XVII
A SNOW FIGHT
I wonder if you ever knew anything to equal the wonderful winter weather we had that day. It had been snowing until all the mountains and rocks around our old house had vanished, and instead of them, there were only beautiful mounds so soft-looking that you wanted awfully to turn somersaults in them.
The day before, there had been a very slight thaw, but during the night everything was frozen hard again, and when the sun came out that morning, thousands and tens of thousands of diamonds were scattered everywhere, sparkling, glittering, flashing, so that the brightness hurt your eyes.
On the old trees down the hillside bits of frozen, glistening snow shone out against the blue sky; the sky was wonderfully blue that day, I remember.
How a sudden overwhelming gladness can sometimes take possession of one! Not necessarily because there is anything especial to be happy over. For that matter, such sudden joy can come simply because it is fine, bright weather, and can be so exciting that you want to shout at the top of your lungs, throw out your arms, or turn somersaults, just because it is so good to be alive!
Exactly that way did I feel the morning I am telling you about. Our month’s vacation had begun. I stood on the front steps with my hat and coat on, for I was going to see Massa and Mina, and I was in such high glee over nothing that I had a great mind to jump up into the shining air. But I controlled myself, for through the window of Father’s office I could see Policeman Weiby’s purple nose, and he would certainly think I was crazy if I behaved that way.
When it is frightfully icy on the hill Policeman Weiby always wears boots with sharp nails on the soles when he comes up to see Father. Once inside the house the dumpy old policeman lifts first one foot and then the other so that the nails won’t go into the floor and fasten him there. My! I wish that might happen some day!
I buttoned my light brown gloves very nicely,—they go away up over my wrists,—held my muff straight down, and pushed my chest out and my stomach in, as the grown-up ladies do when they walk about the street. Policeman Weiby probably had wit enough to see now that I was almost grown up.
A long steep slope with trees on both sides leads up to our house. At the bottom of the hill Karsten was toiling and struggling with a great big box which he kept turning over and over so as to get it up the icy hill which was smooth as glass.
The ear-tabs on his fur cap were unfastened and stuck straight out in the air, and his ears, fiery red, looked like two big handles. With his thick fur cap and his hard work, he was dripping with sweat; and on his hands he had big white mittens that were frozen stiff.
“Come and help me,” he called.
I looked at my light brown, tight-fitting gloves.
“No, I thank you,” I said.
“You ought to see what fun it is to coast down on this box; it bumps and makes such a rattlety-bang noise—it’s awfully jolly.”
I suddenly had a burning desire to try this sport, forgot completely that the chest should be held out and the stomach in, took good hold of the box and pulled,—and there it was, up the hill. Then Karsten sat on the front of the box, I back of him and down the hill we went.
It might well be said that we bumped and thumped along. I felt as if I were being shaken to pieces, especially where the road turned at an angle half-way down the hill. Whether that turn caused it or not, smash went the box and thud! Out I tumbled on one side, Karsten on the other, while the remains of the box sped down and hit against Madam Land’s woodshed with a violent whack. My hands had struck the road with such force that both my light brown gloves had burst right across the middle of the palm and my left knee had such a horrid pain in it that I could scarcely get up.
The red-cheeked old woodchopper came out of Madam Land’s woodshed, hitching up his trousers.
“Did she fall off?” he asked. I did not deign to answer him.
Karsten was furious.
“It was your fault, you are so heavy and clumsy; and now the box is smashed that we were to use this afternoon in the snow-fight.”
“A fight? With whom?”
“With the boys at Tangen, of course. Why should they have that grand big coast all to themselves? We boys from the town never go there with a sled without their coming at us and hitting us; and we have only this miserable little hill to coast on.”
“Miserable little hill? This?”
“Yes, I call it a miserable little hill to coast down when Madam Land’s woodshed is right at the foot, blocking the way so that you have to twist your legs off, almost, to steer around on to the church green. But we have had a council of war, and this afternoon we shall thrash those Tangen boys thoroughly and take the hill for our use.”
This sounded frightfully interesting.
“What time are you going to fight?”
“Oh, you needn’t think that we’ll have you girls with us. You may be mighty sure we won’t.”
Karsten always pretends that he knows everything the bigger boys plan among themselves. As a matter of fact, they simply order him around as much as they please, but he will never acknowledge that.
“We were going to have that box to put our balls in,—snowballs, you know. We were going to make lots of them right after dinner, and then drag the box full of snowballs through Main Street and up Back Gorge and there we would be—right behind Tangen in a jiffy.”
I limped up the hill with my bruised knee aching, but I determined that I would go out to Tangen that afternoon to see the snow-fight, no matter how painful my knee was.
In the living-room all through the noon-hour I could hear Karsten in the woodshed, pounding and hammering at the box. Naturally I had wormed out of him that the fight was to begin at half-past three precisely.
I said nothing about having hurt my knee, and a little past three o’clock went down to the town after Massa and Mina. Yes, indeed, they were crazy to go to the fight, even if the boys didn’t want us; and we knew a short cut through Terkelsen’s garden, so off we ran.
By this short cut, we reached the top of the Tangen hill in no time. Oh, but it was a splendid hill! Very steep to begin with, so that it gave you a great send-off—tremendous speed at the start—then a long, long even stretch. You sometimes go as far as away out to Landvigen; but it is only our old blue sled “Seagull” and Nils Trap’s “Racer” that go that distance. That is because they are the best sleds in town.
Only very poor people live at Tangen, pilots and fishermen and laborers. The small houses are scattered about irregularly, one little hut on a height, and another in a hollow.
The whole hill was swarming with children that day,—boys and girls, big and little, and the air rang with their shouting and laughter and jollity. Not many of the children had real sleds; they coasted mostly on a long board, six or eight of them on it at a time. What of that? Hey hurrah! how they went! Some stood on skiis, the kind they make themselves out of barrel-hoops. They whizzed down the hill, bow-legged, bent way over, but they kept on their feet, anyway.
One child had a forlorn sled with a broken runner; and far below on the slope a wee little boy with a kerchief tied round his head, was dragging a stick of wood after him by a string. That was his sled.
None of our boys were to be seen yet. Our appearance on the hill caused great astonishment. Those who were coming up stood still, whispered together and went a little to one side. At that moment a big sailor boy came up—a regular broad-shouldered square-built fellow.
“Come, now!” he shouted to us. “What are you staying around here for? We have a right to coast down our own hill even if some elegant city flies stand and look at us.” His voice was changing, and he talked as loud as if he were in the worst kind of a storm at sea.
At that moment Nils Trap’s crooked nose appeared from behind the slope, and there were the boys, Angemal Terkelsen, Jens Stub, Peter, the dean’s son, Axel Wasserfall, and a whole bunch of boys besides. I saw Karsten bringing up the rear with the box heaping full of snowballs. Ugh! I almost had palpitation of the heart at the thought of what was coming but I couldn’t bear to leave.
“What do you want?” asked the young sailor.
“We want this slope to coast on,” said Axel Wasserfall. “You must pack yourselves off, every one of you, or——”
The young sailor had come close up to Axel, turning sideways and holding his arms out as boys do when they wish to pick a quarrel with any one, and staring the whole time straight into Axel’s eyes.
“Pack yourselves off, did you say? Pack yourselves off? I’ll give you ‘pack yourselves’—mass of herring-bones that you are!”
And before Axel could catch his breath, the young sailor’s fist struck him in the chest, and he was lying in the snowdrift with the sailor over him; but at the same instant Nils Trap and Angemal Terkelsen jumped on the sailor’s back. Then there was such a tussle that the snow flew in all directions.
A crowd of Tangen boys came storming up the hill, but now Karsten and the rear-guard pressed forward with the snowballs.
Massa, Mina, and I were thoroughly scared and went off to one side. The air was filled with the fast-flying icy snowballs, which hurt wherever they hit, as I myself can bear witness, for one hit me on the cheek and I had to hold my handkerchief there the whole time, it hurt me so much.
My, but it was exciting! They shouted and they screamed; they did not keep to the coast any longer, but struggled and fought out in the deep snow beside the road while fast as ever, without a pause, came the snowballs from the rear-guard whistling past one’s ears.
The women from the houses around flocked out on their stone steps with babies in their arms and kept calling out something to which no one listened.
Our boys had naturally the better position the whole time, for they stood on the hilltop and threw their snowballs down, while the Tangen boys stood below and had to throw theirs up. It was not many minutes before the Tangen boys had to take to their heels and run for shelter among the houses.
One and another lonely snowball still came whizzing up in a long curve, but it was easy to see that the Tangen boys felt themselves beaten.
Axel and Ludvig on our old broad “Seagull” coasted down first; and after them the others in a long row. My! how they laughed and shouted.
Angemal Terkelsen threw himself on his stomach on a sled—he always wants to be so bold—and Jens Stub sat astride his back.
Peter, the dean’s son, started off with his flat red sled. It was made in the country and goes so slowly that the other boys call it the “Snail.” Then Peter gets offended, for he is the kind of boy who never gets angry, but only offended.
But in the midst of all the fun and hurrahing, I began to hear a pitiful sound of crying. When I looked about, I found it came from the little boy with the kerchief on his head, the child I had noticed dragging a stick of wood by a string. It was Tollef, our washerwoman’s little boy.
A snowball had hit him in the eye, he had lost his stick of wood, and he was crying and crying. He knocked on the door of a little house, but his mother had gone out and the door was locked.
In the house next to the one outside of which Tollef stood crying, lived a man whom the whole town called Jack-of-all-trades, because he fixed lamps, soldered old teakettles, and mended all sorts of things. He was a little, grimy man and was now standing out on his front steps.
“Will you take away even this little bit of pleasure from the poor folks’ children?” asked Jack-of-all-trades. He looked at our boys laughing and shouting as they coasted down the long hill. His black eyes flashed and I came pretty near being afraid of him as I stood there. And all at once it struck me what a shame it was and what a horrid, mean thing we had done when we drove those poverty-stricken children from that hill of theirs. I rushed to the snowball box, tipped it over and trampled what snowballs there were left into the snow with all my might.
I remember that I began to cry when I got home; I told Mother that my knee pained me from the knock it got when I coasted on the box, and that was true; but really my crying was more because of what Jack-of-all-trades had said, and because we had spoiled the fun of poor little bow-legged Tollef.
However, the Tangen boys got their hill back again before long, you may be sure of that! And I’m glad to say that our boys have let them alone ever since.