Ernest Hemingway - The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

“No. I’m going to get some sleep. You stay up.”

“Do you think he’ll come in tonight?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to get some sleep. You wake me when you get sleepy.”

“I can stay up all night,” the local warden said. “Many’s the night I’ve stayed up all night for jack lighters and never shut an eye.”

“Me, too,” the down-state man said. “But now I’m going to get a little sleep.”

Nick and his sister watched him go in the door. Their mother had told the two men they could sleep in the bedroom next to the living room. They saw when he struck a match. Then the window was dark again. They watched the other warden sitting at the table until he put his head on his arms. Then they heard him snoring.

“We’ll give him a little while to make sure he’s solid asleep. Then we’ll get the stuff,” Nick said.

“You get over outside the fence,” his sister said. “It doesn’t matter if I’m moving around. But he might wake up and see you.”

“All right,” Nick agreed. “I’ll get everything out of here. Most of it’s here.”

“Can you find everything without a light?”

“Sure. Where’s the rifle?”

“Flat on the back upper rafter. Don’t slip or make the wood fall down. Nick.”

“Don’t you worry.”

She came out to the fence at the far corner where Nick was making up his pack beyond the big hemlock that had been struck by lightning the summer before and had fallen in a storm that autumn. The moon was just rising now behind the far hills and enough moonlight came through the trees for Nick to see clearly what he was packing. His sister put down the sack she was carrying and said, “They’re sleeping like pigs, Nickie.”

“Good.”

“The down-state one was snoring just like the one outside. I think I got everything.”

“You good old Littless.”

“I wrote a note to our mother and told her I was going with you to keep you out of trouble and not to tell anybody and that you’d take good care of me. I put it under her door. It’s locked.”

“Oh, shit,” Nick said. Then he said, “I’m sorry, Littless.”

“Now it’s not your fault and I can’t make it worse for you.”

“You’re awful.”

“Can’t we be happy now?”

“Sure.”

“I brought the whiskey,” she said hopefully. “I left some in the bottle. One of them can’t be sure the other didn’t drink it. Anyway they have another bottle.”

“Did you bring a blanket for you?”

“Of course.”

“We better get going.”

“We’re all right if we’re going where I think. The only thing that makes the pack bigger is my blanket. I’ll carry the rifle.”

“All right. What kind of shoes have you?”

“I’ve got my work-moccasins.”

“What did you bring to read?”

“ Lorna Doone and Kidnapped and Wuthering Heights .”

“They’re all too old for you but Kidnapped .”

“ Lorna Doone isn’t.”

“We’ll read it out loud,” Nick said. “That way it lasts longer. But, Littless, you’ve made things sort of hard now and we better go. Those bastards can’t be as stupid as they act. Maybe it was just because they were drinking.”

Nick had rolled the pack now and tightened the straps and he sat back and put his moccasins on. He put his arm around his sister. “You sure you want to go?”

“I have to go, Nickie. Don’t be weak and indecisive now. I left the note.”

“All right,” Nick said. “Let’s go. You can take the rifle until you get tired of it.”

“I’m all ready to go,” his sister said. “Let me help you strap the pack.”

“You know you haven’t had any sleep at all and that we have to travel?”

“I know. I’m really like the snoring one at the table says he was.”

“Maybe he was that way once, too,” Nick said. “But what you have to do is keep your feet in good shape. Do the moccasins chafe?”

“No. And my feet are tough from going barefoot all summer.”

“Mine are good, too,” said Nick. “Come on. Let’s go.”

They started off walking on the soft hemlock needles and the trees were high and there was no brush between the tree trunks. They walked uphill and the moon came through the trees and showed Nick with the very big pack and his sister carrying the .22 rifle. When they were at the top of the hill they looked back and saw the lake in the moonlight. It was clear enough so they could see the dark point, and beyond were the high hills of the far shore.

“We might as well say good-bye to it,” Nick Adams said.

“Good-bye, lake,” Littless said. “I love you, too.”

They went down the hill and across the long field and through the orchard and then through a rail fence and into a field of stubble. Going through the stubble field they looked to the right and saw the slaughterhouse and the big barn in the hollow and the old log farmhouse on the other high land that overlooked the lake. The long road of Lombardy poplars that ran to the lake was in the moonlight.

“Does it hurt your feet, Littless?” Nick asked.

“No,” his sister said.

“I came this way on account of the dogs,” Nick said. “They’d shut up as soon as they knew it was us. But somebody might hear them bark.”

“I know,” she said. “And as soon as they shut up afterwards they’d know it was us.”

Ahead they could see the dark of the rising line of hills beyond the road. They came to the end of one cut field of grain and crossed the little sunken creek that ran down to the springhouse. Then they climbed across the rise of another stubble field and there was another rail fence and the sandy road with the second-growth timber solid beyond it.

“Wait till I climb over and I’ll help you,” Nick said. “I want to look at the road.”

From the top of the fence he saw the roll of the country and the dark timber by their own house and the brightness of the lake in the moonlight Then he was looking at the road.

“They can’t track us the way we’ve come and I don’t think they would notice tracks in this deep sand,” he said to his sister. “We can keep to the two sides of the road if it isn’t too scratchy.”

“Nickie, honestly I don’t think they’re intelligent enough to track anybody. Look how they just waited for you to come back and then practically got drunk before supper and afterwards.”

“They came down to the dock,” Nick said. “That was where I was. If you hadn’t told me they would have picked me up.”

“They didn’t have to be so intelligent to figure you would be on the big creek when our mother let them know you might have gone fishing. After I left they must have found all the boats were there and that would make them think you were fishing the creek. Everybody knows you usually fish below the grist mill and the cider mill. They were just slow thinking it out.”

“All right,” Nick said. “But they were awfully close then.”

His sister handed him the rifle through the fence, butt toward him, and then crawled between the rails. She stood beside him on the road and he put his hand on her head and stroked it.

“Are you awfully tired, Littless?”

“No. I’m fine. I’m too happy to be tired.”

“Until you’re too tired you walk in the sandy part of the road when; their horses made holes in the sand. It’s so soft and dry tracks won’t show and I’ll walk on the side where it’s hard.”

“I can walk on the side, too.”

“No. I don’t want you to get scratched.”

They climbed, but with constant small descents, toward the height of land that separated the two lakes. There was close, heavy, second-growth timber on both sides of the road and blackberry and raspberry bushes grew from the edge of the road to the timber. Ahead they could see the top of each hill as a notch in the timber. The moon was well on its way down now.