Red and Black

by Grace S. Richmond

“Till this week?” Red’s eyes twinkled enjoyingly. “You can make coffee by now, I’ll wager. But you can’t touch me at making it. Put on your collar and come along. I’ll treat you to a new experience, and by the look of you, you need it. So do I—we’ll clear out together.”

“I can’t leave Mrs. Hodder without her supper—and I have a committee meeting at eight. I’m mighty sorry, Doctor——”

“You needn’t be. I’ll fix the whole thing, and have you back in time for the bunch. Come—take orders from me, for once.”

Of course Black never had wanted to do anything in his life as he wanted to accept this extraordinary and most unprecedented invitation from the red-headed doctor whom he could not yet call his friend. The high barriers were down between them, there could be no doubt of that. Red no longer avoided the minister; he came to church now and then; the two met here and there with entire friendliness, and had more than once consulted each other on matters of mutual interest. But Red, except as he had taken Black into his car when passing him upon the road, had never directly sought him out on what looked like a basis of real pleasure in his society. And now, when Red, running upstairs to see Mrs. Hodder, and coming down to announce that all she wanted for supper was a little tea and bread and butter, and that it was up to Black to fix up a tray in a hurry and be ready when he, Red, should get back—in about fifteen minutes—well, Black was pretty glad to give in, cast his broom and dust cloth into the kitchen closet, wash his hands, and put a little water to boil in the bottom of the kettle over a gas flame turned up so high that it was warranted to have the water bubbling in a jiffy!

“Now, you just go along with the doctor and rest up,” commanded Mrs. Hodder, when the tray appeared. “He told me he was going to take you out to dinner—and I guess you need it—living on canned stuff, so. He thinks I can get down to-morrow, and I certainly do hope so. You look about beat out—and no wonder.”

With this cordial send-off Black ran downstairs like a boy let out of school, his weariness already lessening under the stimulus of the coming adventure. Tired? Just to amuse himself, late last evening, he had made a list of the things he had done, the people he had seen, the letters he had written, the telephone calls he had answered—and all the rest of it. It had been a formidable list. And living on tinned beans, and crackers and cheese, had not been—— Oh, well—what did it matter, so he had got his work done, slighted nothing and nobody—though he could be by no means sure of that! What minister ever could?

He dressed as Red had ordered—heavy shoes, sweater under his overcoat, cap instead of hat—he felt indeed like a boy off on a lark, only that his busy, self-supporting life had not furnished him with many comparisons in the way of larks. As he ran down the manse steps he realized that it was a perfect winter night. There had been little snow of late; the air was dry and not too cold; the stars were out. And he was going camping in the woods with Red Pepper Burns—and it was not up to him to do the cooking!

The car slid up to the curb, a big basket in the place where Black was to put his feet; he had to straddle it. There was not too much time to spare—only a little over two hours. The car leaped away down the street, and in no time was off over the macadamized road on which speed could be made. And then, a mile away from that road, with rough going for that mile—but who cared?—they came to a clump of woods lying on a hillside, and the two were out and scrambling up it in the dark, Red evidently following a trail with accuracy, for Black found no difficulty in keeping up with him.

Upon the top of the hill was a bare, stony space, sheltered from the sides but open to the stars. And here, in astonishingly little time, were made two leaping fires the basis for which had been a small basket of materials brought in the car, upon which hot foundation the gathered sticks of the wood had no choice but to burn. Rustling fuel with energy, Black soon found himself ready to discard his overcoat, and by the time the thick steak Red was manipulating had reached its rich perfection, as only that master of camp cookery could make it, Black was thinking that, big as it was, he could devour the whole of it himself.

Coffee—what coffee! Had he ever known the taste of it before, Black wondered, as he sniffed the delicious fragrance? Red had worked so swiftly—in entire silence—that the hands of Black’s watch pointed to a bare seven o’clock when he set his teeth into the first hot, juicy morsel of meat, feeling like a starved hound who has been fed upon scraps for a month.