The Big Rock Candy Mountain Read Online Free Page A

his smart alec streak. He was the best player there, there was no question. But his grin embarrassed her when they were introduced, and she sat back in the hot sweaty alley between Helm and the rail and let the others talk.
    â€œWhat were you trying to do, kill that guy?” Karl said.
    Mason laughed. “He ran me down, didn’t he? He wants to play rough I can play rough too.”
    â€œI bet he can’t get his hat on for a week,” Helm said. “How about some beer? You look hot, Bo.”
    â€œYou could fry eggs on me,” Mason said. “Sure. Over at your place?”
    Elsa, sitting uncertainly beside Helm, caught her uncle’s grin. “You want to come along, Elsa?”
    The girl flushed and laughed. “I don’t drink beer,” she said, and was furious at how squeaky her voice sounded. They laughed at her, and Helm patted her on the back with a hand like a leg of lamb. “You don’t have to, honey,” she said. “We c’n take care of that.”

3
    In the hot morning hush Elsa walked down the plank sidewalk toward her uncle’s store. There wasn’t enough housework to keep her busy more than a few hours a day, even on Mondays, when she washed, and Saturdays, when she baked. It was a problem to know what to do with her time. Unlike her father, Karl did not have many books around, and though he had given her money to subscribe to the Ladies’ Home Journal, the first number hadn’t come yet.
    She could have called on Helm, but the prospect was still a little terrifying. As she thought over that afternoon with the beer drinkers she felt a little weak. They had all got a little tipsy, they had laughed uproariously, they had told jokes that she knew weren’t quite clean, and she had just pretended not to hear. Before long, if she didn’t watch out, she wouldn’t know what was respectable and what wasn’t. Fiddlesticks, she said. What was wrong about it? But she didn’t quite dare call on Helm.
    In the window of the hotel she caught sight of her reflection, and was pleased. The white dress, perfectly ironed, not yet wilted by the heat; the red hair puffed like a crown in front; the round, erect figure, slim in the waist, full breasted. When she walked past three young men lounging on the sidewalk she stepped self-consciously. Feeling their eyes on her, she hurried a little in spite of herself. She was ten steps past when she heard the low whistle and the voice: “Oh you kid!”
    She remembered the time she had bloodied George Moe’s nose for him when he got smart about her hair. Men were just the same. They’d say smart alec things and if you turned on them, even if you bloodied their noses, they’d laugh even more. But she would have liked to say something sharp to that loafer. Oh you kid! The smart alecs.
    But anyway, the next window told her, she looked nice, cool as a cloud.
    In front of her uncle’s store she almost ran into Bo Mason, bare-headed, his pomaded hair sleek as a blackbird’s breast. As he looked at her his eyes were sleepy, the full upper lids making them narrower than they really were. His voice was slow and warm. “Hel loooo!”
    â€œHello.”
    â€œGoing somewhere?”
    â€œNo. Just looking around.”
    â€œSeeing the city?” He lifted his head to laugh, and she saw the corded strength of his neck. He pointed down the street to the weed-grown flats dwindling off into dump ground and summer fallow. “You must take a stroll in the park,” he said. “Five thousand acres of cool greenery. This is one of the show towns of Dakota. Prosperous! Did you see that magnificent hotel on the corner as you came by? Gilded luxury, every chamber in it, the fulfilled dream of one of Hardanger’s most public-spirited citizens.”
    Elsa was a little astonished. She said demurely, “Very imposing. Bath in every room?”
    â€œSome rooms two, so a man and