Free THE Nick Adams STORIES by Ernest Hemingway

I have to get out of the country for a while. I’ll get her to give me a small skillet and some salt and pepper and some bacon and some shortening and some corn meal. I’ll get her to give me a sack to put everything in and I’ll get some dried apricots and some prunes and some tea and plenty ofmatches and a hatchet. But I can only get one blanket. She’ll help me because buying trout is just as bad as selling them.”
    â€œI can get a blanket,” his sister said. “I’ll wrap it around the rifle and I’ll bring your moccasins and my moccasins and I’ll change to different overalls and a shirt and hide these so they’ll think I’m wearing them and I’ll bring soap and a comb and a pair of scissors and something to sew with and Lorna Doone and Swiss Family Robinson.”
    â€œBring all the .22’s you can find,” Nick Adams said. Then quickly, “Come on back. Get out of sight.” He had seen a buggy coming down the road.
    Behind the cedars they lay flat against the springy moss with their faces down and heard the soft noise of the horses’ hooves in the sand and the small noise of the wheels. Neither of the men in the buggy was talking but Nick Adams smelled them as they went past and he smelled the sweated horses. He sweated himself until they were well past on their way to the dock because he thought they might stop to water at the spring or to get a drink.
    â€œIs that them, Littless?” he asked.
    â€œYeah,” she said.
    â€œCrawl way back in,” Nick Adams said. He crawled back into the swamp, pulling his sack of fish. The swamp was mossy and not muddy there. Then he stood up and hid the sack behind the trunk of a cedar and motioned the girl to come further in. They went into the cedar swamp, moving as softly as deer.
    â€œI know the one,” Nick Adams said. “He’s a no good son of a bitch.”
    â€œHe said he’d been after you for four years.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œThe other one, the big one with the spit tobacco face and the blue suit, is the one from down state.”
    â€œGood,” Nick said. “Now we’ve had a look at them I better get going. Can you get home all right?”
    â€œSure. I’ll cut up to the top of the hill and keep off the road. Where will I meet you tonight, Nickie?”
    â€œI don’t think you ought to come, Littless.”
    â€œI’ve got to come. You don’t know how it is. I can leave a note for our mother and say I went with you and you’ll take good care of me.”
    â€œAll right,” Nick Adams said. “I’ll be where the big hemlock is that was struck by lightning. The one that’s down. Straight up from the cove. Do you know the one? On the short cut to the road.”
    â€œThat’s awfully close to the house.”
    â€œI don’t want you to have to carry the stuff too far.”
    â€œI’ll do what you say. But don’t take chances, Nickie.”
    â€œI’d like to have the rifle and go down now to the edge of the timber and kill both of those bastards while they’re on the dock and wire a piece of iron on them from the old mill and sink them in the channel.”
    â€œAnd then what would you do?” his sister asked. “Somebody sent them.”
    â€œNobody sent that first son of a bitch.”
    â€œBut you killed the moose and you sold the trout and you killed what they took from your boat.”
    â€œThat was all right to kill that.”
    He did not like to mention what that was, because that was the proof they had.
    â€œI know. But you’re not going to kill people and that’s why I’m going with you.”
    â€œLet’s stop talking about it. But I’d like to kill those two sons of bitches.”
    â€œI know,” she said. “So would I. But we’re not going to kill people, Nickie. Will you promise me?”
    â€œNo. Now I don’t know