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Table of Contents
Cover
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Boxes
Acknowledgments
Part 1: Foundations
Chapter 1: The Hydrosocial Cycle
The Month of Big Rains
The Hydrosocial Cycle
Knowledge is Power
Scarcity is Made
Water is Life
Camp is Everywhere
Summary and What’s Next
Further Reading
Chapter 2: Water and Empire
Stillsuits and Spice
Theories of Empire and Water
Water at the Frontier
Property, Race, and Caste
Boundaries and Imperial Space
Legacies of Empire
Further Reading
Chapter 3: Legal Waters
The Chilean Water Code
Why Institutions Matter
Water Rights (and Wrongs)
Legal Pluralism
Institutions in Action
Does the Law Deliver Justice?
A New Day for Chile
Further Reading
Chapter 4: The Business of Water
Paying for the Pipes
Public or Private?
State Failure?
Privatization Debates
New Frontiers of Financialization
Streams of Revenue
Uncooperative Waters?
Further Reading
Part 2: Big Waters
Chapter 5: Eating Water
How Much Water Do You Eat?
The Water of Land Grabbing
Cheap Food and Unsustainable Water Use
Virtual Water Hegemony
Closed Basins, Fragmented Rivers, and Empty Aquifers
More Crop Per Drop, More Dollar Per Drop
Further Reading
Chapter 6: Dam Fever
A Fever Spreads
Dams as Development
Dams as Geopolitics
The “Narmada Effect”
The World Commission on Dams
The Future of Dams
Further Reading
Chapter 7: Shared Waters
A River in “Crisis”
The Myth of Water Wars
Limits to Water Cooperation
A Spectrum of Intensities
Power and Hydro‐hegemony
Water Diplomacy as Praxis
The Future of Shared Waters
Further Reading
Part 3: Water is Life
Chapter 8: Intimate Waters
Citizenship and the Toilet
The Work of Water
From Citizen to “Consumer”
“Here’s to Flint”
Emotional Geographies of Water
Take Back the Tap
Further Reading
Chapter 9: The Right to Water
Victory or Defeat?
What is the Human Right to Water?
Struggles in South Africa
From South to North
A Right to the Hydrosocial Cycle
Rights Beyond the Human?
The Right to Water as a Process
Further Reading
Chapter 10: Future Waters
At the Confluence of Change
Stationarity is Dead
Techno‐Fix 1: Desalination
Techno‐Fix 2: Moving Water
Techno‐Fix 3: Nature‐Based Solutions
Techno‐Fix 4: Resilience
Adapting to New Worlds
A Mudlarkers’ Guide to the Future
Further Reading
Bibliography
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 3
Table 3.1 Key Differences in US Surface Water Allocation
Doctrines4
Chapter 4
Table 4.1 Market Environmentalism in Water. This table
illustrates the ways...
Chapter 6
Table 6.1 World’s Largest Dams by Electric Power
Generation Capacity. Sourc...
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1 The school gardens at Manzo Elementary School
in Tucson, Arizona....
Figure 1.2 The Manzo farmer’s market. Here, student
leaders explain how they...
Figure 1.3 The O’odham calendar at Manzo Elementary
School.
Figure 1.4 The Tijuana hydrosocial cycle. Water moves
unevenly through the T...
Figure 1.5 Hydrosocial flows in the Coachella Valley.After
listening to ...
Figure 1.6 The Black Snake. This map illustrates the
geography of the Dakota...
Figure 1.7 The Oceti Sakowin Camp at Standing Rock.
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1 Sketch of Karl Wittfogel by the Hungarian artist
Lajos Tihanyi (1...
Figure 2.2 The “Imperial Federation” of the British Empire
in 1886. Note the...
Figure 2.3 Map of the Indus River basin.
Figure 2.4 A water tank near Hemakuta Hill, Vijayanagar,
India (1856). Tanks...
Figure 2.5 Problems of water supply for Palestinians. Here,
an elderly man c...
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 Map of northern Chile, including Chiu‐Chiu valley
and towns.
Figure 3.2 Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Prize winner.
Figure 3.3 Major legal traditions in the world.
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 The water footprint of agriculture. This graph
depicts three cate...
Figure 5.2 Portrait of J.A. Allan, or Tony, as he liked to be
called.
Figure 5.3 Head regulator of the Malibya canal new area,
Office du Niger, Ma...
Figure 5.4 Variation in blue water footprints for selected
energy crops. Thi...
Figure 5.5 The Wonderwater Project, an art‐science
collaboration that showed...
Figure 5.6 Café customers in London and Milan read the
menu and learned abou...
Figure 5.7 The expansion of soybean production in Brazil
between 1960 and 20...
Figure 5.8 Estimation of groundwater withdrawals for
irrigation.
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Removal of the Condit Dam on the White Salmon
River, WA (USA). No...
Figure 6.2 Dam construction in Nepal. This photograph
depicts workers in the...
Figure 6.3 The Colorado River basin. This map illustrates
the complex geogra...
Figure 6.4 Region of the Tennessee Valley Authority, USA.
The TVA project wa...
Figure 6.5 Folk singer Woody Guthrie (1912–1967), pictured
in 1943.
Figure 6.6 Social activist Medha Patkar (1954–), pictured in
2002.
Figure 6.7 Himalayan hydropower and dam development at
work.
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Map of the Mekong River basin.
Figure 7.2 World map of transboundary rivers, lakes, and
aquifers.
Figure 7.3 Transboundary Waters Interaction NexuS
(TWINS) matrix.
Figure 7.4 Activists ride a boat along the Mekong River,
Thailand.
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1 “Don’t Just Sit There Fred, Get a House
Renovation Grant.” This p...
Figure 8.2 A rainwater harvesting system in a Tlalpan home,
Mexico City. Thi...
Figure 8.3 Households without piped running water in the
United States, 2013...
Figure 8.4 Changes in urban plumbing poverty rank in the
United States from ...
Figure 8.5 A sign in a Hackney park in London says, “Go
home if you need to ...
Figure 8.6 Barriers to entry in Greenwich Park. Since 2015,
Royal Parks char...
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 Timeline of key events related to the human
rights to water and s...
Figure 9.2 Demonstrations held by Right2Water in Spain.
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 Students surveying the Okavango Delta,
Botswana.
Figure 10.2 Map of the South–North Water Transfer project
in China.
Figure 10.3 The Thames River, central London. View from
the Queenhithe secti...
Critical Introductions to
Geography
Critical Introductions to Geography is a series of textbooks for
undergraduate courses covering the key geographical sub‐disciplines
and providing broad and introductory treatment with a critical edge.
They are designed for the North American and international market
and take a lively and engaging approach with a distinct geographical
voice that distinguishes them from more traditional and outdated
texts.
Prospective authors interested in the series should contact the series
editor:
John Paul Jones III
School of Geography and Development
University of Arizona
[email protected]
Published
Water: A Critical Introduction
Katie Meehan, Naho Mirumachi, Alex Loftus, and Majed Akhter
Environment and Society: A Critical Introduction, 3e
Paul Robbins, John Hintz, Sarah A. Moore
Political Geography: A Critical Introduction
Sara Smith
Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction, 3e
Paul Robbins
Economic Geography: A Critical Introduction
Trevor J. Barnes, Brett Christophers
Health Geographies: A Critical Introduction
Tim Brown, Gavin J. Andrews, Steven Cummins, Beth Greenhough,
Daniel Lewis, Andrew Power
Urban Geography: A Critical Introduction
Andrew E.G. Jonas, Eugene McCann, Mary Thomas
Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction
Tim Cresswell
Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography and GIS
Jeremy W. Crampton
Research Methods in Geography: A Critical Introduction
Basil Gomez, John Paul Jones III
Geographies of Media and Communication
Paul C. Adams
Social Geography: A Critical Introduction
Vincent J. Del Casino Jr.
Geographies of Globalization: A Critical Introduction
Andrew Herod
Forthcoming
Energy, Society, and Environment: A Critical Introduction
Dustin Mulvaney
Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction, 2e
Tim Cresswell
Introduction to Cultural Geography: A Critical Approach
Jamie Winders, Declan Cullen
Water
A Critical Introduction
Katie Meehan, Naho Mirumachi, Alex Loftus, and Majed Akhter
This edition first published 2023
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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Meehan, Katie, author. | Mirumachi, Naho, author. | Loftus, Alex, author. |
Akhter, Majed, author.
Title: Water : a critical introduction / Katie Meehan, Naho Mirumachi, Alex Loftus,
and Majed Akhter.
Description: Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, [2023] | Series: Critical introductions to
geography | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022052847 (print) | LCCN 2022052848 (ebook) | ISBN
9781119315216 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119315193 (adobe pdf) | ISBN
9781119315162 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Water–Philosophy. | Water‐supply. | Water and civilization.
Classification: LCC GB671 .M44 2023 (print) | LCC GB671 (ebook) | DDC 553.7–
dc23/eng20230123
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022052847
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022052848
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: Dam at end of Fassa Valley in Dolomites © devid75/Getty Images
List of Figures
Figure 1.1 The school gardens at Manzo Elementary School in
Tucson, Arizona.
Figure 1.2 The Manzo farmer’s market.
Figure 1.3 The O’odham calendar at Manzo Elementary School.
Figure 1.4 The Tijuana hydrosocial cycle.
Figure 1.5 Hydrosocial flows in the Coachella Valley.
Figure 1.6 The Black Snake.
Figure 1.7 The Oceti Sakowin Camp at Standing Rock.
Figure 2.1 Sketch of Karl Wittfogel.
Figure 2.2 The “Imperial Federation” of the British Empire in
1886.
Figure 2.3 Map of the Indus River basin.
Figure 2.4 A water tank near Hemakuta Hill.
Figure 2.5 Problems of water supply for Palestinians.
Figure 3.1 Map of northern Chile, including Chiu‐Chiu valley
and towns.
Figure 3.2 Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Prize winner.
Figure 3.3 Major legal traditions in the world.
Figure 5.1 The water footprint of agriculture.
Figure 5.2 Portrait of J.A. Allan, or Tony, as he liked to be
called.
Figure 5.3 Head regulator of the Malibya canal new area, Office
du Niger, Mali.
Figure 5.4 Variation in blue water footprints for selected
energy crops.
Figure 5.5 The Wonderwater Project, an art‐science
collaboration that showed the hidden flows of virtual water in
café dishes and drinks.
Figure 5.6 Café customers in London and Milan read the menu
and learned about virtual water.
Figure 5.7 The expansion of soybean production in Brazil
between 1960 and 2002.
Figure 5.8 Estimation of groundwater withdrawals for
irrigation.
Figure 6.1 Removal of the Condit Dam on the White Salmon
River, WA (USA).
Figure 6.2 Dam construction in Nepal.
Figure 6.3 The Colorado River basin.
Figure 6.4 Region of the Tennessee Valley Authority, USA.
Figure 6.5 Folk singer Woody Guthrie (1912–1967), pictured in
1943.
Figure 6.6 Social activist Medha Patkar (1954–), pictured in
2002.
Figure 6.7 Himalayan hydropower and dam development at
work.
Figure 7.1 Map of the Mekong River basin.
Figure 7.2 World map of transboundary rivers, lakes, and
aquifers.
Figure 7.3 Transboundary Waters Interaction NexuS (TWINS)
matrix.
Figure 7.4 Activists ride a boat along the Mekong River,
Thailand.
Figure 8.1 “Don’t Just Sit There Fred, Get a House Renovation
Grant.”
Figure 8.2 A rainwater harvesting system in a Tlalpan home,
Mexico City.
Figure 8.3 Households without piped running water in the
United States, 2013–2017.
Figure 8.4 Changes in urban plumbing poverty rank in the
United States from 2000 to 2017.
Figure 8.5 A sign in a Hackney park in London says, “Go home
if you need to go.”
Figure 8.6 Barriers to entry in Greenwich Park.
Figure 9.1 Timeline of key events related to the human rights
to water and sanitation.
Figure 9.2 Demonstrations held by Right2Water in Spain.
Figure 10.1 Students surveying the Okavango Delta, Botswana.
Figure 10.2 Map of the South–North Water Transfer project in
China.
Figure 10.3 The Thames River, central London.
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Key Differences in US Surface Water Allocation
Doctrines.
Table 4.1 Market Environmentalism in Water.
Table 6.1 World’s Largest Dams by Electric Power Generation
Capacity.
List of Boxes
Box 1.1 Make Your Own Hydrosocial Cycle
Box 3.1 Rules of the Game
Box 3.2 First Law in Australia
Box 4.1 The Dublin Principles
Box 4.2 Thames Water, An Iconic Case
Box 5.1 What is Virtual Water?
Box 5.2 Water on the Menu
Box 6.1 What Is a Dam?
Box 6.2 Fighting for Uncle Sam
Box 6.3 Dams and Displaced Peoples
Box 6.4 Himalayan Hydropower, Hunger Strikes, and Geologic
Surprises
Box 7.1 Transboundary Cooperation and the SDGs
Box 7.2 Problemsheds, Not Watersheds
Box 8.1 Unaffordable Water in the United States
Box 9.1 The United Nations Special Rapporteurs
Box 9.2 Free Basic Water in South Africa
Acknowledgments
We hope you read this book as a love letter to the power of critique.
The references section, itself lengthy as a chapter, captures just a
small sample of the muscular, insightful, and brilliant critical
scholarship on water – including original research and stories of our
own. In the places we research and work, we are grateful to our many
collaborators, informants, and participants, who have deeply shaped
and sharpened our worldviews. May the works cited here inspire
questions, discoveries, and more skeptical superheroes.
This book is the product of four people with very different
backgrounds, interests, and life experiences. What unites us is a
curiosity about the world, a relentless drive to question, and a
responsibility to the people, places, and waters we have met along
the way. We hope that this book serves as a launch pad for readers to
do the same and see the world’s waters around them a little
differently.
We are fortunate to work together at King’s College London in the
Department of Geography, a truly inspiring and collegial
environment that supported the production of this book. The book
arrives amid exciting developments with King’s Water Centre, and
we are thankful for our new interdisciplinary community that has
formed around grand challenges of water sustainability. We are
grateful to the Department of Geography Research Impact Fund and
the PLuS Alliance (Arizona State University, King’s College London,
and UNSW Sydney) for providing funds that were crucial to making
the book more accessible and engaging for our readers. A two‐month
fellowship from the University of Arizona’s Agnese Nelms Haury
Program in Environment and Social Justice helped to shape early
content and structure.
It takes a village to make a book. The series editor, John Paul Jones
III, believed in this project (and us) from the start, and we are
grateful for his vision, patience, and skilled editorial pen – literally,
scribbled in the margins of scanned pages of text. At Wiley, editors
Charlie Hamlyn, Clelia Petracca, and Justin Vaughn shared the faith
and created a structure for this project to flourish and manifest. We
also thank Verity Stuart and others at Wiley who helped bring this
book to publication. Philip Stickler did wonders with the maps and
cartographic design.
A special thanks is due to Jen McCormack, our copyeditor, who
provided superb editorial support, poring over the text with a keen
eye and unwavering fidelity to critique. There was no hiding from
Jen’s quality control: she pushed us to improve our craft and write to
the student at the back of the classroom. All faults and errors remain
ours.
Peer review is the often‐invisible and ever‐vital reproductive labor of
our praxis. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewer for their close
reading, incisive comments, and big picture thinking. Their excellent
comments were joined by three outstanding student reviewers –
Lucy Everitt, Diana Kim, and Tamara Sbeih – who provided
constructive and candid feedback. It was a privilege to be closely read
by such brilliant people.
Writing this book involved a surprising degree of joy and intellectual
freedom. Our classrooms provided a supportive space for thought
experimentation. Special thanks is owed to University of Oregon
students from Katie’s International Water Policy class – all nine
years of you! – and members of the Salon (Shiloh Deitz, Fiona De
Los Ríos, Lourdes Ginart, Olivia Molden, and Kate Shields) who
generously read the book proposal and commented on early
material. At King’s College London, we thank students in our current
and past modules, especially Water and Development,
Environmental Justice, and Water Sustainability.
The writing of this book coincided with COVID‐19 pandemic
upheavals and major structural transformations (and struggles)
within British higher education. Chapters were frantically written
between “pingdemics” and picket lines, including many weeks of
industrial action over pension dispute, fair pay and working
conditions, gender and racial equity – all fights against the
devaluation of our profession and the erosion of education.
A healthy sense of outrage is always a good place to start writing a
critical introduction. Many people supported us along the way –
cooking meals, adjusting plans, telling us when things got boring –
and we would especially like to thank our friends and families, who
have been our best (or at least, most honest) critics and confidants.
This book is dedicated to our students, past and present, who
continue to create new worlds and teach us.
Part 1
Foundations
Chapter 1
Knowledge is Power
Scarcity is Made
Water is Life
Camp is Everywhere

May is the last month of the school year in Tucson, Arizona, USA. At
Manzo Elementary School, students lead us on a tour of their school
gardens.1 Under the desert sun, shade from fruit trees and the cool
touch of goldfish ponds offer respite in this arid city. We stop near a
rain tank (Figure 1.1). Chickens peck at bugs and sip water collected
from the roof. A desert tortoise peeks out from under an agave plant.
At Manzo, students learn science in the garden classrooms. They also
develop community‐building skills of empathy, leadership, mental
wellbeing, and the care work involved in cultivation (Lohr et al.
2022). Manzo students are architects of life, transforming rain into
vegetables, flowers, fruit, and eggs. At their weekly market, they sell
garden products, manage customers, plan budgets, fix systems, and
feed their neighborhood (Figure 1.2).
Figure 1.1 The school gardens at Manzo Elementary
School in Tucson, Arizona.
Source: Courtesy of Community and School Gardens Program.
Figure 1.2 The Manzo farmer’s market. Here, student
leaders explain how they grow vegetables with harvested
rainwater and sell their products in a community market.
Source: Katie Meehan (author).
Can a desert support life? Outsiders tend to assume that a desert is a

wasteland – a site of scarcity, a harsh landscape devoid of water and
therefore life.2 But in the Sonoran Desert, the Manzo students show
us how life is infused in every raindrop. Plant flowering coincides
with the North American monsoon season of July through
September. Thunderhead clouds build pressure and water droplets,
then break in dramatic displays of thunder, lightning, and heavy
evening rain. Water floods streets and arroyos – trapping cars and
washing out paved roads – and recharges rivers and aquifers. Plants
bloom, sprout, seed, and germinate in a few crucial weeks. Most of
the crops at Manzo are rainfed. Water from the municipal piped
network (brought hundreds of miles from the Colorado River) is a
backup source.
Water at Manzo is an example of the hydrosocial cycle, the view of
water as inseparable from society. A hydrosocial approach argues
that water is fundamentally relational (Loftus 2007). Water is the
product of social, spatial, and ecological relations – a point of view
that positions us (people) as internal to the production of the thing
we call “water.” The hydrosocial cycle asks questions like: How is
water produced? Where is it sourced from and to whom does it flow?
What work does water do? And what conditions does a water cycle
create?
The hydrosocial thesis comes into focus at the end of the Manzo
school tour, as we pause at a colorful mural (Figure 1.3). Our student
guides explain that the mural is the traditional Tohono O’odham
calendar for weather, agriculture, and ecological knowledge. Experts
in dryland agriculture, the Tohono O’odham are Indigenous people
of the Sonoran Desert (including Tucson), residing primarily in what
is present‐day Arizona (USA) and Sonora (Mexico).
Each month marks a water‐related event or task. In April, cacti and
flora bloom in spectacular colors, following a season of slow winter
rains. May is the ideal time to collect beans from mesquite trees,
which are dried and ground into flour. In June, the saguaro cactus
called ha:san in Tohono O’odham bears fruit called baidaj which
ripens in scorching temperatures. June is also the Tohono O’odham
new year, called ha:san baidaj (or bak) masad (NAAF 2021). This
celebration connects Tohono O’odham lifeways or himdag to the
harvest of sweet, fuchsia‐colored baidaj. By July – the month of big
rains – the North American monsoon cracks open, unleashing
torrents of hard rain and thunderclaps across a thirsty desert
landscape. At its heart, the O’odham calendar depicts a situated
worldview of water and society – the opposite of what scholar Donna
Haraway (1988) calls the “view from nowhere” that characterizes
modern science. Tohono O’odham Nation citizen and agriculturalist
Nacho Littleagle Flores (CSGP 2022) explains how the calendar
sustains O’odham culture, identity, and language, and incorporates
biogeography, seasonal weather, human labor, and the intimate
relations of water.
Figure 1.3 The O’odham calendar at Manzo Elementary
School.
A hydrosocial approach opens the sluice to a whole array of radical

possibilities. In contrast to the hydrologic cycle, which “naturalizes”
the nature and behavior of H2O, the hydrosocial cycle challenges us
to ask how “nature” – like a flooded field, a broken dike, a
submerged city, a parched town, a thirsty household – comes to be.
Why is Jakarta sinking? Why did New Orleans flood when Hurricane
Katrina struck the US Gulf Coast in 2005? Why is the Middle East
touted as the hot spot for water scarcity? What made “Day Zero” in
South Africa such a terrible crisis? What explains the global rise in
large dams? Who benefits from clean, safe piped water – and who
does not? Why? Why is our world this way? And what can we do
about it?

Imagine water in action. What do you see? Nearly every science
textbook and school lesson begin with the classic image of the
hydrologic cycle: a sweeping visual trace of water’s planetary travels
through clouds, oceans, lakes, rivers, aquifers, trees, and occasionally
a crop field or town. The hydrologic cycle is a cornerstone of water
science and expert knowledge. In most textbook versions, water
moves seamlessly against a temperate backdrop – a hint of its
Northern origins (Linton 2008) – and flows without friction through
different sites and states of being.
Water in the hydrologic cycle obeys a supposed “natural” rhythm and
logic, neatly illustrated by arrows, names, and occasionally numbers.
This water spends a long time underground, and comparatively, just
seconds in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Fueled by energy
from the sun, water in the hydrologic cycle flows like a machine: a
predictable substance that quietly follows the laws of physics and
nature. Precipitation, infiltration, evaporation – these states of water
are “scientific” and devoid of human influence or touch. Our task, as
students and viewers, is to take notes. And then take a test.
Of course, water does obey rules. Rain falls, according to gravity and
physics, even in the Arizona desert. But as the Manzo students
remind us, water is more than a simplified scientific representation –
which, even on its best days, captures knowledge about water that is
important but partial, contingent, and produced (Haraway 1988).
Critical scholars have shown us how the very categories of “nature,”
“technology,” “wilderness,” and “culture” are not stable and pre‐
given, but contingent products of human minds, social conventions,
colonial histories, state institutions, and positions of privilege
(Cronon 1996; Jasanoff 2004; Latour 1993; Ottinger et al. 2016).
This critique is true of water. “Our starting point is that the
hydrologic cycle is not merely a neutral scientific concept,” argue
Jamie Linton and Jessica Budds (2014, p. 171), “but can be regarded
as a social construct with political consequences.” This idea – that
knowledge is produced, and no environment is apolitical (Robbins
2019) – anchors the journeys we take in this book.
In the mid‐nineteenth century, for example, the US West and British
Punjab regions were punctuated by large dams and massive
irrigation projects of “desert reclamation” – a topic we explore in
more depth in Chapters 2 and 6. These infrastructures were made
possible by hydrologic studies and “truths” established by western
science. This intellectual position was backed by the foreign capital
and development muscle of American and British colonial rule – a
confluence of science, capital, and power called the technozone
(Akhter and Ormerod 2015). Experts deemed arid environments as
“deficient” landscapes in need of development intervention to
maximize their full potential as productive landscapes (Koch 2021).
Drylands, the message went, must be tamed, properly managed by
experts, and “scarce water” should not be wasted. In short,
technozone thinking produced a scientific idea of water in desert
regions that went hand in glove with large‐scale infrastructure and
development interventions. As we will analyze, this is not “neutral”
knowledge but a political worldview.
The hydrologic cycle is a relatively recent invention. Jamie Linton
(2010) explains how the hydrologic cycle emerged during an early
twentieth‐century struggle among scientists to define hydrology as a
“pure natural science” and legitimate discipline, backed by
quantitative force. In 1931, Robert E. Horton created the first
scientific depiction of the hydrologic cycle, published in his landmark
article and announced in a public address, launching the field of
hydrology.3 “Hydrology is described as having origins in ancient
philosophy” – a narrative promoted by Horton that supports the
modernist idea that the water cycle was “just sitting there” awaiting
discovery and simply needed a new discipline to illuminate it (Linton
2010). Taking a critical approach to history, Linton (2010, p. 109)
excavates hydrology’s origins “with the quantitative, basin‐scale
studies of French and English proto‐hydrologists in the seventeenth
century.” Through this “new” scientific representation of water,
Linton argues (2010, p. 105), the hydrologic cycle was “an
intellectual move that allows us to quantify water and abstract it
from cultural contexts that otherwise define its social nature(s).”
Horton was no stranger to these ambitions. In his hand‐drawn
version of the hydrologic cycle, water follows a precise order and
quantitative logic. Any relations are severed: humans reside
somewhere “external” or outside of water. Indeed, Horton’s water
cycle does not feature people at all! The effect of this representation
was to “naturalize” water’s circulation – as timeless, placeless, and
devoid of human influence (Linton and Budds 2014; Schmidt 2014;
Swyngedouw 2004). A seemingly innocent diagram, the hydrologic
cycle has had major implications for how we understand people and
nature:
Because it is understood as the natural circulation of water on
earth, the only possible way that people can involve themselves in
the hydrologic cycle is to alter it, thus inevitably producing an
antagonistic kind of relationship. Instead of allowing for the
increasingly hybrid (socio‐hydrological) nature of the circulation
of water, the hydrologic cycle conditions an understanding that
keeps water and people in separate, externally related spheres.
(Linton 2010, p. 106)
A scientific field was born. Water, Horton argued, deserves a

separate field of inquiry called hydrology, constituted by a certified
body of experts (known as “hydrologists”) who specialize in the
“science of water” and bring technical knowledge and authority over
its dynamics (Linton 2010, p. 171). This new framing of water
dovetailed with national development agendas – think of the US
West and British Punjab examples – and the restless movements of
global capital, looking to invest in new infrastructure projects. By the
mid‐twentieth century, Linton (2010, p. 106) describes, “[T]he
hydrologic cycle was quickly taken up by planning agencies of the US
federal government as a means of envisioning the nation’s water
resources and rendering them to a ‘calculable coherence’ to use
Heidegger’s term.” From Mexico to Pakistan, the science of
hydrology supported national development agendas – cue the big
dams (Chapter 6).
The hydrologic cycle is undoubtedly a major achievement. But this
book is guided by a different notion: the hydrosocial cycle, the idea
that water is inseparable from society and shapes – and is shaped by
– our lives, places, practices, and geometries of power (Linton and
Budds 2014). The hydrosocial cycle is a heuristic, a tool for
thinking about relations that might otherwise remain hidden in
mainstream accounts of water. As a tool, the hydrosocial cycle directs
our inquiry into the very production of water flows, facts, narratives,
and ideals. The hydrosocial cycle queries assumptions, challenges
mythologies, and questions authority, even as it traces the material
flows of water. We can ask important questions about the state of the
world:
What is water? How do social groups differentially construct
water? How does water’s materiality – its material properties –
shape the ways people know and manage water?
Where is water? Who experiences its scarcity or
(over)abundance? Why? What does the spatiality of water reveal
about its social and ecological relations?
Whose knowledge about water counts? Under what
circumstances? How do these knowledges articulate or refract
vested interests or structures of power?
How is water produced? What conditions make water “scarce” or
“plentiful”? Who (or what) makes these conditions? What does
water reveal about broader trends, politics, or power? Why is a
drought (or a flood) never just a drought (or flood)?
What causes water injustices? Why do they still occur, despite
major advances in technology and management?
What is the future of water? How can we manage water for more
just and sustainable futures?
Several key elements of hydrosocial thinking bracket this book. First,

the hydrosocial cycle forces us into a relational state of mind. Why
is this important? Water is fundamentally relational, the product of
social, spatial, and ecological relations – a point of view that
positions us (people) as fundamental to the production of water
(Loftus 2007). For example, a relational view asks how the lack of
universal piped water provision in Durban, South Africa, and San
Francisco, California, are manufactured crises generated by social
institutions, ideologies, and power relations (Deitz and Meehan
2019; Loftus 2007, 2009; Meehan et al. 2021). A relational point of
view focuses our analysis on the conditions of water and its
production – and how we, as people, are part of that production.
Second, while the relational aspects of water transcend space and
time, an understanding of the hydrosocial cycle is necessarily
attuned to place. A place‐based perspective provides a sharper view
into power and the production of spatial and social difference
(Massey 2005), including racial, ethnic, classed, caste, and gender‐
based lines of difference and intersection. Consider the hydrosocial
cycle of Tijuana, Mexico, a vibrant coastal desert city on the Mexico–
United States border (Figure 1.4). Often stereotyped by images of
narco‐violence, NAFTA, and Nortec music, on closer look, Tijuana is
a city rooted in struggles over water (Meehan 2014).
Water moves unevenly through Tijuana, shaped as much by
infrastructure, power, and money as by the energy from the sun.
Figure 1.4 depicts the hydrologic and political production of water in
Tijuana (Meehan 2010). At the city’s edge, reservoirs store a precious
water supply imported at great distances from the transboundary
Colorado River. The reservoir supply is governed by a century‐old
international treaty and legal regimes that favor “beneficial use” for
elite parties over long‐term sustainability (Chapter 3). Tijuana has
other vital inputs and outputs of water. Groundwater is a secondary
source for Tijuana’s industry and regional agriculture. The winter
rains from the Pacific Ocean are a complicated water source. Big
storms trigger street flooding and sewer overflows, causing problems
for residents – especially those living in shacks in Tijuana’s denuded
canyons – and life in the Tijuana River estuary, a complex and
beautiful ecosystem at the heart of the San Diego–Tijuana region.
Rather than assume a “universal” movement of water through space,
the Tijuana water cycle reflects the intersecting global and local
dynamics of water in place.
Figure 1.4 The Tijuana hydrosocial cycle. Water moves
unevenly through the Tijuana urban region, fueled as much
by “natural” forces (gravity, energy from the sun, ecological
functions) as by “social” dynamics and institutions (law,
science, urban planning). A hydrosocial perspective invites
us to ask: what makes these conditions?
Source: Katie Meehan, with help from Josh Gobel.
Third, hydrosocial thinking attunes us to a critical and generative

reading of the politics of water, by focusing on its production.
“While the hydrologic cycle has the effect of separating water from its
social context,” argue Linton and Budds (2014, p. 170), “the
hydrosocial cycle deliberately attends to water’s social and political
nature.” What does it mean to say that water is “produced”? A
hydrosocial perspective does not dispute the existence of nature,
reality, or established facts – boring! And by “critical” we do not
imply “nihilistic” or “unproductive” or “critical for critique’s sake” –
doubly boring! Rather, a critical approach to water moves us past a
reading of “external” human influence on the environment – because
water is already relational, and therefore always political – and
unlocks an urgent set of questions: how and why a waterscape is
produced, and with what implications, where, and for whom?
In the following pages, we put our heuristic – the hydrosocial cycle –
to work. Just like the original hydrologic cycle illustrations of
gorgeous swirling vapors and globe‐trotting reach, this book will
follow water through different biomes, sites, controversies, and
dimensions. We will discuss toilets, treaties, food crops, market
logics, big dams, Pinochet, Pakistan, and sex. To build our approach,
the remainder of this chapter presents four core arguments to
structure this text. Think of them as the four joists that underpin the
foundation of this book. They are:
1. Knowledge is power.
2. Scarcity is made.
3. Water is life.
4. Camp is everywhere.
Box 1.1 Make Your Own Hydrosocial Cycle
How does water flow in your neighborhood or region?
Representations are a form of visual discourse: a system of
order and power that uses imagery (not just words) to express a
worldview. As observers and participants in the world, we – the
authors of this book, and you, the reader – also produce
discourse.
In a class assignment, students at the University of Oregon first
listened to a news podcast story (“Valley of Contrasts” by
journalist Antonia Cereijido) about water in Coachella Valley,
California, the site of a retirement community and famous music
festival. “Coachella is divided into two parts: the west side and
the east side,” Cereijido (2017) explains. “While the westsiders
have pools, golf courses, and sprawling lawns – all which require
a lot of water – there are parts of the east (such as mobile home
parks) with up to ten times the safe level of arsenic in their
water.” Working in small groups, Oregon students listened to the
podcast and teamed up to illustrate their version of how water
flows through the valley (Figure 1.5). Just like the Horton water
cycle, their illustrations are not “neutral” depictions, but a visual
analysis and argument.
We invite you to put down this book and pick up a pen or pencil.
Find a flipchart, a notebook, a whiteboard, a tablet, or even a
sidewalk. Think of a place like your hometown, or perhaps, a
place cited in current events or a lecture. How does water flow in
this place? Who and what are its sources and destinations? What
shapes these physical and material circulations? What landscape
features are critical or important? What impedes, diverts, or
transforms water’s flow? With what effects or results? Does water
obey the rules of physics – like the alchemy of rainfall, the
mechanics of evaporation – or are there other, perhaps more
social elements and forces at work? Draw and discuss your
findings. Every image will be unique, because (i) water has
certain universal properties but its flow is dependent on places,
which are unique; and (ii) drawings will depend on you – the
artist and analyst. Ask yourself: What does a hydrosocial cycle
allow us to “see” about water and society?
Figure 1.5 Hydrosocial flows in the Coachella Valley.

Illustration by students (Fiona De Los Ríos and Holly Moulton)
at the University of Oregon.
After listening to the “Valley of Contrasts” podcast,
students discussed the story in class and created their
own interpretation of the Coachella hydrosocial cycle.
Knowledge is Power
A key tenet of the hydrosocial cycle is that knowledge is power. In
other words, scientific knowledge, expertise, and authority shape
how water is understood, managed, and legitimized. In La Ligua
basin in Chile, Jessica Budds (2009a) explores how routine
groundwater assessments by hydrologists became fraught politicized
tools used by the water authority, the National Water Directorate
(DGA). These assessments shape water rights and access for farmers
in uneven ways. Far from science playing a neutral role in water
management, the story of La Ligua reveals how social power
saturates the nexus of science and decision‐making, influencing
which (and whose) ideas are adopted into practice.
Knowledge is not innocent or neutral but is a human construction
that shapes (and is shaped by) the world. Drawing on the field of
science and technology studies, Sheila Jasanoff (2004) argues that
scientific knowledge is coproduced by social practice and spatial
orders. In short, science and politics are a two‐way street, as the
world seeps into science from the outset of knowledge creation.
François Molle (2008) expands on this approach to explain why
certain flagship ideas manifest as practice in international water
policy. Molle examines the emergence of Integrated Water Resource
Management (best known by its acronym, IWRM), a prominent
concept that promotes a coordinated and cross‐sectoral approach to
managing water. While IWRM was welcomed as an antidote to the
perceived “chaos” of uncoordinated water management, Molle
argues that IWRM, like any hegemonic concept, tends to obscure the
political nature of natural resource management. “Ideas are never
neutral and reflect the particular societal settings in which they
emerge, the world views and interests of those who have the power to
set the terms of the debate, to legitimate particular options and
discard others, and to include or exclude particular social groups”
(Molle 2008, p. 131). For Molle, the global IWRM bandwagon
operates not due to “genius” insight but because of the social
conditions which brought IWRM into existence in the first place. For
us, a critical focus sparks even more questions: Whose water
knowledge counts? Why? To what effect or end?
A productive way forward is to consider how expert or scientific
discourse about water is more than a set of constructed facts or
words. Scientific discourse reflects a categorization and system of
power. Social power shapes our realities, knowledge, and claims
about water – it even produces the ways in which truth is made true,
what philosopher Michel Foucault (2020 [1975]) calls “regimes of
truth.” Rutgerd Boelens draws on this theory to explore the
rationalities in different kinds of Andean water knowledge, including
“scientific” knowledge and other knowledge systems categorized as
“local” or less salubrious to water management. From the vantage
point of Western science, the pecking order of knowledge sits in a
hierarchy:
Rules, rights, and duties attached to water flows and hydraulic
infrastructure are closely linked to systems of meanings, symbols,
and values, involving institutions and networks of human, non‐
human, and supernatural actors and power that influence water
control. This domain – often erroneously associated with only
“social” and not with, for example, technology – is essentialized in
romantic representations and contested or ignored in natural
sciences.
(Boelens 2014, p. 240)
Discourses have the effect of designating “legitimate” knowledge,

truths, and frames of reference (Boelens 2014, p. 235) at the expense
of creating (subordinate) categories of “local” (or vernacular)
knowledge (Klenk et al. 2017). In this way, the hydrologic cycle
works to (i) separate “legitimate” forms of water knowledge, rights,
and access from “illegitimate” forms; (ii) naturalize policy models as
scientific and reinforce elite and state control over water resources
(Boelens and Vos 2012). Struggles over water are not limited to
physical allocation, they include struggling over truth regimes and
defining the very order of things (Boelens 2014, p. 235).
How do ideas about water (and people) travel? Who comes up with
influential policy principles and what makes them stick? Why are
some policy models so seductive, pervasive, and powerful? Our
knowledge about water is profoundly shaped by expert networks
and hegemonic policy narratives (Conca 2005). A good idea is not
enough, argues Ken Conca (2005), an idea needs a networked cadre
of elites, organizations, and institutional structures that grease the
tracks for policy ideas to circulate globally, gain authority, and
reproduce in settings beyond their origins. Michael Goldman (2007)
illustrates this argument with his account of how the World Bank
seized the “pro‐poor” narrative of “water for all” and mobilized it into
a policy prescription for water privatization. Goldman (2007, p. 788)
shows how this policy idea stretched beyond the Bank, as it “requires
active participation and contributions from actors in corporations,
NGOs, think tanks, state agencies, and the media, across the global
North and South.” In this case, the expert networks converged to
create a “global consensus” on reforming water “for all,” with
privatization as its answer.
Mary Galvin (2015) offers an equally compelling analysis of
community‐led total sanitation (CLTS) – a prominent technique in
the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WaSH) sector, implemented in
over 56 countries. In the appropriately titled article “Talking Shit,”
Galvin investigates the ideology that underpins CLTS and chronicles
the expert networks that enabled its “thrilling success” in the WaSH
sector.
What is particularly distinctive about CLTS is that it forces
participants to confront their “shit” by using this word, visiting
places where people openly defecate and tracing the fecal to oral
transmission route to the glass of water on the table.
(Galvin 2015, p. 10)
We discuss further how disgust and shame‐based methods create

social damage in Chapter 8 (see also Brewis et al. 2019a). Galvin,
meanwhile, dissects organizational pathways taken by UNICEF,
WaterAid, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Water and
Sanitation that have put CLTS in motion. “Communities may be
driving,” argues Galvin (2015, p. 17), “but the roads have been built
by these organizations.”
Of course, in our uneven world, not all knowledge gets to be mobile
or count equally. As Diné geographer Andrew Curley (2019a, 2021b)
argues, quantification is central to the logic and mechanics of water
law in the US West – a logic informed by the hydrologic sciences. In
the Colorado River basin, US water law literally “divides up the river”
into segmented, quantified units – divorced from their context and
place, stripped of time and kin (human and non‐human), and pegged
to settler‐defined geographical units. This logic stands in contrast to
the worldview of water held by many Indigenous communities (see
Further Reading section). Curley (2021b, p. 21) argues that Indian
water settlements, a type of legal agreement between Native Nations
and the US federal government, are forms of colonial enclosure,
“built on a lineage of law that replaces and perpetuates settler‐
colonial dispossession.” In reproducing law, we reproduce these
hegemonic systems of knowledge.
In sum, a critical approach to water does not take knowledge at face
value, but asks: How is knowledge about water produced? By whom?
What kinds of knowledge are designated as “legitimate” or gain
authority – and which do not? Why? What work does knowledge do?
Scarcity is Made
For desert cities, like Tucson and Tijuana, the notion that water is a
“scarce” resource is a common refrain in many influential
documents, textbooks, and policy principles. But what if, following
Erik Swyngedouw (2004, 2009), we started with the idea that
scarcity is relational and constructed? That a lack of available water
– or clean, accessible, secure, safe water – is not an inherent feature
or pre‐given reality, but the outcome of uneven conditions, logics,
and practices? How do we account for the fact that water – the
molecule H2O – is one of the most abundant elements on planet
Earth and yet out of reach for so many? What explains resource
scarcity?
The narratives of many “scarcity” debates can be traced to Thomas
Malthus, an English economist and demographer in the late
eighteenth century, whose ideas influenced generations of key
thinkers, including Charles Darwin. In his book An Essay on the
Principle of Population, first published in 1798, Malthus (1992)
introduced the concept of population growth causing environmental
degradation. Malthus predicted that the human population would
outgrow the available food (and water) supply, using the artfully
simple logic – he called it “logical empiricism”: that (i) people
reproduce geometrically (exponentially) and yet, (ii) food supply
reproduces in an arithmetic (linear) progression. Too many people,
not enough food.
Malthus didn’t stop there. Indeed, he argued the human population
will expand to the limits of subsistence and only through techniques
of “vice” (including war and violence), “misery” (including famine,
illness, and drought), and “moral restraint” (i.e. abstinence and
Protestant morality) could the world check excessive population
growth and avoid environmental destruction. Welfare or charity
(embodied by the Poor Laws) was a useless exercise, creating more
“dependency” by subjects on the state. Malthus’s own words offer a
window into his worldviews on race, gender, and class:4
The Poor Laws of England tend to depress the general condition of
the poor … they may be said, therefore, to create the poor which
they maintain. (p. 100)
It can scarcely be doubted that, in modern Europe, a much larger
proportion of women pass a considerable part of their lives in the
exercise of virtue than in past times and among uncivilized
nations. (pp. 43–44)
In some of the southern countries where every impulse may be
almost immediately indulged, the passion sinks into mere animal
desire, is soon weakened and extinguished by excess. (p. 212)
With the winds of privilege at his back, Malthus’s ideas about people
and the environment spread like wildfire. His ideas are found, for
example, in popular World Bank claims that the “world is running
out of freshwater.” They lurk in “population bomb” arguments and
other accounts that smack of environmental determinism (see
Robbins 2019 for explanation and critique).
What does this “scarcity” argument overlook or leave out? Let’s go
back to Tijuana. Water in Tijuana can easily be labeled as “scarce” –
but this claim requires surgical attention and critical analysis.
Tijuana is a desert city, but the provision of water to homes and
businesses is mediated by infrastructure, social institutions, law and
legal status, and money. For example, maquiladoras (export‐
oriented manufacturing plants) are thirsty customers that never run
out of municipal water; yet informal housing settlements (colonias)
are routinely denied piped water service and sewerage based on their
tenure status, and unhoused (homeless) people are reliant on
precarious or polluted water sources (Meehan 2013).
For the beneficiaries of Colorado River water, including Tijuana,
scarcity is felt unevenly (see Figure 6.3 in Chapter 6 for the map). In
Southern California, the Imperial Valley is one of the system’s major
recipients; the valley gobbles the bulk of regional water allocation
rights to grow sod for lawns, parks, and sports fields. The service
districts of Los Angeles and San Diego are also well watered. Tijuana,
as a major metropolitan area and economic engine, sucks up the bulk
of Mexico’s allocated Colorado River water through a complex
pipeline system that flows west over the Sierra Madres mountains
and delivers water to its reservoirs, after which it is unevenly
distributed to city residents. Some users can afford to pump
groundwater, at a considerable cost. South of the international
border, in the Colorado River Delta region of Mexico, small‐scale and
subsistence farmers eked out an agricultural livelihood on the
escaped flows from irrigation system leaks (at least, before the
Imperial Valley engineers sealed the leaks). In parts of the Delta,
Indigenous users have been marginalized in terms of water access
and rights allocation (Muehlmann 2013). Now, the mighty flows of
the Colorado River often never make it to the sea, ending in a sad
trickle in a desiccated wetland.
This story asks a deeper question: What produces water scarcity?
Our example does not deny the reality of aridity, or the fact that
deserts receive less rain than their temperate counterparts, or the
fact that the Tijuana metro region is urbanizing rapidly and placing
new pressures on the existing water supply.
A critical approach invites us to ask important questions about
conditions. Scarcity is produced, not ready‐made. As Tijuana
illustrates, what is “scarce” – and to whom, where, and why, across
the Colorado basin – is an outcome of relations. And so, we invite
you to put Malthusian thinking in the dustbin. In its place, we invite
you to think with the people of Standing Rock, who offer a far more
interesting and critical thesis (the third plank of this book): water is
life.
Water is Life
Early in 2016, the people of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe mobilized
to prevent a crude oil pipeline called “The Black Snake” from
crossing their unceded lands and threatening the Missouri River, a
major water source along the tribe’s eastern boundary, located in the
Upper Midwest region of the United States (Figure 1.6). The Black
Snake is the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a US$3.8 billion, 1 172‐
mile underground pipeline that runs 570 000 barrels of oil every day
across four US states, two major rivers, and over two hundred creeks
and streams.
Early on, Indigenous youth organized camps and led protests,
galvanized by calls to “ReZpect Our Water” and defend Indigenous
sovereignty (Curley 2019a). By late September, more than three
hundred Native Nations and allies joined the movement, creating a
#NoDAPL movement and planting their flags in solidarity at Oceti
Sakowin Camp, the largest of several protest camps (Figure 1.7).
Oceti sakowin is translated as the seven council fires of the Lakota,
Dakota, and Nakota Nations, known by some as the Great Sioux
Nation. Not only the name of the largest camp, oceti sakowin is also
the unity of the oyate or people of this geography.5 The Standing
Rock Sioux were no strangers to their roles as Water Protectors.
“#NoDAPL [w]as not a departure from so much as it was a
continuation – a movement within a larger movement, but also a
movement within a moment – of long traditions of Indigenous
resistance deeply grounded in place and history” (Estes and Dhillon
2019). At its peak, the #NoDAPL struggles included thousands of
Water Protectors, galvanized by the phrase mni wiconi or “water is
life.”
The physical geography of the DAPL is massive. Operative since July
2014, it carries light sweet crude oil from six sites in the Bakken and
Three Forks oil‐producing regions of North Dakota, through South
Dakota and Iowa, to a terminal in southern Illinois, where it links to
refineries in the Midwest and Gulf Coast (Mazer et al. 2019, p. 356).
The Bakken and Three Forks production areas are part of a deposit
that runs all the way north into Montana and the Canadian provinces
of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. DAPL fuels a carbon‐dependent
empire, transnational in finance and commodity flows (Mazer et al.
2019). A rupture of “sweet crude” jeopardizes the drinking water of
millions of people and other‐than‐humans who depend on clean
rivers and aquifers for life.
Figure 1.6 The Black Snake. This map illustrates the
geography of the Dakota Access Pipeline as it routes oil
across the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, traditional
Oceti Sakowin Lands, and the northern Great Plains to a
distribution center in Illinois, near the Mississippi River.
Source: The Authors, cartography by Philip Stickler.
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PURPLE

PENNANT ***
“Like a white streak, Perry breasted the string”
THE
PURPLE PENNANT
BY
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

AUTHOR OF “THE SECRET PLAY,” “THE LUCKY SEVENTH,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
NORMAN P. ROCKWELL
NEW YORK AND LONDON

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1916
Copyright, 1916, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Fudge Is Interrupted 1
II. The Try-out 11
III. The Shadow on the Curtain 23
IV. The Ode to Spring 38
V. Perry Remembers 50
VI. The False Mustache 61
VII. Fudge Revolts 74
VIII. Lanny Studies Steam Engineering 89
IX. The New Sign 99
X. The Borrowed Roller 110
XI. Gordon Deserts His Post 120
XII. On Dick’s Porch 130
XIII. Foiled! 142
XIV. The Game with Norrisville 152
XV. The White Scar 166
XVI. Sears Makes a Suggestion 179
XVII. The Squad at Work 190
XVIII. The Officer at the Door 202
XIX. The Train-robber Is Warned 213
XX. Mr. Addicks Explains 226
XXI. On the Track 240
XXII. The New Coach 258
XXIII. Out at the Plate! 273
XXIV. Clearfield Concedes the Meet 290
XXV. Springdale Leads 300
XXVI. The Purple Pennant 311
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“Like a white streak, Perry breasted the string” Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
“‘On your mark!... Set!... Go!’” 18
“‘What’s that?’ asked Perry, startled” 220
“Lanny, dropping to his knees on the plate, got it a
foot from the ground” 286
THE PURPLE PENNANT
CHAPTER I
FUDGE IS INTERRUPTED
“‘K eys,’” murmured Fudge

“‘please’—‘knees’—‘breeze’—I’ve
Shaw
used
dreamily,
that
—‘pease’—‘sneeze’—Oh, piffle!” His inspired gaze returned to the
tablet before him and he read aloud the lines inscribed thereon:
“O Beauteous Spring, thou art, I ween,

The best of all the Seasons,
Because you clothe the Earth with green
And for numerous other reasons.
“You make the birds sing in the trees,

The April breeze to blow,
The Sun to shine——”
“‘The Sun to shine——,’” he muttered raptly, “‘The Sun to shine’;

‘squeeze’—‘tease’—‘fleas’—— Gee, I wish I hadn’t tried to rhyme all
the lines. Now, let’s see: ‘You make the birds——’”
“O Fudge! Fudge Shaw!”
Fudge raised his head and peered through the young leaves of the
apple-tree in which he was perched, along the side yard to where,
leaning over the fence, was a lad of about Fudge’s age. The visitor
alternately directed his gaze toward the tree and the house, for it
was Sunday afternoon and Perry Hull was doubtful of the propriety
of hailing his friend in week-day manner.
“Hello, Perry, come on in!” called Fudge. And thereupon he
detached the “Ode to Spring” from the tablet, hastily folded it and
put it in his pocket. When Perry climbed the ladder which led to the
platform some eight feet above the ground Fudge was in the act of
closing a Latin book with a tired air.
“What are you doing?” asked Perry. He was a nice-looking chap of
fifteen, with steady dark-brown eyes, hair a shade or two lighter and
a capable and alert countenance. He swung himself lithely over the
rail instead of crawling under, as was Fudge’s custom, and seated
himself on the narrow bench beyond the books.
“Sort of studying,” answered Fudge, ostentatiously shoving the
books further away and scowling distastefully at them. “Where have
you been?”
“Just moseying around. Peach of a day, isn’t it?”
It was. It had rained until nearly dinner time, and grass and leaves
were still beaded with moisture which an ardent April sun was doing
its best to burn away. It was the first spring-like day in over a week
of typical April weather during which Clearfield had remained under
gray skies. Fudge assented to Perry’s observation, but it was to be
seen that his thoughts were elsewhere. His lips moved soundlessly.
Perry viewed him with surprise and curiosity, but before he could
demand an explanation of his host’s abstraction Fudge burst forth
triumphantly.
“‘B-b-bees!’” exclaimed Fudge. (Excitement always caused him to
stammer, a fact which his friends were aware of and frequently
made use of for their entertainment.) Perry involuntarily ducked his
head and looked around.
“Where?” he asked apprehensively.
“Nowhere.” Fudge chuckled. “I was just thinking of something.”
“Huh!” Perry settled back again. “You’re crazy, I guess. Better
come for a walk and you’ll feel better.”
“Can’t.” Fudge looked gloomily at the books. “Got to study.”
“Then I’ll beat it.”
“Hold on, can’t you? You don’t have to go yet. I—there isn’t such
an awful hurry.” The truth was that Fudge was not an enthusiastic
pedestrian, a fact due partly to his physical formation and partly to a
disposition contemplative rather than active. Nature had endowed
Fudge—his real name, by the way, was William—with a rotund body
and capable but rather short legs. Walking for the mere sake of
locomotion didn’t appeal to him. He would have denied indignantly
that he was lazy, and, to do him justice, he wasn’t. With Fudge it
was less a matter of laziness than discrimination. Give him
something to do that interested him—such as playing baseball or
football—and Fudge would willingly, enthusiastically work his short
legs for all that was in them, but this thing of deliberately tiring
oneself out with no sensible end in view—well, Fudge couldn’t see it!
He had a round face from which two big blue eyes viewed the world
with a constant expression of surprise. His hair was sandy-red, and
he was fifteen, almost sixteen, years old.
“It’s too nice a day to sit around and do nothing,” objected Perry.
“Why don’t you get your studying done earlier?”
“I meant to, but I had some writing to do.” Fudge looked
important. Perry smiled slightly. “I finished that story I told you
about.”
“Did you?” Perry strove to make his question sound interested.
“Are you going to have it printed?”
“Maybe,” replied the other carelessly. “It’s a pippin, all right, Perry!
It’s nearly fourteen thousand words long! What do you know about
that, son? Maybe I’ll send it to the Reporter and let them publish it.
Or maybe I’ll send it to one of the big New York magazines. I
haven’t decided yet. Dick says I ought to have it typewritten; that
the editors won’t read it unless it is. But it costs like anything. Morris
Brent has a typewriter and he said I could borrow it, but I never
wrote on one of the things and I suppose it would take me a month
to do it, eh? Seems to me if the editors want good stories they can’t
afford to be so plaguey particular. Besides, my writing’s pretty easy
reading just as soon as you get used to it.”
“You might typewrite the first two or three sheets,” suggested
Perry, with a chuckle, “and then perhaps the editor would be so
anxious to know how it ended he’d keep right on. What are you
going to call it, Fudge?”
Fudge shook his head. “I’ve got two or three good titles. ‘The
Middleton Mystery’ is one of them. Then there’s ‘Young Sleuth’s
Greatest Case.’ I guess that’s too long, eh?”
“I like the first one better.”
“Yes. Then I thought of ‘Tracked by Anarchists.’ How’s that sound
to you?”
“‘The Meredith Mystery’ is the best,” replied Perry judicially.
“‘Middleton,’” corrected Fudge. “Yep, I guess it’ll be that. I told
that fellow Potter about it and he said if I’d let him take it he’d see
about getting it published in the Reporter. He’s a sort of an editor,
you know. But I guess the Reporter isn’t much of a paper, and a
writer who’s just starting out has to be careful not to cheapen
himself, you see.”
“Will he pay you for it?” asked Perry.
“He didn’t say. I don’t suppose so. Lots of folks don’t get paid for
their first things, though. Look at—look at Scott; and—and
Thackeray, and—lots of ’em! You don’t suppose they got paid at
first, do you?”
“Didn’t they?” asked Perry in some surprise.
“Oh, maybe Thackeray got a few dollars,” hedged Fudge, “but
what was that? Look what he used to get for his novels afterwards!”
Perry obligingly appeared deeply impressed, although he secretly
wondered what Thackeray did get afterwards. However, he forebore
to ask, which was just as well, I fancy. Instead, tiring of Fudge’s
literary affairs, he observed: “Well, I hope they print it for you,
anyway. And maybe they’ll take another one and pay for that. Say,
aren’t you going out for baseball, Fudge?”
“Oh, I’m going out, I guess, but it won’t do any good. I don’t
intend to sit around on the bench half the spring and then get fired.
The only place I’d stand any chance of is the outfield, and I suppose
I don’t hit well enough to make it. You going to try?”
Perry shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I can’t play much.
Warner Jones told me the other day that if I’d come out he’d give
me a good chance. I suppose he thinks I can play baseball because I
was on the Eleven.”
“Well, gee, if you could get to first you’d steal all the other bases,
I’ll bet,” said Fudge admiringly. “You sure can run, Perry!”
“Y-yes, and that makes me think that maybe I could do something
on the Track Team. What do you think, Fudge?”
“Bully scheme! Go out for the sprints! Ever try the hundred?”
“No, I’ve never run on the track at all. How fast ought I to run the
hundred yards, Fudge, to have a show?”
“Oh, anything under eleven seconds would do, I suppose. Maybe
ten and four-fifths. Know what you can do it in?”
“No, I never ran it. I’d like to try, though.”
“Why don’t you? Say, I’ve got a stop-watch in the house. You wait
here and I’ll get it and we’ll go over to the track and——”
“Pshaw, I couldn’t run in these clothes!”
“Well, you can take your coat and vest off, can’t you? And put on
a pair of sneakers? Of course, you can’t run as fast, but you can
show what you can do. Perry, I’ll just bet you anything you’ve got
the making of a fine little sprinter! You wait here; I won’t be a
minute.”
“But it’s Sunday, Fudge, and the field will be locked, and—and
you’ve got your lessons——”
“They can wait,” replied Fudge, dropping to the ground and
making off toward the side door. “We’ll try the two-twenty, too,
Perry!”
He disappeared and a door slammed. Perry frowned in the
direction of the house. “Silly chump!” he muttered. Then he smiled.
After all, why not? He did want to know if he could run, and, if they
could get into the field, which wasn’t likely, since it was Sunday and
the gates would be locked, it would be rather fun to try it! He
wondered just how fast ten and four-fifths seconds was. He wished
he hadn’t done so much walking since dinner, for he was conscious
that his legs were a bit tired. At that moment in his reflections there
came a subdued whistle from the house and Fudge waved to him.
“Come on,” he called in a cautious whisper. “I’ve got it. And the
sneakers, too.” He glanced a trifle apprehensively over his shoulder
while he awaited Perry’s arrival and when the latter had joined him
he led the way along the side path in a quiet and unostentatious
manner suggesting a desire to depart unobserved. Once out of sight
of the house, however, his former enthusiasm returned. “We’ll climb
over the fence,” he announced. “I know a place where it isn’t hard.
Of course, we ought to have a pistol to start with, but I guess it will
do if I just say ‘Go!’” He stopped indecisively. “Gordon has a
revolver,” he said thoughtfully. “We might borrow it. Only, maybe he
isn’t home. I haven’t seen him all day.”
“Never mind, we don’t need it,” said Perry, pulling him along.
“He’d probably want to go along with us, Fudge, and I don’t want
any audience. I dare say I won’t be able to run fast at all.”
“Well, you mustn’t expect too much the first time,” warned the
other. “A chap’s got to be in condition, you know. You’ll have to train
and—and all that. Ever do any hurdling?”
“No, and I don’t think I could.”
“It isn’t hard once you’ve caught the knack of it. I was only
thinking that if you had plenty of steam you might try sprints and
hurdles both. All we’d have to do would be to set the hurdles up. I
know where they’re kept. Then——”
“Now, look here,” laughed Perry, “I’m willing to make a fool of
myself trying the hundred-yard dash, Fudge, but I’m not going to
keep you entertained all the rest of the afternoon.”
“All right, we’ll just try the hundred and the two-twenty.”
“No, we won’t either. We’ll just try the hundred. Will those shoes
fit me? And oughtn’t they to have spikes?”
“Sure, they ought, but they haven’t. We’ll have to make allowance
for that, I guess. And they’ll have to fit you because they’re all we’ve
got. I guess you wear about the same size that I do. Here we are!
Now we’ll go around to the Louise Street side; there’s a place there
we can climb easily.”
CHAPTER II
THE TRY-OUT
T he High School Athletic Field—it was officially known as Brent

Field—occupied two whole blocks in the newer part of town. The
school had used it for a number of years, but only last summer,
through the generosity of Mr. Jonathan Brent, Clearfield’s richest and
most prominent citizen, had it come into actual possession of the
field. The gift had been as welcome as unexpected and had saved
the school from the difficult task of finding a new location for its
athletic activities. But, unfortunately, the possession of a large tract
of ground in the best residential part of the town was proving to
have its drawbacks. The taxes were fairly large, repairs to stands
and fences required a constant outlay, the field itself, while level
enough, was far from smooth, and the cinder track, a make-shift
affair at the beginning, stood badly in need of reconstruction. Add to
these expenses the minor ones of water rent, insurance on buildings
and care-taking and you will see that the Athletic Association had
something to think about.
The town folks always spoke of it as “the town,” although it was,
as a matter of fact, a city and boasted of over seventeen thousand
inhabitants—supported the High School athletic events, notably
football and baseball, generously enough, but it was already evident
to those in charge that the receipts from gridiron and diamond
attractions would barely keep the field as it was and would not
provide money for improvements. There had been some talk of an
endowment fund from Mr. Brent, but whether that gentleman had
ever said anything to warrant the rumor or whether it had been
started by someone more hopeful than veracious was a matter for
speculation. At any rate, no endowment fund had so far materialized
and the Athletic Committee’s finances were at a low ebb. Two
sections of grandstand had been replaced in the fall, and that
improvement promised to be the last for some time, unless, as
seemed improbable, the Committee evolved some plan whereby to
replenish its treasury. Various schemes had been suggested, such as
a public canvass of the town and school. To this, however, Mr.
Grayson, the Principal, had objected. It was not, he declared, right
to ask the citizens to contribute funds for such a purpose. Nor would
he allow a petition to the Board of Education. In fact, Mr. Grayson as
good as said that now that the school had been generously
presented with an athletic field it was up to the school to look after
it. Raising money amongst the students he had no objection to, but
the amount obtainable in that manner was too small to make it
worth while. The plan of raising the price of admission to baseball
and football from twenty-five cents to fifty was favored by some,
while others feared that it would keep so many away from the
contests that there would be no profit in it. In short, the Committee
was facing a difficult problem and with no solution in sight. And the
field, from its patched, rickety, high board fence to grandstands and
dressing-rooms, loudly demanded succor. Fudge voiced the general
complaint when, having without difficulty mounted the fence and
dropped to the soggy turf inside, followed more lithely by Perry Hull,
he viewed the cinder track with disfavor. The recent rain had flooded
it from side to side, and, since it was lower than the ground about it
and had been put down with little or no provision for drainage, inch-
deep puddles still lingered in the numerous depressions.
“We can’t practice here,” said Perry.
“Wouldn’t that agonize you?” demanded Fudge. “Gee, what’s the
good of having an athletic field if you can’t keep it up? This thing is
g-g-going to be a regular w-w-white elephant!”
“It looks pretty soppy, doesn’t it?” asked Perry. “I guess we’d
better wait until it’s drier. I don’t mind running, but I wasn’t counting
on having to swim!”
“Maybe it’s better on the straightaway,” responded Fudge more
cheerfully. “We’ll go over and see.”
As luck had it, it was drier on the far side of the field, and Fudge
advanced the plea that by keeping close to the outer board Perry
could get along without splashing much. Perry, however, ruefully
considered his Sunday trousers and made objections.
“But it isn’t mud,” urged Fudge. “It’s just a little water. That won’t
hurt your trousers a bit. And you can reef them up some, too. Be a
sport, Perry! Gee, I’d do it in a minute if I could!”
“Guess that’s about what I’ll do it in,” said the other. “Well, all
right. Here goes. Give me the sneakers.”
“Here they are. Guess we’d better go down to the seats and
change them, though. It’s too damp to sit down here.”
So they walked to the grandstand at the turn and Perry pulled off
his boots and tried the sneakers on. They were a little too large, but
he thought they would do. Fudge suggested stuffing some paper in
the toes, but as there was no paper handy that plan was
abandoned. Perry’s hat, coat and vest were laid beside his boots and
he turned up the bottoms of his trousers. Then they walked along
the track, skirting puddles or jumping over them. Fortunately, they
had the field to themselves, thanks to locked gates, something Perry
was thankful for when Fudge, discouraging his desire to have the
event over with at once, insisted that he should prance up and down
the track and warm up.
“You can’t run decently until you’ve got your legs warm and your
muscles limber,” declared Fudge wisely. “And you’d better try a few
starts, too.”
So, protestingly, Perry danced around where he could find a dry
stretch, lifting his knees high in the manner illustrated by Fudge, and
then allowed the latter to show him how to crouch for the start.
“Put your right foot up to the line,” instructed Fudge. “Here, I’ll
scratch a line across for you. There. Now put your foot up to that—
your right foot, silly! That’s your left! Now put your left knee
alongside it and your hands down. That’s it, only you want to dig a
bit of a hole back there for your left foot, so you’ll get away quick.
Just scrape out the cinders a little. All right. Now when I say ‘Set,’
you come up and lean forward until the weight comes on your front
foot and hands; most on your foot; your hands are just to steady
yourself with. That’s the trick. Now then; ‘On your mark!’ Wait! I
didn’t say ‘Set!’”
“Oh, well, cut out the trimmings,” grumbled Perry. “I can’t stay like
this forever. Besides, I’d rather start on the other foot, anyway.”
“All right; some fellows do,” replied Fudge, untroubled, neglecting
to explain that he had made a mistake. Perry made the change and
expressed his satisfaction.
“That’s more like it. Say, how do you happen to know so much
about it, Fudge?”
“Observation, son. Now, all right? Ready to try it? Set!... Go!”
Perry went, but he stumbled for the first three or four steps and
lost his stride completely.
“You had your weight on your hands instead of your feet,”
commented the instructor. “Try it again.”
He tried it many times, at last becoming quite interested in the
problem of getting away quickly and steadily, and finally Fudge
declared himself satisfied. “Now I’ll stand back here a ways where I
can start you and at the same time see when you cross the line
down there. Of course, we ought to have another fellow here to
help, but I guess I can manage all right.” He set his stop-watch,
composed his features into a stern frown and retired some twenty
yards back from the track and half that distance nearer the finish
line. “On your mark!” called Fudge. “Set!... Go!”
Perry sped from the mark only to hear Fudge’s arresting voice.
“Sorry, Perry, but I forgot to start the watch that time. Try it again.”
“That’s a fine trick! I had a bully getaway,” complained the
sprinter. “Make it good this time, Fudge; I’m getting dog-tired!”
“I will. Now, then! On your mark!... Set!... Go!”
“‘On your mark!... Set!... Go!’”
Off leaped Perry again, not quite so nicely this time, and down the
wet path he sped, splashing through the puddles, head back, legs
twinkling. And, as though trying to make pace for him, Fudge raced
along on the turf in a valiant endeavor to judge the finish. Perry’s
Sunday trousers made a gray streak across the line, Fudge pressed
convulsively on the stem of the watch and the trial was over!
“Wh-what was it?” inquired Perry breathlessly as he walked back.
Fudge was staring puzzledly at the dial.
“I made it twelve seconds,” he responded dubiously.
“Twelve! And you said I’d ought to do it under eleven!” Perry
viewed him discouragedly.
“Well, maybe I didn’t snap it just when I should have,” said the
timer. “It’s hard to see unless you’re right at the line.”
“You must have! I’ll bet anything I did it better than twelve. Don’t
you think I did?”
“Well, it looked to me as if you were going pretty fast,” answered
Fudge cautiously. “But those trousers, and not having any spikes,
and the track being so wet—Gee, but you did get splashed, didn’t
you?”
“I should say so,” replied Perry, observing his trousers disgustedly.
“The water even went into my face! Say, let’s try it again, Fudge,
and you stand here at the finish.”
“All right, but how’ll I start you?”
“Wave a handkerchief or something?”
“I’ve got it. I’ll clap a couple of sticks together.” So Fudge set out
to find his sticks while Perry, rather winded, seated himself on the
stand. Fudge finally came back with the required articles and Perry
declared himself rested and ready for another trial. “I’ll clap the
sticks together first for you to get set and then for the start. Like
this.” Fudge illustrated. “Suppose you can hear it?”
“Sure.” Perry proceeded back to the beginning of the straightaway
and Fudge stationed himself at the finish, scuffling a line across the
track for his better guidance. Then, while the sprinter was getting
his crouch, he experimented with slapping the sticks and snapping
the watch at the same instant, a rather difficult proceeding.
“All ready!” shouted Perry, poised on finger-tips and knee.
“All right!” called Fudge in response. He examined his watch, fixed
a finger over the stem, took a deep breath and clapped the sticks.
Perry set. Another clap and a simultaneous jab at the watch, and
Perry was racing down the track. Fudge’s eyes took one fleeting look
at the runner and then fixed themselves strainedly on the line he
had drawn across the cinders. Nearer and nearer came the scrunch
of the flying sneakers, there was a sudden blur of gray in Fudge’s
vision and he snapped the watch. Perry turned and trotted anxiously
back.
“Well?” he asked.
“Better,” replied Fudge. “Of course, the track’s awfully slow——”
“How much? Let’s see?”
Fudge yielded the watch and Perry examined it. “Eleven and two-
fifths!” he shouted protestingly. “Say, this thing’s crazy! I know
mighty well I didn’t run nearly so fast as I did the first time!”
“I didn’t snap it soon enough the other time,” explained Fudge.
“Honest, Perry, eleven and two-fifths isn’t half bad. Why, look at the
slow track and your long trousers——”
“Yes, and they weigh a ton, they’re so wet,” grumbled Perry. “And
so do these shoes. I’m going to try it some time when the track’s dry
and I’ve got regular running things on. I suppose eleven and two-
fifths isn’t terribly bad, considering!”
“Bad! It’s mighty good,” said Fudge warmly. “Why, look here,
Perry, if you can do it in that time to-day you can do it nearly a
second faster on a dry track and—and all! You see if you can’t. I’ll
bet you you’ll be a regular sprinter by the time we meet Springdale!”
“Honest, Fudge?”
“Honest to goodness! To-morrow you put your name down for the
Track Team and get yourself some running things. I’ll go along with
you if you like. I know just what you ought to have.”
“I don’t suppose I’ll really have any show for the team,” said Perry
modestly. “But it’ll be pretty good fun. Say, Fudge, I didn’t know I
could run as fast as I did that first time. It seemed to me I was
going like the very dickens! It—it’s mighty interesting, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” replied Fudge, as Perry donned his things. “You don’t want
to try the two-twenty or the hurdles, do you?”
“I should say not! I’m tuckered out. I’m going to try the two-
twenty some day, though. I don’t think I’d care about hurdling.”
“You can’t tell,” murmured Fudge thoughtfully.
Later, when they had once more surmounted the fence and were
heading toward B Street, Fudge, who had said little for many
minutes, observed: “I wonder, Perry, if a fellow wouldn’t have more
fun with the Track Team than with the Nine. I’ve a good mind to go
in for it.”
“Why don’t you?” asked Perry, encouragingly eager. “What would
you try? Running or—or what?” His gaze unconsciously strayed over
his friend’s rotund figure.
“N-no,” replied Fudge hesitantly. “I don’t think so. I might go in for
the mile, maybe. I don’t know yet. I’m just thinking of it. I’d have to
study a bit. Perhaps the weights would be my line. Ever put the
shot?” Perry shook his head. “Neither have I, but I’ll bet I could. All
it takes is practice. Say, wouldn’t it be funny if you and I both made
the team?”
“It would be dandy,” declared Perry. “Do you suppose there’d be
any chance of it?”
“Why not?” asked Fudge cheerfully.
CHAPTER III
THE SHADOW ON THE CURTAIN
T he two boys parted at Main and B Streets, Fudge to loiter

thoughtfully southward under the budding maples and Perry to
continue briskly on along the wider thoroughfare to where, almost at
the corner of G Street, a small yellow house stood in a diminutive
yard behind a decaying picket fence. Over the gate, which had stood
open ever since Perry had grown too old to enjoy swinging on it,
was a square lantern supported on an iron arch. At night a dim light
burned in it, calling the passer’s attention to the lettering on the
front:
No. 7—Dr. Hull—Office.
Beside the front door a second sign proclaimed the house to be
the abode of Matthew P. Hull, M. D.
Nearby was an old-fashioned bell-pull and, just below it, a more
modern button. Above the latter were the words “Night Bell.” The
house looked homelike and scrupulously clean, but evidences of
disrepair were abundant. The bases of the four round pillars
supporting the roof of the porch which ran across the front were
rotting, the steps creaked ominously under Perry’s feet and the
faded yellow paint was blistered and cracked.
Dr. Hull only rented the house, and the owner, since the retail
business district had almost surrounded it and he expected to soon
sell, was extremely chary of repairs. Perry’s father had lived there so
long that he hated the thought of moving. He had grown very fond
of the place, a fondness shared to a lesser extent by Mrs. Hull and
scarcely at all by Perry. But Dr. Hull’s motives in remaining there
were not wholly sentimental. He had slowly and arduously
accumulated a fair practice and, now that the town was over-
supplied with physicians, he feared that a change of location would
lose him his clients. Dr. Hull was not an old man, but he was forty-
odd and rather of the old-style, and shook his head over the pushing
methods of the newcomers. Perry assured him that it would be a
good thing if he did lose some of his present practice, since half of it
brought him little or no money, and that in a better location he could
secure a better class of patients. But Perry wasn’t very certain of
this, while his mother, who sighed secretly for a home where the
plaster didn’t crumble nor the floors creak, had even less faith in the
Doctor’s ability to begin over again.
Perry glanced through the open door of the tiny waiting room on
the left as he hung up his cap and, finding it empty and the further
door ajar, knew that his father was out. He went on up the stairs,
which complained at almost every footfall, and stole noiselessly
down the narrow hall to his own room. His mother’s door was closed
and this was the hour when, on Sundays, she enjoyed what she
termed “forty winks.” Perry’s room was small and lighted by three
narrow windows set close together. While they admitted light they
afforded but little view, for beyond the shallow back-yard loomed the
side wall of a five-storied brick building which fronted on G Street.
Directly on a level with Perry’s windows was Curry’s Glove factory,
occupying the second floor of the building. Below was a bakery.
Above were offices; a dentist’s, a lawyer’s, and several that were
empty or changed tenants so frequently that Perry couldn’t keep
track of them. In winter the light that came through the three
windows was faint and brief, but at other seasons the sunlight
managed somehow to find its way there. This afternoon a golden
ray still lingered on the table, falling athwart the strapped pile of
school books and spilling over to the stained green felt.
Perry seated himself at the table, put an elbow beside the pile of
books and, cupping chin in hand, gazed thoughtfully down into the
yard. There was a lean and struggling lilac bush against one high
fence and its green leaves were already unfolding. That, reflected
the boy, meant that spring was really here again at last. It was
already nearly the middle of April. Then came May and June, and
then the end of school. He sighed contentedly at the thought. Not
that he didn’t get as much pleasure out of school as most fellows,
but there comes a time, when buds are swelling and robins are
hopping and breezes blow warmly, when the idea of spending six
hours of the finest part of the day indoors becomes extremely
distasteful. And that time had arrived.
Perry turned to glance with sudden hostility at the piled-up books.
What good did it do a fellow, anyway, to learn a lot of Latin and
algebra and physics and—and all the rest of the stuff? If he only
knew what he was going to be when he grew up it might save a lot
of useless trouble! Until a year ago he had intended to follow in his
father’s footsteps, but of late the profession of medicine had failed to
hold his enthusiasm. It seemed to him that doctors had to work very
hard and long for terribly scant returns in the way of either money
or fame. No, he wouldn’t be a doctor. Lawyers had a far better time
of it; so did bankers and—and almost everyone. Sometimes he
thought that engineering was the profession for him. He would go to
Boston or New York and enter a technical school and learn civil or
mining engineering. Mining engineers especially had a fine,
adventurous life of it. And he wouldn’t have to spend all the rest of
his life in Clearfield then.
Clearfield was all right, of course; Perry had been born in it and
was loyal to it; but there was a whole big lot of the world that he’d
like to see! He got up and pulled an atlas from the lower shelf of his
book-case and spread it open. Colorado! Arizona! Nevada! Those
were names for you! And look at all the territory out there that didn’t
have a mark on it! Prairies and deserts and plateaus! Miles and miles
and miles of them without a town or a railroad or anything! Gee, it
would be great to live in that part of the world, he told himself.
Adventures would be thick as blueberries out there. Back here
nothing ever happened to a fellow. He wondered if it would be
possible to persuade his father to move West, to some one of those
fascinating towns with the highly romantic names; like Manzanola or
Cotopaxi or Painted Rock. His thoughts were far afield now and,
while his gaze was fixed on the lilac bush below, his eyes saw
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“‘K eys,’” murmured Fudge

“O Beauteous Spring, thou art, I ween,

“You make the birds sing in the trees,

“‘The Sun to shine——,’” he muttered raptly, “‘The Sun to shine’;

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