The Goblin Reservation

“By rights,” said Maxwell, “I should have thrown you down the stairs and broken your filthy neck.”

He glanced up toward the house and saw that a small crowd of people had collected at the door and were staring down at him. Staring and muttering among themselves.

He turned on his heel and went stalking down the stairs.

At the bottom Carol was clinging desperately to a frantic cat.

“I thought he was going to get away and go up there and tear that man to pieces,” she gasped.

She looked at Maxwell with disgust written on her face.

“Can’t you get along with anyone?” she asked.

Maxwell got off the roadway at the point where it crossed the mouth of Hound Dog Hollow and stood for a moment, staring at the rocky cliffs and bold headlands of the autumn bluffs. A short distance up the hollow, he caught a glimpse, through the red and yellow of the tinted leaves, of the bare rock face of Cat Den Point and up there, high against the sky, standing just back of the most prominent of the headlands, he knew he’d find the castle of the goblins, with one O’Toole in residence. And somewhere in that wilderness lay the mossy bridge that served as a den for trolls.

It was still early in the morning, since he had started out well before the dawn. A frosty dew lay upon the grass and twinkled on clumps of weeds the sun had not yet found. The air had a winy flavor to it and the sky was so faint and delicate a blue that it seemed to have no color and over all of it, over the entire landscape, hung a sense of strange expectancy.

Maxwell walked across the high-arched foot bridge that spa

The trees closed in around him and he walked through a fairy land that held its breath. He found himself moving slowly and very carefully so that no quick movement or noise would break the forest hush. Leaves came planing down from the canopy above, fluttering wings of color falling gently to earth. Ahead of him a mouse ran, humping in its haste, moving through and over the fallen leaves, but making scarcely a rustle in its fleeing. Far up the hollow a bluejay screeched, but among the trees the screech was muted and robbed of its customary harshness.

The path forked, with the left-hand fork continuing up the hollow, while the right-hand fork angled up the bluff. Maxwell took the right-hand path. Ahead of him lay a long and wearying climb, but he would take it easy and stop to rest at frequent intervals. It would be a shame on a day like this, he told himself, not to stop to rest as often as he could, begrudging the time that eventually would take him out of this place of color and of silence.

The path was steep, with many turnings to dodge the massive boulders crouched upon the ground, anchored in the soil, gray-bearded with their crops of lichens. The tree trunks crowded close, the rough, dark bark of ancient oak, the satin whiteness of the birches, showing little tan blotches where the thin bark had peeled off but still clung, fluttering in the wind. In the cluttered trash of the surface rose the fat red pyramid of the jack-in-the-pulpit fruit, the shriveled hood drooping like a tittered purple robe.

Maxwell climbed slowly, saving his breath, stopping often to look around, to soak in the feel of autumn that lay all about. He reached, finally, the fairy green where Churchill’s flier, with himself as passenger, had come crashing down under the spell of the trolls’ enchantment. Just up the hill a ways lay the goblin castle.

He stood for a moment on the green, resting, then took up the climb again. Dobbin, or another horse very similar to him, was cropping at the scanty grass which grew in ragged bunches in a pole-fenced pasture. A few doves fluttered about the castle’s turrets, but there were no other signs of life.

Sudden shouts shattered the morning’s peace and out of the open castle gate came a gang of trolls, moving rapidly and in curious formation. They were in three lines and each line had a rope across its shoulders, exactly, Maxwell told himself, like the old painting he had seen of the Volga boatmen. They charged out onto the drawbridge and now Maxwell could see that the three ropes were attached to a block of hewn stone which bounced along behind them, raising a hollow, booming racket when it hit the drawbridge.

Old Dobbin was neighing wildly, kicking up his heels and galloping madly around the inside perimeter of the fence.

The trolls, their fangs gleaming against the brown, wrinkled viciousness of their faces, their roached hair seeming to bristle more stiffly than was the usual case, came pounding down the path, with the massive stone bouncing along behind them, raising puffs of dust as it gouged into the ground.

Boiling out of the gate behind them came a cloud of goblins, armed with clubs, with hoes, with pitchforks, apparently with anything they could lay their hands upon.

Maxwell leaped out of the path as the trolls bore down upon him. They were ru

At the point where Maxwell had leaped out of the way, the path took a sudden dip, toboga

One of the trolls looked behind him and shouted a frantic warning. The trolls dropped the ropes and scattered. The block of stone went tearing down the slope, gaining speed with every revolution. It struck the fairy green and gashed a great hole in it, made one last bounce into the air, mushed down into the grass and skidded, ripping up the sod, tearing an ugly gash across the place of dancing. Crashing into a large white oak at the far end of the green, it finally came to rest.

The goblins went roaring down the hill in pursuit of the trolls, scattering out into the trees to hunt down the stealers of the stone. Hoots of fear and yelps of rage floated up the hill, intermingled with the sound of many bodies thrashing through the underbrush.

Maxwell crossed the path and walked over to the pole fence. Old Dobbin now had quieted down and stood with his lower jaw resting on one of the topmost poles, as if he needed it to prop him up. He was staring down the hill.

Maxwell reached out a hand and stroked Dobbin’s neck, pulled gently at one ear. Dobbin slanted a gentle eye toward him and whuffled his upper lip.

“I hope,” Maxwell said to him, “that they won’t expect you to drag back that stone. It’s a long, steep pull.”

Dobbin flicked one ear languidly.

“If I know O’Toole,” Maxwell said, “I don’t expect you’ll have to. If he can round up the trolls, they’ll be the ones who’ll do it.”

The uproar down the hill had quieted now and in a little while Mr. O’Toole came puffing up the path, carrying the two-by-four across one shoulder. He still was purple of face, but apparently from exhaustion rather than from rage. He hurried from the path toward the fence and Maxwell walked out to meet him.

“My great apology,” said Mr. O’Toole, in as stately a voice as he could manage with the shortness of his breath. “I glimpsed you and was happy of your presence, but engaged most earnestly and very urgently. You witnessed, I suspect, the low-down happening.”

Maxwell nodded.

“My mounting stone they took,” raged Mr. O’Toole, “with malicious intent of putting me afoot.”

“Afoot?” asked Maxwell.

“You comprehend most feebly, I see. My mounting stone, up which I must scramble to get astride Old Dobbin. Without a mounting stone there gets no horseback riding and I must trudge afoot unhappily, with much pain and puffing.”