Shooting Scrape

William Hunter, 14, lived with his mother and stepfather in Paterson, N. J. A sixth-grader, a lanky boy with a triangular face and messed-up sandy hair, he had an ordinary reputation in the neighborhood--a little behind in his schoolwork, just got a new typewriter, attended Sunday school regularly, was not allowed to run around at night and/or talk back to his mother.

Emmett Jones, also 14, lived near by. A seventh-grader with big ears, a cap worn on the back of his head and the puffed-out cheeks of adolescence, he had never been in trouble either.

Mark Twain has given U. S. citizens some idea of the wild rages, desperate plans, fearsome revenges that seethe behind the impassive, Indianlike features of 14-year-old boys. Last week New Jersey citizens were reminded again. First William and Emmett broke into a garage. An eight-year-old kid who had tagged along with them was spotted by a cop, who fired in the air and captured the kid; William and Emmett ducked through the back streets, until they came to a parked car with the keys in it. They stole it. They had never driven, but William had seen his mother do it, so he climbed behind the wheel and started off. Some 48 hours later, after stealing two more cars (one a policeman's with a .38-calibre revolver inside), after sleeping one night in a sand pit, one night in a dog kennel, they stopped at last at Echo Lake--a small, boarded-up summer resort where frame cottages stood cold and bleak in the New Jersey woods. They broke a window in one, hid until dark, ransacked others that night. Now they were well fixed. They found canned food, soup, beans, four .22-calibre rifles, one .410-gauge single-barreled shotgun, one 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun, one 1885 Army rifle, one hatchet, one bayonet, five daggers, two ammunition belts and some 500 rounds of ammunition for the different guns.

Sunday and Monday passed. Early Monday evening a woman reported to police that two boys, who certainly didn't belong in the neighborhood, had been seen walking down the road with rifles over their shoulders. Three officers began investigating Echo Lake, thought they saw a light. As one started for the door a shot rang out. The officer jumped behind a tree, sent for reinforcements. Around 10 o'clock in the bright starlit night, a huge force--14 State troopers and local policemen, eleven civilians--had assembled to demand that the gunmen surrender. There was the classic defiant answer, less frightening than it would have been if the boys' voices had not been changing: "If you want us you'll have to come get us. And you'd better bring an army with you!"

The officers waited. Whenever they stepped out from behind the trees, and sometimes when they didn't, a fusillade roared from the dark windows. Inside the cabin the boys were firing as fiercely as if they had been defending the Alamo, except that they shot through the walls, the ceiling, the furniture, even through the floor. At 1 o'clock police got a tear-gas grenade through a window, called again for the boys to give up. "Nuts!" cried the boys, with a perceptible quaver. At 1:30 the police got another grenade through; with tears streaming down their cheeks the desperadoes threw their guns out the window and surrendered.

Nobody knew why they had done it, the boys least of all. Their startled parents explained over & over that they had never been in trouble before. Off to Jamesburg reform school went William and Emmett to remain there for 13 months if they behave as well as they now intend to.

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