Читать книгу Poppy Ott Hits the Trail - Edward Edson Lee - Страница 5

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Mrs. Glimme at one time had a lot of servants. But now she has the big house all to herself. For she likes to be alone. The kindly neighbors often worry about her. For she keeps out of sight for days at a time. They watch her chimneys in the winter and her bedroom light in the summer. If they fail to see smoke on time, or a light, they call her up on the telephone. And if that fails to arouse her, they knock directly on her doors. Once they found her unconscious at the foot of her cellar stairs. She had a fractured hip. But nobody in the neighborhood ever learned what caused her to trip and fall.

The town gossips say she’s too close-mouthed. They’d like to have her do more talking about her troubles and her secrets. And because she won’t, they run her down, hinting even that she herself helped to put her son out of the way. But I never took any stock in that theory. For I know how my ma loves me. And I don’t believe that any mother, unless she was totally crazy, would deliberately harm her only child.

Besides, Bardwell Glimme, at the time of his mysterious disappearance, was a man grown, with a wife and a baby boy.

I’ve never seen Reggie Glimme’s mother. But I’ve been told that all she cares about is pretty dresses and gay parties. In the winter time she lets the servants take care of her son. And when summer comes she dumps him onto his grandmother. But he never stays in Tutter any longer than he has to. For he takes after his restless mother. And that big house at the corner of School and Elm Streets is too blamed quiet to suit him.

Yet his grandmother always tries to make his visits pleasant. When he was small, she even bought hickory nuts and sprinkled them on the ground for him to find, so that he could go back to Chicago and tell his chums that he went “nutting” while he was in the country. In the same way she once buried Indian arrowheads for him to find. And how he bragged about that arrowhead collection of his! The city boys got the idea from his talk that nuts and arrowheads were as common in the country as mosquitoes. But that isn’t true at all.

With the strange history of the big house running through my head, I watched Poppy worm his way through the shadowy bushes to the front door, where the tall angular visitor was still waiting impatiently for admittance. Then the door opened. I could see Mrs. Glimme against the lighted background; she seemed peculiarly small and frail; and I could detect the murmur of voices.

Poppy had told me to wait on the sidewalk. But I couldn’t see any sense in that. Besides I was curious to learn what the women were talking about. So I did some pussy-footing myself. And with each guarded step the voices grew plainer.

“But the money isn’t due,” Mrs. Glimme spoke in a troubled trembling voice.

In contrast, the visitor’s harsh voice made me think of spikes going through a corn sheller.

“I want the money to-night,” she said.

“I’ll get it for you to-morrow. But I can’t pay you to-night. It’s impossible. For I haven’t that much money in the house.”

“You heard what I said,” an added sharpness appeared in the visitor’s harsh unrelenting voice. “I want my money to-night. And if you know what’s good for you, Anne Glimme, you’ll get it for me without further argument.”

Mrs. Glimme trembled with agitation.

“Have you no heart at all, Rachel Saucer? Do you propose to hound me to my very grave?”

“HAVE YOU NO HEART AT ALL, RACHEL SAUCER?”

Rachel Saucer! I saw now why Poppy was so excited. Saucer, I recalled, was the name of the strange boy that he had met that afternoon at Clarks Falls—the kid who never had seen the inside of a schoolhouse. And this tall bony woman evidently was the mentioned “battle-axe.”

Boy, she sure was a “battle-axe,” all right!

Her voice rasped with hatred. And she seemed to take a cruel delight in taunting the weaker woman in the lighted doorway.

“Heartless am I?” she began. “Well, maybe I am. But I’m exactly what you made me, Anne Glimme. When I was a girl you snubbed me. You were rich and I was poor. I wasn’t good enough to associate with you then. I wasn’t even good enough for you to wipe your feet on. Trash! That’s what you called me. Trash! And later, when you learned that your precious son was in love with my younger sister, you did everything in your power to separate them. Finally you succeeded. And what happened then? Shall I tell you, Anne Glimme? Shall I tell you to your face, right here on your own doorstep? Shall I? Or do you want to buy me off as usual? It’s for you to decide. And I don’t propose to wait either. Either I get my money to-night, in gold, or the truth about you and your son will be on everybody’s tongue to-morrow morning.”

“Rachel! Rachel!” came the pitiful begging cry. “Please.”

There was a harsh grating laugh, which more than ever revealed the visitor’s cruel unrelenting nature.

“How times have changed!” she spoke tauntingly. “A Glimme begging favors from a Saucer! Ha, ha, ha!” Then the voice changed. It was full of fury now. “But you’ll get no favors from me. I want my money. And I want it now.”

I thought that poor Mrs. Glimme would collapse in the doorway.

“Please come inside,” she begged weakly. “I’ll give you what money I have on hand. And I’ll send the rest to you to-morrow morning, as soon as the bank opens.”

Poppy had caught sight of me in the bushes. And as the two women disappeared into the house he joined me.

“I thought maybe I’d find the Saucer kid in the buggy,” he told me. “And I was going to coax him to jump out and beat it. But evidently his aunt came to town alone.”

“You certainly hit the mark,” says I, “when you called her an old battle-axe.”

“That’s the way she went at the kid this afternoon. As hard as nails. I wondered why he acted so timid. All the time he was talking to me he kept peeking over his shoulder. Sort of fearful-like. And finally he told me the truth. He had an aunt, he said, who knocked him around like a dog. He had been told never to talk to anybody outside of the family. If he saw anybody in the woods he was supposed to run and hide, like a groundhog. But he disobeyed orders when he saw me. That’s why his aunt beat him.”

“Someone ought to beat her,” I spoke angrily.

“We were sitting on a log beside the pool,” Poppy proceeded. “He was just telling me how he’d love to go to school and have boy friends like me. When all of a sudden something grabbed him from behind. And there she stood! Gosh, Jerry! I can’t begin to describe the look on her hatchet-like face. Nobody but the devil himself could look that way. And I doubt if even the devil could do it, unless he had a pain in his stomach. Holding the kid with one muscular hand, she switched him with the other till his bare legs were raw. Then she drove him ahead of her in the direction of their home. I later saw the place. It’s a log house set into the rocks. I bet it’s a hundred years old at the very least. And how anybody gets out of there with a carriage is a mystery to me. But evidently there’s a road of some sort.”

“If we’re going back to help the kid,” says I quickly, “we can’t follow the course that you took to-day. That’s too winding. We need a more direct course. So let’s find out where that road is.”

“How?”

“By following the woman home, of course.”

“By George!” cried Poppy. “That’s an idea.”

We could tell by the looks of the old farm horse that it wasn’t a fast traveler. It probably would walk all of the way home. Or even if it broke into an occasional trot we felt that we could keep up with it. Nor would it be hard, we agreed, to keep out of the driver’s sight.

Our plans thus made, Poppy stood guard near the waiting carriage while I skinned down the street to Wheeler’s drug store and called up mother. I had a big job on my hands, I said; and I might not get home till midnight. She didn’t like that a little bit. But when I explained to her that a friend of Poppy’s was in trouble, and needed my help, she gave in. For she realizes that boy chums owe a duty to one another.

Then who should percolate through the store door but freckled Red Meyers himself.

“Have you seen him, Jerry?” came the quick inquiry.

“Who?” says I shortly, eager to get away.

“The Indian.”

“What Indian?”

“The rain-maker.”

“Who are you talking about?” says I, puzzled.

“There’s a rain-maker in town. A real Indian. He got permission to pitch his wigwam in the public park. And to-morrow he’s going into the hills, where his ancestors used to hunt wild game, to make it rain.”

I thought of Poppy’s plan.

“Who wants it to rain?” I grunted.

“The farmers, of course.”

“I don’t,” says I bluntly.

Red grinned.

“What’s the matter?” says he. “Have you decided to put off your regular midsummer bath till next year?”

I had heard of scientists dynamiting clouds to produce rain. But I couldn’t make myself believe that an Indian could do it with magic charms, as Red now declared. And giving him the horselaugh, I left him in the drug store, with a big gob of ice cream in front of him, and quickly retraced my steps to the corner house.

But in the brief time that I had been away the carriage had vanished. So had Poppy. I was peculiarly disappointed.

Then, to my added surprise, a sleek little roadster drove into the yard. It was the Glimme kid! And beside him sat Bid Stricker.

“Hi, Gram,” greeted the new arrival, when his grandparent met him at the front door.

“Why, Reginald!” came the amazed cry. “What a pleasant surprise. How did you get here?”

“In my new car.”

“In your new car? Do you mean to tell me that you have a car of your own?”

“Sure thing. Didn’t mum tell you about it in her last letter?”

“No.”

“It took a lot of coaxing, Gram, but I finally got it.”

“I didn’t think that you were old enough to drive a car.”

The newcomer didn’t like that.

“Humph! To hear you talk, anybody would think that I was an infant.”

“But I’m sure you aren’t sixteen,” the grandparent persisted.

“Well, keep it to yourself, Gram. For as yet they haven’t found out about it down in Springfield, where the auto licenses are made out.”

Bid then called from the car.

“Hey, Glimme! Shall I bring in your bags?”

“Sure thing. But don’t touch that stuff on the runningboard.”

“What is it?”

“A tent and surveying instruments.”

Mrs. Glimme peered in the lighted car.

“Who is the other boy?” she inquired.

“Oh, one of your town kids. I picked him up down the street.”

“But what are you doing with a tent and surveying instruments?”

“I’m going camping.”

“Where?”

“Up in the hills, near Clarks Falls.”

A sudden change came over the woman.

“Oh, no!” she cried imploringly. “Don’t go there. You must not. For if Rachel found out who you were——”

And there she stopped, later retreating into the house, with increased agitation, when Bid stumbled up the porch steps with two huge traveling bags.

“Here you are,” sang out the luggage carrier, relieving himself of the load.

The grandson stood with a puzzled look on his face.

“My grandmother gets queerer every day,” says he.

“Is she sick?”

“Not that I know of.”

“She looked kind of white to me.”

“She got that way when I told her that I was going camping.”

“Boy! I wish I could go with you.”

“Well, why not?”

“Can I?—honest?”

“Sure thing. Get your stuff together to-night. And I’ll pick you up in the morning. But you’ve got to work.”

Bid began to cool off.

“What do you mean?” he grunted.

“I’m going to do some prospecting as well as camping. And I want you to do the digging.”

“Prospecting?” Bid repeated. “What do you expect to find up there? Gold?”

“No,” young Glimme spoke shortly. “Lead.”