Читать книгу Jerry Todd's Poodle Parlor - Edward Edson Lee - Страница 4

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Rattling quickly off in the cart, with Red and Horse Foot gaping back, we got safely out of the farm woman’s sight and then stopped beside the road to talk matters over.

“What in Sam Hill do you make of that?” I asked the others, completely dumfounded myself.

“It’s easy to see what her game is,” growled Red. “She wants all the old lumber down there for herself to build more cabins with. And just because we’re boys she thought she could scare us out.”

“S-s-she did too,” piped Horse Foot, with a vixenish look at Red. “Y-y-you sure were white, Red. Your freckles stood out like the polka dots in m-m-my Sunday necktie.”

“Oh, yeah?” Red pushed out his chin, brave as a lion again. “If anybody happens to ask you, squash-face, she didn’t scare me a bit. But you can’t argue with an old cross-patch! Boy, I’d hate to work for her all summer, like Scoop and Peg! But give me those lines, Jerry. I’m going back and get that lumber, just as we planned. I’m not going to let her bluff me out.”

I was just as determined as he was to get the lumber, but knew better than to go back then.

“A better plan,” I suggested, “will be to wait here for ten or fifteen minutes and then sneak back afoot to see where she is. If she’s over to her farm, then we’ll race back for the cart and get in to the old hotel and out again with our lumber as fast as we can.”

“But what if she went back to the old hotel?” Red asked.

“In that case we’ll just have to wait till she’s safely out of there. We can easily outwit her if we try. Toughies, huh?” I gave the insult more thought, my eyes narrowing. “Boy, I resent that! We’ve never done anything around here to get a reputation like that. So why should she call us toughies?”

“You’ve got too good an opinion of yourself,” snorted Red, jumping out. “Maybe a lot of people have called us toughies, for all we know. It doesn’t worry me. Come on,” he swaggered off down the road, “I’m going to show her what a tough buzzard I really am.”

“Listen here, Red,” I went at him sharply, when I caught up with him, Horse Foot having been left behind to take care of the horse, “don’t you sass that woman now, if we should happen to clash with her again. If she wants to be ill-mannered to us let her, but we’ll show her that we aren’t the toughies she said. Our folks wouldn’t like it if we sassed her—we’d hear plenty about it if the story ever got back to town. So let’s not do anything we’ll be sorry for.”

“But doesn’t it make you boiling mad, Jerry?” he stamped along, himself burning indignantly to the tips of his freckled ears.

“Sure it does,” I confessed. “She had no right to yank us out of there that way—it wasn’t her property. As you said, she took advantage of us because we’re boys—wanting the lumber for herself. But there’s no use getting mouthy about it. The thing to do is to keep cool and fool her if we can. If we can do that and get the lumber we need in spite of her, I’ll be satisfied.”

“Will the lumber be all piled up ready for us when we get there?” Red asked eagerly.

“Oh, sure! There’ll be a carpenter there, too, to take the money—a Mr. Charley Kelly, Scoop told me. But let’s go quietly now,” I lowered my voice cautiously, “for we’re almost to the old road again, and she may be waiting for us there with a stick.”

“Do you see her?” Red breathed in my ear, as we crept through the bushes.

“No,” I breathed back. “She’s either gone on home or back down the old road to the hotel.”

“She probably thought we were so scared that we’d gallop old Prince all the way home,” Red chuckled.

“I guess we did look pretty scared when we drove off,” I laughed. “But shall we try the old hotel first, to see if she’s there, or go on over to her pet farm?”

Red’s eyes began to dance at mention of the farm and the stories we had just heard about it.

“I’d like to see some of those cats and dogs,” he spoke eagerly.

“So would I,” I confessed.

“Then let’s go over there first,” he suggested.

“O. K.,” I agreed.

Directly across the highway from us was a small neglected private cemetery. I noticed it but gave it very little thought just then, though later on it was to come prominently into my story. My eyes at the time were mostly turned down the old hotel road. There was no one in sight there, however, and crossing quickly we kept on through the bushes to the wood’s edge, where the Windmere property ended and the Beesaddle farm land began. Leaving the highway there, to the left, for better cover, we worked guardedly around to another scattered grove between the farm buildings and the near-by river, coming finally to the barn. All around were hundreds of chickens and ducks that probably would go into the pot before the summer was over to feed the guests there. We saw several Jersey cows, too, contentedly chewing their cuds in the shade.

It couldn’t have been a very large farm, or a very good one either for regular farming—there was too much sand there and too many outcropping windswept sandstone ledges. But this natural beauty, so peculiar to that section of the country with its numerous summer resorts, all helped to make the farm better for the summer vacation business that was now being done there—the farm land itself didn’t greatly matter any more.

Something suddenly popped into sight atop the barn.

“It’s a little gray monkey,” I excitedly told Red, watching.

“Hi, brother!” he promptly saluted. “Come on down!”

“Pipe down, you dumb cluck!” I gave him a punch, as the monkey ran off shrilly chattering. “Do you want the whole farm to hear you? This is no time for funny work.”

The cabins, we found, were all in a grove on the east side of the farmhouse. With their vines and pretty little screened porches and gables they looked like colorful doll houses. It was plainly seen that they had been built for people who could afford the best. We got a glimpse of some of the pets, too, mostly cats, but quickly dropped down out of sight when Mrs. Bumblebee herself came out of the farmhouse ringing a dinner bell.

With the farm woman thus located, we felt we ought to get back to the cart without further delay, so back we went through the farm grove to the highway and from there on to the waiting cart.

“D-d-did you see any cats?” Horse Foot asked us eagerly, when we came running up.

“Sure thing,” I told him, jumping in and grabbing the lines to fly off, “and a monkey, too.”

“A m-m-monkey?” he repeated. Then he looked curiously at Red. “Oh, you, huh?”

“I might resent that,” Red sniffed superiorly, “if you had a head to hang your cap on like other people, instead of an empty peanut shell.”

We had let old Prince take his own time on our first trip in. But now I kept him at gallop, the branches slapping at us right and left. Mr. Kelly thought we were crazy, I guess, when we rattled up to where he was working, and tumbled out.

A lanky white-whiskered old man, with a peculiarly prominent mouth and chin, he had gotten down from his ladder chewing and kept on chewing all the time he helped us get our lumber together, though I was pretty sure he hadn’t anything in his mouth to chew on. It was just a nervous habit.

“You b’ys are gittin’ a heap sight of good lumber fur two dollars,” he told us good-naturedly. “That there door and them two windys that you’ve got are worth that much alone. But it’s all right, it’s all right,” he chewed harder than ever, nodding. “Mrs. Flory Beesaddle and the Woodlawn Bay hotel manager are both tryin’ to buy the rest of the building here, but I was told by the New York woman who hired me to demolish it to sell what I could to whoever came along.”

We had trouble at the very last finding a safe place on the load for our two windows.

“Let’s leave them here and get them later,” suggested Red, anxious to get off on the fly again.

“No, no,” the carpenter put in quickly, “you better take ’em with you, if you want ’em. Either Mrs. Flory or the hotel manager is liable to buy the rest of the building before the day is over. They’ve both telegraphed to the New York owner. You prob’ly wouldn’t be let to take the windys away after the deal was closed.”

The carpenter finally had to come to our aid with the windows, his tongue running further about the trouble between Mrs. Beesaddle and the Woodlawn Bay manager. The cabins, it seems, had taken from the hotel a number of its best-paying patrons and afraid that still more cabins would make the situation worse, the hotel manager had decided to buy up the rest of the partly demolished building as one way of slowing up the cabin owner’s building operations.

Our final rush to be off stirred up the old man’s suspicions.

“What kind of trickery be you b’ys up to?” he asked sharply, blocking our way. “You can’t be in all that hurry jest to get home to dinner.”

“We aren’t up to any trickery,” I told him.

“Well, you act mighty suspicious to me. I still think you’re hidin’ something.”

“Oh, tell him the truth,” urged Red, on needles and pins to be off.

Which I did, figuring we hadn’t anything to lose by it, the old man listening puzzled at first, and then amused.

“Why,” he chuckled, “Mrs. Flory wouldn’t ’a’ harmed a hair of your heads.”

“It wasn’t our hair she threatened to work on,” shrugged Red. “It was our pants.”

“Yes,” I followed up, “she threatened to shake us out of them, if she ever caught us in here again.”

“But she didn’t mean it, b’ys,” cackled the old man, more amused than ever. “All the time, I bet, she was laughin’ up her sleeve. Why, she’s one of the kindest women in the world.”

“That’s what you think,” snorted Red.

“Oh, but I don’t jest think it, b’ys, I know it—I’ve known her fur more’n forty years. Not that I’m doubtin’ your story now, or think you’re exaggeratin’—I don’t mean that—but what you tell me jest don’t fit Mrs. Flory at all. I can’t fur the life of me figure out why she went at you that way, unless—”

“Unless what?” I asked quickly, as he paused thoughtfully.

“—unless,” he finished, “she mistook you fur the Stricker boys from the Woodlawn Bay hotel.”

The Stricker boys from the Woodlawn Bay hotel! Could that mean our old enemy, Bid Stricker and his gang?

“Do you mean the Tutter Stricker boys?” I asked Mr. Kelly, staring. “Are they working at the hotel now?”

“That’s my understandin’,” he waggled. “They started this mornin’, I think—anyway I heard yesterday that they were startin’ there today, and what little toughies they were. Mrs. Flory hates the hotel manager like p’ison, and if it was her idea that you were the Strickers, and that the manager had sent you over here fur lumber, she might have taken that high-handed way of turnin’ you back—though she really had no legal right to do it.”

“Did she know that the Strickers are working at the hotel?” I asked quickly.

“Yes,” the old man waggled, “I told her.”

“And is the manager’s name Mr. Norning?” I further asked the old man.

“Exactly,” he waggled again, chewing in time.

“Then that explains it,” I spoke relieved. “She did mistake us for the Strickers. It’s as plain as day now. But, gosh!—that’s the first time in my life that I ever was mistaken for one of that crummy gang.”

“Mrs. Flory’s goin’ to be awful sorry when she hears about it,” the old man chewed gravely. “As I tell you, she’s kindness itself. Let anyone around here git sick or needy and she’s the first one there to help. Oh,” the chewer’s eyes twinkled, “she likes to boss—I know that! Every time she comes over here she goes ’round sayin’, now, Charley, you do this and you do that. But that’s jest her way. It’s true, too, that she makes people workin’ fur her step right along. But that’s all right—she pays good, and her help is always used good. Take me here. I’m not workin’ fur her directly—at least not yet—but every noon she brings me over a warm dinner.”

“Well, when she comes today you tell her about her mistake, will you?” I requested eagerly, as we got ready to drive off.

“Yes,” grinned the old man, “I’ll tell her. And I bet you git an apology from her—or some kind of a nice present to make up fur it. That’s her big-hearted way. She deserves her good fortune with her cabins. As fur that man Norning, I don’t like him at all—with his smug scheming smile! They say he’s French, or somethin’ foreign, but he never tells hisself what he is, though he still sticks to his foreign accent and manner. But one thing I do know about him, he’s aimin’ to put Mrs. Flory out of business if he possibly can, either by hook or crook. But I better git washed up now, fur she’ll soon be here with my dinner. Maybe I’ll know then how she come out. She was expectin’ a tely-gram around noon, she said.”