Читать книгу Poppy Ott and the Tittering Totem - Leo Edwards - Страница 4

CHAPTER I. RED’S TOTEM POLE

Poppy Ott was at it again. Having finally located him in his pa’s big wood shed under the crooked crab-apple tree I could hear him fiddling around with some kind of a noisy jigger. Sounded like machinery to me. But when I beat a merry little rat-a-tat-tat on the closed door, expecting, of course, as his bosom pal, to be warmly welcomed into the secret laboratory or whatever you want to call it, I was told kind of impatient-like to go around on the front porch and play roly-poly with the cat.

That wasn’t like old Poppy at all. Usually when a secret ambition takes hold of him he tells me all about it. For he and I are thicker than molasses in January. That is, we were thicker than molasses in January before this new notion struck him. But now, if I must tell you the truth, I was kind of peeved at him.

Still, as the saying is, I burned with curiosity to know what was going on behind the locked door of that mysterious old wood shed. For even though my love for Poppy had turned to vinegar, untrue friend that he was, I had to admit to myself that he was no ordinary kid. Tutter’s Pedigreed Pickle factory, one of the town’s chief industries, is evidence of that. For Poppy, it is to be remembered by those who have read the book, Poppy Ott’s Pedigreed Pickles, is the one who invented these famous pickles. Seven-League Stilts is another one of his successful and creditable inventions. He isn’t quite as clever as Tom Swift. But he’s young yet!

Well, having been told to shower my festive talents on the neighborhood mouse catcher, I very properly turned up my shapely nose at the locked wood-shed door and sashayed down the sun-baked street to 1014 West Main where the famous Red Meyers, B. S. A. (meaning Boy Scouts of America), was hard at work in the back yard. No, he wasn’t pushing the family grass chewer as a daily good turn. Nor was he massaging the hen-house windows. His activities, I might say, to put it in a big way, were unique. He and Rory Ringer, the new English kid in our block, were carving (or trying to carve) a totem pole.

I’m a Boy Scout myself. But I take it sensibly. I don’t let it run away with me like Red. Gee. Will I ever forget the day he and Rory broiled the steak. It was one of their second-class tests. Our Scoutmaster, who was required to eat a piece of the junk in order to pass on the test favorably or otherwise, was sick for a week. Red tells around that it was rheumatism of the ribs. But I have my own ideas. For I saw the steak. Dropped into the fire four times, Red wound up by giving it a bath in the canal. Ants or something, he said. When offered the scraps, Rory’s dog very sensibly parked its tail between its hind legs and lit out for home sweet home. Some dogs are smart. Red, though, survived the steak as chipper as you please. Like a goat, that kid can eat anything.

All wrapped up in scouting, as I say, naturally the only place in the house good enough for his cherished merit badges and stuffed rattlesnake skin is in the parlor. Mrs. Meyers doesn’t like it at all. For the snake skin, she says, has a mean habit of falling under the parlor chairs. She knows that it’s a stuffed skin. But the sight of it is an awful shock to her callers. The week Red and Rory camped on Goose Island, in the Vermillion River, the hated snake skin was chucked into the attic. But it was back in its accustomed place when the campers returned to civilization. For Mrs. Meyers knew that if it wasn’t put back Red would blat for a month. She sure is good to him. I’ve got a tin photograph of my ma letting me keep a stuffed rattlesnake skin in the parlor. Oh, yes. Like so much mud. I dassn’t even keep a little toad in the basement.

Well, as I say, all Red knows or cares to talk about is scouting. He even wears his Boy Scout uniform to Sunday school. Once he left his Bible at home and brought a scout hatchet instead. Gosh! I asked him, as he and the hardware clattered around in the pew, why he didn’t bring along his pup tent and cooking kit.

Totem poles come in different sizes. But Red, as could be expected of him under the circumstances, teemed with ambition. No measley little totem pole for him. Absolutely not. Having bought an old stubbed telephone pole for fifty cents he and Rory had lugged the pole home on their Comet Coasters and now were slashing at it with their scout hatchets as it leaned dismally against the sunny side of the hen house.

I could imagine as I looked at the mutilated pole that it was unhappily conscious of its disgrace. For what the two wood carvers were doing to it was a caution. The poor thing. Still, that’s about what you’d expect of Red Meyers.

Perched on a stepladder he paused to admire his work, thinking, I guess, that I would brag on it.

“Isn’t it a beauty?” he finally asked me, swabbing his sweaty face.

Should I tell him the truth? I did.

“It isn’t,” I acknowledged.

“Isn’t what?” he glared at me.

“A beauty.”

Totem poles, as I understand it, originated with the Indians. Not the redskins whose lost arrowheads are still found in our river bottoms, but certain scattered tribes or clans up in the Alaskan district. A genuine totem pole, with its carved figures one above the other, is a sort of family monument, like our marble tombstones, a raven head (called a crest) signifying that one branch of the house had married into the neighboring raven clan and an otter crest signifying that still another branch of the family had married into the otter clan. Some poles contain only two or three crests. Others have a dozen or more, for in addition to the raven and otter clans there are wolf clans, grizzly-bear clans and so on.

Red was peeved because I had told him the truth about his punk work.

“It’s mighty little you know about totem poles anyway,” says he spitefully.

“You and me both,” says I.

“Oh, is that so,” he pushed out his mug. “I studied up on it if anybody happens to ask you.”

“What’s that you’re carving now?” says I, as he put his hatchet aside and took up a wood chisel.

“An owl,” says he, chipping away artistically.

An owl! I wanted to laugh.

“It looks like a fish,” I told him, parking my manly form in the shade of a gooseberry bush.

“Where’s Poppy Ott?” the worker then inquired. “He promised to help me this morning.”

“Don’t say a word to me about Poppy Ott,” I stiffened. “He and I aren’t on speaking terms.”

I was given a curious look.

“No? When did he quit?”

“Quit what?”

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.