Kitabı oku: «Ralph in the Switch Tower: or, Clearing the Track», sayfa 5

CHAPTER XIII-SQUARING THINGS

Ralph was tremendously pleased at the praise of the superintendent of the Great Northern. He started for home, his work through with for the day, feeling that life was very much worth living.

He lost no time on this especial occasion in reaching the home cottage. He wanted to share his pleasure with his devoted mother.

Ralph found the front door locked. He had a key to it however, let himself in, and was wondering at this unusual absence of his mother at a regular meal hour, when he caught sight of a folded note on the little table in the hall.

"I am at Mrs. Davis'," his mother's note ran. "She is not very well, and wishes me to stay with her for a few hours. Please call for me at her house at about nine o'clock."

Entering the little dining room, Ralph found the table all set. He proceeded to the kitchen, and discovered under covers on a slow fire his meal ready to be served.

"Always kind and thoughtful," he reflected gratefully, as he sat down to his solitary repast. "Nine o'clock, eh? That gives me time to attend to some pressing duties. Perhaps Mrs. Davis may have something to say about those bonds."

Ralph's mother had done her duty in seeing to it that he was not put out by her absence. He now proceeded to do his by clearing up the table and washing the dishes. He had everything in order before he left the house.

He sauntered downtown, changed a twenty-dollar bill that was among those the circus manager had given him, and started down a humble side street.

In about ten minutes Ralph reached the Stiggs home. It was a small one-story structure, but comfortable-looking and well-kept.

In the garden was a small summerhouse. A spark of light directed Ralph thither. It appeared that Stiggs was banished from the house while using his favorite weed. This was his "smokery."

Before Ralph could announce his presence, someone spoke from an open window of the house.

"John Jacob Stiggs-smoke! smoke! smoke!" proclaimed a high-pitched voice-. "I should think you'd be ashamed-at it all the time. If you are so valuable to your railroad cronies why don't you bring home a chicken, or a watermelon, or a bag of potatoes once in a while, instead of your perpetual 'plug cut,' and 'cut loaf,' and 'killmequick'? Oh, dear! dear! you are such a trial."

"That's so-never thought of that," responded Stiggs from his snuggery, in his usual quiet way. "But, my dear, something is coming. Some money-you know I told you."

"Nonsense!" retorted Mrs. Stiggs violently. "They stuff you full of all kinds of stories. Last week you said they were going to make you master mechanic."

"I declined it! I declined it!" answered Stiggs in quick trepidation. "The responsibility of the position-think of it, my dear!"

"Well, I suppose you're my cross," sighed his helpmate patiently. "Only, don't get a woman's hopes all alive with your story of five dollars coming, and a new shawl for me."

"Ten, my dear," interrupted Stiggs. "I've quite forgotten the amount, but I am sure it was more than five. You see, I helped catch a tiger-"

"John Jacob Stiggs!" cried his wife severely, "you'd better keep those wild notions out of your head. Tigers! Who ever saw a tiger in Stanley Junction?" she sniffed disdainfully.

"Why, I did, Mrs. Stiggs," broke in Ralph, stepping to the window with a pleasant smile, and lifting his cap politely. "It escaped from the circus now in town. Your husband helped me get it into the hands of the show people, they paid us fifty dollars' reward for our services, and half of it belongs to Mr. Stiggs. There is his share, madam."

"Laws-a-mercy!" cried the astounded woman, as the crisp green bills were placed on the window ledge. "You don't mean-"

"Twenty-five dollars," nodded Ralph.

"His? mine? ours?"

"Yes, Mrs. Stiggs. You can have a famous new shawl now, can't you, madam?"

"Oh, come in. Oh, dear! dear! it don't seem real."

Ralph stepped around to the door and entered the little sitting room. Mrs. Stiggs could not keep still for excitement. She was laughing and crying by turns.

Old Stiggs followed after Ralph in a kind of dumb amazement, and stood staring at the banknotes in his wife's hand. She chanced to observe him. For the first time in his life, it seemed, her husband had ventured inside the house smoking his despised tobacco.

"John-Jacob-Stiggs!" she screamed.

"Oh-my!" gasped the horrified culprit.

The lighted pipe dropped from his mouth, and he bolted out of doors as if shot from a cannon.

Mrs. Stiggs was profuse in her thanks. She got more coherent, and poured out her little troubles to Ralph, who was a sympathetic listener. He gave her some advice, and his heart warmed as he finally left the house, happy in the consciousness that he had bestowed some pleasure and benefit where he felt sure they were fully deserved.

"Anybody but mother would call me a chump for what I've got to do next," he mused, as he proceeded briskly in the direction of lower Railroad Street, "but I've got the impulse, and it looks clear to me that I'm doing the right thing all around."

Ralph proceeded past the long line of poor buildings just back of the depot tracks. He looked into the restaurant where he had found Mort Bemis and Young Slavin some evenings previous.

They were not in evidence now, however, at this or other places he inspected. Ralph made inquiries of some "extras," who had a good deal of spare time, and were likely to know the denizens of Railroad Row.

No one could tell him of the whereabouts of the persons he sought, until he met a young urchin whom he questioned.

"Slavin?" pronounced the precious street arab. "Champeen? He's at Murphy's shed."

A man named Murphy ran a cheap ice cream place further down the street, Ralph remembered. The shed he also recalled as a loafing place for juvenile road hands around the noon and evening hours.

It was a great open structure where expressmen stored their wagons for shelter. Ralph reached its proximity in a few minutes. He glanced around the open end of the place.

Three or four boys were squatted on the ground. Two of them had a coat and a vest, on which they were clumsily sewing. Near by, wrapped in an old horse-blanket, seated on a box, his eyes fixed gloomily on the ground, was the object of Ralph's visit-Young Slavin.

Ralph went forward at once. Two of the group sprang to their feet, startled. Young Slavin, looking spiritless and cowed, craned his bull neck in silent wonder and uncertainty.

"Mr. Slavin," spoke Ralph promptly, "I have been trying to find you."

"What for?" mumbled Slavin in a muffled tone. "I'm ripped up the back. Out of training-see you later."

"Oh, I haven't come to fight," Ralph assured him. "It is this way: I saw you meet with an unfortunate accident this afternoon."

"If you mean you made rags of the only suit of clothes I've got, it's correct," admitted Slavin dejectedly.

"Well, I warned you, but you would rush on your fate," said Ralph. "Pretty badly used up, are they?"

"Are they?" snorted Slavin bitterly. "They were ripped from stem to stern. And what's worse-look at them now!"

Ralph could scarcely keep from laughing outright. One of the amateur tailors had essayed to mend Slavin's trousers.

He had taken up a seam four inches wide. In pursuing the seam, he had sewed it into bunches, knobs, and fissures. One leg was shorter than the other, and stood out at an angle from the knee down.

"No, that won't do at all," said Ralph gravely. "I felt sorry for you, Slavin. As I warned you, that tiger was in the switch tower. I got a reward for telling the circus people where it was, and I think it is only fair that they pay for the damage the animal did. They advertise a good eight-dollar suit down at the Grand Leader. Go and get one. That squares it, doesn't it?"

Ralph extended a ten-dollar bill to Slavin. The eyes of his engrossed companions snapped at the sight of so much money. As for Slavin himself, he stared at the bill and then at Ralph in stupid wonder.

"Take it," urged Ralph.

"Mine?" gulped Slavin slowly.

"Of course it's yours."

"You give it?"

"Why not? I collected damages from the circus people-that's your share."

Slavin's fingers trembled as he took the proffered banknote. He wriggled restively, looked up, and then looked down.

"Say," he spoke hoarsely at last, "your name is Fairbanks."

"Yes," nodded Ralph.

"A good name, and you're a good sort. I jumped on you wrong the other night, and I want to say it right here. I thought Mort Bemis was my friend. This afternoon he took up with a fellow named Slump, broke open my trunk, stole two of my silver medals, and sloped. That's what I got for being his friend. Now you come and do me a good turn. I'm not your kind, and we can't ever mix probably, but if ever you want anyone hammered, I'll be there. See? I'm-I'm obliged to you, Fairbanks. You've taught me something. There's something better in the world than muscle-and you've got it."

When Ralph left the old shed, he was pretty certain that he had made a new friend. He had, too, won the respect of the little coterie who had seen the terrible "champeen" eat humble pie before a fellow half his size.

Ralph went to a millinery store next. The Saturday evening before he had accompanied his mother on her shopping tour. She had admired a hat in a show-window, but had said she could not spare the money for it just then.

Ralph proudly walked home with the self-same hat in a band-box.

"I have made quite a hole in that fifty dollars," he mused, as he left the band-box at the home cottage, and started for Mrs. Davis' house. "I wonder if I would be as extravagant on a bigger scale, if we should be fortunate enough to get back those twenty thousand dollars' worth of railroad bonds?"

CHAPTER XIV-A BUSY EVENING

The nearest cut to the house where Mrs. Davis lived was along a sort of a ravine, and Ralph pursued this route. It was the shortest, and it was here that the switch spur was to run up to Gasper Farrington's old factory.

Ralph was interested in this as a railroader. The work of grading had already commenced. It was not to be a very particular job, as the service would be only occasional. The company was using old rails and second-hand ties.

There was a natural rock shelf on the north side of the ravine. This the roadbed would follow. There were several sharp grades, but there would be no heavy traffic. The entire factory output, which was in the furniture line, would not exceed a carload a day.

Mrs. Davis' home stood back from the ravine about a hundred feet. It was some three hundred yards from the factory building. Between it and the latter structure was a low two-story house, very old and dilapidated. Ralph wondered if this was the spot which Farrington had said he would appropriate, law or no law, as the connecting link in his right of way.

"Mr. Farrington may well look out for wrecks," soliloquized Ralph, as he passed along the ravine. "The freight business from the factory is not worth enough for the company to put in a first-class roadbed. A poor one means danger. They will have to go slow on some of those mean curves and crooked grades, if they want to avoid trouble."

Ralph turned from the ravine as he caught the gleam of a light in the house he knew to be occupied by the mysterious Mrs. Davis.

It was a desolate place, and he felt sorry for anyone compelled to live so remote from neighbors. He felt glad, however, that the lonely widow had been so fortunate as to find a friend in his mother.

Mrs. Davis had proven her honesty by wishing to repay him the ten-dollar loan. Ralph in a way counted that evening on some intimation concerning the twenty thousand dollars railroad bonds. He was naturally wrought up and anxious over this particular phase of the situation.

The house did not front on the ravine. In approaching it, Ralph came up to its side first. The light that had guided him was in a middle room. Its window was open and the shade was lowered, but the breeze blew it back every little while.

It was a bright moonlight night. Ralph could make out the house and its surroundings as plain as day. As he walked beside a hedge of high alders, he paused with a start.

Someone stood directly beside the open window where the light was. The house shadowed him, but even at a distance Ralph could see that the lurker was a boy about his own height.

This person stood with his face to the window. Every time the breeze moved the curtain, he bobbed about actively. He craned his neck, and made all kinds of efforts to look into the room.

"Why," said Ralph indignantly, "it is someone spying!"

The breeze freshening, the curtain was just then blown on a forty-five degree slant. A perfectly plain view of the room and its inmates was momentarily shown.

Even at a distance Ralph could make out Mrs. Davis propped up in a chair with pillows, and his mother seated near by.

The lurker at the window was taking a good clear look. He suddenly whipped a card out of his pocket. He glanced at it quickly, then inside the room again. The breeze let down, and the curtain dropped plumb once more.

Ralph made an impetuous run for the window. He came up to the lurker, grabbed his arm, and still at full momentum ran him twenty feet along from the window. He did not wish to startle the inmates of the house. The astonished boy he had seized Ralph landed against the side of a summerhouse. He never let go of him. His prisoner wriggled in his grasp.

"Hey, what's this?" he began.

"Who are you and what are you up to?" challenged Ralph sharply. "What!" he cried, loosening his hold in stupefaction. "Van-Van Sherwin!"

"Hello!" muttered his companion, now faced squarely about, and staring in turn. "It is you, Fairbanks? Well, that's natural, seeing your mother is here, but you took me off my feet so sudden. Shake. You don't seem glad to see me one bit, although it's an age since I met you last. How goes it?"

Ralph shook the hand affectionately extended. It was not the hearty greeting, however, he usually awarded to this his warmest boy friend. Ralph looked grave, uncertain, and disappointed.

Of all the chums he had ever known, Van Sherwin had come into his life in a way that had appealed strongly to every friendly sentiment. Deprived of reason temporarily through a blow from a baseball, and practically adopted by the Fairbanks family, Van's gentle, lovable ways had charmed them. When he recovered his reason and was the means of introducing Ralph to Farwell Gibson, Van was cherished like a brother by Ralph.

Less than two weeks previous Van had gone back to the wilderness stretch beyond Springfield, where Gibson was keeping his railroad cut-off charter alive by grading the roadbed so much each day, as required by law.

Through Gibson Ralph had got the information that enabled them to prove Gasper Farrington's mortgage on their home a fraud. Naturally he felt thankful to the queer old hermit who was working out an idea amid Crusoe-like solitude.

As to Van, – mother and son made him a daily topic of conversation. They had longed for a visit from the strange, wild lad who had unconsciously brought so much good into their lives.

Now Van had appeared, yet a vague distrust and disappointment chilled the warmth of Ralph's reception. Van had always been frank, open-minded, aboveboard. Ralph had just discovered him apparently engaged in eavesdropping.

Thinking all this over, Ralph stood grim and silent as a statue for the space of nearly two minutes.

"Hey!" challenged Van suddenly, giving his arm a vigorous shake. "Are you dreaming, Ralph?"

Ralph roused himself. He determined to clear the situation, if it could be cleared.

"Van," he said definitely, "what were you doing at that window?"

"Why, didn't you see-looking in."

"I know you was. In other words, spying. Oh, Van-spying on my mother!"

Van Sherwin's eyes flashed. In a trice he had whipped off his coat. His fists doubled up. He advanced on Ralph, his voice shaking with an angry sob.

"Take that back, Ralph Fairbanks!" he cried. "Do it quick, or you've got to lick me. Me spy on your mother? Why, she's pretty near my mother, too-the only one I ever remember."

"But I saw you lurking at that window," said Ralph, a good deal taken aback by Van's violent demonstration.

"Lurking, eh?" repeated Van sarcastically. "I'm a lurker, am I? And a spy? Why don't you call me a bravo-and a brigand? Humph-you chump!"

The impulsive fellow shrugged his shoulders in such a pitying, indulgent way that Ralph was fairly nettled.

"I won't fight you," declared Van, putting on his coat again. "You think so much of your mother that I'll forgive you. But I think a lot of her, too, as you well know, and, knowing it, you ought to have thought twice before you-yes, imputed to me any action that could do her any harm."

"You're right, Van," said Ralph, grasping both hands of his eccentric chum, heartily enough this time. "I am so strung up, though, with things happening, and so much suspicion and mystery in the air, that I'm jumping to all kinds of conclusions helter-skelter. I hate mystery, you know."

"Sit down," said Van, moving around to the door of the dismantled summerhouse, and dropping to its worm-eaten seat. "I want to tell you something. I wasn't looking in that window expecting to see your mother."

"No?"

"Not at all."

"Then it must have been Mrs. Davis, the woman who lives there."

"Is that her name?" inquired Van, with a shrewd smile.

"She says it is."

"You know her, then? Well, I don't, Ralph. Never saw her before. Yet, I've traveled a long distance to get a look at her. See here-can you make it out?"

Van took from his pocket the card Ralph had seen him consult at the window. Ralph held it up to the moonlight.

It was an old-fashioned card photograph. Judging from its yellow, faded appearance, it seemed taken in another generation. It presented the face of a woman of about thirty years of age.

Ralph scanned this with a certain token of recognition.

"This picture resembles Mrs. Davis," he said.

"Think so?" asked Van. "I know it does. It's meant for the lady in that room yonder-when she was younger, though."

"How do you come by it?" inquired Ralph.

"It's a secret for the present, but I don't mind telling you. A friend-a long distance away-asked me to locate the original of that picture. Somehow he got a clew to the fact that she was living in this district."

"Yes, she came to Stanley Junction recently."

"Anyhow, I followed out directions," narrated Van. "I've done what I came for. The woman lives in that house yonder. I must go back and inform my friend."

"Not right away. Mother will want to see you, Van."

Van shook his head resolutely.

"I'll be back again soon, Ralph," he promised. "I wish I could tell you more, but it's not my business."

"That's all right, Van. I don't want to pry into your secrets."

Van restored the picture to his pocket. He sighed with a glance at the house, as if it would indeed be a pleasure to have a chat with his adopted mother, Mrs. Fairbanks.

"Oh, Ralph!" he said suddenly, checking himself as he was about to move away-"have you ever heard anything more about those twenty thousand dollars railroad bonds?"

"Have I?" spoke Ralph animately; "I seem to be hearing about them every step I take, lately!"

"Is that so?"

"Yes, but always in a vague, unsatisfactory way. What made you ask that question, Van?" inquired Ralph, with a keen glance at his companion.

"Oh, nothing," declared Van carelessly. "I was just thinking, that's all. You see, Mr. Gibson is a rare, good fellow."

"He did me some rare, good service-I know that," said Ralph warmly.

"Well, he's pegging away at that railroad of his, wasting valuable time. He don't dare to leave it, because he might vi-vi-bother the word-oh, yes! vitiate his legal rights. He told me, though, that if he could get someone to put up a few thousand dollars so he could hire help, he would go to some big city and interest capital and rush the road through."

"I will bear that in mind," said Ralph thoughtfully. "I believe he has the nucleus of a big speculation. There are rich men in Stanley Junction who might be induced to help him."

"Suppose you got those twenty thousand dollars bonds, Ralph," said Van suddenly. "Would you be inclined to invest?"

"I would feel it a duty, Van," responded Ralph promptly. "I believe my mother would, too. You will remember that if it was not for Mr. Gibson, we would probably be without a home to-day."

"You're a good fellow, Ralph Fairbanks!" cried Van, slapping his chum heartily on the shoulder. "I knew you'd say that. And say-I guess you're going to hear something about those bonds, soon."

"The air seems full of those bonds!" half smiled Ralph. "I wish something besides shadows would materialize, though."

Ralph felt that Van was keeping something back-certainly about the person so interested in the mysterious Mrs. Davis, possibly in reference to the railroad bonds, as well.

Before he could express himself further, Van grabbed his sleeve and pulled him into the shelter of the summerhouse with a quick warning:

"S-sh!"

"What is it, Van?" inquired Ralph in surprise.

"Speak low, look sharp!" whispered Van, pointing through the interstices of the trellis in the direction of the house. "You hate mystery, you say. Then how does that strike you?"

"Why," exclaimed Ralph, after a steadfast glance in the direction indicated-"it is Gasper Farrington!"