Kitabı oku: «The Corner House Girls Growing Up», sayfa 7
"Oh, come on, Pap, le's hurry!" exclaimed Louise Quigg, gaspingly. "Oh, my! Everybody'll see everything all up before we get there!"
The mules were driven aboard over the gangplank and stabled in the forward end of the house. The cabin door was locked and Beauty set on guard. Without the first idea that they were leaving any other human beings upon the barge when they left it, Louise and her father walked toward the drawbridge on the edge of town, over which they had to pass to reach the showgrounds.
Louise had hurriedly cooked supper on the other side of the partition from the coop where the mules were stabled. The fire was not entirely out when she had locked the door. Her desire to reach the showgrounds early made the child careless for once in her cramped life.
The mules, quarreling over their supper, became more than usually active. One mule bit the other, who promptly switched around, striving to land both his heels upon his mate's ribs.
Instead, the kicking mule burst in the partition between the stable and the living room, or cabin, of the Nancy Hanks. The flying planks knocked over the stove and the live coals were spread abroad upon the floor.
This began to smoke at once. Little flames soon began to lick along the cracks between the deck planks. The mules brayed and became more uneasy. They did not like the smell of the smoke; much less did they like the vicinity of the flames which grew rapidly longer and hotter.
As for Beauty, the hound, her idea of watching the premises was to curl down on an old coat of Quigg's on deck and sleep as soundly as though no peril at all threatened the old canalboat and anybody who might be aboard of it.
CHAPTER XV
THE PURSUIT
Neale O'Neil did not return to Mr. Con Murphy's with a creel of fish until late afternoon. He was going to clean some of his fish and take them as a present to the Corner House girls; but something the little cobbler told him quite changed his plan.
"Here's a letter that's come to ye, me bye," said Con, looking up from his tap, tap tapping on somebody's shoe, and gazing over the top of his silver-bowed spectacles at Neale.
"Thanks," said Neale, taking the missive from the leather seat beside Mr. Murphy. "Guess it's from Uncle Bill. He said he expected to show in Durginville this week."
"And there's trouble at the Corner House," said the cobbler.
"What sort of trouble?"
"I don't rightly know, me bye; save wan of the little gals seems to be lost."
"Lost!" gasped Neale anxiously. "Which one? Tess? Dot? Not Agnes?"
"Shure," said Con Murphy, "is that little beauty likely to be lost, I ax ye? No! 'Tis the very littlest wan of all."
"Dot!"
"'Tis so. The other wan – Theresa – was here asking for her before noon-time," the cobbler added.
Neale waited for nothing further – not even to read his letter, which he slipped into his pocket; but hurried over the back fence into the rear premises of the Corner House.
By this time the entire neighborhood was aroused. Luke had called up the police station and given a description of Sammy and Dot. The telephone had been busy most of the time after he and Ruth had returned from their unsuccessful visit to the canal.
Agnes, red-eyed from weeping, ran at Neale when she saw him coming.
"Oh, Neale O'Neil! Why weren't you here! Get out the auto at once! Let us go and find them. I know they have been carried off – "
"Who's carried them, Aggie?" he demanded. "Brace up. Let's hear all the particulars of this kidnapping."
"Oh, you can laugh. Don't you dare laugh!" expostulated Agnes, quite beside herself, and scarcely knowing what she said. "But somebody must certainly have stolen Dot."
"That might be," confessed Neale. "But who in the world would want to steal Sammy? I can't imagine anybody wanting a youngster like him."
"Do be serious if you can, Neale," admonished Ruth, who had likewise been weeping, but was critical of the ex-circus boy as usual.
"I am," declared Neale. "Only, let's get down to facts. Who saw them last and where?"
He listened seriously to the story. His remark at the end might not have been very illuminating, but it was sensible.
"Well, then, if Mrs. Kranz and Joe Maroni saw them last, that's the place to start hunting for the kids."
"Didn't we go there?" demanded Ruth, sharply. "I have just told you – "
"But you didn't find them," Neale said mildly. "Just the same, I see nothing else to do but to make Mrs. Kranz's store the starting point of the search. The whole neighborhood there should be searched. Start running circles around that corner of Meadow Street."
"Didn't Luke and I go as far as the canal!" and Ruth was still rather warm of speech.
"But I guess Neale is right, Ruth," Luke put in. "I don't know the people over there or the neighborhood itself. There may have been lots of hiding places they could have slipped into."
"It's the starting point of the search," Neale declared dogmatically. "I am going right over there."
"Do get out the auto," cried Agnes, who had uncanny faith in the motor car as a means of aid in almost any emergency. "And I'm going!"
"Let's all go," Cecile Shepard suggested. "I think we ought to interview everybody around that shop. Don't you, Luke?"
"Right, Sis," her brother agreed. "Come on, Miss Ruth. Many hands should make light work. It isn't enough to have the constables on the outlook for the children. It will soon be night."
Although Ruth could not see that going to Meadow Street again promised to be of much benefit, save to keep them all occupied, she agreed to Neale's proposal which had been so warmly seconded by Luke.
The boys got out the automobile and the two older Corner House girls, with Cecile, joined them. The car rolled swiftly away from home, leaving Tess in tears, Mrs. MacCall, Aunt Sarah, Uncle Rufus and Linda in a much disturbed state of mind, and poor Mrs. Pinkney in the very lowest depths of despair.
They had all had a late luncheon – all save Neale. He had eaten only what he had put in his pocket when he left for his fishing trip to Pogue Lake that morning. It was approaching dinner time when they reached Meadow Street, but none of the anxious young people thought much about this fact.
The news of the loss of Dot Kenway and Sammy Pinkney had by this time become thoroughly known in the neighborhood of the Stower property on Meadow Street. Not only were the tenants of the Corner House girls, but all their friends and acquaintances, interested in the search.
Groups had gathered about the corner where Mrs. Kranz's store and Joe Maroni's fruit stand were situated, discussing the mystery. Suggestions of dragging the canal had been made; but these were hushed when the kindly people saw Agnes' tear-streaked face and Ruth Kenway's anxious eyes.
"Oh, my dear!" gasped Mrs. Kranz, her fat face wrinkling with emotion, and dabbing at her eyes while she patted Ruth's shoulder. "If I had only knowed vat dem kinder had in der kopfs yedt, oh, my dear! I vould haf made dem go right avay straight home."
"De leetla padrona allow, I go right away queek and looka for theem – yes? Maria and my Marouche watcha da stan' – sella da fruit. Yes?" cried Joe Maroni to the oldest Corner House girl.
"If we only – any of us – knew where to search!" Ruth cried.
Neale and Luke got out of the automobile, leaving the girls surrounded by the gossipy, though kindly, women of the neighborhood and the curious children. Neither of the young fellows had any well defined idea as to how to proceed; but they were not inclined to waste any more time merely canvassing the misfortune of Dot and Sammy's disappearance.
Neale, being better acquainted with the dwellers in this neighborhood, seized a half-grown youth on the edge of the crowd and put several very pertinent questions to him.
Was there any place right around there that the children might have fallen into – like a cellar, or an excavation! Any place into which they could have wandered and be unable to get out of, or to make their situation known? Had there been an accident of any kind near this vicinity during the day?
The answers extracted from this street youth, who would, Neale was sure, know of anything odd happening around this section of Milton, were negative.
"Say, it's been deader'n a doornail around here for a week," confessed the Meadow Street youth. "Even Dugan's goat hasn't been on the rampage. No, sir. I ain't seen an automobile goin' faster than a toad funeral all day. Say, the fastest things we got around here is the canalboats – believe me!"
"Funny how we always come around to that canal – or the barges on it – in this inquiry," murmured Luke to Neale O'Neil.
The two had started down the street, but Neale halted in his walk and stared at the young collegian.
"Funny!" he exclaimed suddenly. "No, there isn't anything funny in it at all. The canal. Canalboats. My goodness, Mr. Shepard, there must be something in it!"
"Water," growled Luke. "And very muddy water at that. I will not believe that the children fell in and were drowned!"
"No!" cried Neale just as vigorously. Then he grinned. "Sammy Pinkney's best friends say he will never be drowned, although some of them intimate that there is hemp growing for him. No, Sammy and Dot would not fall into the canal. But, crickey, Shepard! they might have fallen into a canalboat."
"What do you mean? Have been carried off in one? Kidnapped – actually kidnapped?"
"Sh! No. Perhaps not. But you never can tell what will happen to kids like them – nor what they will do. Whew! there's an idea. Sammy was always threatening to run away and be a pirate."
"The funny kid!" laughed Luke. "But Dot did not desire such a romantic career, I am sure."
"Did you ever find out yet what was in a girl's head?" asked Neale, with an assumption of worldly wisdom very funny in one of his age and experience. "You don't know what the smallest of them have in their noddles. Maybe if Sammy expressed an intention of being a pirate she wasn't going to be left behind."
He laughed. But he had hit the fact very nearly. And it seemed reasonable to Luke the more he thought of it.
"But on a canalboat?" he said, with lingering doubts.
"Well, it floats on the water, and it's a boat," urged Neale. "Put yourself in the kid's place. If the idea struck you suddenly to be a pirate where would you look around here for a pirate ship and water to sail it!"
"Great Peter!" murmured Luke. "The boundless canal!"
"Quite so," rejoined Neale O'Neil, his conviction growing. "Now, on that basis, let's ask about the barges that have gone east out from Milton to-day."
"Why not both ways?" queried Luke, quickly.
"Because most of the canalboats coming west go no farther than the Milton docks; and if the kids had got a ride on one into town, they would long since have been home. But it is a long journey to the other end of the canal. Why, it's fifteen or eighteen miles to Durginville."
"How are you going to find out about these boats?"
Neale had a well defined idea by this time. He sent Luke back to the car to pacify the girls as best he could, but without taking time to explain to the collegian his intention in full. Then the boy got to work.
Within half an hour he interviewed the blacksmith and half a dozen other people who lived or worked in sight of the canal. He discovered that, although two barges had gone along to the Milton Lock at the river side since before noon, only the old Nancy Hanks had gone in the other direction.
He came back to the car and the waiting party in some eagerness.
"Oh, Neale! have you found them!" cried Agnes.
"Of course he hasn't. Do not be so impatient, Aggie," admonished Ruth.
"I have an idea," proclaimed Neale, as he stepped into the car and turned the starting switch.
"A trace of the children?" Cecile asked.
"It's worth looking into," said Neale with much more confidence than he really felt. "We'll run up to the first lock and see if the lock-keeper noticed anybody save the captain and his little girl on that barge that went through this afternoon. Maybe Dot got friendly with the girl and she and Sammy went along for a ride on the Nancy Hanks. They say this Bill Quigg that owns that canalboat isn't any brighter than the law allows, and he might not think of the kids' folks being scared."
"Oh! it doesn't seem reasonable," Ruth said, shaking her head.
But she did not forbid Neale to make the journey to the lock. The road was good all the way to Durginville and it was a highway the Corner House girls had not traveled in their automobile. At another time they would have all enjoyed the trip immensely in the cool of the evening. And Neale drove just as fast as the law allowed – if not a little faster.
Agnes loved to ride fast in the auto; but this was one occasion when she was too worried to enjoy the motion. As they rushed on over the road, and through the pleasant countryside, they were all rather silent. Every passing minute added to the burden of anxiety upon the minds of the two sisters and Neale; nor were the visitors lacking in sympathy.
After all, little folk like Sammy and Dot are in great danger when out in the world alone, away from the shelter of home. So many, many accidents may happen.
Therefore it was a very serious party indeed that finally stopped at Bumstead Lock to ask if the lock-keeper or his wife, who lived in a tiny cottage and cultivated a small plot of ground near by, had noticed any passengers upon Cap'n Bill Quigg's barge.
"On the Nancy Hanks?" repeated the lock-keeper. "I should say 'no'! young lady," shaking his head emphatically at Ruth's question. "Why, who ever would sail as a passenger on that old ramshackle thing? I reckon it'll fall to pieces some day soon and block traffic on the canal."
Ruth, disappointed, would not have persevered. But Luke Shepard asked:
"Is there much traffic on the canal?"
"Well, sometimes there is and sometimes there ain't. But I see all that goes through here, you may believe."
"How many canalboats went toward Durginville to-day?" the collegian inquired.
"Why – lemme see," drawled the lock-keeper thoughtfully, as though there was so much traffic that it was a trouble to remember all the boats. "Why, I cal'late about one. Yes, sir, one. That was the Nancy Hanks."
"She ought to be a fast boat at that," muttered Neale O'Neil. "Nancy Hanks was some horse."
"So that was the only one?" Luke persevered. "And you spoke with Cap'n Quigg, did you?"
"With Bill Quigg?" snapped the lock-keeper, with some asperity. "I guess not! I ain't wastin' my time with the likes of him."
"Oh-ho," said Luke, while his friends looked interested. "You don't approve of the owner of the Nancy Hanks?"
"I should hope not. I ain't got no use for him."
"Then he is a pretty poor citizen, I take it?"
"I cal'late he's the poorest kind we got. He ain't even wuth sendin' to jail. He'd gone long ago if he was. No. I've no use for Cap'n Bill."
"But you saw there was nobody with him on the boat – no children?"
"Only that gal of his."
"No others?"
"Wal, I dunno. I tell you I didn't stop none to have any doin's with them. I done my duty and that's all. I ain't required by law to gas with all the riffraff that sails this here canal."
"I believe you," agreed Luke mildly. He looked at Neale and grinned. "Not very conclusive, is it?" he asked.
"Not to my mind. Bet the kids were on there with this little girl he speaks of," muttered Neale.
"Oh, do you believe it, Neale?" gasped Agnes, leaning over the back of the seat.
"I am sure we are much obliged to you, sir," Ruth said, sweetly, as the engine began to roar again.
"What's up, anyway?" asked the crabbed lock-keeper. "You got something on that Bill Quigg?"
"Can't tell, Mister," Neale said seriously. "You ask him about it when he comes back."
"Now, Neale, you've started something," declared Ruth, as the automobile sped away. "You just see if you haven't."
CHAPTER XVI
THE RINGMASTER
"Just the same, that old fellow didn't even know whether there was somebody aboard the canalboat with Quigg and his daughter or not," Neale O'Neil said, as they turned back into the Durginville road.
"Oh!" cried Cecile. "Are you going on?"
"We are – just," said her brother. "Until we solve the mystery of the Nancy Hanks."
"Do you suppose that canal boatman is bad enough to have shut the children up on his boat and will keep them for ransom?" demanded Agnes, filled with a new fear.
"He's not a brigand I should hope," Cecile Shepard cried.
"Can't tell what he is till we see him," Neale grumbled. "If this old canalboat hasn't been wrecked or sunk, we'll find it and interview Cap'n Quigg before we go back."
"Meanwhile," Ruth said, with more than a little doubt, "the children may be wandering in quite an opposite direction."
"Why, of course, our guess may be wrong, Ruth," Luke said thoughtfully, turning around the better to speak with the oldest Corner House girl. "However, we are traveling so fast that it will not delay us much."
"Pshaw, no!" exclaimed Neale. "We'll be in Durginville in a few minutes."
But they did not get that far. Crossing the canal by a liftbridge they swept along the other side and suddenly coming out of the woods saw before them a tented city.
"Why!" cried Cecile, "it's a circus!"
"I saw the pictures on the billboards," her brother admitted. "If we only had the children with us, and everything was all right, we might go."
"Sure we would," responded Neale, smiling.
"Oh, Neale!" cried Agnes, "is it Uncle Bill's?"
"Yes. I have a letter in my pocket now from him that I've had no chance to read."
"You don't suppose Mr. Sorber knows anything about the children?" said Ruth, a little weakly for her.
"How could he?" gasped Agnes. "But we ought to stop and ask."
"And see about the calico pony," chuckled Neale. "Tess and Dot have been hounding me to death about that."
"You don't suppose Dot could have started out to hunt for the circus to get that pony, do you?" suggested Ruth, almost at her wits' end to imagine what had happened to her little sister and her friend.
"We'll know about that shortly," Neale declared.
Suddenly Luke Shepard exclaimed:
"Hullo, what's afire, Neale? See yonder?"
"At the canal," cried his sister, seeing the smoke too.
"Is it a house?" asked Agnes.
"A straw stack!" cried Neale. "Must be. Some farmer is losing the winter's bedding for his cattle."
"It is on the canal," Luke put in. "Don't you see? There's one of those old barges there – and the smoke is coming from it."
"There are the flames. The fire's burst out," Agnes cried.
Suddenly Ruth startled them all by demanding:
"How do we know it isn't the Nancy Hanks?"
"Crickey! We don't," acknowledged Neale, and immediately touched the accelerator. The car leaped ahead. They went roaring on toward the circus grounds and the canal, and people on the road stepped hastily aside at the "Honk! Honk!" of the automobile horn.
Fortunately there were not many vehicles in the road, for most of the farmers' wagons had already reached the grounds, and their mules and horses were hitched beside the right of way. But there was quite a crowd upon the tented field. This crowd had not, however, as Louise Quigg feared "seen everything all up" before the canalboat girl and her father reached the tents.
Louise wanted to see everything to be seen outside before paying over their good money to get into the big show. So they wandered among the tents for some time, without a thought of the old canalboat. Indeed, they were out of sight of it when the mule kicked over the stove on the Nancy Hanks and that pirate craft (according to the first hopes of Sammy Pinkney) caught fire.
Indeed, nobody on the circus grounds was looking canalward. Torches were beginning to flare up here and there in the darkening field. There were all kinds of sideshows and "penny pops" – lifting machines, hammer-throws, a shooting gallery, a baseball alley with a grinning black man dodging the ball at the end – "certainly should like to try to hit that nigger," Pap declared – taffy booths, popcorn machines, soft drink booths, and a dozen other interesting things.
Of course, Louise and her father could only look. They had no money to spend on side issues – or sideshows. But they looked their fill. For once Cap'n Bill appeared to be awake. He was as interested in what there was to be seen as the child clinging to his hairy hand.
They went back of the big tent and there was one with the canvas raised so that they could see the horses and ponies stabled within. Some of the fattest and sleekest horses were being harnessed and trimmed for the "grand entrance," and such a shaking of heads to hear the tiny bells ring, and stamping of oiled hoofs as there was – all the airs of a vain girl before her looking-glass!
Louise was stricken dumb before a pony, all patches of brown and cream color, and with pink like a seashell inside its ears and on its muzzle. The pony's mane was all "crinkly" and its bang was parted and braided with blue ribbons.
"Oh, Pap!" gasped the little girl, breathlessly, "isn't he a dear? I never did see so harnsome a pony."
A short, stout man, with a very red face and a long-lashed whip in his hand who was standing by, heard the canalboat girl and smiled kindly upon her. He was dressed for the ring – shiny top hat, varnished boots, and all, and Louise thought him a most wonderful looking man indeed. If anybody had told her Mr. Bill Sorber was the president of the United States she would have believed it.
"So you like that pony, do you?" asked the ringmaster. "He's some pony. I reckon the little girls he belongs to will like him, too."
"Oh, isn't he a circus pony?" asked Louise, wide-eyed.
"He was. But I'm just going to send him to Milton to live with some little girls I know, and I bet Scalawag will have a lazy time of it for the rest of his natural life. And he'll like that," chuckled Mr. Sorber, deep in his chest, "for Scalawag's the laziest pony I ever tried to handle."
"Oh," murmured Louise, "he seems too nice a horse to be called by such a bad name."
"Bless you! he don't mind it at all," declared the ringmaster. "And it fits him right down to the ground! He's as full of tricks as an egg is of meat – yes ma'am! Ain't you, Scalawag?"
He touched the pony lightly with his whip upon his round rump and the pony flung out his pretty heels and whinnied. Then at a touch under his belly Scalawag stood up on his hind legs and pawed the air to keep his balance.
"Oh!" gasped Louise Quigg, with clasped hands.
"Just as graceful as a barrel, Scalawag," chuckled Mr. Sorber. "He's too fat. But I just can't help feedin' critters well. I like to feed well myself. And I know where he's going to live in Milton he'll be well tended. Hullo! what's going on?"
For suddenly a shout was heard beyond the main tent. Somebody cried, "Fire! Fire!" and there was a roaring of an automobile approaching the circus grounds at a rapid rate.
"What's goin' on?" repeated Mr. Sorber, and started upon an elephantine trot for the canal side of the field.
"Come on, Pap! We don't want to miss nothin'," gasped Louise, seizing the gaping Quigg's hand. She left the calico pony, however, with a backward glance of longing.
The crowd broke for the canal bank. When the captain and his daughter came in sight of the fire the flames were shooting ten feet high out of the cabin roof.
The boat was moored across the canal. Neale, driving down to the bank, saw that the water was between them and the fire, so he halted the car. A heavy man, bearing two empty pails in each hand, and followed closely by another man and a little girl likewise bearing buckets, came gaspingly to the automobile.
"Hi, Mister!" puffed Mr. Bill Sorber, "ast your party to git out and take us over the bridge in that there machine of yours, will you? That canalboat belongs to this here man and his little gal – why, Neale!"
"Hullo, Uncle Bill! Hop in – you and your friends," cried Neale.
"Come in – hurry, Mr. Sorber!" Ruth added her plea. "Oh!" she said to Louise, "is that the Nancy Hanks?"
"Sure as ever was," gulped Louise. "Come on, Pap! John and Jerry will be burnt to a cinder, so they will."
"Tell me, child," Luke said, lifting the girl into his lap as he sat in front with Neale, and crowding over to give the lanky Cap'n Quigg room to sit. "Tell me, are there others aboard the boat?"
"John and Jerry," sobbed Louise.
"Well, well!" Luke soothed. "Don't cry. They can open the door of the cabin and walk out, can't they?"
"Nop. They're chained to stanchions."
"Chained?" gasped the excitable Agnes from the rear. "How awful! Have you got children – "
"Aw, who said anything about children?" demanded Louise snappily. "Only John and Jerry."
"Well?"
"Them's mules," said the child, as Neale drove the car on at increasing speed.
"Tell us," Ruth begged, quite as anxious now as her sister, "have you seen two children – a boy and a girl – this afternoon?"
"Lots of 'em," replied Louise, succinctly.
Here Cap'n Bill put in a word. "If there's anything to see, children, or what not, Lowise seen 'em. She's got the brightest eyes!"
"We are looking for a little girl with a doll in her arms and a boy about ten years old. They were carrying a big paper bag and a basket of fruit, and maybe were near the canal at Milton – right there at the blacksmith shop where you had your mules shod to-day."
This was Luke's speech, and despite the jarring and bouncing of the car he made his earnest words audible to the captain of the canalboat and to his daughter.
"Did they come aboard your boat? Or did you see them?" he added.
"Ain't been nobody aboard our boat but our ownselfs and Beauty," declared Louise.
"And you did not see two children – "
"Holt on!" cried the girl. "I guess I seen 'em when we was waitin' to get the mules shod. They went by."
"Which way were they going?"
"Toward the canal – they was. And our boat was in sight. But I didn't see 'em after."
"Oh, my dear!" cried Ruth, from the tonneau, "they could not possibly be shut up anywhere on your boat?"
"Why, they wasn't in the cabin, of course – nor the mules' stable," drawled the captain. "Warn't nowhere else."
The automobile roared down toward the burning canalboat. The crowd from the circus field lined up along the other bank; but the towpath was deserted where the Nancy Hanks lay. The flames were rapidly destroying the boat amidships.
