Any Which Wall (13 page)

Henry was surprised the others weren’t furious at Sam for stranding them. “He left you here to rot,” said Henry. “Don’t you care?”

“To rot?” asked Susan. “You guys have only been gone for about thirty minutes. It’s hard to be mad about spending half an hour playing on a tropical beach.”

“Yeah,” said Emma. “I was a mermaid!”

“And I saw a shark!” said Roy. “Or a shark fin, anyway.”

“Wow,” said Henry. “Thirty minutes? Really? It felt a lot longer to me.”

Since nobody seemed to be angry with anybody
else, they all went back to Sam’s house, where he made a nice lunch of soup and bread and tomatoes from his garden. He showed the kids a shrunken head up close, and after lunch, they explored the dunes and flipped horseshoe crabs over on their backs for fun. They stopped when Susan pointed out that the crabs didn’t seem to like it, but it did prove that Sam had a little villain in him after all. And the crabs seemed none the worse for wear.

At the day’s end, they went home to Quiet Falls, where they made sure to turn the key before heading home.

“That,” Henry said as he pedaled slowly, feeling the grit of sand in his shoes, “was not what I meant when I said the worst pirate in the world, but I guess it turned out okay.”

“I’m beginning to think,” said Susan, “that we won’t get to control much of anything in our adventures. We seem to be at the mercy of the magic every time.”

That night, when Henry was getting ready for bed, he emptied his pockets and found the coin with the lion on it. He didn’t remember taking it, but however it had gotten into his pocket, he was glad. He tossed it into the air, felt how heavily it fell back into his palm, and
knew—just knew—that he’d keep it forever. He set it in the back of his sock drawer in a special secret box.

A secret.

And proof.

That he had some pirate in him too.

T
HE NEXT DAY
was an iffy kind of day: warm but not too hot, gray, and slightly overcast. It was the kind of weather that makes your mom or dad suggest a raincoat, but then you just end up all hot and sweaty inside it or you leave it behind someplace. Luckily, no parents were around to bother Henry, Emma, Susan, and Roy with silly things like jackets.

“Where are we going today?” asked Henry, riding his bike slowly alongside Roy on their way to the wall. Emma and Susan were pedaling behind them. “Mars?”

It was Roy’s turn to wish.

Roy shook his head. “No buildings on Mars, so I think maybe we’ll check out the pyramids in Egypt.”

“Aw, ancient history. What do you want to go there for?” asked Henry. “Egypt’s the kind of thing you do a
report on for school!
National Geographic
stuff. Who wants that?”

“I do,” said Roy, who was getting a little tired of Henry’s attitude and who had his own subscription to
National Geographic
. “You do understand,” he said, “that King Arthur is part of history too, right? So is Blackbeard.”

“Well, yeah, maybe, but—”

“Besides, how can the pyramids not be cool?” continued Roy. “They’re the last remaining wonder of the world. They’re huge!”

“Maybe,” said Henry, “but I don’t see what’s so great about a big triangle.” He sped off, calling over his shoulder, “I guess it could always be worse. At least you aren’t making us visit boring old American history!”

Looking down the road after his friend, Roy frowned, but a few minutes later, a sly smile spread across his face, and he tore off after Henry.

He was still wearing the funny smile when they arrived at the wall. He was smiling as Henry turned the key. And he didn’t stop smiling as he wished. “We’d like to see some American history, a genuine pioneer building, if that’s okay with you.”

Then, before Henry had a chance to protest, they were all sucking in the strong smell of animals and dirt
and something like oatmeal. Under their fingers was the splintery feel of unpainted wood, and above them in the rafters a dove cooed and rustled so that hay sifted down on their heads.

They were in a barn.

Henry breathed deeply and said, “Man, this place smells worse than Camelot.” He sounded impressed. A goat responded by nibbling his shoe.

Susan took her hand from the wall and wiped it on her shorts. “I guess most frontier houses were on farms, so we shouldn’t really be surprised, but is everything in the past smelly?”

Roy, holding his nose, answered her. “Yeah, I actually kind of think so. Indoors, anyway, since they hadn’t invented air fresheners yet. If you think about it, barns in our time don’t smell that great either.” Just then, Emma stumbled over a chicken, and there was a great deal of squawking on Emma’s part, as well as on the part of the chicken. Once Emma was standing again, everyone headed for the door. Susan pulled it open, and the kids burst through the doorway into a small fenced yard.

After the dusty dim of the barn, the gleaming day beyond was a shock. With their backs to the barn, the kids looked out at the endless prairie beyond the fence.
It was bathed in the familiar midwestern sun, wide open and alive, big and clean and honest and true. The summer day was blinding, but there was no denying that it was also absolutely breathtaking. A breeze blew past and they could hear the sound, somewhere close by, of clothes flapping on a clothesline. They stared at the prairie—flat as a sheet of paper. It reminded them of the fields near Quiet Falls, but it was much wilder. High grasses caught in the breeze, and patches of wild-flowers—pink and red and purple—were scattered randomly through the green and brown and gold of the field.

Susan said, “It’s beautiful. Just like
Little House on the Prairie
.”

This made Emma look up. Susan had recently given all her Little House books to Emma, proclaiming she’d outgrown them, and Emma was delighted to know this wasn’t entirely true.

“I don’t know, Roy,” said Henry. “I still think this looks pretty boring. I mean, it’s big and all, but how exciting could a prairie be?”

“This can’t be it,” said Roy. “If there’s a barn, there’s a house, and where there’s a house, there must be—”

“I know!” Henry smirked. “The thrill of butter churning?”

“I was going to say ‘people,’” answered Roy shortly, “but if you’re determined to insult my wish and have a bad time, suit yourself!” He turned away from Henry.

This was as close as Roy came to losing his temper, and Henry felt instantly sorry. “I’m sorry, man. I was just goofing. Really—”

But Roy didn’t answer because at that moment, they all heard a jingle of bells, followed by a voice calling out, “Whoa, Ginger!”

“See!” whispered Roy softly. “People!” He turned back to Henry and added, “Never mind about goofing. I’ve come to expect it. I know you can’t help being a total doofus sometimes.” He grinned, and Henry breathed a sigh of relief.

Then they heard a whip-crack, accompanied by clip-clopping. The kids turned away from the prairie and looked in the direction of the barn, which seemed to be the direction of the jingling. Because they couldn’t see through the building, they all crept slowly around it until they were standing at the back of the barn.

They still didn’t see any people, but directly behind the back of the barn, about twenty feet away, was the back of a little house with bright red curtains. A clothesline full of fresh linens and clothes connected the house to the barn, and clean white sheets billowed
in the wind. On both sides of the little house, they saw more buildings, but like the house with the red curtains, every building faced away from the open prairie, toward the jingling and the clip-clopping and the whip-crack.

At first, the kids didn’t even realize that they were looking at the back of a street, because in their minds, they’d arrived on a farm, which (in their experience) meant that they’d arrived in the middle of nowhere. But in fact, this was a town: a row of neat buildings that seemed to have been just plopped down in the ocean of grass!

This may be difficult to understand if you are accustomed to city living—the idea that a town could be so small that you might overlook it from fifty feet away, not to mention the idea that a backyard could be big enough for a barn full of animals. But this town was tiny, and the prairie surrounding it was a great empty land. (This is how almost every city begins—as a small street of shops and houses and a small group of people in the middle of nowhere. A town is really just a few buildings and a name, if you think about it.)

Cautiously, the four kids peered out from behind the house. They looked at the street and saw that the town was inviting—a neighborhood, really. People in
the street stopped to talk to one another. Horses nuzzled at hitching posts.

Even so, when Susan saw the people, she sucked in her breath, grabbed Emma’s hand, and ducked back behind the house where she hoped no one would see her.

“Hey!” she hissed to the boys. “Hey, get back here!”

“What’s the big deal?” Henry asked, walking casually to her side. “They’re just people, and they look pretty friendly.”

“Whisper!” said Susan. “They may be just people, but we’ll look like space aliens to them, dressed like this!” She pointed to her own silver sneakers.

But Henry wasn’t paying attention. He was too busy reading a poster plastered to the back wall of the house just behind Susan’s head. He pointed to it and they all turned to look.

The poster said wanted. It had been issued in the state capital, Iowa City, and offered a whopping $5,000 reward (which seemed a lot of money, even by twenty-first-century standards) for the capture of a murderous man called “Wichita Grim.”

Henry read it twice, then said (too loudly for Susan’s comfort), “Okay, Roy. When you’re right, you’re right. This American history stuff looks fun after all! Let’s check it out!” He began to walk out from behind the
house, but Susan pulled him back by the neck of his shirt.

“Like I was saying,” she said, “we’re going to look like space aliens in these clothes.” She pointed to Henry’s Cubs T-shirt and then to the bright dresses and modest undergarments flapping on the clothesline nearby. “I wonder what happens to time travelers on the frontier.”

They’d known they were heading for the past, but none of them had considered how they’d stand out. It hadn’t mattered so much in Camelot, where Merlin had been accustomed to odd visitors, but here, on the pioneer prairie, facing a clothesline of petticoats, they knew they wouldn’t be able to pass.

Glancing nervously at the window above her head, Susan crept over to the clothesline, reached up, and pulled four dresses down.

“I feel terrible,” she whispered, “but I don’t know what else we can do. Just try to keep them clean so that we can put them back without anyone knowing, okay?”

“But that’s stealing,” said Emma. “Stealing is wrong.”

“We’re only borrowing,” said Susan, tossing a dress each at Henry, Roy, and Emma. “Unless you’d rather just go home?”

Nobody wanted that, but Henry was disgusted as
he examined his new attire. “I want pants,” he said, motioning to a pair of well-worn dungarees on the line.

“Too big,” pointed out Roy. “You’d look ridiculous, and people would know you’d stolen them—I mean, borrowed them.”

“Plus,” said Susan, “dressed as girls, we can cover up our short hair with these.” She reached back to the clothesline for sunbonnets.

Henry shook his head emphatically and crossed his arms. “I draw the line.”

“Fine, have it your way,” said Susan, climbing into her dress. “You can wait here for the rest of us.” She smoothed her hands over the long skirt and wished she had a mirror. She tied on her bonnet, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Emma, can you button my neck?”

Henry continued to groan, but with a pained expression he stepped into his dress, lost at first in the faded and flowered layers.

They were tying their apron strings when they heard a scuffling sound in the street, a commotion. Everyone glanced up sharply.

“What’s that?” asked Emma.

They all peeked out into the street, a tiny packed-dirt road. From their vantage point behind the house with the red curtains, they could make out a few little
stores and a handful of people, children as well as adults. They could also see that the street was clearing of townspeople, but none of the kids could figure out why.

Quickly they took off their shoes (which insisted on peeking out from under their skirts) and hid them under a rusty bucket sitting beside the house. Then they walked around the side of the house and out into the emptying street.

When they did, they saw the cause of the commotion. Barreling down the street was a cloud of dust, and at the center of that cloud of dust was a man, an enormous man in heavy boots wearing a mashed black hat that looked like it had been through a few wars and been slept in for years. The man wore a sour expression, a vest with no shirt, and guns in his belt and in his boot tops. He was coarse with stubble and grime, and he strode with purpose as the street before him cleared. People ducked into houses, slamming their doors. Even the horses looked the other way as he walked past them.

Immediately, Henry, Emma, Susan, and Roy came to two conclusions. First—that this was the man from Roy’s vision, the grimy fellow Merlin had called a Saxon. And second—that this was also the murderous
villain from the wanted poster on the barn, Wichita Grim!