Mandie Collection, The: 4 (62 page)

“Well, I didn’t think you rode a horse from the United States,” Mandie said with a giggle. “But you’ve had a horse everywhere you go.”

“Give back horse and ride ship home with Papoose,” Uncle Ned said, smiling at her. “Keep Papoose out of trouble.”

The three young people laughed.

“That’s impossible, Uncle Ned, to keep Mandie out of trouble, you know that,” Jonathan said, with his mischievous grin.

Mandie looked at the boy and said, “You do pretty well yourself getting into trouble, like falling in the water at the pier.” She grinned.

“Oh, Mandie, stop bringing that up or I’ll begin reminding you of all your escapades,” Jonathan warned.

“Go,” Uncle Ned told them.

“We’ll go by the tunnel room first since that’s on the way, and then we’ll take you to the old boat,” Mandie explained as she walked along beside him. Her friends loved Uncle Ned, too, and they stayed close by on the other side of him.

“Where grandmother of Papoose?” Uncle Ned asked as they crossed the street.

Mandie held the newspaper in one hand and Snowball in the other and explained, “She and Senator Morton have been gone to a reception all day and won’t be back until later this afternoon.” She looked up at the old Indian and added, “So we’ve been free all day.”

Uncle Ned looked down at her as they walked along. “Papoose must learn to be trustworthy. Grandmother of Papoose trust Papoose.”

“But, Uncle Ned, we haven’t done anything really bad,” Mandie replied with a smile. Then she frowned as she remembered the argument
with her grandmother and she added, “I’ve been guilty of other things, though, and I need to talk to you as soon as we get a chance.”

Uncle Ned looked at her thoughtfully. “Yes, Papoose must tell what bothers her.”

When they arrived at the room in the tunnel and showed the boxes to Uncle Ned he told them, “Boxes belong to somebody. Papoose must not bother other people’s belongings. Must pay for smashed boxes.” He looked at her with a frown.

“But, Uncle Ned, like I told you, these boxes must belong to some smuggler, or thief, or something. Who else would pack up rocks in boxes?” Mandie asked as she walked about the room with her two friends.

“That business of police, not Papoose,” Uncle Ned reminded her. “This foreign land. We Americans. We not mess with police business.”

Mandie shrugged. “Come on. We’ll go on to the old boat.”

The young people were surprised to see how agile Uncle Ned was as he quickly climbed the rope ladders and stepped onto the deck of the boat. Mandie knew he was awfully old and that he could do practically anything, but she had never seen him so active before. And he had carried his bow and arrows in the sling across the shoulder of his deerskin jacket as he boarded the vessel.

“Sh-h-h!” Mandie cautioned them as they crept behind the trash pile and Uncle Ned joined them. She held Snowball tightly in her arms.

Uncle Ned glanced around the boat from their hiding place. Mandie started to whisper to him, but at that moment a loud sob from inside the cabin filled the air. Alex was crying his heart out again. The young people listened and watched Uncle Ned to see what his reaction was. A worried expression covered his face.

“There’s a window,” Mandie whispered to her Cherokee friend. She pointed, handed Snowball and the newspaper to Celia, and began moving in a crouched position toward the cabin. Uncle Ned looked puzzled and then he followed her.

At the window Mandie could see Alex lying on the bunk bed. She looked back and motioned for Celia to let Snowball come to her. The kitten raced toward his mistress and then changed his mind and slipped through the cracked door. Mandie and Uncle Ned watched through the window as Snowball didn’t even hesitate this time but jumped upon the
bed and stuck his face next to Alex’s and began loudly meowing. Alex tried to push him away, but he clung to the mattress with his claws.

Alex sat up and picked up Snowball. “You insist on bothering me. If you didn’t look so much like my baby’s kitten, I’d throw you overboard. That I would.” Alex stroked Snowball’s fur as the kitten climbed up to hang on his shoulder.

“The Lord has forsaken me,” Alex moaned. “I am so guilty! I killed my family!” He broke into uncontrollable sobs as he sat there. Snowball squirmed until he released him, and the kitten jumped down and ran back outside to his mistress.

“Killed his family?” Mandie almost screamed when she heard that. She looked up at Uncle Ned. “He must be a murderer!”

Uncle Ned didn’t answer but kept watching the man. Jonathan and Celia had crept up behind them and now Celia reached for Mandie’s hand.

“Let’s go, Mandie,” Celia whispered. “He is dangerous. He might kill us.” Mandie felt her trembling by her side. She looked back and saw that Jonathan had taken Celia’s other hand and was trying to comfort her.

Suddenly the man bellowed, “Oh, God, I am so guilty! Please let me just leave this world! I have nothing to live for!” He shook with sobs.

Mandie tightened her grasp on Uncle Ned’s hand and looked at him. He was still intently watching the man inside.

She made a quick decision and whispered to Uncle Ned as she stood up, “I am going inside to talk to him.”

Before Uncle Ned could stop her, Mandie had entered the cabin and stood before the man, who didn’t see her at first. She walked closer. He finally looked up but his eyes stared blankly at her, and he continued to sit on the side of the bunk bed. He didn’t rush angrily at her as he had been doing, but acted as though he didn’t know she was there.

“Mister Alex,” Mandie began as she crept close enough to grasp one of his big hairy hands. “God has not forsaken you. If you believe in Him, He will always be with you—”

Finally Alex realized she was speaking. “God? What do you know about God? He let me have a terrible accident and kill my family. He doesn’t love me anymore.”

Mandie still held on to his hand and knelt in front of him to get his
full attention. “If you had an accident, then it was an accident. You didn’t deliberately kill your family like you’ve been screaming about.”

“I did! I did! I let the boat get out of control in that hair-raising storm and I couldn’t save them. Oh, my pretty baby, she disappeared. My wife was found too late,” he moaned.

“Well, if it was a storm that caused you to have an accident, then you didn’t cause the storm. God created it,” Mandie tried to explain as she watched his face.

“You’re all wrong!” Alex said, suddenly standing up and waving his hands. “Get off my boat! I told you before! Begone!”

Mandie jumped up and backed off toward the door. She wasn’t afraid, because she knew Uncle Ned was watching. Snowball had been let loose in the excitement and now he came to his mistress. He hissed and sputtered at the man and raised the hair on his back. Mandie reached down and picked him up.

“Oh, Snowball, behave,” she told the kitten. “Mister Alex, please listen to me.” She moved around the room instead of leaving. She caught sight of what looked like the packages the other man had been bringing to the boat. They were lined up on a shelf nearby, still wrapped. She managed to grasp one and quickly pulled the paper off. It was a loaf of bread and cheese.

“If you are hungry take the food. I will not eat it. I don’t want to live,” Alex told her as he watched. “But get off my boat. Now! Begone!”

Mandie quickly replaced the half package on the shelf. “That other man, the one who visits you, has been bringing you food and you’re not eating it. You’ll starve to death.”

“Then that would be a good riddance to the world,” Alex told her as he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes.

To Mandie’s amazement Uncle Ned had suddenly appeared in the doorway. She watched as he stepped inside. Alex gazed at the old Indian in shock for a moment and then yelled, “Even the Indians bother me. Get off my boat!” He walked toward Uncle Ned and stood facing him. “Begone!”

“Yes, we be gone,” Uncle Ned said, reaching for Mandie’s hand. “We be gone.”

Mandie let Uncle Ned lead her out of the cabin and to the rope
ladder as her friends went ahead. When they all arrived at the street at the end of the pier they stopped to talk.

Mandie told them about the bread and cheese, which they hadn’t been able to see from the window. “I’m puzzled now about Alex and the other man,” she said as they sat on a low wall nearby.

Uncle Ned said, “Man grieving himself to death. Sad, but dangerous. Papoose must not bother man.”

“But, Uncle Ned, someone needs to talk to him and make him understand that he didn’t kill his family. It was the storm,” Mandie insisted.

“Papoose say other man come to boat, talk to big man,” Uncle Ned said. “He come enough times big man will listen to him.”

“I have been thinking that man is a thief and that man’s picture is in the newspaper,” Mandie mused. “It doesn’t all make sense. Unless Alex is really a thief, too.”

“But that other man has been bringing Alex food,” Jonathan said.

“Maybe Alex is just putting on, with the crying and all, trying to make people feel sorry for him and to cover up his meanness,” Celia suggested.

“No, that couldn’t be, because he cries when there’s no one there to hear,” Mandie told her.

“Grief real,” Uncle Ned said firmly. “Man grieving.”

“Well, what can we do, Uncle Ned?” Mandie asked.

Uncle Ned frowned and said, “We think something. Now we go to hotel.” He stood up. Mandie rose and grasped his hand.

“Please wait a minute, Uncle Ned,” she said. Turning to her friends, she said, “Do y’all mind if I stay here a few minutes more and talk to Uncle Ned about something else that’s bothering me? We’ll only be a few minutes.”

“Sure, Mandie, we’ll go on back,” Jonathan agreed. “I’ll walk Snowball back for you.” He took the end of the kitten’s leash.

“If your grandmother has returned, we’ll tell her where you are,” Celia said as she and Jonathan went off up the street, with Snowball trying to run ahead. “I have the newspaper.” She held it up.

Mandie and Uncle Ned sat back down. She didn’t know exactly how to begin. Uncle Ned silently waited.

“Uncle Ned, I’ve been bad, terribly bad with my grandmother,
and I don’t know how to fix things,” Mandie began, with a quiver in her voice.

“Bad?” the old Indian questioned as she paused.

“You see, my grandmother and I had an awful argument and she’s still mad at me,” Mandie continued. “Neither one of us mentions the argument but there is a... a...strain, I guess you’d call it, between us since then.”

“Tell about argument, Papoose,” Uncle Ned said, watching her closely.

Mandie related what had occurred between her grandmother and her because she had touched the muslin in the museum. She placed the blame on herself. She realized now that she shouldn’t say mean things back when someone said something to her that she didn’t like. She should have just ignored it.

“I really love my grandmother, Uncle Ned, regardless of what happened years ago,” Mandie said, tears filling her blue eyes. “And I’m afraid I’ve caused her not to love me anymore.”

Uncle Ned put an arm around Mandie’s thin shoulders. “Papoose did wrong. Papoose must tell grandmother sorry. Must ask forgiveness.”

“I’ll try, Uncle Ned, but when I went to her room and intended apologizing, I just couldn’t make myself say a word about it,” Mandie said.

“Grandmother also wrong. Need tell Papoose she sorry,” Uncle Ned said.

Mandie looked at him in surprise. “Why was my grandmother wrong?”

“Grandmother should not say bad things about Jim Shaw that upset Papoose,” the old Indian tried to explain. “Grandmother must forgive, too, because she was one who caused problem at start by separating mother of Papoose and Jim Shaw. Must all forgive each other. And Papoose must ask Big God forgive her.”

Mandie leaned close to the old Indian as his arm tightened about her shoulders; and as he raised his face toward the sky, she knew he was waiting for her to follow suit.

Looking at the white clouds sailing high in the blue sky, Mandie saw God in her mind, sitting at His window and looking down on the world. She could feel His love as a tremor ran through her. “Dear God,
please forgive me for hurting my grandmother. I’m sorry.” Tears blurred her vision and she added, “Thank you, dear God, thank you.”

“Thank you, Big God,” Uncle Ned repeated after her.

Mandie turned to put her arms around the old Indian in a quick hug, and said, “And, thank you, Uncle Ned. I love you. Please don’t ever get old and die and leave me.”

Uncle Ned smiled as they stood up. “We must all go see Big God one day,” he said. “Jim Shaw up there in happy hunting ground waiting for us.”

“I know,” Mandie said softly as she looked back up at the sky.

As they walked toward the hotel, Mandie felt as though a burden had been lifted off her small shoulders. She wanted to get back and talk to her grandmother.

And she also wanted to talk with her friends about what they would do next concerning Alex, the room full of boxes, and the other man. But at least now she had Uncle Ned to help her solve this mystery.

CHAPTER TWELVE

UNEXPECTED HAPPENINGS

When Mandie and Uncle Ned arrived back at the hotel, Celia and Jonathan were waiting for them in the reception room. Snowball’s leash was tied to a chair leg and he was curled up asleep on the rug. Celia still had the newspaper.

“Is my grandmother back?” Mandie asked as she and Uncle Ned approached her friends.

“No, not yet,” Jonathan said as he turned around to look at the front door. “But here she comes now with Senator Morton.” He motioned toward the door.

Mrs. Taft and Senator Morton hurried inside, then stopped abruptly when they saw everyone waiting for them.

“Well, well, quite a reception committee,” Senator Morton said, laughing. He reached to shake hands with Uncle Ned. “Good to see you again, sir.”

“And you,” Uncle Ned replied as Mrs. Taft also greeted him.

“I’m so glad you finally caught up with us. I feel the young people are so much safer with you around, Uncle Ned.”

The old Indian smiled and dropped his gaze. He never knew how to react to a compliment.