On Track for Treasure (9 page)

A
N HOUR OF PRAYER

J
ack had asked to be excused from prayers.

“I don't mean that I'm not thankful,” he'd told the Reverend. “It's just . . .” He couldn't put it into words. He thought about what happened in the depot the day before, when it looked like he and the others were going to be sent back to Kansas. He'd wished for a way to escape—was that
really
praying? If it was, it was the first time he'd prayed since his brother died. And as it happened, the way to escape had been to lie and say they were with the Careys. Had
that
answer come from praying? Jack didn't know what to think.

He was relieved when Reverend Carey didn't ask for an explanation, though disappointment passed over his face like a cloud.

Jack had been out in the yard for half an hour now, and he was bored. He idly kicked a pebble against the side of the chapel. Even outside he could hear the Reverend's voice, going on about how children were like apple tree boughs. Jack knew he was talking about them—the orphan train kids.

“Let our family be the strong rootstock unto which these boughs may grow,” Reverend Carey intoned, followed by a chorus of
Amens
.

That was kind of the Careys, Jack thought, but the last thing he wanted was to be rooted here.

He found another pebble, kicked it as far as he could, and ambled after it. But as he went, he began to hear voices—was there an argument going on in the barn?

“You do what the man says! You fetch the water like he tells you!”

After a few more steps, Jack heard noises that were sickeningly familiar: the thud of fists, followed by the sharp smack of a hand.

He wanted to run, but he turned the wrong way, and that's when he saw a man by the side of the barn with his arm raised to strike, and strike hard. There was a boy at his feet. Eli.

Jack could guess who the man was. He had the same high forehead as his son, though his brow was slick with sweat and his eyes were wild.

As soon as Eli's father saw Jack, his arm fell slack to his side and he stumbled a little. It was clear he'd been drinking. He shuffled a few more steps and picked up something on the ground behind Eli—a bottle, which he shoved into his pocket.

Mr. Pike glowered in Jack's direction. “It's your lucky day,” he told Eli. Then he staggered around the side of the barn and was gone.

Eli brushed dirt from his shirt and wiped his face with his sleeve. Jack came closer and extended a hand to help him off the ground. But Eli hesitated a moment before letting Jack pull him up.

“Are you all right?” Jack asked him.

Eli didn't say anything.

“My father, he would drink, too. . . .”

“Save it for the Reverend,” Eli said. He yanked his arm away and stepped back.

From the way the kid felt the side of his mouth as if to check his teeth, Jack knew this wasn't the first time he'd been hit like that.

Jack tried again: “But the Careys . . . they could help you.” Didn't Reverend Carey preach against liquor and try to save people who were hurt by it?

“They wouldn't. Not a kid like me,” Eli said. “Or my old man.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked. But as soon the words were out, he wished he hadn't said them. Because he knew what Eli had meant: Eli and his father were black.

“I don't need pity from the Reverend anyway,” Eli shot back. “Or you.” And then he walked off.

The prayers were over now and everyone was trickling out of the chapel. From where Jack stood, he could see the other kids. George and Harold were racing to the water pump; Alexander was telling Anka and Sarah a story; and Frances was helping Nicky fix his neck wrap.

Jack watched as Harold won the race to the water pump. “Let's race back!” Harold shouted. George agreed, but not before he glanced at the house and then down at his clean shirt. He looked nearly as tidy as Sarah and Anka, who stood nearby with Alexander.

“You should've seen O'Reilly's face when he looked in the pail . . . ,” Alexander was saying while the girls laughed. Jack knew he was talking about what Eli had done in the orchard.

Jack hung back. He didn't want to tell anyone what had happened after Eli's father found out about the incident.

Just then, Jack saw Ora; she was lugging a heavy cooking pot from the sharecroppers' shanties over to the pump. She smiled as she passed Jack.

“Wait,” he said. “Is Eli all right? I saw . . .”

Ora stopped walking and sighed as she set down the pot. “I know what you saw. Moses Pike gets that way with the gin. Eli tries to hide when it happens, but his daddy's temper was too high today.”

“Does Mr. Pike always take it out on Eli?” Jack asked.

“I wish it weren't so,” Ora said. “But he hasn't been the same since Eli's mama died. A terrible fever she had when Eli was just seven. The boy was sick, too, but he lived. After that, Moses took up drinking.”

Jack just nodded. He didn't know what to say.

Ora picked up the cooking pot and looked straight at Jack. “I'm only telling you the story because of what you saw,” she said. “You will not repeat it.”

“I won't,” Jack promised.

Ora went on. “Eli's all right. If he needs anything, he'll come to our place. My son and his wife keep an eye out for him same as I do. As for Eli's daddy, he's sleeping it off now. And
you
—you ought to get back to the Careys.” With that, she continued her walk to the pump.

Jack made his way back to the yard of the big house, where it was time to be seated for supper. He found a spot on the bench next to Sarah, who was busy reminding Harold to be quiet while the Reverend said grace.

“We have to show that we're grateful for the food,” she explained. “Do you see that pot of delicious chicken stew and dumplings? We're thankful for that, you know. . . .”

“Of
course
,” Frances cut in quickly. “Yes, Harold, we should be thankful.”

Maybe she wasn't bossing around her little brother as much as she used to, Jack noticed, but he could tell she sure wasn't about to let someone else do it for her.

Harold's eyes were big as he stared at the steaming pot. “Wow. We're really lucky, aren't we?”

“Yes,” Jack said quietly. “We're really lucky.”

W
HAT HAROLD FOUND

F
rances was glad that there were not too many evening chores, because even after supper, it was still light outside—enough bright sky to last at least another hour—and she wanted to show the other girls the apple orchard. So she and Harold hurried as they took scraps to the pigs and helped stack the dirty dishes.

“Thank you, dear. That will be all.” Mrs. Carey stood at the kitchen door and took the last of the plates from Frances. “Sarah and Anka will help me with the washing-up.”

“When will they be done?” Frances called after her, but it seemed Mrs. Carey hadn't heard her, and then the door fell shut.

Frances felt stupid waiting on the back steps. All she wanted was for Sarah and Anka to see the apple trees—to see how pretty they were and how thrilling they were to climb. (Well, when you were wearing breeches, at least.) Then maybe they'd stop giving her pitying looks the way they had at supper tonight.

“What do we do now?” Harold asked.

“Go watch Jack and Alexander chop wood,” she said. “I'm going to read until the girls can come back out.”

But Harold shook his head. “Let's knock on the door! I want to go in the house and have jam sandwiches! George says they're delicious. . . .”

“
Harold
,” Frances growled, pointing toward the barn. “Do as I say. Go.”

Finally, Harold ran off toward the barn, while Frances found a decent patch of grass and took out her
Third Eclectic Reader
, turning straight to the page with Ned's instructions. She was trying to memorize them, step by step, in the hopes that she could work out the clues in her head somehow.

Cross an Indian, a saint, and one of our founding fathers
was next on the list. What did
that
mean? Frances wondered. You could cross a horse and a donkey and get a mule, but what did you get when you crossed saints and Indians and founding fathers? It gave her a headache. She tried to think of saints' names: St. John the Baptist, St. Joseph, St. Nicholas, but there had to be
thousands
of those. . . .

She rubbed her eyes and looked up. She could see Jack and Alexander at the woodpile.
Just
Jack and Alexander, though. She looked around the yard and then ran over to the boys.

“Where's Harold?”

Alexander shrugged. “He was here a minute ago.”

Jack nodded.

Frances suspected neither of them had been paying attention, since their wood-chopping had turned into some kind of dumb log-balancing contest. “Never mind,” she muttered, and ran toward the barn, calling for her little brother. “Harold! Where are you?”

“I'm here!” came his reply.

“What do you mean,
here
?” Frances was beginning to lose patience.
“Where?”

Harold didn't answer for a moment. And then he called back:

“In Wanderville!”

Behind the barn was a split-rail fence, and just beyond the fence was the place that Harold had found. It was a small, grassy clearing, and at one end stood an old stone chimney. Frances could see a crumbling fireplace at the base, and where part of a wall had been, the remnants of its stone foundation still lay in the grass. There were other bits of wall throughout the clearing, too, including a corner section that stood almost as tall as Harold.

“There was a house here!” he exclaimed. “A hundred years ago, I bet!”

“I don't know if it was that long ago,” Frances said, but the stones did look old, with moss and lichen growing over them. It was a beautiful place, and a little mysterious, too.

“And there are apple trees!” Harold pointed all around. The trees looked scruffier than the ones in the orchard, and they weren't in neat rows. “So there's food right here!”

“I think those are wild trees. Reverend Carey said their apples aren't any good,” Frances replied. Then, fully appreciating her brother's comment, she added, “Besides, why would we need to find food?”

Harold didn't seem to be listening. Instead, he was walking around the old chimney. “This can be the town square, and over there can be where we sleep. . . .”

“Harold,
no
,” Frances said firmly. She didn't want Harold to get too attached to this place. They were going to leave as soon as they had the chance. And the sooner they fled, the sooner they could make their way back to Sherwood and find out what Ned had left them. Even if it wasn't a treasure, it had to be worth
something
, Frances thought. But everyone kept getting distracted here at the Careys'. Especially Harold.

“What do you mean,
no
?” Harold protested.

Frances sighed. “This isn't Wanderville.”

“Why not? It can be anywhere. That's one of the laws.”

Frances started to tell her brother that they already had a perfectly good place to sleep in the barn, but just then, they heard a voice behind them.

“That doesn't mean this place can't still be Wanderville,” Alexander said. He and Jack had climbed over the fence and were looking all around. “This is a great spot.” Alexander grinned—a look Frances remembered from the very first day they'd met him in Kansas. “We can rebuild here!” he declared.

“We sure can,” Jack agreed.

“We can't live here . . . ,” Frances protested.

“But we can call it
home
,” Harold insisted.

“He's right,” Jack said. Suddenly Frances understood: The Careys' farm was just where they were staying. But she could see it meant something to Harold to have his very own place. This was a way to have both.

“Just one thing, though,” Frances said. “The Careys give us meals. So there's no need to steal food.”

“You mean
liberate
it?” Harold piped up.

“
No
liberating
or
stealing food!” Frances told her little brother. “Understand?”

“Right,” Alexander said. “The second law of Wanderville shall not be enforced. Not unless . . .” He stopped suddenly, and Frances realized they could hear footsteps in the grass, coming closer.

They turned and saw Ora and Ella, Clement's wife. Ella was carrying her baby and Ora had a basket covered by a cloth.

Ora laughed. “I don't suppose it's breaking the law if we offer you children some biscuits, is it?”

Jack was relieved that the sharecroppers had come across Wanderville rather than the Careys. The Reverend wouldn't understand what the place was for. But the poor farmer families were curious about Jack and his friends—Jack had overheard Clement calling them “the outside orphans”—and seemed to respect them more for deciding to not live in the big house.

Ella and Ora were soon joined by others, including the rest of Ora's family. They brought lanterns, since dusk was coming on. The glow of the flames was matched by fireflies, and suddenly, it felt almost like a celebration.

“It's real peaceful over here,” Clement said. “It's good to have a place to go that's all your own.”

“This was an old settlers' place,” Ora told the children, motioning to the crumbled walls. “Nice to see it being settled again.”

Harold was excitedly showing everyone around Wanderville. “This is the hotel,” he said, pointing to one corner. “And the fireplace is the courthouse. . . .”

“Can little Liza have a castle?” Ella asked, jiggling her baby. “And for me, a fancy parlor with silk curtains.”

“Right there!” Harold said, pointing at a grassy spot a few feet away.

Jack sensed someone watching them from the fence. He turned and saw Eli.

“Hi . . . ,” Jack called out, but the boy ignored him and wouldn't even look in his direction. Then finally, he made his way over to Ora and took a biscuit to eat. He hung back behind a section of wall and watched Harold build his imaginary houses.

Meanwhile, Clement had brought over some rope and was working with Alexander to build a swing from one of the sturdier trees. Baby Liza and Ora's grandchild were toddling through the grass, trying to grab fireflies.

“We should have some music out here sometime,” Ella said. “Some singing.”

Frances was finally smiling, and Jack felt better, too. He watched as Harold showed Ora where her mansion was.

“I get a big gold bathtub,” she insisted.

Then Harold spotted Eli. “Where do you want your house?” he asked him.

Eli just shook his head. “I'm not playing this game.”

“It's not a game; it's Wanderville,” Harold said. “And you don't have to have a house, either. You can have something else. What do you want?”

Jack held his breath as Eli seemed to consider the question. At last the boy nodded. “A train that goes anywhere,” he said. He grinned at Harold.

Then he slipped away over the fence.