Wanderville (10 page)

I
n no time they'd decided on the alarm system: Bang the cup with single
clang
s
if Sheriff Routh was spotted coming from west of the ravine. Double
clang
s
if he was coming from the east, and triple if he was coming along the creek.

“Whoever spots him first should sound the alarm,” Alexander explained. “But then we need someone to run and roust the others! Someone fast.”

Frances and Jack and Alexander raced one another up the ravine slope to see who was fastest. Frances won and was designated the Roustabout. She made herself a signal flag with the discarded lace bow from her dress and waved it proudly as she ran. Then the boys scattered into different locations in the ravine to see how long it would take her to get to them. She could reach them in no time, except for Harold, who didn't understand that Frances was the Roustabout and kept running away instead.

“You can't get me, Sheriff!” he yelled at his sister.

“Harold!” Frances called. “We're playing something else.”

“GO HOME, SHERIFF! NOBODY LIKES YOU!”

Jack and Alexander doubled over laughing. “At least we know what'll happen if the sheriff tries to chase Harold,” Jack said.

“And if he catches me, I'll give him a bunch a' fives!” Harold shouted, punching the air with his fist.

“Fisticuffs with the sheriff?” Frances said. “
Right
, Harold.”

“I've got a better idea,” said Alexander. “Attack from the trees!”

Jack snapped his fingers. “Swing down with the rope! Knock him over.”

“Or you can jump on his back like you did with Quentin!” Frances said. “Cover his eyes and confuse him.”

And so they practiced one battle after another. Sounding the alarm, then running through the ravine to the rope swing and the nearby trees.

“Get in your attack positions!” Alexander would call out.

Then Jack would use the rope to climb to one of the highest branches of the swing tree, and Frances found a good spot in the crook of an adjacent tree. Harold could get up almost as high as Jack by shimmying up a sapling that was too thin to hold the bigger kids but was just sturdy enough to hold his seven-year-old weight. And Alexander had used some leftover rope to rig himself a line that he could hold onto as he stood on the end of a thick branch.

Then they'd wait for Alexander to give the signal. At first he'd just do it right away, but then the more they practiced, the trickier he got. Sometimes he'd wait for minutes at a time. It was long enough for them to imagine the sheriff making his way along the ravine, looking around the campsite. They'd stare through the clearing in the fading dusk light until they could see him in their minds.

Jack tended to picture the sheriff clenching his fists and stomping his boots.

Frances always imagined the sheriff muttering to himself, saying,
Where are those blasted orphans?

Harold had never seen the sheriff up close, but he figured he would be carrying a big net, and thought about how they would take the net away from him and maybe even trap him in it or something.

Alexander just imagined the sheriff's eyes. How they would look all around and see Wanderville, see everything that had been built. And then the sheriff would stop to wonder, and he'd look up, and then—

“
Attack!!!!!
” Alexander yelled.

That was the signal for Wanderville to take action. For the citizens to swing down from the trees, or beat the tin-cup alarms to scare off the trespasser, or throw down rocks and sticks.

“Got him!” Harold shouted during their last drill. “I shot an arrow in his arm!”

“Hold your fire,” Jack called as he swung down on the rope. “I'm coming in!”

Frances was already on the ground, laughing and kicking at the imaginary sheriff. “We've got him licked!”

“We sure do,” Alexander said. “That last fight was amazing.”

“Let's practice another one,” Jack said.

“I don't know. Harold looks really tired,” Frances said. Her little brother was yawning up in his tree perch. “Come down before you fall both asleep and out of that tree,” she told him. The night sky had been light enough for them to keep playing long after sunset, but the campfire was getting dim.

“I suppose it
is
time for bed,” Alexander agreed. “We do have to start out early for tomorrow's trip to Whitmore, after all.” He tossed dirt on the campfire to fully extinguish it. “Lights out, everyone.”

With that, Harold and Jack each curled up in one of the hammocks Jack had pulled up, Frances settled into the soft patch of ground under the hotel pines, and Alexander assumed his usual spot on the sloping ground.

Frances attempted to close her eyes, inhaling the sweet, smoky trace of the fire and listening to the hushing noise of the big tree in the light breeze. Just as she was about to nod off, she heard her brother rustle.

“Hey, Frances,” he whispered in the dark.

“Yes, Harold. What is it?”

“Can Wanderville be our home?”

Nobody said anything for a moment. Frances took a breath as if to speak, but then she looked over at Alexander, who raised his head expectantly, and then at Jack, a silhouette in his hammock. Frances could just make out that he was grinning.

“Buddy,” Jack said, his voice soft but clear, “it already is.”

J
ack read the sign again in the morning sun:
WHITMORE
MERCANTILE
. It hung over the front porch of a batten-and-boarded building on Front Street.

They had just devised their plan for “liberating” goods. Jack and Alexander would go in first. Then, a moment later, Frances.

“Ready?” Alexander asked the group.

“Ready as I'll ever be,” Jack said, his hands shoved into his pockets to keep from fidgeting. He couldn't help but wonder what he'd be putting in those pockets in just a few moments.

“Wait, what about me?” Harold asked at the very last moment. “What's my job?”

Alexander looked at Frances. “I figured he could stand guard outside the store.”

“Outside by
himself
?” Frances asked.

“I can do it,” Harold protested.

“You have to stand in
one place
,” Frances told him. She turned to Alexander. “Sometimes he hasn't the patience,” she said. The truth was, she hated to let Harold out of her sight at all. Once she'd had him wait on a corner in the Bowery while she dashed across the street to buy them apples, and by the time she'd returned, he'd ventured halfway up the stairs to the elevated train in an attempt to make friends with a pigeon.

“I think Harold understands that it's a big job,” Alexander said. “And he's going to have to learn to fend for himself one of these days. Cross the street on his own and all that.”

“I'm brave!” Harold insisted. “Just like Alezzander. He's not scared of anything. Right?”

Frances gazed expectantly at Alexander, waiting for him to respond. He had the same look about him that he'd had the day before in the stable, when he was talking about the sheriff.

“Right, Alezzander?” Harold asked again.

“
Right
,”
Alexander said. “Nothing to worry about! Really, Frances, Harold will be fine.”

“If you say so,” Frances said finally.

She stood with Harold in front of the mercantile while Jack and Alex went inside, her stomach feeling ice cold.

“Stay right here. If you see the Pratcherds or the sheriff, come in and tell us,” she whispered to Harold, hoping her voice didn't sound too shaky. She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Wait right here for Mother, Freddy,” she said in a much louder voice. “I'm going in the store for just a spell.”

The storekeeper sighed. “May I be of assistance, son?” His bored voice made it clear that he would not be of much assistance at all.

Jack scratched his head. “Uh . . . what kind of sweets are those red ones?” He pointed to some dusty-looking hard candies in a jar by the counter.

“That would be sarsaparilla,” said the man, who couldn't be bothered to put down his newspaper.

“Oh,” said Jack. “Do you have . . .” His voice trailed off as he tried to think. Alexander had disappeared into the dim back of the store, down an aisle lined with barrels and piles of grain sacks and a rack of brooms. The plan was for Frances and Jack to work the front of the store, while Alexander took care of the dry goods. He was hoping to smuggle out a whole sack of cornmeal under his coat.

Meanwhile, Frances was standing near a high counter pretending to admire a display of tinned beans stacked in a pyramid formation. Jack couldn't tell whether she'd nabbed anything yet.

The store fellow seemed to hardly care that Jack hadn't finished his question, but he persisted. “Do you have . . . other kinds of sarsaparilla?” Jack asked.

“What kinds?” muttered the man, who still hadn't put down his paper.

“Hmm, I don't know,” said Jack. “Maybe . . . green sarsaparilla?”

The man just shook his head and kept reading. The man seemed dedicated to ignoring Jack now, which wasn't quite the plan, since Jack was supposed to be distracting him. Either way, the fellow paid no attention to him. Or to Frances—who, Jack noticed, was presently tucking a packet of oyster crackers into her coat pocket.

She caught his glance and smiled, a wild look in her eye. She might not have approved of Alexander's notions about “donations,” but she sure looked like she was having fun now. As she stepped closer, he could see the handles of three spoons sticking out the top of one of her high-buttoned shoes.

“Pleasant day, isn't it?” she said to Jack.

He nodded and took a deep breath and headed toward the middle of the store. That was his signal to start “liberating” goods.

As he stood contemplating a row of canned beans, he could hear Frances behind him trying to distract the storekeeper now that they'd switched roles. “Pardon me, mister, but do you have any calico patterns with sprigs on them?” she asked.

“Eh, they've all got sprigs,” the man grumbled.

Jack's fingers closed around the first tin, and he whisked it into his pocket.
Simple.
He couldn't believe how simple. He turned and saw Alexander watching him from the back, making just the slightest nod in his direction. Jack felt a strange soaring that was not unlike swinging down from the high branch on the rope swing.

Jack reached out again and again and took.

Nothing was happening, Harold thought. Nobody was coming. What could he do? He could cross the street, he thought. In fact, Alexander had
said
that he, Harold, was going to have to learn to cross the street by himself. Yes, Harold thought, he could do that now. There was nobody coming, after all.

Harold wished that it wasn't such an easy street to cross, to be honest; he was really old enough, and if he'd been in New York, he would have crossed much busier streets, with all kinds of carriages going by. This street was boring, Harold thought as he went right across.

He saw a building with a sign that said
LIVERY
. He wasn't sure what that was, but it sounded pretty close to
lively
, which was something this street could definitely stand to be more of. But when he got to the building, all he saw were horses. So then he walked until he got to the corner, and then he decided to turn the corner.

He heard a voice calling to him. A lady's voice. “Little boy? Is everything all right?”

Harold turned and saw a woman on the porch of a yellow house. She seemed kind and vaguely familiar, with a round face and a pretty watch on a chain around her neck. She was holding a pitcher of something to drink, and there was a table all set with a pie on it.

“You look thirsty,” she said. “Can I pour you some lemonade?”

Harold nodded. Never had something been so welcome.

The lemonade was sweet and cold and delicious, of course, but he realized that the welcome feeling was because he'd seen the lady before. He remembered her watch. She was from the train! The
nice
lady, not the one with the
SCARE
badge.

“What's your name?” she asked.

Frances said he should tell strangers his name was Freddy. But this lady wasn't really a stranger. “Harold,” he said.

The lady furrowed her brow. “How old are you, Harold? And how did you . . .
get
here?”

It suddenly occurred to Harold that if
he
recognized
her
,
then
she
might recognize
him
.
Uh-oh.

“Was it on a train?” she asked gently.

“Um, I don't know,” he said. He took another sip of lemonade.

And then the door to the yellow house opened and the lady's husband came out. He had a long mustache like a frown.

“Where are your parents?” the man asked Harold.

But Harold wouldn't answer. He was looking at something on the man's shirt. At first, the thing reminded Harold of Christmas because it was a star, a shiny one with five points, and so it seemed kind of jolly. But then he remembered what it meant when a man had a shiny star badge on his shirt.

It meant
sheriff.