Wanderville (8 page)

A
ccording to Alexander, the town of Wanderville had only two laws.

“First, we accept all children in need of freedom,” he said. He was standing on a large rock by the creek, as if it were a podium.

It was their second day as citizens. The night before, they'd gone to bed among a stand of pine trees, where the ground felt spongy-soft from all the fallen needles.

“It feels pretty nice,” Jack had whispered while Harold softly snored. “I think I get why Alexander calls this part of the woods ‘the hotel.'”

“I still think it's because he's odd,” Frances had whispered back. Still, it was the best sleep she'd had since leaving the Children's Home.

In the morning, after a breakfast of peaches straight from the jar, Alexander and Jack and Frances rolled an old fallen tree trunk over in front of the big rock. It seemed to make a perfect bench to sit and watch whoever was on the rock. In this case, it was Alexander.

He continued reciting the first law: “Any kid who escapes from a cruel home or an orphanage or some other terrible predicament can hereby become a citizen.”

He looked over expectantly at Jack and Frances, who were sitting next to Harold on the tree trunk.

“Sounds good,” Frances offered.

“Agreed,” said Jack.

Harold clapped. “YES PLEASE!” he shouted.

Alexander grinned and went on. “As for the second law, we should always be open to donations. . . .”

Jack looked confused. “Donations?”

Alexander cleared his throat. “Uh, gifts of food or supplies or other provisions that would be helpful to Wanderville and its citizens.”

“Gifts?” Frances asked. “Gifts from who?”

“Well, sometimes the gifts aren't
given
by anyone,” Alexander explained. “Sometimes the things we need just . . . present themselves. And when they
do
present themselves, we shouldn't be shy about taking them.”

“Like this log?” Harold asked, patting the tree trunk they were sitting on.

“Sure!” said Alexander. “It was free for the taking, and we took it and used it to build our courthouse here.” He motioned around him to the rock he stood on and to the row of “seats” on the log. “That's exactly what I mean.”

Frances had to keep herself from giggling out loud. The
courthouse
?
Alexander was talking his crazy talk again. Then again, at least he let you see that a “hotel” was a few scrawny pine trees and a “goods store” was a hole in the ground. Whereas the people from the Howland Mission and the Relief Society would tell you one thing and you wouldn't know until too late that it was practically a lie. The Children's Home wasn't a
home
;
it was a drafty dormitory with rough beds. And the only
family
the orphan train had in store for them were some brutes called the Pratcherds.

With Alexander, Frances thought, she could decide for herself what was what, even if she didn't much feel like calling rocks and trees and creeks by fancy, made-up names.

Jack didn't mind Alexander's high-flown talk at all. His brother, Daniel, used to go on about the things he was going to buy with his wages—gold watches, boots for Jack, a tailor shop of his own. That's just what you did when things were hard: You talked
big
,
if only to show you weren't licked. Their father was licked; for as long Jack could remember, the man had been taken with dreadful moods that he soused with whiskey on a daily basis. And his mother was just as beaten down. But her face would light up a bit whenever Daniel talked about his dreams. She'd sit at the table with the blue-and-yellow oilcloth and squeeze Jack's hand as they listened to Daniel at breakfast.

So Jack had listened, too—not always to the words but to the spirit of the words, because he could tell how much his older brother needed to be heard. Alexander must have been waiting weeks for someone to come through these woods and listen. Jack could tell that he'd wanted to stand on that rock for a long time.

“Sun's getting high,” Alexander said. “We'd better head out.”

“Head out where?” Harold asked. He had been finding rocks and arranging them in a line along the creek to make the courthouse wall.

“We're making a supply run in Whitmore,” Alexander told them.

“We're going to the
town
?” Jack asked.

“The
real
town?” Frances added.

“You'll see. Come on—we'll follow the creek,” Alexander said. “It's not the shortest route, but with the trees, it's the most hidden path and the easiest to follow.”

Jack saw Frances hesitate a moment before she started walking. He could guess why. If they'd stayed on the train that night, they would have ended up in Whitmore. They'd escaped whatever fate awaited them there, but now they were headed right into the thick of it.

“How do you know which way is which when you're out on the prairie?” Frances asked after nearly an hour of walking along the wooded creek bank. Jack could understand why she was confused—as he looked out at the flat country that lay beyond the woods, it all just seemed like an ocean of grass to him.

“I'll show you,” Alexander said. He scanned the ground and then motioned the others over. “This is a pilot plant,” he told them, pointing to a patch of weeds with wide leaves at their base. “It has yellow flowers in the summer. See how all the plants have their leaves growing in the same two directions? Those directions are north and south.”

“Wow!” Harold said. “How does it do that?”

“How did you
know
that?” Jack asked.

“My pop showed me. We lived on a farm in Pennsylvania before.”

“Before New York City?” Frances asked.

“Yeah,” said Alexander. “Before my pop died. He worked at a mill. Died there.” He had started walking again. “Then my ma and me were in the city.” He kept his head down. Still, Jack could see that he wanted to say more. “But you know how it is,” Alexander added finally. “Don't need to tell you.”

“Right,” Jack said quietly.

Frances sensed it was time to change the subject. “So, what kind of supplies are we getting?”

“Good question,” Alexander said. “We're nearly out of potatoes, and we need salt pork, too. Lumber would be good if we can find some we can carry. But we've already got plenty of nails in our inventory.”

“Inventory?” Jack asked.

“You have to think about what you have, as well as what you need,” said Alexander. “These towns out west, they always have to keep track of the stock in their stores, since everything comes on the train. . . .”

“Like us!” exclaimed Harold, grinning.

Jack and Alexander chuckled at Harold, but Frances felt her stomach drop. If the townspeople kept track of the goods that came in on the train, then surely they'd also be counting how many children were supposed to arrive.
Does that mean that someone will be looking for us?
Perhaps Mrs. Routh's husband, the sheriff?

“See that bridge over there?” Alexander said, interrupting Frances's racing thoughts.

Ahead of them, a wooden footbridge rose above the creek, spanning the high banks. “We're going to climb up on the bank on this side of the creek, and then cross the bridge,” he told them.

Frances took a deep breath. The past day and a half had been so very strange. In the woods it had all felt like make-believe—especially with this Alexander kid's talk about “Wanderville”—but soon they would be back in the real world. “And then?” she asked.

“And then we'll be in Whitmore, Kansas.”

T
hey all stayed close behind Alexander as they crossed the bridge into Whitmore.

“Walk calmly until we get close to something we can hide behind,” Alexander instructed. “Two at a time.”

“It's not a big town, is it?” Frances murmured. There were just a few dusty streets, each no more than three blocks long, beginning at the footbridge road and stopping at the railroad tracks. Still, the town's tiny size didn't do anything to make Frances less anxious.

“Depends on how you look at it,” Alexander replied, shuffling along. “Whitmore's no New York City, but it has all the supplies we need.” He darted behind a barn and motioned for the others to follow.

From there, they kept to the narrow alleys that ran between the streets, creeping as quietly as they could from one shed to another.

“Huh,” Jack whispered. “False fronts.” Most of the buildings, he realized, were one-story houses built to look as if they were two stories tall in front. But now that he was creeping along the back, the town looked much less imposing—just muddy yards, crooked lean-tos, and people's washing hung out to dry.

In the alley on the second block, Alexander waited for Frances and Harold to catch up, and then they ducked into an empty stable.

“All right,” Alexander told them. “Here's how I do it. I start with the mercantile over here on Front Street, right by the depot. Never go in the store when you've already liberated goods elsewhere, because they'll be able to tell you're hiding something.”

Frances's eyes narrowed as she listened.

Alexander ignored her and went on. “I always stop in here and grab some straw and stuff it at the end of my coat sleeve to plug it up.” He slipped his coat off one shoulder and pulled his arm out, then pushed straw down into his sleeve as he'd described. He tucked the end of the sleeve into his jacket pocket. “See, it looks like I've still got my arm in there, but you can stash things in the empty sleeve, long as they're not too heavy.”

“You mean ‘donated' things, right?” Frances said with a sigh.

“Look, now,” Alexander said. “This is all for a good cause.”

“That doesn't make
stealing
right,” she retorted.

“Well, was it stealing when George Washington's army raided the redcoat arsenals for gunpowder in Boston?” he asked.

“Yes
,
” Frances said.

“Well, have you any better ideas? Because—” Alexander stopped suddenly and crept over to the stable's grimy window that faced Whitmore's center street. “Uh-oh,” he said. His face fell and he looked a little sick.

“What's wrong?” Jack asked, joining him at the window. Frances and Harold came over as well.

“See her?” Alexander pointed to a woman standing outside the mercantile, next to a black wagon.

“She'd be hard to miss,” said Jack. The woman was wearing a brocade dress and an elaborately plumed hat, both of which wouldn't have been out of place in New York.

“She looks like a
Godey's Magazine
engraving,” Frances added. “Or . . .”

“Maybe not,” Jack concluded. The spring wind had sent the woman's hat askew, and when she reached up to straighten it, Jack could see that her face beneath was as red and weathered as a washerwoman's.

“That's the woman whose ranch I escaped from,” said Alexander. “That's Mrs. Pratcherd.”

“She has a lot of feathers,” Harold said.

“Does she wear that kind of finery at the farm?” Jack asked.

“Not when she's overseeing the farmhands. She likes to ride out to the fields to pick out kids who aren't digging up beets fast enough. Then she marches them through the mud to muck out the stables,” Alexander said. “And see that wagon? It looks like a delivery wagon, but that's what they used to take us out to the farm after we got off the train.”

Jack drew closer to the window, determined to memorize the sight of the wagon with its hard top and its windowless black sides. Just then a figure appeared around the back of the wagon—a teenage boy in a bowler hat whose face was as ruddy as the woman's. He had a coiled whip in his belt.

“There's the son,” Alexander whispered. “Rutherford. Even worse than Mr. and Mrs. Pratcherd.”

“What are they doing here?” Frances asked.

Alexander bent his head to see the sky out the window. “It must be around noon. They usually come into town around this time. She visits the dressmaker's, and Rutherford chews the fat with some fellow at the gun shop. I always make my trips into town earlier so that I can avoid them. But I guess we got a late start today.”

“So what do we do?” Jack asked. “Just wait until they're gone?”

“Wait
here
?” Frances quivered. Jack could sense that she still didn't like being in Whitmore, and he was inclined to agree. Hiding out in some fellow's shed wasn't any better than being out in the middle of town. In some ways, it was even worse.

Harold was the only one who wasn't anxious. “We can play in here,” he said. He stood on his toes and tried to reach a hat that hung high on a peg until Frances shooed him away from the wall.

“I don't know if we should stay. The Pratcherds are out there. . . .” Alexander paused, his voice changing back to a whisper. Jack couldn't help but notice that Alexander had turned a little pale. “And since they're around, it means Sheriff Routh is nearby as well.”

Jack took in a quick breath. “Really?” Mrs. Routh had been nice, but that didn't mean her husband would take kindly to runaways.

“They always meet after she's done shopping,” Alexander said. “The sheriff looks over the wagon, and she always asks him how many orphans are coming. . . .”

“Harold, are you all right?” Frances asked suddenly. Jack followed her line of sight to see Harold standing by the water trough, looking cold and listless. “Harold, what did you do?”

The seven-year-old had been floating bits of straw on top of the water in the horse trough and had gotten his coat sleeves wet. Now he was nearly shivering in the spring wind. “Water's cold,” he said.

“We'd better go back,” Alexander said. “We'll dry his coat off by the campfire.” He went to the stable entrance and leaned out to see if the alley was clear. “Come on,” he said, motioning to Jack and Frances and Harold.

“What about the supplies?” Jack asked.

Alexander ignored him and ducked back into the stable for just a moment. Then he came back out. “Let's go!” he said, and took off running for the footbridge. Frances grabbed Harold's hand and ran, too.

Jack kept behind them all, scanning the alley to make sure nobody had seen them. He'd have to wait another day to see how it felt to swipe things from the mercantile, but he hardly minded—except that they still needed food and supplies if they were going to stay out in the ravine.

He reached the footbridge, where Frances and Harold and Alexander were waiting for him, and then they made their way down the creek bank.

As Jack walked, he couldn't help but notice something strange about Alexander's left arm, which hung in an odd way. “Is your arm all right?” he whispered.

Alexander smiled and shook his coat a bit until some straw fell out of his left coat sleeve. And then Jack saw his friend's left arm wasn't in the sleeve at all but was holding a bundle against his side. Alexander was pulling the very tricks he'd just taught them in the stable.

“Arm's just fine,” Alexander whispered back. “Couldn't be better.”