Wanderville Read online

  “I just realized,” Frances said, “I . . . I don’t know how to start the horses.”

  “Don’t worry about that yet,” Alexander hissed. “Just get down and hide.”

  “But what if I—” Frances started to ask. She didn’t finish her sentence, though, because just then, two things happened.

  The first was a tremendous noise that went BLAM!

  Mr. Pratcherd had fired his Civil War musket into the air.

  Then the second thing: The horse team hitched to the black wagon screeched and thrashed their heads and stomped their feet, and then they began to run.

  29

  The Unstoppable Wagon

  The wagon took off with a fierce jerk that nearly pitched Frances and the boys off the front seat.

  Frances scrambled to take the reins. “Whoa-oh!” she called to the horses.

  “Wait!” Jack cried. “We’re not ready!”

  “Try . . . telling . . . horses . . . that!” Alexander gasped. He’d tried to stand up, but now he was swaying back and forth so precariously that his arms began to windmill and flail.

  The reins were thrashing and Frances felt them yanking her like a puppet. “Stop! Halt!” In her peripheral vision she could see Alexander’s desperate motions. Was he going to fall off? He was going to fall off.

  “Alex!” Jack was braced against the seat, and he lunged forward as the wagon hit one hard ridge. Thunk! His hand caught just the back of Alexander’s shirt, and he tugged until his friend fell back down in the seat with a thud.

  “They won’t stop!” Frances cried. “I can steer the horses, but they’re not stopping!”

  “Just hold on!” Jack told her. Trying to turn the wagon at this speed would be too dangerous.

  He and Alexander crouched down to get a better hold on their seats while Frances braced her feet against the front board. Jack could hear muffled, surprised shouts from the kids in back and hoped they were holding on, too.

  “The horses won’t slow down!” she yelled.

  Jack twisted around to look back. He couldn’t see the bunkhouse yard or the Pratcherds or the other adults. Had Quentin noticed what happened? Jack faced the front again and saw that they were approaching a set of gateposts that would take them beyond a split-rail fence.

  “We’ve reached the main road!” Frances gasped. “We’re leaving the ranch!”

  “Then we’ll go,” Alexander told them. “Turn left and go!”

  As they turned, the road became smoother and the horses picked up speed. Now Alexander decided to look behind the wagon. He knelt on the seat and peered over the long black roof of the wagon.

  “Uh-oh,” he called out. “Jack, look . . .”

  Jack climbed up next to Alex and saw what he was seeing: Back by the ranch gate, two figures had dashed out onto the road. Two men—Jack couldn’t exactly make out their features with the distance, but it looked like the sheriff and Mr. Pratcherd.

  “They’re on foot! They can’t catch us,” Jack shouted over the rattle of the wagon.

  “But they saw which way we’re going,” Alexander yelled back. He was holding onto the edge of the wagon seat with one hand, and the other he held over his shiner to protect it from the road dust. He looked straight at Jack with his good eye. “We’ve got to get the wagon off the road.”

  “How?” Frances called up from her spot behind the reins. “We can’t stop!”

  The boys exchanged a nod. Jack turned back around and slid next to Frances on her left. Alexander took the spot to her right. “Who said anything about stopping?” he said.

  Jack could see Frances’s eyes grow wide, though she didn’t dare take them off the road. “Right!” she said. “Just say when.”

  Jack scanned the side of the road for a good place to turn off—some place that wasn’t too bumpy, or muddy, or fenced off—while Alexander crouched down to tap on the window that led to the back of the wagon.

  “Attention, passengers!” he called through his cupped hands. “By and by there will be some jostling as we change our course. . . .”

  “Hold on!!!” Frances screamed.

  The horses surged to one side and yanked the wagon so hard that one side swung up, then down with a slam and three bumps so wild that Jack swore he felt his teeth rattle.

  The noise beneath the wagon had changed—from the clatter of the hard road to a deeper pounding sound. They were driving over dirt, over grass, across the open prairie.

  Frances nearly toppled out of her seat from shock. “We did it,” she breathed. The boys clasped her shoulders on each side.

  “Don’t fall off now,” Alexander said with a laugh. “Just keep driving until we get to the railroad tracks. And then we’ll be almost home.”

  30.

  Almost Home

  It turned out Frances didn’t need to worry about stopping the horses. Once they’d reached the railroad embankment, which was too high for the wagon to cross, the horses simply slowed down and then stood in place.

  Frances’s legs felt like jelly as she and the boys raced around to the back of the wagon. “Harold!” she cried.

  He was the first one to jump out. “I told everyone not to be scared,” he said as his sister folded him into a hug.

  “Were you scared?” Frances asked, keeping him close.

  “Sure,” Harold said matter-of-factly. “But I also told myself not to be scared. You always tell me, Frances, but I can tell myself, too.”

  “Yes,” Frances whispered, hugging him once more. “Yes, you can, Harold.” Then she let him go and watched as he ran back to the wagon to help the others climb out.

  Jack was checking on the horses. “We have to ditch the wagon here because it’ll be too hard to hide it by the creek,” he called over to Frances. “It’s a shame. . . . These seem like a fine team of horses.”

  “We really left Mr. Pratcherd and the sheriff in the dust, didn’t we? They didn’t have a chance of catching up with us,” Frances said, stroking the horses’ heads. “Thank you, whatever your names are,” she told them.

  “They saved the day,” Jack said, though it didn’t sound quite right to say those words. Not with Quentin back at the ranch still, with the other kids they hadn’t rescued in time. Jack should have known the horses would bolt. He should have gotten more kids into the wagon before it took off. He looked out across the prairie.

  Frances pointed west. “The Pratcherd place is out that way, if you’re wondering,” she told Jack. “And I’ve a feeling you are wondering.”

  “Do you think they’re all right?” Jack asked. “Quentin and the others?”

  “We won’t forget about them, Jack,” Frances said. “None of us will.”

  She went to help the other children who were clambering out the back of the wagon. Jack, meanwhile, stayed by the horses, staring out at the spot on the horizon where Frances had pointed.

  Harold grabbed Frances’s hand and pulled her over to meet the others from the ranch.

  “Lorenzo and Sarah were on our train,” Harold told her. “And here’s Nicky, and George, and Anka.”

  Frances remembered dark-haired Lorenzo. Sarah looked close to her own age, and Frances had known her on the train not by name, but by her smooth braids and wry smile.

  Nicky had black curly hair and was very skinny, and Alexander seemed glad to see him. “He was on my train,” Alexander explained.

  “Anka’s ten and she’s from Poland!” Harold told Frances. She had ash-blond hair and was shy to speak, but she looked strong and smart.

  “I’m George,” said the last boy, a towheaded kid who looked close to Harold’s age. “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see,” Frances told him.

  Alexander and Lorenzo helped Jack unhitch the team of horses. Once the horses were loose, they stepped up over the railroad embankment and trotted off down the other
side.

  “I think they know there’s an oat field over that way,” Alexander said. “They’ll enjoy grazing.”

  Jack nodded in agreement, then motioned toward the wagon. “When the sheriff finds the wagon by the tracks, maybe he’ll think we hopped a train.”

  “Let’s hope so,” said Lorenzo.

  Soon they were all walking across the open prairie. Alexander was a few paces ahead of all the others, and Frances ran up to walk with him.

  “I’m sorry I doubted you before,” she told him quietly. “When we fought after Harold was taken.” She looked up at his black eye. “I’m sure it wasn’t easy to go back to the Pratcherds’ after all you’d been through there. That was really brave of you. . . . Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” he replied. “And, uh, thanks for driving.”

  “Well, sort of driving.” She laughed. “But you’re welcome.”

  Jack recognized the lone tree where he and Frances and Harold had spent their first night in Kansas. It seemed like months ago now.

  “We’ll walk toward that tree and then head straight east,” he told the others. “And then we’ll be in Wanderville.”

  “Is that a town?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes, in a way,” Jack replied.

  “It’s our town,” Frances said.

  They reached the spot where the ground began to slope downward into the ravine.

  “This way,” Alexander said as he led them toward the creek.

  Jack had wondered if Wanderville would be the same as he remembered. Not that it would have changed much in the last three days, but would he see it the same way? Would it still seem like their town, or just a rough campsite in the woods? And what would the others think of it?

  But then he saw the little clearing and the creek bank and the fireplace. The courthouse, the hotel, and the storehouse. His tree and Frances’s tree and Alexander’s. And the stones Harold had arranged. It was all there.

  The two girls and the three boys from the ranch walked slowly around the clearing, looking up at the trees and down at the creek. They said nothing, and the combined sounds of their footsteps moving through the dry leaves made a strangely restless noise.

  “Welcome to Wanderville,” Alexander said a little nervously. “Over here is the main square. . . .” But his voice trailed off.

  “Just let them look around,” Jack told him, his voice low.

  Lorenzo walked over to the courthouse and nudged the big rock with his foot. Nicky was over by the hotel.

  “Do you think they see it?” Harold whispered to Frances.

  Frances watched for a few moments. “I think so,” she said.

  Sarah had found the rope swing. “Oh,” she sighed. “This is the best thing ever.”

  George was walking along the log bench. He pointed to the rock wall. “Did you make this?” he called over to Harold.

  “Yes!” Harold said, running to join him. “Let’s keep building it.”

  Nicky had picked up the flint rock, and Alexander went over to show him how it worked. Lorenzo was scaling the big tree.

  “This is excellent,” he called down to everyone. “Excellent!”

  Frances and Jack walked over to where Anka was standing, in the pine tree grove of the hotel. She was turning slowly all around.

  “What do you think?” Jack asked her.

  “I like very much,” Anka said. “And I like this.” She pointed to a fork in one of the trees where Frances had placed a short plank of wood just the day before. She had wedged it in firmly between two branches and made sure it was level so that it could be used as a shelf.

  Anka reached into one of her pockets and pulled something out. It was a small doll, carved out of wood. The doll had a full wooden skirt like a little bell, and it was painted with stripes and dots and flowers. Anka put it on the shelf. “There,” she said, and turned it so that Jack and Frances could see the doll’s face. The head had a painted kerchief and a tiny smile and closed eyes that were like little smiles, too.

  “There,” she said again. It looked perfect.

  31.

  A Town that Wanders

  They decided they would build a bonfire at dusk, partly because they suddenly had a bounty of firewood—Nicky and Lorenzo had been practicing with the hatchet on a big fallen tree—and partly to celebrate the new citizens of Wanderville.

  “There are nine of us now!” Alexander had declared while standing on the courthouse rock. “Our numbers are growing stronger.”

  Jack couldn’t help but think that it would have been even better to have ten. Ten or more, with Quentin and the others. But he cheered with the group all the same. Then he went to start the fire while Alexander showed Anka and Sarah the pantry.

  Frances looked around, suddenly on her own. Where had Harold gone?

  She turned and at last spotted her brother by the creek, sitting on the bank with one of the new boys, George. They looked close in age, and Frances hoped they were becoming friends. She headed in their direction slowly, gathering sticks for kindling as she went.

  “I never knew her,” she heard George say. “She died when I was born. Then my da gave me up.”

  They were sharing their stories, Frances realized. Their orphan stories. Their backs were to her, and she ought not to be overhearing them. But then Harold spoke up.

  “We had our aunt Mare,” Harold said. “Only . . . she was really our mother. She once told me.”

  Frances stopped breathing for moment. He knew. When had Mare told him? Frances had no idea that he’d known.

  “Why’d you call her your aunt?” George asked.

  “Don’t know. She told us to. I think it was because we didn’t have no father.” Any father, Frances wanted to correct him.

  Harold turned around just then, as if he could hear her mind. “Isn’t that right, Frances? About Aunt Mare?”

  “Yes,” she told him. “She thought it would be better if folks believed we were her orphaned niece and nephew.” Their mother had just been trying to protect them, she realized. Just as Frances had wanted to protect Harold. But maybe the truth was just the truth, and it wouldn’t hurt them anymore. Not here in Wanderville, at least.

  “Anyway,” Harold told George, “she went away when I was little. Right, Frances?”

  Frances blinked her wet eyes and smiled. “Right.”

  “Don’t cry, Frances,” her brother said. “It was a long time ago.”

  “You’re using the flint again instead of the matches,” Alexander remarked, watching Jack struggle with the rock and the hatchet. “What’s wrong?”

  “Quentin,” Jack said, hitting the flint. “The others at the ranch. The ones I didn’t save.” Like Daniel, he thought. Daniel, who needed his help that day in the factory. “I’ve got to do something.”

  The flint broke in two. Jack sat up and took a deep breath, then he went to pick up the pieces. But Alexander reached in and grabbed them instead.

  “You mean we,” he said. “We will do something to help the others. You and me and Frances.”

  “And Harold,” Frances added. She had come over just then. “Don’t forget about him.”

  Jack shook his head. “How could we—”

  Frances interrupted, “He wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

  Jack looked up. “Really?”

  “Neither would I,” Frances said. She looked a bit like she’d been crying, but by now a grin had replaced her tears, her frizzy hair framing her beaming face.

  “And neither would Wanderville,” Alexander said. “Come on, let’s start that fire.”

  For their supper, Jack and Anka cooked up a stew of canned beans and ham. George surprised them all by contributing two potatoes that he’d saved from the infamous Tater Thursday battle.

  “I got deep pockets,” he said.

 
They had to share dishes and pass them around the fire to eat the stew, but everyone agreed it was a thousand times better than the food on the ranch.

  “Or those puny sandwiches on the train,” Sarah said. “Frances, remember that horrid Miss DeHaven? With the sleeves?”

  “She was on our train, too,” Nicky said. “I heard she’s Mrs. Pratcherd’s sister.”

  “You mean monsters have sisters?” Lorenzo said, and they all laughed.

  But Anka shuddered. “They are not good people, the Pratcherds,” she said. “They will look for us.”

  “Yes, and Sheriff Routh, too,” Jack pointed out.

  “I wonder what Mrs. Routh thinks,” Frances said. “I feel like she knows the Pratcherds are cruel to us and she’s trying to tell her husband.”

  “But he’s still the sheriff. His job isn’t to care about us, just to keep the order,” Jack replied. “Trouble is, we can’t live on our own without being on the wrong side of the law.”

  “That’s why we can’t stay here forever,” Frances sighed.

  “I was thinking about California,” Alexander said. “It’s supposed to be better there. Warm and nice, and you can pick oranges by the side of the road. And see the ocean.”

  “You mean . . . leave Wanderville?” Jack asked.

  Alexander grinned. “Of course not. Wanderville is here, right now. But it can be any place we want to be. Any place we build it.”

  “Can that be the third law of Wanderville?” Harold asked. “That it can be anywhere?”

  “Sure!” Alexander laughed. “I mean . . . we hereby declare it!”

  “It’s a very good law,” Frances agreed. Lorenzo nodded. “A town that wanders.”

  “Right,” Alexander said. “It’s anywhere we decide that we’re better on our own, not pushed around or ignored or treated like stray animals. It’s anywhere we can choose how we live.”

  “And it’s anywhere we can help other kids, too,” Jack added. “Where we can bring them and show them how life can really be.” He took a deep breath. “Better than the ranch, or the Lower East Side, or . . . or sent off to live with strangers.”