On Track for Treasure Read online

  Jack looked at Eli’s bundle. “It took you that long to pack that?”

  “Well,” Eli said, “actually, I went over to Clement’s place and then Ora’s to tell ’em goodbye. And . . . I asked them to look in on my pop once in a while. Make sure he gets a decent supper. . .” He looked down and shrugged. “My mama would have wanted me to do that.”

  Jack understood. He wondered if back in New York his mother was still taking care of his father when he came in late at night after visiting the taverns. Or was the bottle his only friend now?

  The two boys continued down the path to the barn, stopping by the water pump to grab a drink. “Alexander says we’ll set out at dawn tomorrow and follow the train tracks,” Jack told Eli as Eli worked the pump. “Then we’ll find a place to camp . . .”

  Suddenly Eli stopped, his hand frozen on the pump handle, looking behind Jack.

  Mr. Pike was walking slowly toward them. Jack wondered briefly if he was drunk, but when Jack looked up at his face, the man’s eyes were clear and sober.

  “Where are you going, Pop?” Eli asked quietly.

  “The chapel,” said Mr. Pike. “Gonna wait for the Reverend. He came by after you left. Said he was sorry about things. Said he’d pray with me if I wanted . . . if I wanted to stop.”

  Eli looked down. “Ain’t the first time you promised that.”

  “I know,” said Mr. Pike. “But since you’re setting out to find yourself a better life, well . . . maybe I can find one, too. Maybe one day you’ll come back and see if I did.”

  “Maybe I will,” Eli said, his voice almost a whisper.

  “Best to do it that way, instead of me letting you down all the time.” Mr. Pike held out his hand, which trembled slightly.

  Eli reached out and squeezed it.

  Then Mr. Pike nodded goodbye and walked on to the chapel.

  Frances was helping Harold collect all his things in the barn. It turned out he really did have a lucky pebble. And a lucky stick, leaf, horseshoe nail, and dead beetle.

  “I’ll keep them in my pocket,” Harold insisted.

  “Well, I suppose we need all the luck we can get,” Frances said. Just then she looked up. “Sarah! Anka!”

  The girls were standing in the barn doorway, Nicky and George just behind them. They were all holding bundles and baskets, and Sarah wore a shy smile. They came into the barn, followed by Eli and Jack, who grinned in surprise.

  Alexander, who had been in the haymow, swung down on the ladder. “You’re all here!” he exclaimed. “And you’re all packed!”

  Frances looked over in time to see Anka’s awkward expression. Sarah exchanged glances with Nicky before speaking.

  “Actually, we’re here to bring supper,” she said, holding up the basket. “And, well, to tell you something.”

  Frances already knew what Sarah was going to say, and she could tell, by the expression on Jack’s face, that he did, too. She’d had a feeling deep down for days now, and then today, when she’d gone upstairs in the house and seen Anka’s little wooden doll on the windowsill, she knew for sure.

  It was Nicky who said it.

  “Sarah and Anka and George and me,” he began, “we like it here at the Careys’.”

  “So . . . we’re staying,” Sarah added.

  Frances looked over at Alexander, who was scratching his head.

  “You’re not coming with us?” he said. “What about our town? What about Wanderville?”

  “It’s about home,” Anka said softly. “We think this will be our home now.”

  Alexander didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he sat down on one of the crates that they used as chairs in the barn. “I wanted us to stay together,” he said, staring at the ground.

  Jack went over and pulled up a crate. So did Frances. “You know how the Careys let us go because they knew we’d be happier someplace else?” Jack asked Alexander.

  “It’s the same thing,” Frances added.

  “I guess you’re right,” Alexander said. His voice was sad, but he still managed a half smile.

  “And they’ll be safe here,” Jack pointed out. “Thanks to you.”

  Frances watched Alexander’s face brighten a little more.

  “I’m glad you and Harold and Jack are still coming with us,” he said.

  “Always,” Frances told him.

  She looked over at Harold, who, along with Nicky, was helping Sarah and Anka open the supper baskets.

  “I have an idea,” she said. “Let’s have supper in Wanderville!”

  All eight of them, along with Eli, had one last picnic together in the grass and the crumbled walls of the old house. Then they played and talked until the sky turned deep pink.

  “I wish you would stay,” Sarah told Frances as they finished their sandwiches. “I think you’d really like Eleanor and Olive.”

  “They’re all right,” Frances said. “But I want to see California. I’m going to miss you and Anka, though.”

  She leaned back in the grass and listened to the other conversations. Eli and Jack were talking about trains. Nicky was promising Alexander that he and the other house kids would come out and play in this Wanderville sometimes.

  “Mrs. Carey says I have to be careful not to break my glasses,” George was telling Harold. “So I can’t go back to being a hobo.”

  “I’ll send you a postcard,” Harold said. “And we can trade good-luck tokens. Want my beetle?”

  Finally, it was time for the four who were staying with the Careys to go inside for the night. There were hugs goodbye and promises to write. Sarah gave Frances two pencils and extra writing paper so she wouldn’t have to keep tearing pages out of her Third Eclectic Reader.

  Meanwhile, Anka showed Alexander the basket where she’d packed extra sandwiches for their journey, and Nicky handed Jack and Eli sacks full of provisions he’d managed to scrounge up for them.

  “And when the Careys ask me where those potatoes went,” he said, “I’ll tell ’em the truth and take my lumps.”

  They all laughed.

  “Thank you for everything,” Frances called one last time as Anka, Sarah, Nicky, and George climbed over the fence at dusk.

  Then the five of them spread out their blankets to go to sleep. They all lay back and bade each other good-night by their hobo names:

  “Night, Pennsylvania Kid.”

  “Good night, Gizzard.”

  “Sleep tight, Little Tomato Can.”

  “Good night, Swindler Jack.”

  Jack sat up and turned to Eli. “Wait, you need a hobo name!”

  Frances watched as Eli sat up and scratched his head. Finally, he said, “Call me Bulldog.”

  They all agreed it was an excellent name.

  After that, they lay back again, looking up at the deepening blue sky.

  “It’s the first time we’ve spent the night in the Missouri Wanderville,” Frances mused.

  “And also the last, since we’re leaving tomorrow,” Jack pointed out.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Alexander said. “We’re back under the stars.”

  30

  THE FINAL ESCAPE

  It was dawn when something nudged Jack in the side. Hard.

  It shoved up against his ribs—it was a foot, Jack realized—a boot. Someone was trying to roll him over like a log. Jack squirmed onto his back and looked up to see the man standing over him: O’Reilly, with his stubbly red face.

  “Just what are you up to?” he growled at Jack.

  “What—what do you mean?” Jack managed to straighten up and get out from under that awful boot. The other children were just waking up, and he could hear Harold whimper at the sight of O’Reilly. Eli, Jack noticed, was already sitting up and glaring at the man.

  “You little brats were supposed to be gone already. But this one”—
O’Reilly nodded toward Eli—“he ain’t going nowhere. He stays here.” He grabbed the boy’s wrist. “This one’s got to work for me, since his daddy’s no good for the fields.”

  Alexander scrambled to his feet. “No! Eli’s with us! And Reverend Carey said we could go.”

  O’Reilly smirked. “Yes, he said you could go. Reverend sent me out here to make sure you maggots weren’t sneaking off with a—arrrgh!”

  He left off with a sharp yowl as Eli pinched his forearm hard.

  The boy wrenched himself free and dodged behind Jack. “Front gate,” he gasped before he took off running. Then O’Reilly shoved past Jack and lit out after Eli in swift pursuit. After a moment they’d disappeared around the side of the barn.

  “Oh, no,” Harold whispered, while Frances stood, stunned.

  “Get your things!” Alexander said, turning to grab one of the feed sack pouches they’d packed. “Eli’s bag, too. Right, Jack?”

  Jack just nodded, so anxious he could barely breathe.

  A few moments later, the four of them crept along the fence at the edge of the farm, doing their best to stay out of sight of the house. But as they got closer to the front yard and the road beyond it, Jack could see, in the early-morning dimness, a light in one of the upstairs windows of the house. The light shifted as someone moved in the window. From the silhouette Jack thought it might be Mrs. Carey, but he couldn’t be sure, and he didn’t know why she’d be watching.

  They were getting close to the front gate now. Did Eli mean to meet them there? Or, Jack thought, at least try?

  But there was nobody there. Frances turned to Jack with panicked eyes. “What now?” she whispered, looking to him and Alexander. “Do we wait for Eli? Do we run for it?”

  “Run for it!” Harold said, not whispering. “Look!”

  Jack had been so preoccupied with searching for Eli at the front fence he hadn’t thought to look beyond it, out in the road. But there, waiting at a small bend past the fence, was a wagon, a single-hitch with a horse that looked too scraggly to belong to the Careys. Clement Bay held the reins, and he nodded in their direction.

  The four of them hesitated. Jack looked back to see if Eli was coming. Frances grabbed his shoulder. “There!” she gasped. “There he is.”

  Jack turned just in time to see Eli stand in the bed of the wagon. He was grinning, but he waved frantically, as if to say, hurry!

  Jack almost laughed out loud as they all ran the last few yards and climbed into the wagon bed. Frances got in first, then she and Alexander helped lift in Harold, and Jack swung up last.

  “I outran O’Reilly,” Eli bragged as the wagon began to move. “He’s chased me before, but sooner or later he always stops when his knee goes funny. So I just took a chance and kept running. And then the fact that Clement was heading to town was just good luck.”

  “All I’m doing is headin’ to the mercantile,” Clement called from the front of the wagon. “Ain’t no trouble.”

  Jack turned to Eli and the others. “It’s not just luck that we made it out okay,” he said. “I think it means something.”

  “It’s a sign,” Frances said. “A sign that we should all five stay together.”

  Alexander agreed. “Let’s shake hands on it. Swear on it or something.”

  Jack started to shake Eli’s hand, but Eli just held it and Frances’ hand, too. One after another they joined their hands in a tight little circle right there in the wagon, just for a moment in the long morning sunlight.

  Clement Bay let them ride all the way to Bremerton. He stopped at the depot, where the five children climbed down by the railroad tracks that they would follow on foot.

  “Which way y’all headed?” Clement asked them.

  “North,” Alexander replied.

  “Anyone expecting ya up thataways?”

  Frances grinned. “You could say that.”

  Jack looked out at the train tracks and the way they vanished between two green hills. They’d decided it would be too risky to hop a train—too many folks who’d take notice of five waifs on their own, and who knew how many of them were like Miss DeHaven? Besides, now that they’d gotten a ride in the wagon, it was less than ten miles—half a day’s walk—to their first destination. Jack studied the horizon again and realized he knew, for the first time, how it felt to be excited about the road ahead.

  After one last wave goodbye to Clement, the five of them set off.

  As they walked, they passed the time telling Eli stories about the first Wanderville in Kansas, including the time they’d thrown dozens of roasted potatoes at Rutherford Pratcherd.

  They sang the Big Rock Candy Mountain song. Then Harold taught them the Cold Water Army song, which they all agreed was not nearly as good a song to sing. In fact, Alexander pointed out, it just made them wish there was colder water in the big glass jar they’d brought along.

  The sun got higher in the sky. They stopped to eat lunch in the shade of a big tree, and then they continued on, walking, talking, and singing.

  They wondered about Miss DeHaven, too—where she was now and whether she’d even return to the Careys’ looking for them.

  “Do you think Reverend and Mrs. Carey will keep their promise not to tell her where we went?” Frances asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “But it’s better to be careful if we ever send letters to their farm.”

  “We could give our letters to a hobo,” Alexander suggested. “And ask him to stop off in some town where we’ve never been and mail them from the post office there.”

  “That sure would throw Miss DeHaven off our trail,” Jack said.

  “Speaking of hoboes,” Frances said, “we’re almost there.”

  They had come to the edge of another small town, where ahead of them stood the little train depot and its wooden platforms.

  “What are you talking about?” Eli asked.

  Jack looked over at Frances, who reached into her pocket and took out her reader. It fell open right to the page with the instructions she’d written down.

  “We’re now in Sherwood, Missouri,” Frances announced. “Where our good hobo friend A-Number-One Nickel Ned Handsome left a secret treasure. And we intend to find it.”

  31

  EVERY STEP HAS ITS OWN PRESIDENT

  “We’ve already got the first clue,” Frances said, pointing to the cobbler shop sign across the street from the depot—the big wooden boot that hung over the shop door. “‘You’ll have your boot on in the right direction,’” she read out loud.

  Jack nodded. “So we’ll go that way?” he asked, pointing east, where the boot’s toe was facing. Seemed simple enough, he thought. Maybe too simple.

  “Yes,” Frances said. “But it’s this next one that has me stumped: ‘Cross an Indian, a saint, and one of our founding fathers.’”

  “Huh,” Alexander muttered as they headed down the street to a corner where the storefronts ended and the houses began. They stood there a moment, glancing around.

  Then Jack looked over at the street name, which was painted on the side of a post: HIAWATHA.

  “I got it! It means cross Hiawatha Street!” he exclaimed. “An Indian!”

  “I think you’re right!” Frances said, as they all ran across the street. “What’s this next street? A saint’s name?”

  Sure enough, the street post said ST. LOUIS, and they kept going. The street after that was FRANKLIN.

  “A founding father,” Alexander pointed out.

  Frances looked down at her book. “Now I think we turn right. But then it says, ‘Just keep going until you get mush.’ What does that mean?”

  “Let’s keep going and find out,” Eli said.

  They all walked three blocks, then four, until they found themselves near the far edge of town. What if there’s nothing here? Jack wondered. The street had only a row of de
serted-looking brick warehouses.

  Then Harold yelled, “I see it! Look up!”

  They all looked up at the side of one of the warehouses, where painted in fading colors on the brick was an advertisement:

  EAT

  MCCANN’S

  MUSH

  OAT CEREAL 3 FLAVORS

  “MUSH!” they all shouted joyfully. It was the best billboard Jack had ever seen for a food he didn’t want to try in the slightest.

  From there, it wasn’t too hard to find the “house with blue eyes that are always shut and has broken teeth.” Frances was right that the “blue eyes” were painted shutters; the “broken teeth” were missing rail posts on the front porch.

  They went to the edge of the woods, where the space between two big trees seemed to form a sort of doorway.

  “‘Then count steps,’” Frances read aloud. “‘Every step has its own president.’”

  Jack took one step, which got him just past the trees. “George Washington,” he said. What was the second step? “Thomas Jefferson?”

  Frances shook her head. “John Adams. Then Jefferson.”

  She led the step-counting through the woods. “Madison, Monroe . . .” But once she got as far as Lincoln, she hesitated.

  “Johnson,” Eli said, taking a step. “Grant. Hayes, Garfield, Arthur . . .” He made four more steps.

  “I thought you said you stopped going to school!” Jack said.

  Eli shrugged. “Just ’cause I can’t read so good doesn’t mean I can’t memorize a bunch of presidents,” he said. “Drat! Now I lost my place. Where was I?”

  “I see it!” Frances shrieked. “‘Once you get to Harrison, check the ground, and you should be on the right track.’”

  “What do you see?” Jack said, scanning the dirt and twigs beneath his feet.

  And then he saw it, too—steel railroad tracks! A single railroad spur that went through the woods.

  They looked to the right and realized the tracks led to a tiny shed of gray weathered wood that blended in so well with the forest surroundings that they hadn’t noticed it until now.