On Track for Treasure Read online

  Mrs. Carey went on to explain that they had six children—three were grown now, and Olive, Eleanor, and Jeb were the youngest.

  “So we are accustomed to having children around,” the Reverend said.

  “Will we be—” Frances’s little brother started to ask.

  “Not now,” Frances broke in. “The train’s coming in.” It was pulling into the station, and they would be boarding in a moment.

  Harold went quiet, and Jack felt a beat of dread as he realized what the boy’s full question to the Reverend would have been.

  Will we be your children?

  Once they were on the train, Jack slid into a seat next to Alexander, who had chosen a spot in the coach that was as far back from the Careys as possible.

  “So what now?” Jack asked, his voice low. “We ought to escape as soon as the Careys reach their stop, right?”

  “I say we stay long enough for the Careys to make us a decent dinner. Then we’ll take our leave in the morning,” Alexander said, like the matter was settled.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? The more we depend on these folks, the harder it’ll be to leave,” said Jack. “At least for some of us.” He’d noticed the way Anka’s and Sarah’s faces had brightened a little when the Reverend mentioned living in their house. Harold’s, too.

  Alexander shrugged. “The Careys mean well and all, but they’re Holy Rollers, and their life isn’t the life for us. Everyone can see that.”

  Jack wasn’t so sure. “Well, Quentin and Lorenzo sure thought that hoboing was the life for them.”

  “There you go again, blaming me for being mean to Quentin,” Alexander hissed. “And for everything else, too.”

  It seemed to Jack that they kept arguing about the same blasted thing. “I never said that. I just want us all to stay together.”

  “Me, too,” Alexander muttered. “It’s just hard work keeping everyone together, that’s all.” He turned away to lean against the windowsill and watch the scenery speed by. He didn’t say anything more after that.

  Jack found another empty seat across the aisle, where in the very next row Jeb Carey and either Olive or Eleanor were sitting quietly. Jeb looked up from reading a small brown book called The Noble Work of Missionaries and gave him a faint smile. “Pa’s sermons are kind of long, but he’s all right,” he said.

  Jack nodded.

  “You’ll all get sick of apples, too,” Jeb added. Then he went back to his book.

  With no one to talk to, Jack rested his head back against the seat. He closed his eyes and listened to the rhythm of the train. The noise drifted further and further back in his head as he began to nod off.

  “Jack!” Frances was nudging him. “Jack!”

  He shook himself awake. The train was quiet. “Are we there?” He began to stand up.

  “Not yet!” Frances whispered. “But look!” She was in the aisle, pointing out the window.

  Jack turned to see a train platform outside—just a quiet depot in a small town, nothing unusual. “Look at what?” he asked Frances.

  “The sign!” Frances said excitedly. “The name of the town!”

  Jack saw it on the platform: SHERWOOD. He’d just heard that town name . . . where?

  “It’s where Ned Handsome left his secret stuff!” Frances exclaimed. “Whatever it is, he said we could find it if we were ever in Sherwood.” The train began to slowly move again as Frances continued. “We’re just passing through Sherwood right now, but it’s the last stop before Bremerton! I asked the conductor about it. The place where we’re going is just the next town over, and I wrote down all of Ned’s clues, and just now I was looking out the window and . . . and look! Quick! That store across the street!”

  She yanked Jack up by his jacket collar so that he could get a better view. He scanned the storefronts of Sherwood, Missouri, as they slid by the window. They were all dull, except for a cobbler shop on the corner that had a big wooden boot hanging over its door instead of a sign.

  “The boot,” Frances said proudly. “It’s one of the clues.”

  Jack tried to get a second look, but the train was moving too fast, and the town was already behind them. Truthfully, he couldn’t believe that Frances was taking this business about buried hobo treasure so seriously. Then again, so much had happened to them in the past two days that anyone would be a little crazy. And tired and hungry . . .

  Jack found himself so ravenous all of a sudden that he reached into his pocket and pulled out the apple the Careys had given him. It was red on one side and golden on the other. Jack bit right into the red side. It was tart and his mouth puckered, but that was what made an apple good as far as he was concerned.

  The crunching noise made Sarah, who was in the seat ahead of him, turn around. “I don’t know why you’re eating that now,” she said. “We’re getting supper at the Careys’, you know.”

  Jack glanced over at Alexander, who nodded back. It seemed they were going with Alexander’s plan after all.

  Jack sighed and took another bite. He remembered Jeb’s warning: You’ll all get sick of apples. But, of course, Jack knew that couldn’t happen. They wouldn’t be staying long enough, would they?

  11

  A PROMISE THEY CAN’T KEEP

  Frances couldn’t believe it: Sherwood, Missouri, was right there. And she had figured out Ned’s first clue without even getting off the train! She found the page in her Third Eclectic Reader where she’d written down the instructions. You’ll have your boot on in the right direction, the first part read. When she’d spotted that boot sign, she’d felt her guts leap. She was sure it meant that the boot’s toe was pointing the way to the treasure. Now all they had to do was get back there.

  This revelation took her mind off the very strangeness of the day. This morning, she and Harold had woken up in a shed in an unfamiliar city. Tonight they would be at Reverend Carey’s supper table. At least they’d be getting something to eat, Frances thought. And, of course, they’d gotten away from Miss DeHaven. But what’s next? she wondered.

  Which was why it had been so thrilling to see that clue out the window. Maybe that boot was the next step. . . .

  Her mind was so full she hardly noticed that the train had stopped. It took Harold, tugging on her arm, to bring her back to attention.

  “Frances! This is our stop! We’re home—” he exclaimed before he quickly stopped himself. “I mean,” he said, more softly, “we’re here.”

  Frances didn’t want to think about what Harold’s slip of the tongue had meant. She nodded and took her brother’s hand.

  Bremerton wasn’t much bigger than Whitmore, Kansas, but it struck Frances as older and more settled, with more brick storefronts on its main street. The land here was different, too, Frances noticed. Kansas had been nearly flat—only a few distant bumps on the horizon—and the trees were thin. Here in Missouri, though, there were low, rolling hills that went on for miles like green waves, and instead of a dusty intersection in front of the train depot, as in Whitmore, there was a little square park with old oak trees.

  Before long, she and the other kids were sitting cross-legged in the bed of the Careys’ hay wagon as it bounced gently along. For most of the drive, they silently took in the new scenery, with the exception of Nicky, who’d had a small coughing fit, and Anka, who softly hummed a song to herself. Even George and Harold seemed to understand that they were to be on their best and quietest behavior now. Frances couldn’t help but notice the difference between Jack, who wore a wary expression and shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and Sarah, who kept smoothing her hair and wiping George’s chin with her handkerchief.

  Reverend Carey steered the horse team onto a smaller road, past a field full of short, scrubby trees. It was the apple orchard, Frances guessed, judging from the way the trees were lined up in neat rows. She remembered Alexander talking about California and how
you could pick oranges from the side of the road. This was almost as good as that, she thought. For now, at least.

  “Which house is yours?” Frances heard Jack ask Mrs. Carey as the wagon approached a cluster of small board-and-batten houses.

  “Oh, the sharecropping farmers live there,” Mrs. Carey replied. “They work the oat fields.”

  Reverend Carey turned to look back at the children. “This used to be a plantation,” he explained. “My grandfather built it, and my father ran it after he died. He freed the slaves long ago, of course. Now I’m working to free mankind from other evils.”

  The closer the wagon got, the more Frances could see how small the houses were. Maybe the sharecroppers weren’t slaves, Frances thought, but they still looked awfully poor. On the porch of the nearest house were two women, one wringing something into a washtub, the other with a baby on her hip. They nodded hello as the wagon passed.

  Sarah was staring so intensely at the women she had to turn in her seat to keep them in her sight.

  “Stop it,” Frances whispered. “You act like you’ve never seen black people before.”

  Sarah turned red. “I have. Just . . . not at the orphanage.” Frances remembered that Sarah had never lived anywhere besides the Home for Destitute Children. It was true that there were mostly white children in the New York orphanages—there was a separate home for black orphans in Harlem. Frances and Harold had been on their own in the city before taking refuge at the Howland Mission and Children’s Home, and while it had been rough, Frances realized, at least they’d known early on that there were all kinds of people in the world.

  The wagon finally stopped between a white barn and a two-story brick house. The house was old and large but unadorned—to Frances it seemed like a big box with a roof, like the kind of house Harold would draw when he was supposed to be practicing his letters. Behind the house was a tiny clapboard chapel, and a little farther beyond that were the sharecroppers’ houses.

  “Is that where we’re going to live?” George asked loudly as the children climbed out of the wagon. He pointed at the brick house, gazing up at its tall windows.

  Reverend Carey paused before answering. “That will be up to you, children. We’ll discuss it at supper. But you are all welcome to take a look inside.”

  George required no further invitation. Frances couldn’t believe how quickly he clambered up the front steps. Nicky and Anka and Sarah weren’t far behind.

  Frances steadied herself and took Harold’s hand. Together, they followed Alexander and Jack up to the porch. But instead of going through the door, the boys hung back, their hands in their pockets.

  “Aren’t you going in?” she asked them.

  Alexander shrugged. “Nah.”

  “It’s just a house,” said Jack.

  Harold pulled on her hand; he wanted to go inside. Truthfully, Frances was curious, too. So they stepped over the polished wood threshold and into the house.

  The place was simply furnished, but there were lots of rooms—a sitting room with straight-backed chairs, a study with a big table made of dark wood, and even a schoolroom with a row of desks, their iron legs bolted to the floor. Mrs. Carey, Frances had heard, taught all her children lessons during the winters.

  They came to a big kitchen; Olive and Eleanor were already in there, tending to the enormous cookstove. (Frances paused in the doorway for a moment, hoping she could hear one of them call the other by name so she could tell them apart.) The other children were darting excitedly from room to room. “Look in there!” Anka exclaimed, pointing to a doorway off the kitchen.

  Frances gasped when she and Harold crossed the threshold. It was a big pantry—shelves filled with gleaming jars of fruit and beans and pickles and at least a dozen barrels and casks lined up along the floor. They had never seen so much food in one place.

  Now in a half daze, Frances and Harold climbed the stairs. Most of the second floor was one room, with two rows of beds—six narrow beds with brown woven blankets and plain iron bedsteads. Sarah and George had already chosen their beds; Sarah was smoothing the pillow of hers. “A real mattress again,” she sighed.

  Frances stared down at the nearest bed. She knew she should be happy like Sarah. But all these beds in one place—it was like the orphanage. The last time she’d had a bed like this was at the Howland Mission back in New York. Even then she remembered thinking that she ought to be grateful for a decent place to sleep, but all she ever really felt was trapped. Just one more cot in a row in a room that was locked up at night . . . and now this room, it was much smaller. . . .

  It was suddenly hard for her to breathe.

  Harold squeezed her hand. “Franny, are you all right?”

  She took a deep breath. “Harold?” she asked. “Do you want to sleep up here?”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, but finally he looked up at her. “We don’t have to,” he mumbled. “Not if you don’t want to.”

  Frances knelt down to look her little brother in the eye. “We can stay in the barn, you and me,” she said. “As long as we’re together, that’s all that matters, right?”

  Harold tried to smile. “Right,” he said.

  Jack had heard the inside of the house was nice, but he and Alexander were more interested in seeing the rest of the place. For the first time since they left Kansas it seemed to Jack that he and Alexander were really thinking alike. It was a relief to explore the big white barn without squabbling about something.

  Alexander had once lived on a farm in Pennsylvania, so he knew what all the equipment and tools were for. He showed Jack the haymow and pointed out the big grappling hooks that were used to move bales of hay. Then he pointed to a corner of the barn. “That’ll be a good place to sleep. Enough room for all eight of us.”

  “Just for tonight, at least,” Jack was quick to add. Then we’ll make a run for it, right? he thought. The thing was, he wasn’t so sure all eight of them wanted to sleep there after seeing the house, but he didn’t know how to say that to Alexander. So he was relieved when Mrs. Carey called them over to the water pump in order to wash up for supper.

  The food was served up on a long table in the backyard, alongside which were benches for the children and seats at the ends for the Reverend and Mrs. Carey. Jack couldn’t wait to eat—there was cold ham, and bread with fresh butter, and pickles, and a big platter of apples fried with onions that smelled wonderful.

  But first there was the grace. Reverend Carey gave thanks for the food and the safe journey home, then he blessed “the souls who had found the path to temperance.” (Jack had asked Frances what temperance was—it meant avoiding liquor.) Then the Reverend blessed the orchards and the crops and the sharecroppers, whose shanties they had passed in the wagon. Next he blessed his own children—Jeb and Olive and Eleanor and the three others who were no longer at home but were off doing the Lord’s work as missionaries. Then he said, “Bless Alexander and Anka and Frances and George and Harold and Jack and Nicholas and Sarah, who have come to us today. . . .”

  This was the longest grace that Jack had ever heard in his life, though he was impressed that the Reverend knew all their names in alphabetical order.

  “And may they choose the right path,” Reverend Carey continued. Jack wondered what he meant by that.

  Once the Reverend had stopped speaking, Mrs. Carey sang “Amazing Grace.” Jack was so hungry by now his eyes were crossing, but he had to admit her voice was pretty.

  Then it was time to eat. It was all Jack could do not to wolf down the bread, which was cut into thick slices, and gulp down the cold milk that the Carey girls poured into tin cups from a big pitcher. He was full all too quickly, but somehow he found more room once Mrs. Carey brought out two apple pies and began cutting them into slices.

  As soon as the pie was finished and the plates collected, Reverend Carey stood and spoke. “Dear children, Mrs. Carey an
d I know your lives have been hard. We know of the miseries of the city—the factories, the saloons, the poverty. Some of you have had your families torn apart by liquor and other evils. . . .”

  It was true that Jack’s father spent most of his pay on whiskey—sometimes Jack’s and his brother’s wages, too—and it had made things harder. He knew his wasn’t the only family affected: One night back in Kansas, Anka had confessed that her mother died from drink. Now he looked over at Anka and saw she was listening intently to Reverend Carey’s words, her eyes shining with tears.

  “Your new life here will not be easy,” the Reverend went on. “You must work to help us and earn your keep. But if you choose to stay here in our home and mind our rules, you will in time become part of our family.”

  Jack looked across the table to meet Frances’s eyes, but he couldn’t figure out what she was thinking. Her expression was solemn and calm as she squeezed her little brother’s hand. What did that mean?

  “Just one more thing,” Reverend Carey said. “Our rules are simple, but there is one promise that is very important, especially in light of what happened today at the depot.” He looked straight at Jack just then. “Anyone who chooses to live in our house must promise to never lie again.”

  Jack felt a lump in his throat. He lied at the depot just so they could save themselves. He and all the other kids—they lied only when they had to. Besides, half the time grown-ups weren’t honest with them.

  He and Alexander exchanged a glance. He knew neither of them could make that promise.

  “That is what you must agree to in order to live under our roof,” the Reverend went on. “No lying, for any reason.”

  Around him, all the other children were silent. Although someone across the table—Sarah—was nodding in agreement.

  It was no surprise to Jack, then, when at dusk Sarah was the first to go inside to stay in the big brick house. Mrs. Carey had gathered the children on the front porch to give them bits of soap to wash up with. Then, if they chose, they could go in and use the basin in the house before heading up to bed.