The Curlytops at Silver Lake; Or, On the Water with Uncle Ben

by Howard Roger Garis

  CHAPTER IV

  THE QUEER BOX

  Trouble was now crying and kicking with his little heels against thefloor of the garage. Part of his little body was half way under thecarriage, the front wheels of which were turned in such a way thatJanet could reach her little brother’s legs. His head stuck outthrough one of the front wheels, in between two spokes.

  “We’ve got to get him out!” decided Janet, as she and Ted paused toget their breath.

  “Yes,” replied Teddy. “Let’s both pull hard!”

  They were about to take hold of Baby William once more, but hescreamed so loudly that they held back.

  “You hurted me!” he wailed. “You hurted me! Don’t push me an’ pull meany more!”

  “But we’ve got to get you out, Trouble!” said Teddy. “We have to pushyou or pull you!”

  “Which hurts the most, Trouble?” asked Jan kindly. “Does it hurt mostto pull you or to push you?”

  “Dey boff hurts!” sobbed the little boy. “You go and tell my mommer Iwants her to get me out! I wants my mommer!”

  “I guess we’d better do that!” decided Teddy. “You go for mother, Jan.I’ll stay with Trouble.”

  Off toward the house hurried the little girl. She burst into thekitchen, where Mrs. Martin was making some broth for the sick man whohad fallen down through weakness and hunger on the Martin lawn thatmorning.

  “Oh, Mother, he’s stuck fast!” cried Janet.

  “Who, Skyrocket? Did you find him?” asked Mrs. Martin, thinking ofcourse it was the dog about which her little daughter was talking.

  “No, Skyrocket isn’t stuck fast. We didn’t find him,” replied Janet.“It’s Trouble! He’s stuck fast! And Teddy pulled and I pulled, andthen we both pushed, but we can’t get him loose. He’s stuck!”

  “Oh, dear me!” sighed Mrs. Martin. “What will happen next? Here, Nora,watch this broth so it doesn’t burn. Now, Jan, come and show me whereTrouble is stuck fast.”

  Taking hold of Janet’s hand, Mrs. Martin hurried out to the garage.Rushing in, she saw Teddy holding Trouble’s head, which was stillthrust between two of the carriage wheel spokes.

  “Is he badly hurt?” asked Mrs. Martin, thinking perhaps Baby Williamwas in worse trouble than Janet had told her.

  “Oh, no, he isn’t hurt,” explained Ted. “He just can’t get his headout, that’s all. I’m holding it up for him, ’cause he says the wheelspokes hurt his neck.”

  “Poor little darling! I should think they would!” said his mother.

  “I—I was playin’ peek-a-boo wif a chicken,” explained Baby William.“An’ I stuck in my head, but I can’t stick it out! Oh, Muzzie!” hecried, using a pet name for his mother that he had almost forgotten,“you det me out!”

  “Of course I will!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin. “Here, Ted, let me get holdof him.”

  “You can’t push him out!” declared Ted.

  “And you can’t pull him out,” added Janet. “His head is too big!”

  Mrs. Martin gave one look at the wheel spokes, she saw just howTrouble’s head was caught, and then, with a quick motion, she liftedhim up, pulled him back, and in another moment he was safe in her armsand sobbing on her shoulder.

  “Why—why!” exclaimed Teddy, “how’d you do it so quick, Mother?”

  “We tried and tried, an’ we couldn’t do it,” added Jan. “We pushed andwe pulled; didn’t we, Ted?”

  “Yes!”

  “Well, you should have lifted up,” said Mrs. Martin with a smile.

  “We never thought of that,” Teddy said.

  “You see the carriage wheel spokes are put together like the letter‘V,’” said Mrs. Martin, as she showed the two older children. “WhenTrouble’s head and neck were toward the bottom of the V they were inso tightly that neither pushing nor pulling would get him out. Butwhen I lifted him up I raised him toward the wide part of the V, atthe place where he had stuck his head in, and then it was easy enoughto get him out. But you mustn’t do it again, Baby William!” she added,as she patted the sobbing little fellow on his shoulders.

  “No, me don’t want to play peek-a-boo wif a chicken any more at all!”decided Trouble.

  “Haven’t you found your dog yet?” their mother asked.

  Ted and Jan sadly shook their heads.

  “Well, maybe he’ll come home,” said Mrs. Martin kindly. “He may be offpaying a visit to some doggie friends of his. Look around some more,and take good care of Trouble.”

  Baby William felt better now, especially after Nora had brought out tohim, and also to Janet and Teddy, some sugar cookies. Munching these,the children wandered around, looking here, there, everywhere for thelost Skyrocket.

  Mrs. Martin went back to the kitchen to finish making the broth forthe sick man.

  “I wish he would wake up,” said Teddy, as he and his sister, eachholding a hand of Baby William, walked about searching for the petdog. They had looked in the room of the sick man.

  “What do you want him to wake up for? To tell us a story?” askedJanet.

  “Oh, maybe he can tell stories!” exclaimed Ted. “I didn’t think ofthat. But I want to ask him if he saw Skyrocket. He’s a tramp, andtramps see lots of dogs when they walk around.”

  “He is not a tramp!” declared Jan. “I heard daddy say he wasn’t atramp, even if he was poor.”

  “Well, he’d been walkin’ a lot!” exclaimed Ted. “I looked at his shoeswhen daddy and Patrick carried him into the house, and his shoes had alot of holes in ’em. Shoes get holes in ’em when you walk a lot, andif you walk a lot you’re a tramp, even if you have good clothes. Somaybe he did see Skyrocket.”

  “Well, maybe he did,” agreed Janet, thinking that, as Teddy was olderthan she, he must know more about it.

  “’Et’s go in an’ p’ay buttons!” suddenly proposed Trouble, as hethought of the fun he had had the night before. “I want all de wedbuttons!”

  “No, dear, we aren’t going to play the button game now,” said Janet.“We must look for Skyrocket.”

  “Trouble want to play buttons!” exclaimed the little fellow. “If noplay, Trouble sit down in de mud!” and he pulled his hands away fromboth Ted and Janet and started toward a little mud puddle at one sideof the garden path.

  Jan looked at Ted, not knowing what to do.

  “No play button game, Trouble sit in de mud!” cried the little fellow;and, tiny “tyke” that he was, he stuck the toe of one shoe in thepuddle.

  “Yes, Jan will play the button game!” cried his sister. “Don’t sit inthe mud!” She ran over and caught Trouble by the hand again. “I’lltake him up to the house and get out the button bag,” said Jan to Ted.“You can keep on looking for Skyrocket. Mother won’t like it ifTrouble gets all muddy, and he will sit down in it if I don’t keephold of him.”

  “All right,” agreed Ted. “You can play with him. I’ll go and see if Ican find Skyrocket. But if that man wakes up you come and tell me. Iwant to ask him if he saw our dog.”

  A little later, when Janet had taken Trouble back to the house, andwhile Ted was walking down in the peach orchard, whistling and callingto Skyrocket, the boy heard an answering signal.

  “Hello!” called Ted. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me,” was the answer, which, if not just the right way to answer,told Teddy what he wanted to know.

  “Oh, hello, Tom!” he called, as Tom Taylor, a boy chum who lived inthe next street, came walking along the orchard path. “What are youdoin’?”

  “Nothin’!” answered Tom. “What you doin’, Ted?”

  “Looking for our dog,” said Teddy, beginning to remember that hismother had told him to be careful not to drop the last letter “G” fromhis words that needed it. “Skyrocket is lost.”

  “Skyrocket lost?” cried Tom Taylor. “How’d it happen?”

  Teddy told the simple little story, and also how he and Janet had beenlooking for their missing pet, and how Trouble had been caught in thecarriage wheel.

  “I�
��ll help you look,” offered Tom. “Skyrocket is a nice dog. Maybesome tramp opened the woodshed window and coaxed him out,” he added.

  “There’s a tramp up at our house now,” said Ted, rather proud to beable to tell such news as that.

  “A tramp! There is?” cried Tom. “Did he take Skyrocket?”

  “Well, he isn’t zactly a tramp,” went on Ted, and then he explainedabout the man his father and Patrick had carried in. “When he getswoke up I’m going to ask him about Skyrocket, though.”

  “I guess you’d better,” agreed Tom. “Now come on, I’ll help you look.”

  But, though the two little boys wandered here and there, calling andwhistling, there was no sign of Skyrocket.

  “I guess we’ll have to put a piece in the paper about him,” decidedTed, as he sat down to rest on the bank of a little pond in the shadeof a willow tree.

  “I hope you’ll find him,” said Tom, again. “Say, I know what we can dowhile we’re resting,” he went on.

  “What?”

  “We can make a raft and go riding in the pond,” answered Tom. “It’sgot lots of water in now, after the rain. We can make a raft from thefence boards and have a dandy sail.”

  Ted thought about it for a moment, and then said:

  “That’s what we’ll do! We can take off our shoes and stockings, ’causea raft isn’t like a boat. The water sloshes all up on it. We’ll gobarefoot, and we’ll have a lot of fun.”

  The pond where the boys had sat down to rest in the shade was notusually deep enough to float a raft, or any boat except tiny toy ones.But since the rain two days before had made the pond larger anddeeper, and also muddier, there was, as Tom had said, water enough tolet a small raft of boards be paddled around in it.

  This raft Ted and Tom now started to make. There were plenty of loosefence boards near the pond, and some of the boards had nails in them.Using stones for hammers, the two boys knocked out some of the rustynails, and drove them in again, fastening a number of boards together.Then they put the raft in the water. It floated, but when Tom and Tedstood on it, the raft sank out of sight under the muddy surface.

  “But it doesn’t touch bottom!” cried Ted, as he pushed it about with awillow pole. “It floats, and we don’t care if we get our feet wet,’cause we’ve got our shoes and stockings off.”

  “Hi! We’ll have lots of fun!” cried Tom.

  And the boys did. They pushed the raft to and fro, from one side ofthe little meadow pond to the other. They pretended they were makinglong voyages, and half the time Ted was captain of the “ship,” and theother half it was Tom’s turn.

  The boys were having a very jolly time, thinking nothing of splashingeach other with the muddy water as they poled the raft about, whensuddenly Ted gave too hard a thrust on his pole. It broke in twopieces and the next second he found himself splashing about in themuddy water. He had fallen off the raft!

  “Oh! Wug! Guggle! Blug!” spluttered Ted, his mouth full of muddywater.

  “Wait! Sit still! I’ll get you out!” cried Tom.

  But Ted did not wait. The water was not deep—hardly up to his knees,and, after splashing and floundering about, he managed to stand up onhis feet. He did not “sit still” as Tom had told him to.

  Oh, but he was a sight—all muddy, and dripping water all over!

  “Are—are you hurt?” asked Tom.

  “N—n-no!” stammered Ted, in answer. “You don’t need to jump in to getme out. I—I can wade out.”

  “Get on the raft and I’ll pole you to shore,” offered Tom.

  “Yes, I can do that,” Ted answered. “There might be glass on thebottom and I’d cut my feet. I’ll get on.”

  He managed to get aboard the raft again, though he nearly tipped Tomoff in doing so. Then the two boys poled their craft to shore.

  “Say, you are wet!” exclaimed Tom, as he looked at his chum. “Awfulwet! Will your mother be mad?”

  “I guess she won’t like it,” Ted confessed. “But if I stay out longenough maybe I’ll dry. I guess we won’t sail any more.”

  “No,” agreed Tom, “I guess we better not. I’ll walk around with youtill you get dry.”

  It was a warm, sunny day, and Ted felt sure he would not take coldfrom his ducking. He knew, too, that the sun and wind would soon dryhis clothes, though of course the mud would still remain.

  So he and Tom walked about in the lower peach orchard, and around inthe meadow where the pond was, on which they had sailed the raft. Tedwas about half dry, and the two boys were throwing stones in thewater, seeing who could make the biggest splash, when they saw Mrs.Ransom, owner of the little store, hurrying along the meadow path.

  “Hello, boys!” she called pleasantly to Ted and Tom. She knew themwell, for they spent many pennies over her counter.

  “Hello, Miss Ransom!” answered the two boys.

  “Land sakes! what are you all wet and muddy for, Teddy Martin?” askedthe storekeeper, when she saw the state Teddy was in. “It hasn’t beenraining, has it?”

  “No’m,” answered Ted. “I fell off the raft.”

  “Raft? What raft?” asked Mrs. Ransom. “I didn’t know there was a raftaround here.”

  “Ted and I made one,” explained Tom, “an’ his pole broke and he fellin. He’s walkin’ around to dry himself off.”

  “Land sakes!” exclaimed Mrs. Ransom. “Your mother won’t like that,Teddy Martin. But I mustn’t stand here talking. I’m going over toConstable Juke’s house. Have you see him this morning?”

  “Constable Juke!” exclaimed Teddy and Tom in one breath.

  “Yes, I want him to arrest somebody,” went on Mrs. Ransom.

  The two boys looked at each other. A constable in the country, theyknew, was the same as a policeman in the city. He could arrest peopleif they were bad.

  “You—you want Constable Juke?” asked Ted, in a low voice.

  “To arrest somebody?” asked Tom, almost whispering.

  “Yes, that’s what I want him to do if he can catch ’em!”

  “Is it—do you want him to arrest _us_, ’cause I fell in the water,Miss Ransom?” asked Teddy, and his voice trembled.

  “Land sakes, no, child!” laughed the storekeeper lady. “What ever putsuch a notion in your head? What I want of Constable Juke is to havehim arrest somebody that robbed my store.”

  “Robbed your store!” cried Ted and Tom. This was getting more and moreexciting.

  “Yes,” went on Mrs. Ransom, whom the boys were apt to call “Miss,”though she had been married and was a widow. “Some one got into myplace last night and took a lot of things. I didn’t miss ’em untiljust now. And as soon as I did I started for the constable. I’m on myway there now. I hope to find him at home.”

  “Did they take any money?” asked Ted.

  “Yes, a little. But they took some other things, too. I don’t mind themoney so much, nor the other things. But they took a queer box mybrother, that used to be a sailor, brought me from a far-off country.It was a very queer box, and I wouldn’t sell it for a lot of money.Now the burglars have it, and I’m going to have them arrested ifConstable Juke can find ’em! Land sakes, but I must hurry on! Stay outin the sun, Teddy, until you get dry, and then most of that mud willbrush off. Dear me! To think that queer box should be taken after allthese years that I’ve kept it! I hope I can get it back!”