The Woodshed Mystery

by Gertrude Warner

  “Shoot him? Miss Jane wouldn’t shoot him!”

  They all stared in surprise at Willie.

  “Yep,” said Willie. “She said so. I heard her. ‘I’d like to shoot Andy Bean,’ she said.”

  Henry looked up at Jessie and without a word he slid down the tree. All the rest came after him.

  “What? What?” cried Willie when he saw the children come out of the tree.

  “Come on, Sam!” shouted Henry. “We must catch Andy!”

  “No,” said Willie. His mouth was open. “He took the bus.”

  But the Aldens and Sam were running down the hill. Benny shouted back, “Aunt Jane doesn’t hate him, Willie! She was just fooling!”

  “Don’t stop to talk,” cried Jessie. “We must catch that bus!”

  “We can’t,” Sam called back. “It’s been gone fifteen minutes.”

  “Well, we’ve got to catch it,” cried Benny. “It has to stop to let people off!”

  They ran to Sam’s old car which stood in the yard. They all threw themselves into the car and off they went. Benny and Henry sat beside Sam. For a minute they could not speak. When Henry got his breath, he said, “I bet Andy came home and found out Aunt Jane was back. He must have wondered if she would see him.”

  Benny said, “I bet so, too. And I remember what Aunt Jane said. She said, ‘I’d like to shoot Andy Bean!’”

  Jessie added, “And Willie was right in the kitchen selling asparagus. He heard every word!”

  “Oh, dear, how wrong can you be?” said Violet. “Willie didn’t know Aunt Jane didn’t mean it. So he told Andy, and Andy went away again.”

  “Drive faster if you can, Sam,” said Henry. “If Andy gets out at the bus station he will get on the train. Then we’ll be too late to stop him.”

  Jessie said, “We don’t even know that he took this bus.”

  “Yes,” said Sam. “This is the only bus in the morning. He’d have to take it. But what shall we do when we catch up with the bus?”

  “Well, we know he has a crooked smile,” said Henry. “We can tell him he is wrong about Aunt Jane. Let Violet tell him. He’ll believe her.” He smiled at Violet.

  “But how do we stop the bus driver? That’s the question,” said Jessie.

  Benny said, “That’s easy. If we see the bus, you honk your horn, Sam, and we can shout to the driver.”

  “This old car is surprised it can go so fast,” said Sam. “And I am, too.”

  The old car rattled and squeaked. But it flew along.

  At last Benny cried, “There’s the blue bus! Oh, Sam, honk your horn!”

  Sam kept the horn going. The bus driver honked back. He looked in his mirror at the children. Then he pointed at the railroad station ahead. There stood the train, ready to go.

  When the bus stopped, the driver put his head out of the window and said, “What’s the matter with you? Want to get on?”

  “No,” said Henry. “We’ll tell you in a minute.” They all piled out of the car and ran around to the door of the bus.

  Benny cried, “Have you got a big man on board? He has a crooked smile!”

  “Well, I don’t know about the smile,” said the driver laughing. “But I have a man on board on the back seat. Just coming out.”

  They looked back in the bus and saw a tall man coming out. His hair was brown, not white.

  “Oh, excuse me!” cried Benny. “Are you Andy Bean?”

  “Yes, that’s my name,” said the stranger. “Why?” He stared at Violet. Then he smiled. His smile was crooked. He came a few steps toward the Aldens.

  “Oh, please,” said Violet. “Aunt Jane sent us to find you! Don’t run away again until we tell you all about it.”

  “Aunt Jane,” exclaimed the man. He shook his head and turned toward the train. “No, Jane doesn’t want to see me,” he said. “And that’s that.”

  “Please come and sit in our car,” begged Violet. “Aunt Jane wants very much to see you.”

  “She said she hated me and maybe she has a reason to. She talked about shooting,” Andy Bean said in a low voice.

  “Oh, you don’t understand,” said Henry. “That was what Willie said, wasn’t it? Aunt Jane didn’t mean it. She just got too tired and spoke that way. She must have been like that even when she was a girl.”

  “I wish I could believe you,” said Andy.

  Now Sam spoke. “You can. You can believe anything these kids say. They know what they’re doing every time.”

  Andy looked at Sam. Then he looked at the children. “All right,” he said. “I’ll give it one more try. I’ll go back with you if that’s what you want.”

  “Yes, indeed!” said Jessie. “That’s exactly what we want.”

  Andy had a small bag, and Henry said, “I’ll put your bag in the trunk.”

  “No, thank you,” said Andy Bean with his crooked smile, “I always keep this bag with me wherever I go.”

  It was not a large bag. Benny at once began to guess what might be in it. A change of clothes? A treasure map? Pistols? His guessing turned into a game, but he had to wait for the answer.

  CHAPTER 14

  A Treasure Bag

  Sam drove home slowly. Violet and Benny sat on the front seat. This made room for Andy on the back seat with Henry and Jessie.

  “Now the next thing is to tell Aunt Jane,” said Jessie. “I am worried about that.”

  “Oh, that will be easy,” said Andy Bean. “I’ll tell her myself.”

  “What will you tell her?” Violet asked softly.

  “Well, I came home to Boston on a ship. I saw in the paper that the Aldens had bought the old house. So I thought I’d come up and see if I was welcome. I knew Willie would keep my secret. He knew me right away.”

  “You were the one stealing all those eggs!” said Benny.

  Andy laughed. “Well, they were really my own eggs, you see. Half that Bean farm belongs to me.”

  “What will your brother say?” asked Henry. “You have been away so long.”

  “I don’t want the farm,” Andy said. “Don’t you worry about me. The only thing is Jane. If she wants me to stay, that’s all I care about.”

  They soon drove up to their own back door. “Oh, dear!” said Violet, “This is going to be so hard for Aunt Jane. She thinks you may be dead. She isn’t very strong.”

  “That’s one reason I came home,” said Andy. “I’m strong enough for two.”

  And he looked it.

  Aunt Jane was sitting in her long chair in the back yard. She was shelling peas. She looked up at the children. Then she saw the stranger smiling at her. Her face changed. She cried, “Andy! Andy! You did come back! Henry, get a chair!”

  “I don’t need a chair, Jane,” said Andy. He went over to the little lady and took her hand. “Glad to see me, Jane?”

  “Oh, yes! I’d know you anywhere. Will you stay?”

  “You bet I’ll stay!” said the tall man. “I have a long story to tell. But first I have something for you. Everywhere I went, I bought one of these for you.”

  He took the pan of shelled peas out of her lap and gave her a small bag. “Open it.”

  The children sat down on the grass. Andy sat down beside Aunt Jane. He did not seem old at all. Aunt Jane opened the bag and took out a box. She opened the box and looked in.

  “They look like old, old stones,” said Benny.

  “Very good, young feller,” said Andy. “That’s just what they are. Old, old stones.” He laughed.

  Aunt Jane picked one up and looked at it carefully. It was not round. It was not square. It was very different looking. But Jessie saw a flash as the stone turned. “It’s blue!” she said.

  “Yes, that one is blue,” said Andy. “It’s a sapphire. These stones are not cut. Just as they came from the ground. I got that one in India. Everywhere I went, I bought you a jewel, Jane. Look at this one!” He picked up a stone that flashed green.

  “An emerald!” said Aunt Jane. “It is enormous! These must have
cost you a fortune, Andrew.”

  “Well, I didn’t want a fortune,” said Andy. “I wanted adventure. But now I’m through with adventure.”

  “I don’t believe a word of it!” cried Aunt Jane, but she looked at Andy proudly.

  Benny said, “Why didn’t you come home long ago?”

  Andy said with a crooked smile, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Yes, I would,” said Benny nodding his head.

  “I was afraid of Jane,” said Andy, speaking quietly. “She’s a tiny little thing, but I was afraid of her. And she left, too, to go out West. What was there to come back for?”

  Jessie said, “I can understand. If Aunt Jane turned you down, you’d have nothing to live for.”

  “That is exactly right, young lady,” cried Andy. “You have a lot of good sense.”

  Aunt Jane looked at the jewels one by one. “For me?” she said. “I don’t need them all. Andy, let’s have the children each choose one to keep. I want them each to have a jewel.”

  “Oh, boy!” said Benny. “I can tell you what everyone will choose.”

  “All right. Go ahead, boy,” said Andy.

  “Jessie will take a blue sapphire, Violet will take a purple amethyst, Henry will take a green emerald, and I will take a red ruby.”

  “Right!” shouted everyone.

  “There is a fortune in that box, sure enough,” said Andy. “But I found something under the woodshed that I think is more exciting.”

  “Always looking for excitement, Andy,” said Aunt Jane smiling.

  “Yes, I suppose I always will be,” said Andy. “But I am glad to stay at home now. I shall find plenty of excitement right here.”

  “When are you going to show us what you found in the woodshed?” asked Benny.

  “Oh, let’s wait!” Jessie said, looking at Aunt Jane and Andy Bean. “I’m sure that everyone is hungry.”

  “Thank you,” said Andy. “I am hungry. What I found can wait a little longer.”

  “Mercy!” cried Aunt Jane. “Andy’s hungry! Benny, run and tell Maggie to have lunch just as soon as she can.”

  “No eggs!” Andrew called after him. “I’m sick of eggs.”

  “I’ll tell Maggie,” shouted Benny. “But I’m sure lunch isn’t all eggs anyway!”

  CHAPTER 15

  Letter from Long Ago

  Maggie did not have eggs for lunch. She had a good meal for a strong man. She had cold meat and a hot dish of macaroni and cheese. Andy ate as if he were half starved.

  “I’ve had cold food for a long time,” he said. “Even raw eggs.”

  “We’ll soon fix that,” said Aunt Jane. She loved to see him eat.

  Benny said, “Right after lunch are you going to show us that thing you found?”

  “Right! Just as soon as lunch is over. I have it right here in my pocket. Maybe you won’t think much of it. But I do.”

  “I’m sure we will,” said Jessie, “if you found it in the woodshed. That’s an exciting place.”

  “Yes, and so is your own cellar,” said Andrew.

  At last he could not eat any more. He said, “All right. Come out in the yard again and see my treasure. This is in a bag too.”

  When Aunt Jane was in her chair, Andy gave her a leather bag.

  “What a funny looking bag!” said Benny. “It must be very old.”

  Aunt Jane opened the bag. It was stained and ready to fall apart. Inside was another piece of leather. Inside that was an old paper covered with writing.

  “The ink is brown,” said Violet.

  Aunt Jane carefully unfolded the paper. “It is dated June, 1775,” she said. “Shall I read it?”

  “Yes,” said Benny. “Just as quick as you can.”

  Now at last the whole story would be told.

  So Aunt Jane began to read. She read slowly because sometimes the writing was hard to read.

  My name is Mary Cooper and my husband is called James. I am telling my true story just as it happened. When the war is over, I hope someone will find it. Then they will know why we did what we did. My husband and I love this country and we want it to be free. But we are in great danger. We are storing ammunition on our farm. A man who loves liberty came and asked my husband if we would do this, and he said yes.

  Where could we hide it? We thought of two places. One was in a woodshed on the hill. The other was in our cellar in the potato pit.

  One night James said to me, “Mary, the men who come here with ammunition are in danger. Perhaps we could hide them somewhere.”

  “In the same place with the guns and bullets,” I said.

  So we began to dig under the woodshed to make a place to hide the men. We had to work at night. I went with James and helped him dig. It was very hard, but at last we had a big hole. We put in a stool and a candle. Then we dug another hole in the potato pit. This was harder. James made a door to look like the stones. But it was very good. I could hardly see it myself.

  One night there was a great knocking on our door. We got up and went to the door. There stood a Redcoat holding a poor man by the arms.

  The Redcoat said, “I caught this man hiding ammunition. We want to know if there were others with him.”

  James said, “I have not seen anyone.”

  I said, “Bring the poor man into the kitchen. He looks half dead.”

  The man laughed. “Soon he will be dead. I am taking him to Boston. He will be hanged as he deserves.”

  “I have a plan,” said my husband. “Let us talk it over. You will want a horse and food. Put this man down in my cellar. There is no door to the outside, so he cannot run away.”

  “How can I believe you?” asked the soldier.

  “Here,” said James, “take these two chairs. You and I will sit at the head of the cellar stairs by this door. We will know if he comes up.”

  When the poor man was thrown down the cellar stairs, James whispered to him “Potato pit.” How I hoped he would understand! We had planned to dig a tunnel from the cellar to the woodshed, but it was too hard.

  James had to give a horse to the Redcoat. He would have been shot if he had not. I went out to the barn and got the horse out. We owned four horses. Then the Redcoat went to the cellar stairs and called, “Come up, you!” But nobody came. We all went down the cellar. The Redcoat hunted and hunted. He said to James, “You have let him escape.”

  James said truly, “You sat right here yourself all the time. There is no other door to the outside.”

  The Redcoat was angry. He could not find the poor man. So he rode away. He said he would come back, but he never did.

  When he had gone, we took the poor man upstairs to the kitchen and gave him food. Then we told him to hide in the hole under the woodshed until we came for him. That night we went up and got him. We gave him a horse and the ammunition and he rode away and we never saw him again, either.

  We hid many men in those two places. I am so unhappy that we could not be friendly with our neighbors. But we were afraid someone would tell what we were doing. We never let anyone come to see us and we never went to see anyone, so we lost all the friends we had. In those days we could not tell who was a friend and who was an enemy. I hope we did our share to make this country free, but in doing so, we lost all our friends.

  MARY COOPER

  Of course Benny was the first to speak. He said, “Isn’t that too bad? To lose all their friends? But they helped win the war, that’s sure. Did you find this in the woodshed?”

  “I found that long ago, young feller! I have carried it with me all these years.”

  “How did you find the hole under the woodshed, Andrew?” asked Aunt Jane.

  “Easy, I went up there one day and I went in and looked it over. I thought the floor looked queer, so I found the cover and went down into the hole. I found the flintlock and bullets and this bag. I tried to make Jane come and see it, but she wouldn’t go.”

  “I do remember,” said Aunt Jane. “But you were always up t
o some new trick, so I wouldn’t go. I’m sorry now.”

  “Never mind, Jane. The past is past. One day I went down to get potatoes for your mother and I found that hole, too. I wanted to tell somebody, but I didn’t dare. At last I showed the gun to John Cole, but he wasn’t interested. He said he didn’t know how to shoot it. He wasn’t interested in the story, either. So I didn’t even read it to him.”

  Henry looked thoughtful. “I think I see now,” he said. “Way back, Mary Cooper acted so queerly that at last no one had anything to do with her. I suppose people began to make up stories to explain why they wouldn’t go to the Cooper place. Finally I expect that no one remembered how it all started. People just knew there was something mysterious about the farm. And if anything new went wrong, someone was always ready to say, ‘Well, what can you expect?’“

  Andrew looked at Henry and nodded. “I think you understand the people around here. Sometimes they act just that way.”

  “All those ideas about something wrong with this place lasted a long, long time,” said Jessie. “We’ll have to tell the real story now.”

  “Don’t worry!” cried Andrew. “When people see me, the story will go like wild fire. It may even be in the Sunday papers!”

  Aunt Jane was laughing. “You’ll put it in the Sunday papers yourself! My, my! It will be exciting living with you, Andy!”

  “What?” cried Andy. “Did you say living with me, Jane? You kids just run off and let me talk to your aunt!”

  In one minute the young Aldens were on the other side of the house. They sat down on the back step. Maggie came to the door. “Is Miss Jane all right?” she asked.

  “She’s fine,” said Benny. “I think she’s going to marry Andy Bean. Then she’ll be Mrs. Bean after all.”

  “I hope so,” said Maggie.

  “Do you?” asked Jessie.

  “Yes, I do. I feel homesick for the West. Sam and his wife feel the same way. If Miss Jane was in good hands, we’d all go back to the ranch country.”

  Henry said, “Andy won’t be a very good farmer, but he’s a strong man and Aunt Jane can hire men to run the farm.”

  “I just wonder what Andy will find for excitement up here?” said Jessie.