Secret Signs

by Shelley Hrdlitschka

  “Of course I’ve ridden the rods,” he blustered, not knowing what the rods were, let alone how to ride them. “It’s been a while, that’s all.”

  “Is that a fact?” The hobo stuck a fresh plug of chewing tobacco in his cheek.

  Henry felt a little foolish, but it was too late now. “I used to ride all the time, but that was ages ago, when I was just a kid. Remind me again how it’s done?”

  Clickety Clack roared with laughter, almost spewing his tobacco into the dirt. “You forget, do you? Well now, don’t that beat all. You plan on hopping a freight to Calgary? Because that’s about the only way a pup like you is going to make it out there. I was thinking of heading to Calgary myself, but I have to plan for it. It’s a long way.”

  Henry knew the jig was up. “So what would it cost for you to take me with you?”

  Clickety Clack spat a new gob into the dirt. “I travel alone, boy.” A greedy gleam came into his eye. “But for curiosity’s sake, what do you have?”

  Henry thought of the five one-dollar bills in his pocket. He also remembered the desperate farmer who’d tried to rob him. He wasn’t going to trust this old man for a minute. “I’ll pay you five dollars cash to take me to Calgary.” The mention of money immediately got the tramp’s attention.

  “You have that much on you? Where you hiding it?” Clickety Clack’s hungry eyes went to Henry’s book bag.

  “All you need to know is that I won’t pay until we get to the Glenmore Dam.” Henry stuck his chin out defiantly. He wouldn’t be tricked again.

  “That’s a long way to go on faith, boy. I’ll have to see it before I take a step.” Clickety Clack clasped his hands as though praying.

  Hesitantly, Henry pulled the cash out of his pocket for the hobo’s inspection.

  Clickety Clack reached out a gnarled hand, but Henry snatched the bills back. “Is it a deal?”

  The hobo rubbed his bristly chin. “Deal!” He grinned, then spat into his dirty palm and held it out for Henry to shake.

  Reluctantly, Henry clasped the hobo’s disgusting hand to seal the bargain.

  This was not how he’d imagined today would go. He’d thought by tonight he’d

  be eating dinner with his father, but instead it looked like he’d be with this raggedy tramp, hopping a freight train to Alberta!

  CHAPTER 6

  “Okay, boy, this is where we catch our ride. As soon as I spot a train heading for Alberta, we wait for it to start rolling, then it’s all aboard.” Clickety Clack stuck a fresh plug of tobacco in his mouth and settled in to wait.

  They’d managed to sneak through a hole in the fence at the railway yards and were hiding near the tracks. It was well after noon, but the June sun was still a blistering ball in the clear blue sky.

  “And how do you know which train is going to Alberta?” Henry asked his gruff guide.

  Clickety Clack winked at Henry. “That’s why you’re paying me the big bucks, boy.” Several trains went by but the hobo ignored them.

  Bored with the endless waiting, Henry absently reached into his pocket and felt something wedged in the bottom. He pulled out the stub of red crayon he’d used to leave the hobo sign for his pa. As he doodled on the fence, he saw that his drawing resembled a locomotive. Henry blinked.

  Why, he’d created a hobo sign! This one would let other boys know they could catch a train here. Henry wondered if there were any other boys in the world having adventures like his.

  Clickety Clack glanced at Henry’s drawing, narrowed his eyes and grunted.

  Henry watched the engines pull into the yard, then slow to a stop with a loud whoosh and a huge cloud of billowing steam. He wondered if they were ever going to find a train bound for Alberta. “Which one are we going to take?” he asked impatiently.

  A noise from the far side of a stationary boxcar made Clickety Clack grab Henry’s arm. “Hush up, boy!”

  “What’s wrong?” Henry asked.

  “Quiet! Over there, behind that boxcar— bulls.” Clickety Clack crouched even lower behind the large wooden crate they’d been using for cover.

  Henry couldn’t imagine why livestock would be roaming loose in a train yard, but when he stood to get a better look, Clickety Clack yanked him down.

  “Didn’t you hear me? I said there are two bulls behind that car and they’ve got a dog. Do you want us to get our heads busted open?”

  The alarm in the hobo’s voice alerted Henry to the seriousness of the situation. “We’re not talking about cattle, are we?”

  Clickety Clack shook his head. “No, fool! I’m talking about the meanest, toughest, worst kind of two-legged critter that ever walked the earth—railway police. Why, those guards would as soon crack your skull as give you the time of day. If they catch us, we’re dead meat. We’ve got to hide.”

  Henry glanced around. “Hide? Where?”

  Clickety Clack spat out a messy glob of greenish brown ooze. “Over there, in that water tank. The dog can’t track our scent once we’re in the water. Come on!” Clickety Clack made a dash for the tall wooden tower.

  Henry followed reluctantly, fear making his feet drag. Did the old man really expect him to climb inside this huge vat and hang there like a rat in a water bucket?

  “Come on, I’ll give you a leg up onto the ladder.” Clickety Clack made a cradle out of his hands and lowered himself so Henry could get a boost.

  “I—I don’t want to,” Henry stammered, taking a step backward.

  The hobo frowned, then rubbed his whiskers. “Oh, I get it. You can’t swim. Don’t worry, boy. I can’t swim a stroke either, but we won’t be in for long and we can hang on to the top.”

  Henry clenched his teeth. “No. I won’t do it.”

  The hobo clambered onto the ladder that ran up the side of the water tank. “I’m telling you, it ain’t safe out here. Now come on before you get us both beat up.” He scrambled up the rungs with surprising speed and disappeared over the edge.

  Henry looked behind him. The guards were almost at the end of the boxcar nearest him. He had to hide, but not in that water-filled casket!

  He sprinted for a tall stack of crates at the end of the narrow alley between the rows of cars. Darting behind the wooden boxes, he ducked as two burly railway policemen rounded the end of the freight car. With them was a huge dog with a hungry gleam in its beady black eyes.

  Henry’s breath caught when he saw the vicious-looking beast. As the guards passed the crate where Henry and Clickety Clack had been hiding seconds before, the big dog stopped.

  Its nose dropped to the ground. It sniffed a couple of times, then lifted its huge head to stare at where Henry was hiding.

  Henry edged farther away as the dog padded toward him. He increased his speed as the two guards followed the dog.

  Ducking under a boxcar, Henry ran to the next set of tracks and squeezed between two more cars. He snatched a look over his shoulder. Having caught his scent, the animal was now loping after him, foam-flecked drool sliding in slimy trails out of its massive jaws.

  Henry sprinted to the edge of the train yard and came up against the high fence that he and Clickety Clack had found their way through earlier. Turning, he saw the animal closing on him. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide! Frantically, he dug through his book bag. His fingers closed around the remains of his food.

  He tore off a piece of cheese and tossed it on the ground. The dog halted its headlong attack, sniffed the tidbit and then slopped it up. Henry held out the rest of his food. The dog stopped, lifted one paw off the ground and whiffled the air.

  “Nice doggy,” Henry murmured. “Good boy, you want a tasty treat?”

  The dog stepped closer. Henry waved the snack invitingly. “Then go get it!” He threw the food as far as he could, then sprinted in the opposite direction. As he crawled under a boxcar, he heard the dog scramble after his lunch. He also saw the two policemen running to where he’d been only seconds before.

  Henry raced to the water tower. “Clic
kety Clack!” he called in a loud whisper. The old hobo’s head peered over the edge of the tank. “Come on! We’ve got to make a run for it! The dog thinks I’m a lunch wagon, and he’ll bring his two buddies with him.”

  Clickety Clack was out of the water and down the ladder in a twinkling. “Come on, boy. We’ve got a train to catch!”

  Squelching with every step, Clickety Clack headed toward an engine that was making its way out of the big train yard, a long parade of boxcars in tow. “Do exactly what I do and keep your feet away from the rails!” he yelled as he ran alongside the slowly moving train.

  Henry’s heart pounded as the powerful steam engine shook the ground.

  An open boxcar drew up alongside Clickety Clack. He tossed his bedroll in through the opening, then grabbed hold of the door edge and leapt aboard. “Jump!”

  Henry looked behind him. The two policemen and the huge guard dog were closing in. The dog bared its teeth and snapped its powerful jaws as it tore after them.

  Reaching up as he ran, Henry’s fingers were only inches from Clickety Clack’s outstretched arm as the train pulled away. In a last desperate effort, Henry lunged forward and clasped the hobo’s hand, and with a mighty heave, Clickety Clack yanked him through the open door.

  They were safe!

  Henry lay sprawled on the dusty wooden floor, gasping.

  Clickety Clack pulled himself to his feet and spat out the open door as he waved goodbye to the posse that had been chasing them. “So long, suckers!”

  Henry sighed with relief. He felt the train vibrating beneath him in a steady rhythm as it carried them west.

  This was not how he’d imagined today would go, but soon he would be with his father in Alberta, and vicious dogs, angry policemen and leaping aboard moving boxcars would all be behind him.

  CHAPTER 7

  Lulled by the constant swaying of the train as it carried them west into Saskatchewan, Henry imagined he was on a riverboat. The steel rails were his river, and the boxcar his paddle wheeler. He was steaming down the Mississippi, just like his hero, Tom Sawyer. Life was grand!

  Henry thought about writing Anne her very first letter, then decided she could wait and pulled his novel out instead. He sat at the edge of the door, rereading a favorite chapter of Tom’s adventures, but his attention was drawn to the miles of parched fields he was traveling through.

  He remembered his teacher talking about John Palliser’s Triangle, which stretched across much of southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and into parts of Manitoba. The Triangle had dry sandy soil, no trees, and grassland that spread out to the horizon. In his mind’s eye he could see a vast ocean of gently waving prairie grass, but now, in the searing heat of a drought, all that was left was burnt scrub and swirling dust devils.

  Clickety Clack snored loudly as he slept on the boxcar floor. Henry looked around his temporary transport. The dusty wooden freight car was old and smelled of oil. It was not a place he wanted to spend much time in, that was certain.

  He went back to watching the world pass by, mesmerized by the landscape.

  Groaning loudly, Clickety Clack roused himself from his afternoon nap. “Well now, I’d say we need a little snack. I’m feeling a might peckish. Where’s my old turkey?” He groped around for his bedroll, which had served as a pillow while he slept. “Let’s have a look.” Out of the rolled-up blanket came an assortment of food including a couple of squashed buns, a piece of beef jerky and two hard-boiled eggs.

  Henry’s stomach rumbled.

  Clickety Clack laid out the feast on an old handkerchief that had materialized from one of his pockets. It was then that Henry realized why the hobo had so many pockets. He was wearing two coats, one over top of the other!

  The tramp looked at him. “Where’s your grub, boy? We’ll eat now and go to the bread line in Regina when we get there tonight.”

  Henry sighed. “I had to feed it to the guard dog to get away.”

  Clickety Clack stared at him. “You gave all your food to that hairy beast? Why didn’t you throw part of it and keep some for yourself? Kind of shortsighted, wouldn’t you say, boy?”

  Henry’s temper flared. “I didn’t know I was going to have to run for my life or I might have been more prepared. No one told me about the railway bulls and their boy-eating dog.”

  “And if you’d done what I said in the first place and climbed into that water tower, you could have kept all your food and still escaped.” Clickety Clack tapped the shell of his hard-boiled egg with a jackknife that had magically appeared; he then pulled a tiny tin of salt out of yet another pocket. “Too bad, but I don’t have enough to feed you and me both. I guess you’ll have to wait till tonight.” He peeled the egg and sprinkled it liberally with salt before greedily chomping into it.

  “Fine with me! I’m not hungry anyway.” Henry’s stomach was gnawing on his backbone, but he wasn’t going to beg for food. Not him! He went back to reading his book.

  The elderly traveler continued to enjoy his meal. Henry swallowed; his mouth wouldn’t stop watering. He knew he shouldn’t look, but his eyes were drawn to the food.

  Clickety Clack glanced at him from under bushy gray eyebrows. “Oh, stop looking like the pigs ate your granny, boy. I reckon there’s enough here for two.” He tossed Henry an egg, followed by a bun and a sizable chunk of the jerky.

  Henry tried to look as though he didn’t care one way or the other. “I guess I could force it down.”

  They ate in silence while the miles slipped by in the lazy summer sunshine. A smudge on the horizon caught Henry’s eye, and he wondered what kind of dust storm it was. “There’s a strange…” he began.

  “Be quiet!” Clickety Clack looked up, listening intently.

  Then Henry heard it. A strange whirring sound filled the air.

  “We’re in for it now!” Scrambling to his feet, Clickety Clack hurried to the open door and tugged at it.

  At that moment, Henry saw them.

  Millions and millions of grasshoppers!

  With a hailstone rattle, the flying bugs hit the sides of the boxcar, plastering it with their slimy green bodies. The noise was deafening. Henry ran to help close the door. The grasshoppers smashed into his hair and face. He opened his mouth to yell, but his voice was drowned as insects filled his nose and throat. He couldn’t breathe, and panic gripped him as his mind flashed back to that terrifying day at the creek when he had almost died.

  He spat out the loathsome bugs and pulled on the door. It was jammed.

  Henry could see that the bottom track was plugged with dead grasshoppers. He dropped to his knees and frantically dug the gooey green mush out of the track.

  Clickety Clack heaved on the door, slamming it shut against the terrible storm. “This is not good. These little critters can strip a crop to the ground in minutes and drive cattle so wild that they stampede into fences.”

  Henry’s head came up. “Feel that? The train’s slowing down!” The car began to shudder. Then a horrible stench made his lunch rise in his throat. He clamped his hand over his nose. “What’s that awful stink?”

  Clickety Clack shook off several grass-hoppers that clung to his coat. “The wheels have squashed so many hoppers, we can smell the hot, oozing bug juice, and the reason we’re slowing down is because as the critters get ground up, the steel wheels lose traction on the slimy rails. They act like grasshopper grease.” He shook his head. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  As they waited, the sound of the laboring engine could be heard clearly above the drumming of the insects. Finally the train came to a complete stop, and the noise of bug bodies pounding into the boxcar gradually died away. Henry looked at Clickety Clack. “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing good for us,” the tramp answered as the train jolted forward and backward along the slick tracks. Finally the jerking motions stopped and the air grew ominously quiet.

  With the squeal of straining steel, Henry heard the engine start chugging again, slowly at first, then fast
er. He sighed with relief.

  This was not how he’d imagined today would go, but by tonight they’d be in Regina. Halfway to Calgary, halfway to finding his father. He braced himself for the hard snap that would come as their car rumbled into motion, but nothing happened. As Henry listened, the sound of the engine pulling away was distinct and frightening.

  CHAPTER 8

  “Grab your gear, boy. This is where we get off.” Clickety Clack slung the belt holding his bedroll over his shoulder.

  Henry was confused, but for once he did as he was told without argument. He knew if he was to survive, his best chance was to listen to the old hobo.

  They shoved the door open. The world was sunny again.

  Henry jumped down and looked around. Their car, along with a dozen others, was parked on a siding in the middle of the empty prairie. “The train left us! We’re stranded!” He heard the panic in his voice. “What are we going to do?”

  Clickety Clack spat out a gob of tobacco juice, which looked a lot like the grass-hopper guts Henry had scooped out of the door track. “You’re too soft, boy. The old road was spoiled is all, but we’ve got feet, don’t we?” he scoffed. “We can walk to Regina. It can’t be more than two or three days away.”

  Henry stared at him in disbelief. “Two or three days! Are you crazy?”

  Clickety Clack shot him a hard look. “Hold your tongue, boy. I’ve never taken guff from anyone, especially not a wet-behind-the-ears kid.”

  “And I’ve never been stuck in the middle of the bald prairie before! It’s, it’s…” Henry searched for the right word.

  “Terrifying?” Clickety Clack added helpfully.

  “Aggravating!” Henry groaned. “I was supposed to see my father tomorrow.”

  Clickety Clack threw back his head and gave a great roar of a laugh. “Well now, that’s life, boy. It doesn’t always go the way we plan, but once you’re on this ride there’s no getting off, so make the best of it.”