Bob put down the milk pails to listen, and Wapley took a step toward Mr. Peabody, his face working convulsively.
“You cheater!” he gasped. “You miserable sneak! You’ve held back money all season, just to keep us working through harvest. If I had a gun I’d shoot you!”
The man was in a terrible rage, and Betty wondered how Mr. Peabody could face him so calmly. Suddenly she saw something glitter in his hand.
“I’ve got my pistol right here,” he said, raising his hand to wave the blunt-nosed revolver toward Wapley. “I’ll give you two just three minutes to get off this place. Go on—I said go!”
Wapley whirled about and saw the milk pails. He seized one in either hand, raised them high above his head and dashed the contents furiously over Bob, Mr. Peabody, the steps and the porch impartially, sprinkling himself and Lieson liberally, too.
“I never knew how much milk those cows gave,” Bob said later. “Seems like there must have been a regular ocean let loose.”
Mr. Peabody was furious and very likely would have fired, but Bob put out his foot and tripped him, though he managed to pass the matter off as an accident. Wapley and Lieson trudged slowly up the lane, carrying the heavy cheap leather suitcases. Betty watched them as far as she could see them, feeling inexpressibly sorry for the two who had worked through the long hot summer and were now leaving an unpleasant place with what she feared was only a too well-founded grievance.
“Some of you women,” Peabody included Betty in the magnificent gesture, “get to work out there and clean up the milk. There’s several pounds of butter lost, thanks to those no-’count fools. I’m going after my gun.”
“Gun?” faltered Mrs. Peabody.
“Yes, gun,” snapped her husband. “I don’t suppose it occurs to you those idiots may take it into their heads to come back and burn the barns? Bob and me will sit up all night and try to save the cattle, at least.”
Bob was furious at the idea of playing lookout all night, and he was in the frame of mind by early morning where he probably would have cheerfully supplied any arson-plotters with the necessary match. But nothing happened, and very cross and sleepy, he and Mr. Peabody came in to breakfast as usual.
Betty, too, had not slept well, having wakened and pattered to the window many times to see if the barns were blazing. Indeed, if Lieson and Wapley had deliberately planned to upset the Peabody family, they could not have succeeded better.
Bob made up his lost sleep the next night, but his appetite came in for Mr. Peabody’s criticism.
“You seem to be aiming to eat me out of house and home,” he observed at dinner a day or two later. “You don’t have to eat everything in sight, you know. There’ll be another meal later.”
Bob blushed violently, not because of the reproof, for he was used to that, but because of the public disgrace. Betty, the cause of his distress, was as uncomfortable as he, and she experienced an un-Christianlike impulse to throw the dish of beans at the head of her host.
The following day Bob did not come in to dinner, and Betty, thinking perhaps that he had not heard Mrs. Peabody call, rose from the table with the intention of calling him a second time.
“Where are you going?” demanded Mr. Peabody suspiciously.
“To call Bob to dinner,” said Betty. “I’m afraid he didn’t hear Mrs. Peabody. The meat will be all cold.”
“You sit down, and don’t take things on yourself that are none of your concern,” commanded Mr. Peabody shortly. “Bob isn’t here for dinner, because I told him not to come. He’s getting too big to thrash, and the only way to bring him to terms is to cut down his food. Living too high makes him difficult to handle. This morning he flatly disobeyed me, but I guess he’ll learn not to do that again. Well, Miss, don’t swallow your impudence. Out with it!”
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE NAME OF DISCIPLINE
Betty opened her mouth to speak hotly, then closed it again. Argument was useless, and the distressed expression on Mrs. Peabody’s face reminded the girl that it takes two to make a quarrel.
Dinner was finished in silence, and as soon as he had finished Mr. Peabody strode off to the barn.
A plan that had been forming in Betty’s mind took concrete form, and as she helped clear the table she did not carry all the food down cellar to the swinging shelf, but made several trips to one of the window sills. Then, after the last dish was wiped and Mrs. Peabody had gone upstairs to lie down, for her strength was markedly slow in returning, Betty slipped out to the cellar window, reached in and got her plate, and, carefully assuring herself that Mr. Peabody was nowhere in sight, flew down the road to where she knew Bob was trimming underbrush.
“Gee, but you’re a good little pal, Betty,” said the boy gratefully, as she came up to him. “I’m about starved to death, that’s a fact.”
“There isn’t much there—just bread and potatoes and some corn,” said Betty hurriedly. “Eat it quick, Bob. I didn’t dare touch the meat, because it would be noticed at supper. Seems to me we have less to eat than ever.”
“Can’t you see it’s because Wapley and Lieson are gone?” demanded Bob, his mouth full. “We’re lucky to get anything at all to eat. Your cupboard all bare?”
“Haven’t a single can of anything, nor one box of crackers,” Betty announced dolefully. “The worst of it is, I haven’t a cent of money. What can be the reason Uncle Dick doesn’t write?”
“Oh, you’ll hear before very long. Jumping around the way he does, he can’t write a letter every day,” returned Bob absently.
He handed back the plate to Betty and picked up his scythe.
“Don’t let old Peabody catch you with that plate,” he warned her. “He’s got a fierce grouch on today, because the road commissioners notified him to get this trimming done. He’s so mean he hates to take any time off the farm to do road work.”
Betty went happily back to the house, forgetting to be cautious in her satisfaction of getting food to Bob, and at the kitchen door she walked plump into Mr. Peabody.
“So that’s what you’ve been up to!” he remarked unpleasantly. “Sneaking food out to that no-’count, lazy boy! I’ll teach you to be so free with what isn’t yours and to upset my discipline. Set that plate on the table!”
Betty obeyed, rather frightened.
“Now you come along with me.” And, grasping her arm by the elbow, Mr. Peabody marched her upstairs to her own room very much as though she were a rebellious prisoner he had captured.
“Sit down in that chair, and don’t let me hear a word out of you,” said the farmer, pushing her none too gently into the single chair the room contained.
From his pocket he drew a handful of nails, and, using the door weight as a hammer, he proceeded deliberately to nail up the window that opened on to the porch roof.
“Now there’ll be no running away,” he commented grimly, when he had finished. “Give kids what’s coming to ’em, and they flare up and try to wriggle out of it. You’ll stay right here and do a little thinking till I’m ready to tell you different. It’s time you learned who’s running this house.”
He went out, and Betty heard him turn a key in the lock as he closed the door.
“So he’s carried a key all the time!” cried the girl furiously. “I thought there wasn’t any for that door! And the idea of speaking to me as he did—the miserable old curmudgeon!”
She supposed she would have to stay locked in till it suited Mr. Peabody to release her, and quite likely she would have nothing to eat. If he could punish Bob in that fashion, there was no reason to think he intended to be any more lenient with her.
“Even bread and water would be better than nothing at all,” said Betty aloud.
The sound of wheels attracted her attention, and she peered through the window to see Mr. Peabody in conversation with a stranger who had driven in with a horse and buggy.
Mrs. Peabody was stirring, and presently Betty heard her go downstairs, and a few minutes later she came out
into the yard ready to feed her chickens.
“Don’t let the hens out in the morning,” ordered Mr. Peabody, meeting her directly under Betty’s open window. The girl knelt down to listen, angry and resentful. “Ryerson was just here, and I’ve sold the whole yard to him. I want to try Wyandottes next. He’ll be over about ten in the morning, and it won’t hurt to keep them in the henhouses till then.”
“Oh, Joseph!” Mrs. Peabody’s voice was reproachful. “I’ve just got those hens ready to be good layers this fall. You don’t know how I’ve worked over ’em, and culled the best and sprayed those dirty old houses and kept ’em clean and disinfected. I don’t want to try a new breed. I want a little of the money these will earn this winter.”
“Well, this happens to be my farm and my livestock,” replied her husband cruelly. “If I see a chance to improve the strain, I’m going to take it. You just do as I say, and don’t let the hens out to-morrow morning.”
His wife dragged herself out to the chicken yard, her brief insistence having completely collapsed. The girl listening wondered how any woman could give in so easily to such palpable injustice.
“I suppose she doesn’t care,” thought Betty, stumbling on the heart of the matter blindly. “If she did have her own way, that wouldn’t change him; he’d still be mean and small and not very honest and she’d have to despise him just as much as ever. Things wouldn’t make up to her for the kind of man her husband is.”
Supper time came and went, and the odor of frying potatoes came up to Betty in delicious whiffs, though she had been known to turn up her little freckled nose when this dish was passed to her.
About eight o’clock Mr. Peabody unlocked the door and set inside a plate of very dry bread and a small pitcher of water, locking the door after him. Betty slid the bolt angrily and this gave her some satisfaction. She ate her bread and water and listened for a while at the window, hoping to hear Bob’s whistle. But nothing disturbed the velvety silence of the night, and by half-past nine Betty was undressed and in bed, asleep.
She woke early, as usual, dressed and unbolted her door, hungry enough to be humble. But no bread and water arrived.
The rattle of milk pails and the sounds which indicated that breakfast was in progress ceased after a while and the house seemed unusually quiet. Then, just as Betty decided to try tying the bedclothes into a rope and lowering herself from the window, she heard Bob’s familiar whistle.
“Hello, Princess Golden Hair!” Bob grinned up at her from the old shelter of the lilac bush. “Let down your hair, and I’ll send you up some breakfast.”
This was an old joke with them, because Betty’s hair was dark, and while thick and smooth was not especially long.
“I want you to help me get out of here!” hissed Betty furiously. “I won’t stay locked in here like a naughty little child. Can’t you get me a ladder or something, Bob, and not stand there like an idiot?”
“Gee, you are hungry,” said Bob with commiseration. “Dangle me down a string, Princess, and I’ll send you up some bread with butter on it. I helped myself to both. We can talk while you eat.”
Betty managed to find a strong, long string, and she threw one end down to Bob, who tied the packet to it; then Betty hauled it up and fell upon the food ravenously.
“I got you into this pickle,” said Bob regretfully. “Old Peabody licked me for good measure last night, or I would have been round at this window trying to talk to you. Awfully sorry, Betty. It must be hot, too, with that other window nailed up.”
“Do you mean he whipped you?” gasped Betty, horrified. “Why? And what did you do yesterday?”
“Oh, yesterday I wouldn’t back him up in a lie he tried to tell the road commissioner,” said Bob cheerfully. “And last night I sassed him when I heard what he’d done to you. So we had an old-fashioned session in the woodshed. But that’s nothing for you to worry over.”
“Where is he now?” asked Betty fearfully.
“Gone over to Kepplers to see about buying more chickens,” answered Bob. “Mrs. Peabody has gone to salt the sheep, and I’m supposed to be cleaning harness in the barn.”
“Get me a ladder—now’s my time!” planned Betty swiftly. “I could bob my hair and you might lend me a pair of overalls, Bob. For I simply won’t come back here. It’s too far to jump to the ground, or I should have tried it. Hurry up, and bring me a ladder.”
“I’ll get a ladder on one condition,” announced Bob stubbornly. “You must promise to go to Doctor Guerin’s. Not cutting your hair and wandering around the country in boy’s clothes. Promise?”
Betty shook her head obstinately.
“All right, you stay where you are,” decreed Bob. “I have to go to Laurel Grove, anyway, and I ought to be hitching up right now.”
He turned away.
“All right, I promise,” capitulated Betty, “Hurry with the ladder before Mr. Peabody comes back and catches us.”
Bob ran to the barn and was back in a few minutes with a long ladder.
CHAPTER XIX
THE ESCAPE
Betty capered exultantly when she was on the ground.
“I packed my things last night,” she informed Bob. “If Mr. Peabody isn’t too mean, he’ll keep the trunk for me and send it when I write him to. Here, I’ll help you carry back the ladder.”
“Take your sweater and hat,” advised the practical Bob, pointing to these articles lying on a chair on the porch where Betty had left them the afternoon before. “You don’t want to travel too light. I think we’ll have a storm before noon.”
Betty helped carry the ladder back to the barn and put it in place. Then she hung around watching Bob harness up the sorrel to the dilapidated old wagon preparatory to driving to Laurel Grove, a town to the east of Glenside.
“I’d kind of like to say good-bye to Mrs. Peabody,” ventured Betty, trying to fix a buckle.
“Well, you can’t. That would get us both in trouble,” returned Bob shortly. “There! you’ve dawdled till here comes the old man. Scoot out the side door and keep close to the hedge. If I overtake you before you get to the crossroads I’ll give you a lift. Doc Guerin will know what you ought to do.”
Her heart quaking, Betty scuttled for the narrow side door and crept down the lane, keeping close to the osage orange hedge that made a thick screen for the fence. Evidently she was not seen, for she reached the main road safely, hearing no hue and cry behind her.
“So you haven’t started?” Peabody greeted the somewhat flustered Bob, entering the barn and looking, for him, almost amiable. “Well, hitch the horse, and go over to Kepplers. He wants you to help him catch a crate of chickens. The horse can wait and you can come home at twelve and go to Laurel Grove after dinner.”
Bob would have preferred to start on his errand at once, so that he might be at a safe distance when Betty’s absence should be discovered; but he hoped that Peabody might not go near her room till afternoon, and he knew Mrs. Peabody was too thoroughly cowed to try to communicate with Betty, fond as she was of her.
“I’ll take a chance,” thought Bob. “Anyway, the worst he can do to me is to kill me.”
This not especially cheerful observation had seen Bob through many a tight place in the past, and now he tied the patient horse under a shady tree and went whistling over to the Keppler farm to chase chickens for a hot morning’s work.
“Oh, Bob!” To his amazement, Mrs. Peabody came running to meet him when he came back at noon to get his dinner. “Oh, Bob!”
Poor Bob felt a wobbling sensation in his knees.
“Yes?” he asked shakily. “Yes, what is it?”
“The most awful thing has happened!” Mrs. Peabody wiped the perspiration from her forehead with her apron. “The most awful thing! I never saw Joseph in such a temper, never! He swore till I thought he’d shrivel up the grass! And before Mr. Ryerson, too!”
Bob’s face cleared.
“Did he try to cheat Ryerson?” he asked eagerly. “That is, er—I mean
did he think Ryerson was trying to cheat him?”
“Cheat?” repeated Mrs. Peabody, sitting down on an old tree stump to get her breath. “No one said anything about cheating. I don’t know exactly how to tell you, Bob. Betty has gone and she’s taken all the chickens with her!”
Bob opened his eyes and mouth to their widest extent. Chickens! Betty! The words danced through his brain stupidly.
“I don’t wonder you look like that,” said Mrs. Peabody. “I was in a daze myself.”
“But she couldn’t have taken the chickens!” argued Bob, restraining a mad desire to laugh. “How could she? And what would she want with them?”
“Well, of course, I don’t mean she took them with her,” admitted Mrs. Peabody. “But she was mad at Joseph, you know, for locking her in her room, and he says she’s just driven the hens off to the woods to spite him.”
Bob walked out to the poultry yard, followed by Mrs. Peabody. The doors of the henhouses were flung wide open, and there was not a fowl in sight.
“When did you find it out?” he asked.
“When Mr. Ryerson drove in for the hens,” answered Mrs. Peabody. “Joseph went out with him to help him bag ’em, and the minute he opened the door he gave a yell. I was making beds, but I heard him. The way he carried on, Bob, was a perfect scandal. I never heard such talk, never!”
“Where is he now?” said Bob briefly.
“He’s gone over to the woods, hunting for the hens,” replied Mrs. Peabody. “He wouldn’t stop for dinner, or even to take the horse. He says you’re to start for Laurel Grove, soon as you’ve eaten. He’s going to search the woods and then follow the Glenside road, looking for Betty.”
Bob did not worry over the possibility of Betty being overtaken by the angry farmer. He counted on her getting a lift to Glenside, since the road was well traveled in the morning, and probably she was at this very moment sitting down to lunch with the doctor’s family. He was puzzled about the loss of the chickens, and curious to know how the Peabodys had discovered Betty’s escape.
The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 194