On Track for Treasure

by Wendy McClure

  “I’ll sleep in the barn,” Alexander told Mrs. Carey.

  “So will I,” said Nicky. “And also Jack, right?”

  Jack said yes, though he couldn’t bring himself to look Mrs. Carey in the eye.

  She seemed taken aback for a moment, but she said only, “Very well. You can wash up at the pump in the yard.”

  Anka took her piece of soap and went inside the house. Jack had figured the girls would want to stay in the house. But then George went in, too.

  That left only Frances and Harold. “Ma’am, my little brother thinks it would be fun to sleep in a barn,” she explained. “And, you know, I ought to look after him.”

  Jack was relieved that Frances and Harold weren’t going inside. Though, from the look on Harold’s face, Jack suspected that staying in the barn wasn’t really his idea. Mrs. Carey just smiled sweetly, though she looked a little sad.

  “Let me at least give you some blankets,” she told them. She turned and pulled out some woolen blankets from a trunk just inside the front door and handed them to Jack and Nicky.

  Nicky started to say “Thank you,” but broke into another coughing fit before he could get out the words. He’d always coughed a little, but he seemed to be having more spells ever since they’d left Kansas, and the dust of the train car and the smog around the depot couldn’t have helped any. Jack could hear him wheeze between coughs.

  “Oh my goodness,” Mrs. Carey said. She took his blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders. “You’d better not sleep in that musty barn. I’ve got some mint tea and honey that will help.”

  Nicky hesitated for a minute. Then another cough came on. “Okay,” he said, and Mrs. Carey led him inside. Jack couldn’t help but notice her face brighten as she brought another child into the house.

  The door swung shut with an efficient click. Jack, Frances, Harold, and Alexander looked around at one another, dumbstruck. Alexander managed a wry smile. “Citizens of Wanderville,” he said, “let’s head over to the barn.”

  12

  OUTSIDE THE HOUSE

  Alexander found a lantern in one of the horse stalls, and Jack was glad to learn that he still had matches in his pocket. After a moment, the lamp was lit, and the four set to work making a corner of the barn comfortable. Frances discovered some feed sacks to put down over the hay bales, and with the blankets on top they had some decent beds.

  They stepped back to admire their work. “Not bad for a barn,” Frances said.

  They heard a sudden laugh from behind them.

  “Not bad? Why, you’ve got it looking like a palace!”

  Jack turned and saw two figures watching them from the doorway. The woman was the one who’d spoken—the same one Jack had seen standing on her porch with the washtub that afternoon. She wore a faded work dress and a crooked grin. The man was in overalls; he was sunburned and had watery blue eyes.

  They were from the sharecropping families, Jack realized. The Reverend had explained that they worked on the Careys’ farmland in exchange for a portion of the crops.

  “So you’re the orphans. Preacher Carey said there’d be a few of you staying in the barn,” the man said. As he spoke, more new faces appeared in the doorway—some black, some white. There were about a dozen men, women, and children in all; and they wore worn work clothes and dungarees.

  “The name’s Clement Bay,” said the sunburned man. “I’m the fellow who first welcomes strangers around here.” He introduced them to his wife, Ella, and their baby girl, Liza, who was just starting to walk.

  The woman with the washtub was named Ora, and she shared a shanty with her son and his wife. “So you got nowhere in the world to go, but you ain’t staying in the preacher’s big house?” she asked.

  Jack shrugged. “I guess.”

  “They wanted us to promise not to tell lies,” Harold said, much to Frances’s embarrassment.

  Ora laughed deeply. “And you couldn’t promise that, could you?”

  Harold shrugged. “I guess not. Even though they have a whole room full of jars of jam. But Frances said the barn will be fun.”

  Jack liked these people. They reminded him of some of the kinder neighbors back in the New York tenements who’d look out for Jack and his brother on days when their father didn’t come home and their mother had to work. As he and Frances and Alexander said hello to each of the poor farmers, he glanced around to see if anyone was close to their age. The sharecropper children, though, seemed to be either older teenagers or toddlers and babies.

  Alexander must have been looking around for the same reason, because Jack heard him ask Ora, “Is that your grandson over there?”

  Jack turned and saw where his friend was pointing. Out past the barn entrance, over by the sharecroppers’ houses, a boy stood and watched them. Judging by his build, he seemed to be about ten, but his face looked older somehow. He bent to pick up a rock, aimed, and threw it hard in the direction of the chicken yard, making the birds scatter.

  “Oh, that’s Eli,” Ora said. “He’s Moses Pike’s boy. And he’s trouble.”

  Alexander nodded and began to walk toward the boy. Jack followed. But when Eli saw them coming, he turned on his heels and trudged back to his house.

  The sharecroppers went to bed early because their work began at sunrise. “You kids ought to turn in, too, if you got chores,” Clement had told them.

  Back in the barn, Alexander adjusted the flame lower on the lantern, Jack stretched out on his blanket, and Frances helped Harold unbutton his shoes.

  “Do we have to stay here for a long time?” Harold asked.

  Frances turned to Jack and Alexander. “That’s what I’d like to know.”

  This did nothing to calm Harold. “Is this like the ranch?” he cried. “Are they going to make us work?” He had one shoe off, and he wobbled on one leg in panic.

  His sister took him by the shoulders to steady him. “I think it’s different here, Harold.” She looked over at the two older boys again. “Right?”

  Jack nodded. “The Careys aren’t like the Pratcherds. They’re not cruel. They mean well, but . . .”

  “They just want things to be a certain way,” Alexander said.

  “I get it—while we’re here, we have to go by their rules,” Frances said. “But how long are we going to be here?”

  “Yes, Alexander, how long?” Jack added. The same question had been on his mind all evening. “I thought we were going to leave in the morning and find a train to California!”

  “Of course we’re still going to California!” Alexander snapped. “It’s just a question of when! Now that Nicky’s sick, that changes things a bit. We’ll just wait until he’s better, and we’ll talk to the others. . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “That’s just it,” Jack said. “What if the others don’t want to leave here?”

  “They will,” Alexander said firmly.

  Frances spoke up just then. “I don’t want to go on another train. Not yet . . .”

  Jack grinned. “I bet you want to go look for that crazy hobo treasure.”

  “Maybe!” Frances replied. “I mean, who knows? There might be something. It’s not crazy.” Her face turned red for a moment, but then she seemed to compose herself. “But . . . really I meant that we should stay away from trains for a while after all that trouble in Kansas City. These orphan trains—they’re going everywhere, and some busybody stationmaster could put us on another one. And what if Miss DeHaven is looking for us?”

  Harold nodded at that, and Jack had to agree that Frances had a point.

  “So you’re saying you’d rather go on a wild-goose chase to find Ned Handsome’s pot of gold?” Alexander said with a snort.

  “I think she’s saying,” Jack said, looking Alexander in the eye, “that we shouldn’t leave until we have a better plan.”

  “My plan got us this fa
r,” Alexander replied. “To a place where we’re safe and treated decently. Trust me, I’ll figure it out from here.”

  At that, he extinguished the lantern, and the four of them said their good-nights.

  Jack lay down facing the barn wall and pulled his blanket around his shoulders. He was beginning to think Alexander didn’t have a plan at all. Or that his only plan was to try to stay in charge.

  13

  A DAY OF WORK

  They woke to the noise of roosters and geese. Harold kept giggling at the clucking sounds, but Frances didn’t think they were so funny this early in the morning. From the looks of Jack and Alexander, who stumbled out of the barn behind her, neither did they.

  She splashed her face with cold water from the pump, then made her way to the yard between the barn and the house, where Mrs. Carey and one of her daughters (Frances thought it might be Eleanor) were setting out hard rolls and mugs of coffee for the sharecropping farmers.

  When Mrs. Carey saw Frances, she pulled her aside. “Here’s an old dress of Olive’s that should fit you,” she said, handing her a mug of milk and a bundle. “There’s no reason why you should keep wearing boys’ clothes.”

  Frances looked down at the breeches she’d been wearing for the past few days. She’d nearly forgotten that she’d had them on—she’d pulled them off a clothesline back in Whitmore just before they’d escaped.

  “Thank you, but it’s all right,” she said. “I . . . I think I’ll keep wearing these for now.” Frances thought about all the things she’d been able to do in trousers, like climb the side of a train. “I’d hate to get a nice dress dirty.”

  Mrs. Carey took the bundle back. “Maybe you’d like to wear it later,” she said, her voice hopeful. “And maybe you’d like to come live inside with the other girls soon. Just let me know.”

  Frances didn’t know what to say to that. She gulped down her milk, then mumbled another thank-you and hurried back to the barn.

  The morning went by quickly. First, Frances and the boys helped pump and carry water for the horse troughs. Then Jack and Alexander went off to put in fence posts while Frances and Harold tended the big garden. Clement showed them how to pull weeds and look for strawberries to pick. “Don’t eat too many,” he warned with a wink.

  “This is much better than that dumb beet field at the Pratcherds’,” Harold said, popping a fat berry into his mouth as they worked. “And everyone’s nicer, too.”

  Her brother was right. Nobody raised his or her voice, or snapped at them, or made threats. The one exception was a stubble-faced fellow named O’Reilly who had a loud, honking voice and a surly temper. He seemed to be the head farmhand, and when he passed the children by the garden he would gripe, “Just what we need! More brats running around!” But Frances was pretty sure they could stay clear of him.

  Her favorite job was in the orchard that afternoon, where she and Harold and the older boys were supposed to look through the apple trees and find branches for cutting. Reverend Carey came out from his study to show them how to locate the best branches—the ones with lots of leaves and buds at the tips—and then how to tie a strip of cloth around to mark them.

  “You may need to climb the trees,” the Reverend said. “That’s why you’re the best ones for the job.” Later, one of the farmers would come and cut the branches, he explained, and then use the cuttings to grow new saplings, or even graft them onto other trees.

  “Why can’t the apple trees just grow from seeds?” Jack asked.

  “They can, but they won’t grow as well, and their fruit won’t be good,” Reverend Carey replied. “They’ll be wild.”

  “Wild, huh?” Alexander muttered, shoving his hands deep in his pockets.

  Frances noticed that the Reverend had a way of making everything sound as if it was important. Like there was a lesson to be learned from apples.

  Before long, the four children were making their way down the row of trees, finding one or two branches from each one and tying on the markers. The pace was slow, but the task was strangely satisfying.

  “Hey, Frances,” Alexander called from the other side of the row. “Did you puzzle out all of Ned’s clues yet?” He liked to tease her about her fascination with the hobo treasure, but Frances had a feeling that he, too, was truly curious.

  “Just the first one,” she said. “But I bet if we were in Sherwood, we’d be able to figure the others out.”

  “I just want to know what Ned hid away in the first place,” Jack said. “Do you think it’s money?”

  “Gold!” Harold exclaimed. “Silver and rubies!”

  “Whatever it is, Ned said we wouldn’t need it if we made it to California. So it can’t be money,” Frances speculated.

  “Why not?” Jack asked as he swung down from a tree limb. “Wouldn’t we need money in California?”

  “We’d need some to get there,” Frances said. “So we’d have to go to Sherwood first. It’s twelve miles away. . . .”

  “We’d have to walk there. Sherwood’s farther away than Bremerton, and it would take a whole day to get there and back,” Alexander pointed out. “And for what? I bet it’s just an old pair of boots that Ned left.”

  “Or an old banjo.” Jack laughed. “With the strings broken.”

  “You’re fools, the both of you,” Frances replied, but she laughed, too.

  They were coming to the end of a tree row and had reached the edge of the orchard, where there was a fence being built. It was the same one Jack and Alexander had worked on earlier, and now the sharecropper boy named Eli was putting in the rest of the fence posts, while O’Reilly, the surly farmer, barked instructions.

  “Set it straight, boy! Push it the other way! No, not that way! Get another post!”

  It didn’t seem fair to Frances that Eli had to lift the heavy posts when O’Reilly was twice as strong.

  “Need help?” Jack called over to Eli. But he only shook his head and looked away. Stubborn, Frances thought.

  O’Reilly snorted in disgust at the boy. “You’re no good. I’ll do it.” He shoved Eli aside and grabbed the fence post. “You go get me some water. It’s hot out here!”

  Eli ran off toward the barn. In the meantime, the man pushed against the fence post and hit it with his shovel. It became more crooked somehow, which made O’Reilly curse and kick at it.

  Eli returned with a pail and dipper, walking right by the tree where Frances and Jack stood. The boy wouldn’t look at them, but Frances could see the faintest smile on his face. She glanced down and saw that the pail was almost empty—not enough water to even fill the dipper.

  He handed the pail to O’Reilly without a word.

  The man’s face went red with rage when he picked up the dipper. “What’s this?” he sputtered.

  “Some water,” Eli said matter-of-factly. Then he turned and ran out of the orchard as fast as he could.

  “Can you believe that kid?” Frances heard Jack say as they were walking back toward the house.

  O’Reilly had stomped off with the pail, and none of them wanted to be around if he came back. It was late afternoon and they were supposed to be returning for supper anyway.

  “That was really something,” Frances agreed. “I guess that’s what they mean when they say Eli’s trouble.”

  “It’s the best kind of trouble,” Alexander said.

  “Look!” Harold said, bolting ahead of them toward the yard. “There’s George and Nicky! And Anka and Sarah! And lemonade!”

  Frances ran to catch up. She saw the Careys—the Reverend and Jeb were chipping ice, and Mrs. Carey and the girls were slicing lemons and stirring pitchers at the big table.

  Near them stood the other four kids. The first thing Frances noticed was that they were in fresh clothes. George’s hair was neatly combed, and Sarah and Anka were wearing dresses that were similar to the one Mrs. Carey had offere
d Frances—although, Frances noticed, theirs weren’t as faded. As for Nicky, he had a strange cloth tied around his neck and under his shirt. “It’s a poultice,” he said. He smelled of camphor, but he was no longer wheezing.

  “Nicky is in bed all day,” Anka told Frances. “But the rest of us, we help Mrs. Carey. What do you do today?”

  Frances started to tell her and Sarah about the orchard and the garden.

  “You’re in the fields?” Sarah said. “I’m never doing that again. You should come live inside!”

  “Well . . . I don’t mind being out there,” Frances said. “The orchard is pretty. . . .”

  “We made strawberry jam, too,” Sarah continued. “Eleanor showed us how.”

  “Mmm! Did you have jam sandwiches?” Harold exclaimed. But almost as soon as he said it, he stopped and looked up at Frances. “I mean . . . that’s nice,” he said in a much smaller voice.

  Just then, Mrs. Carey handed them glasses of lemonade. Frances took a sip. It was cold and sweet, but as she swallowed, she could feel a lump in her throat.

  “Drink up, dear. And then we’ll all go to the chapel,” Mrs. Carey told her. “We often end the workday with prayers and reflection.”

  Frances nodded. “Okay.” Reflection sounded quiet and nice. It had to be better than the matrons droning their way through the verses of Pilgrim’s Progress back at the orphanage in New York.

  She found Harold, and they made their way to the little clapboard chapel, which had only a few rows of benches inside. The other kids were already there, along with several of the sharecroppers. She and Harold took a seat, and then turned to look for the boys. Alexander came over to their bench and sat down beside them.

  “Where’s Jack?” Frances whispered.

  Alexander motioned toward the door.

  Jack was still in the doorway. His shoulders were hunched around his ears and his hands were pushed deep in his pockets. He shook his head and took a step back.