More Adventures of the Great Brain

by John D. Fitzgerald

  Papa was a smart man. He took out his purse and looked at Tom. “How much, T.D.?” he asked. “How about half a dollar to go on tutoring Dotty from now until school lets out?”

  “Better make it a dollar,” Tom said. “Some of the kids might think it’s worth more than half a dollar. But if I can show them a whole silver dollar, I’m sure they will understand.”

  “All right, T.D.” Papa handed Tom a whole silver dollar. “But on one condition. I would prefer your mother didn’t know about this. She has never been a boy and might not understand.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Time Papa Got Lost

  WHEN SCHOOL STARTS, a fellow always feels as if the summer vacation will never come. He starts by counting the months until the Christmas holidays. Then he starts counting the weeks until May. Then he starts counting the days, and each day seems as long as those months before the Christmas holidays. But there is one good thing about the sun that parents and teachers can’t do a darn thing about. It comes up every morning, and it sets every night. Nobody can stop that wonderful last day of school from coming around at last.

  Tom graduated from the sixth grade. I graduated from the fourth grade. I guess Mr. Standish thought he was the greatest teacher in the world when he announced that he would start Dotty in the third grade next fall. Mr. Standish had to teach all six grades, and I doubt if Dotty would ever have made it if it hadn’t been for Tom tutoring her. She learned more from Tom during a half hour in the evening than she learned in school all day. But Tom seemed satisfied to let the teacher take all the credit. He had his dollar.

  Dotty had turned into a real girl, except when it came to riding Star. And she made friends with girls her age even though they weren’t in the same grade. I guess she made friends so easily because she was a sort of celebrity. She was the only girl in town who had whipped a boy bigger than her in a fair and square fight. The dresses Mamma made for Dotty made her one of the best-dressed girls in town. And she learned how to play jacks, hopscotch, jump the rope, and even to play with dolls.

  Two days after our school let out, Sweyn came home from the Catholic Academy. I was never so disappointed in my life. He sure had changed since Christmas. He was wearing long trousers with the suit Mamma had sent him for Easter. And he started off by calling Papa, Dad, and Mamma, Mom. That was all right with me because it didn’t seem to bother our parents. But when he started calling Tom and me “Old Man” instead of by our initials, that was going too far.

  Tom and I were trying to be nice to him on his first evening at home. “You can ride my bike whenever you want,” Tom said generously.

  “Thanks, Old Man, but that’s kid stuff,” Sweyn said.

  “Want to see my jumping frog?” I asked.

  “Thanks, Old Man, but that’s kid stuff,” Sweyn said.

  That got me. “I’m not an old man,” I said. “I’m just a kid.”

  “It is an expression us city folks use,” Sweyn said with a laugh.

  Papa, Mamma, and Aunt Bertha began to laugh too. I knew right then I’d have to put up with Sweyn calling me old man all summer.

  This was bad enough, but the day after he got home, Sweyn pulled the dirtiest trick he could on Tom and me. He started going with a girl, and of all the girls he had to pick, it was that stuck-up Marie Vinson. If ever a fellow felt like disowning a brother, it was me. All I heard from my friends was, “Sweyn’s got a girl. Sweyn’s got a girl.” If Sweyn wanted to disgrace me and Tom, why couldn’t he have kicked a dog, or beat up an old lady, or something not as bad as going with a girl.

  A few days after Sweyn had arrived, Papa told us we would leave on Monday for our annual camping trip. At least for a week I’d get out of town, where I was now known along with Tom as the kids who had a brother who was going with a girl. Papa announced the trip on Saturday during supper.

  “I’ve closed the Advocate for a week,” he said. “We will leave early Monday morning.”

  “Where are we going this year?” Tom asked eagerly.

  “Why not up Beaver Canyon, where we went last year?” Papa asked. “The fishing was excellent, and the hunting very good.”

  * * *

  We left Adenville early Monday morning. Tom and I rode on the seat of the buckboard with Papa, who was driving our team of Bess and Dick. We had all our supplies and tent securely fastened to the bed of the buckboard in back of the seat. Sweyn rode Dusty. We traveled a logging road along the foothills of the Wasatch range of mountains until we came to the mouth of Beaver Canyon. The canyon got its name from the beaver dams at the head of the river that flowed down the canyon. We watered the horses and then ate the lunch Mamma had prepared for us.

  I stuffed myself on the fried chicken, hard-boiled eggs, bread and butter sandwiches, cake, and pie that Mamma had put in a cardboard shoe box. I knew from experience this would be our last bite of good cooking until we returned home. When we had eaten all we could, Papa stood up and patted his stomach.

  “No sense in going on a fishing and camping trip if you don’t rough it,” he said. “Throw away what you can’t eat, boys.”

  The only food Papa allowed us to keep was flour, salt and pepper, a sack of potatoes, bacon, a case of pork and beans, a small sack of onions, sugar, coffee, cans of condensed milk, and a small sack of dried beans. We expected to arrive at our destination in time to catch a mess of fish for supper.

  I was admiring the canyon as we drove up it. Pine and cedar trees were intermingled with aspens and cottonwoods. Some of the trees were growing out of cracks in cliffs and ledges. There were wild flowers. All of them had a great smell you never got in town. Blue jays cawed at us, and we could hear mountain canaries singing.

  Papa seemed much more concerned about the road. “This road looks well traveled compared with what it was last year,” he said.

  “Maybe they have put on more men at the logging camp on top of the plateau,” Tom said.

  “I doubt it,” Papa said. “You can see this road has been traveled by buggies, wagons, and buckboards.”

  We discovered why the road was so well traveled when we arrived at the place where we had camped last year. There were buggies, wagons, buckboards, tents, and people all over the place.

  “What in the name of Jupiter are all these people doing here?” Papa demanded, as if they were all poaching on his private property. “With all the places there are to fish in Utah, why did everybody who owns a fishing pole suddenly decide to choose this particular place?”

  It wasn’t hard for a fellow with a little brain like me to figure out. The year before we’d brought home about four dozen beautiful rainbow and German brown trout packed in wet mud and grass. Papa had insisted we lay them out on our front lawn to wash off the mud and grass with the hose. A big crowd gathered on the sidewalk in front of our house. I remembered how Papa had told them about his perfect place to fish in Beaver Canyon.

  Tom had been thinking the same thing. “Maybe you shouldn’t have told so many people about this place last year,” he said.

  “Well, you would think people would have the decency to respect a man’s private fishing and camping ground,” Papa said.

  Papa could certainly exaggerate. It was public land, and all those people had as much right to be there as we did. We found a place to camp and pitched our tent. Then we went fishing, but the water was muddy from a rainstorm farther up the canyon. We didn’t even get a bite. We ate a supper of cold pork and beans out of cans and sourdough biscuits we baked in our Dutch oven.

  “The stream is all fished out,” Papa said as we finished eating. “That settles it. We will leave in the morning and find a place to fish and hunt where no white man has ever been.”

  The next morning we followed the logging road up the canyon for about four miles, where the road branched off to the left up Beaver Canyon, and there was another canyon to the right. I thought Papa had suddenly gone crazy when he turned the team to the right and started up a dry creek bed.

  Sweyn rode Dusty over t
o the side of the buckboard. “Where are you going?” he asked. “There isn’t even a road or a trail.”

  “Exactly,” Papa said smugly. “Where there is no road or trail, there are no people.”

  Even Tom with his great brain was impressed by Papa’s daring when he leaned back and looked up at the towering sides of the canyon.

  “Are you going to try and cross the mountain?” he asked.

  Papa at that moment must have fancied himself another Jedediah Smith, the Yankee Methodist minister who had explored most of the Utah Territory with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other.

  “We will find ourselves a virgin stream and valley on the other side,” Papa said confidently.

  Tom jumped down from the buckboard. “I think I’ll walk,” he said. “Make it easier on the team.”

  Papa started up the dry creek bed with Sweyn in the lead acting as a scout. I turned around to make sure Tom was following us. I was surprised to see him carving something on a tree where we’d turned off the road. I was even more surprised as I watched him gather up some rocks and lay them on the bank of the dry creek bed.

  We continued up the canyon with Tom lagging behind. The only time Tom caught up to us was when Papa stopped so we could roll boulders and logs out of the way of the buckboard. The big logs and boulders that were too heavy Sweyn roped with his lariat and with Dusty’s help pulled them out of the way.

  My curiosity got the better of me as I turned around several times and saw Tom using his jackknife on a tree or making piles of rocks. I jumped out of the buckboard and joined him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Just carving my initials on a few trees,” Tom said.

  “Why?” I asked. “Nobody will ever see them.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Tom said. “Someday they might build a road up this canyon, and I can prove we were the first ones who ever went up it. Maybe it will make us famous as pioneers.”

  “That is a peach of an idea,” I had to admit. “But what are you doing with those rocks?”

  “Looking for gold,” he said.

  “But that is silly,” I said. “All these canyons have been covered by prospectors.”

  Tom looked a little ashamed of himself. “Maybe it is silly,” he said, “but it helps to pass the time. Don’t say anything to Papa. He might think it’s silly.”

  “All right,” I said, “but I’m not going to walk all the way to the top of this mountain.”

  We continued up the canyon with Tom, Sweyn, and me rolling boulders and logs out of the way for the rest of the day. Just before dusk we stopped, and believe me we had to stop. There was a cliff rising up from the dry creek bed stretching from one side of the canyon to the other that must have been thirty feet high. During a heavy rainstorm, when the dry creek bed became a stream, and the cliff a waterfall, it must have been something to see. But right now all it meant to me was that we had to turn around and go back.

  “We’ll camp here tonight,” Papa said, as if there wasn’t an impossible barrier in our way.

  We couldn’t find a spring so Sweyn rationed the water in the small water barrel tied on our buckboard. We ate mulligan stew made from sliced potatoes, onions, and pieces of bacon all boiled in water in a big frying pan and some more sourdough biscuits with honey.

  The next morning we had fried potatoes and bacon and more sourdough biscuits. Then Papa studied both sides of the canyon.

  “We’ll go up the left side,” he said.

  Sweyn looked at the steep slope of the canyon. “That is impossible,” he said. “The buckboard will tip over.”

  “No it won’t,” Papa said. “You will tie one end of your lariat under the buckboard seat to the clamp that holds the seat in place. You will snag the other end of your lariat to the pommel of your saddle, and make certain the cinch on your saddle is good and tight. You will ride Dusty upslope from me opposite the buckboard about fifteen feet. The mustang will prevent the buckboard from tipping over.”

  “But all our supplies will fall out of the buckboard,” Sweyn protested.

  “Nonsense,” Papa said. “We will cover our supplies with the tent and tie the stake ropes on the tent underneath the buckboard.” Papa took a deep breath. “I am enjoying teaching you boys how to rough it. It is a trick used by early pioneers to bypass such obstacles as this cliff when they had no roads.”

  When everything was ready, we had to go back about half a mile so the pull wouldn’t be too steep for the team. Papa hadn’t gone more than twenty yards when the slope of the canyon became so steep the buckboard was riding on two wheels. The only thing preventing it from tipping over was Sweyn’s sure-footed mustang. I died a thousand deaths fearing the lariat would break and Papa would be dashed to death down the side of the canyon. But we finally made it to the top of the cliff and back onto the dry creek bed.

  The going was pretty easy from there to the top of the mountain, which we reached just before dark. It was very cold, and after supper we all slept in our blankets in the tent.

  Going down the other side of the mountain the next day was easy. We came to a mountain valley that turned out to be a fishing and hunting paradise, just like Papa had promised. There was a sparkling stream filled with trout. Small game was plentiful.

  We remained in our mountain paradise for four days. We dined on quail, pheasant, sage hens, rabbits, and wild turkeys, as well as rainbow trout. Everything was perfect until the time came to leave for home.

  “We’ll take a shortcut out,” Papa announced after we’d eaten breakfast and were breaking camp.

  Tom stopped folding our tent and looked at Papa. “How can we take a shortcut when we’ve never been here before?” he asked.

  “I’ve always prided myself on my sense of direction,” Papa said. “We will follow this valley. It will bring us out of the mountains just a few miles above Adenville.”

  We finished packing and loading the buckboard and were ready to go when Tom put his hand on the front wheel.

  “I’m going to walk behind, Papa,” he said.

  Papa looked surprised. “Why walk?” he asked. “The bottom of the valley is quite level and nothing but sagebrush and a few trees.”

  “I just feel like walking,” Tom said.

  Just before we stopped to camp for the night, the stream turned to a canyon on the left, and there was another canyon to the right. Papa said we’d take the canyon to the right the next morning.

  “But Dad,” Sweyn protested, “what will we do for water?”

  “There are plenty of springs in these mountains,” Papa said. “We must take the canyon to the right because Adenville lies in that direction.”

  Well, all I can say is that Papa was right about one thing. There were springs in those mountains with enough water for us and the horses. But it sure wasn’t the way to Adenville. The canyon to the right came to a fork of two more canyons. We took the one to the right and ended up in a blind canyon. We came back and took the other canyon, and again ended up in a fork, and again took the canyon to the right. We came back and took the other canyon. Finally we came to another canyon that had a stream of water running down it.

  It was a good thing we camped on high ground that night because we had the worst cloudburst I’d ever seen or heard. The rain came down as if poured from giant buckets in the sky. The river was a raging torrent of water when we came out of the tent in the morning, although the rain had stopped.

  “There is nothing like roughing it,” Papa said cheerfully as he made sourdough biscuits with the last of our flour. “I could spend all summer in these mountains, but we’d better start for home. Your mother will be worried. We are a couple of days overdue now.”

  Boy, did that make me feel better. I was sure that we were lost in the mountains, and all the time Papa had only been pretending to be lost to give us boys an exciting adventure.

  Sweyn must have been thinking the same thing. “You mean we aren’t lost?” he asked.

  “How can
a person be lost in the mountains when there is running water?” Papa asked as he pointed at the rain-swelled river. “Water runs downhill. All we have to do is to follow this river downstream, and it will lead us out of these mountains.”

  “Then why didn’t we follow the other stream?” Sweyn asked.

  “That would have taken us out on the other side of the mountains from Adenville,” Papa answered.

  We followed the river downstream until we came to a waterfall. Papa said we would bypass the waterfall the same way we had bypassed the cliff, by going down one side of the canyon around the waterfall with Sweyn and Dusty holding the buckboard from tipping over.

  Tom and I were walking behind; Papa was sitting on the seat of the buckboard. I had my head down to see where I was stepping when I heard Sweyn scream. I looked up, and it felt as if my chest had caved in. The strain on the lariat had become too much, and it had broken. I was stunned with horror. Papa leaped from the seat of the buckboard just a second before it turned over and went tumbling down the side of the canyon, pulling the team with it.

  I ran crying to Papa and threw my arms around his waist. He patted my head.

  “Next time we’ll take pack horses,” he said calmly—as if he lost a buckboard every day of the week.

  The buckboard was a total wreck, with two wheels smashed so badly they couldn’t possibly be fixed. Bess was standing up and shaking with fright, but Dick kept trying to stand up only to fall down and was screaming something awful. We made our way down the steep slope of the canyon to where the horses were. Papa unhitched Bess and had Sweyn tie one end of his broken lariat around her neck and take her to one side with Dusty. Then Papa knelt down and examined poor old Dick. His face was grave as he stood up.

  “His right foreleg is broken,” he said. “I’ll have to shoot him.”

  Sweyn got his .22 rifle from the holster attached to his saddle and handed it to Papa. I watched Papa put the end of the barrel in Dick’s ear and then turned my head away. I heard the sound of the shot. I turned around. Dick still seemed to be moving. Papa shot him again in the head. Then the horse lay still.