“Hey, Rufe,” he said.
“What,” said Rufus, without looking up.
“Want to take a walk?”
“Don’t go gallivanting around town at this time of the night,” said Mama. “Rufus ought to be in bed anyway.”
“We won’t be gone a minute,” Joey promised.
Rufus said, “Wait till I finish this chapter.” But Joey gave him an urgent tug on his shoulder. What’s up? thought Rufus. He looked at the page he was on, page seventy-three, and he closed the book. Rufus did not use bookmarks. He remembered the number of the page. He did not remember dates of fires and birthdays as Joey did, but he did remember the page he was on in a book. The two boys went out the back door.
“Thought I’d take a look at that fox out there,” said Joe casually.
“Right,” said Rufus. “Get my lasso.”
Rufus found the rope and he and Joey went around the house to the street. The red lanterns and the gold flares of the flickering tar torches lit the streets and looked like a mosaic.
“This time are we goin’ in after him?” asked Rufus bravely.
“Naw . . . see if we can coax him out. He’ll be hungry by now. I brought this piece of salt pork. Hope foxes like it. Hungry and frightened, that’s what he’ll probably be. He must be frightened or he’d have come out and tried to get back to the woods before this.”
“Sure.” But then Rufus added as an afterthought, “How do you know he didn’t come out while we were having supper?”
“Well . . . if he’s a woods fox, he might have come out and run off to the woods, and that’d be all right. But,” and Joey’s voice trembled slightly with excitement, “he may be an escaped silver fox, the kind they raise for fur. If that’s what he is, then naturally he’s frightened and I don’t think he’d have come out.”
“Good you thought of the bait,” said Rufus. Any kind of animal would suit him. All he wanted was to be sure and catch the animal so that crawling through the pipes would be safe again.
Now they had reached the corner. The watchman was dozing in front of a fire he had built in an old ash can. His chair was tilted against the shed and his cap was pulled down over his eyes. Joey and Rufus stepped quietly in order not to waken him. They stooped over and looked in the pipe. They saw darkness, nothing but darkness.
“Wish we had a flashlight,” said Rufus.
“We’ll borrow one of these lanterns for a second,” said Joe. He climbed up on the dirt and picked up a red lantern. He held it close within the opening. The lantern cast a red, mysterious glow. “Some tunnel!” muttered Rufus, and he wondered how he ever had had the courage to crawl through, wolf or no wolf, fox or no fox.
But right now, anyway, they didn’t see a fox or a wolf, either awake or asleep. So Joey replaced the lantern and they ran down to the other corner. “Seems like he must still be in there,” said Joe, beginning to doubt. All the same, they looked in hopefully, and in Joey’s case at least, prayerfully.
“There they are!” yelled Rufus excitedly.
Sure enough! There were the eyes, shining golden in the dark.
“Thank goodness!” murmured Joey in relief. A silver fox, a silver fox farm, he thought.
“But be quiet,” he cautioned Rufus. “He’s scared already. We don’t want to scare him more. I’ll put the bait here at the entrance. And I’ll get on top of the pipe and when he comes out to eat, I’ll grab him around the neck, hold on to his jugular vein the way they do in Jack London, and you can slip the rope around him so he can’t get away. Then we’ll walk him home.”
This plan sounded simple, as though it were bound to work. Rufus squatted down about a foot in front of the pipe and watched the eyes.
“They’re comin’ nearer,” he said.
“Sh-sh-sh, don’t talk.”
He smells the bait, thought Joey.
He can’t see my eyes, thought Rufus. You can only see animals’ eyes. Not mine. A ’uman’s don’t shine in the dark. Rufus found comfort in this thought.
“The eyes are comin’ nearer.” Joe whispered it this time.
“He can’t see us,” whispered Rufus.
“Can smell us, though,” muttered Joe.
“If he’s hungry he’ll come out,” said Rufus reassuringly, “whether he smells us or not.”
Joe watched the eyes. Weren’t they coming now? Just a little bit nearer? Yes, they were! Joey imagined putting his fingers into that soft fur and holding the silver fox so tight he couldn’t get away. The beginning of his fox ranch! Oh, knock wood, he prayed, feeling around in the dark for a plank, that the real owner won’t be found and that I can keep him!
Now the eyes were really coming closer. The night was pitch-black, with no moon and no stars. Only the feeble glow of the lanterns and torches. Up the street a way the purple carbon lamp cast an eerie circle of light. But Joey and Rufus were concentrating on these two phosphorescent eyes and felt they were the only lights in the world. They strained their own eyes, trying to see the kind of animal these eyes belonged to. In Joey’s mind there was little doubt. A fox, a silver fox . . .
However, in Rufus’s mind there were still many possibilities. A lion, a tiger, or a wolf. He thought of the picture of the sheep huddled together in a blizzard on the Moffats’ sitting-room wall. They were huddled together not only to keep warm but because they feared wolves. Rufus looked away from the gleaming eyes for a moment and at the swaying lavender street lamp, and he saw moths and insects darting madly at it. A bat swooped swiftly by. All of a sudden Rufus felt scared. If this was a wolf in there, then what in the world was he doing here? That’s what he wanted to know. Joey’s talk of jugular veins was all right. But it was usually the wolf that did the springing for the jugular vein in real life; or at least in books.
He got up and climbed on the pipe behind Joe. “Hey, I can’t catch him with you up here,” said Joey.
“Let’s go home,” said Rufus.
“Not scared, are you, fella?” said Joe. “I’m ready for him. I’ll catch him.”
Joe bent over and looked in closely. The eyes were very near now, looking strangely wild and yellow. Fox, all right, thought Joe. Inch by inch the eyes drew nearer! Salt pork was just the thing, thought Joe. All animals like salt. And where’d they find a salt lick in Cranbury? Nowhere. Nowhere. That’s where this salt pork came in handy.
Joey seemed so sure this was a fox, and a fox was not as scary as a wolf, thought Rufus. A fox in the nighttime was scary but not as scary. And murmuring, “I’m not scared,” he resumed his position, lasso in hand. Phew! Those eyes were close!
“Still can’t see him,” said Joe.
“Let’s get a torch again,” suggested Rufus.
“No . . . scare him away again.”
They waited. They waited for what seemed the whole night. Nobody came along the street fortunately, for they might have ruined the whole business.
All of a sudden eyes came forward with a rush. Joey scrunched up his eyes, put his hands down, and caught hold of the animal right around its neck exactly as he had planned. His heart sank. This fur did not feel like fox fur. It was short! And the animal was too small to be anything but an ordinary . . .
Rufus slipped the lasso around it. “All right,” said Joey. “Never mind the rope. Look what we caught.” And he moved over to a lantern.
“Criminenty! Catherine-the-cat!” bellowed Rufus.
“Yeah, Catherine!” said Joey. And Catherine-the-cat it was, squirming and writhing and tying herself up in a ball. Joey set her down and she ran in the direction of home as fast as she could go.
“Criminenty!” said Rufus again.
But Joey began to laugh. “Some fox!” he said, and he laughed and laughed. Then he grew sober when he thought how he had figured on the animal being a silver fox.
Rufus began to laugh, too. And he didn’t stop when Joey did. He kept laughing and he wished Joey would laugh some more, too. He laughed and laughed all the way home, louder and louder, hoping to make Joe
y laugh again.
But Joey didn’t laugh any more. Some fox! he told himself.
7
Money in the Ice
“Settlement house!” said Rufus in disgust. “Why do they call it a settlement house?” He had come to the city cheerfully with Mama and Jane and Joey to watch Sylvie give a performance of “The Lollipop Princess,” in the Settlement House for the benefit of the soldiers and sailors, even though he had already seen her in it at the Town Hall. He came because he expected to see Indians in a place with a name like that.
“Settlement House!” Rufus repeated. “I didn’t see any Indians.”
He was very disappointed. He had waited impatiently for today. Now, he had thought, he would see the kind of house the settlers lived in, made of logs, where people who looked like Daniel Boone lived, and where there would be plenty of Indians about; friendly ones on the inside, and hostile ones on the outside. But these people were not Indians, or pioneers, either.
And the settlement house itself looked just like any other ordinary red brick house from the outside. Inside there were just rooms. There was one big room with a stage in it. That’s where the play was given. Also there was a kitchen, where the people that ran the house cooked cocoa and piled cookies on paper plates. For a minute, when Rufus saw cocoa and cookies, he thought perhaps now the Indians or at least the pioneers would come. There was an upstairs to the house and maybe that was where they stayed. But everybody, all the ordinary people, drank their cocoa and no settlers joined in. Nor was there a trace of an Indian! Not so much as a feather or a tomahawk!
“Why didn’t you tell me this was just a house?” he asked a little crossly. He and Mama, Jane, and Joey were picking their way up the street on the way to the trolley car. They were all walking gingerly on the ash-strewn pavements, trying not to get cinders in their rubbers or to slip on a smooth spot. Sylvie had stayed behind in the Settlement House because she was giving “The Lollipop Princess” again tonight.
“Once I thought it meant Indians, too,” said Jane dreamily. “Stockades . . . blockades. But it doesn’t.”
Joey was silent. An uncomfortable thought had just struck him. The late afternoon was icy cold and the temperature might easily have fallen down around zero. And he or Mama or somebody should have remembered to turn off the water in the cellar before they left. Otherwise the pipes might have frozen. And if they had frozen they might have burst! For a while he kept this possibility to himself.
“It’s called a Settlement House,” said Mama, “because the people who manage it try to settle newcomers to the country and tell them the ways of the land.”
“Any newcomer is really a sort of a settler,” added Jane.
“Not if there aren’t any Indians,” said Rufus, still cross, and having to run to keep up with the rest of the family.
Joey took Rufus by the hand. “Well, fella,” he said, to take Rufus’s mind off the dismal disappointment he had had of not seeing any Indians, “well, you better stop thinking about Indians and think instead of whether the pipes busted or not!”
“Gracious!” exclaimed Mama. “Did we forget to turn off the water? How could we have, on a day like this?”
“’Cause it’s daytime,” said Jane. This was true. At night, before they went to bed, Mama or Joey turned the water off in the cellar in this zero weather, so the pipes would not freeze. But in the daytime there was usually somebody at home, running the water now and then and keeping the fires going.
They heard a trolley coming and hurried to the corner. Joey accidentally stepped on the heel of Jane’s rubber and it slid off her shoe, but she managed to slither along on it and they did just barely catch the car. On the trolley it was beautifully warm. In the back of the car some men were smoking and the tobacco smelled good.
“I can stand,” said Rufus, for he considered it manly to hang on a strap in trolley cars. Of course, he couldn’t reach the straps, but he could stand without hanging on. There were seats enough for everybody, though, and Mama finally persuaded him to sit down, too. Rufus soon became drowsy and he almost fell asleep. He heard Mama and Joey and Jane talking about the pipes.
They needn’t worry, he told himself. If the pipes burst, I’ll put my finger on the leak the way the boy did in “The Leak in the Dike.” And I’ll hold it there till help comes. He was too sleepy to tell them now. But he certainly was not going to fall asleep on this trolley the way babies do. Every time he felt his head wobble over sideways, he pulled himself up straight with a lurch, and stared at the Drink Moxie ad, or watched the men smoking at the back of the trolley.
Mama and Joey and Jane thought about the pipes. If only they had not burst! It was dreadful to have pipes burst. The Moffats would have to call a plumber perhaps, and that cost a great deal of money. “Gee,” Joey chided himself. “How did I forget?”
“We were all so excited about goin’ to the play, we all forgot,” said Jane.
“Well, maybe they didn’t burst,” said Joe. “I stoked the stoves good. That should’ve kep’ the house warm enough.”
“Ordinarily it would have,” said Mama. “But this is bitter weather. And you know that kind of coal that we get nowadays isn’t very good for our stoves.”
Soft coal! Bituminous coal! That’s the kind of coal they had to burn this year, for the good, hard nut kind was scarce. When Mama started a fire with this coal what a time she had! “By-two-minutes coal,” she called it. “By two minutes the house will be full of smoke,” she always said, making a joke of it.
The Moffats hated to get off the trolley where it was so warm. “Why couldn’t we live on a trolley?” asked Jane, laughing.
“Sure. We could stretch out on the long seats and sleep,” said Joe. “Rufe’s practically asleep now.”
“I’m not!” denied Rufus, sitting up straight with a jerk. “Just thinkin’. Where are we?”
“Goin’ over the Cumberland Avenue bridge,” said Jane. They all looked out over the snowy marshes. The sun had set but there was still a wan wintry glow behind the heavy clouds in the west. “Those clouds look like mountains,” said Jane. “You could think we were livin’ in the mountains.”
“That’s night comin’,” said Joe.
Now the trolley was swaying and sailing up Elm Street. Soon they would have to get off. In the town the streets seemed darker, for the great elm trees and the houses shadowed the sky. Just two more blocks and then they’d be at Ashbellows Place. Rufus was wide awake now and he was the one who pushed the bell. The trolley stopped and the Moffats stepped out into the cold.
“Br-r-r,” said Mama.
The three children raced ahead. They would soon see whether or not the pipes had frozen. They slid up the street on the smooth icy stretches in the gutters, and then they turned into the narrow walk of their own yard. Both sides of the pavement leading to their porch were piled high with great banks of hard snow. “The Grand Canyon!” yelled Jane, her mind on mountains.
Joey opened the door. The three children stood in the doorway and listened. They didn’t hear one thing. This was encouraging, Rufus thought, for if the pipes had burst, surely they would hear water rushing in the cellar. But Joey said no, the pipes might have burst and the water frozen over the break. Or they might have frozen and not burst yet. That would not be quite so bad though, for he and Mama could thaw the pipes themselves with warm cloths and they need not call the plumber.
Joey led the way into the kitchen. Soon he had the lamps lit. The fire in the stove had gone out! A fire made of this soft coal just did not last and the house was very cold. Catherine-the-cat was sitting right on top of the stove to absorb the last bit of warmth there was in it. Nobody took off his coat or his mittens. And everybody held his breath as Joey went over to the sink. He turned the faucet on. The pipe shuddered but no water came. “Shucks!” said Joe. “It did freeze!” and he quickly turned the spigot off again.
Mama came in now. You could see everybody’s breath even though they were in the house. Mama and Joey to
ok the medium-sized lamp and went down to the cellar to investigate. Jane and Rufus stood at the top of the stairs and listened. They could hear Mama and Joey talking in low tones.
“Well,” said Rufus, “did they bust?”
There was no answer. Mama and Joey were too busy, tapping the pipes here and feeling them there, to answer. Rufus and Jane stepped cautiously down one or two steps. These stairs did not have any backs to them and were really more like a ladder than a stairway. The unpaved cellar smelled of damp, cold, dirt.
“Did they bust?” Rufus demanded again.
“Yeah,” came Joey’s muffled voice.
“Bad?” asked Jane.
“No. A little break. Must have just happened,” said Mama.
“Is there goin’ to be a flood?” asked Rufus, taking his mitten off and limbering up his forefinger.
“Nope,” said Joe. “There’s just a little water around the break. Jane, get some things to tie around the pipe.”
Jane climbed to the head of the stairs where the ragbag hung on a nail. But Rufus felt his way up the stairs and into the kitchen and all the way out of the house. Rufus had a plan in his head. It was cold in the Moffats’ house. The fire had gone out and the pipes had frozen. It was not at all nice there, thought Rufus. The first thing to do, of course, was to get the pipes fixed. Mama and Joey were taking care of that. The next thing was to fix the stove, but there wasn’t anything in the house to start a fire with. And this was where Rufus’s plan entered in. He knew of a certain new house that was being built over on Second Avenue. He figured he could get some shavings there to start a fire.
He first snatched an empty burlap bag from the back entry. Then he picked up his red sled, one of the low flat kind with round steel runners. And with his red plaid mackinaw flapping open he took a good run and then belly flopped across the hard snow that covered the Moffats’ lawn and all the way down the street and across the lot to Elm Street.
Rufus M. Page 8
