Freddy Goes to Florida

by Walter R. Brooks

  Then Robert had an idea, and he went up to Mrs. Trigg and barked three times.

  “I believe that dog understood what you said,” said Aunt Etta. “Just see the way he’s looking at you.”

  Then Robert ran a little way toward the kitchen, and stopped and looked back; so Aunt Etta and Mrs. Trigg followed him, and he went straight to a shelf in the kitchen and stood on his hind legs and put his forepaws on the edge of it and looked over his shoulder at them and barked again.

  There were a number of things on the shelf. There was a photograph of Aunt Etta, and a photograph of her married daughter who lived in Rochester, and a spool of black darning-cotton, and an alarm-clock, and a butcher’s bill, and a picture postcard of Niagara Falls, and seven beans, and a box of matches, and quite a lot of dust. The dust was there because Aunt Etta, although she was a kind-hearted woman, wasn’t a very good housekeeper. She spent too much time reading the newspaper.

  “Now, what do you suppose he wants up there?” said Mrs. Trigg.

  “Why I do believe,” said Aunt Etta, and I think she blushed a little—“I do believe he wants that picture of me!” And she took the picture down and gave it to Robert.

  Of course the picture wasn’t what Robert wanted at all, but he was too polite to let her know it, and he thanked her by wagging his tail and smiling the way dogs do. And then he put his forepaws on the shelf and barked again.

  “He wants something else, too,” said Mrs. Trigg. “Now what can it be?” And she began touching all the things on the shelf and looking at Robert. And when she touched the alarm-clock, he barked very loud, so she knew that was what he wanted. So Aunt Etta gave him the clock, and he carried it and the picture out on the porch and showed them to the other animals.

  “Now,” he said, “we’ve got an alarm-clock for Mr. Bean, Charles. You won’t have to get up early in the morning any more when we get back.” And Charles was very much pleased.

  “Now we’ve got an alarm-clock for Mr. Bean.”

  It was getting along toward supper-time by now, and all the farmers were climbing into their buggies and automobiles and driving away. They were happy to have recovered their valuables, and when somebody started to sing, they all joined in. Many of them sang part-songs all the way home. It was very inspiring.

  Soon there was nobody left on the porch but Aunt Etta and her niece and Mrs. Trigg and a stout lady who lived across the road and whose name was Mrs. Hackenbutt.

  “It does seem to me,” said Aunt Etta, “that a photograph and an alarm-clock are a very small reward to give these animals for bringing back our things.”

  “It isn’t very much,” agreed her niece, “but I can’t think of anything else. Can you?”

  “I can think of something,” said Mrs. Hackenbutt suddenly. “We could help them to get all that dreadful paint off. I’ve been watching that cat and he’s been licking himself for an hour. He wants to get it off. Now, if we could give them a good scrubbing——”

  “That might do,” said Aunt Etta. “I always say that there’s nothing that good hot suds won’t take out.”

  Now, if there is anything a cat hates more than cold water, it is hot water, and so Jinx immediately crawled under the porch and stayed there. Hank and Mrs. Wiggins would have liked to crawl under too, but of course they were too large. As for Robert and Freddy, they thought it was undignified to run away, so they sat nobly on the porch and waited while the women heated water in the wash-boiler and brought it out to them.

  Then Mrs. Hackenbutt and Aunt Etta’s niece rolled up their sleeves and set to work with scrubbing-brushes. They scrubbed and scrubbed, and pretty soon the thick paint began to loosen its hold on the animals’ skins and peel off. “This isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” said Mrs. Wiggins.

  “It’s fine,” said Hank. “I used to wonder why Mr. Bean took a bath every Saturday night, but I know now why he likes it so much.”

  When they had got off as much paint as they could, the women led the animals round to the pump and rinsed them off with buckets of cool well-water. But Jinx didn’t come out until it was all over, and then he took care to keep out of sight.

  They stayed at Aunt Etta’s house that night, and would have liked to stay longer, but they knew that Mr. Bean needed them and thought they ought to start along. They hurried back to the log house in the woods and dug up the gold and put it in the phaeton.

  “And now,” said Freddy, “our adventures are over. Soon we’ll be back in our own comfortable home again, and I for one shall be glad to be there.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Wiggins, “our adventures are over for this year at least.”

  But she was wrong. For the most exciting adventure of all was lying in wait for them up the long, homeward road.

  XVIII

  Nothing much happened, however, for the next few days. They plodded along the road, doing a steady twenty-five miles a day, for they were used to it now and could go much longer without getting tired than when they first set out. Most of the people they met had heard about them by this time, and although they attracted a good deal of attention, nobody molested them. The heap of gold coins lay in the bottom of the phaeton, but they had covered it up with the old shawl, so that no one knew that anything was there.

  At last one morning they came to the bridge where the animals had found Mr. and Mrs. Webb again after they had fallen into the river. The two spiders were much excited, and Mrs. Webb ran up to the tip of Mrs. Wiggins’s left horn, and Mr. Webb ran up to the tip of her right horn, and they sat there and looked out across the landscape and shouted to each other: “Oh, do you remember this?” and “Oh, do you remember that?” until Mrs. Webb was so overcome by the recollection of their strange adventure that she burst into tears. Then Mr. Webb climbed hurriedly down from Mrs. Wiggins’s right horn and climbed up her left horn and patted his wife clumsily on the back with one of his eight feet, which he could also use as hands, and said: “There, there, Emmeline! Don’t cry!” And Mrs. Webb wiped her eyes with a tiny pocket-handkerchief which she had woven herself, and stopped crying.

  The animals went on across the bridge and through the village, and when they were out in the country again, Jack said: “I think, if nobody minds, I’d better ride in the carriage for a while. We’re getting near to where I used to live, and I don’t want the man I used to live with to see me. It might cause trouble.”

  Mrs. Wiggins gave a chuckle. “I have to laugh every time I think of that man, and the way he bounced like a rubber ball on the top of his automobile when I tossed him up there. He was an awful coward, even if he did have a big, black moustache.”

  “Yes,” said Jack, as he climbed into the phaeton and crouched down under the shawl, “but just the same I think we’d better hurry along. He has a bad disposition, and he would take a lot of trouble to get even with us for the things we did to him.”

  “We mustn’t take any chances with all this money,” said Henrietta. So they hurried along, and pretty soon they passed the road which led up to the farm where the man with the black moustache lived, and then a little later they passed the swimming-hole in the river, where Mrs. Wiggins had fallen in.

  “We ought to be pretty safe now,” said Jack, “because he doesn’t often come up this way in his automobile. But I’ll stay in here for a while, just the same.”

  In another mile or two the road, which had been running across a valley, began to climb a long hill. It was getting along into the afternoon now, and as the animals had been walking fast, they were hot and dusty; so they were all glad when they came to a stream that crossed the road part way up the hill. They decided to take a swim.

  “I remember this place,” said Robert. “We stopped here to take a swim the day we started out, just before we met the man with the black moustache the first time.”

  “Yes, yes, so we did!” exclaimed the other animals. “Why, we’re almost home! If we go on now we can get back to Mr. Bean’s before midnight.”

  Some of them were al
l for going on at once when they realized how close home was, but Charles said: “We don’t want to get there at night, when Mr. and Mrs. Bean and all the other animals are asleep. That won’t be any fun!”

  And Freddy said: “We’ll be so tired when we get there that we won’t want to tell them about our travels, and they’ll be so sleepy that they won’t want to hear about them. I vote we camp here to-night, and go on in the morning. We’ll get home about dinner-time.”

  “That sounds sensible,” said Hank. “We’ve come a long way to-day. If you ask me, I’ve had about enough. It’s all right for you other animals, but I have to pull this carriage, and all that gold is heavier than Mr. and Mrs. Bean put together.”

  So they pulled the carriage under a tree, and pretty soon they were all splashing about in the water, which was pretty cold, for it was still early in the spring. But animals, with the exception of cats, do not mind cold water as much as some people do.

  Now they were so near home, and so sure that nothing could interfere with their getting there, that they did not keep a very good watch while they were in swimming. And they did not see a pair of sharp eyes that were watching them from the bushes, nor hear the rustle of leaves as the bushes parted and the dirty-faced boy, who was the son of the man with the black moustache, sneaked over to the carriage and, lifting a corner of the shawl that covered the heap of gold coins, peeked under it. When they came back out of the water and ran up and down the bank to dry themselves, the boy had gone.

  They did not sit up very late that night, for they were all pretty tired. Before they went to bed, Robert and Charles and Jack wound and set the alarm-clock. They had done this every night since Aunt Etta had given it to them. And this is the way they did it.

  Jack held the clock in his mouth, and Robert took hold of the winder with his teeth, and they twisted. Sometimes it took them half an hour to do it, out they always did it. And when the clock part was wound up, they wound the alarm. But the thing you set the alarm with, to make it go off at a certain time in the morning, was so small that neither Robert nor Jack could get hold of it properly. And so when they had got it all wound, Charles would take hold of the thing with his beak and set it for whatever time they wanted to get up. This time they set it for five o’clock, because they wanted to get an early start.

  They all took turns standing watch over the gold at night, and to-night it was Charles and Henrietta’s turn. The other animals had found a warm and comfortable place to sleep under the little bridge, beside the stream, and when all good-nights had been said, the rooster and his wife made a final round of the camp to see that all was in order, and then flew up into the phaeton, perched on the back of the front seat, and tucked their heads under their wings.

  They had not been asleep long when it began to rain. It rained gently at first, and Charles, half awakened, moved about a little on his perch, then dropped off again, lulled by the monotonous patter on the umbrella-like roof of the carriage. But the patter grew to a rattle, and then to a roar, and he awoke again to find his feathers getting wetter and wetter, and Henrietta tapping him crossly on the shoulder with her beak.

  “Come, come, Charles; wake up!” she was saying. “We’ll get wet and catch our deaths, very likely.”

  “This will never do!” said Charles. “We can’t stay here. I think, my dear, we had better join the others under the bridge.”

  “I think we had better do nothing of the kind,” said Henrietta crossly. “We are here to watch the gold, and here we stay. We can get down under the shawl in the back seat and keep dry. Come along.”

  “But the mice are sleeping here to-night,” Charles protested. “And you know how Eeny snores. I shouldn’t sleep a wink.”

  But Henrietta was not listening; she had jumped down into the back seat, and Charles followed her, repeating: “I shan’t sleep a wink! Not a wink!” But once they had got under the shawl, where it was dry and warm, and had pushed the sleepy mice over to make room, he did fall asleep again with great promptness. It is true that Eeny snored, although it was not a very loud snore, for Eeny was a very small mouse. And then Cousin Augustus had the nightmare, and dreamed that four tortoise-shell cats with red eyes were chasing him, baying like the bloodhounds in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which he had once seen when he had been on a visit to his aunt, who lived in the town hall at Joy Centre, near Mr. Bean’s farm. Cousin Augustus squeaked dreadfully when he had the nightmare, which was as often as he ate too much supper (and that was as often as he could)—and he jerked his legs and moaned and lashed his tail, so that Eek and Quik and Eeny had to get up and shake him awake. But even through all this Charles would have slept peacefully on if Henrietta had not pecked him on the neck and said: “Charles! Wake up! You’ll have to do something about these mice. Keeping it up at all hours! I never heard such a racket! They don’t seem to have any regard for anyone.”

  So Charles took his head out from under his wing. He couldn’t see anything, because he was under the shawl, but he could hear Cousin Augustus waking up, and then saying: “Oh dear! Oh dear me! Such a dream! Such a dream!”

  “Here, here!” said Charles sleepily, and trying to be stern. “What’s all this? Do be still, can’t you? Other people want to sleep if you don’t!”

  “Cousin Augustus had the nightmare,” said Eek. “It’s all over now.”

  Charles was satisfied with this and would have put his head back under his wing, but Henrietta pecked him again. So he said gruffly: “Well, we can’t have that. Do you understand? We can’t have it! We cannot have our rest broken in this way. I think you mice had better go and sleep somewhere else, as you don’t seem able to do it quietly, like other animals.”

  The mice were a little afraid of Charles because he was so grand and talked so beautifully and strutted about the barn-yard so nobly, and so they did not give him any back talk, but climbed down meekly out of the carriage ond went to join the other animals under the bridge.

  “Well, for once you had the gumption to stand up to somebody, even if it was only a mouse,” said Henrietta. But Charles did not hear her, for he was again fast asleep.

  There was now no sound under the shawl but the ticking of the alarm-clock and Charles’s gentle breathing, and so Henrietta went to sleep too. When she awoke again, it was still dark. For a few minutes she could not tell what it was that had roused her; then she heard a faint creak, and the carriage gave a lurch to one side. It was moving! Something or somebody was drawing the carriage down the road!

  She pecked Charles sharply, and he awoke with a groan. “Oh, my goodness, Henrietta! What is it now? Can’t you let me alone?”

  “Hush!” she whispered. “Don’t you feel the carriage moving? Someone is running away with it. Someone’s stealing the gold!”

  Charles was very wide awake in an instant. He poked his head out from underneath the shawl and looked about him. Two shadowy forms—men, they looked like, though they might be animals—were pulling the carriage down the hill, and they must have pulled it some distance from where Hank had left it, for the bridge was nowhere in sight.

  “This comes of not keeping watch,” whispered Henrietta, who had poked her head out beside him. “If you hadn’t crawled under this shawl, you’d have been able to hear what was going on.”

  “You crawled under too,” said Charles. “You’re as much to blame as I am. But what shall we do? Even if I crow my loudest, they’ll never hear me with the rain coming down the way it is.”

  “One of us must jump out and run back and give the alarm,” said Henrietta. “And the other must stay here and find out where the carriage is being taken. You’d better go, Charles, and I’ll stay.”

  Charles was too scared to complain at being ordered to go out in the heavy rain. The only thing he wanted was to get away from that carriage as quickly as possible. And being scared, he did what a scared rooster always does: he gave a loud squawk. And then he made a wild jump for the road. But his feet caught in the fringe of the shawl, and before he could get them
free, and before Henrietta could get out herself, one of the dark figures dropped the handle of the carriage at which it was pulling, ran back, and caught them both. It was the dirty-faced boy.

  “Hey! Pa!” he called. “Here’s a couple nice chickens for Sunday dinner in here with the money.”

  They squawked and struggled, but he held on tight, and then the man with the black moustache came and tied their feet with string and shoved them roughly into the space under the front seat of the phaeton.

  “I hope you’re satisfied!” said Henrietta. “Of all the useless, good-for-nothing roosters, you’re the worst! Why couldn’t you keep your silly beak shut? My goodness, you certainly have got us in a nice mess now!” And she went on telling just what she thought of him. But Charles was not listening. “Sunday dinner,” he was thinking, “Sunday dinner! Me, that’s travelled hundreds and thousands of miles in my time—me, that’s seen what I’ve seen and done what I’ve done, to end as a Sunday dinner! Fricasseed, probably, and eaten by perfect strangers!” And he burst into tears.

  XIX

  The animals slept very soundly that night under the bridge, without a suspicion of the loss of their gold, or of the terrible fate that had overtaken Charles and Henrietta. Robert was the first to awake in the morning. It had stopped raining, but a heavy mist hid everything from sight.

  “My goodness!” said Robert. “It must be dreadfully late! I wonder why I didn’t hear the alarm when it went off at five o’clock. Hey, Freddy!” he called. “Hank! Wake up! We ought to have been on our way two hours ago.”

  In two minutes all the animals were wide awake, and Freddy had gone out to see what was the matter with the alarm-clock. Pretty soon he came running back. “The clock is gone,” he panted, “and Charles and Henrietta are gone, and the phaeton is gone. Everything’s gone. I bet Charles has run away with the treasure.”