CHAPTER XVIII

THE HAUNTED CISTERN

Coming out of the cellar, we found everything in the runaway’s quarters in apple-pie order. To one side was a sort of provision shelf made of two long coffin cases piled one on top of the other. On another similar shelf the frying pan and kettles were neatly arranged. In the middle of the room was a sort of library table, built up of small coffin cases. Here we found the runaway hard at work copying a farewell letter to his folks from the book, “Tricked at the Altar.”

“It wouldn’t be right,” says he, “for me to skip out to Montana without telling Ma something about my plans. For she might worry.”

Peg, the big monkey, lugged in an iron cemetery settee. It brightened up the room, he said, and made it more homelike. Then he brought in a withered “Gates Ajar” flower piece that had been thrown away. There was nothing like having things cheerful, he said.

But the pencil pusher was too deep in his letter writing job to give any attention to the nonsense that was going on around him. I looked in the book to see what he was copying. Here it is:

DEAR FATHER:

Unable to longer endure my unmerited shame, I am going to the river. It is my last earthly wish that my innocent child shall be brought up never to know the cruel trick that was played on its unfortunate mother at the altar. Good-by, forever. May I know a happier fate in the next world. Your erring daughter, TESSIE.

I let out a yip.

“For the love of Pete!” says I. “I hope _that_ isn’t the letter you’re writing to your mother.”

He glanced up.

“Oh, I’m changing it,” says he. “How’s this?”

DEAR MOTHER:

Unable to longer endure my shame in having killed Aunt Pansy’s parrot, I am going to Montana to be a cowboy and scalp Indians and Gila monsters. It is my last earthly wish that you give Jerry Todd the custard pudding that Aunt Pansy promised to make for me for supper. He will see that I get it and not eat it himself. Good-by, forever.

Your erring son, DONALD.

P.S. Please give Jerry a spoon with the custard as I forgot to bring one along.

P.S. If you haven’t got your spoons out of the cistern yet you needn’t bother about sending me one. I can eat the custard without a spoon. But be sure and sugar it.

“Some kid, Red is,” says Peg, when we were on our way home in the delivery wagon.

“Some bluffer, you mean,” says Scoop, with a grunt.

I thought of the note that I was carrying to the runaway’s mother.

“Maybe he means business,” says I, thoughtful.

“_Him_ run away?” says Peg, hooting at the idea. “Tell me next that the moon is made of green cheese and see if I believe _that_.”

Poppy laughed at his thoughts.

“After a night or two in the old manse he’ll be glad enough to go home to Aunt Pansy and take his medicine.”

“And what Aunt Pansy will do to him,” says Peg, whistling. “Spat-spat-spat on his china end.”

I squirmed at the turn of the conversation.

“Maybe,” says I gloomily, “he isn’t the only kid in Tutter who’ll get a spat-spat-spat on his china end.”

Coming into town, the others let me out of the wagon close to my home.

“Aren’t you coming, too?” says I to Poppy.

He shook his head.

“I guess I better go down to the jail and see Pa. For he gets lonesome for me.”

“We’ll meet you after supper at the medicine show,” says Scoop. “The invisible-ink letter is all written, telling about the wonderful buried treasure in the old manse cellar, and I’ve fixed it with Spider Phelps to hook one of the Indian’s sheets to-night when they’re passed out and switch it for mine. See? Then Spider’s going to offer my sheet to Bid, who, of course, will jump at the chance of getting a ‘spirit letter.’” There was a contented laugh. “And this is _some_ letter, eh, Poppy?”

“I’ll tell the world!” says the leader.

“I can imagine Bid’s excitement when he reads it,” says Scoop. “He’ll show it to his gang, of course, for he won’t have the nerve to go into the cemetery all alone. We’ll have an eye on them. And when they start for the cemetery to dig up the treasure we’ll take a short-cut and get there ahead of them, hiding to see the fun. Red will be on the lookout for us. I told him not to show a light. And we’re to give a ‘mewing cat’ signal, so he’ll know for sure that it’s us, and not the enemy.”

I more than half suspected that Mother or Dad would be waiting for me at the front door with a paddle. So I didn’t put on any speed in approaching the house. To the contrary I sort of piecemealed along.

But, to my surprise, the house was closed.

“Looking for your folks, Jerry?” says Mr. Dodson, who lives next door to us.

“Yes, sir,” says I.

“The marshal was here this afternoon to see your pa about something. Then Mr. and Mrs. Meyers came over and they all drove away in the direction of Ashton.”

Well, this was cheerful news!

Two hours passed and still my folks hadn’t come home. But this didn’t surprise me. The county courthouse is in Ashton. That is where the Tutter people go to get marriage licenses and dog tags. And now I had the feeling that my parents were at the courthouse trying hard to get a pardon for me. They undoubtedly believed me to be as guilty as Red. But even so they wouldn’t want to see me go to jail. For I was just a boy. More than that I was _their_ boy. And they loved me.

When dusk came I went down town. And who should I bump into, in turning a corner, but Bill Hadley himself. At sight of the marshal’s big star I pretty nearly panaked.

“Kid,” says the officer, putting a heavy hand on me, “I’ve bin lookin’ fur you.”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

“Lulu kept supper waitin’ on you fur mor’n an hour,” says Bill, naming his wife, an old school teacher of mine, as I say, and a chum of Mother’s. “What’s the idea of disappointin’ us? Don’t you like our grub? Or didn’t you git your ma’s note?”

“Note?” says I, dizzy.

“I was up to your house this afternoon talkin’ with your pa about goin’ fishin’. Then Mr. and Mrs. Meyers come over and started coaxin’ your folks to go with them to some kind of a party in Ashton. Your ma said she didn’t like to go away and leave you to git your own supper. ‘Shucks,’ says I, ‘me an’ Lulu we bin wantin’ Jerry to come over to our house to supper fur a coon’s age. You jest trot along,’ says I, ‘an’ we’ll take care of Jerry an’ see that he gits plenty to eat.’ Your ma left a note fur you on the hall table. Didn’t you find it?”

“No,” says I, and I sort of felt myself over to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming. I had expected him to drag me off to jail. And here he was talking to me like a chum!

Well, he took me into a restaurant and ordered some fried potatoes and beefsteak for me, with a lot of stuff on the side like apple pie with ice cream on it and two kinds of bread and dill pickles and fried cakes and jello and pears. There was pudding, too, and strawberry shortcake and some kind of a salad with chopped-up red peppers in it. Still dazed, I ate everything they set out. They brought me a second portion of meat and potatoes and I ate that. There was a big bowl of soup crackers near my plate and I ate that. I didn’t leave a single cracker. As I look back the wonder to me is that I didn’t eat the toothpicks or gnaw a hunk out of the wooden counter. With the law standing behind me, urging me on, eating seemed to be a sort of duty. So everything went down.

Bill was called away before I had the counter cleaned off. I was glad of that. He had talked to me like a friend, but I couldn’t quite get away from the worried feeling that I’d wake up and find myself in handcuffs. Besides I was having hard work now to get the food down. I didn’t seem to have any room for it.

Staggering out of the restaurant, I bumped into Tommy Hegan, a neighbor kid.

“Golly Ned!” says he, laughing. “You sure did scare the wits out of old Mose this afternoon. He thinks your cistern is haunted. How did you work it, Jerry?”

I loosened my belt and drew a deep breath.

“Work it?” says I. “Work what?”

“The voice.”

“What voice?”

“The voice in the cistern that said, ‘Polly wants breakfast.’ I laughed when Mose told me about it. He says he wouldn’t go near your cistern again, to finish the job of cleaning it, for a hundred dollars. It was a pretty slick trick, all right. Tell me how you worked it, Jerry.”

_Red’s parrot!_ I saw the whole thing in a flash. He had dumped the parrot into the cistern along with the other stuff. And instead of being dead, as we had supposed, the bird had been in a faint. And now it was recovered! And the law as yet hadn’t found out about the silverware!

Boy, was I ever glad! Hoop-a-la! I kicked up my heels, only I couldn’t kick very high because my tight stomach was sort of in the way of my knees. Then down the street I went, lickety-cut, and into our back yard.

[Illustration: “POLLY WANTS BREAKFAST!” CAME IN A WILTED HOLLOW VOICE FROM THE CISTERN.

_Poppy Ott and the Stuttering Parrot._ _Page 198_]

“Polly!” says I, putting my head into the black cistern. “Polly!”

“Breakfast,” came a wilted hollow voice from the in-flow tile. “Polly wants breakfast.”

The thing to do, I figured out quickly, was to tell Red that his parrot was alive and then help him get it out of the cistern. It would help our case if we could get the bird back into its cage before our folks returned from Ashton. And if we could succeed in bailing up the silverware so much the better.

I started for the cemetery on the run, telling myself that things were looking a lot brighter for us. And now comes the part of my story that always gives Mother the shivers.