On Track for Treasure (3 page)

“Jack,” Alexander broke in. “We won't be any help to them if we all get caught!”

That was all Harold needed to hear. “I don't want the sheriff to catch us!” he cried.

“We're
not
going to get caught,” Frances told her little brother. She looked up at Jack and Alexander. “We're going to do
something
, right?”

Alexander's eyes met Jack's. “That train's our only chance, and that's that.”

That's that?
Jack wanted to say more, but his mouth went dry. Alexander seemed to think he had all the answers. And he always had to have the last word.

Now we're here
, Jack thought, keeping his eyes on the floor of the train car to avoid looking at Alexander. He couldn't believe they'd made it on board. But still he wished it all had gone differently—the rescue attempt, Quentin's escape, their sudden departure. And if Alexander had just bothered to listen to him . . .

Jack felt someone nudge his shoulder. Anka had crept over to where the boys were sitting. Anka, who had come all the way from Poland when she was younger—and now she was still traveling, still searching for a home. But somehow nothing seemed to get to her too much; she could always find a reason to laugh.

She smiled and took something out of her skirt pocket to show Jack and Alexander. It was the little painted wooden doll that she had brought out on her first night in Wanderville. Frances had made a small shelf in the crook of one of the trees, and it had been the perfect place for the doll to stand. It was one of the things that had made the wooded ravine feel like home.

“Remember the third law of Wanderville,” Anka told them.

Jack understood. Back in the woods, he and Alexander and the rest of the children had created this last law—the law that meant that Wanderville could be anywhere they decided to build it. But Jack couldn't stop thinking about the Wanderville they'd just left.

Alexander grinned. “We're just on our way to the next place, that's all. Right, Jack?”

“Right,” Jack said.

But he didn't mean it. Alexander
wasn't
right. They should have stayed in Kansas.

B
RETHREN OF THE ROAD

“D
o you think we're in California yet?” Frances's little brother whispered. “I want an orange.”

“
Harold
,” Frances whispered back, “it'll be a long time before we get there.”

Frances guessed that it had been about an hour since they left Whitmore. She was starting to get used to the jostled-all-over feeling that came from sitting on the floor of a moving freight car. The constant motion made the straw on the floor slowly travel across the boards, like a gently drifting current, and it was mesmerizing to watch. She began to think about California, too, and wondered whether she'd get to see the ocean. . . .

She was just starting to doze off to these thoughts when she felt the train slowing down.

“Why's the train stopping?” Harold asked.

Jack crept over to look out the side door, which had been left open a few inches. Alexander and Nicky were peering outside through wide chinks between the boxcar planks.

“I don't see a town or a station or anything,” Nicky reported.

“Maybe it's a water stop,” said Frances. “For the engine.”

Just then, the hobo with the thousand-year-old voice sat bolt upright. “Kid sister is quite correct. And high time for some of my traveling brethren to join us here in the luxury coach.”

Jack looked around the freight car and laughed. “Luxury coach?”

“Compared to riding the bumpers, 'tis,” the hobo said. “You can call me Jim, by the by.” Then he reached up and knocked against the side of the car. Three knocks, loud.

A moment later three knocks came from the outside. Then, suddenly, the side door slid open wider, and three dusty figures climbed in out of the sunlight.

Harold's face lit up. “Are you hoboes, too?” he asked them. He nudged George in excitement.

“Indeed we are,” said one of the dusty men, who licked the palm of his hand and used it to smooth back his hair. Frances could see he was the youngest of the three; he seemed to be about eighteen. He looked around and gave a big grin, followed by a sputtering cough.

“Riding the decks, eh?” said Jim. “Sounds as if you ate some dust.”

“You were riding up
on top
of the train?” Frances couldn't believe it. The young hobo just nodded and grinned again.

“Time for introductions,” declared Jim. He pointed to the sleeping man. “You've already met Dead John over here, and this here's Cooper and Fingy Jim.” The two older hoboes shook hands with some of the boys.

“Wait, there are
two
Jims?” Frances asked.

“Show them what for you got your name, Fingy Jim,” said the first Jim.

Fingy Jim held up his left hand. His fourth finger was a short stump and his fifth was missing. “Be carefulla them boxcar doors,” he said.

Harold swallowed hard and shoved his hands deep in his pockets.

“What about you?” Frances asked the young hobo. “What's your name?”

He stretched out his legs as the train began to move again. “Well, I used to be known as The Oklahoma Baby. But it don't suit me any longer. Now I prefer to go by A-Number-One Nickel Ned Handsome,” he said. “Or just Ned Handsome.”

Frances didn't find Ned at all handsome on account of his sunburned face and missing front tooth, but he seemed kind enough.

“Those are good names,” Harold said. “All of them.” The other kids nodded.

“Thank you,” said Ned Handsome. He looked around the car at the ten children. “So, are you folks ambulanters? A gypsy family?”

Alexander spoke up. “Not exactly. We're not gypsies, but we are on the move. Just like you, I guess.”

“Not
'zactly
,” said Ned. “
I'm
on the move. You're on the
run
. Escaping from somewheres or someones. It's plain to see.”

Alexander and Jack exchanged nervous looks, and Quentin suddenly started to study his own shoes.

“But as you may have noticed by now,” Ned continued, “us 'boes mind our own business.”

Frances glanced around the car—the hobo named Jim appeared to have dozed off again, Cooper and Fingy Jim were silently playing cards, and Dead John hadn't stirred. Meanwhile, the little kids, Harold and George, were hanging on Ned Handsome's every word.

“Besides, 'twasn't easy at my home when I was young,” he said, his voice a little softer. “Sometimes better to hit the road.”

“We all had a home in the woods. But we had to leave,” Harold put in.

Ned cocked his head. “Is that so?”

Frances leaned in. “It's sort of a long story. . . .” But soon she and Jack and Alexander were taking turns telling Ned about the orphan trains, the sheriff, and the Pratcherds. Then they told him about Wanderville, and the swings they'd built, and the suitcase full of tinned food that they called the pantry.

“We built our own courthouse!” Harold said. “And we slept in the trees!”

The other kids joined in with their stories, and soon they were sharing their lunch with Ned—hunks of bread from Alexander's hammock and a couple of tins of sardines that Lorenzo had stashed in his pack. After a while Frances forgot about the rattling of the train and the way the wind whistled through the planks.

“Sounds like you had quite a paradise back there,” said Ned Handsome. “How come you had to leave?”

Everyone fell silent for a moment. But then George piped up. “Because of Quentin,” he said. “He gave away our hiding place.”

“That's not fair!” Jack protested. “He was just trying to escape.”

Quentin's face had gone beet red and his shoulders were hunched up nearly to his ears. Frances remembered how Quentin could be a bully sometimes, but she'd heard the Pratcherds had thrashed him extra hard, too. He seemed shaken up inside, like a bottle of fizzy cola.

“I
had
to run away from the ranch,” he muttered. “I'll trounce anyone who says otherwise! And I've been trying t' tell you—”

Alexander broke in. “It's all right, Quentin. We believe you,” he said. “Right, everyone?”

The other children nodded. Frances was fairly certain that Alexander
didn't
believe Quentin's story—she wasn't so sure she did herself—but the last thing anyone needed was for Quentin to get angry. Quentin settled down into a sullen silence, and nobody spoke for what seemed to Frances like an eternity. Even Fingy Jim and Cooper had paused their card game.

Ned Handsome cleared his throat. “Sounds like you could stand to borrow some of my luck,” he declared. “If you run into more trouble and ever find yourself near Sherwood, Missouri, that is.”

“What's in Sherwood?” Frances asked. She had never heard of the town.

Ned grinned. “Just a little something I stashed away.”

Harold jumped up. “A treasure?”

“You could call it that. Something I found and set aside in case I ever needed it. But you folks might need it, too. If you want, I can tell you how to find it.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Harold and George together.

“Er, all right,” said Alexander, who sounded more skeptical.

“Very well, then,” said Ned. “You begin at the depot in Sherwood, Missouri. . . .”

Frances reached into the side of her shoe and drew out a pencil. Then she pulled out her
Third Eclectic Reader
and turned to the first bit of blank space she could find to write on.

Begin at depot in Sherwood, Missouri
, she scribbled.

Ned went on, “And you'll have your boot on in the right direction. . . .”

“Don't you mean your
boots
?” Jack asked.

Ned shook his head. “You'll see what I mean if and when you get there. Anyways, then you'll cross an Indian, a saint, and one of our founding fathers.”

Frances looked up from her writing.
“What?”

“Write it just like I says, little sister. Then you give our founding father a right hook, and just keep going until you get mush. I know, it don't make sense now, but trust me, there will be mush! And then . . . look for a house with blue eyes that are always shut and has broken teeth. Go behind it into the woods. Then count steps. Every step has its own president. Once you get to Harrison, check the ground, and you should be on the right track.”

“And?” Harold asked.

“And then you'll get to the right spot,” Ned said. “I promise.”

“Thanks,” Jack said. “We'll be sure to . . . uh, remember it.”

Frances looked down at what she'd written. It seemed like a puzzle. She had no idea where Sherwood, Missouri, was, but maybe there were clues she could figure out if she thought hard enough. Like, a
right hook
—was that his way of saying
turn right
?

She wanted to ask Ned Handsome, but by then he had started teaching the other kids a song—something about a place with mountains made of rock candy.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, all the cops have wooden legs,

And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth, and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs.

The farmers' trees are full of fruit, and the barns are full of hay.

Well, I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow,

Where the rain don't flow and the wind don't blow

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

“Ain't a real place,” Ned said after he had sung it to them. “But it's a song about how we wish things could be. And you can always make up new verses. In fact, I'll make up some just for you folks.”

The next thing Frances knew, Jim was playing a harmonica in the corner, and they were all singing:

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains, all the sheriffs are stone-blind,

And the children from Wanderville don't pay 'em any mind.

The orphan trains don't go nowhere except to Coney Island.

Oh, the birds and the bees and the lib-er-ated cheese.

All the Pratcherds in jail, so we do as we please

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

They sang it five times over, enough to memorize it, until Jim put away his harmonica.

After that, Quentin and Lorenzo stayed in Ned's corner of the boxcar to hear him talk more about hobo life.

“Once I ran afoul of the cops in Cincinnati, and they clubbed me most diligently,” Frances heard Ned tell them at one point.

“Wow!” said Lorenzo.

Meanwhile, Anka braided Sarah's hair, and Nicky and George played jacks in the corner.

“Can I play with them, too?” Harold asked Frances.

Frances hesitated. “Well . . .” Despite George's bookish glasses and the fact that he was a younger kid, the same age as Harold, George seemed like trouble sometimes. He'd swiped those jacks from right under the nose of the clerk at the Whitmore Mercantile last week, and Frances had been sure he'd get them all caught—over a set of lousy jacks.

But Harold had his
please please please
look on his face, so she shrugged and said, “Fine, go ahead.”

Harold beamed and scurried over to George and Nicky's corner, leaving Frances, Jack, and Alexander by themselves.

The three said nothing for a while. They simply sat and swayed with the motion of the train.

“In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,”
Alexander sang softly,
“all the sheriffs are stone-blind.”

Jack just looked down into his lap.
“In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,”
he sang,
“nobody got left behind.”

Alexander sighed. “I know, Jack. I wish we could have helped all the kids at the ranch escape. Believe me.”

Frances felt a lump in her throat. “Me, too,” she said.

Jack glanced up and smiled faintly at Frances. But, she noticed, he wouldn't even look at Alexander.