Johnston Annie Fellows
Georgina of the Rainbows
CHAPTER XIII
LOST AND FOUND AT THE LINIMENT WAGON
WITH Mrs. Triplett back in bed again on account of the rheumatism which crippled her, and Belle going about white of face and sick of soul, home held little cheer for Georgina. But with Mrs. Triplett averse to company of any kind, and Belle anxious to be alone with her misery, there was nothing to hinder Georgina from seeking cheer elsewhere and she sought it early and late.
She had spent her birthday dollar in imagination many times before she took her check to the bank to have it cashed. With Richard to lend her courage, and Manuel, Joseph and Rosa trailing after by special invitation, she walked in and asked for Mr. Gates. That is the way Barby always did, and as far as Georgina knew he was the only one to apply to for money.
The paying teller hesitated a moment about summoning the president of the bank from his private office at the behest of so small a child, so small that even on tiptoe her eyes could barely peer into the window of his cage. But they were entreating eyes, so big and brown and sure of their appeal that he decided to do their bidding.
Just as he turned to knock at the door behind him it opened, and Mr. Gates came out with the man with whom he had been closeted in private conference. It was Richard's Cousin James. The children did not see him, however, for he stopped at one of the high desks inside to look at some papers which one of the clerks spread out before him.
"Oh, it's my little friend, Georgina," said Mr. Gates, smiling in response to the beaming smile she gave him. "Well, what can I do for you, my dear?"
"Cash my check, please," she said, pushing the slip of paper towards him with as grand an air as if it had been for a million dollars instead of one, "and all in nickels, please."
He glanced at the name she had written painstakingly across the back.
"Well, Miss Huntingdon," he exclaimed gravely, although there was a twinkle in his eyes, "if all lady customers were as businesslike in endorsing their checks and in knowing what they want, we bankers would be spared a lot of trouble."
It was the first time that Georgina had ever been called Miss Huntingdon, and knowing he said it to tease her, it embarrassed her to the point of making her stammer, when he asked her most unexpectedly while picking out twenty shining new nickels to stuff into the little red purse:
"All of these going to buy tracts for the missionaries to take to the little heathen?"
"No, they're all going to – to – "
She didn't like to say for soda water and chewing gum and the movies, and hesitated till a substitute word occurred to her.
"They're all going to go for buying good times. It's for a sort of a club we made up this morning, Richard and me."
"May I ask the name of the club?"
Georgina glanced around. No other customer happened to be in the bank at the moment and Richard had wandered out to the street to wait for her. So tiptoeing a little higher she said in a low tone as if imparting a secret:
"It's the Rainbow Club. We pretend that everytime we make anybody happy we've made a little rainbow in the world."
"Well, bless your heart," was the appreciative answer. "You've already made one in here. You do that every time you come around."
Then he looked thoughtfully at her over his spectacles.
"Would you take an old fellow like me into your club?"
Georgina considered a moment, first stealing a glance at him to see if he were in earnest or still trying to tease. He seemed quite serious so she answered:
"If you really want to belong. Anybody with a bank full of money ought to be able to make happy times for the whole town."
"Any dues to pay? What are the rules and what are the duties of a member?"
Again Georgina was embarrassed. He seemed to expect so much more than she had to offer. She swung the red purse around nervously as she answered:
"I guess you won't think it's much of a club. There's nothing to it but just its name, and all we do is just to go around making what it says."
"Count me as Member number Three," said Mr. Gates gravely. "I'm proud to join you. Shake hands on it. I'll try to be a credit to the organization, and I hope you'll drop around once in a while and let me know how it's getting along."
The beaming smile with which Georgina shook hands came back to him all morning at intervals.
Cousin James Milford, who had been an interested listener, followed her out of the bank presently and as he drove his machine slowly past the drug-store he saw the five children draining their glasses at the soda-water fountain. He stopped, thinking to invite Richard and Georgina to go to Truro with him. It never would have occurred to him to give the three little Portuguese children a ride also had he not overheard that conversation in the bank.
"Well, why not?" he asked himself, smiling inwardly. "It might as well be rainbows for the crowd while I'm about it."
So for the first time in their lives Manuel and Joseph and Rosa rode in one of the "honk wagons" which heretofore they had known only as something to be dodged when one walked abroad. Judging by the blissful grins which took permanent lodging on their dirty faces, Cousin James was eligible to the highest position the new club could bestow, if ever he should apply for membership.
If Mrs. Triplett had been downstairs that evening, none of the birthday nickels would have found their way through the ticket window of the moving picture show. She supposed that Georgina was reading as usual beside the evening lamp, or was out on the front porch talking to Belle. But Belle, not caring to talk to anyone, had given instant consent when Georgina, who wanted to go to the show, having seen wonderful posters advertising it, suggested that Mrs. Fayal would take her in charge. She did not add that she had already seen Mrs. Fayal and promised to provide tickets for her and the children in case she could get permission from home. Belle did not seem interested in hearing such things, so Georgina hurried off lest something might happen to interfere before she was beyond the reach of summoning voices.
On the return from Truro she had asked to be put out at the Fayal cottage, having it in mind to make some such arrangement. Manuel had seen one show, but Joseph and Rosa had never so much as had their heads inside of one. She found Mrs. Fayal glooming over a wash-tub, not because she objected to washing for the summer people. She was used to that, having done it six days out of seven every summer since she had married Joe Fayal. What she was glooming over was that Joe was home from a week's fishing trip with his share of the money for the biggest catch of the season, and not a dime of it had she seen. It had all gone into the pocket of an itinerant vendor, and Joe was lying in a sodden stupor out under the grape arbor at the side of the cottage.
Georgina started to back away when she found the state of affairs. She did not suppose Mrs. Fayal would have a mind for merry-making under the circumstances. But, indeed, Mrs. Fayal did.
"All the more reason that I should go off and forget my troubles and have a good time for a while," she said decidedly. Georgina recognized the spirit if not the words of her own "line to live by." Mrs. Fayal could bear up and steer onward with a joyful heart any time she had the price of admission to a movie in her pocket. So feeling that as a member of the new club she could not have a better opportunity to make good its name, Georgina promised the tickets for the family even if she could not go herself. She would send them by Richard if not allowed to take them in person.
It was still light when Georgina fared forth at the end of the long summer day. Richard joined her at the foot of the Green Stairs with the price of his own ticket in his pocket, and Captain Kidd tagging at his heels.
"They won't let the dog into the show," Georgina reminded him.
"That's so, and he might get into a fight or run over if I left him outside," Richard answered. "B'leeve I'll shut him up in the garage."
This he did, fastening the door securely, and returning in time to see the rest of the party turning the corner, and coming towards the Green Stairs.
Mrs. Fayal, after her long day over the wash-tub, was resplendent in lavender shirt-waist, blue serge skirt and white tennis shoes, with long gold ear-rings dangling half-way to her shoulders. Manuel and Joseph were barefooted as usual, and in overalls as usual, but their lack of gala attire was made up for by Rosa's. No wax doll was ever more daintily and lacily dressed. Georgina looked at her in surprise, wishing Tippy could see her now. Rosa in her white dress and slippers and with her face clean, was a little beauty.
Mrs. Fayal made a delightful chaperon. She was just as ready as anyone in her train to stop in front of shop windows, to straggle slowly down the middle of the street, or to thrust her hand into Richard's bag of peanuts whenever he passed it around. Cracking shells and munching the nuts, they strolled along with a sense of freedom which thrilled Georgina to the core. She had never felt it before. She had just bought five tickets and Richard his one, and they were about to pass in although Mrs. Fayal said it was early yet, when a deep voice roaring through the crowd attracted their attention. It was as sonorous as a megaphone.
"Walk up, ladies and gentlemen. See the wild-cat, Texas Tim, brought from the banks of the Brazos."
"Let's go," said Richard and Georgina in the same breath. Mrs. Fayal, out for a good time and to see all that was to be seen, bobbed her long ear-rings in gracious assent, and headed the procession, in order that her ample form might make an entering wedge for the others, as she elbowed her way through the crowd gathered at the street end of Railroad wharf.
It clustered thickest around a wagon in which stood a broad-shouldered man, mounted on a chair. He wore a cow-boy hat. A flaming torch set up beside the wagon lighted a cage in one end of it, in which crouched a wild-cat bewildered by the light and the bedlam of noisy, pushing human beings. The children could not see the animal at first, but pushed nearer the wagon to hear what the man was saying. He held up a bottle and shook it over the heads of the people.
"Here's your marvelous rheumatism remedy," he cried, "made from the fat of wild-cats. Warranted to cure every kind of ache, sprain and misery known to man. Only fifty cents, ladies and gentlemen, sure cure or your money back. Anybody here with an ache or a pain?"
The children pushed closer. Richard, feeling the effect of the gun-powder he had eaten, turned to Georgina.
"I dare you to climb up and touch the end of the wild-cat's tail."
Georgina stood on tiptoe, then dodged under someone's elbow for a nearer view. The end of the tail protruded from between the bars of the cage, in easy reach if one were on the wagon, but those furtive eyes keeping watch above it were savage in their gleaming. Then she, too, remembered the gun-powder.
"I'll do it if you will."
Before Richard could put the gun-powder to the test the man reached down for a guitar leaning against his chair, and with a twanging of chords which made the shifting people on the outskirts stand still to see what would happen next, he began to sing a song that had been popular in his youth. Or, rather, it was a parody of the song. Georgina recognized it as one that she had heard Uncle Darcy sing, and even Tippy hummed it sometimes when she was sewing. It was, "When you and I were young, Maggie."
"They say we are aged and gray, Maggie,
As spray by the white breakers flung,
But the liniment keeps us as spry, Maggie,
As when you and I were young."
Several people laughed and passed on when the song was done, but the greater part of the crowd stayed, hoping to hear another, for the voice was a powerful one and fairly sweet.
"Anybody here with any aches or pains?" he called again. "If so, step this way, please, and let me make a simple demonstration of how quickly this magic oil will cure you."
There was a commotion near the wagon, and a man pushed his way through and climbed up on the wheel. He offered a stiff wrist for treatment. The vendor tipped up the bottle and poured out some pungent volatile oil from the bottle, the odor of which was far-reaching. He rubbed the wrist briskly for a moment, then gave it a slap saying, "Now see what you can do with it, my friend."
The patient scowled at it, twisting his arm in every possible direction as if skeptical of any help from such a source, but gradually letting a look of pleased surprise spread across his face. The crowd watched in amusement, and nearly everybody laughed when the patient finally announced in a loud voice that he was cured, that it was nothing short of a miracle and that he'd buy half a dozen bottles of that witch stuff to take home to his friends.
The vendor began his speech-making again, calling attention to the cure they had just witnessed, and urging others to follow. As the subject of the cure stepped down from the wheel Richard sprang up in his place. Georgina, pressing closer, saw him lean over the side of the wagon and boldly take hold of the end of the beast's tail.
"There. I did it," he announced. "Now it's your turn."
Georgina gave one glance at the wild-cat's eyes and drew back. They seemed to glare directly at her. She wondered how strong the bars were, and if they would hold the beast in case it rose up in a rage and sprang at her. But Richard was waiting, and she clambered up on the hub of the wheel. Luckily its owner was turned towards the other side at that moment or she might have been ordered down.
"There! I did it, too," she announced an instant later. "Now you can't crow over me."
She was about to step down when she saw in the other end of the wagon, something she had not been able to see from her place on the ground under the elbows of the crowd. In a low rocking chair sat an elderly woman, oddly out of place in this traveling medicine show as far as appearance was concerned. She had a calm, motherly face, gray hair combed smoothly down over her ears, a plain old-fashioned gray dress and an air of being perfectly at home. It was the serene, unconscious manner one would have in sitting on the door-step at home. She did not seem to belong in the midst of this seething curious mass, or to realize that she was a part of the show. She smiled now at Georgina in such a friendly way that Georgina smiled back and continued to stand on the wheel. She hoped that this nice old lady would say something about the virtues of the medicine, for it cured two more people, even while she looked, and if she could be sure it did all that was claimed for it she would spend all the rest of her birthday money in buying a bottle for Tippy.
The placid old lady said nothing, but her reassuring presence finally made Georgina decide to buy the bottle, and she emptied the red purse of everything except the tickets. Then the man embarrassed her until her cheeks flamed.
"That's right, little girl. Carry it to the dear sufferer at home who will bless you for your kindness. Anybody else here who will imitate this child's generous act? If you haven't any pain yourself, show your gratitude by thinking of someone less fortunate than you."
Georgina felt that her blushes were burning her up at thus being made the centre of public notice. She almost fell off the wheel in her haste to get down, and in doing so stumbled over a dog which suddenly emerged from under the wagon at that instant.
"Why, it's Captain Kidd!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "How ever did he get here?"
"Must have scratched under the door and trailed us," answered Richard. "Go on home, sir!" he commanded, sternly, stamping his foot. "You know they won't let you into the show with us, and you'll get into trouble if you stay downtown alone. Go on home I say."
With drooping tail and a look so reproachful that it was fairly human, Captain Kidd slunk away, starting mournfully homeward. He sneaked back in a few minutes, however, and trailed his party as far as the door of the theatre. Somebody kicked at him and he fled down the street again, retracing the trail that had led him to the wagon.
A long time after when the performance was nearly over he went swinging up the beach with something in his mouth which he had picked up from near the end of the wagon. It was a tobacco pouch of soft gray leather that had never been used for tobacco. There was something hard and round inside which felt like a bone. At the top of the Green Stairs he lay down and mouthed it a while, tugging at it with his sharp teeth; but after he had mumbled and gnawed it for some time without bringing the bone any nearer the surface, he grew tired of his newfound plaything. Dropping it in the grass, he betook himself to the door-mat on the front porch, to await his master's return.
CHAPTER XIV
BURIED TREASURE
WHEN Georgina tiptoed up the walk to the front porch where Belle sat waiting for her in the moonlight, Tippy called down that she wasn't asleep, and they needn't stay out there on her account, whispering. It did not seem an auspicious time to present the bottle of liniment, but to Georgina's surprise Tippy seemed glad to try the new remedy. The long-continued pain which refused to yield to treatment made her willing to try anything which promised relief.
It was vile-smelling stuff, so pungent that whenever the cork was taken out of the bottle the whole house knew it, but it burned with soothing fire and Tippy rose up and called it blessed before the next day was over. Before that happened, however, Georgina took advantage of Belle's easy rule to leave home as soon as her little morning tasks were done. Strolling down the board-walk with many stops she came at last to the foot of the Green Stairs. Richard sat on the top step, tugging at a knotted string.
"Come on up," he called. "See what I've taken away from Captain Kidd. He was just starting to bury it. Looks like a tobacco pouch, but I haven't got it untied yet. He made the string all wet, gnawing on it."
Georgina climbed to the top of the steps and sat down beside him, watching in deep and silent interest. When the string finally gave way she offered her lap to receive the contents of the pouch. Two five-dollar gold pieces rolled out first, then a handful of small change, a black ring evidently whittled out of a rubber button and lastly a watch-fob ornament. It was a little compass, set in something which looked like a nut.
"I believe that's a buckeye," said Richard. He examined it carefully on all sides, then called excitedly:
"Aw, look here! See those letters scratched on the side – 'D. D.'? That stands for my name, Dare-devil Dick. I'm going to keep it."
"That's the cunningest thing I ever saw," declared Georgina in a tone both admiring and envious, which plainly showed that she wished the initials were such as could be claimed by a Gory George. Then she picked up the pouch and thrust in her hand. Something rustled. It was a letter. Evidently it had been forwarded many times, for the envelope was entirely criss-crossed with names that had been written and blotted out that new ones might be added. All they could make out was "Mrs. Henry" – "Texas" and "Mass."
"I'd like to have that stamp for my album," said Richard. "It's foreign. Seems to me I've got one that looks something like it, but I'm not sure. Maybe the letter will tell who the pouch belongs to."
"But we can't read other people's letters," objected Georgina.
"Well, who wants to? It won't be reading it just to look at the head and tail, will it?"
"No," admitted Georgina, hesitatingly. "Though it does seem like peeking."
"Well, if you lost something wouldn't you rather whoever found it should peek and find out it was yours, than to have it stay lost forever?"
"Yes, I s'pose so."
"Let's look, then."
Two heads bent over the sheet spread out on Richard's knee. They read slowly in unison, "Dear friend," then turned over the paper and sought the last line. "Your grateful friend Dave."
"We don't know any more now than we did before," said Georgina, virtuously folding up the letter and slipping it back into the envelope.
"Let's take it to Uncle Darcy. Then he'll let us go along and ring the bell when he calls, 'Found.'"
Richard had two objections to this. "Who'd pay him for doing it? Besides, it's gold money, and anybody who loses that much would advertise for it in the papers. Let's keep it till this week's papers come out, and then we'll have the fun of taking it to the person who lost it."
"It wouldn't be safe for us to keep it," was Georgina's next objection. "It's gold money and burglars might find out we had it."
"Then I'll tell you" – Richard's face shone as he made the suggestion – "Let's bury it. That will keep it safe till we can find the owner, and when we dig it up we can play it's pirate gold and it'll be like finding real treasure."
"Lets!" agreed Georgina. "We can keep out something, a nickel or a dime, and when we go to dig up the pouch we can throw it over toward the place where we buried the bag and say, 'Brother, go find your brother,' the way Tom Sawyer did. Then we'll be certain to hit the spot."
Richard picked up the compass, and rubbed the polished sides of the nut in which it was set.
"I'll keep this out instead of a nickel. I wonder what the fellow's name was that this D. D. stands for?"
Half an hour later two bloody-minded sea-robbers slipped through the back gate of the Milford place and took their stealthy way out into the dunes. No fierce mustachios or hoop ear-rings marked them on this occasion as the Dread Destroyer or the Menace of the Main. The time did not seem favorable for donning their real costumes. So one went disguised as a dainty maiden in a short pink frock and long brown curls, and the other as a sturdy boy in a grass-stained linen suit with a hole in the knee of his stocking. But their speech would have betrayed their evil business had anyone been in earshot of it. One would have thought it was
"Wild Roger come again.
He spoke of forays and of frays upon the Spanish Main."
Having real gold to bury made the whole affair seem a real adventure. They were recounting to each other as they dug, the bloody fight it had taken to secure this lot of treasure.
Down in a hollow where the surrounding sand-ridges sheltered them from view, they crouched over a small basket they had brought with them and performed certain ceremonies. First the pouch was wrapped in many sheets of tin foil, which Richard had been long in collecting from various tobacco-loving friends. When that was done it flashed in the sun like a nugget of wrinkled silver. This was stuffed into a baking-powder can from which the label had been carefully scraped, and on whose lid had been scratched with a nail, the names Georgina Huntingdon and Richard Moreland, with the date.
"We'd better put our everyday names on it instead of our pirate names," Gory George suggested. "For if anything should happen that some other pirate dug it up first they wouldn't know who the Dread Destroyer and the Menace of the Main were."
Lastly, from the basket was taken the end of a wax candle, several matches and a stick of red sealing-wax, borrowed from Cousin James' desk. Holding the end of the sealing-wax over the lighted candle until it was soft and dripping, Richard daubed it around the edge of the can lid, as he had seen the man in the express office seal packages. He had always longed to try it himself. There was something peculiarly pleasing in the smell of melted sealing-wax. Georgina found it equally alluring. She took the stick away from him when it was about half used, and finished it.
"There won't be any to put back in Cousin James' desk if you keep on using it," he warned her.
"I'm not using any more than you did," she answered, and calmly proceeded to smear on the remainder. "If you had let me seal with the first end of the stick, you'd have had all the last end to save."
All this time Captain Kidd sat close beside them, an interested spectator, but as they began digging the hole he rushed towards it and pawed violently at each shovelful of sand thrown out.
"Aw, let him help!" Richard exclaimed when Georgina ordered him to stop. "He ought to have a part in it because he found the pouch and was starting to bury it his own self when I took it away from him and spoiled his fun."
Georgina saw the justice of the claim and allowed Captain Kidd to join in as he pleased, but no sooner did they stop digging to give him a chance than he stopped also.
"Rats!" called Richard in a shrill whisper.
At that familiar word the dog began digging so frantically that the sand flew in every direction. Each time he paused for breath Richard called "Rats" again. It doubled the interest for both children to have the dog take such frantic and earnest part in their game.
When the hole was pronounced deep enough the can was dropped in, the sand shoveled over it and tramped down, and a marker made. A long, forked stick, broken from a bayberry bush, was run into the ground so that only the fork of it was visible. Then at twenty paces from the stick, Richard stepping them off in four directions, consulting the little compass in so doing, Georgina placed the markers, four sections of a broken crock rescued from the ash-barrel and brought down in the basket for that especial purpose.
"We'll let it stay buried for a week," said Richard when all was done. "Unless somebody claims it sooner. If they don't come in a week, then we'll know they're never coming, and the gold will be ours."
