Freddy and the Dragon (11 page)

They explored a good deal of the cave, though there were so many passages and halls and rooms that it would have taken a week to do it all. The entire hill seemed to be hollow. They found arrowheads and stone implements and Indian pottery in one of the rooms, and in another some bones with curved teeth six inches long, which Mr. Webb said must have been those of some prehistoric animal. They also found a way out of the cave on the west side of the hill. It was masked by thick bushes and evidently had not been used for some time, since there were no broken twigs to be seen.

It was nearly dark by the time they had followed their strand of web back to the big hall. In exploring they had gone, of course, by a roundabout route, and they had to go back the same way. They were pretty tired, too. Even if you have eight legs it is tiring to walk and climb steadily nearly all day.

Mr. Pomeroy was waiting for them. He had stayed near the cave entrance for fear of missing anything that went on, but no one had come in or gone out, and he had been pretty bored. He had killed the time by catching and eating a number of green inchworms that were on near-by trees. He didn't specially care for inchworms, and they always disagreed with him, but there was nothing else to do. He was sorry for it that night, though.

CHAPTER 10

Freddy spent some time selecting a disguise. His favorite one was a long shapeless dress, which he wore with a shawl over his head in the character of an old Irishwoman. It was a good disguise because it concealed his feet and his long pig's nose. With it, he used his idea of an Irish brogue. It wouldn't have fooled an Irishman for a minute, but it was good enough for local use.

But the dress was not much good for moving about the roads, and he felt sure that he'd have to take trips to Centerboro, and to the cave, and perhaps to the Indian village. So he put on the sailor suit that the sheriff had mentioned. It was white, and had long pants which were wide at the bottom, a wide collar, and a round hat with a black ribbon that had on it in gold letters: H.M. S. Inscrutable. At least that's what Freddy said it was. It had belonged to Mr. Bean when he was a little boy.

When he had it on, he looked at himself in the glass. “Really,” he thought, “I'm quite a nice-looking child. Perhaps a little on the plump side, but that's no fault.” He certainly did fill out that sailor suit. Some people might have called him downright fat. But Freddy was used to seeing himself in the glass, and so he didn't notice specially how tight the suit was. You know how that is yourself.

“But I'll have to get somebody to adopt me,” he said to himself, “in case the police get to asking questions.” So he went to the back door of the farmhouse and tapped.

Mrs. Bean came out, and he explained what he wanted.

“Well now, Freddy,” she said, “I'm afraid it wouldn't do to tell folks you're our grandchild from down east. Because everybody around here knows we haven't any grandchildren.”

She kept her hand over her mouth while she talked, and Freddy said: “What's the matter, Mrs. Bean; you got a toothache?”

She was holding her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing, because Freddy really did look pretty funny in the sailor suit. But she didn't want to hurt his feelings, so she said: “No, I was just thinking—that was Mr. Bean's suit, you know—and I was thinking how he'd look in it now.” So then she took her hand down and had a good laugh, and Freddy laughed with her.

On the way up to the pig pen to get his bicycle, Freddy met Jinx. The cat stopped short. “Ahoy, shipmate!” he shouted. “Ahoy and a yo heave ho! Whither away? Off for a life on the roaring deep and a cruise on the bounding main?” And he stood up on his hind legs and hitched up imaginary trousers and danced a few steps of a hornpipe.

“Keep still, you dope!” said Freddy. “I'm in disguise, and I don't want everybody talking about it.”

“Maybe you are,” said the cat, “but if you expect to pass for a sailor, you'd better hang a set of those false whiskers you've got around that long jaw. To me you look like a pig in a sailor suit.”

“Don't be silly,” said Freddy. “This is a kid's suit, not a regular sailor's outfit. I've got an idea. Want to ride down to Mrs. Peppercorn's with me? On my bicycle, I mean. Can't ride Cy in this suit.”

“What's your idea?” the cat asked.

But Freddy wouldn't tell him. Jinx didn't like riding on Freddy's handlebars much. The last time he had done it, Freddy had hit a stone and fallen off, and Jinx had been pitched into a muddy ditch. But, like all cats, he was curious, so he said he'd go.

On the ride into town they didn't see anybody they knew. A few cars passed them, but nobody noticed them, except a little girl in one crowded car who yelled: “Oh, Ma, look at the cat!” and her mother slapped her and said: “Shut up!” They were not nice people, and I am glad they don't come into this story.

So they went to Mrs. Peppercorn's. She said: “The police have been here looking for you, Freddy. And I don't think that's a very good disguise. You look all right from the back, but if everybody's hunting for a pig, one look at your face and you're sunk.”

“Well,” said Freddy, “I thought if I could get somebody to say I was their grandson who had come to stay with them for the summer—oh, I don't mean you, Mrs. Peppercorn. Everybody in town would know all about your relatives. But I was thinking of Mrs. Talcum.…” He looked hopefully at Mrs. Peppercorn's aunt.

“I'd be quite willing to adopt you, Freddy,” said the old lady, suppressing a sneeze. “But if sobebody looks at you closely ad sees that you're really dot a little boy, dod't you thig it will seeb fuddy to theb that I have a pig for a gradchild? Ah—ahchow!”

“Yes,” he said, “but suppose I have hay fever, too. It could run in the family, couldn't it? And I can keep a handkerchief up to my nose all the time. Then nobody would notice.”

“That's a smart idea,” said Mrs. Peppercorn. “You can have that little back room upstairs when you're in town. And you'll ride your bicycle to and from the farm. Your being there a lot will look all right, because I've spent a lot of time there myself.”

“How about talkig? asked Mrs. Talcum. “Ad sdeezig?”

“I can hold my nose with my handkerchief so my talk will sound as if I was plugged up. And I think I can do a pretty good sneeze. How's this?” And he gave an imitation sneeze which nearly blew Mrs. Peppercorn out of her chair. But, of course, she wasn't very big.

“Splendid!” Mrs. Talcum exclaimed. “You are by gradsud, Peppercord Talcub.” And she went on to say that he had come from Syracuse to spend the summer with his grandmother and his distant cousin, Mrs. Peppercorn. He suffered from hay fever, which was hereditary in the Talcum family, and was called Peppy for short. Mrs. Talcum was so pleased with her invitation that she sneezed eight times in a row.

“There are several little boys on this street,” said Mrs. Peppercorn. “Wouldn't he be expected to want to play with them?”

“Their mothers wouldn't let them when they find out that this kind of hay fever is catching,” Freddy said, “or if they think it's a cold.”

“You seem to have thought of everything,” Mrs. Peppercorn said. “But hiding out like this isn't going to solve your problem. If the police won't believe in the animals in the cave, you've got to capture them yourself.”

“I've got an idea about that,” said the pig. And this time he really did have one. “If I can stay out of jail for a few days, I think I can work it.”

So for the next few days he worked hard at being Mrs. Talcum's grandson, Peppercorn Talcum. He rode his bicycle around town, and went to the movies, and bought ice cream sodas, keeping his handkerchief up to his nose all the time, and after a while people didn't notice him specially any more. That is, they didn't look at him carefully, as they would at a stranger. He was just one of them, Peppy Talcum. He could have left the handkerchief at home and probably nobody would have looked at him much.

In the meantime more gardens were torn up and more houses burglarized and windows smashed, and six more people had received letters telling them to leave money on the stone wall on the back road. The troopers had hidden out there one night, hoping to catch the gangsters, but when the headless horseman came riding along, they had left in almost as much of a hurry as Jinx had. They had also gone up to the cave, but they hadn't taken a ball of string along and had gotten hopelessly lost five minutes after entering the big hall. It had taken them three hours to get out, and they had seen nothing of the rooms the Webbs had seen. Naturally they reported that Freddy had made up the whole story about the cave being headquarters of a gang.

The troopers hunted all over for Freddy. They searched the houses of all his friends in Centerboro. They even searched Mrs. Peppercorn's house from cellar to attic. While they were searching the cellar, Freddy sat on the top of the cellar stairs, making suggestions. They didn't pay any attention to him and kept away from him as much as possible, because he sneezed a lot and they didn't want to catch his cold.

Freddy rode out to the farm several times and had long talks with the Webbs. They drew a map for him of the big hall in the cave, and of the rooms off it—there were many passages and rooms that they had not been able to explore. But of course the route a spider takes in exploring can't be followed by an animal as big as a pig. However, they were able to draw in the main path by which the horse and his rider reached the rooms they used, and, also, from the back entrance they had discovered, a winding route by which the same rooms could be reached. This route was apparently not used by or even known to the gang.

Freddy didn't know just what use the map would be. At a general meeting of all the animals, a number, led by Charles, had been for an immediate attack on the cave. But the clearer heads among them were against it. The Webbs had seen a shotgun, and the man who had been grooming the horse had a pistol sticking in his pocket. “If we can't get rid of them any other way,” Mrs. Wiggin said, “we'll have to go in and fight 'em. But with those guns, and in those narrow passages, the guns would have the advantage. They must come out pretty often. Let's try first picking them off one by one. And let's start with this headless horseman. I know I haven't seen him, and I know he's pretty scary, but Alice and Emma weren't afraid of him. Good land, I'm not going to be scared of a ghost that can't even scare a duck!”

“He's collecting all this money,” Hank said. “What use would a ghost have for money?”

“There ain't any such thing as ghosts,” said Samuel Jackson. “He's a fake. I say he's a fake.”

“You didn't see him,” Jinx said.

“That's right,” said Freddy. “He scared me good. But look at it this way: either he's a ghost or he isn't. If he is, all he can do is scare people; he can't hit 'em or shoot 'em or anything. So if a ghost can scare me, why can't I put on a false face and scare a ghost?

“Or say he isn't a ghost. Then he's a man. And if we can't scare him, we can rush him and maybe capture him. My dragon will be ready tomorrow. Robert and Jinx and I can practice and get used to working it in the afternoon, and then we'll take it up on the back road and try it out on the headless horseman. Hank and the cows and Cy and Bill and the bigger animals can hide near by in the woods in case there's trouble. Percy says he'll come; he doesn't want anything more to do with Jack, he says, and the sooner he's driven out of the neighborhood, the better he'll be pleased.”

Having made his arrangements, Freddy rode his bicycle back to Centerboro. He spent the evening talking about poetry with Mrs. Peppercorn. He recited for her some of his longer and more elegant poems, particularly the new one about the eyebrows.