Freddy the Pied Piper (2 page)

“Hello, Freddy,” he said. “My, I'm glad to see you! I had quite a time finding your place. I must say these Beans you live with are nice people. Soon as I got here and they saw I had a cold they hustled me right in here where it's warm, and covered me up with a blanket, and Mrs. Bean made me a pailful of hot lemonade. I'll be fit as a fiddle by morning.”

“Well, it's nice to see you, Jerry,” Freddy said. “I don't suppose you made the trip for pleasure, though. Is there anything wrong with Mr. Boomschmidt?”

Jerry shook his head sadly. “There ain't much that's right, Freddy. You see, he hasn't been able to take his circus out on the road for four years, because war conditions made traveling out of the question. That wouldn't have been so bad, because he's got that place down south and we thought we could all live there until he could start out again. He had quite a little money put by, and he figured out a regular budget—so much for coal, and so much for electricity, and entertainment, and all the things you spend money on; and it worked out that we could all stay there and have a good time and not do a tap of work for five or six years.

“Well, it worked out nice on paper, but when we came to the end of the first year—well, Freddy, the money was all gone.”

“Gone! You mean it was stolen?” Freddy asked.

“No. It was all used up. Mr. Boomschmidt hadn't figured it right. In making out this budget thing he hadn't put anything down for food. And food for lions and tigers and giraffes and … why, do you know how much hay one elephant eats at a meal?”

“No,” said Freddy. “How much?”

“I don't know, but it's an awful lot. And then when meat was rationed, the lions and tigers had to go on a vegetable diet. You ought to have seen Leo making faces over his supper—a big bowl of oatmeal.”

Leo, the lion, was an old friend of Freddy's, and had often visited at the Bean farm. “Where is Leo?” Freddy asked.

Jerry shook his head. “I don't know. When Mr. Boomschmidt couldn't afford to feed us any more, he sent around to different zoos to see if they'd take some of us. They took the giraffe and two of the elephants and some of the smaller animals. But they wouldn't take lions and tigers because they couldn't get meat for them. So finally Mr. Boomschmidt called us all together and he said: ‘Boys, you know how things are. If any one of you has got a plan, well my goodness, let's hear it!' Of course nobody had any plan. ‘Well then,' he said, ‘the only thing for us to do is to scatter and live off the country. If we stay here, we'll starve. Of course,” he said, “if I could find Col. Yancey's treasure, we'd all be fixed. But we haven't had much luck with that.'”

“What's the treasure?” Freddy asked.

“Oh, there's supposed to be some money hidden in the old house. At least folks around there say this old Col. Yancey that used to own the place hid it before he went off to join the Confederate army. Mr. Boomschmidt has hunted for it some, but it's been more a game than anything else: he doesn't really believe it's there.

“‘Well,' he said, ‘how about it? There's lots of wild country around here and, my goodness, your forefathers managed all right, in the days before there were any circuses. Eh, Leo—didn't they manage all right?' You know how the chief always wanted Leo to back him up.

“Well, Leo backed him up all right, though I guess he didn't know much about how his forefathers managed, seeing he wasn't there. But he said the chief was perfectly right and it was the only thing to do, and the other animals agreed. So we decided not to put it off, but to start right away. Leo made a little speech and thanked Mr. Boomschmidt for all he'd done for us, and then we said goodbye.” The rhinoceros sniffed damply, and wiped his eyes with the corner of the blanket. “It was pretty sad, Freddy. I don't like to think about it. Mr. Boomschmidt and his old mother, and Madame Delphine—you remember, she was the fortune teller with the circus—they stood there in the porch and watched us marching off to the woods. Tears running down their faces.—Tears running down our faces too, of course.” Jerry sniffed again. “Got a handkerchief? Oh, never mind; here's some Kleenex Mrs. Bean brought me.”

The rhinoceros sniffed damply, and wiped his eyes with the corner of the blanket.

Freddy was very much affected by the rhinoceros' tears. Mr. Boomschmidt and his animals were old and valued friends, and this account of their misfortunes made him sad. But Freddy was practical in such matters and he didn't think that he and Jerry would help Mr. Boomschmidt much by crying on each other's shoulders. Besides, having an animal who weighs nearly a ton crying on your shoulder is no treat. So to keep Jerry from breaking down completely he said gruffly: “Snap out of it, Jerry. I'll do anything I can for Mr. Boomschmidt, but you haven't told me yet what you want me to do.”

Jerry wiped his eyes on half a box of Kleenex, sneezed twice, and then said: “You're right, Freddy. Well, there isn't much more to tell. It was last spring—nearly a year ago—that we took to the woods and separated, and what has become of the rest of the animals I don't know. I struck out northwest, into the mountains. Had a real nice summer, too. I kept to the hills, and I don't suppose any of the farmers or village people in the valleys ever guessed there was a rhinoceros living close by.

“But one day last fall I was lying up in a blackberry patch—you never saw such berries, Freddy; they were as big as plums—well, small plums, anyway … I was on the edge of the woods above a valley, and I saw what I thought was a big yellow dog running across the fields below me. You know I don't see very well; I have to rely on my ears and my nose; but the wind was from me to him so I couldn't tell much about him. But all at once he stopped, and then came bounding up towards me, and I knew he'd scented me.”

“And it was Leo, I bet,” Freddy put in.

“Darn it, Freddy, you spoiled my story,” said Jerry peevishly. “Oh yes, it was Leo. Just as I started to charge him, he roared. I'd know that roar anywhere. Well, we were pretty glad to see each other. But Leo was awful thin. He said: ‘You know, Jerry, this wild free life isn't all it's cracked up to be. All I've had to eat in the last two weeks is a couple of owls and a woodchuck. And that's pretty poor pickings.' And then he said he'd decided to strike north and try to reach here. ‘ 'Tisn't only on my own account, Jerry,' he said. ‘We ought to do something to help the chief. He's been good to us for a long time, and now when he's in trouble, what are we doing to help him? Walked out—that's what we did, just walked out.'

“I said I didn't see what else we could have done, and he said no, he didn't either, but he said when Mr. Boomschmidt was in trouble there was no excuse for our not doing everything we could. ‘And I figure it,' he said, ‘that Freddy and the Bean animals—they're good friends of the chief's—they'll maybe be able to think of something.'

“Well, that's the story, Freddy,” Jerry said. “We decided to try to reach you, and see if you and your friends could think up some way of helping to get the chief back into the circus business. We don't want you to
do
anything, Freddy; we just want an
idea.
”

Chapter 2

Of course Freddy was greatly flattered to be so highly thought of. If Jerry had walked all the way up from Virginia to get his advice, then his advice must be pretty valuable. And he at once put on a very solemn and important expression and said: “H'm! Ha! Yes, quite so”—all of which was intended to show Jerry that he had come to the right place if he was looking for wisdom. But Jerry just peered at him with deep concern and said: “What's the matter—you got a stomach-ache?”

“Certainly not,” Freddy said crossly. “I'm thinking.”

“Gosh!” said Jerry sympathetically. He never did much thinking himself, and he evidently felt that it was a pretty painful process. As of course it is.

He didn't say anything more and continued to look earnestly at Freddy, blinking his weak little eyes, as if expecting the idea he had asked for to pop out any minute. And when he had waited quite a while and nothing had happened, he said: “Aren't you going to help me, Freddy? Leo said you were just full of ideas.”

“I am,” said Freddy. “Of course I am. The trouble is I've got so many that it's hard to select just the right one for the job. I'll have to think this over for a while. You stay covered up, Jerry. I'll be back soon.”

Freddy knew it was no use trying to get back to the pig pen over that icy crust, so he went into the next stall where Hank, the old white horse, lived. Hank had overheard the conversation and he said: “Land sakes, Freddy, that's too bad about old Boomschmidt. If he was in trouble, why didn't he send word to us?”

“I suppose he hated to ask for help. Felt ashamed, I expect, because he couldn't support his animals any more.”

“Don't see how it was his fault,” said Hank.

“It wasn't. But what I don't see is, why Leo hasn't managed to get up here. Of course he couldn't have come along the main roads, because he'd have been seen, and maybe shot or captured. But Mr. Boomschmidt lives in Virginia, and that isn't so far but what he could have worked up through the back country in all this time.”

“Well, I don't suppose it's as easy as it looks,” said Hank. “Nothin' ever is. Exceptin' maybe slidin' down hill on skis,” he added with a snicker.

“I don't suppose I'll ever hear the last of that,” said Freddy resignedly. “There's one thing about the animals on this farm—they hang on to a joke the way old Zenas Witherspoon hangs on to an old hat, until it's so smashed and stained and full of holes that if it wasn't on his head you wouldn't know what it was. Why, there are some jokes around this farm that were here before I was born, and I don't believe anybody but maybe Mr. Bean knows what they mean any more.”

“They must be pretty good jokes, then,” said Hank, “to last all that time. And I don't know, Freddy—there ain't anything like a good old time-tested joke, that you don't have to stop to think whether it's funny or not; you can just go ahead and laugh your head off.

“Well, I think—” Freddy began, and then he said: “Hey, listen!” There was a deep humming sound that grew gradually louder, and they ran to the door and saw the snow plow coming slowly up the road. The animals all went out and shouted and waved to the men on the plow, and then somebody said: “Here comes the mailman!” and sure enough, way down the hill in the direction of Centerboro they saw a black speck coming up the white groove that the plow had cut through the snow.

There was quite a stack of letters. Freddy got six, and there were several for Mrs. Wiggins, and all the animals—even the mice—had one or two. There was a big white envelope for Mrs. Bean, and the animals called her to the back door and stood around while she opened it. It was a beautiful lacy valentine all decorated with hearts and arrows and clasped hands, and on it was this verse:

I love my pipe

And my to baccy;

I love you
,

I do, by cracky!

I can't write pretty

For I ain't a poet
,

But I love you
,

And don't I know it!

If you ditched me

I sure would pine
,

So I hope you'll be

My valentine!

“My land!” said Mrs. Bean, and she giggled and blushed, and then she turned to Mr. Bean, who had come to the door behind her. “So that's the way you spend your time when you ought to be splitting me some firewood!”

“Pshaw!” said Mr. Bean, looking embarrassed. “Don't know what you're talking about, Mrs. B.” And he puffed so hard on his pipe that both of them disappeared in a cloud of smoke.