Secret Signs (5 page)

“Nice doggy,” Henry murmured. “Good boy, you want a tasty treat?”

The dog stepped closer. Henry waved the snack invitingly. “Then go get it!” He threw the food as far as he could, then sprinted in the opposite direction. As he crawled under a boxcar, he heard the dog scramble after his lunch. He also saw the two policemen running to where he'd been only seconds before.

Henry raced to the water tower. “Clickety Clack!” he called in a loud whisper. The old hobo's head peered over the edge of the tank. “Come on! We've got to make a run for it! The dog thinks I'm a lunch wagon, and he'll bring his two buddies with him.”

Clickety Clack was out of the water and down the ladder in a twinkling. “Come on, boy. We've got a train to catch!”

Squelching with every step, Clickety Clack headed toward an engine that was making its way out of the big train yard, a long parade of boxcars in tow. “Do exactly what I do and keep your feet away from the rails!” he yelled as he ran alongside the slowly moving train.

Henry's heart pounded as the powerful steam engine shook the ground.

An open boxcar drew up alongside Clickety Clack. He tossed his bedroll in through the opening, then grabbed hold of the door edge and leapt aboard. “Jump!”

Henry looked behind him. The two policemen and the huge guard dog were closing in. The dog bared its teeth and snapped its powerful jaws as it tore after them.

Reaching up as he ran, Henry's fingers were only inches from Clickety Clack's outstretched arm as the train pulled away. In a last desperate effort, Henry lunged forward and clasped the hobo's hand, and with a mighty heave, Clickety Clack yanked him through the open door.

They were safe!

Henry lay sprawled on the dusty wooden floor, gasping.

Clickety Clack pulled himself to his feet and spat out the open door as he waved goodbye to the posse that had been chasing them. “So long, suckers!”

Henry sighed with relief. He felt the train vibrating beneath him in a steady rhythm as it carried them west.

This was not how he'd imagined today would go, but soon he would be with his father in Alberta, and vicious dogs, angry policemen and leaping aboard moving boxcars would all be behind him.

Lulled by the constant swaying of the train as it carried them west into Saskatchewan, Henry imagined he was on a riverboat. The steel rails were his river, and the boxcar his paddle wheeler. He was steaming down the Mississippi, just like his hero, Tom Sawyer. Life was grand!

Henry thought about writing Anne her very first letter, then decided she could wait and pulled his novel out instead. He sat at the edge of the door, rereading a favorite chapter of Tom's adventures, but his attention was drawn to the miles of parched fields he was traveling through.

He remembered his teacher talking about John Palliser's Triangle, which stretched across much of southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and into parts of Manitoba. The Triangle had dry sandy soil, no trees, and grassland that spread out to the horizon. In his mind's eye he could see a vast ocean of gently waving prairie grass, but now, in the searing heat of a drought, all that was left was burnt scrub and swirling dust devils.

Clickety Clack snored loudly as he slept on the boxcar floor. Henry looked around his temporary transport. The dusty wooden freight car was old and smelled of oil. It was not a place he wanted to spend much time in, that was certain.

He went back to watching the world pass by, mesmerized by the landscape.

Groaning loudly, Clickety Clack roused himself from his afternoon nap. “Well now, I'd say we need a little snack. I'm feeling a might peckish. Where's my old turkey?” He groped around for his bedroll, which had served as a pillow while he slept. “Let's
have a look.” Out of the rolled-up blanket came an assortment of food including a couple of squashed buns, a piece of beef jerky and two hard-boiled eggs.

Henry's stomach rumbled.

Clickety Clack laid out the feast on an old handkerchief that had materialized from one of his pockets. It was then that Henry realized why the hobo had so many pockets. He was wearing two coats, one over top of the other!

The tramp looked at him. “Where's your grub, boy? We'll eat now and go to the bread line in Regina when we get there tonight.”

Henry sighed. “I had to feed it to the guard dog to get away.”

Clickety Clack stared at him. “You gave
all
your food to that hairy beast? Why didn't you throw part of it and keep some for yourself? Kind of shortsighted, wouldn't you say, boy?”

Henry's temper flared. “I didn't know I was going to have to run for my life or I might have been more prepared. No one
told me about the railway bulls and their boy-eating dog.”

“And if you'd done what I said in the first place and climbed into that water tower, you could have kept all your food and still escaped.” Clickety Clack tapped the shell of his hard-boiled egg with a jackknife that had magically appeared; he then pulled a tiny tin of salt out of yet another pocket. “Too bad, but I don't have enough to feed you and me both. I guess you'll have to wait till tonight.” He peeled the egg and sprinkled it liberally with salt before greedily chomping into it.

“Fine with me! I'm not hungry anyway.” Henry's stomach was gnawing on his backbone, but he wasn't going to beg for food. Not him! He went back to reading his book.

The elderly traveler continued to enjoy his meal. Henry swallowed; his mouth wouldn't stop watering. He knew he shouldn't look, but his eyes were drawn to the food.

Clickety Clack glanced at him from
under bushy gray eyebrows. “Oh, stop looking like the pigs ate your granny, boy. I reckon there's enough here for two.” He tossed Henry an egg, followed by a bun and a sizable chunk of the jerky.

Henry tried to look as though he didn't care one way or the other. “I guess I could force it down.”

They ate in silence while the miles slipped by in the lazy summer sunshine. A smudge on the horizon caught Henry's eye, and he wondered what kind of dust storm it was. “There's a strange…” he began.

“Be quiet!” Clickety Clack looked up, listening intently.

Then Henry heard it. A strange whirring sound filled the air.

“We're in for it now!” Scrambling to his feet, Clickety Clack hurried to the open door and tugged at it.

At that moment, Henry saw them.

Millions and millions of grasshoppers!

With a hailstone rattle, the flying bugs hit the sides of the boxcar, plastering it
with their slimy green bodies. The noise was deafening. Henry ran to help close the door. The grasshoppers smashed into his hair and face. He opened his mouth to yell, but his voice was drowned as insects filled his nose and throat. He couldn't breathe, and panic gripped him as his mind flashed back to that terrifying day at the creek when he had almost died.

He spat out the loathsome bugs and pulled on the door. It was jammed.

Henry could see that the bottom track was plugged with dead grasshoppers. He dropped to his knees and frantically dug the gooey green mush out of the track.

Clickety Clack heaved on the door, slamming it shut against the terrible storm. “This is not good. These little critters can strip a crop to the ground in minutes and drive cattle so wild that they stampede into fences.”

Henry's head came up. “Feel that? The train's slowing down!” The car began to shudder. Then a horrible stench made his lunch rise in his throat. He clamped his hand over his nose. “What's that awful stink?”

Clickety Clack shook off several grass-hoppers that clung to his coat. “The wheels have squashed so many hoppers, we can smell the hot, oozing bug juice, and the reason we're slowing down is because as the critters get ground up, the steel wheels lose traction on the slimy rails. They act like grasshopper grease.” He shook his head. “I've got a bad feeling about this.”

As they waited, the sound of the laboring engine could be heard clearly above the drumming of the insects. Finally the train came to a complete stop, and the noise of bug bodies pounding into the boxcar gradually died away. Henry looked at Clickety Clack. “What's happening?”

“Nothing good for us,” the tramp answered as the train jolted forward and backward along the slick tracks. Finally the jerking motions stopped and the air grew ominously quiet.

With the squeal of straining steel, Henry
heard the engine start chugging again, slowly at first, then faster. He sighed with relief.

This was not how he'd imagined today would go, but by tonight they'd be in Regina. Halfway to Calgary, halfway to finding his father. He braced himself for the hard snap that would come as their car rumbled into motion, but nothing happened. As Henry listened, the sound of the engine pulling away was distinct and frightening.

“Grab your gear, boy. This is where we get off.” Clickety Clack slung the belt holding his bedroll over his shoulder.

Henry was confused, but for once he did as he was told without argument. He knew if he was to survive, his best chance was to listen to the old hobo.

They shoved the door open. The world was sunny again.

Henry jumped down and looked around. Their car, along with a dozen others, was parked on a siding in the middle of the empty prairie. “The train left us! We're stranded!” He heard the panic in his voice. “What are we going to do?”

Clickety Clack spat out a gob of tobacco juice, which looked a lot like the grass-hopper guts Henry had scooped out of the door track. “You're too soft, boy. The old road was spoiled is all, but we've got feet, don't we?” he scoffed. “We can walk to Regina. It can't be more than two or three days away.”

Henry stared at him in disbelief. “Two or three days! Are you crazy?”

Clickety Clack shot him a hard look. “Hold your tongue, boy. I've never taken guff from anyone, especially not a wet-behind-the-ears kid.”

“And I've never been stuck in the middle of the bald prairie before! It's, it's…” Henry searched for the right word.

“Terrifying?” Clickety Clack added helpfully.

“Aggravating!” Henry groaned. “I was supposed to see my father tomorrow.”

Clickety Clack threw back his head and gave a great roar of a laugh. “Well now, that's life, boy. It doesn't always go the way we plan, but once you're on this
ride there's no getting off, so make the best of it.”

He squinted into the distance as though getting his bearings. “We go that way.” He nodded to the west. Pulling a piece of chalk out of one of his pockets, he jotted a sign on the fencepost at the end of the siding. It was a circle with an arrow jutting out of it, pointing in the direction he'd indicated. “This will help other folks who get stranded here so they won't end up as buzzard bait.” He tucked the chalk away and started walking. “Come on, boy. We've got a ways to go, and it ain't going to get any cooler.”

Despite the delay, Henry comforted himself by remembering that he'd already made it out of Manitoba and halfway across Saskatchewan, a feat anyone would be proud of.