Twister on Tuesday (2 page)
Read Twister on Tuesday Online
Authors: Mary Pope Osborne
Jack opened his eyes. Sunlight streamed through his window.
“Tuesday!”
he whispered. Morgan's note had told him and Annie to come back to the magic tree house on Tuesday. He could hardly wait to find out where she was sending them today!
Jack scrambled out of bed. He threw on his clothes. He packed his notebook and pencil into his backpack. Then he headed into the hall.
Jack bumped into Annie. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt.
“Tuesday!” they both whispered.
Together, they hurried down the stairs.
“Mom, Dad, we're going out for a few minutes!” Jack shouted.
“Don't you want breakfast first?” his dad called from the kitchen.
“When we get back!” said Annie.
They rushed out the front door. They ran down their street in the bright summer sunlight.
A warm wind gently shook the trees as Jack and Annie headed into the Frog Creek woods. Soon they came to the tallest tree in the woods. The magic tree house waited for them in the high branches. Jack and Annie grabbed the rope ladder and climbed up.
Inside the shady tree house, the note from Morgan was still on the floor:
Dear Jack and Annie,
Camelot is in trouble. To save the kingdom, please find these four special kinds of writing for my library:
Something to follow
Something to send
Something to learn
Something to lend
            Thank you,
            Morgan
“Okay,” said Jack. “We have the first writing:
something to follow
.” He picked up a list from the Civil War.
“And we have the second,” said Annie,
“something to send.”
She picked up a letter from the Revolutionary War.
“Now we need the third,” said Jack,
“something to learn.”
“No problem,” said Annie. She grabbed a book lying in the corner. “I hope we're not going to another war.”
Jack and Annie looked at the cover. It showed a field of tall green grass.
The title was
Life on the Prairie.
“The prairie?” said Annie. “We already went to the prairie the time we met Black Hawk.”
“Yeah,” said Jack, remembering their adventure with the Native American boy.
He opened the book and turned to a picture of an old-fashioned train crossing the prairie.
“Oh,” he said. “I get it. Trains crossed the prairie
after
the pioneers came. When we went to the prairie before, Native Americans were the
only
people who lived there.”
“So we must be going to pioneer time,” said Annie.
“I think so,” said Jack.
He pointed at the picture that showed the train crossing the prairie.
“I wish we could go there,” he said.
The breeze picked up.
The wind started to blow.
The tree house started to spin.
It spun faster and faster.
Then everything was still.
Absolutely still.
Jack opened his eyes.
He was wearing pants with suspenders and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. In place of his backpack was a leather bag.
Annie was wearing a long dress and a sunbonnet.
“I like my hat,” she said. “It'll keep the sun off my face.”
“Yeah, except the sun's not shining,” said Jack.
He and Annie looked out the window.
The sky was cloudy.
The tree house had landed in a small grove of trees near a creek. Beyond the trees was a wide, open prairie. Green grass and wildflowers swayed in a chilly wind.
In the distance, a train puffed across the prairie. Sparks of fire came out of its smokestack. Huge clouds of black smoke billowed into the gray sky.
“Wow,” said Jack.
He looked at the picture of the train in their book and read:
After the Civil War, the U.S. government built railroads to link the eastern and western parts of the country. By the 1870s, steam engines carried people across the Kansas prairie.
Jack pulled out his notebook and wrote:
“Let's get going,” said Annie. “We have to find that special writing for Morgan.”
She started down the ladder.
Jack packed his things in his leather bag and climbed down after her.
When he stepped onto the ground, Jack looked toward the west.
The train was gone. Only a thin trail of smoke floated across the sky.
“That train was cool,” said Jack.
“Yeah, and so is
that,
” said Annie. She pointed in the other direction.
Far away, in the distance, a line of covered wagons rolled through the rippling grass. Their white coverings billowed in the breeze.
Jack pulled out the research book. He
found a picture of the wagon train. He read aloud:
Wagons were the most common way for families to travel west. They could carry clothes, tools, food, and water. A line of wagons was called a “wagon train.” The white cloth coverings over the wagons also made them look like sailing ships, or schooners. For this reason, covered wagons were sometimes called “prairie schooners.”
Jack looked at the wagons again. They
did
look like ships sailing across a rippling green sea.
He wrote in his notebook:
“Let's get a closer look,” said Annie.
She took off across the grass.
Jack put away his things and ran after her. As they ran, the wind began to blow harder. The clouds overhead grew darker.
“Waitâwait!” Jack finally called to Annie. “We'll never catch up to it!”
They both stopped running. Panting, they watched the wagon train vanish over the horizon.
Jack took a deep breath.
“What now?” he said.
They looked around.
All Jack could see was the distant grove of trees with the tree house.
With the train and wagon train gone, there were no signs of life anywhereâno pioneer cabins, no Native American tepees.
“How can we find the special writing?” said Jack. “There's nothing out here.”
“Oh yeah?” said Annie. “What's
that
?”
She pointed to a rusty pipe sticking out from the top of a small hill.
Streaming from the pipe was a column of black smoke.
“Oh, man,” said Jack, “that's
definitely
a sign of life.”
“Let's check it out,” said Annie.
She and Jack walked up the little hill. At the top, they saw that the rusty pipe was rising out of a wooden roof.
They walked around to the other side of the hill.
Beneath the wooden roof was a door. The door seemed to open into the hill itself.
“What is this?” said Annie.
“Let's find out,” said Jack.
