Poppy Ott and the Tittering Totem E-Book

Edwards Leo

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

A number of boys are ambitious to form a career for themselves in journalism and its various industries, and trusting friendship and willingness to give advice as the protagonist began this work. In other words, the main characters must have a great desire to do this. If they have a „desire”, naturally, they will continue to try. Boys travel to Wisconsin very often with their elders. These adventures are remembered by many readers.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I. RED’S TOTEM POLE

CHAPTER II. THE MAN IN THE WOOD SHED

CHAPTER III. THE CORBIN CARBURETOR

CHAPTER IV. PEACEFUL HOENODDLE

CHAPTER V. AT THE AUCTION

CHAPTER VI. THE IVORY POCKET PIECE

CHAPTER VII. PREPARING FOR THE ABDUCTION

CHAPTER VIII. CLEVER LITTLE ME!

CHAPTER IX. HOW BID PAID US BACK

CHAPTER X. THE BIG BATTLE

CHAPTER XI. OUR RUCKATUCK WITH THE LAWYER

CHAPTER XII. AN EXCITING RESCUE

CHAPTER XIII. WHAT PATSY TOLD US

CHAPTER XIV. A SCREAM IN THE NIGHT

CHAPTER XV. DEDUCTIONS

CHAPTER XVI. THE BIG RACE

CHAPTER XVII. A NEW LINK IN THE MYSTERY

CHAPTER XVIII. THE BOATMAN’S STRANGE COLLAPSE

CHAPTER XIX. AN AMAZING DISCLOSURE

CHAPTER XX. ON TO THE RESCUE!

CHAPTER XXI. THE TITTERING TOTEM

CHAPTER XXII. LATER FINDINGS

CHAPTER I. RED’S TOTEM POLE

Poppy Ott was at it again. Having finally located him in his pa’s big wood shed under the crooked crab-apple tree I could hear him fiddling around with some kind of a noisy jigger. Sounded like machinery to me. But when I beat a merry little rat-a-tat-tat on the closed door, expecting, of course, as his bosom pal, to be warmly welcomed into the secret laboratory or whatever you want to call it, I was told kind of impatient-like to go around on the front porch and play roly-poly with the cat.

That wasn’t like old Poppy at all. Usually when a secret ambition takes hold of him he tells me all about it. For he and I are thicker than molasses in January. That is, we were thicker than molasses in January before this new notion struck him. But now, if I must tell you the truth, I was kind of peeved at him.

Still, as the saying is, I burned with curiosity to know what was going on behind the locked door of that mysterious old wood shed. For even though my love for Poppy had turned to vinegar, untrue friend that he was, I had to admit to myself that he was no ordinary kid. Tutter’s Pedigreed Pickle factory, one of the town’s chief industries, is evidence of that. For Poppy, it is to be remembered by those who have read the book, Poppy Ott’s Pedigreed Pickles, is the one who invented these famous pickles. Seven-League Stilts is another one of his successful and creditable inventions. He isn’t quite as clever as Tom Swift. But he’s young yet!

Well, having been told to shower my festive talents on the neighborhood mouse catcher, I very properly turned up my shapely nose at the locked wood-shed door and sashayed down the sun-baked street to 1014 West Main where the famous Red Meyers, B. S. A. (meaning Boy Scouts of America), was hard at work in the back yard. No, he wasn’t pushing the family grass chewer as a daily good turn. Nor was he massaging the hen-house windows. His activities, I might say, to put it in a big way, were unique. He and Rory Ringer, the new English kid in our block, were carving (or trying to carve) a totem pole.

I’m a Boy Scout myself. But I take it sensibly. I don’t let it run away with me like Red. Gee. Will I ever forget the day he and Rory broiled the steak. It was one of their second-class tests. Our Scoutmaster, who was required to eat a piece of the junk in order to pass on the test favorably or otherwise, was sick for a week. Red tells around that it was rheumatism of the ribs. But I have my own ideas. For I saw the steak. Dropped into the fire four times, Red wound up by giving it a bath in the canal. Ants or something, he said. When offered the scraps, Rory’s dog very sensibly parked its tail between its hind legs and lit out for home sweet home. Some dogs are smart. Red, though, survived the steak as chipper as you please. Like a goat, that kid can eat anything.

All wrapped up in scouting, as I say, naturally the only place in the house good enough for his cherished merit badges and stuffed rattlesnake skin is in the parlor. Mrs. Meyers doesn’t like it at all. For the snake skin, she says, has a mean habit of falling under the parlor chairs. She knows that it’s a stuffed skin. But the sight of it is an awful shock to her callers. The week Red and Rory camped on Goose Island, in the Vermillion River, the hated snake skin was chucked into the attic. But it was back in its accustomed place when the campers returned to civilization. For Mrs. Meyers knew that if it wasn’t put back Red would blat for a month. She sure is good to him. I’ve got a tin photograph of my ma letting me keep a stuffed rattlesnake skin in the parlor. Oh, yes. Like so much mud. I dassn’t even keep a little toad in the basement.

Well, as I say, all Red knows or cares to talk about is scouting. He even wears his Boy Scout uniform to Sunday school. Once he left his Bible at home and brought a scout hatchet instead. Gosh! I asked him, as he and the hardware clattered around in the pew, why he didn’t bring along his pup tent and cooking kit.

Totem poles come in different sizes. But Red, as could be expected of him under the circumstances, teemed with ambition. No measley little totem pole for him. Absolutely not. Having bought an old stubbed telephone pole for fifty cents he and Rory had lugged the pole home on their Comet Coasters and now were slashing at it with their scout hatchets as it leaned dismally against the sunny side of the hen house.

I could imagine as I looked at the mutilated pole that it was unhappily conscious of its disgrace. For what the two wood carvers were doing to it was a caution. The poor thing. Still, that’s about what you’d expect of Red Meyers.

Perched on a stepladder he paused to admire his work, thinking, I guess, that I would brag on it.

“Isn’t it a beauty?” he finally asked me, swabbing his sweaty face.

Should I tell him the truth? I did.

“It isn’t,” I acknowledged.

“Isn’t what?” he glared at me.

“A beauty.”

Totem poles, as I understand it, originated with the Indians. Not the redskins whose lost arrowheads are still found in our river bottoms, but certain scattered tribes or clans up in the Alaskan district. A genuine totem pole, with its carved figures one above the other, is a sort of family monument, like our marble tombstones, a raven head (called a crest) signifying that one branch of the house had married into the neighboring raven clan and an otter crest signifying that still another branch of the family had married into the otter clan. Some poles contain only two or three crests. Others have a dozen or more, for in addition to the raven and otter clans there are wolf clans, grizzly-bear clans and so on.

Red was peeved because I had told him the truth about his punk work.

“It’s mighty little you know about totem poles anyway,” says he spitefully.

“You and me both,” says I.

“Oh, is that so,” he pushed out his mug. “I studied up on it if anybody happens to ask you.”

“What’s that you’re carving now?” says I, as he put his hatchet aside and took up a wood chisel.

“An owl,” says he, chipping away artistically.

An owl! I wanted to laugh.

“It looks like a fish,” I told him, parking my manly form in the shade of a gooseberry bush.

“Where’s Poppy Ott?” the worker then inquired. “He promised to help me this morning.”

“Don’t say a word to me about Poppy Ott,” I stiffened. “He and I aren’t on speaking terms.”

I was given a curious look.

“No? When did he quit?”

“Quit what?”

“Speaking to you.”

“It wasn’t him who quit–it was me. I’m through with him.”

“Got any candy?”

“No.”

“I’m hungry.”

“As usual.”

“Say, Jerry,” the freckled face lit up, “did I tell you that I’m in line for another merit badge? Carpentry. That’ll make seventeen.”

“You’re smart,” I told him. But you can imagine how I said it.

“This is good practice,” he added, hacking away with the wood chisel.

I watched him for a moment or two.

“That’s a funny looking owl,” I felt compelled to say.

“It was all right until Rory knocked the beak off.”

“Aw!... Hi didn’t,” the junior pole carver quickly defended himself. “Hi never touched hit. Hit was you who ‘it the bloomin’ thing.”

I like Rory, even though he does get his “h’s” all mixed up. He’s a good kid for his age. Yet it kind of disgusts me the way he lets Red boss him around. Red’s all right. But I’ve learned from experience that he’ll take a mile if you give him an inch.

“Anyway,” the freckled one hacked away, “the beak fell off. But I can easily nail it on.”

“Where did you get the idea,” says I, watching him, “that totem poles were put together with nails?”

“Accidents will happen,” he excused himself.

“It looks to me,” I sized up his work, “as though you’ve had more accidents than anything else.”

“It’s lovely of you,” says he, “to sit there and crab at us. We sure appreciate it–don’t we, Rory?”

“Sock ’im with a ‘atchet,” was Rory’s gentle suggestion.

“What animal’s that?” I further pointed.

“That? Oh, that’s a–a–You made it, Rory. What is it?”

“A heagle,” Rory pronounced proudly, mopping his sweaty face.

“Of course,” Red relayed the information to me. “It’s a heagle.”

“Bald,” says I, returning the freckled one’s grin, “or ‘airy?”

“You aren’t funny,” Rory glared.

The leader went back to work.

“Tra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la,” he sang.

“Careful,” I told him. “You ought to know that you can’t sing and do good work, too. The first thing you know you’ll skid and dislocate the monkey’s tail.”

“What monkey?”

“Isn’t that bow-legged thing a monkey?” I inquired innocently.

“You’re the only monkey I see.”

Rory was sweating worse than ever.

“Boy, this sure is ‘ot work,” he panted.

“We might move the pole over there in the shade of the barn,” Red suggested.

“Let’s.”

The gentle hint was then passed to me that they needed my help. So I got up. And after considerable lugging and tugging, in which Red tripped over the stepladder and almost broke his neck, we got the totem pole propped against the side of the barn. It reached almost to the haymow door. So you have an idea how big and clumsy it was.

“Do you ever expect to finish it?” I inquired.

“Finish it?” Red repeated, staring at me. “Why, of course, we expect to finish it.”

“For what purpose?”

“Can’t you guess?” he countered.

“Don’t tell me,” says I, “that you’re going to hang it up in the parlor beside your rattlesnake skin.”

“Silly! We’re going to present it to the Tutter Boy Scouts.”

And I was one of them!

“Do the Boy Scouts have to accept it?” says I kind of guarded-like.

“They’ll be glad to. For as our Scoutmaster said last week the one thing needed to finish off our camp is a totem pole.”

“Yah,” says I, “a totem pole.”

Red isn’t dumb.

“Well,” he stiffened, “what’s the matter with this one?”

“Everything is the matter with it,” I told him heartlessly.

“I wish you’d go home.”

“At nine o’clock in the morning? Kid,” I made myself comfortable under the gooseberry bush, “I can stay here for hours.”

“We will sock you with a ‘atchet,” young Johnny Bull put in, “if you don’t dry up.”

“Who ever ‘eard of a ‘atchet?” I mimicked him.

“Say that again,” he brandished the tool, with fire in his eyes, “and see what you get.”

Here a row of monkey faces came into sight over the alley fence.

“Look at Jerry Todd sittin’ under a gooseberry bush,” piped Bid Stricker, the leader of the Zulutown gang.

“Sometimes he sits and thinks,” chimed in Jimmy Stricker. “And sometimes he just sits.”

“Haw! haw! haw!” bellowed Red, who usually laughs at the wrong time. “That’s funny.”

If you have read the book, Jerry Todd, Pirate, you’ll need no lengthy introduction to Bid Stricker and his crummy gang. Our enemy, they tried their best to steal the sunken treasure on us. At one time it looked as though they were going to be successful, too. But we won out in the end.

I don’t like Bid. For he’s a sneak. And Jimmy, his cousin of the same age, is just as bad. Other members of the gang, all from Zulutown, which is the name that the Tutter people have for the west end of town, are Hib and Chet Milden, brothers, and Jum Prater. It’s generally agreed around town that the young Zuluites are so tough that their folks chain them to fences to keep them from biting the dogs.

Wondering what had brought the Strickers here, tough nuts that they were, I listened while they razzed Red and Rory about the totem pole. Their lingo was funny especially when they mimicked the smaller one, calling him “the guy from the hupper hend of Hengland who made ‘atchet ‘andles out of bloody hoak.” As for the leader, what he should do, they said, was to stick his own freckled mug on the pole. A freckled totem pole! How they did laugh. But they ducked in a jiffy, let me tell you, when Red, with blood in his eyes, started pitching rotten eggs at them from the haymow door. Gee. Eggs splattered every which way. And stink! Wough. I started to run. Then what do you know if the furious egg pitcher didn’t paste me. He said afterwards that he mistook me for one of the flying enemy. But I know him. As a sort of unhappy climax to the exciting (and stinking) scene he lost his balance as he hung to the edge of the haymow door and fell on top of poor Rory who got three of the rotten eggs, of which Red had found a whole nestful that morning in the haymow, down the back of his neck.

The Strickers were lucky. For Red, the crazy boob, had missed them entirely. So you can imagine how they hooted at us, stinking wretches that we were, as we slunk through town on our way to the swimming hole, just off the canal, where we stripped to the skin and scrubbed our bodies with sand. We were an hour cleaning up and another hour drying our washed clothes. About to start for home, where Red and Rory intended to resume work on the totem pole, we were attracted to the main channel by the sound of an outboard motor.

Yah, you guessed it. The thing Poppy Ott was working on so secret-like was an outboard motor. And now he was running it up and down the canal as big as cuffy.

“More fun, I suppose,” says Red selfishly, “than helping me.”

Rory had his eyes on a tow-headed kid in the front of the boat.

“Who is hit, Jerry? Do you know ’im?”

“No,” says I, with a kind of jealous feeling.

And, to that point, having been shut out of Poppy’s confidence, as recorded, it did hurt, let me tell you, to thus learn that he was sharing his new secret with a strange boy.

CHAPTER II. THE MAN IN THE WOOD SHED

I’ll never forget my first meeting with Poppy Ott. Of all the dirty tousle-headed kids. And ragged! Huckleberry Finn had nothing on him. For more than two years he and his shiftless father had trailed around the country in a rickety covered wagon daily getting poorer and poorer. Tramps. That’s what they were, as Poppy admitted to me right out. And how he hated it.

“Pa’s an old dumb-bell,” he told me, when I quizzed him about the detective badge that his father flashed around. “Him detect? Say, he couldn’t catch a crippled bedbug in a pot of molasses. No wonder the cops lock him up on suspicion. They think he’s cuckoo. Sometimes I feel like knocking his block off. But Ma said I shouldn’t. She’s dead.”

It’s fun to read about a kid like Huckleberry Finn. You sort of envy the young adventurer his care-free life. But as Poppy told me that morning in the willow patch, after explaining to me that he got his crazy name from peddling popcorn, there’s nothing in such a life for the boy himself. Without proper schooling and a steady job no one gets anywhere.

“What I want to do,” the rover confided to me, with wistful eyes, “is to settle down and be somebody. But every time I mention it to Pa he has a fit.”

“Does he beat up on you?” I inquired curiously.

That brought a reckless laugh.

“Him? Say, he couldn’t even catch me. For he’s got rheumaticks.”

Boys should stick together, I think. And though this one as I sat beside him was as dirty as a new potato, I saw my duty. If he wanted to locate in Tutter, I said, I’d help him get a job. Which explains briefly how our friendship began.

Advancing the price of a hair-cut I further dolled him up in one of my worn suits. For I was bright enough to realize that no sensible business man would hire a ragamuffin. Washed and dressed up he sure was a swell-looking kid. Not pretty–I don’t mean that. But smart looking. My new buddy! I could tell by the way he hung around me that he liked me. And the more we were together the better I liked him.

His pa, of course, long used to coming and going as he pleased, blew up like a ton of dynamite when he learned that the wheels of his precious traveling chateau had been broken to slivers. But Poppy made it clear to the old man that he meant business. So finally the latter pulled in his horns, agreeing to give up his silly detecting and go to work.

At my request Dad took him on in the brickyard as night watchman. But he soon fizzled out on that job. For one night a robber came. And the first thing Poppy and I knew the authorities had the dazed watchman locked up in the town jail.

I tried to tell Dad that the brickyard safe had been burglarized by the same mysterious thief who had stolen the black parrot. But he wouldn’t listen to me. Nor would the authorities listen to Poppy when he took the floor in his pa’s defense. So my chum and I set to work on our own hook. Picking up the vanished parrot’s trail (not tail!) in a stuffy Zulutown attic we wound up in a lonely moonlit cemetery. Glazed marble eyes and sticky-fingered pine trees! Br-r-r-r! Talk about shivers. No boy, I bet, ever had a worse scare than me. For what I put my hands on in the dark! Oh, oh! Still, on the whole, it was fun. And how pleasing was our final success.

Having saved his new home, as you might say, Poppy next turned his hand to invention. Seven-League Stilts! I was to be his partner, he said, spreading out the new stilts for my admiring inspection, and between us we were to manufacture and market the new product in car-load lots, thus getting rich.

As though boys of our size could do that! But he wasn’t to be stopped. And right then is when I really began to admire him as well as love him. For I saw how smart he was. A born business man if ever there was one. We had lots of grief. But, as I say, Poppy hung on. Him admit defeat? Not in a million years if he was convinced that he was headed in the right direction. So in the end, thanks to his capable and persistent leadership, we won out.

To-day Mr. Ott, a changed man, is the bustling general manager of the stilt factory that my chum and I started in the abandoned carriage plant. And if you think that you can slip anything over on the old gentleman, once so silly and dumb acting, just stop in some day when you’re traveling through La Salle County and try it. Shrewd? Say, there isn’t a penny goes to waste in that factory. He even feeds the sawdust to woodpeckers so that he can use their eggs for knot-hole plugs. And the bent nails are made into fancy pimple pickers. That’s efficiency, he says. Considering how shiftless he used to be, the change in him is remarkable.

Well, having turned the new stilt business over to Mr. Ott, with high hopes, Poppy and I set out on a “hitch-hike,” as a sort of vacation. One hot night, finding ourselves stranded on a closed country road, we applied for supper and a bed at a lonely farmhouse. Here we bumped into a talkative little old lady who entertained us while we ate with a rambling account of her wealthy relative’s weird death. Later Poppy and I slept in the dead millionaire’s bed. Imagine that! And did I ever yip when that goofy spotted gander, the mainspring of the mystery, nipped my bare toes in the middle of the night.

The mystery solved, queer smells, striking clocks, ghostly footfalls and all, not forgetting the vanished heiress whom Poppy impersonated so cleverly, we decided, after our crazy trip across the “desert” in the “Galloping Snail,” that the best place to spend a vacation was in Tutter. So back we came. And then, scarcely had we washed the sand of travel from our ears before we got mixed up in that hilarious “Pedigreed Pickle” deal.

A “Pickle Parlor!” I ridiculed Poppy’s new scheme. Deep in my heart, though, I knew he could do it. And he did–with my help. There’s a river pirate in this book, old Peg-leg Weir they called him. And strange hidden treasure. For, of course, pirates and hidden treasure always go together. Yes, and there’s a smart kid in the story whom you’ll want to push in the face. He tried in every way he could to wreck our growing business. But what we did to him in the end. Oh, baby!

Then to vary his activities the world’s foremost stilt inventor, hitch-hiker and pickle packer developed what you might call a consuming interest in freckled goldfish. It was like him, of course, kind-hearted lad that he is, to want to help old Mrs. Warmley. Having no ready money with which to pay her roofing bill he promptly took over her big collection of goldfish which were later sold at a dollar a throw. Our good friend, Sam Lung the laundryman, generously offered us the use of his store. Later he turned against us. Queer, we thought. While we were flipping goldfish over the counter and merrily initiating Dad’s business friends into our new secret lodge (and you can belong to this lodge, too, if you want to as explained in the preface of this book), Red Meyers and Professor Pip, in rubber boots, were parading up and down the Weir marsh in search of a “tree with a cow’s head.” This unusual tree, the freckle specialist said, in his teetering way, marked the yellow-mud deposit so necessary to him in his concluding experiments. Yes, there is a strange connection between the completed freckle cure and the freckled goldfish from which the book gets its title. Gosh, if you don’t laugh your head off when you read this story I miss my guess.

And now, after all of our fun together and after all of our promises to stick together for life, Poppy had turned me down. No longer was I to be his preferred side-kick, Seven-League-Stilting with him one week and Pedigreed-Pickling with him the next. Henceforth I was to be an outsider; a sort of onlooker. I’d hear about him through other Tutter boys; and I’d see his name in the local newspaper along with the ads for stray cats; but no longer were his victories to be my victories. For he had a new pal.

Tow-headed kids always did look dumb to me. And this one, I gritted my teeth, as the motor boat disappeared around a bend in the narrow canal, had best watch his “p’s” and “q’s” if he wanted to save his beezer from permanent disfigurement.

Red let out a yip.

“Why, I know that kid.”

“Who is he?” says I grimly, figuring that any information on the subject would be useful to the monument engraver later on.

“It’s that rich kid from Walkers Lake.”

“Not young Fuzzy,” says I.

“No. The Davidson kid. His pa makes motor cycles in Milwaukee.”

“His pa better start making harps,” says I, in continued grimness.

But that was too deep for Red. As for Rory, having sat down on a bee he was too busy massaging the seat of his pants to notice what I had said.

“Hi thought hit was a bee,” says he, feeling of himself. “But maybe hit was a bloomin’ ‘ornet.”

A ‘ornet!

“Oh, dry up,” I told him. “You make me sick.”

Red looked at me.

“Say,” says he, on the other’s side, “what’s the matter with you anyway? You’re grouchier than a fish with a flat tire.”

“‘Ornet,” I spit out, “and ‘atchet and heagle.”

“Well, what of it? You say funny things yourself.”

“Maybe I do when I look at you.”

Rory, in the interests of international peace, wanted us to know that there was hopes for him.

“Even my father couldn’t say “heagle’ when ‘e first came to this country. But now ‘e can say “heagle’ just as plain as anybody.”

“Take him away,” I screeched, “before I pull another Boston tea party.”

It sounds silly, of course. But that’s exactly how I felt. Me play with the cat. And that tow-headed squirt from Milwaukee had taken my place. Gr-r-r-r!

“We licked you at Bunker Hill,” I danced around the bewildered British forces. “And we can do it again.”

Red quickly drew the smaller one away.

“Run for your life, Rory. He’s crazier than a bedbug.”

Left alone, I waited on the canal bank until the motor boat came back. Boy, were they ever tearing along. I waved my hand. But much less than stopping to pick me up they didn’t even look at me.

I guess, though, Poppy didn’t want to look at me. He had a new pal–one with motor boats and motor cycles. Well, I shoved up my nose sort of independent-like, he could keep his old motor boats and motor cycles. My rowboat and bicycle were good enough for me. One thing, I knew how to be true to my friends. I didn’t let money turn my head.

In telling about Mr. Arthur Davidson’s recent purchase of a summer home at Walkers Lake, three miles south of town, the Tutter Daily Globe had expressed the hope that the grounds of Gnome Towers, so long neglected, would be restored to their original beauty. The wealthy new owner, the newspaper mentioned, was well able to do this. Dad remembers the man who built the big stone house with its many beautiful towers and turrets. Following his tragic death the place was closed to the public. And for many years no attempt was made to keep up the grounds. Mr. Peter Gnome, I’ve been told, was a very queer man. He talked to the trees and flowers. Birds and squirrels came when he called them. Even the fish answered his call. At least, such is the story that the servants told. And strangest of all he never slept in a bed. When night came he went into the woods where he made a bed of leaves sometimes in one place and sometimes in another. Rain meant nothing to him. Failing to return one morning, after a wild storm, the searching party found him, miles from home, with a battered chest. During the night a colt had stepped on him leaving the print of its hoofs.

Would Poppy go over to Gnome Towers and live? I wondered, as I started back to town. Well, if he did it would serve him right if old Gnome’s ghost grabbed him by the seat of the pants and shook the tar out of him. As for the young tow-head, if he got stepped on by a colt I knew one kid in Tutter who wouldn’t send him calla lilies.

Still, my curiosity persisted, it was queer that he and Poppy should lock themselves in the wood shed. What was their idea anyway? Were they keeping something there? I decided that it was my duty to go right over to Elm Street and find out.