The Corner House Girls' Odd Find

“You’d better’ve let me go into that show alone, Pop.”

“No, no, my girl. You’re too young for that. No, that warn’t the right kind of a show.”

The girl’s voice sounded wistful now: “Wish we could get an act like that we had in the tent show when Neale was with us. He was a good kid then.”

“Yes; but there ain’t many like Neale Sorber was. And like enough he’s gone stale ‘fore now.”

“I’d just like to know where he got all that money,” said the girl-voice. “And in a book, too. I thought ’twas a photograph album.”

“Hist!” said the man-voice, “’Tisn’t so much where he got it as it is, is he comin’ back here with it.”

“He’ll come back to Milton, sure. Bill Sorber isn’t so sick now.”

The voices died to a whisper. Agnes, both troubled and frightened, tried to steal away. But she had been resting her weight upon the corner of the heap of ties. As she moved, the icy timbers shook, slid, and suddenly overturned.

Agnes, her face white, and with a terrified air, found herself facing a man and, not a girl but, a boy, who had sprung up from a log by the fire. And they knew she had overheard their conversation.

CHAPTER XIV – BARNABETTA

“Why, there isn’t any girl here at all!” Agnes Kenway exclaimed, as she faced the two people who had been sitting by the bonfire.

They were shabby people and both had bundles tied to the end of stout staves. Evidently they had either walked far, or had stolen a ride upon a freight train to this spot. There was a water-tank in sight.

The boy, who was thin, and tall, and wiry looking, slipped the bundle off his stick, and seizing the stick itself as a club, advanced stealthily around one side of the fire. The man seemed to be a much more indecisive sort of creature. His smooth face was like parchment; his ears stood out like bats’ wings. No one could honestly call him good looking. Rather was he weak looking; and his expression was one of melancholy.

Somehow, Agnes was not much afraid of the man. It was the boy who made her tremble. He looked so wild, and his eyes blazed so as he clutched the stick, creeping nearer to Agnes all the time.

As he advanced, Agnes began to retreat, stepping slowly backward. She would have run at once, trusting to her lightness of foot to relieve her of the boy’s company in a few rods, had it not been that she remembered the unknown and savage beast that had followed her to this spot.

It must have been this boy’s voice she had heard; yet it sounded just like a girl’s. Agnes was greatly puzzled by the youth’s appearance. She looked again over his supple, crouching body as he advanced. It was wide-hipped, narrow-waisted, and not at all boyish looking. Despite the thinness of this young stroller, his figure did not at all suggest the angles of a boy’s frame.

Aside from being puzzled, Agnes Kenway was much afraid of him. His face was so keenly threatening in expression, and his stealthy actions so antagonistic, that the Corner House girl almost screamed aloud. Finally, she found relief in speech.

“What are you going to do with that stick? Put it down!” she cried.

“I – I – You’ve been listening to us talking,” said the boy. But it was the girl’s voice that spoke.

It did not sound like a boy’s voice at all. It was too high, and there was a certain sweetness to it despite the tremor of the notes. Agnes began to recover her self-possession. She might have been afraid of a reckless boy. But she was strong herself, and agile. Even if the other did have a stick —

“You were listening,” cried the other accusingly, again. “Yes, I was listening – a little,” confessed the Corner House girl. “But so would you – ”

“No, I wouldn’t. That’s sneaky,” snapped the other.

“How about your finding out about the book of money you spoke of?” asked Agnes, boldly. “Didn’t you do anything ‘sneaky’ to find out about that?”

The other started and dropped the stick. The man sat down suddenly. It was plain, even to usually unobservant Agnes Kenway, that her remark had startled both of them.

“I was alone – and lost,” Agnes went on to explain. “I was trying to reach Mr. Bob Buckham’s farm, and a wolf chased me – ”

“A wolf!” interrupted the youthful tramp. “Now I know you’re telling a wicked story.”

“It was. Or something,” said Agnes, stoutly. “I was scared. Then I saw your smoke.”

“Why didn’t you walk right in and speak to us instead of snoopin’?”

“You’d have ‘snooped’,” flashed back Agnes, with some heat. “I was alone, and I was afraid of tramps – ”

“Well, we’re tramps,” said the boy, stooping and picking up the dropped stick.

“Not the kind I am afraid of,” Agnes replied, trying to smile.

The boy would not be pacified, but the man said, shakingly, from his seat on the log:

“We wouldn’t hurt you, girl. Put down that stick, Barney. This is my son, Barney, and I’m Asa Scruggs. I’m a joey when I’m in luck, and Barney – he’s a trapeze artist. He’s good.”

“Oh, Pop!” shrilled the youthful trapeze artist, “might’s well tell the truth this time. She’s nothing but a girl herself.”

“And that’s what you are!” cried Agnes, with excitement.

“Yes. I’m Barnabetta, not Barney, Scruggs. Nice name, isn’t it?” scoffed the strange girl. “My mother was Pennsylvania Dutch; that’s where I got my name, Barnabetta. But it’s safer to travel as a boy, so I’m Barney on the road. Besides, skirts would be in the way, climbing in and out of ‘rattlers.’”

“Oh, what fun!” gasped Agnes. “Do you and your father always travel this way?”

“You bet we don’t! Not when we have an engagement. We’ve ridden in Pullman cars – haven’t we, Pop?”

The man nodded. He did not say much but watched Agnes with eyes that, in a child, the girl would have thought expressed terror. Barnabetta was much the stronger character of the two, the Corner House girl was positive.

“But where are you traveling now?” asked the interested Agnes.

“We’re aimin’ on gettin’ South, miss. There’s tent shows there all winter long,” said the man, plaintively. “I’ve been laid up with my ankle, and it’s too late to get any bookings worth while through the usual vaudeville agencies. We been workin’ for Twomley & Sorber’s Herculean Circus and Menagerie; but of course they’re in winter quarters now at Tiverton. That’s where I got hurt – right at the end of the season, too.”

Agnes’ brain was working busily. Twomley & Sorber’s at Tiverton. Tiverton was where the letter was postmarked that had taken Neale O’Neil away from home so strangely. The talk she had just overheard assured her that these two circus performers had been conversing about Neale and the old album full of money and bonds that he had taken away with him.

But she caught the disguised Barnabetta watching her very sharply. That girl’s black eyes were like glittering steel points. They seemed to say: “How much does this girl who listened guess – how much does she suspect – how much does she know?”

“We’ve got to work up some kind of patter to go with our act if we strike a job,” said Barnabetta, still with her eyes fixed on the Corner House girl. “You’ve got to have something new if you expect to put any act over these days. Pop’s a good joey – ”

“I suppose you mean a clown?” asked Agnes.

“Yep. How’d you know?” sharply retorted Barnabetta.

“I – I’ve heard the word used before,” admitted Agnes, seeing that she had been unwise. “Then you know circus folks?” observed the suspicious trapeze artist.

“Oh, no!”

Barnabetta was not convinced, that was plain. But she turned in a matter-of-fact way to the man. “Well, Pop,” she said coolly, “about that money.” The man jumped, and his weak eyes opened wide. But Barnabetta kept right on and Agnes was sure she was winking at her father. “You must disbelieve me when I say I saw it, and I’m goin’ to say we’ll get it,” she declared.

“Huh?” gasped the clown.

“That’s the way it must be in our act,” the girl said firmly. “In our act – don’t you see?”

“Oh! Ha! Hum!” said the clown, clearing his throat. “I see.”

“This is second-story work,” the girl explained eagerly. “I’ll show you how to climb up to the window for the money – that’s to the trapeze, you see,” she added, throwing the explanation at Agnes.

“Oh! I see,” murmured the Corner House girl.

“And you play the joey part, Pop,” pursued Barnabetta. “I’ll go ahead, and say ‘Hist!’ and ‘Take care!’ and ‘Clumsy!’ and the like, making believe we’re going to rob a house. You do the joey, as I said, and climb almost up to the trapeze on the rope, and then make a fall. We’ve got to get the laughs,” she added again, glancing sidewise at Agnes.

The latter felt very peculiar indeed. Bluntly honest, it was hard for Agnes to play a part in this way. She knew the girl trapeze performer was trying to lead her astray. Barnabetta and her father were talking of Neale and his money before Agnes appeared, and this tale about the new act was being invented on the spur of the moment to confuse her.

Barnabetta stopped suddenly. Perhaps she saw that her tale was making little impression upon their visitor.

“Where were you going, miss?” asked Mr. Scruggs, after a minute’s silence.

“I was on my way to visit Mr. and Mrs. Buckham. They expect me,” said Agnes, wisely. “But I must have missed the road. I know where I am now, however, I’ll go down the railroad beyond the water-tank a little way and find the very crossing of the lane that goes into their dooryard from the west. Those trees must hide the house from here.”

Secretly Agnes wanted to get away, but not to visit Mr. and Mrs. Buckham. She felt that she ought to communicate with Neale O’Neil just as soon as possible. This old clown and his disguised daughter might have a plan to stop Neale on his way home and take the old album and its precious contents away from him.

For now Agnes, like her sister, Ruth, had begun to believe that the engraved slips of paper pasted into the book were “really truly” banknotes. How they had gotten there, and who they originally belonged to, Agnes could not guess. Nor did she believe that Neale O’Neil had carried them off with him, knowing them to be good currency.

However, everybody who got a sight of them seemed to think that the notes were legal tender. Even this strange girl, Barnabetta Scruggs, thought Neale was carrying around thousands of dollars with him. Dear me! if Neale would only know enough to go to Mr. Howbridge, there at his brother’s house at Tiverton, the lawyer would tell him just what to do with the old album.

These thoughts raced like lightning through Agnes’ mind as she turned calmly away from the campfire. “I must be going,” she said. “Good-bye.”

The man said nothing, but looked away. Barnabetta said: “How about that wolf you said was chasing you?” and she said it sneeringly, as though she doubted Agnes’ story.

“I guess he won’t follow me down upon the railroad tracks,” the Corner House girl said cheerfully.

“Huh! I guess he won’t. ’Cause why? There wasn’t any wolf,” snapped Barnabetta. “That’s a story!”

“It isn’t, either!” cried Agnes, hotly.

“I’d like to know what you were hidin’ behind that pile of ties and listenin’ to us for?” said the circus girl.

“I told you how I came to do that.”

“I don’t believe you,” was the flat reply.

Agnes was too impulsive to let this stand without answering. She whirled and spoke hotly to the trapeze performer:

“I tell you the truth. I doubt if you tell me the truth. Why were you so afraid of being overheard, if all that talk about the money you saw in the book was just play-acting?”

“You are too smart,” snarled Barnabetta.

“I am smart enough to know that you are trying to fool me. I’m not going to believe you at all – not a word you say. I don’t like you. I’m going to Mr. Buckham’s – so now!”

Barnabetta sprang forward, crying: “You’re not goin’ so fast! Is she, Pop?”

Agnes had forgotten the clown. He had come silently around the other side of the fire – evidently at some signal from Barnabetta – and was now right at her elbow.

“Grab her, Pop! Don’t let her get away!” cried the circus girl, commandingly.

Agnes would have run; but she fairly bumped into the little man. He seized her by both arms, and she found that she was powerless against him.

At this point Agnes Kenway became thoroughly frightened. She opened her lips and screamed for help.

Instantly there was a scrambling in the brush beside the overturned pile of ties, a savage growl, and a shaggy body sprang into sight and charged the struggling Corner House girl and the man who held her.

CHAPTER XV – AGNES SHOULDERS RESPONSIBILITY

“Tom Jonah!” screamed Agnes; for in this emergency she recognized the old dog.

He had followed the car from town, had scented out her tracks when she entered the woods, and so had followed Agnes to this spot, afraid to come up with her for fear of being scolded; for, of course, he knew well enough he had disobeyed.

But now the dog’s loyalty to one of his little mistresses had brought Tom Jonah out of hiding. The attempt of Asa Scruggs to hold Agnes was an unfortunate move on the clown’s part.

Tom Jonah shot out of the bushes, growling fiercely, and charged the man. Scruggs let go of Agnes and shrank back, trying to flee – for the dog looked quite as savage as the wolf Agnes had thought was following her.

As he turned, Scruggs slipped and went down. His right foot twisted under him and the dog’s heavy body flung him flat on his back. Tom Jonah held the clown down with both forepaws on his chest and a threatening muzzle at his throat.

Agnes could easily have gotten away now. The clown could not move, and Barnabetta began to cry.

“Oh, Pop! Oh, Pop!” she wailed. “He’s going to eat you up!”

Agnes knew Tom Jonah would not let the man rise unless she commanded him to do so. So she did not leave the spot as she had at first intended. All in an instant, through the interference of the old dog, the tables had been turned.

“If I call him off,” she asked, shakingly, of Barnabetta, “will you leave me alone?”

“You’ve fixed Pop with your nasty old dog – hasn’t she, Pop? That’s his bad ankle. He can’t do anything to you now,” declared the trapeze performer.

“And you let that stick alone,” commanded Agnes. “Tom Jonah will do anything I tell him to,” she added, warningly, and then proved it by calling the old dog to come to her. He came, growling, and showing the red of his eyes as he looked over his shoulder at the prostrate clown. The man seemed unable to rise, but sat up, groaning, and rubbing the twisted ankle.

“Oh, dear, me!” cried Barnabetta; “that fixes us for another two months. You won’t be able to work at all, Pop, even if we get a job. What ever shall we do?”

Agnes began to feel most unhappy. Her excitement once past, she felt that she was somehow partly to blame for the clown’s predicament. And she could not help feeling sorry for him and for this strange girl who was dressed in boy’s apparel.

Besides, Agnes felt a sort of admiration for Barnabetta Scruggs. There was romance attached to her. A girl, not much older than Agnes herself, tramping in boy’s clothing and meeting all sorts of adventures on the road! Agnes failed to remember that right then Barnabetta and her father were meeting with one very unpleasant adventure.

“Dear me,” said the Corner House girl, with sympathy. “Is he really hurt?”

“That’s his sprained ankle hurt again. It’s even worse than just an ordinary sprain,” explained the trapeze performer. “He can’t do any stunts, or joey work on crutches, can he? The doctor told him to be careful for a long time with it. What shall we do?”

“He – he won’t be able to walk, will he?” gasped Agnes.

“Only on a crutch. We can’t do any travelin’ on railroads with him this way. And he can’t walk. How far’s it to Milton?”

“You can get an electric car to town if you follow this woodpath.”

“How far?”

“I’ve been almost an hour and a half walking here from the car.”

“Must be four or five miles then,” murmured Barnabetta.

“Yes.”

“Never can hobble that far – can you, Pop?” asked the circus girl.

“Not yet,” groaned the man. He was taking off his shoe and sock. “Get me some snow, Barnabetta,” he said.

“My, that’s so!” she exclaimed. “We can pack it in snow to take down the swellin’.”

“He’ll get his foot frostbitten sitting here without any shoe on,” said Agnes.

“I’ll keep a good fire goin’,” said the girl, shortly.

“And stay here all night – in the open?” cried Agnes, horror-stricken at such a thought.

“Where else?” snapped Barnabetta. “There’s no place to go. We’ve got no friends, anyway. And we’ve mighty little money. We expected to steal a ride South, and sleep in farmers’ barns, and the like. We’ve done it before. But we’ve never been so bad off as this.”

She said all this too low for her father to hear. She added: “Pop always had his health and strength before.”

“Oh, dear me!” groaned Agnes, impulsively. “I wish Neale were here.”

“Oh!” ejaculated the circus girl, sharply. “What Neale’s that?”

Agnes remained silent, sorry that she had spoken so thoughtlessly.

“I might have known you were one of those girls,” added Barnabetta.

“What girls?” asked Agnes, curiously.

“Those that Neale O’Neil lives with at Milton.”

“He doesn’t live with us. He lives next door to us – with Mr. Con Murphy.”

“Bill Sorber said he lived with some Corner House girls. That’s what he called you,” said Barnabetta.

“Just the same,” said Agnes, boldly; “I wish he were here. He’d know what to do – how to help you.”

But Barnabetta was despondent. “Nobody can’t help us,” she said. “We’re in bad.”

“Oh! I will find some way of helping,” declared Agnes, trying to speak comfortingly.

“Huh! lots of good you can do now,” grumbled the other. “You and that nasty dog has just fixed Pop.”

“It wasn’t Tom Jonah’s fault. And I’m sure it wasn’t my fault. He was only defending me. You and your father shouldn’t have tried to stop me.”

“You hid the dog in the bushes a-purpose,” cried Barnabetta, angrily. “You know you did.”

“No, I didn’t. And he scared me enough, too. I thought he was a wolf,” said Agnes, anxious to explain though why she should be put on the defensive, it would be difficult to tell.

“Well,” concluded Barnabetta, roughly, “you can’t be any good here.”

“I know I can’t. But I believe I can help you just the same.”

“Don’t want your help,” growled the circus girl.

“Oh! don’t say that,” begged the Corner House girl. “I can go to Mr. Bob Buckham and get his carriage and horses – ”

“We haven’t got any money to pay for a carriage,” said Barnabetta, quickly.

“You won’t have to pay Mr. Buckham for doing an act of Christian charity,” declared Agnes, and she set off immediately, Tom Jonah following closely at her heels.

Barnabetta did not even bid her good-bye. She was all solicitude for her father’s hurt ankle, and was now kneeling by him, packing the snow about the swelling foot. But she was “as hard as nails” toward the Corner House girl.

Agnes hurried right down to the railroad and walked without molestation to the crossing she had spoken of. There, up the snowy lane, she obtained her first glimpse of Mr. Bob Buckham’s house.

She had come a roundabout way to it, indeed. It was now long past noon and she had missed her dinner. Of course, Mr. and Mrs. Buckham had ceased expecting her long ago.

The big girl who worked in Mrs. Buckham’s kitchen – Posey by name and an autocrat to a degree – met Agnes with a cheerful greeting, but refused admission to Tom Jonah.

“No. He can’t come in. I just been scrubbin’ my floor and I can’t ‘low no dog trackin’ it up. You drop your arctics there on the porch, Miss Aggie, and then you can run in to Mrs. Buckham.”

“If Tom Jonah only wore arctics!” sighed the Corner House girl.

“Well, he don’t – more’s the pity,” agreed Posey.

Agnes ran into the invalid’s room, all breathless, but full of her adventure. There sat Mrs. Buckham in her wheel-chair, surrounded by bright worsteds and fancywork, as busy and smiling as though she had not spent twenty years between that chair and her bed.

“Here’s our Corner House girl at last. And why not to dinner?” cried Mrs. Buckham.

“Oh, mercy me! I didn’t even re-mem-ber dinner till just this minute!” Agnes confessed.

“Your poor child! No dinner? Quick, Posey! here’s a starving child – ”

“Dear Mrs. Buckham – wait! Never mind me. I sha’n’t starve yet,” declared the plump Agnes, laughing. “Look at me. Do I seem so frail? And I’ve had the greatest adventure!”

“Well, well!”

“Where is Mr. Buckham? I must tell him all about it, too,” Agnes said, excitedly.

And here came the farmer as she spoke – bewhiskered, grizzled, keen-eyed and always smiling, who cried:

“Here’s the tardy one! Why, I thought you were coming out betimes, young lady? How are all at the Corner House?”

Agnes was too greatly excited to reply in full to that question. Mr. Bob Buckham sat down and the Corner House girl related all that had befallen her since she had left home that morning – save that she said nothing about the mystery of the big album she had found in the Corner House garret, and the Scruggs’ interest in its contents.

Her explanation, therefore, as to why the circus clown and his daughter desired to detain her at their camp in the woods was rather hazy; but the fact of the clown being hurt and the helplessness of the two trampers were sufficient to excite the pity and alarm of the farmer and his wife.

“Tut! tut!” clucked Mr. Buckham. “They can’t stay out there in the snow. It’s going to be mighty cold to-night.”

“It is awful to think of,” agreed Mrs. Buckham. “But Posey’s got her hands full. If I was up and about myself – ”

“Oh, dear, Mrs. Buckham! I wasn’t thinking of such a thing as bringing them here,” Agnes cried. “The man can’t walk to the Milton car. He can scarcely walk at all, with that sprained ankle. But if Mr. Buckham will hitch up and drive over there, and take ’em to the car, I can get ’em from the car to the Corner House.”

“Oh, dear me, child! To your house?” cried Mrs. Buckham.

“Dunno ’bout that,” said Mr. Buckham.

“Of course,” said Agnes. “We’ve plenty of room – and beds enough for a hotel.”

“But what will Ruth say?” asked the farmer’s wife.

“And what will your Mrs. MacCall say, eh?” chuckled the farmer.

“Why, don’t you suppose they will be kind to ’em, too?” cried Agnes. “Ruth would do the same herself. I know these poor folk have very little money and nowhere to go – ”

“Enough said, Robert. We have no right to thwart such unselfish impulses,” Mrs. Buckham said. “Go and harness up the carriage – ”

“No,” said the farmer, “I’ll take the pung. And I’ll fill the body with straw, so ‘t that poor chap won’t get his ankle hurt no more. How’s the streets in town, Aggie? How’s High Street?”

“Why, it’s good sledding,” declared the girl. “We see nothing now but automobiles and sleighs.”

“Strawberry Farm ain’t got quite as fur as an auto yet,” chuckled Mr. Buckham. “But maybe we will in time,” and he went out to hitch up.

Without having been told further, Posey now brought in a cup of hot cocoa and a nice little luncheon. In the midst of eating this welcome feast, Agnes remembered the forlorn party camping amid the railroad ties.

“Oh, dear me! I don’t suppose Mr. Scruggs and Barnabetta have anything at all to eat – poor things!” she cried.

So a big basket was filled with food and a can of coffee, and that Agnes carried out to the sleigh when it appeared at the side porch, and climbed into the great heap of straw with it, and burrowed down. The colts started off briskly, and they left Posey on the porch watching them while Mrs. Buckham waved her hand at the window.

The farmer knew how to drive right to the spot where the Scruggs were encamped, although it was not on his land. When the colts came through the woods, their bells jingling and the snow and ice flying from their sharpened hoofs, Barnabetta appeared suddenly on the pile of ties to see who came.

“Is that the gal?” asked Farmer Buckham of Agnes.

“Yes.”

“She’s a wild lookin’ critter, ain’t she?” was Mr. Buckham’s comment. “And looks for all the world like a boy!”

Barnabetta disappeared in a moment and when he drew the colts in beside the fire, there she stood with her staff, as though to defend the old clown from the newcomers.