Ginger Pye (23 page)

At this moment, however, her tramp ambled out of the little side path. He didn't even look at her, but she looked at him. He didn't look at all like her and Jerry's villain, and she saw that his hat was black. It was not an old yellow one like Unsavory's at all. This was a great relief for, if it had been yellow, how would she ever have got to see whether or not it had the red mark inside the band that the perpendicular swimmer had put in the real hat?

Thank goodness, this tramp was very likely of the cup-of-coffee variety and not the sort who would steal Ginger. Anyway, Mama had said the person who stole Ginger was probably not a tramp at all but an unsavory character. So Rachel really could skip all tramps, if she saw any more of them, that is, on this particular day when it was her special job to search for Ginger, Jerry being sick with the measles.

Rachel went into Mrs. Tally's penny shop and after buying the yo-yo for Jerry she stood before the little glass showcase for a long long time. She was trying to make the impossible decision of choosing between a minature china doll with arms and legs that moved and long black hair, and a penny box of crayons. The lady of this shop did not care how long it took you to decide. At last Rachel bought the crayons and they became only a little soft and bent as she sauntered along the sunny streets home.

A man was leading his cow out of the fields that she had crossed a short time before. She was glad she had not seen the cow grazing then because she had on a red dress. Rachel had an idea that cows did not like red, though Jerry said it was bulls that did not like red, and that cows did not care what color you had on, and that she was mixed up. Even

so, what with the Gypsies at five o'clock, and the sleeping tramp, Rachel was glad she had not also seen the cow and had not had to think was it bulls or cows that did not like red.

The man and his cow loped placidly up the street ahead of Rachel. As she turned into her own street, leaving them loping along the main road, it seemed to Rachel she had been gone a very long time. She ran around to the back entrance way to see where Mama was, what everybody was doing.

Mama was giving some milk and some fish to a stray cat.

"Do cats also have a mark on our back door?" asked Rachel.

Mama laughed and kissed Rachel and stroked her hot forehead. "It does seem so, doesn't it?" she said.

"Cats and tramps and what else?" asked Rachel.

Mama laughed. "Call in Mr. Pye," she said, the way they all always did when they couldn't find any logical answer to a question.

Jerry and Rachel continued to be on the lookout for the man with the yellow hat for they were sure that where they saw the hat they would likewise see Ginger.

This important day was the twenty-ninth of May, a sort of a holiday because it was Jerry's birthday. It happened also to be a Saturday. Early in the morning Rachel and Jerry set out to explore the great field below the railroad station for wild strawberries which usually grew there in abundance and which they were very fond of, crushed up with milk and sugar. They would surprise Uncle Bennie with a cupful of these when he arrived for his regular Saturday morning visit which was going to be an all-day visit since it was Jerry's birthday.

The field was still wet with dew and it was covered with juicy little ripe berries. Rachel and Jerry filled three cups besides eating a great quantity as they picked. They tasted so good they then ate all they had picked except Uncle Bennie's. They were tired of picking any more and since Uncle Bennie was so very little and probably could not eat a whole cupful they then ate half of his. Now they had none left to eat with milk and sugar but this did not really matter since it was Jerry's birthday and they might be going to have ice cream.

A scraggy hill covered with pale wild roses led
up to the railroad station and they clambered up it, for they imagined they were just in time to see the Banker's Express go roaring by. Naturally the Banker's Express never stopped in Cranbury. But Jerry and Rachel loved to watch the speedy train whenever they could and wave to the engineer and the passengers, and catch a glimpse of people eating in the dining car, not just sandwiches they had packed—real bacon and eggs and coffee on beautiful white tablecloths. Why the coffee stayed on the tables instead of slopping all over the people and onto the aisles was a mystery, the fast way the train went. Anyway it must or so many people would not eat in this dangerous fashion.

The railroad station was one of their most favorite places in the entire town of Cranbury. While waiting for the Banker's Express they got weighed on the baggage scales several times. They shook the peanut machine and the gum machine for stray pennies, peanuts, and gum. Then they got weighed again, with and without their sweaters on. Then they went back out on the platform for, according to the clock, it was about time for the Banker's Express.

"Lookit the way the railroad tracks meet way off there," said Jerry.

"Um-m," said Rachel. "That's perspective," she said, for she had just learned this in school.

"Um-m-m," agreed Jerry. "Perspective."

Then, into the perspective, there came a little dot and it grew rapidly larger and larger with a line of smoke following along above it.

"Here it comes!" shouted Jerry.

"Here comes the Banker's Express!" shouted Rachel, and they both stood back expecting to see the train go streaking by the way it always did. But the train didn't streak by. It slowed up and did an unheard-of thing for the Banker's Express. It stopped. In Cranbury where it never stopped, it nonetheless stopped. It came to a standstill in such a way that the last coach was at the platform where Jerry and Rachel were standing. Being a very long train the front of it must be almost out to the reservoir, Rachel and Jerry imagined.

The train lurched backwards and forwards for a few moments as though in perplexity as to what to do. Then it stopped again.

"It's getting water or something," Jerry explained.

Jerry and Rachel were so excited watching the important train lurch forward and backward and do such an odd thing as stop here at the Cranbury railroad station that they did not notice a big boy standing on the rear platform. But this boy noticed them and he was watching them intently and maybe
it was his dark glowering glance that finally made them look at him. Good night! It was Wally Bullwinkle! Wally Bullwinkle, with no hat on, on the Banker's Express!

"Where ya going, Wally?" yelled Jerry.

"Going to New York, Wally?" asked Rachel.

"Going to the Museum of Natural History?" asked Jerry.

Wally met these friendly questions with a surly grimace. He thrust out his lower lip and looked as though he would like to pick a fight.

"What are you mad at?" asked Jerry curiously.

Wally answered something, but what he said they never knew for at this moment the train slowly and evenly began to move. Wally slapped a hat on his head. And there he stood, Wally Bullwinkle, with an old yellow hat on, on the Banker's Express! But a gust of wind snatched Wally's hat off and though he tried to grab it, it was no use, the hat was gone.

Wally's hat landed on the platform and rolled to Jerry's feet. It was an old yellow felt hat on the order of the one the unsavory character had worn. Jerry looked at the hat and he looked at the train, gathering speed now, with Wally clinging to the back railing with one hand and feeling his bare head

with the other in bewilderment. Then the train disappeared around the bend and the Banker's Express, with Wally Bullwinkle on it, was gone.

Rachel and Jerry stared at the hat and they stared at each other, and Rachel said breathlessly, "He did have an old yellow hat after all. Wasn't spots before our eyes at the skeleton house. Was a hat like Unsavory's."

Jerry picked up the hat. Neither he nor Rachel yet connected
this
yellow hat that belonged to Wally Bullwinkle, a boy in Jerry's class and the owner of a dog as ferocious, so Wally claimed, as the one that bit the nose off Bit-nose Ned, with the yellow hat of Unsavory whose picture they had drawn so often as the villain in the story of the disappearance of Ginger Pye. Jerry said, "We'll save his old hat for him for when he comes back."

Rachel said, "It looked like Wally was going away for good. He had a going-away-for-good look about him."

"Oh-h-h," said Jerry slowly with remembering. "He might be. He said in the schoolyard the other day that he and his pop—he hasn't any mother—were going to join a vaudeville show. They'd been training for it, he said. It's what his pop used to do, he said. We didn't believe him, Dick Badger and me, because he's always saying something ain't true."

"He might have an act with that fierce dog he owns," said Rachel.

And then suddenly the same thought struck both of them. The fierce dog might be a ruse. The dog for the act might be Ginger!

"The hat!" screamed Rachel. "Has it got the mark in it? The mark, you know, the red mark?"

Muttering, "Of course not. This is Wally's old hat, not the unsavory character's," still Jerry paled and he took the hat into the bright sunshine and he turned down the inside band and there, sure enough! there was the red crayon mark just where Dick Badger had put it that day at the reservoir. And there Wally Bullwinkle was, on the Banker's Express, and perhaps he was leaving the town of Cranbury forever. And all along he probably was the one who had stolen Ginger and not the villain they had drawn the picture of. And was Ginger on the train too? In the baggage car? And did this mean they would never ever see their dog, Ginger, again?

"He might still not have been the one," murmured Rachel. "He might be one of a yellow-hat band of people and not be
the
one," she said. "Like I said."

"No," said Jerry. "No."

They both stared down the silent shimmering tracks where the train with Wally had gone. "We
could catch the next train," suggested Rachel. "And trail him in New York."

She knew this was impossible, but she had to think of something. "Could we have him apprehended in New York?" she wondered.

There must be something they could do.
Call in Mr. Pye,
thought Rachel and she said they better hurry home and ask Papa what to do anyway. Papa might go to New York himself and bump into Wally on the escalator the way he had Mama. He would do something.

Jerry and Rachel started to race for home as fast as they could go, forgetting to whoop under the bridge they were so excited. They were sure their dog, Ginger, was on the Banker's Express and, though he was, they thought, at this very moment being whisked off to New York, still they felt nearer to him than at any time since his disappearance. Jerry held the old yellow hat firmly in his hands. It was a really close link with Ginger, he thought.

"You know what," said Jerry, panting. "First, before we go home, we better go over to Wally's house and see if by any chance Ginger was left behind, see if there is any trace of him or the big fierce dog or what."

So they changed their course. On the corner of Elm and New Dollar Street, whom should they see
coming marching up the street with a hard firm step but Chief Larrimer on his way home for his coffee and buns. When he heard the latest developments in the Ginger Pye case, he turned around and joined Rachel and Jerry in the reconnoitering of the Bullwinkle homestead.