it all started just before school was out. one afternoon when i got home mother showed me a letter from uncle hieronymous, who lives in the woods back of baldwin, on the middle branch of the père marquette river. i never had seen him, but he and mother wrote to each other quite often, and i guess she’d been telling him a good deal about me, that’s binney jenks, and mark tidd and tallow and plunk. of course, mark tidd was most important. he always thought us out of scrapes. so what did this letter of his do but invite us all to come up to his place and stay the whole summer if we wanted to?
as soon as i read it i was so excited i had to stand up and prance around the room. i couldn’t sit still.
“can we go, ma? can we go?” i asked, over and over again, without giving her a chance to answer.
ma had been thinking it over, because she said yes right off. ma never says yes to things until she’s had a chance to look at them from all sides and knows just what the chances are for my coming out alive. “you can go if the other boys can,” she told me, and i didn’t wait to hear another word, but went pelting off to mark’s house.
mark was in the back yard talking to his father when i got there, and i burst right in on them.
“can you go?” i hollered. “d’you think you can go?”
“l-l-light somewheres,” says he. “you’re floppin’ around l-l-l-like bill durfee’s one-legged ch-chicken.”
“can you go to my uncle hieronymous’s? we’re asked in a letter. the whole kit and bilin’ of us. up in the woods. right on a trout-stream. in a log cabin.” i broke it all up into short sentences like that, i was so anxious. after a while mark got it all out of me so he understood it, then he turned to his father.
“c-c-can i go, father?” he asked.
mr. tidd, though he’d got to be rich, was just as mild and sort of dazed-like and forgetful as ever—and helpless! you wouldn’t believe how helpless he was.
“way off into the woods?” says he. “fishin’ and sich like? um-hum. ’s far’s i’m concerned, mark, there hain’t a single objection, but, mark, i calc’late you better see your ma. she sort of looks after the family more’n i do.... and if she lets you go, son, i’ll give you a new set of gibbon’s decline and fall to take with you. you’ll enjoy readin’ it evenin’s.” with that he took out of his pocket a volume of old gibbon and sat himself down on the back steps to read it. he was always reading that book and telling you things out of it. after i’d known him a year i most knew it by heart.
we went right up-stairs to where mrs. tidd was making her husband a shirt on the sewing-machine. she didn’t have to make him shirts, because they had money enough from the invention to buy half a dozen to a time if they wanted to. but mrs. tidd, she says there ain’t any use buying shirts for a dollar and a half when you can make them twice as good for fifty cents and a little work. that was her all over.
mark called to her from the door. “ma,” he said, “can i go—”
she didn’t let him get any further than that, but just says sharp-like over her shoulder: “there’s a fresh berry-pie on the second shelf. can’t you see i’m so busy i dun’no’ where to turn?”
“but, ma,” he says again, “i d-d-d-don’t want pie. i want to g-go—”
“no,” says she, “you can’t.” just like that, without finding out where he wanted to go or anything; but that didn’t scare us a mite, for we knew her pretty well, i can tell you. in a second she turned around and wrinkled her forehead at us. “where you want to go?” she rapped out.
mark started in to tell her, but he stuttered so i had to do it myself. i explained all about it in a jiffy. she thought a minute.
“it’ll get you out from underfoot,” she says, “and keep us from being et out of house and home. i guess if the others can go you can.”
you always could depend on mrs. tidd to be just that way. she was so busy with housekeeping or something, and had her head so full that she didn’t get to understand what you said at first and always said no just to be safe, i guess. but i never knew her to refuse mark anything that he had any business asking. for all her quickness we fellows thought a heap of her, i want to tell you.
when the martins and smalleys found out we could go they let tallow and plunk come along, so there we were. we fixed it to leave the day school was out and to stay just as long as we could hold out.
we started the day we planned. at first we thought we’d take a lunch, but mrs. tidd set her foot down.
“you’ll need a hot meal,” she told us, “so you go right into the dining-car when you get hungry.” then she gave mark the money for our dinners, and we all kissed our folks good-by and got on the train.
it was pretty interesting riding along, and we enjoyed it fine till we got to grand rapids. we had to change there for baldwin, and from then on the ride began to get tiresome. we tried a lot of things to pass away the time, but nothing helped. i guess it was because we were so anxious to get into the woods. we went along and along and along. i hadn’t any idea michigan was so big. after a while a colored man came in and yelled that dinner was ready in the dining-car. mark began to grin. it looked like he was ready for the dinner. so was i, and the other fellows didn’t hold back much. we went in and sat down at a little table. each of us got a card that told what there was to eat. there were so many things it was hard to make up our minds, but finally we hit on the idea of every fellow taking something different, and so we got a look at more of it than we would any other way. we were about two-thirds through eating when all at once that car acted like it had gone crazy. i looked at the other three, and you never saw folks with such scared expressions in all your life. their eyes bulged out, their mouths were open.
well, sir, we just rose right up out of our chairs; that is, all of us did but mark tidd, and he was so wedged in he couldn’t. it started with a crack that we could hear above the roaring of the train, then the car sagged down at the front end and began to bump and jump and wabble back and forth like a boat in a storm. we hadn’t time to get scared—only startled. then the car went over—smash! i don’t believe anybody ever got such a jolt. the next thing i knew i was kicking around in a mess of rubbish with my head down and my feet up. busted tables and dishes and chairs and folks were all scrambled on top of me. first off i thought sure it was the end of me, but i didn’t hurt any place, and when my heart settled down below my adam’s apple i began squirming around to get loose.
i remember the first thing i thought about was its being so still. nobody was hollering or groaning or anything. it surprised me and sort of frightened me. i squirmed harder and wriggled a table off me and pushed a chair away from the back of my neck. then i sat up. you never saw such a sight. the car was lying on its side, and the lower side where i was was nothing but a jumble of things and people. and the whole jumble looked like it was squirming.
next i thought about mark tidd. he was so fat and heavy i was afraid he’d be smashed all to pieces. i tried to call him, and at the third try i got out his name.
“mark,” says i, faint-like, “are you hurt?”
over to the left of me, under a dining-table with its legs spraddled up, i heard a grunt—a disgusted grunt. it was a familiar grunt, a grunt that belonged to mark.
“h-h-hurt,” says he, sarcastic-like, but cool as a cucumber, only stuttering more than usual. “h-h-hurt! me? naw; i’m comfortable as a ulcerated t-t-tooth. hey, you,” says he to somebody down under the rubbish, “quit a-kickin’ me in the s-s-stummick.”
i knew he was all right then, and began figgering about tallow martin and plunk smalley. in a minnit both of them came sort of oozing out from amongst things looking like they’d sat down for a friendly chat with a cyclone.
“mother’ll be mad about these pants,” says plunk.
“there hain’t much pants left for her to get mad about,” says tallow, angry-like and rubbing at his shoulder. “what you want to do is get a barrel.”
“w-what you want to do,” says mark tidd, “is g-git me out of here. there’s a feller keeps k-k-kickin’ me in the ribs and somebody t-t-tried to ram a table-leg into my e-e-ear.”
folks was digging their way out all around us now, and nobody seemed hurt particular, though some was making an awful fuss, specially a stout lady that had lost a breastpin. we began mining for mark, and pretty soon we got down to where we could see him. he was the beat of anything i ever saw. somehow he’d wriggled so as to get his head on a soft leather bag that somebody’d brought into the diner—most likely some woman. one arm was pinned down, but the other was free, and what do you think he was doing with it? eating! yes, sir; eating! he had two bananas in his pocket that he’d grabbed off the table just before the smash-up, and there he lay, gobbling away as calm as an iron hitching-post. it made me mad.
“you’d eat,” says i, “if gabriel was tooting his horn!”
“d-d-didn’t know what was goin’ to h-happen,” says he, “so i th-thought i’d g-git what enjoyment there was t-t-to it.”
we hauled him out, and it took all three of us. heavy? i bet he weighs two hundred pounds. we got his head and shoulders free first and tried to drag the rest of him from under, but he wouldn’t drag. why, each one of his legs weighs as much as i do. he has to have all his clothes made special. i bet i could rip one of his pant-legs down the front, put sleeves in it, and wear it for an overcoat.
while we were tugging away at him somebody outside began smashin’ the door, and pretty soon three or four men crawled in and began helping folks out. one of them came over to us and looked down at mark.
“hum,” says he. “didn’t know there was a side-show aboard.”
that made mark kind of mad.
“mister,” says he, “this is the f-f-f-first wreck i was ever in, and i want to en-enjoy it. so i’d rather b-be pulled out by a f-f-feller that’s more polite.”
the man laughed. “didn’t mean to offend you,” he said. “beg your pardon. naturally i’m one of the politest men in michigan, but, you see, i was shaken up considerable by the wreck.”
mark grinned. “all right,” says he. “go ahead. i’ve got about all the f-fun there is out of bein’ tangled up here.”
the four of us hoisted him up and set him on his feet. he shook himself like you’ve seen a dog do when it comes out of the water, blinked around him to see what there was to see—and then took another banana out of his pocket and began to skin it absent-mindedly.
the man threw back his head and laughed fit to kill. “you sure are a cool one,” he says.
“don’t do any good to g-g-get excited,” says mark. “there’s always enough o-other folks to do that. anybody hurt?”
“haven’t found anybody yet. it’s a regular miracle.”
mark looked at tallow and plunk and me and shook his head. “you’re the fellers that d-d-don’t b’lieve in luck,” says he. “now i g-g-guess you won’t make fun of my carryin’ a horseshoe.” and he pulled one out of his pocket. “found this jest as we was gittin’ on the train,” he says to the man, “and l-look what it’s done!”
“i’ll never travel again without a horseshoe,” he says. “let’s get out of here—we’re the last ones.”
“got to git my hat,” says mark.
that was just like him. when he did a thing he did it thorough. if there’d been any danger and he ought to have got out he would have gone. he never took chances he didn’t have to; but there wasn’t any danger, so he wouldn’t go until he took along everything that belonged to him. it took us twenty minutes to locate our stuff. the man helped us, laughing all the time. he seemed to think he was having a lot of fun. i sort of liked him, too. he was jolly and good-natured and pretty good-looking.
when we got outside i said to mark, so the man couldn’t hear, “nice feller, ain’t he?”
“too g-good-natured,” says he.
“you’re mad ’cause he made fun of you.”
“’tain’t that. he’s one of these f-f-fellers that make a business of bein’ p-pleasant. maybe he’s all right, b-but if i was goin’ to have much to do with him i’d k-keep my eye on him.”
“huh!” says i; but after a while you’ll see mark wasn’t so far wrong, after all. i never saw such a boy for seeing into folks. he could almost always guess what kind of a person anybody was.
we stood around a minute, getting our breath and sort of calming down. then we watched the trainmen digging baggage and valuables out of the car and finding owners to fit them. that wasn’t very interesting, so we went and sat down on the bank beside the track and commenced to wonder how long we would have to stay there.
“probably have to wait for a train from grand rapids,” tallow said.
mark got up and looked down the track. “g-g-guess they can crowd us in th-them.”
just then the good-natured man who helped us out of the wreck came along, grinning like he’d found a quarter on the sidewalk.
“hello!” says he. “any the worse for wear?”
“no,” says plunk.
“camping?” says he.
“sort of,” says i. “goin’ to stay at my uncle’s cabin.”
“whereabouts?” he asked.
“we git off at baldwin,” i told him.
“good fishing?” he wanted to know.
“my uncle says it’s bully.”
he sat down alongside of us. “my name’s collins,” says he—“john collins.”
he sort of waited, and then i introduced everybody, beginning with mark tidd, then tallow martin, who was next to him, then plunk smalley, and last of all binney jenks, which is me.
we talked considerable and speculated on how long we would have to wait and wished there was a lunch-counter handy—especially mark. maybe twenty minutes went along before we saw the conductor and yelled at him to know if we were going to have to stay all night.
“better hustle up to the day coaches,” says he. “i guess we can pull out pretty soon.”
when we got in the car it was pretty crowded, but we four got seats together. mr. collins had to take half of a seat quite a ways off from us. i could tell by the way mark’s eyes looked that he was glad. for some reason or another he’d taken a dislike to the man. i couldn’t see why, because he seemed to me to be pleasant enough for anybody.
i noticed that mark had a piece of paper in his hand, crumpled up into a ball.
“what’s that?” i asked him.
“d-dun’no’. picked it up outside.”
“nothin’ but a piece of paper, is it?”
“looks so, but you n-n-never can tell.” he opened it up, and it wasn’t anything but a sheet of a letter. the writing began right in the middle of a sentence where the man who wrote it had finished one page and started another. i looked over mark’s shoulder and read it.
“—peculiar old codger,” it said. “you’ll have to be careful how you handle him. he’ll smell a mouse if you don’t step pretty softly, and then the fat will be in the fire. you haven’t the description of the land, so here it is. keep it safely, and bring back a deed. it will be the best day’s work you ever did.” then came some letters and figures that we didn’t understand, but we did understand them later. they looked mysterious and like a cipher code—“the s. 40 of the n. w. ? of sec. 6, town 1 north, r. 4 west.” then the letter was signed by a man named williams j. partlan.
“wonder what it means?” i asked.
“dun’no’,” says mark. “guess i’ll s-s-save it and find out.”
now, that was just like mark. he didn’t just wonder what these letters and figures meant and then throw away the paper; he saved it so he could study it out or ask somebody who could explain it to him. he was the greatest fellow for looking into things he couldn’t understand you ever heard of.
it was hot and dusty, and pretty soon it began to get dark. first i knew mark began slumping over against me until he almost squeezed me out of the seat, and then he began to snore. i poked him with my elbow, but it didn’t do any good. once mark tidd gets to sleep it would take more than my elbow to wake him up. i bet he’d have slept right through the wreck and been picked out of it without ever missing a snore. after a while the conductor came through and called “baldwin. change for manistee, traverse city, and petoskey.” at that i had to wake mark, so i put my mouth close to his ear and hollered. he lifted a big fat hand and tried to brush me away like i was a fly. i hollered again and poked him a good one in the ribs. he grunted this time, and with another poke and a holler he half opened his eyes and wiggled his head from one side to the other like he was displeased about something.
“we’re coming to baldwin,” said i. “wake up.”
“i d-d-don’t care,” says he, stuttering like anything, “if we’re c-c-comin’ to jericho with the walls a-tumblin’ down.”
but in a minnit he roused up, and as soon as he really got it through his head what was going on he was as wide awake as anybody.
after a little the train stopped at baldwin, and we scrambled out, lugging our suit-cases. out of the tail of my eye i saw mr. collins getting off, too. well, sir, we got off at a little depot, smaller than the one at wicksville. down a little piece was a building with lights on it, and that was all. there wasn’t any town that we could see, nothing but the two buildings.
“b-b-bet it’s a lunch-counter,” says mark.
“makes no difference if it is,” says i. “we got to find my uncle, and you got to come along. if you don’t we never will find him, for you’re all he’s got to go by. i never saw him, you know. when mother wrote we were coming she told him to look out for the fattest boy he ever saw, and that the rest of us would be along with you.”
“huh!” says mark, disgusted-like.
we stood in front of the depot, looking around and waiting for uncle to come up and speak to us. pretty soon we saw a man come along squinting at everybody and looking into corners and stretching his neck to see around people. he was a tall man, so tall his head come almost on a level with the top of the door. he had a mustache, too—the biggest one i ever saw, with ends that poked out past his cheeks and then swerved down until they almost touched his shoulders. he didn’t have any hat on, and his overalls didn’t come within six inches of reaching his shoes. i most laughed out loud.
when he came to us he stopped and looked and looked. it was mostly at mark.
“hum!” says he, after a minnit. “fattest boy i ever see.... fattest.... boy.” he reached out an arm as long as a fence-rail and pointed at mark. “you’re him,” says he, and chuckled to himself. “now, hain’t you him?” he didn’t wait for an answer, but said a little poetry. i found afterward he made it up on the spot.
“i’m lookin’ for a boy who is awful fat,
but i didn’t think you’d be as big as that.”
then he grinned the mostly friendly grin you ever saw.
“hieronymous alphabet bell is my name,” says he, “and i’m a uncle. yes, sir. you wouldn’t think to look at me i was an uncle, but i am. my nephew’s name is jenks. does any one of you happen to be named jenks?”
“i’m him, uncle,” says i.
he stuck out his hand to me, and i shook with him.
“howdy, nephew,” says he. “pleased to make your acquaintance.” he was that polite! “what’s his name?” he asked, pointing to mark tidd.
i told him, and they shook hands. after that he shook hands with tallow and plunk and acted like he was tickled to death to see us. when he’d done shaking hands once he commenced with me and did it all over again.
“boys!” says he, making an exclamation of it. “i don’t like boys. i jest despise boys. you can see i do, eh? can’t you, now? tell it by my manner. they’re nuisances, so they be, but i can tame ’em. no monkey-shines, mind, or look out for uncle hieronymous alphabet bell.” after he said this he leaned up against the side of the depot and laughed and shook and slapped his hand against his thigh, but without making a sound. in a minnit he straightened up and recited another little poem:
“oh, boys is a pest,
they give you no rest.”
mark was looking at uncle hieronymous with his eyes bunging out, as interested as could be. his little eyes, almost hidden by his fat, were twinkling away, and i could see right off that he liked uncle. that made me glad, for i liked uncle, too. there was something that made you sort of sorry for him. i guess it was because he was so glad to see us fellows. it made you think maybe he was pretty lonesome.
“come on,” says he. “i got an engagement with marthy and mary, so i got to hustle. don’t like to break no engagements.”
“girls?” i asked, feeling sort of offish about it.
“no,” says he, “not exactly girls; nor yet exactly wimmin.” and that was all he’d say about them.
we followed him over to a railing where he’d hitched his horse and wagon. as soon as he came within earshot of the horse he began talking to him just like anybody’d talk to folks.
“good evenin’, alfred,” says he; and i thought that was a funny name for a horse. “i’m back again,” he says, “a-bringin’ with me three medium-sized boys and one boy that is a little mite—say about a hundred pounds—over the medium.” he turned to us. “come over here,” he says, “and see you act your politest. i want you should be acquainted with alfred. step right up. alfred, this here is my nephew, binney jenks.”
alfred lifted his head and bobbed it down in as fine a bow as you ever saw, and he did the same thing when he was introduced to the other three.
“be we glad to have visitors, alfred?”
alfred bobbed his head three times and whickered the most pleased whicker i ever heard a horse give.
uncle turned to us solemn. “it’s all right, fellers,” says he. “i was a mite bothered till you’d met alfred and i found out what he thought about you. if alfred had took a dislike to you i don’t know what i ever would have done. alfred and marthy and mary sort of runs me, so to speak. the way they boss me around is surprisin’ the first time you notice it.”
we all climbed in the wagon with our baggage, and uncle leaned over the dash-board so alfred could hear better.
“he’s a leetle deef,” uncle told us. then he spoke to the horse. “alfred,” says he, “i calc’late we better be startin’ if you feel you’ve got rested. i don’t want to hurry you, but if you feel you’re ready, why, jest go ahead.”
alfred turned his head as though he wanted to see everybody was in, then he sort of sighed and began to go up the road slow as molasses.
pretty soon we came to the town, which was about a half a mile away from the depot and the hotel. we went through it without stopping, and then turned out into the country. in a few minutes we were right in the woods; not woods of great big trees, but woods of little trees. there wasn’t anything but woods any place, and uncle said it was that way for miles and miles.
“nothin’ but jack-pine and scrub-oak,” says he. “timber’s gone—butchered off. once,” says he, “you could walk through here for days and never git away from the pine.”
we drove and drove and drove. in places it was so dark we couldn’t see alfred’s tail, but he knew the way, and if it hadn’t been for bumps and holes that jarred and joggled us we would all have been asleep before we got to uncle’s house.
but we got there at last, and it was a log cabin. the front door was in the back, and there wasn’t any back door in the front. what i mean is that there wasn’t but one door, and that went into the kitchen.
“i figgered out,” says uncle, “that the place folks wanted to git most often was the kitchen, especial after comin’ off the river, so there’s where i put the door.” then he recited another poem:
“this al’ shack is sure a dandy;
everything is neat and handy.”
he led us through to the front of the house, where there was a bed and two cots for us. “now,” says he, “git to bed. breakfast’s at four, and mary and marthy’ll be all wrought up to see you. good night,” says he, and off he went.
we were so tired we didn’t stop to talk, but just tumbled into bed and were off to sleep in a minute.
