CHAPTER XVIMR. BROSE WILKINS
There seemed nothing for it but to take Kewpie into their confidence, and this they did when, after dinner, Ned and Laurie were back in No. 16. Kewpie, still demanding a work-out and impatient at delay, proved that he was not entirely obsessed by baseball. He became quite excited about Miss Comfort and thePequot Queenand demanded to be let in on the affair.
“Got any money?” asked Ned.
Kewpie smiled in an irritatingly superior manner and showed a purse fairly bulging with bills and silver coins. “Which,” he observed grandly, “reminds me that I owe you fellows a trifle.” The twins accepted payment without demur.
“I asked about money,” said Ned when that matter had been concluded, “because to get in on this game, Kewpie, you have to have—er—three dollars.”
Kewpie’s countenance promptly betrayed thesecret thought that he could remain out and still manage to survive. Whereupon Laurie added hastily: “Of course, three dollars makes you a life member, you understand. You can become an ordinary member for two.”
Kewpie grinned and disentangled two one-dollar bills from the wad. Ned accepted them gravely. “Want a receipt?” he asked.
“Yes, I’d like a receipt for your cheek,” responded Kewpie flippantly. “Bet nobody else has put in any little old two dollars! Bet nobody else has put in two bits!”
“The books of the association are always open to inspection,” replied Ned coldly, pocketing Kewpie’s contribution.
“All right, Nid. Now, what about some pitching?”
Laurie tottered to his feet. “Come on,” he sighed. “But, oh, Kewpie darlin’, I rue the day I first looked on your ugly face!”
Later that day the initial contribution to the expense fund was augmented by like sums paid or pledged by the others, and the colossal amount of twelve dollars resulted. Laurie opined that itwould suffice, since he meant to beg or borrow whenever possible. In the evening the twins went over to see Bob’s father, and that gentleman readily agreed to intercede with the Porter Quarry Company in their behalf. “I’ll stop there in the morning, boys, and see Porter himself. Bob, you stay around the telephone here, and I’ll call you up about nine.”
And at a little after nine the next morning the message came. The Porter Quarry Company, Mr. Starling telephoned, claimed no equity in thePequot Queen, and, furthermore, would be extremely relieved to see the last of her!
Five minutes later Laurie and Bob had set out to find Mr. Wilkins, who conducted the boat-yard a quarter of a mile beyond the new location chosen for thePequot Queen. There were a pier and a landing, two weather-stained sheds, piles of second-hand lumber, and a few boats in various stages of dissolution. But there was no Mr. Wilkins, even though they crossed the lane and adventured to a neighboring house. They had decided to give up the search for the time when there came a hail from the river. A small launchchugged toward shore, and a man waved to them from it. They went to meet it. The noisy motor was stilled, and the man hailed again.
“Looking for dad?” he asked. He was a tall chap of possibly twenty-two or three years with copper-red hair that curled closely about his bare head. His face was long and thin and chiefly remarkable for a lazy, good-natured, and very wide smile. The boys explained their errand while the little launch floated close to the inshore end of the wharf.
“Dad’s over to Hamlin doing a job of work. But I can give you a tow. Where’s your launch?” Bob told him. “Huh?” asked young Mr. Wilkins, his smile almost fading. “The oldP. Q.? You bought her?” They explained further. Young Mr. Wilkins looked dubious. “Don’t know as I’d want to take a chance like that,” he said. “S’pose the Porter folks had me pinched. May be all right, fellers, like you say, but you don’t own her—”
“But we’ve told you that it’s all right,” interrupted Bob. “We wouldn’t be stealing her, anyhow. All we want to do is bring her up the river and tie her up to the bulkhead down there.”
“That’s so.” The tall youth’s smile broadened to normal. “All right. When you want I should do it?”
“Pronto,” said Laurie. “Right off. How much will you charge for the job?”
Young Mr. Wilkins viewed them swiftly and shrewdly. “Oh, it ain’t worth more’n five dollars, I guess,” he answered carelessly.
“I’ll say it isn’t!” exclaimed Bob. “Listen, please. We’re not selling you the boat. All we want is a tow.”
The other laughed merrily. “I wouldn’t give you five dollars for her, feller. Well, how much do you want to pay?”
Oddly, perhaps, they hadn’t considered the question before. But Laurie answered quite promptly, “Two dollars.”
“All right,” was the equally prompt reply. “Jump in!”
Two minutes later the launch was chugging out into the stream, Laurie and Bob huddled in the stern seat, with the water rippling past a scant four inches below the gunwale. The craft was rather an amazing affair, being not more than fourteen feet in length and apparently builtof odds and ends. No two planks seemed the same width, while, as for length, they were anywhere from two feet to ten. Water trickled in from innumerable seams. The engine was a diminutive thing of one cylinder, with a fly-wheel scarcely larger than a good-sized dinner-plate, but it pushed the boat along at a good gait, the boat shaking and trembling at every explosion in the cylinder. The skipper, seated on an empty box by the engine, laughed.
“How do you like her?” he asked. “Some cruiser, eh? I knocked her together two, three years ago. Got that engine out of a yacht dinghy that sank over by Eagle Beak one time. She’s sort of wet underfoot, but she generally gets there. You fellers from Hillman’s?”
Bob said they were.
“Fine man, the Doctor. Used to work for him sometimes when I was in high school. Mowed grass and so on a couple of summers. My name’s Ambrose Wilkins. Called Brose generally. What sort of a baseball team you fellers going to have up there this year?” He gave a negligent tug at the tiller-line and swerved around the stern of a tug that was backing outfrom the coal-wharf with a lighter snuggled beside her.
“Why, pretty good, I reckon,” answered Laurie.
Brose Wilkins’s grin broadened more. “Guess you weren’t up there when we played you that twenty-two to three game. Course not. That was five years ago. That was some game, boys. Hillman’s didn’t get a hit until the fifth and didn’t put a run over until the eighth. Then our in-field went flooey for a minute, and your crowd piled in three runs. Some game!”
“Did you play?” asked Laurie.
Brose nodded and squirted some oil in the general direction of the little engine. “Yeah,” he answered. “Pitched.”
“Oh! Well, you must have been good,” replied Laurie.
“Fair,” the other acknowledged modestly. “That would have been a shut-out if a couple of our in-fielders hadn’t cracked.”
Laurie stared intently at thePequot Queen, now less than two hundred yards away. After a moment he asked idly, “Do you still play ball?”
“Yeah, I pitch for the Lambert team, over toMunroe. At least, I been pitching for them. There’s a team down at Carmel that’s written me a couple of times lately. Guess they’ll make me an offer soon. I got twenty a game from the Lamberts, but I guess this Carmel crowd’ll do better.”
“Twenty dollars a game?” asked Bob.
“Yeah. ’Tain’t much, of course, but it helps. Besides, I like to play ball, and there ain’t so much doing up here that dad can’t tend to it once a week. Well, here’s the oldP. Q.Gee-whillikins, fellers, I remember when this old scow was a regular lady! Say, what you guys meaning to do with her, anyway?”
“That’s a long story,” evaded Laurie.
“All right. None of my business, eh? Reach under that seat, will you, and pull out that coil of rope.”
No one paid any attention as thePequot Queen’sweather-grayed hawsers were cast off and, with Laurie and Bob at the bow, the long idle craft moved slowly from the dock. Until the last moment Laurie had feared that some officious employee of the quarry company would object, and he breathed freely when the boat wasclear of the little harbor and her broad nose had been pointed up-stream. She moved sluggishly since, as Brose Wilkins remarked, she probably had enough water under her deck to fill a pond. “Water-line’s ’most a foot under,” said Brose, “but she’ll come all right as soon as she gets started.” The boys thought the three-quarter-inch manila rope that Brose was using as a tow line perilously weak, but it proved quite equal to its purpose. At first the little one-lung engine threatened to throb itself into junk in its effort to move thePequot Queen, but gradually the larger craft got under way, imperceptibly at first, and the voyage up the river began. It was slow going, but the tiny launch never faltered, and thePequot Queen, having, as it seemed, finally made up her mind to say good-by to her old home and set forth on an exciting adventure, displayed a cheerful willingness to follow this new acquaintance.
On the coal-wharf a half-dozen workers paused in their labors and stared incredulously. One shouted a question, and after that thePequot Queenwallowed leisurely past to a chorus of ribald comments. In answer Laurie, seated onthe bow rail, waved a nonchalant hand. Further along other denizens of the waterfront stood and stared at the sight. That they were causing a tremendous sensation was quite evident to the passengers on the old ferry-boat, and, boy-like, they enjoyed it thoroughly. Laurie regretted that they hadn’t brought a flag and run it up on the short staff beside them!
Getting thePequot Queeninto her new berth was far more difficult than persuading her to leave her old home. She had to be taken past the sunken canal-boat without running her bow on the bottom, and that task required patience and ingenuity. But Brose Wilkins was equal to it, and finally, after much tugging and swinging and shoving—thePequot Queen’ssteering apparatus was no longer of use—the battered old craft was lying against the short stretch of bulkhead. That her rail smashed off the upper plank of the bulkhead was immaterial, since it allowed her to get a few inches nearer. That the boys had neglected to bring anything to tie the boat up with complicated matters at first. They had not brought the old hawsers along since they had been uncertain whether they had been the property of theboat’s former owners or of the quarry company. In any case, those rotted ropes would have been of only temporary use. Laurie offered to run over to a store and get some new line, but Brose vetoed that suggestion.
“You fellers hold her here a few minutes,” he said. “We’ve got some second-hand stuff over in the shed that’ll do fine and won’t cost you but a few cents. All we need is about thirty feet at each end.” He chugged off, leaving the boys sitting on the rail of the boat with their legs dangling over the bulkhead planking. ThePequot Queenshowed no desire to leave her new home. In fact, she seemed more desirous of pushing her way right up on the beach, and Laurie audibly wondered whether they hadn’t better somehow strengthen the bulkhead.
“I guess she’ll be all right when she’s once tied up,” said Bob. “We’ll ask the Wilkins chap when he comes back.”
Brose allayed their fears as he climbed aboard thePequot Queenwith a supply of thick hawser. “She won’t budge when we get her fixed,” he assured them. “Ease her off a bit while I stick these fenders over the side.” The fenders weretwo sausage-shaped canvas bags attached to short lengths of cord, and he inserted them between bulkhead and boat about ten feet apart, making the free ends of the cords fast under the low rail. “They won’t cost you anything,” he said. “They’re worn out. All right for this job, though. Now let’s see.”
Ten minutes later thePequot Queenwas fast, bow and stern, the worn but still serviceable hawsers securely tied to two spiles. “There,” said Brose. “She’ll stay put till the Yankees win the World’s Championship, fellers!”
“We’re awfully much obliged to you,” said Laurie gratefully. “You’ve been mighty decent. Now, how much is it, rope and all?”
“Two dollars and seventy-five cents,” answered Brose. “But I’ll throw off the seventy-five cents if you’ll tell me what in the name of Old Joe Barnes you’re aiming to do with her now you’ve got her!”
Laurie questioned Bob silently, and, because they had taken a sudden and immense liking to the queer, loose-jointed, red-haired Brose, Bob nodded. So Laurie told him the whole story, and Brose Wilkins’s eyes opened wide and his broadsmile threatened to jostle his ears while he listened. Once or twice he chuckled, too. And when Laurie had finished he laughed until tears stood in his gray eyes. Laurie frowned then. He supposed it did sound rather funny, but Brose’s laughter lasted too long. It wasn’tthatfunny! Then, just when Laurie was forming a stinging rebuke in his mind, Brose wiped his streaming eyes with a sleeve of his old brown sweater and became coherent. He had previously attempted without success to speak.
“Well, if that don’t beat the Cubs!” he gasped. “I got to hand it to you fellers for using the old bean! And, say, what about Miss Pansy, eh? Ain’t she running true to form? I’ll say she is! You can’t beat that little woman, fellers. She’s plucky, she is! Think of her living down here all by her lonesome, and tickled to do it because she’s on a boat! Funny, eh? And sporting, too, eh? She’s a wonder, Miss Pansy is!”
“You know her then?” asked Laurie, mollified.
“Know her? Know Miss Pansy Comfort? Known her since I was that high.” Brose swept a hand along about six inches from the deck. “Used to be in her Sunday-school class. Done oddjobs for her when I was a kid, often. Shingled the shed roof for her not more’n four years ago. Sure, I know her. Guess every one does. I heard something about her having to leave that house up there, but I didn’t know she was up against it like that. Well, say!”
“Don’t you think she’d get on all right here?” asked Laurie anxiously. “I’ve been thinking that it’ll be sort of lonely here at night for her.”
“She’ll get on. Trust her. She’s plucky. Anyway, no one would trouble her. Why, gee-whillikins, I’ll look out for her myself! I’m going past here all times, land or water, and I’ll keep the old eagle eye peeled sharp. Another thing. You say you’re going to fix this old ark up a bit. You’d have to, of course. Well, that’s where I come in, eh? I’m sort of handy with tools, and I’d like mighty well to help. What say, fellers?”
“Gosh,” answered Laurie joyfully, “I say ‘Sure!’ That’ll be simply corking. And maybe you’ve got some tools?”
“Tools? Yeah. Or if I ain’t I can get them. When you aiming to get at her and what you aiming to do?”