CHAPTER XIVA QUEER RIDE
Ted, running as he was with the ball of string, and with his back to the kite, did not see what had happened. But he wondered why Jan and Jimmie were shouting so loudly.
“Look! Look! Look at the rooster!” yelled Jimmie, jumping up and down, he was so excited.
“Oh, he’ll fall and be killed!” exclaimed Janet.
“Cock-a-doodle-do!” crowed the rooster himself, while below him, running about on the ground, the hens clacked and clucked, wondering what it was all about, and thinking, perhaps, that a big hawk had carried off their friend.
“Stop, Ted! Stop!” Jimmie finally cried. “That’s my father’s best rooster and he wouldn’t want him hurt. Stop!”
Not until then did the Curlytop boy turn around to see what was the matter. Then he saw the rooster dangling in the air from the weed that was on the end of the kite tail.
“Oh, my!” cried Ted. “How did it happen?”
Without waiting for anyone to answer him he stopped running. The kite, no longer being pulled against the wind, began to fall, especially as the rooster was heavy. If it had not been such a big kite it never would have gone up with its long tail and the rooster also.
But kites, in a strong wind, can lift heavy weights. Ted had been told this by his father, and that is why he and Jimmie made such a large flier. But they never expected it to lift a rooster.
“The string and the weed on the end of the tail got tangled around Mr. Rooster’s legs,” said Jimmie, when he and Ted went to where the kite had fallen to look at it. “He couldn’t get loose.”
And that is exactly what happened. The rooster had been quietly feeding with the hens when the weed, which Jimmie had pulled up, roots and all, had flopped down on him as the kite made a dive through the air,and then had come the sail upward, the rooster getting a free ride.
With many a crow, and other queer noises, the ruffled fowl ran away as soon as Jimmie had untangled him. And such a cawing and cackling as there was among the hens! If chickens talk, as some people think they do, they must have had lots of questions to ask old Mr. Rooster about what had happened to him when he was ballooning.
“Well, I guess we’ll get this kite up in the air after a while,” said Jimmie, when they were once more ready. “Jan, you’d better keep watch and see if we get tangled up with any more things.”
“I will,” promised the little girl.
But nothing else happened, and this time the kite went away up in the air, darting here and there like some big bird. Ted and Jimmie took turns holding the string, and then they let Jan feel how strongly the kite pulled.
Then they sent up “messengers”—bits of paper, pierced with a hole so they could slide up the slanting string, all the way to the kite high in the air. The wind blew up the “messengers,” and the two boys pretended they were at war, and were generals sending wordto their soldiers about the “enemy,” hidden in the tall weeds.
Ted and Jimmie were sitting down in the grass, watching the kite floating in the air far above them, when Jan, who was tying some leaves together to make a sort of baby doll, called:
“Here comes Hal!”
The two boys looked up to see the lame chap hopping toward them, a smile on his face.
“I came over to see your kite,” he explained. “I saw it from the field where I was sitting, and I wondered who had it up so high. It’s a dandy!”
“It’s higher than it was a while ago, when it tried to take up our old rooster,” laughed Jimmie.
“Take up a rooster? Oh, I’d like to see that!” cried Hal.
“We give only one show like that a day,” returned Ted, grinning. “You can hold the kite awhile if you want to.”
“Thanks!” exclaimed the lame boy. “I like kites. I can make ’em, only they don’t have the right things over at the Home. I can make a dandy one that goes up without a tail.”
“Can you?” cried Jimmie. “That’s great! Make one, will you? I’ve got lots of paper and sticks.”
So after Hal had held the kite with the tail for a while, feeling how hard it pulled, the children all went to the Dell home, and there made a kite without a tail, Hal teaching his new chums how to do it. There are only two sticks used in a tailless kite, instead of three, and the cross-stick is bent like a bow, and held that way with a string before the paper is pasted on.
It took the rest of that day to make the kite without a tail, and then it was time for Hal to go back to the Home. But he promised to come the following day and see the others fly it.
“I can hold it, while one of you runs with the string,” explained the lame boy. “Sometimes, if the wind is just right, you don’t have to run with these kites at all. They’re easier to fly than the others. You’ll like ’em.”
“We’re glad you came over,” said Jimmie, and he and Ted felt that, after all, it was not so bad to be lame when one could make such fine kites.
“Say, you’d better tell your grandmotherto get her chocolate cake ready,” Hal called to Ted just before starting away.
“Why?”
“Because that party, or entertainment, or whatever you want to call it, that they’re going to have to raise money for the Home will be given in two weeks. I thought I’d tell you in plenty of time, so your grandmother wouldn’t have to hurry,” he added with a laugh.
“I’ll tell her,” promised Ted. “Is there anything I can do?”
“And me, too!” added Jan quickly. “I’d like to help.”
“Well, I don’t know that there is,” answered Hal slowly. “They’re trying to raise money for the Home, that’s about all I know.”
“We might sell lemonade,” said Jan, thoughtfully.
“I guess they’re going to sell lemonade over at the Home,” explained Hal. “If I hear of anything you can do I’ll let you know.”
Jimmie and Ted, as well as Jan, were eagerly waiting for Hal to come the next day and show them how to fly the tailless kite. He had promised to come right after breakfast,but it was nearly noon when he reached Jimmie’s house, and he hopped along slowly, his face showing that he was in pain.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jan quickly.
“Oh, nothing much,” and he tried to smile. “Dr. Wade played a sort of game of tag with my bad foot this morning, and it—it—um—it sort of—tickles,” he went on. “I don’t mind, though, for it’s the only way to make it straight and better, so I won’t have to limp. There’s lots worse than me. Some of ’em can’t get out of bed after the nurses or doctors give ’em what they call ‘treatment.’ That is they rub or twist the crooked bones. But I’m lucky. I could get over here.”
It must have been painful for him, though he said nothing about it. Hal was a brave little chap.
“Now for the kite!” he cried gaily. “There’s a good wind and it ought to sail up fine!”
And so it did, going up much better and easier than the one with the tail. And it flew higher, too, and pulled much harder.
“I wish I had a kite of my own,” said Janet wistfully, after she had been given a few turns at holding the string of the boys’ kite.
“I’ll make you one,” promised Hal. “It’ll be bigger than this, if I can get longer sticks.”
“I’ll get ’em,” offered Jimmie, and this, a few days later, he did. So Jan had her kite, and it was a good flier, too.
“It’s more fun to play with this than with a doll,” said the little Curlytop girl after she and Ted had gone back to Cherry Farm. “A kite does something, and a doll can’t unless you do it for her.”
“If you hide a ham bone under her dress a dog will carry her off,” said Grandpa Martin, and the children laughed.
The Curlytops and their friends had fun flying kites and doing many other things during the vacation days at Cherry Farm. One morning Ted called to his sister:
“I say, Jan, come on down to the brook-pasture,” and he pointed toward a large field, through which ran a little brook.
“What are you going to do down there?” asked Jan.
“You’ll see,” answered her brother, and Jan saw that he had a piece of clothesline coiled under his blouse. “Come on, you’ll see. I’m going to learn to be a Wild West cowboy!”
“Oh, Ted! If mother heard you——”
“She won’t, if you don’t tell her. It’s no harm. Come on!”
Eager to see what her brother would do, Jan followed him. When she saw him climbing the fence to get into the pasture, and as she noticed some little calves eating in the grass, she asked:
“Are you going to catch one?”
“I’m going to lasso it,” answered Ted. “Wild West cowboys lasso.”
“Won’t it hurt the little cow?”
“Nope. I’ll do it easy. It won’t hurt.”
And I don’t believe it really did. Ted climbed over the fence and, making a slip-noose in the clothesline, he went up softly behind one of the calves. But the animal heard Teddy coming and, kicking up his heels, ran away.
“But I’ll get another,” declared the little Curlytop chap, and after two or three attempts he did manage to throw the noose over the neck of a small calf. The little animal tried to pull away, but Ted was quite strong and at last led the animal along by the rope.
“Now I’m a cowboy!” boasted Ted. “Didn’t I tell you I could catch one?”
“Yes,” agreed Jan, “you did. Is that all you’re going to do?”
It really was not much fun for her to sit on the fence and watch her brother lead a calf around by a rope. The calf seemed quite tame after it was once caught, and did not try to get away.
“Maybe I could teach it to do tricks,” said her brother. “If I could we might have a circus and earn money for the Crippled Home. Say, Jan——”
“Oh, here comes grandpa!” suddenly called Janet, looking back across the field from her seat on the fence. “You’d better let that calf go!”
Ted thought so himself, and tried to get the rope off the little animal’s neck. But it was pulled tight, and as the calf kept jerking its head Ted did not find it easy to loosen the noose.
“Here, you help, Jan!” he begged. “I’ll lead the calf up to you while you sit on the fence, and you can hold him while I untie the rope.”
Jan was willing, and they both worked quickly, for they did not want Grandpa Martin to see that they had caught a calf. He might not like it, though really the littleanimal was not hurt, and hardly even scared—at least so the Curlytops thought.
“I can’t reach the rope if he keeps lifting his head up that way,” said Ted, after a bit. “Here, Jan, you hold the loose end, and I’ll climb up on the fence. Then I can reach down.”
Jan took the end of the rope and her brother scrambled up on the rail fence. He worked away at the knot around the calf’s neck, and Jan looked back to see how near Grandpa Martin was. The old gentleman had turned to one side, however, and did not seem to be coming to the pasture.
“There!” cried Ted. “I almost had it!”
And just then something happened. Ted slipped from the fence, and, as he fell, he stretched out his arms toward the calf in front of him and down below him. Then Ted fell astraddle right on the calf’s back, just as if he intended to take a bareback gallop.
The next minute he was having a queer ride, for Janet, with a cry of surprise, had let go her end of the rope, and the calf, with Ted on his back, was running across the field.