THE MAN WITH THE EARRINGS
The twins got out of the cut between the two hills after a time, and
then it _was_ long past noon and Laddie was hungry as well as Vi. It
seemed terrible to the Bunker twins to have money to spend and no way to
spend it. They might just as well have been on a desert island, like
that man Robinson Crusoe about whom Rose read to them.
"I know a riddle about that Robinson Crusoe man. Yes, I do!" suddenly
exclaimed Laddie.
"What is the riddle, Laddie? Do I know it?"
"You can try to guess it, Vi," said the eager little boy. "Now listen!
'How do we know Robinson Crusoe had plenty of fish to eat?'"
"'Cause the island was in the water," said Vi promptly. "Of course there
were fish."
"Well, that isn't the answer," Laddie said slowly.
"Why isn't it?"
"Because--because the answer is something about Friday. You fry fish,
you know--And anyway, Crusoe's man was named _Friday_."
"Pooh!" scoffed Vi. "You fry bacon and eggs and lots of other things,
besides those nice pancakes Norah makes for breakfast when we're at
home. I don't think much of that riddle, Laddie Bunker, so now!"
"I guess it is a good riddle if I only knew how to ask it," complained
her twin. "But somehow I've got it mixed up."
"Don't ask any more riddles like that. They make me hungry," declared
Vi. "And there isn't a candy shop or anything around here."
She came very near to speaking the exact truth that time. On both sides
of the railroad track where they now walked so wearily there seemed to
be almost a desert. There were neither houses nor trees, and although
the country was rolling, it was not at all pleasant in appearance.
And how tired their feet did become! If you have ever walked the
railroad tracks (which you certainly must never do unless grown people
are with you, for it is a dangerous practise) you know that stepping
from tie to tie between the rails is a very uncomfortable way to travel,
because the ties are not laid at equal distances apart. First Vi and
Laddie had to take a short step and then a long step. And if they missed
the tie in stepping, their shoes crunched right down into the wet
cinders, for the ground by no means was all dried up since the heavy
rain.
"Oh, me, I'm so tired!" complained Vi, after a while.
"So'm I," confessed her twin brother.
"And I don't see daddy coming for us," added Vi, her voice tremulous
with tears again.
[Illustration: "I SEE SOMETHING!" CRIED LADDIE.
_Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's._ (_Page 99_)]
"I see something!" cried Laddie suddenly and hopefully. He did not want
his sister to begin crying.
"Is it Daddy Bunker?" demanded Vi, looking ahead eagerly.
"It's a house--right beside the railroad," said Laddie, quickening his
own pace a little and trying to drag Vi along, as he still held her
hand.
"Where? Where is the house?" demanded Vi anxiously. "I don't see any
house."
"Well, it's a very small house. But there it is," said her brother,
pointing ahead with confidence.
"Oh! I see it, Laddie," cried Vi. "Oh, what a little house it is--and so
close to the tracks! Do you suppose anybody lives in that little house?"
"I don't know. It is small," admitted Laddie.
"Maybe a dog lives in it. It isn't much bigger than Mr. Striver's
dog-house at home in Pineville."
"I guess it isn't a dog-house. Anyway, we'll see."
"Maybe it's a candy store," suggested the reviving Vi more cheerfully.
"If you could spend your dime, Laddie, for something to eat, I'd feel a
whole lot better, I guess."
"Oh, I know what it is, Vi!" exclaimed the boy suddenly. "It's a
riddle."
"There you go again with your old riddles," sniffed Vi. "We can't eat
riddles."
"This is a good one," declared her brother cheerfully. "I'm going to ask
you: What looks like a dog-house, but isn't a dog-house?"
"I don't know. A hen-house, Laddie?"
"Pooh! They don't build hen-houses right down beside railroad tracks,
and just where a road crosses the tracks."
"Don't they? What do they build there, then?"
"Why," cried Laddie, quite delighted at his discovery, "a flagman's
house. That is what that little house is, Vi. A flagman stays there to
stop people from crossing the tracks when the train is coming. There!
There's the flagman now. See him?"
Just as Laddie spoke so excitedly a man came out of the little house,
and he bore a flag in his hand. Unnoticed by the children, there had
begun behind them a rumbling sound, and the rails between which they
walked began to hum. There was a train coming from the east.
The flagman unrolled his flag, and then he looked both ways along the
road that crossed the railroad. Then he turned and saw the two little
folks coming toward him. At sight of them he became much more excited
than the children were.
"Look out-a da train!" he shouted. "Look out-a da train!"
"What does he say?" asked Vi curiously.
The flagman began to wave his arms and the flag, and ran toward the
twins. He was a man with a very dark face, and his hair was black and
curly. But what interested Laddie and Vi most about the flagman was that
he wore big gold rings in his ears.
"Look out-a da train!" shouted the flagman again.
"I never saw a man wearing earrings before," said Vi soberly. "And he
acts awfully funny, doesn't he?"
The little girl began to feel a bit afraid of the strange man. She
stopped walking ahead and pulled back on her brother's hand.
"I guess he doesn't mean any harm," said Laddie doubtfully.
But drawn away by Vi, he stepped with her off the ties into the path
between the east-and west-bound tracks. The flagman stopped running, but
still gestured to the children. And just then, quite startling in the
twins' ears, sounded the long drawn shriek of a locomotive whistle.
Laddie and Vi glanced behind them. Around the curve, out of the railroad
cut in which their adventure had begun, was coming a big locomotive
drawing a long passenger train. The man with the earrings reached Vi and
Laddie the very next moment.
"Look-a da train!" he cried. "You bambinoes want-a get run over--yes?"
"We're not Bambinoes, Mister," said Laddie. "We're Bunkers."
Vi could not quench her usual curiosity, although the man seemed so
strange in her eyes. She asked:
"Why do you wear rings in your ears? Please, why do you wear 'em?"