POPPY OTT
AND THE GALLOPING SNAIL
[Illustration: HE REACHED DOWN AND PINCHED MY BARE TOES.
_Poppy Ott and the Galloping Snail._ _Frontispiece_ (_Page 153_)]
POPPY OTT
AND THE
GALLOPING SNAIL
BY
LEO EDWARDS
AUTHOR OF
THE POPPY OTT BOOKS
THE JERRY TODD BOOKS
ILLUSTRATED BY
BERT SALG
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
COPYRIGHT 1927, BY
GROSSET & DUNLAP
TO
MY WIFE
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Galloping Snail 1
II A House of Mystery 11
III The Spotted Gander 27
IV Admiral Pepper 40
V The Man in the Storm 48
VI The “Ghost” in the Kitchen 59
VII Lawyer Chew 70
VIII All Aboard For Pardyville 83
IX No Automobiles Allowed 90
X Our Meeting With Goliath 100
XI The Runaway 113
XII Dr. Madden Comes Home 122
XIII Poppy’s Amazing Theory 132
XIV Bit by a Grand Vizier 144
XV A Scream in the Night 155
XVI Getting Closer to the Secret 166
XVII In Quarantine 179
XVIII A Whispering Voice 187
XIX The Diary in the Clock 198
XX “Miss” Poppy Ott 210
XXI Behind the Moon 222
XXII On the Road Again 231
POPPY OTT
AND THE
GALLOPING SNAIL
CHAPTER I
THE GALLOPING SNAIL
All fagged out, I dragged myself wearily from the sun-baked concrete
highway to the skinny shade of a thin-limbed, thirsty-looking bush.
“Under the spreading blacksmith tree the village chestnut sits,” I
crazily recited, kicking off my shoes to cool my blistered feet. Then
I looked at my chum with begging eyes. “Get me some ice cream, Poppy.
Quick, before I faint.”
Boy, was I ever hot! I felt like a fried egg. But scorched as I was,
inside and out, I could still sing a song.
To better introduce myself, I’ll explain that my name is Jerry Todd.
I live in Tutter, Illinois, which is the peachiest small town in the
state. And the kids I run around with are the peachiest boy pals in the
state, too, particularly Poppy Ott, the hero of this crazy story.
Poppy is a real guy, let me whisper to you. I never expect to have a
chum whom I like any better than I like him. He’s full of fun, just
like his funny name, which he got from peddling pop corn. And _brains_?
Say, when they were dishing out gray matter old Poppy got served at
both ends of the line. I’ll tell the world. If you want to know how
smart he is, just read POPPY OTT’S SEVEN-LEAGUE STILTS. Starting with
nothing except an idea, we ended up, under his clever leadership, with
a factory full of stilt-manufacturing machinery and money in the bank.
That’s Poppy for you. Every time. A lot of his ideas are pretty big for
a boy, but he makes them work. Of course, as he warmly admits, I was
a big help to him in putting the new stilt business on its feet and
teaching it to stand alone. But his loyal praise doesn’t puff me up.
For I know who did the most of the headwork.
With Poppy’s pa doing the general-manager stuff in the new factory, my
chum and I had merrily set forth on a hitch-hike as a sort of vacation.
This, too, was Poppy’s idea. A hitch-hike, as every kid knows, is a
sort of free automobile tour. You start walking down the concrete in
the direction you want to go, and when a motor car to your liking comes
alone you wigwag the driver to stop and give you a lift. Sometimes you
get it and sometimes you don’t. But if you limp a little bit, and act
tired, that helps.
Poppy, of course, was all hip-hip-hurray over his hitch-hike idea.
That’s his way. Our most violent exercise, he spread around, seeing
nothing but joy and sugar buns ahead, would be lifting our travel-weary
frames into soft-cushioned Cadillacs and Packards. Once comfortably
seated, we would glide along swiftly and inexpensively. No gasoline
bills to pay. No new tires to buy. Everything free, including the
scenery. Some automobiles would carry us ten miles, others would carry
us a hundred miles. “We might even average around three hundred miles
a day,” was some more of his line, “and still have time each night
to stop at a farmhouse and do chores for our supper and breakfast.”
If we slept in the farmer’s barn, that would be free, too. Our trip
would cost us scarcely anything, though it would be wise, the leader
tacked on at the tail end, to carry twenty dollars in small bills for
emergencies.
I fell for the scheme, of course. For Poppy never has any trouble
getting me to do what he wants me to do. Not that I haven’t a mind of
my own. But I’ve found out that in going along with him I usually learn
something worth while, and have a whale of a lot of fun doing it, too.
Having won our parents’ consent to the trip, we had set forth that
morning in high feather. But in poor luck we now were held up on a
closed road, though why the road had been suddenly shut off was a
mystery to us.
With a final look up and down the long stretch of concrete, Poppy came
over to where I was and dropped down beside me in the hot sand.
“Still not a sign of a car,” says he.
“Not even a flivver, huh?” I suffered with him.
“I can’t understand it,” says he, puzzled. “We saw a few cars after we
left Pardyville. But the road’s completely empty now, and has been for
hours.”
I saw a chance to have some fun with him.
“‘And our most violent exercise,’” I quoted glibly, “‘will be lifting
our travel-weary frames into soft-cushioned cattle racks and pant
hards.’ Say, Poppy,” I grinned, “was that last cattle rack we rode in a
four-legged wheelbarrow or another gnash?”
“You won’t feel so funny,” came the laugh, “if you have to go to bed
to-night without your supper.”
“Bed?” says I, looking around at the sun-baked scenery. It was a
beautiful country, all right--for sand burs and grasshoppers! “Where’s
the bed?” I yawned. “Lead me to it.”
“This sand knoll may be the only bed you’ll get. For there isn’t a
farmhouse in sight.”
I got my eyes on something.
“The Hotel Emporia for me, kid,” I laughed, pointing to a billboard
beside the highway. “‘One hundred comfortable rooms,’” I read, “‘each
with bath and running ice water. Delectable chicken dinners. Sun-room
cafeteria. Inexpensive garage in connection.’ Who could ask for more?”
I wound up.
“Jerry, don’t you ever run down?”
“Hey!” I yipped, straightening. “What do you think I am?--a clock?”
“Yah,” came the quick grin, “a _cuckoo_ clock.”
“It took real brains to think up that one, kid. You win.”
“It’s a cinch,” the leader then went on, “that they aren’t letting any
cars into this road. For we haven’t seen an automobile since three
o’clock. And it’s after six now.”
“Supper time, huh?”
“Yes, supper time, but no supper. Shall we walk back to Pardyville,
Jerry?”
“How would that help us?”
“The automobiles must detour from there.”
“First let us sleuth the road map,” I suggested, “and find out where we
are.”
“Here’s Pardyville,” Poppy presently pointed out.
“We must be near New Zion,” says I, squinting at the map. “See? Here’s
a river running east and west, with a concrete road on each side--C.
H. O. and C. H. P.”
“County Highway ‘O’ and County Highway ‘P,’” Poppy explained.
“We must be on C. H. O.”
“That’s what the map says.”
“Come Here Often,” I made up of the three capital letters, looking
around at the Sahara sandscape. “Yes, I will--not!”
“I should imagine,” came thoughtfully, as the leader studied the map,
“that a better scheme than going back will be to cross the river at New
Zion and pick up the other road. For both roads lead into Sandy Ridge.
And that’s our next regular town.”
“How far have we come?” I inquired.
The leader got out his “log” book.
“About sixty-two miles.”
“What!” I squeaked. “Has it taken us all day to cover sixty-two miles?”
“Here’s the dope: The first automobile carried us twelve miles. The
next one kissed a telephone pole before it had gone a mile. The third
one got on the wrong road and we lost seven miles. The fourth one--”
I let out a yip.
“The end of a perfectless day!” I sang noisily. “And you were the
bird,” I threw at him, “who said that some automobiles would carry us
a hundred miles at a jump. Poppy! Poppy! I believed in you, and now my
sugar is salt.”
“I guess I put it pretty strong,” says he, with a sheepish look.
“I guess you did. Sixty-two miles! Hold my head, I’m dizzy.”
“Anyway,” he added, “you can’t blame me because they suddenly closed
this road.”
“I suppose not,” I let up on him. “But just the same I feel like a
victim of circumstances, as the tomcat said when it sat down on the fly
paper.”
We got up then. And taking to the concrete again, we kept our ears
sharpened for the sound of an automobile, for it didn’t seem possible
to us that the fine highway could much longer remain closed. But all
we heard in the desolate strip of country was the rasping applause
of happy-go-lucky crickets and the occasional bagpipe notes of a
long-winded, hard-working locust. The waste land was an irregular
checkerboard of sand ridges and clumps of unhappy-looking scrub trees.
Men who jerked plows around for a living certainly had saved themselves
a lot of grief and hardship by not stopping here. There wasn’t a sign
of a fence, which showed in itself that the land wasn’t any good.
Still, I concluded, it must belong to some one.
Weary from watching us all day, and messing up our faces with sweat,
the sun, on its way to bed, was fast sliding out of the sky in the
west. From a sizzling white moth ball it had changed itself into a big
orange. The air was cooler now, but the concrete under our dragging
feet seemed hotter than ever. It was like walking on hot stove lids.
It was Poppy’s idea that the small town of New Zion, where we were
going to cross the river, was just ahead of us, to the left, on a side
road running north and south, between C. H. O. (where we were) and C.
H. P. (where we wanted to be). But as we trudged along the hard roadway
no sign of church steeples or shapely water towers came into sight. I
was about to let go in weak-kneed despair, when suddenly the sound of
an automobile cut the road silence behind us.
“Hot dog!” I cried, with new pep. “The road’s open! We won’t have to
walk now.”
But instead of a string of cars coming toward us from the direction of
Pardyville, we could make out just one moving shape. It was far down
the sloping road. Nor was the solitary car speeding toward us, though
from the noise it was making, and the smoke, you could have imagined
that it was scorching along at double the law’s limit.
After an hour or two, more or less, the slow-moving, smoking car got
close enough for us to see that it was a roadster without a top. Maybe
at one time it had been a fairly good-looking car. But that was years
and years ago. In its old age it had gotten a broken back, which left
the front and rear ends tipped up like the head and tail of a canoe.
The sides were open--there were no doors--which in itself stamped the
car as a relic. The windshield had long ago shimmied itself to pieces,
though the brass frame that once had held the glass was still there.
All four wheels toed out, like the wheels of Dad’s brickyard dump cart,
and one front fender was gone.
There was an old man in the car--a queer-looking old man, sort of
stooped and thin-faced. He was hanging to the steering wheel for dear
life. I waved to him to stop, but he didn’t seem to see us at all, so
deep was he in his driving job.
The crazy car having passed us, the noisiest piece of junk that I ever
had seen on the road, I untangled myself from its smoky tail to find
Poppy laughing his head off.
“The Galloping Snail!” he yipped, having read the name that was printed
on the back of the car.
“It sure is a ‘Galloping Snail,’ all right. Why didn’t you jump in,
Jerry?--you’ve been yelling for a ride.”
“I didn’t want to cheat the goose out of its seat,” I laughed.
“Goose?” says the other, looking at me.
“Didn’t you see the goose on the seat?”
“Who do you mean?--the old man?”
“No, a real goose.”
“I guess it was a pair of geese,” laughed Poppy, thinking of the queer
driver.
Sometimes a fellow gets a hunch about things that he’s heading into.
But we had no hunch that we’d ever see that old car again, much less
get mixed up in a crazy, shivery adventure with its queer driver and
his equally queer gander--for it was a gander that I had seen, as we
learned later on, and not a goose.
A spotted gander! Did you ever hear of one? No? Well, you’re going to
hear about one pretty soon.