POPPY’S PEDIGREED PICKLES
Landing on the north shore of the river, the boats were dragged out
of the water, to keep them from wandering off into the current, after
which we jiggled the cave truck into four equal loads and started
single file for the darkened stone house, where we did a snappy little
rat-a-tat-tat on the closed front door.
“Who is it?” Mrs. O’Mally’s quavering voice percolated through the
keyhole.
Getting our answer, the door was quickly thrown open.
“We’ve brought you company,” laughed Poppy, as the whole gang traipsed
in.
The woman stared at the visitors, more particularly at the stooped old
man.
“Howdy, ma’am,” says he, taking off his hat and bowing like a
hand-organ monkey. Then his bundle got away from him and tin pans
galloped all over the room.
“Mither of Moses!” hurdled Mrs. O’Mally. “’Tis a wonder ye wouldn’t
scare the wits out of a body.”
We told her then who the old man was, and why the kid was no longer a
prisoner.
“As we’re all working together,” Poppy wound up, “we figured that
the safest and best plan, with the cat killer in mind, was to live
together, too.”
“Sure, ’tis welcome ye are to what I’ve got,” came heartily from the
generous woman. “An’ ’tis glad I am, too, for your company. For with
secret doors in me cellar an’ a vicious prowler without, ’tis no safe
place for a lonely ould widdy. Look at me! ’Tis still tremblin’ I be
from the fright that gripped me when I heard ye on the front porch.
For, thinks I, ’tis no one but that creepin’ cat killer, himself--bad
luck to his murderin’ soul!”
“Has he been here again, Mrs. O’Mally?”
“Niver a sound have I heard from him since ye left. But ’tis the
constant feelin’ I’ve had that there’s _eyes_.”
I knew what she meant. For it was those same hidden _eyes_ that had put
the shivers in me on the way to the bridge.
Having been up all night, Poppy and I were dead tired, as you can
imagine. But dizzy as I was from lack of sleep, I had no intention of
turning in until I had seen the underground chamber. So, leaving Mrs.
O’Mally and Uncle Abner to frisk the extra beds into shape, the leader
and I, with our new chum, skinned down the cellar stairs. Then, having
opened the secret door--and I might explain here that the only reason
why the door had escaped us in the first place was because the chimney
base was built squarely in the middle of the cellar floor--we next
corkscrewed down the winding stairs. As Poppy had said, it was like
going down a peculiar well. Coming to the room where Tom had gotten the
“bump on the bean,” as he now grinningly expressed it, I zigzagged here
and there, hoping to feast my eyes on some of that wonderful “pirate”
truck that we had talked of. But the only “weapons” in sight were Tom’s
pick and an old mule collar. Nor were there any skeletons.
“What makes you so sure,” says Poppy, when we had made the rounds,
“that the treasure is walled up in this room?”
“That’s what Grandpa Weir told us.”
“Did he see it put away?”
“No. But he said we’d find it here.”
Poppy swung the pick.
“Solid rock,” says he.
We were then taken through another secret passage which connected
the hidden room with the old cement tunnel. Here we found a second
iron door, the complexion of which was so much like the solid rock
on either side of it that it had completely escaped us. But, to that
point, even if we had been wise to the fact that it was there I doubt
if we could have spotted it.
“Who do you suppose built all these passages,” puzzled Poppy. “The old
pirate, himself?”
“If he did,” I put in, “he must have been some worker.”
“Grandpa Weir didn’t tell us all the particulars,” says Tom. “But it’s
Uncle Abner’s opinion that the early miners, whoever they were, tapped
the cellar of the stone house by accident. They couldn’t have been
skilled miners, Uncle Abner says, for a shaft is never properly made
from the bottom up. Later the fake chimney base, with its secret door,
was built over the hole in the cellar floor. And as this all favored my
great-uncle’s crooked scheme, it may be that the queer mining was done
under his orders.”
At four o’clock we hit the hay, Poppy and I sharing one bed and Tom and
his uncle the other. But before turning in we double-locked the cellar
door, further rigging up a “tin-pan” burglar alarm. But nothing woke us
up.
Mrs. O’Mally, as usual, had to pile out early to start her pickers to
work, but she moved quietly in and out of the house, so the rest of us
didn’t uncover our eyes until ten o’clock.
“Well,” says I, yawning, “what’s the program for to-day?”
“Cucumbers,” says Poppy, reaching for his pants.
“Gold?” I further exercised my jaws, as I thought of our recent
adventures.
“Gold and pickles, both.”
I suddenly sat up.
“_Good_ night! With so much other truck going on I’d completely
forgotten about that bin of cucumbers. What are we going to do with
them?”
“We’ve either got to pickle them,” says Poppy, “or sell them to old
Pennykorn at a loss of a dollar and ten cents a bushel.”
I put my adding machine to work.
“That’s almost eight hundred dollars.”
“If the treasure turns out as well as we hope,” says he, “the loss of
eight hundred dollars might not cripple us. But just the same I’d go
ten miles out of my way before I’d lose even a penny to that grasping
old geezer.”
“But, Poppy,” says I, getting a slant on his thoughts, “how in the
world are _we_ going to pickle seven hundred bushels of cucumbers? For
even if we had plenty of money to work with, we wouldn’t know how to go
about it.”
“We might hire old Butch,” he grinned, flipping his necktie into shape.
“Yes,” says I, matching his nonsense with some of my own, “and we might
commit suicide, too. But who wants to do that when fried cakes are only
ten cents a yard?”
“Jerry, after eating those swell cucumber pickles at his house--and
I _know_ they’re the same kind of pickles that I bought at the food
sale--it’ll forever be a puzzle to me how he slopped over on the last
batch.”
“I hope,” says I uneasily, “that you aren’t thinking of giving him a
second trial.”
“Hardly.” Then he swatted me with a pillow. “Get up, you lazy bum.
Here I am all dressed and you haven’t even untangled yourself from the
feather tick.”
“Wait a minute,” I motioned him away. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Spill it.”
“How would it be,” I suggested thoughtfully, “if we got Mrs. O’Mally to
do the pickle making for us? Mother was raving about her pickles last
night. So they must be all right.”
“By George!” came the applause. “I wonder if we can’t? Of course,” he
added, with less enthusiasm, “they won’t be the _wonder_ pickles. We
can’t expect that. But other dealers sell big wads of ordinary pickles.
So, with fairly good luck, we ought to be able to flag an order now and
then.”
“Shall we call her in and ask her?” says I eagerly, feeling pretty
hefty over the fact that little Y. T. (meaning Yours Truly) had made
the important suggestion. Oh, I’m there, all right ... once or twice a
year, at least!
“Just a minute,” says Poppy. Then, having slipped out of the room,
I heard him stumble over a chair in the empty kitchen. By hurrying,
I was well ornamented with clothes by the time he got back. “Before
saying anything to her,” he laughed, “I thought we’d better sample her
pickles on the sly. For it’s a cinch we don’t want to make another
crazy blunder.” Then he shoved a cucumber at me. “Try it,” says he,
cheerfully, “and see what you think of it.”
I loved that pickle about as much as you love cod-liver oil.
“Oof!” I screwed up my nose. “Do I have to do it?”
“Here we go,” says Poppy, heroically. “One, two, _three_.”
At the third count I jabbed the hated pickle into my mouth and began to
chew. Then, as I got a taste, I sort of stiffened with surprise, after
which I chewed all the faster, my jaws and eyes working together.
“What the dickens?...” cried Poppy, staring at me.
“It tastes to me like those church pickles,” says I, staring back at
him.
He was out of the room like a shot. And this time, instead of grabbing
a pickle apiece, he heaved up the stairs to our boudoir with a whole
dishful.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” he cried, when the bottom of the dish was
uncovered. “I can’t understand it. But if these aren’t a match for the
church pickles and the ones I ate in old Butch’s house, I’ll eat my
shirt.”
I remembered then what the mule driver had dished out to us about his
choice recipe.
“Don’t you catch on?” I cried, as my beezer slipped into high gear. “It
was from Mrs. O’Mally that old Butch got his recipe in the first place.”
Poppy looked dizzy.
“Were we ever dumb,” says he, “not to have suspected it? And _him_
going with her, too! Drill a hole in my thick skull, Jerry: my brains
need ventilating.”
In answer to our questions, Mrs. O’Mally admitted to us at the
breakfast table that she had sent some of her pickles to the food sale.
She also had given several jars, she said, to “a friend.” We knew,
of course, who the “friend” was! Feeling that she was too poor to
subscribe to the Tutter newspaper, she thus had missed seeing our ad.
Starting in at the beginning, we handed her the whole story, which
amused her one minute and amazed her the next. But when we asked her,
in the wind-up, to do the pickle-making stunt for us, she almost
fainted.
“_Me_ pickle seven hundred bushels of cucumbers? Mither of Moses! Is it
the work of ten women that ye think I can do?”
“All right,” Poppy quickly followed up. “We’ll go at it that way, then.
You’ll be the boss. See? And the other women will do the work.”
“No, no!”
“But, Mrs. O’Mally,” old do-or-die hung on, “if you don’t help us, we
won’t be able to pay you for the cucumbers. Besides, think of what it
will mean to you if the pickles turn out to be a big success. We’ll be
able to start up a pickle factory. That will make you rich. For, of
course, you’ll be one of the owners.”
“Sure,” came dizzily, “’tis nothin’ I hear but talk of riches. First it
was the pirate’s treasure; an’ now it’s pickles.”
“Besides,” Poppy galloped along, “think how lovely it will be to beat
old Pennykorn at his own game, who probably is waiting for you right
now with that ninety-cent contract.”
The pickle woman’s face hardened.
“He’ll get no ninety-cent cucumbers from me.”
“That’s the spirit, Mrs. O’Mally. We’ve got to fight him. It’s our
duty, sort of. For if we can work this pickle scheme, independent of
him, the sweet-corn farmers can then get together, in pattern of us,
and beat him at that game, too. It will mean thousands of dollars to
them. And instead of mortgaging their farms to buy shoes and stockings,
they’ll be able to ride around in Chevrolets.”
Mrs. O’Mally liked the idea of the Chevrolets.
“But what women have ye in mind?” she let down the bars.
“Jerry’s ma will help, for one.”
“Sure thing,” I swung in. “And she probably can get some of the
Methodist ladies, too.”
Poppy almost jumped over the table.
“Hot dog!” he yipped. “Now I know! There isn’t a church in town that
isn’t head over heels in debt. All these bazaars that are put on by the
different church societies, and the chicken-pie suppers, is just an
endless run of schemes to raise money. All right! If the church ladies
want to raise money, we’ll put them to work. We furnish everything
and they get ten per cent of what the pickles sell for. Why, kid,”
he yipped it off, from the peak of his enthusiasm, “they’ll jump
at a scheme like that. Sure thing. And if we find out that we have
more cucumbers than the Methodist ladies can handle, we’ll give the
Presbyterian ladies a chance to lift their church debt. If that isn’t
enough, we’ll call in the Catholic ladies. For pickles are pickles,
kid, regardless of whether they’re Protestant pickles or Catholic
pickles.”
Mrs. O’Mally got the idea from this talk that the church ladies were
going to run things to suit themselves.
“Sure,” she heaved a sigh of relief, “’tis glad I am to learn that ye
hain’t a-goin’ to need me.”
“Don’t you think for one minute that we aren’t going to need you,”
Poppy still held the floor. “In fact,” he grinned, “you’re going to be
the biggest frog in the puddle. For everything that the women do will
be done under your directions. The point is, Mrs. O’Mally, that we’ve
got to turn out better than average pickles if we’re going to put this
scheme across with a bang. You know how to do it. And you’ll want to be
on the job every minute, to make sure that every part of the work is
being done exactly as you would do it if you were working alone.”
Leaving Tom and his uncle at work in the underground room, with the
promise that we’d give them a helping hand as soon as we got our pickle
business better organized, Poppy and I lit out for town, where we had
an important talk with Mr. Thomas Lorring, our former “stilt” partner,
in the latter’s private office in the Commercial Bank.
“What?” the president boomed at us in pretended amazement, thinking, no
doubt, of how we had similarly called upon him for help in starting up
our stilt factory. “Are you young shavers trying to organize another
new industry?”
“A pickle factory,” grinned Poppy, who had a hunch that he stacked up
pretty high in the kindly banker’s estimation.
“And you want to borrow money, heh?”
“All we can get.”
“Meaning how much?”
“Five hundred dollars to start with.”
“Humph! Think you’re going to get it?”
“We’ve got to,” says Poppy earnestly. “For if we don’t our cucumbers
will go to waste.”
“Not necessarily. Mrs. O’Mally can still sell them to the canning
company.”
It began to look as though we were going to get turned down. And I
could see that Poppy was worried.
“But they’re trying to cheat her, Mr. Lorring,” he burst out. “That’s
one reason why we stepped in. All they agree to pay her is ninety cents
a bushel.”
The banker held up a big red hand.
“Wait a minute,” says he, sort of quiet-like. “A thing you want to
learn, Poppy, if you’re going to be a good business man, is not to go
around telling people that your competitor is a cheat. As a matter
of fact, Mr. Pennykorn isn’t a cheat. He’s just close-fisted in his
business dealings, that’s all. He isn’t forcing any of the farmers to
sell their stuff to him. And the mere fact that his prices are low
doesn’t stamp his dealings as being crooked. I will say, however, in
justice to your viewpoint, that his way of doing business isn’t right
according to my notion. And if we could clear up the situation for the
local farmers by starting another canning factory, I’d be in favor of
it. However, with all due respect to your other manufacturing success,
the organization of such a factory isn’t a job for two boys.”
“But, Mr. Lorring--”
“Just a minute,” the big hand came up again. “The point that I am going
to make is this: You can’t borrow money here with the specific idea
of starting up a pickle factory. However, having confidence in you,
because of past associations, I’m willing to advance you five hundred
dollars on a thirty-day note at six per cent, to enable you to swing
this pickle deal and thus save yourself from loss. If you find in
selling your pickles that you have what would seem to be the nucleus
of another industry, that will be taken up separately, by the proper
people. Just give this slip to the cashier as you go out and your
account will be credited accordingly.”
“Five hundred and thirty-two dollars,” says Poppy, looking at our new
bank balance when we were in the street. “It isn’t going to be a cent
too much. Do you know what seven hundred bushels of pickled cucumbers
ought to bring?”
“How much?” says I.
“Anywhere from seven thousand to eight thousand dollars.”
This high finance, or whatever you call it, was almost too much for me.
“Poppy,” says I, sort of anxious-like, “aren’t we getting in gosh-awful
deep?”
“The deeper the better,” says he. “For then we can high-dive in perfect
safety.”
“We may ‘high-dive,’” says I, “and never come up.”
But he was too bubbly inside to be troubled by me.
“Now,” says he, starting off down the street, “let’s see what the
Ladies’ Aid has got to say.”
“By the way,” says I, keeping pace with him, “are we still going to use
that ‘Aunt Jemima’ name?”
“No,” he shook his head. “‘Aunt Jemima’ took too hard a flop ever to
get her wind back. So far as we are concerned the old lady is dead and
buried.”
“‘Poppy’s Pickles,’” I showed my stuff. “That’s a good name.”
“Jerry, did you ever hear of pedigreed cows?”
“Sure thing.”
“Isn’t it a fact that _pedigreed_ is the mark of quality in cows,
horses, dogs and almost everything else?”
“Even nanny goats,” I nodded.
“All right,” says he, “we’re going to manufacture pedigreed pickles.
Or, if you think it’ll help to stretch the name out, we’ll call them
‘Poppy’s Pedigreed Pickles.’ That’s what they are--pickles with a
pedigree. For you heard what Mrs. O’Mally said about her recipe having
been handed down in the family for a hundred years or more. There’s
where the _pedigreed_ part comes in. It’s a _proven_ recipe, in other
words. The quality of the pickles is guaranteed. Do you like the name,
Jerry?”
I beamed at him.
“Do I like it? Kid, I’m crazy over it.” Then, running off into my
usual line of bunk, I got in some big gestures. “What a difference
one day makes in the history of the world,” I orationed. “Yesterday
pickles were pickles. But to-day pickles aren’t pickles unless they’re
Pedigreed Pickles.... Let’s send a telegram to Mr. Heinz, telling him
that we’re in the pickle business, too,” I wound up. “Maybe he’ll be so
scared that he’ll beg us to buy him out at two cents on the dollar.”
Putting all nonsense aside, though, I saw that old Poppy had a real
idea. The job now was to make it work.