THE TELEGRAM
Rick’s mother was waiting for him. With a wondering look on her face she
took the letter he held out to her, and the boy watched her read it.
“This is very strange,” she murmured as she glanced through the short
note.
“Mother, what is it?” asked Rick. “Has anything happened—anything to
Uncle Tod?”
“Nothing serious I think—at least not yet,” added Mrs. Dalton as once
more she glanced over the letter. “He’s just gone, that’s all. He left
in a hurry, too. I didn’t notice him go. I wonder if he took any of his
things with him?”
“I didn’t look to see,” the boy answered. “I just hurried down when I
saw the letter. Say, what has happened, anyhow?”
“You may read the letter,” offered Mrs. Dalton as she started up stairs
toward Uncle Tod’s room. “Don’t let the potatoes burn,” she called to
Mazie who was in the kitchen.
“All right, Mother, I won’t,” was the answer. “But what’s the matter?
Why don’t you all come to supper? Here’s daddy,” she went on, as she
caught a glimpse of her father coming in the front gate.
“I hope he can puzzle this out,” murmured Mrs. Dalton, as she entered
Uncle Tod’s room, while Rick remained in the hall outside to read the
letter left by the man whose strange actions, following that mysterious
message, had created a worry in the family.
The letter that Uncle Tod had left for his niece was short. Rick read
this:
“Dear Schotzie: I’m sorry I have to leave this way, but it
has to be. If any one inquires for me don’t tell them
anything. Don’t even tell them I’m gone! You will soon
receive a telegram. Just believe in me.
Your affectionate
Uncle Tod.”
“He took some of his things,” declared Mrs. Dalton, after a hasty look
through the closet. “He must be going to stay for a while.”
“But where has he gone?” asked Rick.
“You know about as much as I do,” his mother replied. “I never was more
surprised in all my life! I can’t understand it. Oh, what’s this?” she
exclaimed as something fell with a thud from the top of a closet shelf
where Uncle Tod kept his clean shirts—some of which he had taken with
him. “What is it?” she repeated, and she stepped back from a green
object that had rolled to the middle of the floor. “Is it a rat, Rick?”
“No, it isn’t a rat,” the boy answered with a laugh. “It’s a cabbage
leaf and rolled up in it is a rock and a bullet, and—”
“Oh, Rick, a bullet—”
“Don’t be afraid, Mother, it’s just the lead part, and can’t go off.
See.”
He opened the now wilted cabbage leaf and showed the curious rock,
which, as he now noticed, had some shining bits of metal imbedded in it.
He took the lead bullet in his hand and held it out to show his mother
it was harmless for it was out of the explosive cartridge shell.
“But what does it mean?” asked Mrs. Dalton.
“It’s the message Uncle Tod got over the fence to-day,” said Rick.
“A message? Over the fence? Why—”
[Illustration: “But what does it mean?” asked Mrs. Dalton.]
“Yes. It was thrown over soon after I ran home because I was afraid the
dog-catchers were out again and might get Ruddy. Uncle Tod didn’t say
what it meant—”
“I don’t see that it can mean anything sensible—just a cabbage leaf and
a stone,” interrupted Mrs. Dalton.
“Oh, it means _something_!” insisted Rick. “If you’d ever read any
Indian stories—”
“Nonsense!” she laughed. “It’s my opinion Uncle Tod is playing a joke on
all of us.”
“No, sir!” exclaimed Rick. “If you had seen his face—”
“Say, what’s going on up there?” called the voice of Mr. Dalton from the
lower hall. “It’s too early to be hiding Christmas presents. What are
you doing? I’d like my supper!”
“Oh, Dick!” exclaimed his wife. “Uncle Tod is gone!”
“Gone!” there was a note of alarm in Mr. Dalton’s voice.
“I mean he’s gone away, and he didn’t say where, and he doesn’t want it
known and he got such a queer message—”
“I’ll show it to you,” broke in Rick, racing down the stairs with the
cabbage leaf, the rock and the bullet.
“Hum!” mused Mr. Dalton when he had looked at them. “Some of Uncle Tod’s
jokes!”
“No, I think not,” was Mrs. Dalton’s opinion. “Here’s a letter he left.”
Mr Dalton whistled softly when he had read this.
“Tell me all about it,” he suggested. “We can talk while we eat supper.”
And when the story was told him, from the time of Rick’s hasty run home
in alarm over Ruddy, to the discovery that Uncle Tod had secretly
disappeared, Mr. Dalton agreed that it was rather puzzling.
“Well, I take it that the scare about the possibility over Ruddy being
shot, poisoned or stolen away has nothing to do with Uncle Tod’s going,”
said Rick’s father. “How about it?”
“Ruddy is all right, and the dog catchers haven’t been around,” answered
Rick. “That was a false alarm of Tom’s.”
“Then as to this ‘message,’ as Rick calls it,” went on Mr. Dalton,
turning over the piece of rock, “we have here a bit of copper ore.”
“Is that what it is?” asked Rick.
“That’s what it is—copper ore. It didn’t come from around here unless it
came on a railroad train as part of a shipment, and I don’t believe that
could have happened for there are no smelters in this locality. So much
for that.”
“The cabbage leaf doesn’t tell much,” said Mazie. “But it’s awfully
interesting—quite _hectic_, I should say.”
“_Hectic!_ Where do you get that word?” laughed Rick.
“All the girls at school say it,” answered Mazie with just the least
up-tilting of her nose, for Mazie was growing fast.
“If you mean ‘hot’ why don’t you say so?” demanded her brother.
“Hectic is a much nicer word than hot,” declared Mazie, “and our teacher
said we should try to increase our vo—vo—vocabulary.”
“Well, you’re doing it all right!” chuckled Rick. “Anyhow the cabbage
leaf doesn’t mean anything; does it, Dad?”
“Unless it’s meant for part of an Indian sign message as you at first
suggested, Rick.”
“That’s what I thought,” the boy said. “You know Uncle Tod knows a lot
about Indians. I don’t mean those tame ones up at his salt mines,” he
added. “Indians, like old Johnnie Green, with his ‘kickum hard—two
bits,’ wouldn’t send such a mysterious message as this.”
“No, I think not,” agreed Mr. Dalton. “Besides, everything at Uncle
Tod’s salt mine is progressing quietly, since he got rid of his rascally
partner Slither. And, as a matter of fact, Uncle Tod has sold most of
his salt mine stock, just retaining a small block. So I think Johnnie
Green and his Indians had nothing to do with this.”
“But what does it mean?” asked Mrs. Dalton. “I’m beginning to get
worried.”
“It’s great!” exclaimed Rick. “It’s like a detective story! I’m going to
see if we fellows can’t puzzle it out.”
“No, you mustn’t!” said his mother.
“Why not?”
For answer she held up the letter Uncle Tod had left.
“Oh, yes, he said to keep it secret; didn’t he,” remarked Rick. “All
right, I will. Well, we’ll have to pass up the cabbage. But there’s the
bullet,” and he pointed to where it lay on the table.
“Yes,” said Mr. Dalton, “there’s the bullet. Get me my magnifying glass
from my desk, will you please, Mazie?” he asked his daughter. And when
the powerful lens was brought, Mr. Dalton, under it, studied the leaden
missile.
“There are some letters scratched on this,” he said, after a while.
“There’s a c and an o. Wait, I’ll write them down as they appear.”
On a piece of paper he set the letters down in this fashion
C
M E
O
“What do they mean?” asked Mazie, looking over her father’s shoulder.
“Maybe that’s the Indian’s weather vane,” suggested Mrs. Dalton, “and
the letters stand for the points of the compass, like our N for north,
and so on.”
“I don’t believe so,” spoke Mr. Dalton. “If they intended this for a
weather vane there would have been an arrow or a cross or something like
that.”
Mazie was busy with pencil and paper, putting down the letters.
“What are you trying to do?” asked Rick.
“Seeing what they spell,” she answered. “But ocem, mcoe, oemc or moce
doesn’t spell anything in English. Maybe it’s an Indian word and meant
danger for Uncle Tod!” she eagerly exclaimed.
“You’re getting as strangely mysterious as Rick,” laughed her father.
“Wait a moment, though,” he exclaimed as if a new idea had occurred to
him. Quickly he set the letters down on paper, and then he wrote them in
a new combination.
“I have it!” he cried, as pleased as a boy or girl would have been over
the solution of a puzzle. “This is the word!”
He held out a paper on which he had written:
COME
“That’s what it is,” he said. “It was a summons to Uncle Tod. The word
is ‘come,’ and on a bullet means ‘come in a hurry,’ I take it. I think
we have solved that much.”
“Huh! Come,” murmured Rick. “I guess that’s it. But say, what a lot of
combinations you can make out of four letters!” he cried. He
wrote,—meco, ocem, cmoe, moce, eomc, mcoe—until his mother cried:
“Oh, Rick, stop it! You’re getting on my nerves!”
But it is rather surprising to see how many combinations, other than the
right one, can be made from those four letters.
“It seems, then,” went on Mr. Dalton, “that Uncle Tod was summoned away
by this mysterious message, tossed over the back fence by some one
unknown. Why this form of summons should be chosen, rather than an
ordinary letter I don’t know. But as long as Uncle Tod has gone, and the
letter he left seems to confirm this, we might try to find out how he
was able to slip off without any of you seeing him,” and he looked at
his wife, daughter and son.
“I was swimming,” said Rick.
“I only came home a little while ago,” Mazie said. “I was over to
Helen’s house.”
“And I’ve been so busy that all I remember is that Uncle Tod came in,”
said Mrs. Dalton. “I didn’t hear him go out.”
However the fact remained that Uncle Tod had gone out, and had taken a
few things with him in a valise, which would seem to indicate that he
intended remaining some time.
“He must have come down the back stairs when I was in the front of the
house,” decided Mrs. Dalton.
“And he could easily get over the back fence and go to the station that
way,” added her husband. “I think I’ll make some inquiries at the
railroad station.”
He did this, with the result that it was easily established Uncle Tod
had met a man there, and had bought a ticket for a western city. But
this was all that could be learned.
“I guess we’ll just have to wait until he sends that telegram he speaks
of in his letter,” said Mrs. Dalton.
“Yes,” agreed her husband. “But I don’t see the need for all this
mysteriousness.”
“Uncle Tod knows what he’s doing,” said Rick. “I thought he was crazy
when I was cruising with him on the _Sallie_, but it turned out all
right, and I’m sure it will now.”
“Of course he may have had his reasons,” admitted Mr. Dalton, “but I
can’t guess at any to make him leave so quickly and so secretly. It’s
just as if he were afraid.”
“Maybe he is afraid,” admitted Rick, “I mean afraid of getting us in
trouble. He isn’t afraid for himself, but some danger might be hanging
over him and he didn’t want us mixed up in it.”
“Oh, nonsense!” laughed Mr. Dalton. “I guess you Boy Scouts have been
playing too many Indian games.”
“No,” said Rick, for he and Chot were now full-fledged Scouts, “we only
do the best things the real Indians once did. Of course some of them
were mysterious, and Uncle Tod may know about them. But I would like to
know what all this means.”
“So would I,” agreed his mother with a sigh. “I hope nothing happens to
Uncle Tod.”
“I reckon he can look out for himself,” said her husband, and Rick
murmured:
“He sure can!”
The family agreed that nothing was to be said to outsiders concerning
the strange leaving of Uncle Tod. If questions were asked they were to
be evaded, or it could be said, with perfect truth, that Mr. Belmont
(his name was Toddingham Belmont) had gone away for a few days.
“And when that telegram comes we’ll know more about it,” suggested Rick.
Meanwhile he and Ruddy pursued their usual line of activities about
Belemere, going swimming, fishing, crabbing or off on joyous excursions
in the fields and woods.
And then, one day, the expected message came. Uncle Tod had been gone
nearly a week, without a word as to his whereabouts when, one afternoon,
the colored boy from the telegraph office, riding his ramshackle and
rattling wheel, stopped at the Dalton home.
“Oh, Mother!” cried Mazie. “Here’s a telegram!”
Mrs. Dalton’s hand shook a little as she signed the book, for telegrams
were rather unusual, and she told Mazie to give the boy ten cents for
himself.
“Is it from Uncle Tod?” asked Rick eagerly, as he quieted Ruddy, with
whom he had been romping in the yard.
“I don’t know, my dear. I’ll tell you in a minute,” his mother answered.
With still trembling hands she tore open the envelope. It was a telegram
from Uncle Tod, dated from the western town of Bitter Sweet Gulch, and
the message read:
“Arrived safe and sound, but need help. Let Rick and Ruddy
come West. I want them. Also bring another boy. They’ll have
a good time and be of service to me. Will explain later.
Come soon, and don’t forget Ruddy.”
“Whew!” whistled Rick as he sensed the import of the message. “Ruddy and
me for the West! Hurray. Oh, boy!”