“Sure, pretty good.”
“Well, then you can be our interpreter and figure out secret messages.”
Takashi beamed with pleasure. “Sure I can,” he cried enthusiastically. “And if you guys want, we’ll spy on my old man.”
But the thing was broken. There was no one left to fight but Mr. Kato, and Mr. Kato was too nervous with his shotgun.
Halloween went past, and Thanksgiving. In that time Robbie’s effect on the boys was indicated by a growth in their vocabularies, and by a positive hatred for shoes or of any kind of good clothing for that matter. Although he didn’t realize it, Robbie had set a style, not new, perhaps, but more rigid than it had been. It was unmanly to wear good clothes, and even more than that, it was considered an insult to Robbie.
One Friday afternoon Robbie wrote fourteen notes, and secretly passed them to fourteen boys in the school yard. The notes were all the same. They said: “A lot of Indians are going to burn the Pres. of the U. S. to the stake at my house tomorrow at ten o’clock. Sneak out and bark like a fox down by our lower field. I will come and lead you to the rescue of this poor soul.”
For several months Miss Morgan had intended to call upon Junius Maltby. The stories told of him, and her contact with his son, had raised her interest to a high point. Every now and then, in the schoolroom, one of the boys imparted a piece of astounding information. For example, one child who was really famous for his stupidity, told her that Hengest and Horsa invaded Britain. When pressed he admitted that the information came from Junius Maltby, and that in some way it was a kind of a secret. The old story of the goat amused the teacher so much that she wrote it for a magazine, but no magazine bought it. Over and over she had set a date to waft out to the Maltby farm.
She awakened on a December Saturday morning and found frost in the air and a brilliant sun shining. After breakfast she put on her corduroy skirt and her hiking boots, and left the house. In the yard she tried to persuade the ranch dogs to accompany her, but they only flopped their tails and went back to sleep in the sun.
The Maltby place lay about two miles away in the little canyon called Gato Amarillo. A stream ran beside the road, and sword ferns grew rankly under the alders. It was almost cold in the canyon, for the sun had not yet climbed over the mountain. Once during her walk Miss Morgan thought she heard footsteps and voices ahead of her, but when she hurried around the bend, no one was in sight. However, the brush beside the road crackled mysteriously.
Although she had never been there before, Miss Morgan knew the Maltby land when she came to it. Fences reclined tiredly on the ground under an overload of bramble. The fruit trees stretched bare branches clear of a forest of weeds. Wild blackberry vines clambered up the apple trees; squirrels and rabbits bolted from under her feet, and soft-voiced doves flew away with whistling wings. In a tall wild pear tree a congress of bluejays squawked a cacophonous argument. Then, beside an elm tree which wore a shaggy coat of frost-bitten morning glory, Miss Morgan saw the mossy, curled shingles of the Maltby roof. The place, in its quietness, might have been deserted for a hundred years. “How rundown and slovenly,” she thought. “How utterly lovely and slipshod!” She let herself into the yard through a wicket gate which hung to its post by one iron band. The farm buildings were grey with weathering, and, up the sides of the walls outlawed climbers pushed their fingers. Miss Morgan turned the corner of the house and stopped in her tracks; her mouth fell open and a chill shriveled on her spine. In the center of the yard a stout post was set up, and to it an old ragged man was bound with many lengths of rope. Another man, younger and smaller, but even more ragged, piled brush about the feet of the captive. Miss Morgan shivered and backed around the house corner again. “Such things don’t happen,” she insisted. “You’re dreaming. Such things just can’t happen.” And then she heard the most amiable of conversations going on between the two men.
“It’s nearly ten,” said the torturer.
The captive replied, “Yes, and you be careful how you put fire to that brush. You be sure to see them coming before you light it.”
Miss Morgan nearly screamed with relief. She walked a little unsteadily toward the stake. The free man turned and saw her. For a second he seemed surprised, but immediately recovering, he bowed. Coming from a man with torn overalls and a matted beard, the bow was ridiculous and charming.
“I’m the teacher,” Miss Morgan explained breathlessly. “I was just out for a walk, and I saw this house. For a moment I thought this auto-da-fé was serious.”
Junius smiled. “But it is serious. It’s more serious than you think. For a moment I thought you were the rescue. The relief is due at ten o’clock, you know.”
A savage barking of foxes broke out below the house among the willows. “That will be the relief,” Junius continued. “Pardon me, Miss Morgan, isn’t it? I am Junius Maltby and this gentleman on ordinary days is Jakob Stutz. Today, though, he is President of the United States being burned by Indians. For a time we thought he’d be Guenevere, but even without the full figure, he makes a better President than a Guenevere, don’t you think? Besides he refused to wear a skirt.”
“Damn foolishness,” said the President complacently.
Miss Morgan laughed. “May I watch the rescue, Mr. Maltby?”
“I’m not Mr. Maltby, I’m three hundred Indians.”
The barking of foxes broke out again. “Over by the steps,” said the three hundred Indians. “You won’t be taken for a redskin and massacred over there.” He gazed toward the stream. A willow branch was shaking wildly. Junius scratched a match on his trousers and set fire to the brush at the foot of the stake. As the flame leaped up, the willow trees seemed to burst into pieces and each piece became a shrieking boy. The mass charged forward, armed as haphazardly and as terribly as the French people were when they stormed the Bastille. Even as the fire licked toward the President, it was kicked violently aside. The rescuers unwound the ropes with fervent hands, and Jakob Stutz stood free and happy. Nor was the following ceremony less impressive than the rescue. As the boys stood at salute, the President marched down the line and to each overall bib pinned a leaden slug on which the word HERO was deeply scratched. The game was over.
“Next Saturday we hang the guilty villains who have attempted this dastardly plot,” Robbie announced.
“Why not now? Let’s hang ‘em now!” the troop screamed.
“No, my men. There are lots of things to do. We have to make a gallows.” He turned to his father. “I guess we’ll have to hang both of you,” he said. For a moment he looked covetously at Miss Morgan, and then reluctantly gave her up.
That afternoon was one of the most pleasant Miss Morgan had ever spent. Although she was given a seat of honor on the sycamore limb, the boys had ceased to regard her as the teacher.
“It’s nicer if you take off your shoes,” Robbie invited her, and it was nicer she found, when her boots were off and her feet dangled in the water.
That afternoon Junius talked of cannibal societies among the Aleutian Indians. He told how the mercenaries turned against Carthage. He described the Lacedaemonians combing their hair before they died at Thermopylae. He explained the origin of macaroni, and told of the discovery of copper as though he had been there. Finally when the dour Jakob opposed his idea of the eviction from the Garden of Eden, a mild quarrel broke out, and the boys started for home. Miss Morgan allowed them to distance her, for she wanted to think quietly about the strange gentleman.
The day when the school board visited was looked forward to with terror by both the teacher and her pupils. It was a day of tense ceremony. Lessons were recited nervously and the misspelling of a word seemed a capital crime. There was no day on which the children made more blunders, nor on which the teacher’s nerves were thinner worn.
The school board of the Pastures of Heaven visited on the afternoon of December 15. Immediately after lunch they filed in, looking somber and funereal and a little ashamed. First came John Whiteside, the clerk, old and white haired, with an easy attitude toward education which was sometimes criticized in the valley. Pat Humbert came after him. Pat was elected because he wanted to be. He was a lonely man who had no initiative in meeting people, and who took every possible means to be thrown into their contact. His clothes were as uncompromising, as unhappy as the bronze suit on the seated statue of Lincoln in Washington. T. B. Allen followed, dumpily rolling up the aisle. Since he was the only merchant in the valley, his seat on the board belonged to him by right. Behind him strode Raymond Banks, big and jolly and very red of hands and face. Last in the line was Bert Munroe, the newly elected member. Since it was his first visit to the school, Bert seemed a little sheepish as he followed the other members to their seats at the front of the room.