"Oh, would you?" cried the little boy, greatly relieved. "We-ell, I was a teeny bit scared myself."

The children--all nine of them--spent much of their time in Mammy June's room. The old colored woman had ways of keeping them interested and quiet that Mrs. Armatage proclaimed she could not understand. Mother Bunker understood the charm Mammy worked far better.

Mammy June loved children, high and low, rich and poor, good and bad, just so they were children. Therefore, Mammy June could manage them.

Russ and Rose, finding themselves mistaken in their first attempt to relieve the old woman's anxiety about her son, wondered in private what they could do to let the absent Sneezer know where his mother was, and how much she wanted to see him.

Russ and Rose Bunker were quite used to thinking things out for themselves. Of course, there were times when Russ had to go to Daddy Bunker for help and his sister had to confess to Mother Bunker that she did not know what to do. For instance, that adventure of Russ's with the sailor-boy aboard the steamship.

But this matter of helping Mammy June's son to find his mother, if by chance he came back to the site of the burned cabin, was solely their own affair, and Russ and Rose realized the fact.

"We ought to be able to do something about it ourselves," declared Russ to his sister. "I'm going to ask Mammy June again if she is sure Sneezer can't read a word of writing."

This he did. Mammy June shook her head somewhat sadly.

"Dat boy always have to wo'k," she said. "When first he went away he sent me back money by mail. The man he wo'ked for sent it. Then Sneezer losed his job. But he never learnt to read hand-writin'. Much as he could do to spell out the big print on the front of the newspapers.

That's surely so!"

Rose suddenly thought of something--and perhaps it was not a foolish idea at that.

"Oh, Mammy!" she cried, "can your boy read newspaper print?"

"Sure can. De big print. What yo' call de haidlines in big print. Sure can."

"Oh!" murmured Rose, and she dragged Russ away to confer with him in secret.

CHAPTER XXII

THE STRANGE CRY

Rose Bunker's idea was too good to tell in general. Some ideas are too good to keep; but Russ and Rose decided that this one was not in that cla.s.s. They determined to tell n.o.body--not even Mammy June or Daddy or Mother Bunker--about what they proposed to do to help the old colored woman.

They had tried once, and failed. And Philly and Alice and Frane, Junior, had laughed at them. Now they proposed to do what Rose had thought of, and keep it secret from everybody.

"Of course," Rose said, "nothing may come of it."

"But that won't be your fault, Rose," said her brother. "It is a perfectly scrumptious idea."

"Do you think so?" asked Rose, much pleased by this frank praise.

"Sure I do. And we'll do it to-night. Then the Armatages won't know and--and laugh at us."

For they had found Philly and Alice and Frane, Junior, rather trying.

Not having their childish imaginations so well developed as the six little Bunkers had, the children of the plantation were altogether too matter-of-fact. Many childish plays that the Bunkers enjoyed did not appeal to their little hosts at all.

For instance, when Russ invented some brand new and charming, simple play for all to join in, Philly and Alice and Frane just drifted away and would have nothing to do with it. They were too polite to criticize; but Russ knew that the Armatage children felt themselves "too grown up"

to be interested in the building of a steamboat or the driving of an imaginary motor-car.

His little brothers and sisters, however, were constantly teasing Russ to make something new. They enjoyed traveling in reality so much, did the six little Bunkers, that, as Daddy laughingly said, traveling in a wheelbarrow would have amused them.

So this day when Russ made a whole freight train with empty chicken coops, with a caboose at the end and a big engine in front, only Frane took an interest in it aside from the Bunkers themselves. And perhaps his interest was, only held because Russ agreed to make him the engineer while Laddie was fireman.

As for Russ himself, he was the conductor at the end of the long train.

He had to explain very plainly that of course a freight train had a conductor. Every train had to have a "skipper" just like a boat. A railroad man had explained all that to Russ Bunker when the family was on its way to Cowboy Jack's early in the autumn.

"And you-all," said Russ, copying Frane's speech, speaking to the little ones and Rose, "must stay back here with me and be brakemen. When we need the handbrakes, I'll tell you, and you run forward over the coops--I mean the cars--and set the brakes."

"But suppose we get flung off?" asked Vi.

"That you must not do," said her older brother sternly. "If the train is going fast you might get a broken leg. Or if it is going around a curve it would be worse. You must be careful."

"I think this is a dangerous play," said Vi hopefully. There was n.o.body really more daring than Vi.

The two Armatage girls tried to coax Rose away from the "train"; but Rose liked to play with her brothers and sisters, and she knew that Mother Bunker expected her to. So she excused herself to Philly and Alice.

Unfortunately they took some offense at this. That evening after supper Rose found herself ignored by Phillis and Alice Armatage. At another time this ungenerous act might have hurt the oldest Bunker girl. But she and Russ had their secret plans to carry through, and Rose was glad to get away with her brother in a room where n.o.body would disturb them.

Again Russ had broken up pasteboard boxes, and he had pen and ink. To make new signs all in "big print" to stick up at the site of Mammy June's burned cabin was more of a task than merely writing them. This was Rose's bright idea. Russ did not deny her powers of invention.

They printed four good signs. Oh, the letters were large and black!

"They ought to be," Russ said. "We've used 'most half a bottle of ink."

"Don't let's tell Philly or any of them," said Rose. "They laugh at so many things we do."

"All right," agreed Russ, although he was less sensitive about being laughed at than his sister.

But this habit the young Armatages had of laughing at what the little Bunkers did caused all the trouble on this night. And it was a night that all of the children and most of the grown folks, too, would be likely to remember.

The Armatage children knew a great deal more about the plantation and the country surrounding it than the Bunkers did. That was only natural.

Philly or Alice or Frane, Junior, would not have started off secretly, as Russ and Rose Bunker did, after nine o'clock at night to go down to the place where old Mammy June's cabin had been burned.

To tell the truth, the Armatage children had a.s.sociated so much with the colored folks about the plantation that they were inclined to believe that there might be such things as "ha'nts." The little Bunkers had heard of "ghosts"; but they looked on such things as being like fairies--something to half-believe in, and shiver about, all the time knowing that they were not real.

So Russ and Rose had no actual fear of haunts when they started down the cart-path toward the wide brook where Russ had had his first adventure catching the big fish.

The colored folks were all at home in their quarters; and although it was a starlight night they were having no celebration. Everything about the plantation seemed particularly quiet. And no sounds at first came to the ears of the brother and sister from the forest.

As they approached the place for which they aimed however there came suddenly a mournful screech from the woods--a sound that seemed to linger longer in their hearing than any strange noise Russ and Rose had ever heard. The brother and sister stopped, frightened indeed, and clung to each other.

"Oh! What's that?" murmured Rose.

"It--it's maybe an owl," returned Russ, trying to think of the most harmless creature that made a noise at night.

"I never heard an owl howl like that," whispered his sister.