More Adventures Of The Great Brain (9 page)

   
“Boys,” he said as we stood in front of him. I’d never seen his face so serious. “I think we should start building a log cabin.”

   
“How are you going to build a cabin without a saw and a hammer and nails and things?” Sweyn asked.

   
“The same way the early pioneers did,” Papa answered. “Using the bark of aspen trees to bind the logs together and mud from the banks of the river to chink up the cracks between the logs. And there is a ledge of flat rock over there we can use to build a fireplace. We must prepare for the worst and hope for the best. It may be years before some friendly Indians or some trapper finds us.”

   
Tom shook his head. “Isn’t it silly to start building a cabin when Uncle Mark will be riding in here in a few days?” he asked.

   
“That is impossible, “Papa said.”That cloudburst washed away all our tracks.”

   
“No it didn’t,” Tom said. “I knew when we turned off the logging camp road that we might get lost. I used rocks to make markers that wouldn’t wash away, and I cut markers on trees no cloudburst could destroy. That is why I was lagging behind all the time. If my calculations are correct, Uncle Mark should be riding in here in two or three days, if we just stay here. You didn’t think my great brain would let us get lost, did you, Papa?”

   
Papa and Sweyn stared at Tom bug-eyed for a moment, and then they both began to smile happily. Papa got off the boulder and patted Tom on the shoulder.

   
“I’m proud of you, son,” he said. “It was foolish of me to try and find a shortcut out of these mountains without marking our trail.”

   
Then Papa had a second thought about what he had just said. He staggered back to the boulder and sat down. He covered his face with his hands as if he were going to cry.

“What’s the matter with him?” Sweyn whispered.

“I don’t know,” Tom answered. “Suppose we find out.”

   
Tom walked up close to Papa. “What is the matter?” he asked. “I told you we were going to be saved.”

   
Papa raised his head up. “I’ll never live this down,” he cried as if being tortured. “Your mother will never forgive me for trying to take a shortcut and endangering all our lives.

And I can just hear people in town bringing up the subject every time some neighbor’s cow wanders away. I’ll be the butt of jokes for years.”

   
Then Papa got real dramatic and held his arms out in a hopeless gesture. “That is the only answer,” he cried. “I’ll stay right here. Better to live out my life in this wilderness than to go back and have people point me out as the town fool. You boys return with your Uncle Mark. I’m staying right here.”

   
Tom stared at Papa for a moment as his great brain began to click. Then he looked at Sweyn.

“Did you see me mark the trail?” he asked.

   
Sweyn looked surprised for a second and then smiled. “No,” he answered.

   
Tom looked at me and winked. “Did you see me mark the trail, J.D.?”

“No,” I lied.

   
“Well,” Tom said with a shake of his head, “I sure don’t remember marking our trail, and that leaves only Papa.”

   
The look of despair on Papa’s face gave way to one of hope. He looked as though he might enjoy the comforts of home more than living like a savage in the wilderness.

   
“Thank you, boys,” he said. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

   
I figured Tom would have liked it better to be thanked from the bottom of Papa’s purse but didn’t say anything.

   
We lived for two and a half days on small game we caught in our deadfalls, fish we caught, and roasted pinenuts. On the afternoon of the third day Uncle Mark rode into our camp on his white stallion, leading two pack horses. I was never so glad to see anybody in my life. But Papa folded his arms on his chest and looked positively angry.

“What in the name of Jupiter took you so long?” he demanded. “Leaving me all this time trying to keep up the spirits of my boys?”

   
I didn’t know what spirits Papa was talking about. He sure hadn’t kept up my spirits with that story of the man lost for five years in the mountains.

   
Uncle Mark grinned as he dismounted. Then he looked at Papa. “If you’d just stayed in one place after you knew you were lost,” he said, “instead of wandering up and down one blind canyon after another, I would have caught up with you a few days ago. It is a good thing you had sense enough to mark your trail, or I would never have found you.”

   
“What kind of a tenderfoot do you think I am?” Papa asked as if insulted. “You certainly don’t think for a moment that I’d try to take a shortcut out of these mountains without marking my trail, do you?”

   
Uncle Mark turned sideways so Papa couldn’t see him wink at Tom. “Of course not,” he said. “But you really gave me a scare when I saw the wrecked buckboard and the dead horse. It is a good thing you didn’t let anybody ride in the buckboard when you tried to bypass that waterfall. They might have been killed if you had.”

   
Papa must have
forgot
his wild leap from the buckboard. “I certainly wouldn’t do a fool thing like that,” he said.

   
“Gosh, T.D.,” I whispered to Tom, “Papa is lying like all get out.”

   
“Would you rather have him tell a few little white lies, or have everybody in Adenville think he was a fool?” Tom asked.

   
“But your great brain saved us, and Papa is taking all the credit,” I protested.

“I know, and you know, and Sweyn knows, and Uncle

Mark knows I marked the trail,” Tom said. “But that is as far as it will ever go. We aren’t even going to tell Mamma.”

   
I thought about it for a moment and knew Tom was right. It would be bad enough for everybody in Adenville to think Papa was a fool. But letting Mamma know she had married one would certainly break her heart.

Tom Scoops Papa’s Newspaper

EVERY TUESDAY IT WAS TOM’S and my job to deliver the weekly edition of Papa’s newspaper. The second Tuesday after we’d returned from our fishing and camping trip, we entered the Advocate office after doing our morning chores at home. Papa usually wrote his editorial and set the type for it and for the advertisements during the first five days of the week, in addition to any extra printing jobs he had. He also set the type for news items from other Utah newspapers which he thought might interest his readers, and national news items received by telegraph, and the mail edition of the New York World. He waited until Saturday to set the type for the local news items he had collected during the week. The four-page weekly newspaper was printed on Monday and delivered to subscribers on Tuesday morning.

   
Sweyn really thought he was something, helping Papa at the Advocate, wearing long pants, a printer’s apron, and a green eye shade. The way he lorded it over Tom and me!

   
“It’s about time you got here, Old Man,” he said to Tom as we entered the Advocate office with its smell of ink and paper.

   
“Sorry we are late, Grandpa,” Tom said, “But Mamma made us weed the vegetable garden this morning.”

   
Sweyn’s eyes popped open. “What is this Grandpa business?” he asked.

   
“If I’m an old man,” Tom said, “you must be my grandfather.”

   
Boy, how I wished I could have thought of that snappy comeback, which positively stunned my oldest brother for a moment. Then he got a sly look on his face as he pointed at the two neatly piled stacks of the weekly on the counter.

   
“Papa went to the barbershop for a haircut,” he said, “but he told me to make sure you little grade-school kids did a good job.”

   
From the look on Tom’s face I could tell he would rather be called Old Man than a little grade-school kid. But he didn’t say anything as he grabbed his pile of the weekly and me the other pile. We carried them outside and Tom put his copies in the basket on his bike. It was his job to deliver the Advocate to the homes of all subscribers in Adenville because he had a bicycle. It was my job to drop off all copies of the newspaper that had yellow name stickers on them at the post office. These were mailed. I left the rest of my copies on the counter of the Z.C.M.I, store and on the desk at the Sheepmen’s Hotel for people to buy for cash.

I don’t know if Sweyn calling Tom and me little grade-school kids started it but after supper that night Tom got what Papa called growing pains. Mamma and Aunt Bertha were doing the supper dishes. Sweyn, the big sissy, had left to go sit on the Vinson’s front porch and hold hands with his girl, Marie. Papa was reading The Farm Journal. Tom was pacing back and forth in the parlor with his hands behind his back. I guess this made Papa nervous.

   
“What is the matter with you?” he asked as he dropped the magazine into his lap.

   
Tom stopped pacing and looked at Papa. “Sweyn wants to be a doctor when he grows up, and I want to be a journalist just like you,” Tom said.

Papa nodded. “That is what you have both always said.”

   
“Then why don’t you let Sweyn start learning how to be a doctor working with Dr. LeRoy and let me help you at the Advocate?” Tom asked.

   
“S.D. couldn’t possibly be of any help to Dr. LeRoy now,” Papa said. “It takes years to become an intern. But he can help me at the Advocate.”

   
“There isn’t anything Sweyn can do that I can’t do better with my great brain,” Tom said. “I could learn how to run the Washington Press and set type twice as fast as he can.”

   
“I’m afraid you aren’t old enough,” Papa said. “Don’t forget that your brother is almost two years older than you.”

   
“I’m not a kid anymore,” Tom said as if Papa had insulted him.

   
“I know how you feel, son,” Papa said gently. “You just have growing pains, but you will get over them.”

   
Tom looked as if he’d just lost the ball game. He joined me on the floor where we played checkers until it was bedtime. I knew he didn’t have his mind on the game because I beat him two times out of six.

   
As we got undressed for bed that night, I looked closely at Tom. I couldn’t see any difference in him.

“Do they hurt?” I asked.

“Does what hurt?” he asked.

“The growing pains,” I said.

   
Tom folded his britches over the back of his chair. “Some kids grow too fast and that makes their bones and muscles ache,” he said. “That is what they call growing pains. But that isn’t what Papa meant. He thinks I’m just a kid and too young to help him at the Advocate but I’ll show him some way that I’m not.”

   
“You must be sick,” I said. “You take on any more work and you won’t have any time to play.”

   
“When you get as old as me, J.D.,” he said shaking his head, “you will understand there are more important things than just playing.”

   
“Boy!” I said. “I hope I never get so old I’d rather work than play, especially during the summer vacation.”

   
Tom’s great brain must have been working in his sleep because he was smiling when we got up the next morning. I didn’t find out the reason for the smiles until we’d finished breakfast and Papa was having his second cup of coffee.

   
“Why have you kept that old Ramage Press in that crate in the rear of the Advocate office all these years?” Tom asked.

   
“Sentimental reasons, I guess,” Papa answered. “I published my first newspaper in Utah on that press, The Silverlode Advocate, when Silverlode was a booming mining town.”

“Can I have it?” Tom asked eagerly.

“What in the world would you do with it?” Papa asked.

“J.D. and I can clean out a corner in the barn,” Tom said quickly. “We could practice being newspapermen.”

   
Papa appeared to be thinking about it for a moment. “The press is just lying there,” he finally said, “and the type that goes with it is in the crate. I couldn’t use the type when I bought the Washington Press, which uses a larger type.”

   
Mamma helped Papa make up his mind. “Let the boys have it,” she said.

   
“Why not?”
Sweyn asked. “Then the little grade-school kids can play at being journalists.”

   
Tom glared at my oldest brother. “I’ll make you eat those words someday,” he said.

“No quarreling,” Mamma said.

   
Papa smiled. “All right, T.D.,” he said. “You can have the Ramage Press.”