Stoner's Boy by Robert F. Schulkers

Author:Robert F. Schulkers
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2016-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

HAM GARDNER

Ham didn’t say another word; he trotted away, and I could see a bunch of Pelham fellas waiting for him in the shadow of the trees beyond the schoolhouse.

THURSDAY.—Early this morning I struck out for the houseboat. School’s out. What a grand and glorious feeling to know we got a long vacation ahead of us; we don’t have to bother about anything now except to have fun and lazy around. There wasn’t a soul around when I unlocked the houseboat door. But just as I had opened some of the windows, in come the Skinny Guy.

“Hello, Link,” I says. “You’re an early bird.”

“Yeah,” he says, “and I’m after a worm, too.”

“What you mean?” I asked.

Link chuckled. “Stoner’s Boy,” he says, “that bird has been around here.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

Link didn’t answer. He begun to whistle to himself and sat down on a chair and took out a little saw and a file, and started to file the saw. I watched him for a few minits. Then I says, “You got a job of some kind?”

“Yeah,” says Link, “think I’ll have a purty tough one purty soon.”

I says, “Link, you know Briggen is gone?”

Link jumped up. “Where to?” he asked.

I waved my hand. “How should I know?” I says. “Ham Gardner said he disappeared.”

Link kept filing on the saw. “Well,” he says, “Stoner ain’t got him; that’s one thing to be thankful for.”

I says, “Link, how do you know that?”

Link stopped filing his saw and looked up. “I just been all through the cave,” he says, “in Stoner’s hiding place and everywhere; there ain’t a soul around.”

I says, “Well, us fellas don’t know much how this gray ghost works. I wish you would keep an eye on his hiding place, Link.”

Link said he would. He was still filing his saw when the other fellas come down. We held our meeting and made some plans how to spend our vacation. In the afternoon we played ball.

FRIDAY.—Link came in the morning, just as we sat down to have our meeting. “Wait,” he says, “I just come back from Watertown; I found out where Stoner lives.”

“How could you find his house, Link?” I asked.

Link grinned. “I saw Briggen sitting at a window,” says Link. “He made a motion for me not to make any noise, but I saw he was a prisoner, and when I passed under the window, he dropped this note out, and I picked it up.” Link held a piece of paper, and Dick Ferris took it.

“I’ll read it loud,” says Dick:

Dear Link,

I am caught, he got me, I ain’t been hurt none. I got enough to eat, but goodness knows what the gray ghost is going to do with me, he told me he was going to fix me before he let me go, get the fellas up here to get me out. I will pay you back some day. You know me.

Briggen.

“Yeah,” says Jerry Moore, “we know Briggen all right; we ain’t got no reason to get him out of this fix.

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