[Illustration: TED MARTIN HIT THE GROUND WITH A HARD THUMP.

  “Curlytops Touring Around”      Page 137]




  THE CURLYTOPS
  TOURING AROUND

  OR

  _The Missing Photograph Albums_

  BY
  HOWARD R. GARIS

  AUTHOR OF “THE CURLYTOPS AT CHERRY FARM,”
  “THE CURLYTOPS IN THE WOODS,” “THE CURLYTOPS
  AT SUNSET BEACH,” ETC.

  _Illustrations by
  JULIA GREENE_

  NEW YORK
  CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY




THE CURLYTOPS SERIES

By HOWARD R. GARIS

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

  _THE CURLYTOPS AT CHERRY FARM Or, Vacation Days in the Country_

  _THE CURLYTOPS ON STAR ISLAND Or, Camping Out With Grandpa_

  _THE CURLYTOPS SNOWED IN Or, Grand Fun With Sleds and Skates_

  _THE CURLYTOPS AT UNCLE FRANK’S RANCH Or, Little Folks on Ponyback_

  _THE CURLYTOPS AT SILVER LAKE Or, On the Water With Uncle Ben_

  _THE CURLYTOPS AND THEIR PETS Or, Uncle Toby’s Strange Collection_

  _THE CURLYTOPS AND THEIR PLAYMATES Or, Jolly Times Through the
    Holidays_

  _THE CURLYTOPS IN THE WOODS Or, Fun in the Lumber Camp_

  _THE CURLYTOPS AT SUNSET BEACH Or, What Was Found in the Sand_

  _THE CURLYTOPS TOURING AROUND Or, The Missing Photograph Albums_

CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, New York


  COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY
  CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY

  THE CURLYTOPS TOURING AROUND

  Printed in U. S. A.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                            PAGE

      I DOWN THE WELL                   1

     II GOOD NEWS                      14

    III THE CARDWELL ALBUMS            24

     IV A BIG CROWD                    35

      V MOVING PICTURES                45

     VI THE ALBUMS ARE GONE            53

    VII ON THE TRAIL                   65

   VIII OFF AGAIN                      75

     IX AT THE FARM                    84

      X TROUBLE’S DANGER               96

     XI FUNNY FISH                    108

    XII FLIP-FLOPS                    117

   XIII TED FALLS OFF                 127

    XIV JAN IN A TRAP                 137

     XV THE BOX COMES BACK            146

    XVI ON AGAIN                      158

   XVII ALONG THE RIVER               166

  XVIII TWO BEARS                     175

    XIX THE LUMBER CAMP               183

     XX A SMASH                       193

    XXI ABOARD THE MOTOR BOAT         204

   XXII ON THE LAKE                   214

  XXIII THE WRONG BOX                 221

   XXIV TROUBLE’S PUSSY               229

    XXV THE RIGHT BOX                 236





THE CURLYTOPS TOURING AROUND




CHAPTER I

DOWN THE WELL


“Come on, Jan! Now will be a good time to try it!”

“All right, Ted. But are you sure it will be safe?”

“Course I am! Why, it’s a big rope and I’m not very heavy, Jan.”

“I know that. But s’posing I shouldn’t be able to pull you up again?”

“Well, I could get up by a ladder, I guess. Come on now before Trouble
comes out to bother us. He’s in the house with mother and we have a
good chance now.”

Two children, a boy and a girl, each with clustering curls on their
heads, darted down a path, around the house, and ran toward the apple
orchard at the rear.

Ted Martin’s hair was darker than that of his sister Janet, but the
locks of each were so clustered on their heads that the children were
more often called “Curlytops,” than their right name.

Now the curly tops of the brother and sister were bobbing about as they
ran along, intent on having what they called “fun,” though, as you will
soon see, it developed into mischief. But that, as Ted said afterward,
wasn’t their fault.

“I’m glad Trouble is in the house,” remarked Jan, as she hastened along
beside her brother.

“So’m I,” answered Ted. “William is a good little boy, but when you
want to do something he always wants to do something else.”

“Always,” agreed Janet, with a wise shake of her head.

From this you may know that “Trouble” was only the jolly nickname of
the small brother of Ted and Janet. Mother Martin used to call him
“Dear Trouble” when he upset a glass of milk on the table or shoved his
plate to the floor. Daddy Martin used to speak of William as a “Bunch
of Trouble” when he had to drop his paper and rush out, perhaps to
pull the little fellow’s head loose from between the fence pickets,
where, possibly, he had thrust it.

Ted and Janet called their little brother simply “Trouble” and let it
go at that.

The two older children had been playing in the front yard of their home
when Ted had suddenly thought of a trick he had been wanting to try for
a long while. He had a strange idea in his head, and he needed the help
of Janet to carry it out. Now seemed a good time.

It was the beginning of the long vacation from school, and though the
Martin family expected to go away for the summer, plans had not yet
been made.

So Jan and Ted were amusing themselves as best they could until, tiring
of “playing store,” into Ted’s head had popped his big idea.

“Wait a minute now, Jan!” cautioned Ted, as they neared the back of the
house and could look over toward the apple orchard. It wasn’t a very
large orchard, but there were enough trees to call it by that name.
Though, as yet, the season being early, only green apples were on the
branches.

“What’s the matter--aren’t you going to do it?” Jan wanted to know, as
her brother put out a hand and detained her behind a screening bush.

“Course I’m going to do it!” he declared. “But I want to look and see
if Patrick isn’t there. Patrick maybe wouldn’t let me do it.”

“That’s so,” agreed Janet. “And if Nora saw us, she maybe wouldn’t let
us, either.”

“No,” said Ted, in a low voice. He looked carefully out from the fringe
of the bush, but saw neither Patrick, who did odd jobs about the Martin
place, nor Nora, the cook; so the coast was clear.

“Come on, Jan!” Ted whispered.

“Oh, I--I’m almost getting scairt!” whispered the little girl, as she
and her brother neared the scene of their latest trick.

“Pooh! Silly! What’s to be scared of?” asked Ted. “Come on!”

Thus teased, Janet took her brother’s hand for a quick dash across the
open space to the shelter of the orchard. Suddenly, when the children
were halfway over the little space, they heard their names called:

“Ted! Jan! Where are you? Come here! Mother says you have to ’muse me!
Come on!”

“It’s Trouble!” gasped Janet.

“And we’ve got to amuse him!” sighed Ted. “Oh, jinkity jinks!”

He kicked the sand at his feet peevishly.

“Come on! Let’s make believe we didn’t hear him. He hasn’t seen us and
we can hide from him.”

Janet was about to agree to this, but Trouble was smarter than either
of the older ones gave him credit for. He had run on after his first
call, and now he stood where he could look full at Ted and Jan.

“I see you!” he laughed. “You playin’ hide-an’-find? Anyhow, mother
says you have to ’muse me! Go on! ’Muse me!”

Mrs. Martin often, when she was tired of looking after William or when
she had to do something else, would call to the other children:

“Come and amuse Trouble!”

Nearly always Jan or Ted would be glad to do this. But now they had
something else they wanted to do.

“Too late!” sighed Ted. “We can’t skip away from him now.”

“No, if we did he’d tell mother,” agreed Janet. “Oh, I know what
we can let him do! He can do it all alone, too, so we can go to the
diamond mine!” she added.

“What?” asked Ted, to whom the reference to a “diamond mine,” did not
seem strange. That was part of the game they were going to play.

“I’ll get the sifter we were using when we played store, and I’ll let
Trouble sift a lot of sand and tell him to pick out all the stones,”
suggested the little girl. “That will keep him amused a long while.”

“Yes, I guess it will,” stated Ted.

“You playin’ hide-an’-find?” asked Trouble again. This was his name for
the game of hide-and-seek.

“No, we aren’t playing that, Trouble dear,” said Jan, with more
sweetness than usual in her voice. She wanted to be nice to her little
brother so he would be satisfied to play by himself.

“You goin’ to ’muse me?” demanded the little fellow.

“Sure we are!” exclaimed Ted. “I’ll get the sifter,” he told Janet.
“You keep him here a minute.”

“Come here and I’ll tell you a little story,” offered Janet.

“I’m comin’,” Trouble announced, as he toddled to his sister. She kept
him amused until Ted came running back with the sieve which, a little
while before, he and Janet had borrowed from Nora in the kitchen so
they could use it in sifting sand, which they pretended was sugar in
their play store.

Near the spot where Trouble had so unexpectedly found his brother and
sister was some clean sand, and it was this that Janet had thought
William could be induced to play with, while she and her brother went
on with their own plans.

And, for once at least, Trouble did just what was wanted of him.

“See the nice sand, Trouble,” murmured Janet. “Look, you put it in this
sifter and you jiggle it and all the nice little sand falls through.
The big stones and little stones stay inside. Then you pick out all the
stones and put them in a pile and you sift more sand. See!”

“Yep, I see,” murmured Trouble. “Let me shift sand.”

Janet gave him the sieve and filled it for him. He moved it to and fro
and a little pile of fine sand grew in the shape of a pyramid. Trouble
looked at the stones left in the sieve.

“What I do wif these?” he asked.

“Put ’em in a pile and then we’ll make believe they’re raisins and
we’ll stick ’em in mud pies,” said Ted.

“Oh, I like to make mud pies!” cried Trouble, with shining eyes.

“Yes, but not now! Not now! After a while!” cried Janet quickly, for
the little fellow seemed ready to drop the sieve. “What did you want to
say that for?” she asked Ted, in a whisper. “You’ll spoil everything!
Leave it to me!”

“Oh, all right,” mumbled Ted. “Go ahead! As soon as you can leave him
alone come on over to the old well.”

“All right,” answered Janet. “Now, Trouble,” she went on, as she filled
the sifter again, “shake this out and pick out all the stones. Put
the big ones in a pile by themselves and the little ones in a pile by
themselves.”

“Den we make mud pies,” laughed Trouble.

“I guess so--yes--maybe,” murmured Janet, who did not want to be too
sure on this point. “Now you play here, Trouble, and don’t go away,
will you?” she asked, as she prepared to follow Ted.

“Trouble stay here and shift sand,” gravely promised the little fellow.
“But where you goin’, Jan?” he asked suspiciously.

“Oh, just over here a little way,” she answered. “I’ll soon be back.
Now sift a lot of sand, Trouble, and pick out all the stones.”

“Aw right--I shift sand.”

He was having fun now, being “’mused” as his mother had told him he
would be, and he did not much care what Ted or Janet did--at least for
a while.

“Is he all right?” asked Ted, as his sister joined him under an apple
tree where an old well had been dug.

“Yes, I guess he’ll stay there until we play diamond mine a while,”
said Janet. “But are you sure it will be all right, Ted?”

“Sure I am. I’ll just step on the bucket and hold to the rope, and
all you’ll have to do is to keep hold of the handle and let it unwind
slowly. Then I’ll go down in the well and we’ll play it’s a diamond
mine.”

“But how you going to get up again, Ted?” his sister asked.

“Why, you can wind up the handle just as you unwound it, can’t you?
It’ll be like pulling up a bucket of water when there used to be water
in the well. That’s how I’ll get up.”

“Oh, I see! All right.”

The Curlytops ran over toward the old well, which had not been used
for a number of years, the water having seeped out of it, so that
the well was dry. But the curbing, the windlass, the bucket, and the
rope were still in place, and they had given Ted the idea for playing
diamond mine. He had seen some pictures of miners going down a hole in
the ground by means of a bucket and rope, and had got the idea that
diamonds were thus secured.

The reason Ted and Janet had not, before this, played at the old well,
was because they did not know it existed. It was on some land next to
their house which Mr. Martin had recently bought. And, learning there
was an old well on it, the children’s father had decided to do away
with it, for it might be dangerous, even if there was no water in it,
for it was about thirty feet deep.

The first step in doing away with the old well had been to have Patrick
clear away the weeds around it. Then the curbing was to have been
taken away and the well filled up. But when Patrick had cut down the
weeds he was called to other tasks, and so the old well stood plainly
revealed.

Ted and Janet had discovered it, and then into Ted’s mind had come the
idea of going down into the dry well. He had tested the rope, with its
bucket and windlass, and found that it worked.

“Now, Jan,” said her brother, when they were at the well, with no one
near to stop their mischievous play, “I’ll climb up and stand on the
bucket. You keep hold of the handle and let it unwind slowly. I don’t
want to go down too fast, you know.”

“No, I guess you don’t,” agreed Jan.

“After I get down to the bottom I’ll make believe dig diamonds,” went
on Ted. “Then you can twist the handle the other way and pull me up.
After that I’ll let you go down.”

“I don’t want to go down!” said Jan quickly, after one look into the
black depths of the well. “You can go. I don’t want to.”

“All right,” agreed Ted cheerfully. “I’ll go down twice. Now get
ready.”

He climbed the well curbing and put one foot on the edge of the bucket,
which was a little way below the top of the curbing, or elevated wooden
rim about the well. The rope was wound around a wooden roller, or
windlass, to the end of which a crank was made fast. And there was a
ratchet catch to prevent the rope from unwinding and letting the bucket
down into the well until such time as the person drawing was ready.
This catch now prevented Ted from dropping down into the well.

The curly-haired little boy steadied himself on the edge of the bucket
by holding to the rope above his head. He looked down into the well.
It was deep and black, but there was no water in it, so Ted did not
hesitate.

“All right, Jan! Let me down!” he called to his sister.

Already he was a little way down the shaft of the well, for the rope
was partly unwound and the bucket perhaps two feet below the top of the
curbing when Ted took his place.

Janet loosened the catch of the windlass and then, holding to the
handle with all her strength, let it slowly revolve. It would have
gotten out of control, and would have whirled around very fast, for
Ted was much heavier than a bucket of water, only the affair was old,
rusted and stiff. So, after all, Ted was quite safely lowered.

Down and down he went into the black depths of the old, dry well.

“It’s lots of fun, Jan!” he called up. “You’d better come down next
time!”

“I don’t want to. You can,” answered his sister.

“Now I’m all the way down. I’m standing on the bottom!” called up Ted.
“I’m going to dig for diamonds!”

Jan could see that there was no longer a strain on the rope. The handle
turned freely. Suddenly it gave a little quiver, Jan saw the rope slip
loose from around the windlass and then, as the end of it fell down the
well, the little girl screamed:

“Oh, Ted! Ted! Oh, something dreadful happened!”




CHAPTER II

GOOD NEWS


Down in the dark depths of the old well, Ted Martin heard what his
sister called in such frightened tones.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

A moment later he learned on his own account. For the bucket rope
having slipped off the windlass, from which it had rotted away, tumbled
down the well. It caught for a moment on a projecting stone, and then
went down into the depths. It fell partly on top of Ted’s head as he
stepped off the edge of the bucket on to the pile of dried sticks and
leaves which had blown and tumbled into the well during the years it
had not been in use.

“Oh, Teddy!” cried Janet. “The rope came loose and it fell down!”

“I know it did,” Ted answered. For the rope was coiled about him.

“Then how are you going to get up?” Janet wanted to know. “How are you
going to get up out of the well when I can’t wind up the rope?”

To this Ted made answer:

“I don’t know, Jan. I guess I’m in a sort of pickle. But wait a minute.
Don’t run away and leave me!”

Janet had no such idea. She wouldn’t desert Ted in trouble.

While the little fellow is down in the old, dry well, trying to think
of a way to get out, and while Janet is also puzzling her head over
the same matter, I will take just a moment to let my new readers know
something about the Curlytops.

I have told you the reason for their nickname. They had been christened
in this order: Theodore Baradale Martin, who was called Ted or Teddy,
except when he had done something wrong, and then he heard his full
name spoken. Next came Janet Louise Martin, which was shortened into
Janet or Jan. She was just a year younger than Ted. Last of all was
William Anthony Martin. He was “Trouble,” you know.

Mr. Richard Martin, the father of Trouble and the Curlytops, was the
owner of a large, general store in Cresco, in one of our eastern
states. In the first book of this series, called “The Curlytops at
Cherry Farm,” I related how the children went to visit Grandpa Martin
on his wonderful farm, and I told you what happened after they reached
there. During other vacation seasons the children traveled to Star
Island, they were snowed in, visited Uncle Frank’s ranch, and camped on
Silver Lake with Uncle Ben. The children had some queer pets, as you
may learn by reading another book, and they had many playmates with
whom they had jolly times. After a trip to the woods, the children
found something in the sand, as told in the book just before this,
called “The Curlytops at Sunset Beach.”

After the summer at the shore the Martin family returned to Cresco.
Through the long winter Janet and Ted played in the snow. Then came
spring. Now it was summer again and the long vacation had arrived.

“And it means a lot of work, too,” sighed Mrs. Martin, on the last day
of school. “I’m sure I don’t know what the children will do with so
much time on their hands!”

But this did not worry Ted, Janet or Trouble. They knew they could
have fun, and one of the ways hit on by Ted and his sister was to play
“diamond mine,” as we find them doing at the old well when this story
opens.

“Do you think you can get out, Ted?” his sister called anxiously down
into the depths of the dark well.

“I don’t know,” was Ted’s answer. “But don’t go away. I’m going to try
to climb up, Jan.”

“How you going to climb up?” the little girl wanted to know.

“Well, there’s a lot of stones sticking out on the sides. They’re like
steps, and maybe I can get up on them.”

Ted tried; but though a man or an older boy might have managed to hoist
himself out of the well in this way, it was beyond the strength of the
Curlytop lad. He got up a little way but slipped back to the soft bed
of dried leaves at the bottom of the well.

“Did you hurt yourself?” asked Jan anxiously, as she heard her brother
grunt as he slipped back.

“No, I didn’t hurt myself,” he answered. “But I jiggled myself a
little.”

Ted’s use of the word “jiggled” reminded Jan that she had left Trouble
“jiggling” the sieve at the pile of sand. She wondered if her little
brother was all right, but she did not want to leave Ted in order to
make sure.

However, she did not need to do this for just as Ted called up to her
that he was going to try to toss up the rope, so she could fasten it to
the windlass, Janet saw her little brother coming along a path that she
and Ted had trampled through the weeds.

“Oh, now I is found you!” remarked Trouble, with a smile on his cute,
dirty little face. “I is found you! Here is Jan, Mother!” he called
more loudly. “I is found her!”

“Is mother looking for us?” asked Janet.

“Yes, Jan,” answered the voice of Mrs. Martin herself. “I told you and
Teddy to amuse William, and I find him all alone sifting sand. Not
but what he was having fun, but I thought you would stay with him. I
asked him where you went and he pointed off this way. Why, what are you
doing at the old well?” went on the mother who, having followed Trouble
along the weed-grown path, now saw Janet standing near the curbing and
windlass. “What are you doing there?” she repeated.

“Teddy--now--Teddy--he’s down there!” gasped Jan, pointing.

“Teddy in the well!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin. “Is he----”

“There isn’t any water in it,” Janet hastened to add, and then Mrs.
Martin herself remembered that her husband had told her that same fact.
So she asked more calmly:

“How did Teddy get down in the well?” She hurried forward, keeping a
tight hold of Trouble’s hand, so he wouldn’t slip into the black depths.

“We were playing diamond mine,” Janet began to explain, when Ted, at
the bottom of the well, heard his mother’s voice and cried:

“I’m all right! I can get up if you can fasten the rope to the
windlass, or lower a ladder to me!”

“Oh, Teddy! Why did you ever go down there?” cried Mrs. Martin, as she
leaned over the curbing and looked down. “You shouldn’t have done such
a thing!”

“I didn’t mean to get stuck down here, Mother!” the boy answered. He
could look up and see his mother quite plainly, for she was in the
sunlight. But she could hardly see him at the bottom of the well.

“The rope slipped off,” explained Janet.

“If we had a cowboy here he could lasso Teddy up,” said Trouble, with a
laugh.

“Yes, but we haven’t any cowboy,” said Mrs. Martin. “Jan, you run and
tell Patrick to come here. Tell him to bring a ladder. I hope we have
one long enough. Hurry, Jan!”

Now that her mother was on the scene, Janet felt sure that Teddy would
soon be out of the well. As she hastened back toward the house, she saw
Patrick working in the garden.

“Please take a long ladder to the old well so Teddy can get out,
Patrick,” she begged. “Hurry!”

“What’s that, Jan?” asked the man of all work.

When the little girl had explained, Patrick ran off toward the barn,
chuckling to himself and saying:

“They call the little one ‘Trouble,’ but I’m not sure but what it would
be a good name for the other two. Sure, they’re into twice as much
mischief as William! It’s a good thing the well is dry!”

Patrick was on his way to the well, carrying a long ladder, which, he
told Janet, would surely reach the bottom, and the little girl was
following him when she saw her father coming around the house by a side
path.

It was not usual for Mr. Martin to come home from his store in the
middle of the afternoon. When he did, something extraordinary nearly
always happened, and this time Janet thought he had heard about Teddy.
So she said:

“He’s all right now, Daddy! We’ll soon have him out!”

“Who’s all right? Who’s going to be out soon?” asked Mr. Martin, much
puzzled. “And what are you going to do with that ladder, Patrick?”

“Sure an’ I’m going to get Teddy out of the old well.”

“Out of the old well?” cried Mr. Martin. “Do you mean to tell me Ted
has fallen down there?”

“He didn’t perzackly _fall_ in,” said Janet. “I let him down by the
rope, but the rope slipped off and he’s down there. He couldn’t climb
out, so mother told Patrick to bring the ladder.”

“Oh, well, if your mother’s there I guess matters will soon be all
right,” said Mr. Martin, breathing more easily. “Why did you children
go to that well? We must fill it up at once, Patrick.”

“Yes, sir. I was going to do it this afternoon. But they got ahead of
me, the Curlytops did.”

Mr. Martin hurried on with Patrick, helping him carry the ladder, while
Janet followed. Mrs. Martin and Trouble were still standing at the well
curbing, and when Mrs. Martin saw her husband she, too, thought he had
come home because of what had happened to Ted.

Then, as she knew he could not have heard of it at the store, she said
to Mr. Martin:

“Is anything wrong? Why did you come home at this time of day?”

“Everything is all right,” replied Mr. Martin, with a smile. “I came
home to tell you some good news. But first we must get Teddy out of the
well.”

Mr. Martin leaned over and looked down into the depths. Ted saw his
father and called to him:

“I’m all right!”

“I’m glad of it,” was the answer. “We’re going to lower the ladder down
to you so you can climb up. Stand to one side so it won’t hit you.”

And as her father and Patrick lowered the ladder into the well, Janet
wondered what good news it was that had brought Mr. Martin home in the
middle of the afternoon.




CHAPTER III

THE CARDWELL ALBUMS


Ted Martin was in no danger in the dry well. His father and mother knew
this as soon as they had looked down at him. There was not a drop of
water in the well, and the sides were well walled up so they wouldn’t
cave in.

“Don’t ever do anything like this again, Theodore!” his father said
quite sternly to the little chap, as the ladder was being put into
place.

“No, sir,” answered Teddy.

“We didn’t mean to do it,” said Janet.

“I know you didn’t,” her mother admitted. “But just think what would
have happened if there had been water in the well?”

“I wouldn’t have gone down if there had been water in,” Teddy called
up, for he could hear what was being said.

“Well, I’m glad you have that much sense,” his father told him. “Now,
Patrick, you hold the upper end of the ladder steady and I’ll put this
end down in.”

Slowly the ladder was lowered into the well, Teddy crowding back
against the stones as he stood on the leafy bottom, so as to be out of
the way. At last the ladder was in place.

“Now can you climb up, Ted?” called his father.

“Sure I can climb up,” was the answer, and a little later the head of
the Curlytop lad appeared above the curbing. There were leaves and dirt
and cobwebs in Teddy’s hair, but he didn’t mind that. “I brought the
end of the rope up with me,” he said, showing it to his father. “You
can fasten it to the windlass if you want to.”

“I don’t want to,” declared Mr. Martin. “And, just so you and Janet
won’t be tempted to play diamond mine again, we’ll drop this old rope
back to the bottom of the well. And you must start at once, Patrick, to
fill it up.”

“Yes, sir, I will,” was the answer.

Mr. Martin took the end of the rope from Ted and let it drop back into
the black depths where it fell on the bucket, already on the bottom.

Then the ladder was pulled up, and as Mr. Martin walked back toward the
house with his wife and children Patrick got a shovel and began tossing
dirt and rocks into the well, to fill it up level.

“There’ll be no more Curlytops down in you!” said the man, as he
labored away. The wooden curbing was torn loose and the windlass
broken. It was the end of the old well.

“But, anyhow, I got down it all right,” declared Ted, as he looked back
and saw Patrick filling up the hole.

“Yes, but you might not have gotten out so easily if we hadn’t come to
help you,” suggested Mrs. Martin.

“I guess that’s right,” agreed Ted. “I tried to climb out, but it was
hard work.”

“He was like ‘ding-dong bell, pussy in the well,’ wasn’t he, Mother?”
laughed Trouble, as he stumbled along beside his father.

“Yes, and daddy was Big Johnnie Stout who got Teddy out!” added Janet.
“But what’s the good news?” she asked. “You said you had good news,
Daddy.”

“It’s about our summer vacation,” replied Mr. Martin. “You know, my
dear,” he went on, turning to his wife, “we haven’t been able to make
any plans for the vacation, because I didn’t know how matters were
going at the store. Well, I have just found out that I can get away
next week, and be gone for a month, so I hurried home to let you know.
We shall have a fine vacation this season!”

“Where are we going?” asked Ted, brushing some of the well dirt from
his clothes.

“To the seashore?” asked Janet.

“No, we aren’t going any special place,” her father replied.

“Oh, I thought you said we were going to have a fine vacation!”
objected Ted.

“So I did, and so we are. But we aren’t going to any special place.
What do you say to touring around--going from place to place in our
auto, and perhaps taking a trip in a motor boat? How would my Curlytops
like that?” and Mr. Martin ruffled first the hair of Janet and then
that of Teddy.

“I think that will be lots of fun!” cried Janet.

“Do you mean touring around in our car and sleeping in it and camping
out and all that?” asked Ted.

“Well, something like that,” agreed Mr. Martin. “Of course we can’t
exactly sleep in our auto, as it isn’t a Gypsy wagon. But we can take
along a tent that can be fastened to the auto, and we can sleep in that
if we wish. Or we can put up at hotels along the way. It will be partly
a camping trip.”

“Oh, that’ll be dandy fun!” cried Ted. “When can we start?”

“Next week. But in the meanwhile don’t go climbing into any more
wells,” urged his father.

“No, sir, I won’t!” the Curlytop boy promised. “Oh, hurray for touring
around! Hurray for touring around!” he cried, turning a somersault on
the grass.

“’Ray! ’Ray!” echoed Trouble, trying to do as he saw his brother do.
But Trouble toppled over to one side, laughing as he fell.

“We’ll have lovely fun!” confided Janet to her mother. “I think daddy
is just wonderful, don’t you, Mother?”

“He is, indeed, quite wonderful,” agreed Mrs. Martin, with a smile.

From then on, as you can imagine, there were busy times in the home
of the Curlytops. Once it was decided that they would spend part of
the summer vacation touring around, going to no particular place, but
stopping wherever they felt like it, many preparations had to be made.

Mr. Martin owned a big touring car, and he bought a camping outfit and
tent to go with it. The tent could be fastened to one side of the car,
and cots put beneath the canvas covering.

“The children can sleep in the car, when it rains too hard,” decided
Mrs. Martin.

“And can we cook, and eat and everything like that out of doors?” Janet
wanted to know.

“Of course we have to cook!” declared Ted. “I’m going to make the
campfires,” he declared.

“We’ll see about that,” Mr. Martin said. “Very likely we’ll take along
an alcohol stove. That’s more certain for cooking than wet wood. But we
can have a campfire once in a while.”

Ted and Janet told their many boy and girl chums about the coming
touring trip, and all the lads and lassies wished they were as lucky as
were the Curlytops.

It was one evening, about four days after Ted had gone down into the
well which was now filled up, that, as the Curlytops and the others of
the family were talking about the coming trip, a ring sounded at the
front door.

“I wonder who that can be?” said Mrs. Martin.

“Well, it’s pretty hard to guess,” her husband answered, with a laugh.
“But we’ll soon see, for Nora is opening the door.”

In came Mr. James Cardwell, an elderly neighbor who lived two or three
houses down the street. Under his arm Mr. Cardwell carried two large
books, which, a second look told Janet and Ted, were old-fashioned
photograph albums.

“Good evening, Mr. Cardwell,” said Mr. Martin. “Have a chair.”

“Thanks, but I didn’t come to stay long,” said Mr. Cardwell, as he put
his albums down on the table. “I came to ask you to do me a favor.”

“Did you want our pictures to put in your album, Mr. Cardwell?” asked
Ted, for he and Janet had had their photographs taken the week before.

“Thank you, little man, but these albums are filled,” was the answer.
“I’d like to get your pictures, though, for another album I have at
home. What I came over for,” he went on, “is to see if you would take
these albums to my brother Reuben in Bentville, Mr. Martin. I hear
you are going on a long auto tour, and that you will pass through
Bentville. Is that right?”

“Yes, we planned to make Bentville one of our stops,” said Mr. Martin,
naming a town about three hundred miles away.

“That’s my old home,” said Mr. Cardwell. “There is going to be a
reunion of the Cardwell families there in the fall. We have it every
year. All the Cardwells for miles around come to this reunion.

“Now in this album are a lot of pictures of Cardwells that are dead and
gone--dead and gone,” and the old man’s voice trembled. “Some of their
relatives would like to look at these pictures. I thought it would be a
good plan to have them at the reunion.”

“Very nice, I should say,” remarked Mrs. Martin.

“That’s what I thought. Well, I want to send my albums on ahead, before
I start, which won’t be until fall. I want to send them to my brother,
Reuben Cardwell of Bentville. The albums have been in the family many
years. I’d hate to see them lost, or have anything happen to them.
I’m afraid to send them by mail or express. But I thought, as long
as you’re going to tour out that way, you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Martin,
leaving these albums with my brother.”

“I shall be glad to do that,” replied the Curlytops’ father. “If you
think you can trust me with them,” he added.

“Of course I’ll trust you,” said Mr. Cardwell. “Though we think so much
of these albums in our family that I wouldn’t trust every one. I don’t
know what would happen if they got lost or were destroyed. See, here
are pictures of my dear little twin girls, who died when they were ten
years old. They’re the only pictures we have of them--Mary and Alice.”

He turned the heavy pages and showed pictures of two pretty girls, with
long, curling hair. The pictures were of a bygone time, old-fashioned
and rather strange to the Curlytops. But they could see that Mr.
Cardwell thought a great deal of them and of the albums.

“And here is another picture we prize highly,” said the elderly
neighbor. “It’s a picture of my brother’s boy Tom. He was only
eighteen,” and he turned to the photograph of a fine-looking lad.

“Did he die, too?” asked Mrs. Martin softly.

“Yes--at least, we suppose so,” said Mr. Cardwell gently. “He went away
to be a sailor. His ship was sunk and we never heard anything more from
him. I suppose the poor young fellow died at sea. This is the only
picture of him, and I know how badly my brother would feel if it were
lost. So will you take charge of these old family albums, Mr. Martin,
and deliver them in Bentville?”

“Yes, I’ll be very careful of them,” promised Mr. Martin. “I know what
it means to lose such things.”

“Didn’t they ever find the boy who was lost at sea?” asked Ted, to whom
this little story appealed greatly.

“No, Ted, we never heard a word from him,” sighed Mr. Cardwell. “I
suppose the sea has him. He is as much lost as my dear little twin
girls are,” and he turned back to the pictures of the children.

“I have a small chest, or box, down at the store, Mr. Cardwell,” said
Mr. Martin, as the caller was about to leave. “I’ll put your albums in
that chest so they will be safe.”

“Thank you. Tell my brother, when you see him, why I sent them to him
this way--I didn’t like to trust the mails or the express, and I won’t
be out to Bentville myself until fall.”

“I’ll tell him,” was the promise.

Ted and Janet were looking at the queer, heavy covers of the old books
and wondering what games the pictured children used to play when they
were on earth, when suddenly from outside came a number of sounds.

There was the sound of the clanging of bells, the blowing of whistles
and the shouting of men and boys.

“It’s a fire! A fire down the street!” cried Ted, as he raced to the
door. “Oh, Mr. Cardwell, I guess your house is on fire!”




CHAPTER IV

A BIG CROWD


Nothing causes quite so much excitement as does a fire. And when the
fire is on your own street, and near your house, and perhaps in the
home of some one you know--why, then there is excitement enough to
cause even the grown-ups to move about quickly.

And this is just what happened when Ted Martin called out:

“I guess your house is on fire, Mr. Cardwell!”

Mr. and Mrs. Martin, as well as their visitor who had brought the two
old photograph albums with him, ran to the door. And you may be sure
that Janet was there ahead of them, for she had heard what her brother
shouted. William, also, was right there, making his way in and out
among chairs until he finally pushed through between Ted’s legs as that
lad stood on the porch.

“I’m goin’ to fire!” cried the little fellow.

“No, Trouble! You stay here!” commanded Ted, catching hold of him just
in time.

“It is a fire, surely enough,” declared Mrs. Martin, when she had
looked down the street.

“And it’s near my house, if it isn’t in it!” exclaimed Mr. Cardwell.
“Excuse me!” he said hastily, as he pushed his way between Ted and
Janet on the steps. “But I’d better get down there!”

“I’ll come and help,” offered Mr. Martin.

“May I come?” asked Ted.

“No, Son, you stay with your mother,” directed his father.

As the two men hurried out of the front gate, joining the throng that
was running toward the scene of the fire, Mrs. Martin took Trouble by
one hand and Janet by the other and said:

“We’ll just walk down a little way to see what’s going on. Come along,
Ted.”

Much pleased that he did not have to stay away altogether from the
fire, the Curlytop lad followed his mother and the others. The engines
were already on hand, and it was their puffing and tooting of whistles
that had made some of the noise.

“It isn’t Mr. Cardwell’s house, though,” said Mrs. Martin, when she and
the Curlytops, with Trouble, had gone far enough down the street to see
just where the fire was. “It’s next door to him.”

“I wouldn’t want a fire next door to me,” sighed Janet.

“I would!” cried Ted. “You could see it fine!”

“A fire is a terrible thing,” said Mrs. Martin. “We shouldn’t want one
anywhere near us.”

“Oh, no, of course not! I don’t exactly _want_ one,” admitted Ted. “But
if one has _got_ to come I wish it would be near our house, but not in
it, so I could see it good.”

“This isn’t a very big fire,” observed Janet, when they had watched for
a few minutes. “I guess it’s out now.”

“I hope so,” said her mother.

And such proved to be the case, for in a little while the firemen who
had rushed into the home of Mr. Blakeson, next door to the residence of
Mr. Cardwell, came out with a long, thin hose. It was the hose from the
chemical engine, and not the big water hose.

“It was only a fire in the chimney,” said Mr. Martin, as he came
walking back with Mr. Cardwell. “No damage done, but the folks were
pretty well frightened. They put it out with chemicals.”

“How could a chimney be on fire?” Jan wanted to know. “A chimney is
brick, and bricks can’t burn.”

“It isn’t the bricks that burn,” her father explained. “But when a
chimney has been used a number of years it gets coated, or lined on
the bricks inside, with soot. Soot contains oils and other things that
burn. Finally, some day, a hot fire sets the soot inside the chimney on
fire, and it burns fiercely. And if it burned long enough it would make
the bricks so hot that they would set fire to the roof or the wooden
parts of the house near them. That’s why a chimney fire is dangerous,
even though the bricks themselves can’t burn.”

“Did they put salt on the fire?” asked Mrs. Martin.

“Ho! Ho!” laughed Ted. “I’ve heard of putting salt on the tail of a
wild bird to tame it, but I didn’t know you put salt on a fire.”

“Yes, you do, sometimes,” stated Mr. Martin. “Salt is said to put out
chimney fires. Some sort of chemical is released when salt is heated,
and this smothers the fire in the chimney. But the firemen put this
fire out, and without any damage being done.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Mrs. Martin, as they went back to the house.

“And I’m glad the fire wasn’t in my house,” remarked Mr. Cardwell. “If
it had been, and if those albums had burned, with those pictures of my
children and my brother’s boy--pictures we never could get again--my
wife and I would have felt very sad. My wife thinks a great deal of
those albums. I’ve been planning for a long time to send them out to my
brother, but we never dared trust them to any one before. I hope you
will take good care of them, Mr. Martin.”

“Oh, I surely will, Mr. Cardwell,” replied the father of the Curlytops.

That night, when the children were in bed and Mr. and Mrs. Martin
were quietly talking over their plans for the coming tour around the
country, Mrs. Martin said:

“I almost wish you didn’t have to bother with those two big albums of
pictures, Dick!”

“Why?” asked her husband.

“Oh, just suppose something happens to them?”

“Nothing will happen to them. I’ll pack them in that small chest I have
down at the store, and we’ll put it in the back of the auto. When we
reach Bentville I’ll give the albums to Mr. Cardwell’s brother. That
will end the matter.”

“I shall be glad when it is ended,” said Mrs. Martin, as she carefully
carried the precious old books of pictures upstairs with her.

“What are you going to do with them, my dear?” asked her husband, as he
noticed what she was doing.

“I thought I’d have them handy so I could pick them up and run out with
them in case our house caught fire during the night.”

“Oh, nonsense!” laughed Mr. Martin. “Nothing is going to happen!”

But it did. Not that night, nor the next night, but before very long,
as you shall read.

Ted and Janet, with Trouble also, were very busy the next day, going
over their toys and playthings to pick out the things they wanted
to take on the tour with them. Jan had a number of dolls, a ball,
some books, a few things she thought her dolls might need and even a
carriage. Ted had picked out some books, his top, a pair of roller
skates and a bow and arrows.

“Why, children, you can’t take all those things!” laughed their mother.
“There wouldn’t be room in the auto, for one thing, and, besides, you
will have no time to play with your toys. We shall be traveling most
of the day, and at night you’ll want to sleep. Don’t take any of those
things.”

After some talk Ted and Janet agreed to limit the toys they would take
with them. Janet picked out the doll she liked best and one book, and
Ted took a ball and a book. As for Trouble----

Well, by the time Mrs. Martin had settled on what the two older
children could take, she had forgotten about Trouble. Then, all of a
sudden, she remembered him.

“Where is William?” she asked.

Ted and Janet looked at each other. They, too, had forgotten their
small brother. But a moment later a cry was heard:

“Come and get me out! Come and get me out!”

“There’s Trouble now!” exclaimed Janet.

“Oh, what has happened to William now?” sighed Mrs. Martin.

By this time Janet had run into the front yard, and from there she
shouted:

“Here’s Trouble! He’s all right! But he’s got his head stuck in the
fence and he can’t get loose!”

Mrs. Martin and Ted rushed out to find that the little boy had stuck
his head in between two pickets of the fence, at a place where one
picket was loose. His head had gone in easily enough, but when he tried
to draw back his ears stuck out so he couldn’t.

“Oh, my poor little William!” said his mother.

“I’ll get him loose!” exclaimed Ted, which he did, by pulling off the
loose picket so there was room enough for his little brother to draw
back his head.

Trouble was frightened, and the skin, back of his ears, was scratched a
little, but otherwise he was not hurt.

“What made you stick your head through the fence like that, William?”
his mother asked him.

“I--now--I was pickin’ a flower to take in the auto with us,” Trouble
explained. “I reached through the fence to get the posie.”

“Oh, the little darling!” murmured Jan, kissing him. “I’ll pick flowers
for you,” she offered. “Don’t stick your head through the fence again.”

She went out and found where her little brother had reached out to
gather some flowers that grew just beyond the fence. He could have
gone out of the gate to get them, but, instead, he reached through the
pickets. Jan picked some blossoms and took them to Trouble.

Such happenings as this did not worry Mrs. Martin much, for so many of
them took place each day that she was getting used to them. Trouble
soon stopped his crying and went out to play with Ted and Janet, while
their mother went on with the preparations for the auto tour.

Mr. Martin, that day, brought home the small, stout box to hold the
Cardwell albums, and they were put in and locked up, ready to be taken
to Mr. Reuben Cardwell of Bentville.

In a few days all was in readiness for the start. Mr. Martin left his
store in charge of his head clerk, the house was closed up, the auto
had been piled with valises, and the tent, for sleeping at night, had
been strapped on the running-board. In piled the Curlytops and Trouble
and Mr. Martin blew the horn.

“Good-by! Good-by!” called friends, neighbors and the playmates of the
children.

“Good-by! Good-by!” echoed the Curlytops.

Just then along came running Jack Turton, a funny little fat chap. He
was all out of breath.

“What’s the matter, Jack? Is there a fire?” asked Mr. Martin, as he was
about to start the auto.

“No, sir. But there’s a terrible big crowd down in the meadow near the
white bridge!” gasped Jack. “Oh, it’s a terrible big crowd, and I’m
going down to see. Maybe there’s somebody drowned!”

Away he rushed, as fast as his fat legs would take him.




CHAPTER V

MOVING PICTURES


Well did the Curlytops know the place spoken of in such a hurry by fat
Jack Turton. Ted and Janet had often gathered flowers in the meadow,
and Ted had, more than once, caught fish under that same white bridge
spoken of by the fat lad.

“The water is deep down by the white bridge,” said Ted, as he watched
Jack hurrying down the street. Other children, gathered to say good-by
to the Curlytops, had heard what Jack said about a big crowd in the
meadow, and they were following him down to the place.

“I hope no one is drowned,” murmured Mrs. Martin, looking at her three
children in the auto and feeling thankful that they were safe with her.

“Oh, Daddy!” exclaimed Janet, “couldn’t we drive down past the meadow
on our way and see what the crowd is there for?”

“Maybe it’s a circus!” exclaimed Trouble, who had caught some of the
talk, but didn’t know exactly what it was all about.

“No, it can’t be a circus,” declared Ted. “There haven’t been any
circus posters around town. I’d have seen ’em if there was.”

“It isn’t a circus,” decided Mr. Martin. “I think, as long as we have
time, that I’ll drive around that way. We can take the road over the
white bridge as well as any other.”

In fact, the Curlytops were going to tour around the country, not going
to any certain place at any certain time, so they could do as they
pleased, which is half the fun of touring.

“Dick,” said Mrs. Martin, touching her husband gently on the arm as he
was about to start the car down the street after Jack and the other
children, “perhaps we had better not go down there.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“If it’s a drowning it would be a sad sight, and----”

Mr. Martin appeared undecided as his wife brought this thought to his
mind, and it might have been that he would have taken some other
route, except that he saw Doctor Whitney driving along in his small
car. The physician was coming from the direction of the white bridge.

“Dr. Whitney will know if an accident has happened,” said Mr. Martin.
“If there’s been a drowning he wouldn’t be coming away from it. He
would stay there and try to save the drowned person.”

“Please ask him,” suggested Mrs. Martin.

Accordingly her husband called:

“Anything the matter down at the white bridge, Doctor?”

The doctor brought his car to a halt near that of the Curlytops, and
waved his hand to the children after he had raised his hat to Mrs.
Martin.

“Drowning at the white bridge?” he asked. “No, nothing like that.
Though there may be if they keep on. There’s a big crowd there and some
of the youngsters may fall in.”

“What’s going on?” asked Mrs. Martin.

“Is it a circus?” Trouble asked. “I’d like to see a nellifunt!”

“Yes, you saw one once!” laughed his mother.

“No, it isn’t a circus, though the kids are having almost as much fun
as if there was one,” chuckled the doctor. “And the men are having as
much trouble trying to keep the boys and girls back as though there
were two circuses.”

“Sounds rather interesting!” laughed Mr. Martin. “But I’m glad no one
is drowned--that’s what fat little Jack suggested.”

“What in the world is it?” asked Mrs. Martin, and Ted and Janet
listened eagerly to the answer of the physician, for they could not
imagine what was happening at the white bridge.

“It’s moving pictures,” the doctor replied.

“Moving pictures!” cried the Curlytops together, just as twins might
have done. But Ted and Janet were not twins, though they were born on
the same day of the year. Ted was exactly a year ahead of his sister.

“I didn’t know they were showing movies in the meadow,” said Mr. Martin.

“They aren’t _showing_ moving pictures,” replied Doctor Whitney.
“They’re _taking_ them.”

“Taking movies!” gasped Ted. “Oh, I want to see that!”

“Real moving pictures?” Janet wanted to know.

“I guess they’re real enough,” answered the doctor. “I don’t know much
about such things, but there is a company of men and women down in the
meadow, posing around on the bridge and on boats in the river. They’re
all painted up--I mean their faces--and they are wearing fancy clothes.
A lot of men with megaphones are shouting directions, and other men are
grinding away at the cranks of moving picture machines. So I guess it’s
real enough.”

“Oh, Daddy, please take us there!” begged the Curlytops.

“Shall we go, Mother?” asked Mr. Martin of his wife.

“Yes, I would like to see it,” she answered. “And I’m sure the children
would be amused.”

“Oh, say, I guess we would!” murmured Janet.

“Come on, Dad! Step on it!” cried Ted, meaning for his father to press
on the gasoline accelerator of the car and move the machine faster.

“Ted and Janet, they didn’t ’muse me,” remarked Trouble. “An’ Ted, he
fell down in the well--he did!”

He remembered this event quite clearly.

“Well, we hope no one falls into the river,” laughed Mrs. Martin, as
they said good-day to Doctor Whitney and moved along. A large creek, or
a small river, whichever way you looked at it, flowed under the white
bridge on the outskirts of Cresco.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” chanted Ted.

“I’d love to watch them take movies,” remarked Janet. “I’ve never seen
them do it.”

“I did once, at a baseball game,” stated Ted. “But it didn’t amount to
much. This’ll be a lot better.”

As the Curlytops approached the white bridge and the meadow through
which flowed the river, they saw others also hurrying to the scene. For
Cresco was a small city, or a large town, you might say, and anything
like excitement--such as taking moving pictures near it--was sure to
draw a throng.

As Mr. Martin drove his car over the bridge and down a lane into the
meadow, where many other cars were parked, there was no doubt about
what was going on. Moving pictures were certainly being taken there, or
“filmed,” to use the right word.

“Oh, look at the cowboys!” cried Ted, for some of the actors were
attired in western suits--big hats, “chaps,” or leather breeches,
and spurs on their shoes, while some of them carried coils of ropes.
“They’re lassoes,” explained Ted.

“Pooh, I knew that!” scoffed Jan.

“Why, there’s quite a company of them!” remarked Mrs. Martin, as she
noticed the number of men and women who, it was plain to be seen, were
not residents of Cresco. They belonged to the company. “Why do you
suppose they came here to take pictures?” she asked her husband.

“It’s hard to say,” he answered. “Probably the play they are taking
needed just such a scene in it as this bridge, river and meadow
provide. The company is out on ‘location,’ as it is called. That is,
they have come out from their studio, or the ‘lot,’ as they call it,
and they have found just the right location for making certain scenes.”

“Oh, look, that lady is going to jump from the boat!” cried Janet,
pointing to a small skiff on the river, which held one young lady and
several men.

The actress was, indeed, standing up in the bow of the boat and, as Jan
had said, seemed about to jump into the river. One man was rowing the
boat, and the other, in the stern, was moving forward as if to stop the
young lady from leaping overboard.

“This is great!” cried Ted, with shining eyes.

“Awfully exciting,” admitted Janet.

“It’s like a circus,” said Trouble. “But I don’t see any nellifunts!
Where are the nellifunts?”

Several persons standing near Mr. Martin’s car laughed at this. But
they quickly looked away from the Curlytops and toward the boat on the
river as the young lady in it gave a scream and leaped into the water,
making a great splash.

“Oh, my goodness!” cried Mrs. Martin. “There’ll be a drowning after
all!”




CHAPTER VI

THE ALBUMS ARE GONE


More than one, at least in the crowd that had gathered to watch the
movie folk, was almost as much excited as was Mrs. Martin, when they
saw the actress jump out of the boat into the river. But Mr. Martin
quickly understood that it was all part of the work of making moving
pictures, and said:

“It’s all right, Mother! Don’t worry!”

“They’ll get her out!” added Ted. “Look, there goes a man in after her
now!”

As he spoke the man in the stern of the boat threw off his coat and
leaped with a great splash into the water after the young lady.

“And they’re taking pictures of it all the while!” called out Jan. “Oh,
I wish I could see them on the screen!”

What Janet said was true--from the time the boat started up the stream
near the white bridge until the moment when the young lady leaped
out and the actor leaped after her, men on the bank, and also men in
another boat, were quickly turning the handles of their moving picture
cameras, filming every action of the actors and actresses.

“Why do they have three cameras, Daddy?” asked Janet, for she noticed
at least this number of men, with their caps on backward, grinding away.

“There are two reasons for that,” answered Mr. Martin. “One reason is
that one film might be spoiled, and if it was the only one taken all
the work would have to be done over again. Another reason is that the
pictures give different views of the same scene, and it can not be
told, until after the films are developed and printed, which is the
best. So they take two or three, the same as a photographer takes more
than one picture of you when you go to his studio.”

“Did they take more than one picture of the little twin girls that
died?” Janet asked, pointing to where, in a box in the rear of the
auto, the two Cardwell albums had been placed. “And did they take two
pictures of the boy who was lost at sea?”

“I don’t know about that,” her father answered. “I suppose they did,
though the pictures were taken a number of years ago when it wasn’t as
easy to make photographs as it is now. When those twin girls and the
Cardwell boy sat for their portraits, moving pictures weren’t thought
of--at least, not as we see them now.”

“There--they’ve got her!” cried Ted, as he saw the man from the boat
reach the girl who had leaped overboard. “She’s saved!”

“Well, I’m glad of that,” remarked Mrs. Martin, with a sigh of relief.

“But she wasn’t going to drown, anyhow!” went on the Curlytop lad. “She
knew, all the while, that she’d be saved, didn’t she, Daddy?”

“I guess she did,” Mr. Martin admitted, with a smile. “These movie
people don’t take many chances. Of course, some of them who do ‘stunts’
run into danger, but, in the main, they are pretty careful. I guess
this young lady was a good swimmer.”

“They’re taking more pictures of her,” cried Jan. “Look! She’s on the
bank over there and they’re taking a lot more pictures of her.”

“So they are,” agreed Mrs. Martin. “The poor thing--they won’t even
give her a chance to get into dry clothes.”

“Probably the story of this movie doesn’t call for that,” suggested Mr.
Martin. “The young lady may have to be shown coming up from the water
dripping wet.”

That seemed so, for as soon as the man who had jumped from the boat
into the water after the actress began to carry her in his arms up
the bank of the creek, some of the camera men ran around with their
machines and again began grinding very fast at the handles.

“Oh, it must be wonderful to be a movie actress!” sighed Jan.

“I’d like to be one of the cowboy actors!” exclaimed Ted, looking at
the men in western costume, who, just then, did not seem to have much
to do. They were standing idly about near their horses.

“Well, if being a movie actress means jumping into a river with all
your clothes on, I beg to be excused,” laughed Mrs. Martin.

“I’m glad we came here,” said Ted. “Aren’t you, Jan?”

“I just guess I am!” she murmured. “Oh, look! Now she’s running away
from the man who saved her!”

Indeed, this very scene was then taking place, and it caused some more
excitement.

For the young lady, dripping wet as she had been taken from the water,
had rested on the bank only a moment, while some pictures of her and
her rescuer were taken, and then, with a scream, she broke away from
the man and rushed off across the meadow.

But it was all part of the play that was being taken, for the Curlytops
noticed that the young lady was running straight toward a camera that
had been set up near a clump of willow trees. And as she approached the
machine the man behind it kept it focused, or “aimed,” as Ted said,
straight at the actress, picturing her every movement.

“I wish they’d take a picture of a nellifunt!” sighed Trouble, and
again his queer remark caused a laugh.

“I guess they haven’t any elephants in this outfit,” remarked a man
standing near the Martin auto.

“What do you suppose it’s all about?” asked Mrs. Martin of her
husband, as they got out of the car and walked toward a group of the
picture people. “I mean what is the story they are filming?”

“I don’t know, and I doubt very much if even those taking part in it
know what it’s all about,” said Mr. Martin. “You see,” he explained,
“in taking moving pictures they make views of all the scenes that take
place in a certain spot all at once. That’s so they won’t have to come
back to it again. Now they may take views of the cowboys here at the
bridge and also pictures of the girl in the boat. But the cowboy scenes
may be shown at the beginning of the finished film, and the scene we
have just witnessed may be at the very end. That’s how movie work is
done.”

“Look, they’re going to take cowboy pictures now!” cried Ted, as he saw
some camera men approaching a group of the horsemen. And the cowboys,
who had been idly talking, now leaped to their saddles as if to be in
readiness for something.

“Yes,” remarked Mr. Martin, as he glanced across the meadow, nodding to
several Cresco men whom he knew, “I think they have finished filming
the drowning lady for the present. She may put on dry clothes and
take part in some other part of the play. Now we’ll watch the cowboys.
They’ll make it lively, I think.”

“Have we time to stay here and watch this?” asked Mrs. Martin, as she
followed her husband and the children from the auto out over the green
meadow.

“Oh, yes,” he answered. “We are off on a pleasure tour, you know, and
this is giving the children as much pleasure as anything we could let
them see. It is educational, too, and this seems like a company of nice
people.”

“Will it be safe to leave the car?” went on his wife.

“Oh, surely!” laughed Mr. Martin. “No one will run away with it. There
are police here,” and he pointed to some of the Cresco force that
had gathered to keep order while moving pictures were being taken.
“Besides, I’ll lock it; then it will be safe.”

This he did, and then he took the Curlytops, his wife, and Trouble over
where they would have a good view of what the cowboys were about to
enact.

“What company is this?” asked Mr. Martin of Mr. Taylor, the feed
merchant.

“Oh, it’s one that makes funny films,” was the answer. “Comedies, you
know. They have a studio in Mansfield, but they’re out here just for
the day. Quite a sight, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s interesting,” admitted Mr. Martin.

“Your children are taking it all in,” added Mr. Taylor, laughing.

“They don’t miss much,” admitted Mr. Martin.

By this time, with the Curlytops and Trouble in a place where they
would have a good view, that part of the play in which the cowboys had
a part began to be filmed.

One actor waved his hat and flapped it against the sides of his pony,
starting it off at a fast gallop down the meadow. As he rode along the
children could see cameras grinding away, taking pictures of this fast
ride. Then, after the first man, rode a number of others. Now began a
scene of great excitement, for the cowboys chasing after the one who
had first ridden away began firing their big revolvers and shouting at
the tops of their voices.

“My goodness!” cried Mrs. Martin, holding her hands over her ears at
the sounds of shooting. “I hope they aren’t firing real bullets!”

“They’re only blank cartridges,” declared Teddy. “Aren’t they, Daddy!”

“Yes,” was the answer.

“Oh, look!” suddenly cried Jan. “One man fell off his horse!”

That actually happened to one of the riders chasing after the lone
cowboy. Off his horse he rolled, tumbling over and over. The pony
got up after the fall and walked about, beginning to eat grass as if
nothing had happened. The cowboy, also, picked himself up and walked
with a limp over to get back on his steed.

“I’m glad he wasn’t hurt,” said Mrs. Martin.

“Oh, he did that on purpose!” said Ted.

“I guess he did,” Mr. Martin agreed. “They want to make the picture
look as natural as possible, so often the riders fall off on purpose.”

“I should think they’d be hurt,” observed the mother of the Curlytops.

“Cowboys know how to fall,” said Ted. “Maybe I’m going to be a cowboy
when I grow up, and ride a bucking bronco.”

“An’ maybe I’ll ride a nellifunt!” declared Trouble.

After an exciting chase, which was all taken in by the cameras, the
cowboys quieted down. This seemed to be the end of making pictures
for that time and in that place. The actors and actresses hurried to
waiting automobiles, and the camera men began taking the long-legged
tripods from their machines.

“You picked a good spot to leave your car, Mr. Martin,” said Mr.
Taylor, as the family was walking back to resume their tour.

“What do you mean?”

“Your machine is right next to that of Harry Portnay, the actor. That’s
his car there,” and Mr. Taylor pointed. “He’s getting into it now. His
car is the same make as yours and the same kind.”

“Oh, is that Mr. Portnay?” exclaimed Mrs. Martin. “I’ve often seen him
in the films. How interesting! He was one of the cowboys, wasn’t he?”

“Yes,” agreed Mr. Taylor. “And he’s very funny. He’s the one who fell
off his horse.”

“No wonder he knew how to fall!” laughed Ted. “I like him!”

Indeed, Mr. Portnay was well known in the films, and quite a favorite
with boys and girls. Ted and Janet had often seen the Portnay pictures
in the Cresco theater.

With wondering eyes at being this near to a real movie actor, the
Curlytops watched Mr. Portnay get into his car and drive away with
others of his company who had come to Cresco on location.

“Well, I guess the excitement is all over,” remarked Mr. Martin, as the
crowd began leaving the field when the actors and camera men had moved
away.

“But we saw a lot, didn’t we, Jan?” asked Ted.

“It was wonderful!” she returned. “I’d like to see it all over again!”

“But we must start on our tour, if we’re going,” said Mrs. Martin, as
she lifted Trouble into the car. “Come along, Curlytops.”

Mr. Martin looked over his machine, to make sure everything was all
right. He counted the bags, valises, and other things they had brought
with him, and noted that the tent to be used for camping was on the
running-board.

Suddenly he gave a start of surprise and asked his wife:

“Did you move that box of albums?”

“You mean the Cardwell albums?”

“Yes. It was in the back of the car. Did you move it?”

“No, I didn’t touch it. I saw it there when we got out, though.”

“Well, it isn’t there now!” exclaimed her husband. “The Cardwell albums
with the old pictures in them are gone! I wonder who could have taken
them!”




CHAPTER VII

ON THE TRAIL


The Curlytops, and Trouble also, were so much taken up with watching
the moving picture people leave the meadow that for a time they did not
listen to what their father and mother were talking about. But at last
Jan heard something said about the Cardwell albums and asked:

“Did we lose them out of our car?”

“No; we had them when we parked here,” answered her father. “I remember
putting the box under a robe, so it wouldn’t be in plain sight. It
could be mistaken for a fancy box of lunch, I thought, and some hungry
boys, thinking it contained sandwiches, might be tempted to take it.”

“Did they?” asked Ted.

“Some one has taken the box with the albums in it,” answered Mr.
Martin. “It’s gone!”

“Let’s look again, to make certain,” suggested his wife. “We don’t want
to make a fuss and then find the box, after all.”

“I don’t believe we’ll find it,” replied Mr. Martin, and there was a
worried look on his face. “It isn’t in the car--it’s been taken out.
And what to say to Mr. Cardwell I don’t know! He will be very sorry to
learn that the albums are gone, for he never again can get pictures of
his twin girls who are dead. And that sailor boy’s picture, too! That’s
gone.”

“Oh, perhaps we’ll find the box and the albums,” said Mrs. Martin more
cheerfully. “No one would really steal them--they would be of no value
to any one.”

“No; and that’s what I can’t understand!” complained the father of the
Curlytops. “But the albums are gone, sure enough!”

It really seemed so, for when the children--even Trouble helping--had
looked through the car, the box was not to be found.

“Well, I don’t know what to do,” said Mr. Martin, walking up and down
with a worried air, beside his auto. “I don’t want to go back and tell
Mr. Cardwell we have lost his valuable relics. And yet it isn’t fair
to him not to let him know.”

“Maybe he came here himself and got them,” suggested Ted.

“What do you mean, Son?” asked his father.

“I mean that maybe after he gave them to you he found out he was going
to Bentville himself, and he came here to tell you. He didn’t see us,
because we were looking at the cowboys, and he just took the box out of
our car.”

“He wouldn’t do that without telling me,” said Mr. Martin. “No,
something else happened. I wish I knew what. I’d like to get those
albums back.”

While Mr. Martin was still nervously pacing up and down beside his auto
and Mrs. Martin was making another search among the robes and valises
for the box, one of the cowboys who had taken part in the moving
picture rode past. Ted and Janet looked at him with eager eyes, for he
was a hero to them.

Seeing the children, the actor smiled, and then, noticing that
something was wrong, he stopped his horse, removed his big,
broad-brimmed hat in a bow to Mrs. Martin and asked:

“Is anything wrong? Can I help you? Did some of our people bump into
your car? I know that sometimes happens when a crowd gathers as we are
taking films.”

“No, nothing like that happened,” answered Mr. Martin. “But I left a
box with some valuable books in it here in my car, and now the box is
gone. I suppose some one in the crowd thought it contained food and
made off with it. I wish they’d bring it back, for the books are of no
value except as keepsakes to a family in Bentville where we are going.”

“What sort of box was it?” asked the cowboy, one of the last of the
moving picture actors to leave the green meadow near the white bridge.

“It was a dark red wooden box, with inlaid pieces of light wood,” Mr.
Martin explained. “It had a brass handle to carry it by. It was a box I
used to keep my papers in at my store. But I had put these books in it
for safety. I might better have left them out.”

“Was it a box about so long?” asked the cowboy, holding his hands out
about two feet apart.

“Yes,” answered Mr. Martin.

“Then I know where it is!” exclaimed the cowboy.

“You do?” cried Mr. and Mrs. Martin together, while the Curlytops gazed
at the rider with eager eyes. As for Trouble, he was gazing at the
horse and murmuring:

“You aren’t as big as a nellifunt! I fed a nellifunt peanuts once, I
did!”

“Yes, I know where your box is; or at least, I know who took it,” went
on the actor. “It was all due to a mistake.”

“Who has it?” asked Mrs. Martin.

“I think you will find it in the car of Mr. Harry Portnay, our head
actor, or leading man, as we call it,” replied the cowboy, with a smile.

“What would he be doing with old photograph albums?” asked Mr. Martin.
“For those are the books in the box--just old photograph albums, though
they contain pictures highly valued by those who own them.”

“Mr. Portnay didn’t want the albums,” said the actor, who gave his
name as Ned Weldon. “But his helper, Jim Lewis, took them to him by
mistake. Lewis thought your box was Mr. Portnay’s make-up box.”

“Make-up box? Do you mean the box with false mustaches and grease paint
and things like that in it?” asked Mrs. Martin.

“Yes,” answered the cowboy. Later Mrs. Martin explained to the
Curlytops that actors when they “dress up” as different characters must
also change their faces as well as their clothes. They must sometimes
put on powder and paint, as well as false hair and beards. And each
actor has what is called a “make-up box,” consisting of many things
which enable him to make himself up to look like some one else.

“This is how it happened,” went on Mr. Weldon. “Your car was parked
next to that of Mr. Portnay. I remember seeing that as I rode about
taking part in the picture. He has the same make and model car that you
have.

“During the cowboy race Mr. Portnay happened to want something from his
make-up box. I heard him tell Lewis to go and get it. I was sitting
on my horse near Mr. Portnay when Lewis came back with a box such as
you describe. At first it looked a good bit like Mr. Portnay’s make-up
chest, but our leading man knew right away that it wasn’t.

“Lewis, by mistake, had gone to your car and taken your box of albums
in place of Portnay’s make-up box. Portnay laughed at the mistake, and
sent Lewis back to get the right box.

“Now, in all probability, what happened was this. Instead of putting
the box of albums back in your car, Lewis put it in Mr. Portnay’s car
and also took from that car the make-up box. He left your box in Mr.
Portnay’s car and now our leading man has gone away with it. That’s
what happened to your albums, I feel sure. No one took them purposely.”

“Yes, it must have happened as you say,” agreed Mr. Martin. “I’m glad
to learn the books weren’t stolen.”

“But how can we get them back?” asked Mrs. Martin.

“The albums aren’t ours--we are carrying them for a neighbor, Mr. James
Cardwell,” explained Janet primly.

“Yes, that’s it,” said the little Curlytop girl’s father.

The cowboy actor looked at his watch and seemed to be trying to
calculate something in his mind.

“We’re to take more scenes on location, as we call it, to-morrow,” he
said.

“Do you mean here?” asked Mr. Martin. “We planned to go on, but if it
means getting back the albums we can stay.”

“No, not here,” answered Mr. Weldon. “Our next scenes will be taken at
Cub Mountain, about fifty miles from here.”

“I know where Cub Mountain is,” said Mr. Martin. “I’ve been there,
but I didn’t intend visiting it on this tour. You see, we are touring
around for our summer vacation,” he added.

“I see,” remarked Ned Weldon. “Well, Mr. Portnay and the rest of the
company, or at least most of us, will be at Cub Mountain this time
to-morrow, or a little earlier. We are taking scenes about a log cabin
on the mountain. If you are there you can very likely see Mr. Portnay
and get back from him your box which his man took in mistake for the
make-up chest.”

“Couldn’t we catch Mr. Portnay before then?” asked Mr. Martin. “I mean,
couldn’t we trail after him now and come up with him somewhere before
he reaches Cub Mountain?”

“You might try,” said the man who played the part of a cowboy. “He is
going through Midvale, which is about halfway there. Probably he’ll
stop in Midvale all night. He’ll be very sorry this has happened, and
he’ll be glad to give you back your box.”

“Thank you,” replied Mr. Martin. “Then I think the best thing for us
to do is to take the trail after this Mr. Portnay. I can get back
the albums without having to worry Mr. Cardwell about them. Come on,
children!”

“Yes, I’s comin’,” murmured Trouble.

Into the auto scrambled the Curlytops and Trouble. Mrs. Martin took her
place beside her husband, and, waving a farewell to the cowboy actor,
they started on the trail of Mr. Portnay.

The green meadow by the white bridge was now almost deserted. The
curious ones from the city of Cresco had left, and so had the moving
picture people, with the exception of the actor who had solved the
mystery of the disappearance of the albums.

“Well, we are having rather an exciting start of our tour,” laughed
Mrs. Martin, as the auto rolled along the smooth road. “First we meet
these interesting moving picture people, and then we have to chase
after them. It’s very exciting.”

“It’s lots of fun!” laughed Janet.

“I hope we see some more cowboy races,” remarked Ted.

They rode on for several miles, and as they went slowly around a bend
in the road, Trouble called out:

“Look! Look! Look at the monkey!”




CHAPTER VIII

OFF AGAIN


Trouble Martin was not given to calling out alarms like this; so, at
first thought, his mother imagined he was playing some sort of joke.

“William, you mustn’t say such things!” she exclaimed, with a little
laugh, giving him a playful shake. “There aren’t any monkeys in these
woods.” Just then they were slowly passing along a road over which the
branches of big trees arched.

“You didn’t see any monkey!” cried Ted. “If you saw anything it was one
of your ‘nellifunts,’ Trouble.”

“I did see a monkey!” insisted the little fellow. “There he is now.
He’s swinging in a tree!” and he pointed ahead.

Mr. Martin was now running the auto very slowly, for there was a bad
place in the road where it had been dug up. So there was plenty of
time for them all to look where Trouble pointed with his chubby finger.
Jan, the first to see something, cried:

“It is a monkey! Oh, look! He’s hanging by his tail from a tree!”

Then they all saw it, and as Mr. Martin stopped the machine just
beneath the swaying monkey, Mrs. Martin exclaimed:

“What in the world does it mean? Trouble, I beg your pardon! You were
right, after all! I thought you were fooling.”

“He’s my monkey!” declared the little fellow. “I saw him first! He’s
mine!”

“If you can get him!” chuckled Ted. “But I guess he’s going to stay up
there out of reach.”

“How do you suppose a monkey comes to be in these woods?” asked Mrs.
Martin of her husband. “Could it have escaped from a circus?”

“There’s nellifunts in a circus,” announced Trouble, getting back to
his favorite subject.

“Yes, this little chap might have come from a circus,” said Mr. Martin,
with a smile, as he looked up at the monkey, now swinging above his
head. “Or from some house. Some people have monkeys for pets.”

“Maybe it belongs to the moving pictures!” exclaimed Ted. “They have a
lot of animals in the pictures.”

“I don’t believe it was with Mr. Portnay’s company,” Mrs. Martin
remarked. “We didn’t see any such animals there. But what are we going
to do about this one?”

“Guess we’ll have to leave him where he is--up in the tree,” answered
her husband. “He can’t do much harm, and since it is summer, he won’t
suffer from the cold. If winter was coming on he’d be a pretty sick
monkey--out in the open like this.”

“I wish I could have this monkey!” pleaded Trouble. “I like a monkey
better’n I do a nellifunt, I guess!”

“Well, that’s quite a thing for you to say!” laughed the little
fellow’s father. “But I’m afraid we can’t get you this for a playmate.
Hold fast, children, I’m going to start.”

As he was about to let in the clutch and send the car ahead, there
appeared, running around the bend in the road, an excited Italian organ
grinder with his music box. He was running fast, and when he caught
sight of the auto he cried:

“You seena da monk? You seena da monk?”

At this moment the monkey in the tree, still swinging by his tail,
began to chatter shrilly. Doubtless he had caught sight of his master
and the organ to which tunes the monkey danced. And as the monkey
chattered the Italian looked up, catching sight of his pet.

“Ah, da monk! My leetle monk!” he exclaimed, and then he talked in his
own language. After which he again spoke English, saying: “Come down,
Mickey! Come down to papa!”

The children laughed at this, and the Italian joined them in the mirth.

“He gooda da monk, but he run away,” explained the man. “Da string, she
break, Mickey go ’way. Come down! Come down!” he begged, holding out
his cap. “Come to papa!”

But the monkey did not appear to want to come down. It turned right
side up, no longer swinging by its tail, but sitting on a branch.

“If you had some peanuts he’d come down for those,” suggested Ted,
searching through his pockets, hoping to find a stray “goober.”

“Mickey lika da peanut, but Mickey lika da banan mooch better,” said
the Italian. “If I hada da banan, down queek he come.”

“I have a banana,” said Mrs. Martin. “I bought some after we left the
moving picture place, and the children didn’t eat all of them. Here’s a
banana for Mickey,” she added, handing to the Italian organ grinder one
of the yellow fruits.

“T’ank you,” murmured the man. Then, peeling the banana, he bit off a
little end of it and held the remainder out so the monkey could see it.
“I no fool you,” the man murmured to his pet. “Dese banana, he good!
See, I eat some of heem!”

Again he took a nibble as if to prove to the watching monkey that the
fruit was real and good. And, seeing this, the monkey gave another
chatter and then began to climb down the tree. Once he had made up his
mind to descend, he lost little time, and he was soon perched on the
organ eating the banana while his master fastened to the collar the
little animal wore, the end of the string from which Mickey had broken
loose.

“Now you be da good monk and come weeth papa!” said the organ grinder,
at which the Curlytops laughed again, the Italian joining in.

“Mother, isn’t it funny for him to call himself the monkey’s papa?”
whispered Jan.

“Rather funny, yes,” admitted her mother. “But the Italians are like
that.”

“I t’ank you for catcha da monk,” said the Italian, taking off his hat
and bowing to Mrs. Martin, as Mickey finished the banana. “Mebby I
never no get heem if so dat he not smell da banana.”

“I’m glad I had one to tempt him down with,” replied the mother of the
Curlytops, with a smile.

“Does your monkey act in moving pictures?” asked Ted, as the traveler
got ready to move along.

“Da movie pitcher--no--no!” cried the Italian. “Mickey he only
hand-organ monk--no movie da pitcher monk! Goo’-by! T’ank you!”

“Good-by!” echoed the Curlytops and the others.

Then Mr. Martin started his car along the road while the Italian, glad
that he had recovered his pet which had run away from him, went in the
other direction.

“Well, another adventure on our tour,” laughed Mrs. Martin. “I couldn’t
imagine what Trouble meant when he called out about a monkey in the
tree.”

“Neither could I,” said the little fellow’s father. “I thought he was
fooling.”

“We’ll have to pay more attention to Trouble after this,” said Ted.

“Next time he may see a bear!” laughed Jan.

“Don’t like bears!” murmured the little fellow, who was getting sleepy.
“Like nellifunts an’ monkeys, but not bears.”

“Well, I don’t believe we are likely to meet any bears,” said Mr.
Martin. “What I would like to meet, though, is that moving picture
actor with the Cardwell albums.”

“We’ll find him at the hotel in Midvale and get the albums back,” said
his wife.

“I hope so,” her husband answered.

They were now on their way again. Since Mr. Martin had made no special
plans for their touring vacation, he and his wife decided that it would
be as well to stop in Midvale for the night, and go on in the morning,
as it would be to try to reach some more distant place.

“Will we sleep in the tent at Midvale?” asked Ted, when signs along the
road showed the Curlytops that they were entering that small city.

“No, I think we’ll go to the hotel,” replied Mr. Martin. “We have to
stop at the hotel, anyhow, to catch this movie actor, so we may as well
stay all night.”

“It would be more fun in the tent,” urged Ted.

“Heaps more fun,” agreed his sister.

“Oh, we’ll have enough of tent life before we finish this tour,
children,” laughed Mrs. Martin.

They reached the Midvale hotel about five o’clock that afternoon. Mr.
Martin told his family to remain in the car until he went in to make
sure they could get rooms. He came out a little later and there was a
look of disappointment on his face.

“Can’t they take us in for the night?” asked his wife.

“Yes, we can stay here. But Mr. Portnay isn’t here. I can’t get the
albums from him.”

“Not here? Then, where is he?” asked Mrs. Martin.

“He stopped here, but has gone on,” her husband answered. “He has gone
on to Cub Mountain, and, I suppose, has the box of albums in his car
with him. Perhaps he doesn’t know about them, and they may get lost. I
wish he had stayed here until I came!”




CHAPTER IX

AT THE FARM


While the young Curlytops did not think much about the missing albums,
they could see that their father was worried because he had not got
them back from Mr. Portnay. And anything that worried their father and
mother also worried Ted and Janet.

For they could see that Mr. Martin was bothered by the failure to meet
the moving picture actor and get back from him the box his man had
taken by mistake, thinking it contained false hair, false beards and
make-up paint.

“What are you going to do?” Mrs. Martin asked her husband.

“I hardly know,” was his answer.

“Can’t you telephone or telegraph on ahead to Cub Mountain and ask him
to wait for us, or to leave the box of albums where we can get it when
we arrive there to-morrow?” Mrs. Martin asked.

“I might do that if I knew where to send a telegram or where to
telephone to Mr. Portnay,” answered her husband. “That’s what I should
have done here--sent a telegram to that actor at this hotel. He would
have received it and have left the box here for me. But I didn’t think
of that; so he has gone on, taking my box with him. Very likely, he
doesn’t even know he has it; he is so busy making this picture.”

“You say you can’t reach him at Cub Mountain?” Mrs. Martin inquired.

“No, the people at this hotel say Cub Mountain is only a small
settlement, and that there isn’t even a hotel there. If the moving
picture company doesn’t set up a camp, Mr. Portnay will probably
stop with some friends or in a private boarding house. There may be
telephones in some houses or cabins at Cub Mountain, but there is no
telegraph station there. The only thing to do will be to go on there.”

“Now?” asked Ted, who was getting hungry and who looked at the Midvale
hotel with longing eyes.

“Oh, no, we won’t go on now,” replied his father. “We’ll stay here for
the night and travel on to Cub Mountain in the morning. The roads
aren’t any too good. I want to travel them by daylight. Well, you may
as well get out and come in,” he told his wife and children.

While Mrs. Martin was signing her name to the hotel register, she
listened to her husband talking to the clerk about the moving picture
actor.

“Yes, he was here,” the clerk said; “he and a number of his company.
But the crowd stayed only to eat and then went on. I heard one of them
say they had a lot of scenes to take at Cub Mountain, and they wanted
to start the work early in the morning.”

“Did you see Mr. Portnay have a reddish brown box, about so large?”
inquired Mr. Martin, showing the size of the little chest containing
the albums.

“No, he didn’t bring in any baggage,” was the answer.

“Then it’s probably still in his car,” said the Curlytops’ father. “I
hope I can get it back to-morrow.”

They went up to their rooms, Ted and his father having one, with two
beds in it, while Mrs. Martin took Janet and Trouble in with her.

“Better get ready to eat, children,” suggested their father, as he
noticed Ted and Janet looking from the windows out across the country,
for Midvale was on the side of a hill from which a good view could be
had.

Mrs. Martin washed Trouble, and put clean clothes on him from the
supply carried in the valises, and thus he was first ready to go down
to the dining room. When neither his father nor his mother noticed him
he wandered out into the hall.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin were ready to go down, and so were Ted and Janet,
when Trouble’s mother looked around for him.

“Where’s William?” she asked.

“I saw him go out into the hall,” answered Ted. “I’ll get him.”

As he opened the door to go into the hall, the others following, they
heard the tinkle of broken glass, and then, directly afterward, a bell
began to ring.

Instantly, throughout the hotel, which was not a very large one, there
was a great commotion. The elevator shot up to the floor where the
Martin family stood and the colored boy in the cage cried:

“Come on! Git in! Ah’ll take yo’ all down ’fore de place burns!”

“Before the place burns? What do you mean?” asked Mr. Martin. “The
hotel isn’t burning!”

“Yes, ’tis!” cried the colored elevator lad, his eyes big with fright.
“Doan yo’ all hear de ’larm!”

“I do hear a bell ringing!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin.

There was more commotion in the hotel, and several guests began running
from their rooms, carrying bags and clothing. It began to look as if
there was a fire, but there was no appearance of flames, nor could Mrs.
Martin smell smoke.

Then Ted exclaimed:

“It was Trouble! He sent in a false alarm! Trouble pulled the fire
alarm! Look!”

He pointed to the little fellow who was climbing down from a chair in
the hall. The chair was some distance down the corridor, and near a
small red box fast to the wall.

In a moment Mr. Martin understood. He had seen these fire signal
stations in various places about the hotel. In front of a small iron
box was a sheet of glass, and hanging down from the box by a chain was
a little iron hammer. Directions on the box said to break the glass
with the hammer and pull down the hook inside, which could only be
reached when the glass was smashed.

“Trouble smashed the glass and pulled the hook!” cried Ted.

“I heard some glass break,” added Janet.

Mr. Martin ran down the hall to the small boy, who stood near the
chair. On the carpet were pieces of shattered glass.

“Trouble, did you do this?” cried his father.

“I--now--I jist hit the glass a little wif de hammer and it did break,”
confessed William. “Den I pulled on de button hook!”

“Well, you did more than that!” exclaimed his father, with a grim
laugh. “You sent in the alarm when you pulled the hook. There’s no
danger, my friends!” he called to the guests who were crowding out into
the corridor. “There’s no fire. It was a false alarm! I shall have to
punish my little boy for breaking the glass and sending in a false
alarm.”

“Oh, don’t punish him!” murmured a lady, who in running from her room
had caught up a canary bird in a cage and a pair of old slippers. She
hardly knew what she was doing in the excitement.

“No, he didn’t mean to do it,” said a man. Trouble, by this time, knew
he had done something dreadful, and was crying behind his mother’s
skirts.

Luckily, the alarm Trouble caused to be sent in was only a private one,
just in the hotel itself. It did not bring the Midvale fire department
out, for word went to the clerk downstairs that there was no danger and
he did not call out the engines or hook and ladder apparatus.

So, after all, little harm was done, except to cause some excitement
and fright among the hotel guests. But this soon passed, and when the
Martins went to the dining room a little later, every one looked at
Trouble as a guest of some importance.

“But don’t ever do it again!” his mother warned him.

“No’m, I won’t,” he promised.

The broken glass was swept up by one of the chambermaids, and a new
sheet put in front of the hook in the fire alarm box.

That evening after dinner Mr. Martin took his family to the moving
picture theater near the hotel. You can imagine how surprised they
were when one of the pictures proved to have been made by Mr. Portnay’s
company, and he himself took a large part in it.

There, on the screen, the children saw the very man they had watched
act in the green meadow that morning. Ned Weldon, the cowboy actor with
whom the children had talked, was in it, too. Of course these were not
the scenes they had watched being filmed, for that picture was far from
being finished. But it was very exciting to see the people they had so
recently watched.

“I wish Portnay were here in person instead of only in the movies,”
remarked Mr. Martin, as they left the theater. “I’d ask him for those
rare albums. But I suppose we shall have to wait until we meet him at
Cub Mountain.”

The next morning, after a quiet night, the Curlytops resumed their
tour, and made a safe trip to Cub Mountain, on which was a small
country settlement. The scenery was just wild enough to be the right
background for moving pictures.

“Where are you going to inquire about Mr. Portnay?” asked Mrs. Martin,
as her husband stopped his car on what appeared to be the only, as
well as the main, street of the village.

“Right here in the post-office,” he answered, for it was in front of
the post-office that they had stopped. “They’ll know here about the
moving picture people, I guess.”

But again Mr. Martin was doomed to disappointment. For when he inquired
of the postmaster that official said:

“Yes, there was a company of movie people here. But that was early this
morning--about three hours ago, I reckon.”

“Have they left?” asked Mr. Martin, wishing he had made an earlier
start.

“Yes, they went on to the Dawson Farm. They’re going to film some
scenes there, so I heard ’em say.”

“Where is the Dawson Farm?” asked Mr. Martin.

“About ten miles from here. Keep straight on and you can’t miss it.
It’s a big place--old-fashioned white farmhouse, red barns, and all
that. Just the thing for movies, I reckon.”

“Thank you, I’ll go there,” said Mr. Martin, and when he rejoined his
family he said to his wife:

“This Portnay actor keeps me on the jump. I wish he’d stay in one
place long enough for me to get back those albums.”

“You’ll very likely catch him at the farm,” said Mrs. Martin. “But
perhaps it would be as well to telephone from here and say you are
coming.”

“Yes, I’ll do that,” the Curlytops’ father said.

He went back into the post-office, where he had noticed a telephone on
the wall. But when he asked if he could use it to send a message to the
Dawson Farm the postmaster smiled and said:

“Well, you’re welcome to use it as far as I’m concerned, but you can’t
get Dawson’s Farm on that machine.”

“Haven’t they a telephone?” Mr. Martin wanted to know.

“Oh, yes, they have a ’phone. But this one here is out of order and it
won’t work. I’ve sent for a feller to fix it, but he hasn’t come.”

“Is there another telephone here?” asked Mr. Martin.

“No, this is the only one, and this is out of order. I’m sorry!”

“I’m sorry, too,” Mr. Martin answered. “I’d like to get a message
through to Dawson’s Farm, so Mr. Portnay won’t again leave and take my
box with him.”

However, there was nothing to do but to hurry on to the farm as fast as
they could go. The postmaster explained that the place was a real farm,
not one for moving picture purposes, though scenes were frequently
filmed there, as many farm animals were ready to be photographed as a
background for the actors and actresses.

“It’s just like a game, isn’t it, Daddy?” said Teddy.

“Like hide-and-seek,” added Janet, giggling.

“Maybe,” agreed Mr. Martin. “But I don’t like playing the game very
much.”

Down off Cub Mountain drove Mr. Martin with his auto load of family,
and after rather a bumpy trip over rough roads he turned onto a firm,
smooth highway and soon they read a sign which said it was but one mile
to Dawson’s Farm.

“There it is!” cried Ted, a few minutes later, as they made a turn in
the road. Before them lay the big farm and buildings spoken of by the
Cub Mountain postmaster. And, as the Martins drew nearer, Janet cried:

“I see the movie people! There they are!”

She pointed to a number of persons, some on horses and others on foot,
who were, undoubtedly, some of the same ones they had watched in the
green meadow.

“Now I’ll get those albums back,” said Mr. Martin.




CHAPTER X

TROUBLE’S DANGER


“This is a dandy place!” exclaimed Ted, as his father guided the
auto into a lane that led from the main road up to the group of farm
buildings.

“Indeed it is,” agreed Mrs. Martin. “I should like to spend part of our
vacation here, if they would let us.”

“Look at the cows! Look at the cows!” cried Trouble, pointing to a herd
of fine animals in a distant pasture.

“And what a lot of horses, too,” added Janet.

Mr. Martin, however, was most interested in the company of moving
picture players clustered around one of the buildings. He was looking
for a sight of Harry Portnay who, by mistake, had taken the box of the
Cardwell albums.

As the auto came to a slow stop not far from the group of movie folk
who were being filmed in some scene, a man on a horse rode up to the
car.

“How do you do, Mr. Martin!” he said.

“Oh, it’s Mr. Weldon!” exclaimed the father of the Curlytops, as he
recognized the movie cowboy actor who had first given the information
about Mr. Portnay’s man taking the album box by mistake.

“Yes, I’m here again,” was the answer. “I just got my costume on.
They’re going to shoot me and some of the other boys pretty soon.”

“Shoot you!” cried Ted, in surprise.

“Oh, I forgot--you youngsters don’t know all the movie terms,” laughed
Mr. Weldon. “I mean they’re going to aim the moving picture cameras at
us and ‘shoot’ us that way--not with guns!”

“Oh!” murmured Ted, laughing with the actor. “Well, I’m glad they
aren’t going to shoot you with guns.”

“They shoot nellifunts with guns!” broke in Trouble. “But if I had a
nellifunt I wouldn’t let ’em shoot him. And we saw a monkey, we did!”

“My, that’s a fine thing to see!” chuckled Mr. Weldon. “But I suppose
you saw Mr. Portnay and got back your box of valuable hot cross buns,
didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t hot cross buns!” laughed Janet, for this actor had a jolly
way about him. “It was _albums_--albums for pictures, you know.”

“Ah, yes, so it was! Albums!” said Mr. Weldon, with a smile. “I was
just joking, you know. But I suppose you got them back?” he said to Mr.
Martin.

“No, I didn’t,” was the answer. “That’s why I came on here after them.
I missed Mr. Portnay in Midvale.”

“That’s too bad,” returned the actor. “You’re out of luck again.”

“What do you mean?” inquired Mrs. Martin.

“Why, I mean Mr. Portnay isn’t here.”

“Not here!” echoed Jan’s father. “Why, I thought this was his moving
picture company and that he’d surely be here. The postmaster at Cub
Mountain told me he had come on here.”

“Some of us did after the scenes there were taken,” explained the actor
cowboy. “But Mr. Portnay didn’t. He isn’t in these pictures that are
going to be taken at the farm. Or, at least, he doesn’t come in until
later. So, while this is his company, or the company of which he is the
star, he isn’t needed just now; so he went back to New York. He left
just a little while ago to take the train.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin. “It seems we are never going to catch
up with that man.”

“It is rather unfortunate,” said her husband. “But perhaps he left my
box here,” he went on to Mr. Weldon. “He wouldn’t take that back to New
York with him.”

“No, he wouldn’t if he knew what it was,” admitted the movie actor.
“But he leaves all such matters to his helper, Jim Lewis. And Jim
probably packed your box with the other baggage belonging to Mr.
Portnay and shipped it to New York.”

“Is there any one here I could ask if the box has been left?” inquired
Mr. Martin.

“Oh, yes; our director, Tony Birch. He’d know if any one would,” said
Mr. Weldon. “There he is over by the chicken houses. They’re going to
take a picture of Miss Marcell feeding the hens, I believe.”

“Is Miss Marcell the young lady who jumped into the river?” asked Mrs.
Martin.

“Yes, the same one. She’s our leading lady as Mr. Portnay is our
leading man.”

“You stay here with the children, my dear,” said Mr. Martin to his
wife, “and I’ll go and ask Mr. Birch if he knows anything of my box of
albums that Mr. Portnay took. I’ll be right back.”

The Curlytops watched their father cross a field and approach a group
of movie folk who were being filmed in some scene that had to do with
the fowls, of which there were a large number on the Dawson Farm. From
where they sat in the auto the Curlytops and their mother could see and
hear something of what went on. Trouble had gotten down out of the car
and was playing with a little puppy at one side, so he was accounted
for for the time being.

As Mr. Martin approached the scene at the chicken houses he could see
Miss Marcell tossing grain to the hens and roosters. In front of her,
and to one side of a movie camera, was a man with a megaphone in his
hands. Through this he called directions to the actress as the man at
the camera ground the crank.

“Not so fast! Not so fast!” cried Tony Birch, for it was the director
who was managing matters. “Don’t throw the chickens corn so fast, Miss
Marcell! You’ll make them have indigestion. Do it slowly, as if you
were a girl on a farm.”

“All right,” was the smiling answer, and she began to scatter fewer
grains.

“Oh, you’ll have to give them more than that or they’ll think you’re
stingy!” exclaimed the director. “There--that’s better. Shoot!” he
called to the camera man, and the latter, who had ceased grinding out
the film while the actress was being corrected, began again.

When the scene was over Mr. Martin asked the director:

“Did Mr. Portnay leave behind him a red box belonging to me? He took it
by mistake yesterday when you were at Cresco.”

The director thought for a moment and answered:

“No, I am sorry to say he didn’t. Mr. Portnay had to leave in a hurry
to get back to New York to arrange some matters, and I suppose he
didn’t think of your box.”

“It may be that he doesn’t even know he has it,” explained Mr. Martin.
“His man Jim Lewis took it by mistake for a make-up box.”

“Oh, I see. Um--yes. Well, I tell you the best thing to do. Mr. Portnay
will join us here in about a week. He’ll be in New York during that
time. I can give you his address and you can write or telegraph and ask
him to be sure and bring your box back with you.”

“Thank you. But won’t he return for a week?” asked Mr. Martin.

“No. We have a number of scenes to film here at the farm, and we are
going to stay for a week. They are scenes in which Mr. Portnay has no
part, so he isn’t needed here. But when he comes back he can bring your
box.”

“I suppose that is the best I can do,” said Mr. Martin, a bit
disappointed. “But I am touring around with my family. I didn’t count
on staying here a week.”

“It’s a good place to stay,” urged Mr. Birch, with a smile. “We movie
people have engaged board here, and there is room for more. Why don’t
you stay with your family? You’ll see some interesting sights. We’re
going to film a big part of the picture here. And Dawson’s Farm is a
good place for a vacation.”

“So my wife said,” remarked Mr. Martin. “Well, I’ll talk to her about
it. The only way to get back those albums seems to be to get in touch
with Mr. Portnay personally, and I can best do that by staying here.
The children ought to like it,” he murmured, as he looked over the big,
pleasant farm.

“Why, certainly! By all means, stay!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin, when told
of the situation. “We don’t have to travel on until we get ready.”

“No,” agreed her husband. “And I certainly must get those albums back
or there will be trouble in the Cardwell family. Well, I guess the best
thing to do is to stay.”

“Oh, goodie!” cried Janet, when she heard this.

“Hurray!” shouted Ted.

“Will they be any nellifunts?” asked Trouble.

“No. But there are lots of other animals,” his mother said. “But will
they keep us here?” she asked her husband. “It’s a delightful place,
but with all these movie folk here, will there be room for us?”

“Mr. Birch said so. But we can soon make sure of it,” said the father
of the Curlytops.

Mr. Dawson, who owned and ran the big farm, was a jolly kind of man.
He was proud of his place, and one reason he consented to let the
movie people take scenes of it was so that other persons, all over the
country, would see what a fine farm his was.

“They’re going to show a picture of me, too,” said Mr. Dawson to Mr.
Martin. “And the name ‘Dawson’s Farm’ is to go in some of the titles.
We farmers ought to make the world proud of us, and by showing movies
of a big farm like this city folks will think more of the man who tills
the soil.”

“I agree with you,” said Mr. Martin. “But what about keeping us here?”

“Plenty of room! Plenty!” laughed Mr. Dawson heartily. “And you say you
have two children?”

“Three,” answered their father.

“Three! So much the better! I love children! Bring ’em in! My wife will
want to see them! She loves children, too!”

So it was settled that the Martin family was to remain at Dawson’s
Farm until Mr. Portnay came from New York, or else shipped back the
box of albums. Mr. Dawson kept quite an establishment, having a number
of hired men and servants, and he took the Curlytops and their family
right into his own house. The movie people “camped” out by themselves
in a separate building. They would do their own cooking and look after
themselves. But the Martins would eat with the Dawson family.

“Oh, what a lot of fun we can have here!” cried Jan, after she and her
brothers had put on “old clothes” and were romping about. Mr. Martin
had gone to write a letter to Mr. Portnay which that actor would
receive in New York. Mrs. Martin was talking to Mrs. Dawson, who was a
kind, motherly soul with no children of her own.

“I know just how you feel, losing that album with those little girls’
pictures in it,” she said. “It’s worse than if it was your own,
belonging to some one else that way.”

“Yes, that’s what Mr. Martin thinks,” said his wife. “Well, we hope
we’ll get it back.”

“I hope so, too. Now I want the children to have a good time. Let them
do just as they please.”

“Well, I can’t quite do that,” replied Mrs. Martin, with a smile.
“Though they’ll pretty nearly do that, anyhow,” she added.

If she could have seen Janet and Ted then she would have had reason to
add to this, for the Curlytops were climbing an apple tree, where Ted
had seen some fruit that looked nearly ripe.

“I’ll climb up and shake some down to you, Jan,” he had said.

“You needn’t, thank you,” laughed Janet. “I can climb a tree as well as
you can!”

“You can not!” declared her brother.

“I can so! I’ll show you!”

Toward the tree ran the Curlytops, and while they were climbing it
Trouble was doing something else. He had wandered off by himself,
though Mrs. Martin had told Jan and Ted to look after him. Going down
a path that led away from the orchard, he came to a field in which was
pastured an old boar, a savage pig with long, curving tusks--teeth that
stuck out like the tusks of an elephant.

The sight of these tusks, small as they were, made Trouble think the
boar might be a small animal of the kind he was so interested in.

“Oh, it’s a little nellifunt! It’s a little nellifunt!” cried Trouble.
“I’m going in an’ give him a peanut!” for he had asked his mother to
buy him some nuts just before reaching Dawson’s Farm and he had a few
of the goobers left. “I give you peanut, little nellifunt!” cried
Trouble, as he crawled in between two strands of the prickly wire
fence. His waist caught and was torn a little, but he didn’t mind that.

The boar gave a grunt as he saw Trouble enter the field. The boar
wasn’t used to this. He didn’t very often have company, especially
small boys. And the boar was savage--he didn’t like company of any
kind! The only things he was afraid of were dogs and a man with a sharp
pitchfork or a big stick.

So, as soon as Trouble crawled through the fence, the savage boar, with
loud grunts, made a rush for the little fellow.




CHAPTER XI

FUNNY FISH


When the boar, with deep grunts, started toward Trouble, the little boy
saw that he had made a mistake. It wasn’t a little “nellifunt” at all.

“’Cause he didn’t have any trunk--that’s how I knew he wasn’t a
nellifunt,” Trouble explained to his mother afterward. “He had big
teeth, like a little nellifunt, but he didn’t have any trunk.”

As soon as he had discovered it wasn’t a small elephant in the field,
Trouble began to be afraid. He didn’t exactly know what sort of
animal this might be. Dimly he remembered something about pigs on his
grandfather’s farm. But those pigs were cute little pink ones in a pen
with their big, fat mother pig. The mother pig lay on her side and
grunted. The little pigs ran around squealing. None of them acted as
did this savage boar.

For that reason Trouble didn’t know exactly what to make of this. He
held out in his hand some of the peanuts he had taken from his pocket.
In the distance Trouble could hear the shouts of Jan and Ted as they
scrambled up the apple tree. But more clearly than anything Trouble
heard the grunts of the boar as it came nearer and nearer.

“I--I don’t like you! Go on ’way!” called Trouble, after a second of
watching this big, ugly animal. “Go ’way!”

But the boar still came forward. He was used to having his own way
except when a man with a dog or a pitchfork came in the field. More
than once this boar had chased boys and girls who, unthinkingly, had
wandered to this part of Mr. Dawson’s farm. Mr. Dawson always warned
people about going into the field where the boar was, but he had been
so busy with the movie folk that he forgot about it this time.

Suddenly the boar gave such a loud grunt of rage, ending with such a
squeal, that Trouble was badly frightened. The little fellow began to
cry. He wished he hadn’t come into the field.

The cry of their little brother reached the ears of Ted and Jan in
the tree. They had just begun to pick some of the fruit, but when they
heard Trouble they looked toward him. And what Ted saw made him drop an
apple after he had taken one bite. He scrambled down out of the tree
shouting:

“I’m coming, Trouble! I’m coming! I wont let the pig bite you!”

For Ted knew that boars are very savage when once roused.

“I’m coming, too!” cried Jan.

She tried to scramble down out of the tree, but slipped when on the
lowest limb and fell to the ground. Luckily she fell in a place where
the grass was long and thick, so she wasn’t hurt. She was merely jarred
a bit, and after getting back her breath she ran toward the fence,
through which Ted was crawling to reach Trouble.

By this time the boar was close to the little fellow. Long before this
the savage pig would have rushed at the small boy, but, truth to tell,
the way Trouble stood there, crying, puzzled the boar. And when animals
are puzzled they don’t act as quickly as when they know just what is
going on.

However, neither Ted nor Janet would have reached Trouble in time to
save him. For as Ted got through the barbed wire fence, which alone
prevented the boar from getting out of the pasture, there was a thud
and rush of feet and a voice shouted:

“I’ll get him! Stand still, little boy!”

The rush of feet were the galloping hoofs of a horse. And the voice
was that of Mr. Weldon, the movie actor. He rushed his steed toward
the fence, called to his mount, and, in another moment, the horse
sprang cleanly over the fence and rushed on toward the boar. But more
particularly Mr. Weldon guided his steed toward Trouble.

As the little fellow turned to see whence came the pounding of hoofs
and the cheery call of the man, the rider leaned from the saddle and
in one hand picked up small William, swinging him up in front and to
safety. All the while the horse was going at top speed.

In another moment Mr. Weldon had leaped his animal back over the fence,
and the boar was left alone in the field, doubtless wondering, in his
small brain, what had become of that boy he was going to gash with his
tusks.

“There you are, little man!” said Mr. Weldon, as he brought his horse
to a slow pace and set William on the ground near Ted, who had crawled
back through the fence. “I wouldn’t go in that field again, if I were
you.”

“I should say not!” cried Ted, who had been surprised with the
quickness of it all. “What made you go in there, Trouble?”

“I--now--I thought he was a little nellifunt, an’ I was going to give
him peanuts!” sobbed the little chap, for he wasn’t yet over his fright.

“Oh, elephant! He’s crazy about elephants!” explained Jan, who came
up just then. “I guess he thought the big teeth on that pig were
elephant’s teeth.”

“I suppose so,” said Mr. Weldon. “But keep watch of him, so he doesn’t
go in there again.”

“Yes, we will,” promised Ted.

“And thank you for saving Trouble,” added Jan.

“Oh, yes, thank you!” murmured Ted, who had been so taken up with
admiring Mr. Weldon’s horse and the manner in which the cowboy made his
steed jump the fence that he had little room to think of his manners.

“That’s all right,” said the movie man, with a smile. “We have to do
harder things than that when we’re on the ‘lot.’ Well, I’ll see you
later,” and he rode back to join the others, for the camera men were
getting ready to film certain scenes down near one of the barns.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin also thanked Mr. Weldon that night, after they had
heard how he had gotten Trouble out of danger. The Curlytops and their
friends were now well settled at the farm, where they would remain
about a week.

“Though if Mr. Portnay sends back that box of albums any sooner, we
might travel on,” said Mr. Martin.

“Oh, let’s stay here!” pleaded Jan. “It’s lovely here!”

“We can have lots of fun,” added Ted.

“Well, since we started this tour mainly to give you children a good
vacation time, and since you like it here, we might as well stay for a
while,” said their father.

“But you must take better care of Trouble,” their mother warned them.
“I shan’t feel easy in my mind unless you promise to watch him all the
while he is with you. With these movie folk here at the farm there is
so much going on that Trouble may easily get into danger.”

“We’ll take good care of him,” promised Jan.

“I’ll take him with me wherever I go,” said Ted.

“Well, then I’ll feel better about it,” said Mrs. Martin.

It was because of his promise that the next day, when Ted and Janet
decided to go fishing, Ted called:

“Come on, Trouble! You may come with us!”

“Oh, I like fishin’!” declared the little boy. “I’m going to catch a
big one.”

“I’ll leave him to sit on the bank near you,” whispered Ted to his
sister, “and I’ll go off a little way by myself. I never can catch any
big fish if I’m near him, for he’ll be pulling his hook in all the
while to see if he has a bite.”

“I know he will,” said Janet. “I’ll take care of him while you fish.”

Not far from the farmhouse was a stream winding in and out among a
grove of trees. In some places there were deep pools and eddies where,
some of the farmhands said, large fish could be caught.

Ted picked out what he thought was a good spot and, posting Jan and
Trouble a little way from it, cast in his hook.

He was sitting on a grassy bank near one of the deep pools spoken of
by some of the farm hired men. Here the water had worn out a place in
the shore, making what is called an eddy--a quiet, swirling bit of the
stream where big fish love to swim.

Ted had not been fishing long when he felt that he had a bite.

“Oh, I’ve got a big one!” he called to Jan, who was busy keeping
Trouble from falling into the stream. “I’ve got a whopper! Look, Jan!”

He pulled up. Something black went sailing through the air over his
head. But no sooner had it landed than Ted found he had hooked an old
rubber boot!

“Oh, jinks!” he cried in disgust. “Look at that!”

“That’s a funny fish!” laughed Jan.

“Well, I’ll get a real one this time!” declared her brother.

In he cast again. There came a gentle tug on his line.

“Now I’ve got a bite!” he shouted. Again he pulled up. Something
flopped on the grass behind him.

But it was only an old shoe!

“Say, what’s the matter here, anyhow?” demanded Ted.

“Ha! Ha!” laughed his sister. “What funny fish!”

“Look at Ted’s funny fish!” chuckled Trouble.




CHAPTER XII

FLIP-FLOPS


Pulling up a rubber boot in place of a fish wasn’t strange for the
first time, since Ted had before this done much the same thing when out
for a day’s sport. But when, the second time, he hooked an old shoe, it
was too much!

If he had been fishing with some of the Cresco lads he would have
suspected a trick, for often one of them would slip away, reach for a
chum’s hook in a spot where he couldn’t be observed, and fasten on the
hook some queer object, putting it softly back into the water again and
waiting for the fun that was sure to follow.

But Ted knew none of his chums were with him now, and Janet, though she
sometimes played tricks, was too far away, looking after Trouble, to
have put the boot and shoe on his hook.

“Of course I might have picked them up off the bottom, but I don’t
believe it,” thought the Curlytop lad. “I’m going to watch.”

“I got a better fish than yours!” boasted Trouble, holding up a small
“sunny,” which had rashly nibbled at his hook.

“So you did,” admitted Ted. “But I’ll get a big fish soon.”

“That was _big_ enough!” laughed Janet, pointing to the rubber boot,
from a hole in the toe of which water was running.

“But it isn’t real,” said Ted ruefully. “Just you wait!”

When Janet went back to the comfortable place she had picked out for
herself and William, Ted again took his position on the jutting-out
bank near the deep eddy. Once again he threw in his line, letting out
plenty of it. But this time, instead of gazing off at the distant
hills, Ted kept watch of his tackle. Presently he saw it begin to move
in toward the shore at a place where tall grass and rushes made a
secret hiding place.

“That’s funny,” said Ted to himself. “If a fish was on my hook a fish
would move out toward the middle of the brook--not toward the bank.”
For this is true of fishes. Once hooked, they try to get into deep
water, hoping to get the sharp point out of their mouth.

But Ted’s line was being slowly pulled in toward the grass-screened
bank, and it wasn’t at all as if a fish was hooked.

“It might be a mud turtle,” thought the lad. “A turtle would go slow
like that--but not a fish. I’ll wait and see what happens.”

His line was pulled in a little farther toward the bank. There was a
movement in the tall grass and the lad felt a tug on his pole as if a
fish were nibbling. It was just like the other two “bites” he had.

“Now to see what it is!” thought Ted.

But instead of calling to his sister to look what a big “fish” he had,
the lad kept quiet and began to haul in.

Something heavy was on his hook, that was certain. But when he hauled
it up out of the water all that met his eyes was--an old rusty tin can!

Janet looked up in time to see it sailing through the air and she
cried, as well as she could for her giggles:

“Oh, Teddy! what’s the matter with you? More funny fish!”

“It’s a trick--that’s what it is!” declared the Curlytop lad. “A
trick. Somebody down there in the grass is putting boots and shoes and
tin cans on my hook!”

Dropping his pole, Ted made a dash for the clump of tall grass and
rushes where he had seen the cautious movements. Before he reached
the place there was a commotion there, and out and up leaped a queer
little man--a man who shouted and laughed and at once began turning
somersaults on the open place a little way back from the edge of the
stream.

Backward and forward the queer little man turned somersaults. Then he
sprang up in the air, landed on his hands, and bounced back to his
feet. With a whoop he turned a “cartwheel,” and then rolled over and
over in the grass.

“Oh, look! He’s doing flip-flops! He’s doing flip-flops!” cried Trouble
who, with Jan, had risen from his fishing place to look at the funny
man. “He’s doing flip-flops like the nellifunt man in the circus!”

Indeed, this odd character seemed to have come from a circus, except
that he did not have on a gayly colored suit with shining spangles.

As Ted watched the thought came into the lad’s mind that this strange
man was the one who had fastened the boot, the shoe and the tin can on
the fish hook.

“Whoop-la! That’s the way to do it!” cried the man in a jolly voice, as
he walked around on his hands. He then very suddenly straightened up.
“How’s fishing?” he asked, as he walked toward Ted.

“Why, it isn’t so very good--not with you around.” When Ted said this,
which might not be considered very polite, a smile came to his face.
One could not help smiling when one looked at the jolly countenance of
the “flip-flop man” as Trouble called him.

“Oh, ho! So I spoiled your fishing, did I?” asked the acrobat.

“Somebody did,” declared Ted. “That’s all I caught.” He pointed to the
rubber boot, the shoe, and the rusty tin can on the grass.

“Oh, dear! That’s too bad! Too bad!” sighed the funny man. “And there’s
good fish in here, too. I know it, for I’ve pulled them out. Suppose
you try again.”

“I will if you’ll stay up here and not go down there to put things on
my hook,” agreed Ted, pointing to the clump of tall grass near the
water’s edge, whence the man had come.

“Oh, ho! So you suspect me, do you?” asked the tumbler.

“Yes, I do!” laughed Ted. “Didn’t you do it?”

“I’m like George Washington. I must tell the truth,” said the man. “I
did it. I hope I didn’t bother you. It isn’t too late to catch some
real fish. Come on--throw in again. I’ll sit here on the bank and keep
as quiet as a little mouse. Did you ever see a little mouse?” he asked
Trouble, winking first one eye and then the other at the small boy.

“I--now--I saw a nellifunt,” was Trouble’s answer.

“Hum! Then you must belong in the circus where I came from,” laughed
the man.

“Oh, are you from the circus?” asked Jan eagerly.

“I used to act in one--doing flip-flops and other clown work,” answered
the man. “Now I’ve joined the movies. I’m Jimmie Tizzy!”

“Oh, are you Jimmie Tizzy?” cried Ted, for well he knew that name,
having laughed more than once at the funny antics of this clown of the
movies.

“That’s who I am,” the man replied, with a laugh.

“You don’t look like him,” ventured Jan doubtfully.

“That’s because I haven’t my make-up on, nor dressed as you generally
see me,” said Mr. Tizzy. “But if you stay around here long enough
you’ll see me as I really am. I’m going to have a part with Mr. Portnay
next week.”

“Oh, are you stopping here at the farm, and are you with Mr. Portnay’s
movie company?” cried Ted.

“That’s right!”

“We haven’t seen you before, and we’re staying at the farm, too,” said
Jan.

“There are so many of us, it’s no wonder you missed me,” said Mr.
Tizzy. “I really haven’t done any acting for the camera since we came
here. My part doesn’t get filmed until next week. But I wanted to keep
in practice, so I came out here to do a few flip-flops. Then I saw you
fishing and I thought it would be fun to play a little joke on you.
I hid in the deep grass, pulled your hook in with a long stick and
fastened the boot on first. Then I put on the shoe and lastly the tin
can. Did you mind it?”

“Oh, no,” admitted Ted, with a laugh. “At first it puzzled me. But it’s
all right. I hope I can catch some real fish now.”

“I think you can,” said Mr. Tizzy. “I won’t play any more jokes.”

Ted baited his hook anew and prepared to cast in again, while the funny
acrobat sat down on the bank near the Curlytop lad to watch him.

“Come on, Trouble,” said Jan, in a low voice. “We’ll let Ted catch a
big fish for us.”

But Trouble didn’t want to go. He dragged and held back.

“Wait! Wait!” he begged. “I want to ast him suffin!”

“What is it, little man?” inquired Mr. Tizzy, with a smile. “Do you
want me to stand on my head again? I’d better not until your brother
catches a fish. But what else do you want to ask me?”

“Can you do flip-flops on a nellifunt’s back?” inquired Trouble.

“Yes, I’ve done that,” admitted Mr. Tizzy. “If you’ll bring your
elephant here I’ll flip-flop on his back.”

“I hasn’t got a nellifunt,” admitted the little lad. “But maybe I could
find one in the woods. Once I gave a nellifunt peanuts.”

“And he’s never forgotten it!” laughed Jan. “But come on,” she urged
her small brother. “Ted wants to fish. Maybe Mr. Tizzy will do some
other tricks for you,” she added.

“I surely will,” promised the acrobat. “I must keep myself in practice
ready for the work next week. Now go ahead and fish, Ted.”

When it grew quiet, the lad eagerly waited for a nibble, and he was
soon rewarded by pulling up a good-sized fish.

“It’s a real one this time!” Ted shouted, as the beauty flopped on the
grass.

“I must watch him,” said Mr. Tizzy. “I may get some ideas from the way
he leaps about.”

From then on Ted had good luck and caught five fish before it was
time to go home. Trouble, also, caught a fair-sized perch, which much
delighted him.

“Now for a few more flips and I’ll walk back with you,” said Mr. Tizzy.
“I’m glad to know we’re stopping at the same place. I heard some talk
last night about children being at the farm, but I thought they meant
movie children.”

“Well, we’re sort of on the move,” explained Ted. “We’re touring around
for our vacation. But Mr. Portnay took two old photograph albums by
mistake, and we’re waiting for him to send them back.”

“Go on--do a flip-flop!” urged Trouble eagerly. “I like ’em!”

“All right. Here goes, little man!” cried Mr. Tizzy.

He began turning somersaults again, leaping back and forth, doing
handsprings and cartwheels on a smooth place in the grass.

“Now watch this!” he cried, and he bent himself in the shape of a hoop
by grasping his ankles with his hands. Around and around he rolled, the
children laughing in glee until, all at once, Mr. Tizzy disappeared.

Out of sight he vanished, as though the earth had opened and swallowed
him!




CHAPTER XIII

TED FALLS OFF


For a while the Curlytop children and Trouble thought this sudden
vanishing of Mr. Tizzy was one of his tricks--he was so full and
bubbling over with them. Ted said afterward he thought the movie man
had doubled himself up into as small a ball as possible and was hiding
behind a clump of grass.

But when nearly a minute passed and Mr. Tizzy did not come back, the
children began to get worried. A trick and a joke might be all right,
but this was a little too much!

“Maybe he hurt himself,” suggested Jan.

This very thought was in Ted’s mind, but his sister spoke of it first.

“Let’s look and see where he is,” went on Jan.

“He went down in a hole!” declared Trouble.

Certainly it looked so, and when Ted walked forward, toward the place
where he had last seen the acrobat and when Janet and Trouble followed,
the Curlytop lad found that what his little brother said was true.

There was a hole in the ground, a rather deep and steep hole with grass
growing close to the edge of it. And down in this hole lay the acrobat
in a huddled heap.

So still and quiet he was, all doubled up, that Janet felt frightened.
She was going to ask Ted if he thought the jolly man might be dead. But
Ted suddenly exclaimed:

“I guess he’s fainted. I’ll get some water and pour it on him.”

Ted had once seen his aunt faint, and his mother had dashed water on
her face.

Back to the stream ran the boy, and in the can he had fished out he
brought back some water. When some of this had been spilled on the
face of the man lying in the hole, he opened his eyes and asked rather
faintly:

“What happened?”

“You flip-flopped into a hole,” answered Ted. “Can you get out or shall
I run back to the farm for help?”

“Oh, I guess I’m all right now,” was the answer. “I remember now. I
was cartwheeling around and, all of a sudden, I saw this hole in front
of me. Before I could stop myself I rolled into it. I hit my head on a
stone, and that’s all I remember. But I’m all right now, though I guess
I was unconscious for a minute or two.”

“We didn’t know what had happened to you,” remarked Janet.

“Well, it isn’t anything to worry about,” said the man, as he untangled
himself, for his legs and arms were rather mixed up. “I’ll be all right
in another minute.”

He scrambled out of the hole, gave himself a shake to make sure no
bones were broken, and then went down to the edge of the little river,
where he bathed his head, especially the place that had hit a stone,
and drank some water.

“Now I feel better,” he announced. “But I guess I won’t do any more
flip-flops right away.”

“What do you think made that hole?” asked Ted, as they stood around
the edge, looking down in it, after Mr. Tizzy said he thought they had
better start back to the farm.

“Some boys may have dug it for a cave to play in, or some one may have
dug a big stone out of there,” said the acrobat. “But if they took a
stone out, where it is I can’t see,” and he looked around in vain for a
sight of the bowlder. “More likely it was boys at play,” he said. “But
it was dug some time ago, for the grass has grown all around the edge
and the dirt they took out has disappeared.”

Glad that nothing more serious had happened, the Curlytops started back
toward the group of farm buildings. Ted carried the fish he had caught,
and Trouble insisted on bringing home his small sunny and the perch,
neither of which were of much account for the kitchen.

“Oh, what a fine fisherman you are, William!” his mother exclaimed,
when she saw what he held up for her to admire. “Why, you’ll soon be
able to catch enough for a whole meal.”

“I caught a fish before Ted did,” announced the little lad. “He got a
rubber boot!”

Mr. and Mrs. Martin laughed at the story of the funny trick played on
Ted by the flip-flop man, and a little later that day they met the
actor and talked to him, liking him very much.

While Mr. Martin was waiting for an answer to the letter he had sent to
New York, asking Mr. Portnay to return the photograph albums taken by
mistake, there was nothing to do save to amuse himself as well as he
could at the farm and make the best of matters.

The moving picture actor might ship the box of albums back by express,
or he might bring them himself, so Mr. Weldon said.

“Harry Portnay is a queer chap,” said the cowboy actor who had leaped
his horse over the fence to save Trouble from the ugly boar. “He
never does what you think he will. It would be just like him to send
a special messenger back with those books, or he may even forget all
about them and leave them in his New York office.”

“But I have written him a letter about them!” exclaimed Mr. Martin.

“Yes, I know. But he gets a lot of letters every day--all movie stars
do--and he may not pay much attention to yours.”

“I must get those albums back if I have to go to New York for them
myself,” declared the father of the Curlytops.

“Oh, I’d like to go to New York!” cried Ted.

“So would I!” added his sister.

“We have made other plans,” their mother answered, with a smile. “We
are going to tour around and make a stop in Bentville--as soon as we
get the albums.”

Meanwhile, the only thing to do was to wait, and it was a pleasant
waiting, at least for the children. They liked it at the Dawson Farm,
for there was much to see and do, especially with the moving picture
people there. Every day some scenes were taken--nothing very elaborate
or big, because of the absence of the star, but enough to keep the
camera men and the actors and actresses busy.

To their delight, the day after the queer fishing trip the children
saw Mr. Tizzy do some of his funny tricks in front of the camera. The
acrobat said he was all right again after his tumble into the hole, and
he certainly was lively enough, leaping here and there.

One afternoon Mr. Birch, the director, walked over to the Martin
family, who were all sitting under a shade tree. The director seemed to
have something on his mind.

“Did your children ever act in the movies?” he asked Mr. Martin.

“I don’t believe they ever did,” was the answer.

“Oh, yes, Daddy, I did, once!” cried Ted.

“You did! Where?” asked his mother, for she did not remember any such
happening.

“Why, they took pictures of a baseball game in Cresco once,” went on
the Curlytop lad. “I was there in the grandstand. They took pictures of
the people in the stand and they took mine. I saw myself in the movies
afterward.”

“Oh, yes, I do remember that,” said Mrs. Martin. “But that wasn’t
really acting.”

“Well, I can give them a chance now, if you’ll let them take it,” said
the director. “One of our writers has made a change in this story we
are filming, and we need three child characters in it for a short
scene. If you’ll let your Curlytops and their little brother take part,
it will be a big favor to us.”

“I don’t see any objection,” replied Mr. Martin, as his wife looked at
him. “What do you want them to do?”

“I want them to ride on the back of a pony,” explained the movie
director. “Mr. Dawson has a very safe pony, and I’d like to have the
children shown crossing a meadow where the pony is pastured. They have
been after berries, we’ll say. On the way back they want some fun, so
they ride on the pony’s back--all three of them. We’ll take pictures of
them doing that.”

“Three of them on one pony? Maybe the pony wouldn’t like it,” said Mr.
Martin, with a laugh.

“Oh, the pony won’t mind,” the director assured him.

So it was arranged, and the next morning the three children went to the
pasture, followed by some of the movie people and two camera men. Mr.
Dawson had given permission to use the pony.

“Now don’t think of anything except having fun,” the director advised
them. “Ted, you help your sister and your brother on the pony’s back,
and then scramble up yourself. Janet, you guide the pony as I call to
you through my megaphone. But, above all, don’t look directly into the
camera. We want this to seem natural.”

“You can’t keep Trouble from looking at the camera,” laughed Ted. “He’s
doing it now. I guess he thinks music will come out.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter so much about him,” replied the director. “But
you two older ones keep your eyes away from the camera. Look anywhere
but there.”

There was a rehearsal first and finally the director said the children
did very well.

“All right now, we’ll try it in earnest,” he said. “Come on--camera!”

Ted led his brother and sister through the pasture toward the pony,
which was a tame one and fond of children. The Curlytops had made
friends with him the first day they arrived.

“All right now,” called the director through his megaphone, while the
cameras clicked away. “Put your sister up on the pony’s back, Ted.”

This was done, and then the delighted and shouting Trouble was helped
up by Ted to a seat behind Janet.

“Now you get on, and try to make the pony run!” the director suggested.

Ted managed to scramble up on the back of the little horse, and he did
it very well. But the pony this time seemed to dislike so many on his
back. Instead of running as he was wanted to, the pony kicked up his
heels, and the next thing Ted knew he was falling off.

“Oh, you’re spoiling the picture! You have spoiled it!” cried Janet,
as she glanced back, a funny look on her face, and saw her brother
slipping off.

But the cameras clicked away.




CHAPTER XIV

JAN IN A TRAP


Ted Martin hit the ground with a hard thump. He grunted, for the breath
was knocked out of him. But he wasn’t hurt. He knew that as soon as any
one. At school Ted played football sometimes, and more than once he had
had a harder fall than this.

“Whoa! Whoa!” cried Janet to the pony. She pulled on the reins and the
little animal came to a stop.

“What’s matter?” Trouble wanted to know. “Why don’t horse go on?”

“Because Ted’s fallen off,” explained his sister.

By this time the Curlytop lad had leaped up and was running to get on
the pony. What bothered him more than anything else was the fact that
the camera men, laughing among themselves, were still grinding away at
the cranks of their machines, taking moving pictures.

“Wait! Wait!” cried Ted. “Don’t take me now! Wait until I get on the
pony!”

“That’s all right, Ted!” laughed Mr. Birch. “This is funnier and better
than I thought it would be. Can you fall off again?” he asked, as the
camera men stopped grinding, for Ted was now beside the pony which had
come to a halt, with Janet and Trouble still on its back. “Can you fall
off again, Ted?”

“Can I fall off again?” cried the boy, in surprise. “Do you mean you
want me to fall off on purpose?”

“That’s just what I want,” replied Mr. Birch. “The cameras happened
to snap you when you fell the first time. It made a good scene, and
I’m going to change the story about to fit it in. But if you can do
the same thing again, maybe in a little different way, it will be very
funny. Want to try?”

“Sure I do!” declared Ted. “I’ll be just like one of the funny men in
the pictures, won’t I?”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” agreed Mr. Birch, with a laugh. “Now get ready,”
he went on. “Janet, you guide the pony along and Ted will run up and
try to get on. When he does you make the pony go a little faster as if
you were trying to get away. Then Ted will slip to the ground as he did
before. You aren’t afraid, are you, little man?” he asked Trouble.

“No, I not ’fraid,” was the answer. “I like horsies an’ I like
nellifunts. Once I roded on a nellifunt, I did.”

“Good! Then a pony oughtn’t to frighten you,” chuckled Mr. Birch. “Get
ready now!”

Again the pony ambled forward, with Janet and Trouble on its back, and
Ted ran forward to get on. Janet did just as the director told her to,
and her brother slipped off in a funny fashion.

“That’s fine!” cried Mr. Birch, with a laugh. “You children will be
in the movies some day. It’s a good thing you fell off, Ted, even if
it was accidental at first, for it gave me an idea. That’s the way it
often happens in this sort of work--accidents, many times, make the
best scenes.”

“I thought sure he’d spoiled the picture when he slipped off,”
confessed Janet, when the cameras had stopped grinding.

“I did, too,” admitted Ted. “I’d like to see how I looked when I fell.”

“We’ll let you do that some day,” promised the director. And I might
say that, later in the season when they were back home, the Curlytops
saw this picture, in which they had had a part in making, shown in the
Cresco Theater. Ted beheld himself running after the pony and slipping
from its back in a queer way that made him laugh. All who saw it also
laughed, including Ted’s friends and playmates. As for Trouble, when he
saw himself and Janet on the pony, the little fellow let out a scream
of delight.

So, all in all, though at first it seemed as though their efforts were
going to fail, the initial appearance of the Curlytops in the movies
was quite a success.

Mr. and Mrs. Martin liked it very much at Dawson’s Farm, and only for
the fact that he had planned to make a tour induced the father of the
Curlytops to carry out the idea.

“It would be nice to stay here all summer,” he said to his wife.

“Yes,” she agreed. “But I would like a little change, and so would the
children. I want to get near a lake or a large river for a week or two.”

“Yes, I’d like that myself,” said Mr. Martin. “And if I can manage it
we may take a motor boat trip. We’ll stay here until Mr. Portnay sends
back that box of albums, and then we’ll travel on.”

“You ought to hear from him in a day or so,” said Mrs. Martin.

“I expect to,” replied her husband.

Meanwhile, the Curlytops and Trouble were having a great deal of fun
on the farm. They were allowed to gather eggs and do some of the small
chores about the place, such as feeding the chickens and taking salt to
some sheep in a distant pasture.

Every day some moving pictures were taken, and when this happened not
too far away the children were allowed to watch. Some of the scenes
were filmed several miles distant from the farm, in rocky glens or
in bits of woodland which were needed for the background. On such
occasions the actors and actresses were piled into automobiles, or
those who had horses rode them, and the whole company, cameras and all,
would go to the spot picked out by Mr. Birch.

Once he filmed a fishing scene, and when Mr. Tizzy happened to mention
the trick he had played on Ted, the director had a great idea.

“We’ll do that for the movies!” he cried. “It will be great. Will you
children go through with it for us?”

“I guess so,” said Ted, “if my father thinks it’s all right.”

Mr. Martin gave his consent, and so, for the second time, the Curlytops
faced the camera. Or, rather, they didn’t exactly face it, for if you
will notice in moving pictures, the players hardly ever gaze directly
at you, which means that they don’t peer straight at the lens of the
camera.

But Ted threw in his baited hook and waited for a bite, while the
flip-flop man, hidden in the grass around the bend in the bank,
fastened on a rubber boot. Another camera took close-up views of this
scene, while the first camera was picturing Ted’s surprise when he
pulled up the rubber boot full of water which spurted from the hole in
the toe.

The rest of the funny scene, with the shoe and the tin can, was also
taken, and Trouble was even filmed catching a real fish, much to his
delight. Then Mr. Tizzy did flip-flops while the children were shown
laughing at him after they had discovered the trick. But the funny man
did not again fall down the hole, as that was considered too dangerous.

The next day Mr. Martin received a letter from the movie actor in New
York, saying how sorry Mr. Portnay was to learn that his helper had, by
mistake, picked up the box of albums.

“I am having your box shipped back to you by express,” wrote the
leading man. “I hope you will receive it safely. I may see you before
the summer is over, as my company is going to travel in the same
direction you are taking on your tour.”

“Oh, I hope we do see him again!” exclaimed Janet, when the letter was
talked about one afternoon. “I like him.”

“So do I,” declared Ted. “I wish I could ride a horse as he does, or
like Mr. Weldon.”

“Well, I shall be glad to get back Mr. Cardwell’s albums,” said Mr.
Martin. “As soon as that box comes we’ll travel on again and bid
good-by to the movie folk, at least for a while.”

It was some time later, that same afternoon, that Janet wandered off
by herself to a little wood lot about a mile from the farmhouse. She
wanted to pick some wild flowers, and Ted, whom she asked to come with
her, said he didn’t want to.

But Janet did not mind going alone, for she had often been in these
same woods before. She had been taking care of Trouble nearly all of
that day, and Trouble certainly lived up to his name--he was full of
mischief. Jan was glad to get away from him for a time, dearly as she
loved him.

So she wandered about, picking flowers that grew in the woods and
enjoying the beautiful scenes all about her. She neared a little
gully, down the sides of which grew some blossoms she had not before
noticed--beautiful red flowers.

“Oh, I’m going to get some of them!” she murmured.

Down the pine-needle-covered sides of the gully she scrambled, toward a
big clump of ferns, near which grew the red flowers she so much admired.

The sides of the gully were steeper than Janet realized, and she was
going faster than she thought--so fast, in fact, that when she reached
the clump of ferns she couldn’t stop. Right through them she had to
run, and, before she knew it, she saw that just behind them, hidden in
a growth of tangled bushes, was what seemed to be a large box.

It was a box one end of which was open. Before Janet had time to wonder
what such a big box was doing out there in the woods, and before she
could stop herself, she had run right into it, through the opening.

“I wonder what this is?” thought the little girl. “It has such a funny
smell--like wild animals in the circus!”

There was a clicking sound and the big box, which Janet was now inside
of, began to tremble. Then came a jar and a thud, and it suddenly grew
dark.

“Oh!” gasped Janet.

She whirled about, but too late!

Behind her, the opening was closed. The sliding end of the box
trap--for such it was--had dropped into place, falling shut, and making
poor Janet a prisoner.

“Oh, I’m in a trap!” she cried. “In a wild animal trap! How am I ever
going to get out?”




CHAPTER XV

THE BOX COMES BACK


Janet Martin was frightened--very much so, though not so much but what
she kept her wits about her and looked around the strange prison in
which she found herself.

At first, when the sliding door in the end of the box trap had fallen,
closing the only way out, it had been very dark. But in a few moments
Jan was able to look about her, and she noticed that near the top of
the box there were openings which let in light and air. The openings
were merely holes, not large enough for a cat or dog to get through, to
say nothing of a girl like Janet.

The box was about six feet wide, almost as long, and quite as high, so
there was plenty of room for Janet to stand up in it and walk about.

“It would make a nice play-house,” she thought to herself.

But she did not feel at all like playing now. All she wanted to do was
to get out of this box trap prison. So well had it been concealed in
the bushes back of the clump of ferns that Jan had not noticed it at
all until she had entered.

“I guess a wild animal would do the same thing,” thought Janet. “He’d
run right in here and be caught. I must have jiggled something that
made the door slide down. And I guess there’s been a wild animal in
here not long ago. It smells so.”

On the floor of the trap were dried leaves and grass; and the whole
place smelled like the inside of the animal tent at a circus, a queer,
wild smell which most of you know, I am sure.

“But if there was a wild animal in here, how did he get out?” thought
the little girl, who, now that her eyes were accustomed to the
semi-darkness, could see about her quite plainly. “If he got out, maybe
I can.”

She pushed against the sides of the box as hard as she could and she
pounded with her little fists, but the box seemed very solid. Then she
tried to raise the sliding door that had dropped shut behind her as
soon as she entered the trap. But though this door rattled and moved a
little in the grooves in which it slid up and down, Jan could not raise
it. It seemed to be fastened in place.

“Maybe the wild animal that was caught here didn’t get out,” thought
the little Curlytop girl. “Maybe Mr. Dawson had to come and let it out;
or maybe some of the movie people. I guess that was it--they caught a
moving picture animal in this trap, and now they’ve caught me and I
can’t get out!”

Janet cried a little as she thought of this. It would soon be dark, she
feared, and she did not want to stay in the trap all night.

“I know what I’ll do,” thought Janet, as she dried her tears, for she
knew crying did no good. “I’ll yell as loud as I can. I’ll call and
shout and somebody will hear me and come and let me out. Maybe Ted will
come, or that funny flip-flop man.”

Having thus made up her mind, Janet began to shout and call. Her voice
sounded strange and hollow in the box trap. She wondered how far it
would carry. She hoped they might hear her down at the farmhouse, but
she hardly thought this possible.

Then a new terror came to poor Janet. She began to think of the wild
animal that had been in the trap.

“Maybe it was a bear,” she whispered to herself. “And maybe he might
hear me yelling and come to see me. I wouldn’t like that. But, anyhow,
he couldn’t get in, since I can’t get out.”

For the first time Janet was glad the trap was firmly closed. True, she
couldn’t get out, but then, no wild animal could get in.

After Janet had called as loudly as she could for some time and no one
had answered, she began to feel tired. So she sat down in a corner of
the box trap, on the soft dried grass and leaves.

“Oh, dear! I wish some one would come and get me out!” she sighed.

It was about this time that Mrs. Martin began to inquire for Janet. The
little girl had told her mother about going to the “wood lot,” as Mr.
Dawson called it, to pick flowers.

“But it’s time she was back,” Mrs. Martin said to her husband. “It will
soon be evening.”

“I’ll go after her!” offered Ted, who had just come back from a distant
pasture, having been there with one of the hired men to salt the
sheep. Every so often lumps of coarse, rock salt were put in boxes in
the fields where the sheep roamed. Sheep, and most other animals, like
a bit of salt now and then. It keeps them healthy.

“All right, Teddy,” said his mother. “I wish you would go after Janet.
She’s probably all right, but she has forgotten it is getting late.
Very likely she has found more flowers than she expected and she wants
to get a big bouquet.”

“I come, too!” offered Trouble, as he saw his brother starting away.

“No, you stay here,” objected Mrs. Martin, with a laugh. “We don’t want
you getting lost.”

“I’ll soon be back,” Ted called to William.

The Curlytop lad well knew the path to the wood lot, for he and his
sister had trod it many times since coming to Dawson’s Farm. And now
running and now walking fast, Ted was soon on the edge of the clump of
trees. He looked about, but did not see any signs of his sister.

“Maybe she started back another way,” he told himself.

But he decided to give a good look around in the woods, and when he had
done so and had not yet caught a glimpse of Janet picking flowers, Ted
began to feel worried.

“Guess I’ll give a yell and see if she answers,” he said to himself. So
he called: “Janet! Janet! Oh, Jan! where are you?”

Ted paused for a reply, but none came.

Then he called again, and listened. About him he heard only the rustle
of the wind in the trees, the whisperings of the bushes, the tinkle of
a distant waterfall and the songs of birds.

“I wonder where she is?” thought the boy.

Taking a long breath, he gave the loudest shout of which he was
capable. It made him red in the face. Then he listened.

At last he heard an answer.

“Ted! Oh, Ted! Come and get me out! I’m in a trap!”

It was Janet’s voice, beyond a doubt, but such a strange voice--and
faint and far away. Ted remembered once when his sister had been shut
in the preserve closet down the cellar at home in Cresco. Her voice
then had sounded just as it did now.

“But there isn’t any cellar here,” thought Ted. Once more he called:
“Where are you? I can’t see you!”

“I’m shut up in a box trap!” answered Janet. “It’s by a big clump of
ferns down in a little hollow.”

Ted at that moment was standing on the edge of the gully into which
Janet had run to get the red flowers. And, looking down, Ted saw where
the ferns had been broken and bent to one side as his sister pushed
through them. He also saw the top of the box hidden among the bushes.

“All right! I’m coming, Jan!” cried Ted, as he scrambled down the steep
sides.

Janet had been roused from a half slumber by the call of her brother’s
voice and had answered him. Thus he had found her.

But when he stood in front of the box trap, Ted was a bit puzzled as to
how Janet had gotten in and how he was going to get her out.

“How does this thing work?” he called to his sister, through the wooden
sides. “How’d you get in?”

“I ran in when the door was open. I ran in before I knew what it was,”
answered Janet. “Then the door dropped shut. I guess I must have
jiggled something.”

“I guess you did,” answered Ted. “Now I wonder if I can get this door
open! I’ve got to pry it up with a long stick if I can find one.”

Luckily, the Curlytop lad discovered just what was needed--a long tree
branch, sharp on one end, like a wedge. This wedge he put under the
edge of the sliding door and pried it up. As the door raised a little,
Ted, holding it in that position with one hand on the long stick, while
Janet helped from the inside, thrust a stone beneath the door. There
was a crack wide enough for Janet to thrust out her hand.

“But I can’t crawl out through that crack,” she said.

“I know it,” answered her brother. “I’ll lift it up higher.”

This he did, a foot or so at a time, putting more stones and finally
upright sticks beneath the wooden slide, until it was raised high
enough for Janet to crawl out.

“Oh, I’m so glad you came!” she cried to her brother.

“So’m I,” he said. “But what made you go in there?”

“I didn’t know it was a trap,” explained the little girl. “I saw some
red flowers and I ran to pick them and before I knew it I was in the
box, and I must have jiggled something for the door fell shut behind
me and I couldn’t get out.”

“I guess it’s a wild animal trap, all right,” Ted remarked. “It smells
so,” and he sniffed the air.

“Do you think they catch bears here?” asked Janet.

“Maybe,” assented Ted.

“Then let’s run home,” suggested his sister, for it was now getting
dusk in the woods, though it was lighter out in the open.

Ted took out the sticks and stones from beneath the door, letting it
drop into place again.

“So nobody else will be caught,” he explained.

Then he and his sister hurried back to the farmhouse.

“Say, now, that’s too bad!” exclaimed Mr. Birch, the movie director,
when he heard what had happened. “We did have some wild animals in that
box, but they were foxes, not bears. And we didn’t trap the foxes--we
just held them in that box so we could let them run out when we wanted
to take moving pictures of them.

“We hid the box in the bushes so it wouldn’t show in the picture, and
the door was pulled up by a long rope. After we filmed the foxes some
of the men must have left the door open, taking off the ropes. So it
was turned into a regular trap, though we didn’t intend it as such.

“The door thus left propped up, when Janet went in she must have
‘jiggled’ it, as she says, so it dropped into place. I’m mighty sorry
about it, little girl!”

“Oh, I don’t mind, as long as I got out before dark,” laughed Jan. “But
I was scared for a little while.”

“I’ll see that it doesn’t happen again,” declared the director. “We
have no further use for the box, since we have made the fox films, so
I’ll have it taken away.”

A few days later most of the pictures intended to be filmed at Dawson’s
Farm had been taken, and the company prepared to move on to the next
location. Already some of the cowboys and other men and women connected
with the company had left.

One last scene taken was where Mr. Tizzy, the funny flip-flop man,
pretended to be a cowboy, riding a horse to lasso a pig. It was a
lively affair. The animal used was not the savage boar that had nearly
hurt Trouble, but a more gentle pig.

The Curlytops and their father and mother, as well as the Dawson
household, laughed until the tears ran out of their eyes at the funny
antics of Mr. Tizzy and the no less funny actions of the pig.

At last the flip-flop man lassoed the squealing pig, which, however,
dragged the man off his horse and pulled him around the lot. And of
all this the clicking cameras took many pictures which, later, made
thousands of persons laugh.

It was this same afternoon that an express package came for Mr. Martin.
It was a wooden box well wrapped in paper.

“What is it, Daddy? Oh, what is it?” cried Janet, dancing up and down
in excitement.

“Oh, let him look first, Jan,” admonished Teddy.

“Ah, the album box has come back!” said the father of the Curlytops.
“Now I won’t have to tell Mr. Cardwell it is missing. We can take it on
the tour with us.”

He tore open one end of the paper wrapping, disclosing the red, shining
wooden box.

“No need to take off all the paper,” he said. “It is well packed
and I’ll leave it so and put it in the car. We’ll travel on again
to-morrow, Curlytops!”

Ted and Janet were glad of this, though they liked it at the farm. But
children are always glad of a change, I suppose.

So Mr. Martin put the wrapped box in his car. If he had only taken off
all the paper and had looked more closely inside, there would have been
a different ending to this story.




CHAPTER XVI

ON AGAIN


When Mrs. Martin called Janet the next morning, to tell the Curlytop
girl to get up, dress and have breakfast, ready to start touring again,
Janet, with her eyes still closed, began to call:

“Let me out! Let me out! Oh, don’t let the bears come in!”

This awakened Trouble, and he wanted to know what the matter was.

“I guess Janet thinks she is back in the box trap again,” said Mrs.
Martin, with a smile. “Wake up, my dear! Wake up,” she went on, giving
her daughter a gentle shake. “You’re all right, Janet.”

“Oh! Oh!” gasped the little girl, as she opened her eyes. She was
plainly surprised to find herself safe in bed in the room with her
mother and Trouble. “I--I thought I was in the box trap and a bear was
trying to come in with me,” she said.

“I thought that was it,” replied her mother. “It was quite an adventure
for you, but don’t think any more about it.”

And Janet tried not to.

“I’m sorry to see you folks go,” Mr. Dawson said to Mr. Martin, when
the Curlytop family was at breakfast. “The old farm will be a lonesome
place with you and the movie people leaving. The last of them will go
to-day, too.”

“We have enjoyed it here,” said Mrs. Martin.

“We’ll come back again,” promised Trouble, as he finished the last of
his boiled egg and drank the glass of milk. “I like it here a lot.”

“I’m glad you do, my dear,” said motherly Mrs. Dawson.

The big touring car was brought around to the side porch, and into it
the Martin family baggage was piled. Mr. Martin made sure that the box
Mr. Portnay had sent from New York was in a safe place.

“I hope nothing more happens to that box before I deliver it to Mr.
Cardwell in Bentville,” said Ted’s father, with a sigh of relief as he
put the small chest under some robes. “If I had known all the anxiety
it was going to give us, I’d never have promised to deliver it for my
neighbor,” he told Mr. Dawson.

“Well, when you have a lot of worry it’s best to get it over with,”
said the farmer. “Be sure and stop off to see us when you come this way
again.”

“We will,” promised Mrs. Martin.

Then the Curlytops were off again on their summer touring trip. More
adventures lay ahead of them.

“Where are we going now, Daddy?” asked Janet, as they rode along a
pleasant country highway.

“The next big place at which we expect to stop is called Evenham,” was
the answer. “But we won’t be there before to-morrow or next day.”

“Where do you expect to stop to-night?” asked Mrs. Martin.

“What would you say to camping out?” her husband wanted to know.

“In the tent?” cried Ted.

“Oh, what fun!” echoed Jan.

“I goin’ to make a campfire!” declared Trouble.

“We’ll see about that,” his father answered. “Yes, if your mother
thinks well of it, we can stop in some good place, rig the tent up to
the side of the car, and stay there all night,” Mr. Martin went on to
Ted and Janet. “It’s going to be a warm, pleasant night.”

“And can we cook a meal?” Ted wanted to know. “It isn’t like camping
out if you don’t cook your own meal.”

“Yes, we can do that, too,” said Mrs. Martin, who liked camp life and
roughing it almost as much as did the Curlytops.

So it was decided, and in the next town they stopped to purchase some
bacon, coffee and other things they could cook over their alcohol
stoves. They carried two small stoves.

About noon the auto was rolling along a quiet country road, and,
finding a lane which did not seem to be much traveled, Mr. Martin
turned off on that to be out of the way of traffic while lunch was
being got ready.

Then such a good time as the Curlytops had, and Trouble also!

For they prepared a meal out in the open, and the table that was set
was the running-board of the car, papers being spread on it for a cloth.

“Oh, I just love it here! Don’t you, Ted?” murmured Janet, her mouth
half filled with part of a peanut butter sandwich.

“It’s dandy!” Ted exclaimed, as he reached for another slice of bacon,
for Mrs. Martin had fried some in a little pan over the stove which
burned solid chunks of alcohol. And such a wonderful odor as that bacon
gave off in the woods! It was worth going miles just to get a whiff of
it.

After the meal Mr. and Mrs. Martin strolled about in the woods while
the children played near by. The radiator of the car was filled with
fresh water from a clear, bubbling spring, and then the touring party
started on again.

“We must be looking for a good place to make our night camp,” Mrs.
Martin said, later in the afternoon. “We don’t have to go on to any
certain place, so if we find a good spot we might as well stop there
and begin to put up the tent. We want to get everything in readiness
before dark.”

“That’s right,” agreed her husband. “So keep your eyes open, children.”

Ted and Janet did, with the result that they pointed out several more
or less good spots for a night camp. There were objections to most of
these, however. But at last Mrs. Martin spied what seemed to all of
them to be a delightful place. It was in a meadow, on the edge of a
clump of woods, and there was a spring of water near by. It is always
wise to camp near water.

“This seems all right,” agreed Mr. Martin, as he drove the auto into
the glade. “And there aren’t any neighbors.”

He spoke truly, for there was not a house in sight. It was a beautiful
spot, very quiet and restful.

“Not even a cow,” said Janet.

Ted helped his father get the portable tent out and attach it to the
sides of the car while Mrs. Martin prepared the evening meal. There
were folding cots which, when spread out, made comfortable little beds.

It was arranged that Trouble and Janet would sleep on the seats of
the auto, with the side curtains put up so they would be snug and
comfortable. And on cots, under the extended tent, Ted, his mother and
his father would pass the night.

Supper was eaten with keen appetites, and then the Martin family sat
about in the beautiful evening glow, singing songs and telling stories.
They saw no signs of life, no near-by farmers happened along, and not
so much as one car passed up or down the road.

The frogs in a distant pond began to croak as night fell, and pretty
soon Mrs. Martin noticed that Trouble’s eyes were closing.

“Bedtime!” she announced, and though Ted and Janet declared they
weren’t a bit sleepy, their parents said they had better “turn in.”

“We’ll get an early start in the morning,” said Mr. Martin.

Trouble was asleep almost as soon as he had been tucked in on the
comfortable auto seat, and Janet was not far behind him in journeying
to slumberland.

But to Ted, out in the tent with his father and his mother, sleep did
not come so quickly. The little boy pretended he was a cowboy, sleeping
out on the plains, with a big herd of cattle near by.

Perhaps his lively thoughts kept Ted awake. At any rate, something did;
but at last he, too, closed his eyes and was soon fast asleep.

Just how long it was afterward he did not know. But he was suddenly
awakened by feeling something touch him on the side. It was as though
some one had “punched him in the ribs,” Ted said afterward.

The little fellow opened his eyes and murmured:

“Is it morning, Mother?”

He imagined it was his mother rousing him by shaking him, as she
sometimes did.

His mother did not answer. Then Teddy saw that the tent was dark. The
sun was not streaming in. But through a crack the lad caught sight of a
distant star. He knew it was still night.

But something had awakened him by touching him on the side. He raised
himself on his elbow and listened. He could tell, by the deep, regular
breathing of his father and mother that they were sleeping soundly on
their cots.

Then from the outside of the tent something reached in and gave Teddy
such a blow that he was knocked back on his cot.




CHAPTER XVII

ALONG THE RIVER


For a moment or two the Curlytop lad was so surprised, as well as a
little frightened, that he lay quietly, not moving nor saying a word.
Then he knew he must do something about it. Never would it do to let
some strange man, as Ted supposed this to be, come into the tent and
take Mr. Martin’s money, or perhaps the box of valuable photograph
albums.

“Maybe it’s kidnapers after William!” was one of the wild thoughts that
flashed into the mind of the lad. He was glad then that William was
sleeping in the auto with Janet.

But in a moment or two Ted recovered the breath that had been knocked
out of him by the blow that had sent him back on his cot, and he raised
himself again. He could see more plainly now, for the side of the tent
near his cot had become unfastened.

Whatever or whoever it was that had thrust Teddy back had loosened some
of the tent fastenings, and through this opening the little boy could
see the stars more plainly now.

Teddy could also see something else. This was a large object, with a
mouth, a big nose, and great eyes, and, what was worse than this, Teddy
caught sight of two spreading horns.

Then it was that the Curlytop lad let out a yell that awakened every
one in the temporary camp--awakened even Trouble and Janet who were
sleeping very soundly.

“Oh, Daddy! Mother!” yelled Teddy. “There’s a big animal with horns
coming into the tent. Look!”

The head of the beast was now well within the tent, and it leaned right
over Ted’s cot. But you can be sure the little lad was not there. No,
indeed! He had rolled off on the other side, falling to the grassy
ground.

But his frightened shout had awakened his father and mother, and the
first thing Mr. Martin did was to thrust his hand beneath his pillow
and get his flashlight. This little electric torch Mr. Martin always
kept near him at night, and it was useful in more ways than one.

Snapping on the switch now, he threw a small but brilliant beam of
light over toward Ted’s cot. At first he could not see the boy, and
wondering what the noise was all about Mr. Martin asked:

“Where are you, Ted?”

“Here I am,” came the answer, and Janet’s brother arose from the ground
where he had thrown himself.

“What in the world are you doing there?” asked his mother, who was
sitting up on her cot. “Did you have nightmare? Were you walking in
your sleep?”

“No, I wasn’t walking in my sleep,” replied Teddy. “But I gave a jump
and I fell out of bed.”

“What for?” asked his father, for he saw nothing to be alarmed about.
And the reason was that the horned head had withdrawn itself out of the
hole through which it had been thrust.

“What for? That’s what for! Look!” cried Teddy, and he pointed just as
the big head was thrust in again--the head with the large mouth and the
big eyes, to say nothing of the horns.

Mrs. Martin stared as if she could hardly believe what she saw. She
gave a gasp of surprise. Teddy, too, gasped, but no longer in fright.
For now he saw what it was that had thrust its head into the tent.

Mr. Martin laughed, and well he might. For in the gleam of the electric
flashlight they were looking at the calm features of a big cow that,
with her head thrust into the tent, was quietly chewing her cud,
leaning over the cot from which Ted had leaped in such a hurry.

“Oh, my!” cried Janet, who looked over the side of the auto into the
tent to which it was attached. Then Trouble looked and he cried:

“Oh, a cow! A cow! Is it morning an’ did the cow come to bring us milk?”

“Well, not exactly; though it looks that way,” said Mr. Martin, with
another laugh. “Was it this cow that frightened you, Teddy?”

“Yes, sir, I--I guess so,” replied the lad. “I felt something poke me
in the ribs, and I woke up, and then the tent side sort of flew open
and this big head came poking in and I didn’t know what it was, so I
rolled off my cot on the other side.”

“Which was a wise thing to do, seeing that you couldn’t very well tell
in the dark what was after you,” said his mother.

“It might have been a bear,” said Janet. “I’m glad it wasn’t.”

“So am I,” added Mrs. Martin.

“Would a bear eat peanuts like a nellifunt?” Trouble wanted to know.

“I guess a bear will eat almost anything,” said Mr. Martin, as he
slipped on his shoes. “I think I’d better go out and tie this wandering
cow to a tree,” he said. “Or else she’ll be back just as soon as we get
to sleep, bothering us again. For that’s what she is--a wandering cow.
She was probably tethered out for the night and broke loose. She must
have come to pay us a visit.”

“Well, some fresh milk for the morning coffee would be very welcome,”
remarked Mrs. Martin. “But I’m not going to milk a cow in the middle of
the night. Fasten her well, Dick, so she won’t get loose again.”

“I will,” answered Mr. Martin.

The cow was very gentle and tame. She probably did not intend to
frighten Teddy by thrusting her horns against the tent, poking him
in the ribs and afterward thrusting her head inside. It was all an
accident.

Mr. Martin found a rope that was fastened around the animal’s neck, and
soon led her well away from the camp, tying her to a tree. Then he came
back to the little tent and soon the place was quiet again, and all the
Martins slept soundly until morning.

Getting breakfast was lots of fun, and they had fresh milk, after all.
For while Mrs. Martin was making coffee a farm boy came strolling
along, looking for the lost cow. When he heard what had happened and
saw the creature tied to a tree, he milked her, Mrs. Martin giving him
a pail for this purpose.

“It’s only fair to give you some milk after the fright the cow gave
you,” said the farm lad, with a grin. “Where you folks going?” he
asked, as he looked with eager eyes at the auto and the tent fastened
to it.

“Oh, we’re just touring around,” Teddy answered. “I guess we’ll go up
the river to-day.”

He had heard his father say they might do that, for they were near
a large stream alongside of which wound a good road leading into a
pleasant country with great stretches of woodland.

After breakfast, at which Trouble drank with glee some milk from the
“night cow,” as he called her, preparations were made for a trip up the
river.

The tent was taken down and folded into a small space, as were the
folding cots. Then, once more, the Curlytops were on their way. They
soon reached the river road, and Mr. Martin was glad to find it in good
condition.

“This will take us many miles on our way,” he said.

All that morning they traveled, stopping at noon in a little glade of
trees to cook and eat lunch. They were ready to go on again when Mr.
Martin discovered that one of the tires was flat.

“There’s a leak in that inner tube,” he told his wife. “I might as well
stop and mend it now and save our spare tire and tube. We might need to
make a change in more of a hurry. I have plenty of time now, so I’ll
stop and mend that leaky inner tube.”

This suited Ted, Janet and Trouble, who were having fun in the woods
and along the bank of the river which ran near by. Mr. Martin jacked
up the car, took off the rim and tire, and, taking the thin, rubber
inner tube from the shoe, proceeded to fasten on a patch.

He finished this work, and then, to make sure the leak was mended, he
took the foot pump and filled the red, inner tube with air as it lay on
the ground.

The tube was well pumped up and Mr. Martin was waiting to see if any
of the air leaked out when a cry from the children on the bank of the
river attracted the attention of father and mother. They looked up and
saw Trouble and the Curlytops standing there and pointing to a small
raft of logs that was slowly floating down the stream.

At one end of the raft was a little cabin, made of slabs of wood with
the bark side out, and from this cabin, or shanty, was coming a curl of
smoke, showing that this was where the lumbermen slept and cooked.

There was a dog on the raft, and when he saw the children he barked
joyfully and wagged his tail. Then, unexpectedly, as the rear of the
raft swung in close to shore, the dog leaped off and a moment later was
frolicking with the Curlytops.

The “lumber dog,” as Trouble called him, seemed to be wild with joy at
being once again on land and near children. He ran up and down, barking
in delight and wagging his tail until it seemed it would come off.

Then, all of a sudden, the dog ran toward the blown-up inner tube which
lay on the ground while Mr. Martin waited to see if it leaked any more.

The dog gave one look at what, to him, must have been a strange object,
and then he growled and barked at it.

“Look out! Don’t touch that!” cried Mr. Martin, with a laugh.

He was too late, however, for the dog sprang forward and caught the
tire tube in his mouth. He gripped it savagely, as a dog will do with
something he fears, and a moment later there came a loud noise, as if a
gun had been fired.

Heels over head that dog went toppling back, howling in dismay.




CHAPTER XVIII

TWO BEARS


Several of the lumbermen in charge of the raft of logs came rushing out
of the slab cabin at the sound of the shot--or what they thought was a
shot from a gun.

One of the men, seeing the dog, rushed to the edge of the raft and
cried:

“Who shot Spot?”

“Nobody shot him!” laughed the steersman, who was chuckling so with
mirth that he let go of the long sweep that was used to guide the raft.
“Leastways, if he’s shot he shot himself! Ho! Ho!”

“Shot himself! What do you mean?” asked one of the lumbermen.

The Curlytops, also, did not understand what had happened. But Mr.
Martin, looking at the inner tube of his tire which was now quite flat,
knew what had taken place.

“Yep, Spot shot himself!” laughed the steersman. “He bit into that
blown-up auto tire on the shore and made a hole in it. He punctured
it, and the air popped out like a gun, right in his face. I guess Spot
thought he was shot, anyhow.”

“It did sound like a gun,” remarked one of the men. “Hi, Spot!” he
called.

With a bark, the dog, his tail between his legs in fright, raced along
the shore and gave a leap which carried him across the water between
the raft and the bank and landed him on the logs. Then he ran inside
the cabin and hid himself.

The steersman guided the log raft against the bank, thus bringing it to
a stop, and he jumped ashore.

“I’m right sorry, sir, that our dog punctured your tire,” he said.

“Oh, that’s all right,” replied Mr. Martin, with a smile. “It’s easily
mended again. We aren’t fussy about dogs--we have one at home.”

“That’s good,” murmured the lumberman. “Some folks don’t like dogs, but
they’re a heap of company, I say. I reckon Spot must have thought your
auto tire was a big, red bologna sausage, all ready for him to eat,
and he wanted to take a bite out of it.”

“He might have thought that,” said Mr. Martin. “His sharp teeth didn’t
take long to put a hole in the tube. And it certainly shot off like a
gun.”

“He doesn’t know much about auto tires--this dog of ours,” said the
steersman. “I reckon he never saw a red blowed-up tire on the ground
before.”

“And he’ll never want to see another, I reckon!” added a big lumberman
in high boots. “He sure was a scared dog.”

“Won’t he come out again and play with us?” Trouble wanted to know.

“Maybe I can coax him out,” said one of the men.

After some urging, Spot was induced to leave the cabin, where he had
been cowering under a bunk. He whined and seemed still afraid, but
when the Curlytops had coaxed him ashore and romped about with him, he
regained his spirits and began to bark and leap about.

“Don’t put that tube on the ground again after you get it mended,”
said Mrs. Martin to her husband, with a laugh, as she saw him at work,
cementing another patch on the place where Spot’s sharp teeth had gone
through the rubber.

“No, indeed!” he agreed.

And when the tube had been mended again Mr. Martin hung it over the
rear of the car to dry. It held the air when he tested it, and,
slipping it inside the shoe, he pumped it up fully and soon had the rim
and tire back on the car.

By this time the raft had been worked out from shore and was ready to
go on again.

“Here, Spot!” called the steersman.

The dog seemed to want to remain on shore and have fun with the
Curlytops, but he knew his master’s voice and, with a little whine and
bark of farewell, he jumped on the moving raft and went on down the
river.

“Good-by!” called Trouble, waving his hand to the dog. And Spot waved
his tail in answer.

“Where did the raft come from?” asked Ted, for he had seen his father
talking to the men while waiting for the second tire patch to dry.

“The trees were cut in the woods, quite a distance up the river,”
explained Mr. Martin. “They were floated down from the lumber camp, a
few miles up.”

“Could we go to the lumber camp?” asked Ted. “I’d like to see it.”

“I’d like to see it, too,” added Janet. “We had fun in a lumber camp
once.”

“There isn’t much going on in a lumber camp in the summer time,”
explained their father. “Winter is the busy season there, for the logs
are cut and hauled through the woods to the edge of the water that is
to float them to the mill.”

“How can the water float them to the mill in winter when the rivers and
lakes are frozen?” asked Ted.

“That’s just it--they don’t float the logs down in the winter,” his
father explained. “They pile them up near the river and wait for
spring to come when the snow and ice melts and makes the water very
high--higher than at any other time of the year. It is on this high
water that the logs are floated down.

“However, there is some little work being done in this lumber camp now,
the men said. They are cleaning up the logs left over from the spring
freshet run, and this raft was one of that sort. I suppose we might
stop off at this lumber camp, if your mother thinks it would be all
right,” said Mr. Martin, looking at his wife.

“Do whatever you like,” she said, with a smile. “We are touring around
to give the Curlytops a good time, and we might as well stop at the
lumber camp as anywhere else.”

So it was decided, and after making sure nothing had been left behind,
the auto party went on again.

Mr. Martin expected to reach the lumber camp that evening, and he knew
he would be welcome there with his family, to spend the night, for the
men on the raft had told him so. They could sleep in one of the log
cabins, the steersman said, since only a few of the wood-choppers were
in the camp now.

But the river road, which had been very good at first, soon became so
rough that the auto had to be driven slowly, and not as good time could
be made. Also the distance was farther than Mr. Martin thought, or at
least farther than the men on the raft had told him.

When the evening shadows began to fall they were still traveling along,
with no signs of the lumber camp in sight.

“I guess we shall have to camp out again to-night alongside the road,”
remarked Mr. Martin, as he scanned the highway ahead of him and saw no
sign of a house.

“That’ll be fun!” declared Ted.

“Maybe a horse will visit you to-night instead of a cow,” his sister
said.

“I don’t want either one,” declared the lad.

Mr. Martin drove the auto on for another mile or two and then, coming
to a place he thought would make a good camp--an open space near a
spring--he stopped and the work of making camp for the night was begun.

The tent was stretched out from the side of the auto and the folding
cots put beneath the shelter. As before, Janet and Trouble would sleep
in the auto itself.

Mrs. Martin got the supper over the alcohol stoves, which, though
small, gave good heat. Ted and Janet gathered wood, for their father
had said they might make a campfire and sit about it before going to
bed.

When the meal was finished Ted was allowed to light the fire. The
children sat about it on smooth stumps, pretending they were early
settlers living in the wilderness.

“It’s just like the Pilgrims,” said Janet, who was fond of history.
“Only there aren’t any wild Indians or wild animals to come after us,”
she added.

“Yes, that’s the only difference,” agreed Ted.

“They is some wild animals,” said Trouble, who was sitting near his
mother. He suddenly arose and looked off toward the forest. “They is
some wild animals here.”

“Oh, no, there aren’t, Trouble!” declared Ted.

“Yes, they is!” insisted his little brother. “They is two bears! I see
them! Here they come!”

He pointed across the open glade, and the Curlytops, looking, saw, to
their great astonishment, two bears shuffling their way toward them!

“Oh! Oh!” screamed Janet. “Oh, look at the bears!”




CHAPTER XIX

THE LUMBER CAMP


Mr. Martin, who had been busy making sure that everything about the
camp was snug and secure for the night, did not at first glimpse the
bears. But he heard what Janet exclaimed and called to her:

“I wouldn’t pretend so hard if I were you, Jan, especially about bears
at night. You might scare Trouble.”

“But, Daddy!” cried Janet, as she ran toward him, “there _are_ bears!
_Real_ ones! And Trouble saw them first.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mr. Martin, emerging from behind the auto, where
he was making sure the tent flaps were fast.

“Yes, here are two bears, Dick!” said his wife. “And they’re coming
right for us! We’d certainly better do something!”

“I’ll do something!” cried Ted, picking up a blazing brand. “I’ll scare
’em with this!”

“No! No! You mustn’t!” objected his mother.

“Bears are afraid of fire!” stated Ted.

“These don’t seem to be,” observed Janet. “They’re coming right for us!”

She had turned, on her way to join her father, and she saw the shaggy
creatures still shuffling along. By this time Mr. Martin had reached
the open place and he had a sight of the bears.

“Bless my stars!” cried the father of the Curlytops. “Who would have
thought to find bears here? But they must be tame bears!”

“I certainly hope so!” exclaimed his wife.

“They must be!” said her husband again. “Wild bears would run at the
sight of us--not come nearer. Some lumberman must have caught these two
when they were small, and he’s tamed them. They aren’t much more yet
than two-year-old cubs. I believe they’re coming to see if they can
find something to eat.”

“Oh, if they’re tame bears maybe they’ll do tricks!” cried Ted.

“Maybe they’ll eat peanuts like nellifunts!” added Trouble.

“Well, you aren’t going to feed these bears peanuts!” decided his
mother, catching the little fellow up in her arms and stepping back
toward the auto with him.

“Oh, look! They’re eating!” suddenly cried Ted, pointing.

Surely enough, the two bears that had been shuffling along in the
peculiar way bears have, had now come to a stop some little distance
away from the campfire and began sniffing along the ground.

Suddenly one of them seemed to find some dainty, for he picked it up.
And an instant later the other, with a sort of squealing growl, tried
to knock whatever it was from the mouth of the first bear.

“They’re quarreling, just like two boys! Oh, they must be tame bears!”
decided Mrs. Martin, for the shaggy chaps seemed to have no interest
except in each other or in what they could find on the ground.

“What is it, Daddy, they’re fighting about?” asked Janet, for now the
two bears were wrestling, standing up on their hind legs, and each
trying to throw the other. Whatever the first bear had found had been
knocked from him by the second bear and had fallen to the ground. Now
they were struggling to see which should have it.

“It’s my snandwich that I dropped,” explained Trouble. “I was over by
there and I dropped a snandwich (he always called them that) and the
bears are eating my snandwich.”

“I guess that’s right!” agreed Mr. Martin.

As the two bears wrestled, more in fun than in anger it seemed, the one
who had knocked the sandwich from the one that first found it, dealt
his companion such a blow as to send him staggering off against a tree.
Then the second bear pounced on Trouble’s lost sandwich and soon ate it.

The first bear seemed to take it all good-naturedly and went sniffing
for more tidbits that might have been tossed away or dropped by the
campers.

“Oh, aren’t they cute!” exclaimed Jan, for by this time it was evident
that the bears would do no harm. They came to eat--not to run the
Curlytops off.

“I’d like to know whose they are,” said Teddy.

“And I hope they don’t stay here all night,” added Mrs. Martin. “I
don’t want to go to sleep, knowing a bear--no matter how friendly he
is--may poke his head in on me at any moment.”

“I’ll see if I can drive them away,” offered Mr. Martin.

“No, don’t do that!” begged his wife, clutching him by the arm. “They
might turn on you and scratch you.”

“I don’t believe they will,” said her husband. “As you say, we don’t
want to go to sleep with bears roaming around loose, even if they are
tame bears.”

“Maybe they’ll go away themselves if we give them enough to eat,”
suggested Janet.

“Huh, that’s just the way to make ’em stay around here!” declared Ted.
“They’ll stay as long as you feed ’em--like a stray dog.”

It was evident that something must be done, for the two bears, having
picked up all the scraps they could find outside the camp, were now
approaching closer. They stood up and sniffed hungrily, moving their
snouts about in a peculiar way. Nor did they appear to be afraid of the
fire, on which Ted piled more wood.

“I wish their keeper would come and take them away,” said Mrs. Martin.

Then, as if in answer to her wish, a man came running out of the
forest--a lumberman, he seemed, with big boots on--and in his hands he
carried chains that rattled and clanked. At the sound of the rattling
chains the bears turned, like boys caught in a jam closet, and,
dropping to all fours, would have run into the woods, except that the
man shouted:

“No, you don’t, Jim! Come back here, Jack, you little rascal! Come
here, I say!”

The bears paused, and then, as the man ran toward them and again
shouted, they turned about and walked slowly back to him. In an instant
he had snapped one end of the chains he carried into collars they wore
about their necks.

“Hope my pets didn’t scare you folks,” said the man, as he playfully
pulled the little short ears of his shaggy charges. “Jim and Jack are
as gentle as lambs, but you’ve got to know how to treat ’em. Hope they
didn’t frighten you.”

“They didn’t--exactly,” said Mr. Martin. “We were a bit surprised, at
first, but the bears seemed to be content to pick up scraps about the
place.”

“That’s what they love--picking up scraps of food,” said the lumberman.

“Are they your pets?” asked Janet.

“Yes, little girl. I’ve had ’em ever since they were little bits of
cubs. Some one shot the old bear and I found these two, like puppies,
whimpering on their dead mother. I brought them to my camp, raised them
on a bottle until they were old enough to eat, and I’ve kept ’em ever
since. This evening they got away, as they often do, and wandered off,
so I had to take after ’em.”

“Are you camping around here?” asked Mr. Martin.

“Yes, in a way,” was the answer. “I’m not camping for fun, as you folks
are. It’s business with me. I’m manager of a lumber camp over in the
woods.”

“Oh, yours is the camp we have been looking for!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin.

“You’ve been looking for me?” echoed the man, who gave his name as Pat
Teeter.

“We met some lumbermen on a raft going down the river,” explained Mr.
Martin, telling about the dog who bit the auto tire. “They said you
might let us inspect your camp.”

“Sure, I will. We’ll be glad to have you visit us!” declared Mr.
Teeter. “There aren’t many men in camp now, and they’ll be glad of
company. We’re over in the woods about three miles from here.”

“I’m afraid that’s rather too far to go to-night,” objected Mrs.
Martin. “And we have things all ready here.”

“Then come over the first thing in the morning,” urged Mr. Teeter.
“I’ll go back now, with my runaway bears. We’ll expect you in the
morning.”

“Will your bears do tricks?” asked Ted, as the shaggy creatures on the
ends of the chains prepared to follow their keeper.

“Oh, yes. I’ll show you to-morrow,” was the answer. “Come over to
breakfast, if you like.”

“Thank you, but I think it will be best to come over directly after
breakfast,” answered Mrs. Martin.

Mr. Teeter disappeared in the woods with his two tame bears, and the
Curlytops were quite delighted, talking of the fun they would have in
the lumber camp the next day.

“I only hope those bears don’t get loose again in the night and poke
their noses in our tent as Ted’s cow did,” said Mrs. Martin, as they
made ready for bed.

“I don’t believe they will,” said her husband. “Mr. Teeter will be
sure to chain them up well.”

“If a bear comes I would like to ride on his back!” stated Trouble.
“Once I did ride on a nellifunt’s back. But I would like a bear ride,
too.”

“Well, maybe you’ll get it!” laughed Janet, as she cuddled him in her
arms.

In spite of what her husband had said about the bears being well
secured, Mrs. Martin, several times in the night, awakened, thinking
she heard the shaggy cubs shuffling along through the forest.

But nothing like this occurred, and morning came without anything
having happened in the night. Breakfast was served and eaten, the
things straightened up and put back in place, and off to the lumber
camp started the Curlytops.

“There it is!” cried Ted, a little later, as they drove along the river
road. He pointed to a cluster of log cabins in the woods, cabins set
down in the midst of a clearing.

“Yes, I guess this is the lumber camp all right,” assented his father.

“I see the two bears!” added Janet, pointing to the cubs, chained at
the rear of one of the log cabins.

“Well, this will give us a new set of adventures--stopping in a lumber
camp,” said Mr. Martin, as he guided the car over the not very smooth
road that led up to the cluster of cabins.

At that moment, from down the road in the other direction, came some
strange yells, shouts and cries:

“Yip! Yip! Yippie!” was yelled, and then followed more strange noises.

“What do you imagine that can be?” asked Mrs. Martin, wonderingly,
of her husband, while several dogs in the lumber camp began to bark
excitedly.




CHAPTER XX

A SMASH


Mr. Martin for a time thought there must be some sort of fight or
other kind of trouble among the lumbermen to cause all this noise. The
lumbermen, he knew, were, some of them, rough characters, and he did
not wish the Curlytops and Trouble to see any fighting or quarreling
among them.

The children, however, were excited and curious. They looked toward the
bend in the road whence the noise came, and a moment later Janet cried
out in delight:

“Oh, it’s the movie actors! See, there’s Mr. Weldon!”

“That’s right--the cowboys!” added her brother. “I wonder what they are
doing here!”

“They probably came to take some pictures in the lumber camp,” said Mr.
Martin.

But taking pictures seemed very far from the thoughts of the movie
actors--at least, for the time being. They were intent on having a good
time, for they were laughing among themselves and many of the men were
giving voice to that “yi-yippy” yell which sounded so wild.

“I guess they’ve just finished some hard work,” said Mrs. Martin, as
she laughed at some of the antics of the riders. “They’re like boys out
of school.”

So it proved, for when Ned Weldon and some others of the men who had
been friendly with the Martin family while at Dawson’s Farm, saw the
family, they rode up and renewed their friendship, and also told why
they had come here.

“We had to have a lumber camp location for this part of the film,”
explained Mr. Birch, the director. “So we came here.”

“But we didn’t expect to find you here,” added Mr. Weldon, as he made
his horse prance on its hind legs, much to the amusement of Trouble.

“We didn’t expect to come here,” stated Mr. Martin. “But when Mr.
Teeter invited us we thought it would give the children something new
to see for their vacation tour.”

“And they’s bears, too!” exclaimed Trouble.

“I guess you mean elephants, don’t you?” asked Mr. Weldon, who had more
than once laughed at the little fellow’s pronunciation of the name.

“No, not nellifunts--bears,” insisted Trouble. “They’s over there,” and
he pointed to the two tame bruins, chained to a tree. The movie actors
had not yet seen the bears, it appeared.

But Mr. Birch had no sooner looked toward the cubs than he gave a cry
of delight and said:

“Just what we want! You remember that scene, Weldon, where you go into
the old cabin?”

“Yes, I remember that,” answered the cowboy actor.

“Well, I’ve been trying to think of something funny that could happen
there. The bears will be the very thing! We’ll put them in the cabin,
and you go in. Then the bears chase you out. It will be very funny.”

“Funny for the bears, maybe, but not for me!” exclaimed Mr. Weldon. “Do
you think I’m going into a cabin with a couple of bears?”

“Why, sure you are,” replied the director.

“Well, sure I am not!” cried the cowboy. “I won’t do such a thing! Do
you think I want to be clawed by a bear and have my clothes torn?” and
he made such a funny face that the Curlytops laughed.

But Trouble solved the problem by saying:

“They is tame bears. They won’t hurt you, Mr. Weldon, and they eats
peanuts like nellifunts.”

“Oh, if they’re tame bears, that’s another thing,” said the movie
actor. “But I want to be sure they are tame.”

“Yes, they are,” said Mr. Martin. “The bears came to our camp last
night. We thought they were wild, but they soon proved to be tame. Mr.
Teeter has raised them from little cubs.”

“Just the thing for us, then,” said Mr. Birch. “We’ll have those bears
filmed to-morrow. It will make a funny scene, Weldon, with you climbing
out of a cabin window chased by bears.”

“All right--I’ll go through with it,” said the cowboy with a sigh and
another funny face which made the Curlytops laugh. “But if they tear
my clothes you’ll have to buy me a new suit.”

“I will,” promised the movie director.

By this time the moving picture actors and actresses had quieted down
and were getting ready to take their parts in the film. They were to
remain in the lumber camp several days, and the Curlytops were glad of
this, for they liked to see the work being done.

Mr. Birch hurried off to arrange with the tamer of the bears about
using the animals in a scene with Mr. Weldon. The latter remained to
talk to the Martins.

“Is Mr. Portnay here?” asked Mr. Martin. “I don’t see anything of him.”

“No, he doesn’t take any part in this section of the film,” answered
the cowboy. “But we expect him to join us in a few days. Did you get
back your box of albums that his man took by mistake?”

“Yes. I have the box here in the car,” answered the father of the
Curlytops. “We expect to reach Bentville soon, and then I will turn the
old books and pictures over to Mr. Cardwell. I shall be glad to get rid
of them, for I am always afraid something is going to happen to them.”

One of the lumbermen came along then to say that Mr. Martin and his
family could occupy one of the cabins in the woods while they were in
the camp.

“It’s only a rough shack,” he said; “but it’s the best we have.”

“This will do very nicely,” said Mrs. Martin, when they had driven over
to it. “Cows can’t poke their horns in, at any rate.”

“No, ma’am, we haven’t any cows here,” said the lumberman, with such a
puzzled look on his face that Mrs. Martin laughed and explained about
the cow that tried to enter the tent while Ted was asleep.

The movie folk were distributed around the camp in the different
cabins, and soon the place quieted down. This, as I have said, was not
the busy season at the lumber camp in the woods, and only a few of the
men were there. Because of this, many of the cabins were vacant, which
gave the movie people and the Curlytops plenty of room.

The remainder of the day Ted and his sister, taking Trouble with them,
watched the movie actors at work. Many short scenes were filmed, but
the children were more interested in watching Mr. Weldon practice, or
go through, his part with the tame bears.

At first the actor was a bit timid when with the shaggy creatures. But
after he had seen Ted and Janet feed them lumps of sugar, Mr. Weldon
got courage enough to let them eat from his hand. After that it was
easy, and he and the two cubs were soon on friendly terms.

“Now we’ll try how it goes when they chase you out of the cabin,”
suggested the director.

“But they’re so friendly they won’t chase me,” said Mr. Weldon.

“If you have some bread and molasses with you they will,” said Mr.
Teeter. “They’ll go anywhere to get bread and molasses. Just have some
of that with you when you play your part. Hold it out to the bears and
then pull it away. They’ll chase you from here to the end of Crystal
Lake to get the sweet stuff.”

So that was tried. One of the cabins in the open part of the woods was
picked out as the scene in the picture.

The bears were put inside, and then Mr. Weldon got ready to go through
his part. In his pocket he had some slices of bread covered with
molasses, which the lumber camp cook had given him. The bread was
wrapped in waxed paper so it would not make the actor’s pocket sticky.

The idea in this part of the film story was that Mr. Weldon was to
enter the cabin, thinking it held a man whom he wanted to catch. So he
approached the place on tiptoe. But no sooner had he entered, than the
bears, who had been anxious to come out, rushed at him. They smelled
the bread and molasses in Mr. Weldon’s pocket. There was no need to
hold it out to them.

“Now run!” cried Mr. Birch, while the cameras clicked.

There was no need to tell Mr. Weldon to do this. He took one look at
the bears, hungry for bread and molasses, and away he rushed. After him
lumbered the cubs--not angry, just keen to get the sweets.

“That’s good! Fine! Couldn’t be better!” cried Mr. Birch.

Finally the bears chased Mr. Weldon so closely that, tame as they were,
he feared they might claw him in their eagerness. So he climbed a tree
and dropped the bread and molasses down to the shaggy fellows.

This was all they wanted, and they stopped to lick up the molasses,
thus ending the scene.

“That was great!” cried the director.

“Glad of it,” said Mr. Weldon, as he came down from the tree after the
bears had been led away. “If it had been spoiled I wouldn’t have done
it over again. It was too exciting.”

But there was no need to take the bear scene over again, as sometimes
happens when movies are being filmed. It was all right from the first
click of the cameras.

Other scenes were taken the next day in the lumber camp, and in some
the Curlytops had small parts, much to their delight. They liked it in
the woods, and Mrs. Martin was glad to remain a few days in one spot
and have the shelter of a cabin in which to sleep.

Mr. Birch decided that as long as he was in a lumber camp he had better
take some scenes of chopping down trees, and this was arranged for.
Then, as his company was one producing comedies, he wanted something
funny and decided to have a man up in a tree that was being chopped
down.

One of the lumbermen volunteered to take this part, as he said it had
really happened to him once. He jumped out of the falling tree into
another standing near by, and so was not hurt.

“I can do the same thing again,” he said.

This scene took place on the edge of the clearing in the lumber camp,
where the light was good. As the company carried no powerful electric
lights with them, they had to depend on the sun, and in the depths of
the woods there was not light enough for taking good pictures.

After some funny antics, the lumberman climbed the tree. Then another
man began to chop it down. It did not take long, for the lumbermen know
how to fell a tree in a few minutes. And as the big pine began to sway
toward the earth, the trunk being almost cut through, Mr. Birch cried:

“Jump now!”

The man jumped, a camera filming him as he leaped from the falling tree
to one standing near it. Then down to the earth crashed the tall pine.

There was a shout of dismay from some of the movie people standing off
to one side.

“I hope no one was hurt,” said Mrs. Martin.

Mr. Teeter came running up through the cloud of dust caused by the fall
of the tree.

“There’s been a smash,” he said.

“A smash?” repeated Mr. Martin.

“Yes. That tree didn’t fall just the way it should, and it smashed down
on your auto.”

“Oh, is our car smashed?” cried Ted.

“Not all of it, but one wheel is,” said a lumberman. “I’m afraid you
Curlytops can’t continue your tour. I’m very sorry.”




CHAPTER XXI

ABOARD THE MOTOR BOAT


Nothing could, have been more of a disappointment to the Curlytops just
then than to hear they could not keep on touring around. They were
having such fun they did not want it to stop. But if they had no auto
to go in, they would have to return home--and the trip wasn’t half
finished!

“And how are we going to take those albums to Mr. Cardwell?” said Teddy.

“Let’s go and see how badly the car is damaged,” suggested Mr. Martin.
“Perhaps it can be repaired so we can go on.”

“It will need a new wheel,” answered the lumberman. “I think one can be
sent on from the factory, or the nearest supply house, but it will take
several days. It’s too bad!”

“It couldn’t have been helped, I suppose,” said Mr. Martin, as, with
his wife and children, he walked toward his car. “I shouldn’t have
left it there.”

“The tree was taller than any of us thought,” said the lumberman. “The
end of it stuck out farther than we calculated, and it was just the tip
of it that hit your front wheel.”

It did not take more than a glance from Mr. Martin to tell him that he
could not continue touring in his auto--at least, until a new wheel was
secured.

“If only the tire or the rim had been broken, we could have managed,”
he said. “For we carry a spare tire and rim. But I haven’t an extra
wheel.”

“We’ll get you one,” offered Mr. Birch. “It was the fault of our
company that your wheel was broken, and we’ll pay for a new one. I’ll
telegraph and have one sent on from Blissville at once. There is a
branch agency there that keeps parts for your car.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Mr. Martin. “It can’t be helped now. I am
glad no one was hurt. There is no great hurry about our tour--a few
days’ wait will not matter.”

But it would take more than a few days to supply a new wheel for the
one broken on the auto, it was found out. The agency was out of wheels
for the kind of car Mr. Martin owned, and it would be necessary to
send to Michigan for one. This would take about two weeks, stated the
telegram that came in reply to the one Mr. Birch had sent.

“Do you think we want to stay in this lumber camp two weeks more?”
asked Mrs. Martin of her husband.

“Hardly,” he answered. “And yet I don’t see how we can continue our
tour without a car.”

“Couldn’t we go on horseback?” asked Ted. “When we were at Uncle
Frank’s ranch we rode on ponies.”

“I’d like a pony,” Janet said.

“The ponies might be all right for you two Curlytops and for me,” said
their father. “But I hardly think your mother and Trouble could manage
it. No, we had best either go back home or wait here for a new wheel.”

Mr. Birch was saying how sorry he was that the plans of the family had
thus been spoiled when Mr. Teeter suddenly asked:

“How about a motor boat?”

“A motor boat?” asked Mr. Martin. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” explained the lumberman, “how would you like to keep on
touring in a motor craft? I suppose cruising would be a better word
than touring, when you speak of a boat. But how about it?”

“A boat would be dandy fun!” exclaimed Ted.

“I think so, too,” added his sister.

“But it would take us as long to arrange to hire a boat as it would to
wait for a new wheel,” objected Mr. Martin. “Besides, how could we get
to Bentville by boat?”

“Very easily,” answered Mr. Teeter. “Rockaway River, which is the
stream we float our logs down, flows from Crystal Lake, about fifty
miles up country. You could cruise along the river, and so get to the
lake. Then you cross the lake and you’re right at Bentville.”

“Yes, I suppose we could do that,” admitted Mr. Martin, after thinking
it over. “But what about a boat? Where could we get one?”

“Take mine,” offered the lumberman. “I have a very good little cabin
motor boat down in the river. You can put your things from the auto
into the boat and keep on going.”

“Oh, Daddy, let’s do it!” cried Ted.

“Please!” added Janet.

“I like a boat on the water,” crooned Trouble. “Nellifunts, they squirt
water out of they trunks.”

“What do you say, Ruth?” asked Mr. Martin of his wife.

“It sounds very nice,” she answered, with a smile. “But I should like
to see the boat. Is there room on it for all of us?”

“Plenty,” said Mr. Teeter. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

It wasn’t far from the lumber camp to the Rockaway River, and at a
small dock was tied the gasoline motor boat, _Pine Tree_. This was a
very good name, the Curlytops thought, for a boat owned by a lumberman.

“Say, she’s a dandy!” exclaimed Ted, as he went on board.

“I like this better than an auto,” said Janet. “There’s more room to
move about.”

This was true. Though the _Pine Tree_ was not an especially large motor
boat, there was much more room on her than in even the largest touring
car. There was a cabin in which they could eat, and at night the table
folded up out of the way and bunks, like those in sleeping cars, could
be let down. A sliding partition made the large cabin into two small
ones. One could be used by Ted and his father, while the other would do
for Mrs. Martin, Janet and William.

“Well, do you think you want to go cruising for a while instead of
autoing?” asked the lumberman.

“Yes, indeed, thank you,” said Mrs. Martin. “I’m almost glad, now, that
the wheel was broken. This is a lovely little boat.”

So it was arranged. The baggage from the Martin car was put aboard the
_Pine Tree_, and the lockers and pantry were stocked with food. Things
could be cooked on a gasoline stove in the little galley, or kitchen.

“Don’t forget the albums,” said Mrs. Martin to her husband, when the
boat was being made ready. “We don’t want to leave them behind.”

“No, indeed,” he answered. “I have them here.”

He stowed away, on board the _Pine Tree_, the box of old albums which
had been intrusted to him. They were still wrapped up as they had come
by express from Mr. Portnay in New York. The movie actor, it was said
by Mr. Birch, had been ill and would not resume work for a time.
Then he expected to go West to complete the film, part of which the
Curlytops had seen made.

“All aboard!” called Mr. Martin, on the morning when a fresh start was
to be made in the touring plans of the Curlytops. “All aboard!”

The lumbermen and the movie people had said good-by, wishing the
Curlytops and their family all sorts of good luck. Mr. Teeter arranged
for the Martins to come back in the boat and leave it at the camp when
they had cruised as much as they wished.

“By that time I’ll have a new wheel on your auto,” he told Mr. Martin,
“and you can drive home in the car.”

“That’s a good idea,” said the father of the Curlytops.

You can imagine how delighted Ted, Janet and Trouble were as they sat
on the little deck of the _Pine Tree_ and looked at the scenery along
the Rockaway River, up which they were puffing their way to reach
Crystal Lake. Mr. Martin knew how to run and steer a motor boat. In
quiet stretches of the river he allowed Ted and Janet to hold the wheel
for a time.

“It’s just lovely here,” said Mrs. Martin with a happy sigh as she
leaned back against a cushion. “It’s much nicer than the auto.”

Mr. Martin thought so, too, and while of course he did not like to have
wheels smashed, still some good came out of it. Up the winding river
went the _Pine Tree_, new scenes presenting themselves every minute.

They did not have to go ashore to spend the night, nor even stop for
meals, which were cooked on board. Mrs. Martin took charge in the
galley, and Ted and Janet gave whoops of delight when she blew a
whistle which meant that the first lunch was ready.

They did not speed along, for, as before, Mr. Martin was in no hurry,
but they took their time, and that afternoon, as they were passing a
large town, they tied up at a wharf and went ashore, as Mrs. Martin
wanted to buy some food which they had not been able to put on board at
the lumber camp.

“We aren’t going to travel in the night, are we?” asked Ted of his
father, as they puffed along late that afternoon, the cupboard having
been well stocked at the last stopping place.

“No, I hardly think so,” he answered. “I don’t know this river well
enough to navigate it after dark. When it gets a little later we’ll
anchor for the night, and go on in the morning.”

“Are we going to sleep on this boat?” Trouble wanted to know.

“Of course,” answered Ted. “Do you think you’re going to sleep in the
water?”

“I don’t see any beds,” remarked the little fellow, looking about.

“Well, I don’t wonder at that,” laughed his mother. “The beds are
folded up, my dear. They come down like this.”

As I have told you, the berths in the _Pine Tree_ were made to fold up
during the day like those in a sleeping car. A turn of a handle and a
pull brought down the beds out of recesses in the cabin walls. There
were blankets, sheets and pillows stored in each berth, just as on a
sleeper.

“Oh, I like these little beds!” cried Trouble, as he saw them come down.

“It’s a dandy boat,” declared Ted.

When it was dark Mr. Martin ran the boat near shore and dropped the
anchor. Then, after a while, they all “turned in,” as a sailor would
say--that is, they went to bed.

Janet suddenly awakened in the night--how late it was she didn’t
know--but something disturbed her. A low light, operated by a storage
battery, gleamed in the tiny cabin, and Janet looked across to the bunk
where her mother was sleeping, with Trouble on the berth below her.

“Mother! Mother!” called Jan, in a low voice, so as not to awaken her
small brother.

“Yes, dear, what is it?” asked Mrs. Martin. She was a light sleeper,
accustomed to being awakened many times in the night by her children.

“I think,” said Janet in a whisper, “somebody is running away with the
_Pine Tree_.”

“Running away with the _Pine Tree_! Do you mean with this boat?” asked
Mrs. Martin.

“Yes, Mother! We’re moving! Don’t you feel it?”




CHAPTER XXII

ON THE LAKE


Mrs. Martin sat up in her berth and listened. She could hear no sound
except the gentle lapping of the water against the sides of the _Pine
Tree_. There had been no motion when she went to sleep, for the river
did not flow swiftly at this point. But something had awakened Janet.

“Don’t you feel it, Mother?” asked the little Curlytop girl. “Don’t you
feel us moving?”

“Yes, I certainly do,” Mrs. Martin said, after sitting still for a few
seconds. “We are certainly moving. I’ll call your father.”

“Do you think anything is going to happen?” asked Janet, greatly
excited by this time.

“No, I think we are dragging our anchor--that’s all,” answered her
mother. “It must be seen to.”

Putting on her dressing gown and slippers, Mrs. Martin went to the
other cabin where her husband was sleeping with Ted. A touch on his
shoulder awakened Mr. Martin.

“What is it?” he asked sleepily. “Have we reached Pittsburgh yet,
porter?”

“You aren’t in a sleeping car, traveling to Pittsburgh,” laughed his
wife. In his earlier days Mr. Martin had been a traveling salesman and
covered many thousands of miles in sleeping cars.

“What is it, then?” he asked, sitting up. By the gleam of the little
light he saw his wife standing near his berth.

“The boat is moving,” she told him.

“Moving?”

“Yes. Don’t you feel it? Janet felt it first and called me. I think we
are dragging our anchor.”

“So we are!” exclaimed Mr. Martin, as he felt the sensation of the boat
moving. “But it isn’t anything serious. I’ll drop it in a new place
where it will hold better.”

As he was putting on a coat and trousers to go out on the little
forward deck, where the anchor rope was caught around a cleat, Ted
awakened.

“What’s the matter?” he wanted to know. “I’ll go up and help you,
Daddy,” he offered, when told of the trouble.

“All right--come along,” agreed his father. “You had better go back to
bed,” Mr. Martin suggested to his wife.

“Yes, I’ll stay with Trouble and Janet,” she agreed.

It was dark up on deck, for the _Pine Tree_ was anchored in the river
away from any town or city. The stars alone dispelled the blackness of
the night.

But Mr. Martin had a powerful flashlight with him, and, switching this
on, he held it over the side, focusing the electric rays on the water.
Then he noticed something that made him exclaim in wonder.

“What’s the matter?” asked Ted.

“Why, we’re going upstream instead of down,” was the answer. “If
we were dragging our anchor we would float down the river with the
current. We wouldn’t go up as we do when the motor is running.”

“The motor isn’t running now,” said Ted, and it was not--the engine
having been shut off when they anchored for the night. “But what makes
us move, Daddy?”

“Something has hold of our anchor rope and is pulling us upstream by
it,” said Mr. Martin.

“You mean an alligator?” asked Ted. “Oh, I wish it was daylight! I’d
like to see an alligator!”

“No, not an alligator,” said Mr. Martin, with a smile. “There are none
of those creatures in these waters. But something is towing us all
right.”

“Maybe it’s river pirates,” suggested the Curlytop boy. “You know Mr.
Teeter said river pirates once took this boat.”

“It isn’t pirates,” declared Mr. Martin. “They would have to use a boat
to tow us away and there isn’t a boat in sight. No, something has hold
of our anchor rope beneath the water. See?”

He held the flashlight on the hemp cable. Ted could see where it went
down into the water, and just ahead of it were little ripples such as
are caused when a stick or a rope is dragged through the water.

“What do you suppose it is, Daddy?” asked the lad.

“Some sort of fish, or other water creature, has got caught in our
anchor,” decided Mr. Martin. “It’s towing us.”

“Maybe it’s a big turtle,” said Teddy. “A big mud or snapping turtle.”

“Maybe,” agreed his father. “I’m going to see. Here, Ted, you hold the
flashlight and I’ll haul up on the anchor rope.”

The Curlytop boy focused the rays of the powerful little electric torch
on the rope extending into the water and Mr. Martin, taking hold of the
cable, near the deck cleat around which it was wound, began to pull up.
It was hard work, but finally he managed to get some slack, and then
Ted cried:

“Oh, I see! It’s a big turtle!”

“Yes, so it is,” agreed his father. For he had pulled up enough of
the anchor and rope to show a great snapping turtle with one of his
flippers caught on the rope, just where it was fastened to the “mud
hook,” as sailors sometimes call an anchor.

“Can you pull him on board, Daddy?” asked Teddy.

“I don’t know that I want to,” was his father’s answer. “He looks like
a pretty ugly customer.”

A moment later the turtle gave a wriggle and dropped off into the water
with a splash. Pulling him up had loosened his hold on the anchor rope.
Then Mr. Martin let go the rope, the anchor dropped back to the bottom
of the river and held in the mud, bringing the boat to a stop.

“Now I guess we’re all right,” said Mr. Martin, as he went down with
Ted, who looked to see the turtle rise again, but it did not.

“What was it?” Mrs. Martin wanted to know.

“A big snapping turtle, crawling along on the bottom of the river, got
caught in our anchor and rope,” explained her husband. “He kept right
on crawling, pulled up our anchor from the mud, and swam away.

“He was so powerful that he was able to tow our boat,” went on Mr.
Martin. “It wasn’t hard to do, once he got it started, and being on the
bottom he could get a good hold for his feet, which have claws on them.
When I pulled up the rope I loosened his hold.”

“If we could keep that turtle, and train him, he would pull the boat
for us, and we wouldn’t have to use gasoline,” said Teddy.

“I’m afraid we’d be several years getting where we want to go,” laughed
his father. “A turtle is pretty slow.”

They went back to bed and were not disturbed again that night. In the
morning the Curlytops looked for a sign of the turtle, and even tossed
bits of meat into the river, hoping to tempt him to rise, but he did
not, probably being asleep in the mud.

They traveled on all that day, having a good time aboard the _Pine
Tree_ and late that afternoon they reached the place where the river
flowed out of Crystal Lake.

“To-morrow we’ll cruise across the lake and reach Bentville,” said Mr.
Martin. “Then I’ll deliver the albums and after we spend some time
here, motoring about, we’ll cruise back to the lumber camp and get our
auto, which ought to have a new wheel on by then.”

“This is a big lake,” said Mrs. Martin, looking across it as evening
settled down. “I hope no storms come when we are in the middle.”




CHAPTER XXIII

THE WRONG BOX


Mr. Martin decided to anchor the _Pine Tree_ for the night, rather than
to try to cruise across the large body of water in the darkness. He had
never been on the lake before, though he had directions for reaching
Bentville.

“But this is a good place to stay,” he told his wife, when they had
reached the point where the river flowed out of the lake. “We’ll camp
here.”

“Do you mean go ashore and camp?” asked Teddy.

“Oh, no; we’ll stay on the boat,” his father answered. “It will be
better, I think.”

“Maybe a big turtle will give us a ride again,” suggested Trouble. He
had been told how the queer creature of the mud had towed the motor
boat, and his great regret was that he had not been awakened to see it.

“No, I hardly think a thing like that will happen the second time,”
said Mr. Martin, with a laugh. “It was only by accident that the turtle
got tangled in our anchor rope.”

Then they made ready to spend the night on board the _Pine Tree_. The
anchor was let down but a short distance from shore, the boat being
close to the bank so they could all reach dry land by crossing a small
gangplank which Mr. Martin ran out.

When the boat had been made fast, the Curlytops and Trouble went
ashore, leaving their mother and father to get supper, for Mr. Martin
was helping his wife.

“Don’t go too far, children,” called Mrs. Martin to the three who were
wandering along the shore of Crystal Lake.

“We’ll soon be back,” promised Janet.

“I’m going to see if I can find any apples,” said Teddy.

“You’ll hardly find any apple orchards around here,” said his father.

But the Curlytop boy did. He was walking along ahead of his sister and
small brother when he suddenly saw a group of trees in a green field,
and a second look told Ted they were apple trees.

“Come on,” he cried. “Let’s see if any of the apples are ripe.”

“Maybe we’d better not,” said Janet. “Whoever owns these apples
wouldn’t like us to take any.”

“Nobody owns ’em,” said her brother. “There’s no house around here. I
guess they’re just wild apples and anybody that wants can pick ’em.”

Ted had rather queer ideas, but he meant no wrong, and soon the three
children were under the trees, gathering the fruit. It was just getting
ripe.

Presently Trouble, who seemed to care more about running around than he
did about picking up apples, gave a cry and pointed at something in a
distant field.

“What is it?” asked Janet.

“It’s a man. He’s coming here,” announced the little fellow. “I see a
tramp man.”

“Oh, Ted!” gasped Janet, “what’ll we do?”

“Well, if it’s a tramp we’ll just go back to our boat,” decided the
Curlytop lad. “He won’t dare say a word when he sees father and
mother.”

“Yes, but s’posin’ it’s the man that owns these apples?” went on Jan.

“Well,” and Teddy thought about that a moment, “we can say daddy will
pay him for ’em, and he will. We only took some because we didn’t think
anybody wanted ’em. I’m not afraid.”

“Where’s the man, Trouble? Show me,” Jan told her small brother. “I
don’t see any one.”

“There he is,” and Trouble led Janet to a corner of the fence. It was
from here that he had looked before, coming back to tell the news.

“He’s taking his time getting here,” thought Teddy, munching an apple
and following his sister and brother. Ted decided that if there was to
be a fuss about the apples he might as well have one to eat, anyhow.

“There’s the man,” Trouble said, pointing the individual in question
out to his sister and brother.

Jan noted the ragged flapping coat and the ragged hat set on one side
of the head. Then Ted saw it and gave a howl of laughter.

“Don’t make fun of him!” his sister begged. “The farmer won’t like it,
and he’ll scold us for taking his apples.”

“Farmer!” chuckled Ted. “That isn’t a farmer.”

“Well, tramp then,” went on Janet. “He does look like a tramp.”

“It isn’t a tramp, either,” laughed Ted.

“What is it then?” Janet wanted to know.

“It’s a scarecrow. That must be a field of corn, or something, over
there, and the farmer that owns it has put up a stuffed man to keep the
crows away. Ho! Ho! It’s a scarecrow!”

“How can you tell?” asked Janet.

“’Cause it hasn’t moved since we’ve been looking at it. Here, I’ll show
you!”

Ted caught up a stone and threw it at the ragged figure, the rock
striking it full in the back. There was a sound as when a stone hits a
board fence, and the ragged figure never moved.

“See! I told you!” cried Ted.

“Yes, I guess it is a scarecrow,” admitted Janet. “I’m glad of it. Now
we can take all the apples we like.”

“Yes, it isn’t an apple-scarer,” laughed Teddy.

“But it looks terribly natural,” said Jan, as they turned back to the
orchard. “No wonder Trouble thought it was a man.”

The scarecrow was very well made, and in the dusk of the evening would
have misled almost any one who did not know about it.

“My, you have enough apples for a pie and some sauce,” said Mrs. Martin
when the children reached the boat and had told about the ragged
figure. “I don’t suppose whoever owns the trees will mind our taking a
few apples,” she said to her husband.

“I think not. But to be on the safe side and to be honest I’ll put
twenty-five cents in an envelope and hang it on one of the branches,”
said Mr. Martin, and he did this.

Very likely the farmer who owned the apples was surprised on visiting
his orchard some time later to find the money and the note with it. He
had made a sale where he had not expected to.

The night passed quietly, but toward morning Mrs. Martin was awakened
by the pitching and tossing of the boat. She looked out to find that
the wind was blowing, making the lake very rough.

“Do you think it will be best to start with the wind blowing like
this?” asked Mrs. Martin after breakfast, when the boat was still
tossing some.

“Oh, yes,” her husband answered. “I think the breeze will go down. I
am anxious to get to Bentville and deliver the albums to Mr. Cardwell.
Then we can go about as we please.”

“I think there’s going to be a bad storm,” went on his wife.

“Oh, I guess we’ll get to the other side of the lake before it comes,”
Mr. Martin said.

But they did not. Though the wind went down for a time just as the
anchor was pulled up and a start made, the breeze began to rise again
when they were out in the wide water. The waves began to toss, and the
_Pine Tree_, though a staunch, stout craft, began to pitch about.

“I wish we hadn’t started,” sighed Mrs. Martin.

“Well, now that we have, we might as well keep on,” her husband said.
“In fact, it is safer to go on, heading into the wind as we are, than
it would be to put back.”

“I like it rough,” cried Teddy, holding fast to prevent himself being
bumped about.

“It’s like being on a nellifunt’s back,” declared Trouble. “It goes up
and down and jiggles.”

“It jiggles all right,” said his mother. “It jiggles too much for me.
What’s that, do you suppose?” she said, as a crash sounded in the
cabin. They were all out on deck at the time.

“Something fell,” replied Mr. Martin. “Perhaps you had better go see
what it is. I can’t leave the wheel.”

Mrs. Martin went down, followed by the children. In the cabin they
saw that a pile of valises, which had been stowed in one corner, had
toppled over. With the valises had been placed the box sent back from
New York by Mr. Portnay.

In falling this box had come out of the paper wrapping, and had opened.
And when Mrs. Martin looked at the contents she exclaimed:

“The wrong box! It’s the wrong box!”

“What do you mean--wrong box?” called her husband.

“I mean Mr. Portnay sent you back his make-up box by mistake, and he
has kept the box of albums! Look, here are his false wigs and paints.
This is the wrong box!”




CHAPTER XXIV

TROUBLE’S PUSSY


Mr. Martin, hearing what his wife said, gave a quick look ahead across
the stormy lake. Then, seeing no other boats in his course, he fastened
the steering wheel, so the _Pine Tree_ would keep on in a straight
line, and down into the cabin he hurried. He saw just what the others
had seen--the pile of valises and also the wooden box with the cover
opened.

“It surely is the wrong box!” said the father of the Curlytops. He
noticed a collection of wigs, false beards and mustaches, together with
a number of tubes of colored paint such as actors use whether in the
movies or on the stage.

“Where are Mr. Cardwell’s albums?” Ted asked.

“I suppose they are back in New York in Mr. Portnay’s studio,” said his
father.

“Unless he has discovered his mistake by this time,” suggested Mrs.
Martin, “and has sent the right box on to us at the lumber camp.”

“He wouldn’t know we were at the lumber camp,” said her husband. “We
only stopped there by accident.”

“But Mr. Portnay knows that his company was there, making films,” went
on Mrs. Martin. “And he might think that they could tell where we were.
I say, let’s go back to the lumber camp and see if the right box isn’t
there.”

Mr. Martin thought this over a moment or two, while the Curlytops and
Trouble looked out of small windows, or portholes, in the cabin, noting
how rough the lake was growing. The storm was getting worse, and the
wind was howling loudly.

“There has been a mix-up and mistake about this box of albums from the
start,” said Mr. Martin. “I don’t see how Mr. Portnay could make a
mistake a second time and send us his paints and false wigs in place of
the old books.”

“The boxes look exactly alike,” said Mrs. Martin. “I guess these
movie people are so busy thinking about the parts they are going to
play that they don’t pay any attention to much else. Or perhaps Mr.
Portnay’s man may have caused the mix-up.”

“Well, it’s a mix-up all right,” her husband said. “And I think your
advice, to go back to the lumber camp, is the best thing we can do. As
you say, that movie man may come there or send the box there. We’ll go
back.”

“I’d like to be out of this storm,” went on Mrs. Martin. “It is getting
much worse.”

“Yes,” agreed her husband, “it is. I think I can turn back, though,
with safety if I use care.”

“But if we have the movie man’s things that he puts on his face to make
him look different in pictures, how can he act?” asked Ted.

“I guess he can easily get another make-up box,” replied his father.
“But it is impossible for us to get other Cardwell albums, and the
pictures of the twins, now dead, and the young boy lost at sea. We
simply must get back the right box. So I’ll go up and turn the boat
around. Better hold fast, everybody, for it will be rougher going the
other way.”

“I’ll come up on deck and help you steer,” offered Ted.

“No, Son, you’d better stay below with your mother, and help straighten
up the cabin,” suggested his father. “Pick up the valises and wrap up
that wrong box. Mr. Portnay will want it back, I think.”

The Curlytops helped their mother set things to rights, and then,
indeed, they had to hold on, for the _Pine Tree_ pitched and tossed
in the storm, much as might her namesake in a forest with a big wind
blowing.

Once it almost seemed that the boat was going to turn over, so far did
she tilt to one side. It began to rain, too, and Mr. Martin, up on
deck, had to put on his rubber coat. But he was a good sailor, and knew
how to manage the boat.

In the afternoon, following a hasty meal on cold victuals, for Mrs.
Martin did not want to light the stove in the storm, the boat seemed to
ride easier.

“I guess it’s going to clear off,” said Janet.

But it was not that. Mr. Martin was near shore now, and under the lee
of a big hill, which kept off some of the wind.

When evening came the touring Curlytops and their family were back
where they had started from--the place where the river ran out of the
lake.

“We’ll tie up here for the night, and when morning comes we’ll navigate
down the river,” said Mr. Martin. “We’ll get to the lumber camp more
quickly than we came away from it, for we shall be going downstream
instead of against the current.”

“Suppose the movie people are gone--what then?” asked Ted.

“Well, the men in the lumber camp will know where they went,” answered
his father. “We’ll find them sooner or later, and get back the right
box of albums.”

It was still raining hard, but the wind did not blow so fiercely in the
sheltered place where the _Pine Tree_ was anchored. Jan was glad of
this, for she did not like rough weather.

It was in the middle of the night, when the storm seemed to have
quieted down a bit, that Trouble awakened his mother by calling to her.
Mrs. Martin was ever on the alert for the calls of her children in the
night, and she had formed a habit of answering them when but half
awake herself. Usually it was only a drink that William wanted.

But this time, when Mrs. Martin became aware that he was calling to her
from his little bunk in the sleeping cabin, she did not hear him ask
for water.

“Mommie! Mommie!” murmured the little fellow.

“Yes, dear, what is it?” asked his mother sleepily.

“Why don’t you let the pussy in?” asked Trouble.

“What pussy, Trouble?” she asked, not yet quite awake. “There isn’t any
pussy here. You must be dreaming. Go to sleep again.”

“Yes they is a pussy!” insisted the little fellow, sitting up in his
berth. His mother could see him in the dim little electric light. “They
is a pussy and she’s mewing and she wants to come in out of the rain.
Bring her in, Mommie.”

Mrs. Martin thought Trouble was imagining all this, or that it was part
of a dream. Often he had dreams and went right on with them when he
awoke.

“I’ll get you a drink, and then you can go back to sleep again,” his
mother said, as she got up.

“Pussy wants a drink, too,” declared Trouble. “She wants a drink of
milk. There! Didn’t you hear her mew?”

There came a lull in the storm and, to her surprise, Mrs. Martin heard,
through a porthole opened for ventilation on the leeward side of the
boat, the mewing of a cat.

“Why, Trouble!” she exclaimed, “there _is_ a pussy out in the rain. The
poor thing!”

“It’s my pussy!” declared the little fellow. “Bring her in!”




CHAPTER XXV

THE RIGHT BOX


Hardly stopping to think why Trouble should claim as his the pussy that
was crying in the night, Mrs. Martin started out of the cabin. Her
husband, sleeping in the other cabin with Ted, heard her and asked:

“What’s the matter?”

“Trouble heard a cat crying. It’s out in the rain. He wants me to bring
it in,” his wife answered.

“A cat?” questioned Mr. Martin. Then with a little chuckle he added: “I
hope it isn’t a wildcat.”

“What’s that?” exclaimed Ted, suddenly awakening. “A wildcat? Have we
got a gun to shoot it?”

“Now don’t get excited,” laughed his father. “This is a tame cat, I
guess. I’ll go out and get it.”

Slipping on his rubber coat, for it was still raining, Mr. Martin went
out on deck. Near the porthole, which was open a little way, but not
far enough to allow the cat to enter, was a crying, wet pussy, mewing
pitifully.

“You poor little thing!” exclaimed Mr. Martin, who was as fond of
animals as were his children. “We’ll take care of you. But I wonder how
you got here?”

The _Pine Tree_ was anchored some distance out from shore, and there
was no plank laid out on which the little cat might have crossed.

“I guess she fell into the lake and drifted down until she caught hold
of our anchor rope,” said Mr. Martin, as he brought the drenched pussy
down into the cabin. “She climbed up on the rope and so reached the
deck.”

“The poor little creature,” murmured Mrs. Martin.

“Let me have her--she’s my pussy!” demanded Trouble.

He wanted her in the bunk with him, but his mother said the wet fur of
the pussy would make the sheets damp.

“I’ll dry her off and give her some milk, and then you may have her,
William,” she said.

The little cat, warm and almost dry, was soon purring contentedly in
William’s arms and going to sleep with him, after lapping up some warm
milk, for Mrs. Martin, now that the boat was not pitching and tossing,
had lighted the gasoline stove.

Ted and Jan looked in at the sight of the stray pussy that had come to
their little brother out of the storm.

“Isn’t he cute!” murmured Jan.

“Who?” asked Ted, for she was looking at her little brother and the
cat--both asleep now.

“They’re both cute,” whispered Jan.

The remainder of the night passed quietly, and when morning came the
storm had passed and the river and lake gleamed in the sunshine.

“Now for another tour,” laughed Mr. Martin, as he and Ted hauled up the
anchor. “Back to the lumber camp!”

“And I hope we get the right box,” said Mrs. Martin.

They were going down the river the second day, and expected to reach
the lumber camp that afternoon when, as they turned a bend in the
stream, Ted and his father, who were out on deck, saw a small boat just
ahead of them. There were two little boys in the boat, and as the _Pine
Tree_ came into view the boys stood up and cried:

“Help! Help!”

“What’s the matter?” called Ted.

“Sit down, boys. Sit down!” ordered Mr. Martin. “You’ll upset!”

The little lads sat down, but they continued to cry for aid, and Mrs.
Martin and Jan came out to see what the trouble was.

“I guess they don’t know how to row, or else they’ve lost their oars
and don’t know how to get back where they came from,” said Mr. Martin,
as he slowed the _Pine Tree_ and guided her close to the small,
drifting craft.

His last guess proved correct. The boys were from a summer camp on the
river. They had set out in a boat, thinking they could manage to row,
but they knew little of how to do it. First one oar slipped overboard
and drifted away, and then the other. The little fellows were helpless
on the river, the current of which was carrying them away. So they
shouted for help when they saw the _Pine Tree_.

“I’ll tow them back to camp,” said Mr. Martin.

This he did, and received the thanks of the parents who had begun to
spread an alarm through the camp concerning the missing boys.

This turning back made the Curlytop family a trifle late, and it was
after dark when they reached the dock in the river alongside the lumber
camp.

“Hello, what brings you back so soon?” asked Mr. Teeter, as he came
down with a lantern to see who was tying up at his dock. “I thought
you’d be gone for a week longer.”

“We got the wrong box,” explained Mr. Martin. “Are the movie people
still here?”

“No, they’ve gone,” was the answer. “Left this morning.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin. “How unfortunate. Shall we ever get
those albums back?”

“When I say the movie people have gone, I mean all those have gone who
were here when you were,” went on Mr. Teeter. “But the head man is
here, Harry Portnay--the leading man I believe they call him. He’s here
with a couple of camera men. They’re going to make some pictures of
him alone.”

“Oh, if Mr. Portnay is here, he’s the very one I want to see,” stated
Mr. Martin. “I hope he has the right box.”

“He’s right over in that cabin,” said the lumberman who owned the tame
bears. “I guess he hasn’t gone to bed yet--there’s a light going.”

Mr. Martin, carrying the wrong box, hastened over to the cabin of the
movie actor. Mr. Portnay greeted the visitor, looked at the box the
Curlytops’ father held out, and exclaimed:

“That’s mine!”

“And I guess that’s mine!” exclaimed Mr. Martin, pointing to a box just
like it on the table. “Has that two old photograph albums in it?”

“Yes, it has,” answered the movie actor. “And has the box you have
there some wigs in?”

“It has,” answered Mr. Martin.

“Thank goodness! Now I can go on with my picture. I really need certain
wigs and false whiskers, because I used them earlier in the film, and
it would look strange to see me go into a room with one sort of beard
on and come out with quite another, which might happen. I am glad to
get my own box back again.”

“And I am glad to get back my right box, the one with the albums in
it,” said Mr. Martin, opening the second package and making sure the
Cardwell albums were within.

Then the actor explained how, in the hurry and bustle of getting to New
York and looking after matters there, one of his men had packed and
shipped the wrong box.

“I did not find it out until yesterday when I wanted to get ready to
finish making this picture,” said Mr. Portnay.

“And I did not open the box you shipped me by express, for of course
I thought it was the right one,” said Mr. Martin. “It was a series of
mistakes all around.”

“Well, I’m glad it has ended now,” said the actor.

The Martin family spent the next few days in the lumber camp, watching
pictures being made of Mr. Portnay in his false hair and beard, which
completely changed his appearance. But the making of these pictures was
not as interesting as the taking of those with the cowboys and bears in
them.

“Well,” announced Mr. Martin, a few days later, when Mr. Portnay had
packed his belongings and gone to join his moving picture company, “I
think we had better resume our tour. The new wheel has arrived for the
auto, and we’ll go on in that.”

“Whatever you do, be sure that you have the old albums in the right
box,” cautioned Mrs. Martin.

“I’ll not let them out of my sight again until I deliver them to Mr.
Cardwell,” declared Mr. Martin.

About a week later, after a jolly trip and some adventures, the touring
party reached Bentville and called on Mr. Cardwell.

“I’m glad to see you,” said Reuben, the brother of James Cardwell, who
had sent the albums. “I had a letter from Jim, and he told me you were
bringing these. But I was beginning to think you were lost.”

“The albums nearly were--more than once,” said Mr. Martin. “But I’m
glad you now have them.”

“So am I,” said the old man. “We think a great deal of these pictures,”
and he looked lovingly at the photographs of the twins and of the
sailor boy, lost at sea.

So the summer tour of the Curlytops came to a successful end. They
remained for a time in Bentville, and then started back home, reaching
there safely after some jolly adventures.

“It was the best summer we ever had,” declared Janet.

“Corking good times!” exclaimed Ted.

“But we didn’t see any nellifunts!” lamented Trouble.

“Never mind, maybe we shall next year,” said Janet, with a laugh.


THE END




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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.