The Clockwork Twin Read online

  The Clockwork Twin

  Walter R. Brooks

  Illustrated by Kurt Wiese

  The Overlook Press

  New York

  For Bernice Baumgarten

  CONTENTS

  I The Voyage of the Summerhouse

  II The Shipwreck

  III Escape from Snare Forks

  IV Mr. Bean’s Farm

  V The Clockwork Boy

  VI An Engineer for Bertram

  VII Adoniram’s Uncle Comes for Him

  VIII Bertram Visits Snare Forks

  IX Mr. Boomschmidt Takes a Hand

  X Bertram Wrestles at the Circus

  XI Freddy Becomes a Trustee

  XII The Expedition Sets Out

  XIII The Gypsy Camp

  XIV What Does R Stand For?

  XV Bertram, Byram and Adoniram

  I

  The Voyage of the Summerhouse

  Once there was a boy about your age, and his name was Adoniram R. Smith. When anybody asked him what the R stood for, he would say: “Oh, it’s a silly name and I don’t like it,” and he would never tell. But when anybody asked him how he pronounced his first name, he would say: “Pronounce it to rhyme with ‘Uncle Hiram.’” And I guess that is the best way to tell anybody how to pronounce it.

  He lived in a farmhouse beside a big river with his uncle and aunt, and they were not very nice to him. As soon as he came home from school they made him work until supper time, and when supper was over he had to go right to bed. In the summer when there wasn’t any school, they made him work all day. They acted mad at him all the time, and what seemed to make them maddest was his name. When they wanted him to do anything they would call: “Adoniram! Adoniram!” and it is a pretty long name to call if you do it a hundred times a day. Still, they could have called him Ad or Don, or just “Here, boy!” But they weren’t very bright, and so they never thought of that.

  The river was deep and swift, and at night when it was very still you could hear it chuckling quietly to itself as it hurried by. But in the spring the chuckle grew to an angry roar, and the river rose higher in its banks and sometimes overflowed them, and snatched and tore at hencoops and gates and woodpiles and carried them down with it. And one spring it rose so high that it came into the cellar of the house, and Adoniram could see barns and porches and parts of bridges whirling by on tossing brown water.

  One night they were sitting at supper. It was a warm night, and the windows were open, and the rush and rumble of the river were so loud that they had to shout to make themselves heard. “Pass the butter!” Adoniram’s uncle would bellow; and “Take your elbows off the table!” his aunt would shriek. They seemed just about as cross as usual, so he didn’t think they were worried, although the river was rising.

  “Adoniram!” his uncle roared suddenly.

  “Yes, sir,” shouted Adoniram.

  “Go out and see if the river is any higher,” bawled his uncle.

  So Adoniram left the rest of his supper and went out to look at the stake that his uncle had driven into the ground at the edge of the water to measure its rise.

  The grass that sloped down to the river was covered with swift-sliding, muddy water, and the little summerhouse on the edge of the bank, which in ordinary times stood eight feet above the water, was now a little island. Adoniram looked at it, standing up black against the afterglow, and hoped the river wouldn’t carry it away. And he was just about to turn to look at the stake when he heard a sharp yelp and saw something small and dark scrabbling and splashing in the water and clinging to the summerhouse railing. And then a little voice called: “Help! Help!”

  Adoniram hesitated, but only for a second, though he knew he would get a licking if he didn’t go straight back into the house and report. Then he tore off his shoes and stockings and waded out. The water tugged at his legs, but it was only knee-deep, and he ran up the summerhouse steps, leaned over, and, grabbing a handful of wet fur, pulled a little brown dog up to safety.

  The dog shook himself, sneezed, wagged a two-inch tail, barked twice, and sat down and looked at Adoniram. I don’t know what kind of a dog he was. He had two ears, four legs, a tail, and a nose that was cold when he was well and hot when he had eaten something that disagreed with him. Just a dog.

  “Well, doggy,” said Adoniram.

  The dog got up, barked, wagged his tail, and sat down again.

  “Oh, dear,” said Adoniram. “I thought you could talk. I was sure I heard you call ‘Help!’ Didn’t you, really?”

  The dog scratched his ear, looked doubtfully at the boy for a minute, then said: “Yes. Yes, I did. But don’t tell anybody.”

  “Oh, I won’t tell,” said Adoniram. “But look, doggy—”

  “Georgie’s the name,” said the dog.

  “Oh,” said Adoniram. “Well, look, Georgie. I’ve got to go right straight back into the house, and I can’t take you with me because they’d drive you away. But I’ll take you over to dry land, and then—well, couldn’t you stay around for a few days? In the barn, maybe, where they wouldn’t see you? I’d bring you out bones and things—”

  “Sure, sure,” said Georgie. “A bone, or an old bread crust, or any odds and ends of leftovers—anything but bananas, in fact—”

  “Don’t you like bananas?”

  “I’ll tell you about that another time. But right now I think we ought to be getting out of here, don’t you? If this summerhouse goes—”

  “Oh, we’re all right,” said Adoniram. “The water’ll have to get a lot higher and stronger to carry this away. But I’ve got to get back anyway.” He picked up the dog under his arm and was just feeling under water for the top of the first step, when out of the corner of his eye he saw something huge and black and shapeless bearing down upon them.

  “Look out!” yelped Georgie, and Adoniram had just time to hook an arm tight around a doorpost when the thing, looming as high as a house, swept down and seemed to swallow them. There was a creaking and cracking, twigs whipped across the boy’s face, and the summerhouse rocked, and then with a splitting crash pulled loose from its foundations and was whirled off down the river in the branches of a big pine tree.

  Luckily the summerhouse was wedged tight into the crotch of the tree trunk or it would have tipped over. But after swaying a few times as the trunk bumped along the bank, it swung out into the middle of the stream, and then it sped along down as smoothly and swiftly as a little steamboat. The needles were all about them. After a minute, when he had got over his scare, Adoniram put the dog down and peered out.

  “Oh, dear,” he said. “We’ve come a mile already. I’ll catch it when I get home.”

  “I guess you don’t need to worry about that for a while,” said Georgie.

  “No, I suppose not,” said the boy. “This river gets wider and wider for hundreds of miles. Oh, Georgie, do you suppose we’ll be carried right out into the ocean? And we haven’t got anything to eat, either.”

  “Oh, what do you worry for?” said Georgie. “Why don’t you enjoy the ride?”

  “Enjoy it?” asked Adoniram doubtfully. He wasn’t used to enjoying things, perhaps because he had never had much to enjoy. “Well, maybe you enjoy it, but I certainly don’t. I wish I was back home.”

  Georgie sniffed and said: “Oh, well, go on and worry, then. But don’t spoil my fun.” And he went and sat on the other side of the summerhouse. But in a minute he came back again.

  “Look here, boy,” he said, “we hadn’t ought to quarrel. Specially as you look so much like the boy that owned me. I suppose you haven’t got a brother named Byram R. Jones, have you?”

  “No,” said the boy. “Adoniram R. Smith is my name. I wish I did have a brother.”

  “What’s th
e R stand for?”

  “I won’t ever tell anybody that,” said Adoniram. “It’s a silly name.”

  “Byram wouldn’t tell what his R stood for either,” said Georgie. “That’s funny, isn’t it? You both have a middle name you don’t like, and you look just alike. Oh dear, I wish I could get back to Byram. I don’t know how he’ll get along without me.”

  “Where did you live?” Adoniram asked.

  “In the city. A long way up the river. Byram didn’t have any folks. Except me, that is.”

  “He didn’t have any folks?” exclaimed Adoniram. “Well, but how did you get anything to eat, or a place to sleep, or—”

  “He used to live with some people named Jones,” said the dog, “and I guess he took their name. He didn’t know what his real last name was, he said. But they weren’t good to him, so he ran away. We lived in an old shed down by the railroad. We used to go out on the street together, and I’d turn somersaults and beg and play dead dog—just silly things like that—and then I’d pass his cap, and people would throw money into it. We made enough to buy things to eat, though once all we had for a week was bananas.” Georgie shuddered. “I wouldn’t peel another banana if, I were starving to death!

  “Then this flood came, and our shed was washed away. We were all right until just as we came round the bend above your house. I slipped and fell in. I didn’t dare bark, because Byram would have jumped in after me, and probably we’d both have been drowned. So I swam hard and just managed to get to your summerhouse. Now we’re separated, and I don’t suppose I’ll ever see him again. Byram was an awful smart boy.”

  It was getting lighter now, for the moon had come out from behind a cloud, and it turned the tumbling water to silver. Georgie looked out through an opening in the foliage and watched the lights along the shore swing by and sniffed the cool damp air, and every now and then he called Adoniram’s attention to something. Pretty soon the boy sat down beside him.

  “Isn’t this fun?” said Georgie.

  “Why—yes,” said Adoniram. “Only I can’t help thinking about—”

  “About all the awful things that may happen—is that it?” asked the dog. “Well, why don’t you think about how maybe they won’t happen? Why don’t you think about nice things that may happen? It doesn’t cost any more. Maybe we will be carried out to sea. But then, maybe we’ll be rescued by a warship or an ocean liner, and live on it, and maybe you’ll learn how to run it, and maybe when you grow up you’ll be captain.”

  “Oh, could I?” asked Adoniram.

  “How do I know?” said Georgie. “But one thing’s certain: there are hundreds of boys your age that are going to be sea captains some day and don’t know it. Maybe you’re one of them.”

  Adoniram had never thought about things that way before. But as soon as he began to think about them that way, he began to have a good time. And he and Georgie pretended they were on a ship, and he was captain and Georgie was mate. “Full steam ahead, mate!” he would shout, and Georgie would reply: “Aye, aye, sir!” Then Georgie would call: “Submarine off the port bow, sir!” and perhaps a floating barn would loom up close to them and they would pretend to fire shells at it. And once when they were pretending to shell a shed that was bobbing along beside them, the little building struck a log and flew to pieces as if it really had been struck by a shell, and they shouted and cheered like anything.

  They had been doing this for about an hour when Georgie shouted: “Village off the starboard bow, sir!” Hundreds of lights twinkled on the hillside above the river, and at the edge of the water some motor-boats were pulled up and a lot of men were working under a floodlight. They shouted and barked, but though out where they were the roar of the water did not seem very loud, the men on shore could not hear them, and the summerhouse was so hidden in the leaves that they could not be seen. And they swept on by and pretty soon the lights grew dim in the distance.

  Adoniram was surprised to find that he didn’t much care, really. After all, if they were rescued, he would just have to go back to his uncle and aunt. “This is fun, Georgie,” he said.

  “Look,” said the dog. “What’s that?”

  A small object was coming up behind them, and on top of it was something that moved.

  “Ahoy!” shouted Georgie. “What ship is that?”

  He was answered by a feeble crow.

  “A rooster!” said Adoniram. “Stand by, mate. We’ll rescue him.”

  He caught hold of the rail and leaned far out, but before the hencoop caught up he could see that he wasn’t going to be able to reach it. Then he thought of something and, climbing on the rail, reached up under the roof and hauled down a small coil of fishline with a sinker at one end. There was no hook on it, because his uncle always took the hook off and put it in his hatband so Adoniram couldn’t fish with it. But it was just what Adoniram wanted.

  “Stand by to catch a line!” he shouted, and threw the sinker. The first throw missed, but the second time the sinker caught the rooster in the side, and with a terrified squawk he fell into the river. But he had the presence of mind to grab the line with his beak, and a minute later he was dragged into the summerhouse.

  He ruffled his dripping feathers, shook them, settled them, and said peevishly: “I say, you might have aimed a little more accurately. You nearly sprained my wing.”

  “Say, listen,” said Georgie, “we rescued you from a watery grave and is that what we get for it? Just complaints? Captain, what do you say we heave him back in?”

  “Sorry,” said the rooster; “say no more about it. I dare say you would be annoyed if you’d ridden seventy miles on top of that coop, and whirling around all the time so sometimes you were so dizzy you could hardly hang on. And I’ve got a cold, too, and that water won’t help it.”

  He cleared his throat and tried to crow, but only a faint miserable piping came out that sent Georgie into a fit of laughter. Even Adoniram, who had never really laughed heartily in his life, had to smile.

  “I say, you fellows,” said the rooster indignantly, “this is a bit thick. Not very sporting, what?—to laugh at a fellow because he has a cold.”

  “I’d give an inch off my tail if I could make a noise like that, rooster,” said Georgie. “Oh, don’t get sore; we’re all in the same boat. Ho, that’s a good one, isn’t it?—all in the same boat.”

  “What’s funny about that?” said the rooster. “We are in the same boat, aren’t we?”

  “Sure. That’s what I mean,” said Georgie.

  “Indeed!” said the rooster; “so we’re in the same boat. And it’s funny. Well, really!”

  Adoniram had got out his handkerchief, and now he rubbed the rooster down and got most of the water off him, and then he tucked him under his coat to keep him warm. And pretty soon the rooster went to sleep.

  “We’d better get a little sleep ourselves,” said Georgie. “You might tie that line around us, captain, so we won’t fall overboard in the night.”

  So Adoniram looped the line a few times around his waist and then through the dog’s collar, and fastened it to the railing. Then they lay down on the floor close together. It was warm, and the rush and roar of the water was pleasant and drowsy. Adoniram listened for a while, and watched for a while the black and silver pattern of the moonlit pine boughs, and then he turned over on the other side without disturbing his companions and went to sleep.

  II

  The Shipwreck

  One very bad thing about being a rooster is that you have to get up at sunrise and crow to get the other chickens up. Most roosters don’t realize that the other chickens would get up anyway, and they feel that their job is a pretty important one. So when the rescued rooster poked his head out from under Adoniram’s coat and saw the eastern sky all pink and misty, instead of pulling it back again and taking another nap, as he wanted to, he said: “Oh, my word! I must arouse these sluggards!” And he crawled hastily out and shook himself and hopped up on the summerhouse rail and took a deep breath and�
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  Well, you could hardly say that he crowed. If Cock-a-doodle-doo is the way to write what a regular rooster does when he crows, what this rooster did can only be written as Beep-a-weepy-weep. It was just a thin little trembling pipe. He certainly had a terrible cold.

  But the sound was so queer that it woke Adoniram and Georgie as quickly as if it had been a good loud crow. They sat up, looked around, and then Georgie began to laugh and after a minute Adoniram joined in. They laughed for several minutes while the rooster looked cross. But Adoniram, who didn’t know how to laugh properly, got to coughing. So then the rooster began to laugh, and he went on for some time until Georgie said:

  “Oh, keep still, rooster.”

  “I shall not be silent,” said the rooster huffily, “unless you compel me to by force.”

  “Oh, I can stop you all right,” said the dog. “Where do you expect to get breakfast? There isn’t anything to eat on this boat, you know.”

  “What!” said the rooster, staring at him. “Nothing to eat? You mean to say you’ve lured me on to this—this structure only in order to starve me to death? You’ve rescued me, and now you refuse to offer me nourishment? Why, I never heard of such a thing.”

  “Yes, you have,” said Georgie with a grin. “You just heard of it now.”

  “We’re sorry,” said Adoniram. “But we haven’t got anything to eat either.”

  “Oh, my word,” said the rooster. “Oh, upon my soul!” And he walked away from them to the other side of the summerhouse and stood gloomily peering out through the pine needles at the tossing river, which under the red sunrise looked like a river of red paint.

  “Well, I stopped his laughing all right,” said Georgie, “but I stopped my own, too.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked the boy. “I’m pretty hungry. I only had part of my supper last night. And I’m thirsty, too.”

  “Mustn’t drink the river water,” said Georgie. “It’ll make us sick. Oh well, cheer up. I expect we’ll be rescued before long. We’ve come a long way in the night and I’ve heard that there are some big towns down the river. There are sure to be some boats out looking for people.”