12

Pot Of Paint

THEY WERE STILL at breakfast next day when a motor car drew up in the farmyard with a squeak of brakes and the sudden scrape of locked wheels on the stones.

‘It’s Mother!’ cried Nancy, and jumped up. ‘I bet it means Timothy’s at the station.’

They ran out into the yard. But Mrs Blackett had not come to announce the arrival of the armadillo.

‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘No. Nothing’s come. But look here, Nancy, you’ve got to do something about your Post Office. Hours of delivery … most irregular. … Not fair on the public to ring them up at dawn. …’

‘Dawn?’

‘Five o’clock this morning, Dick’s horrible invention began to do its worst. We did our best to sleep through it, but couldn’t. In the end I had to get up and go down to the pigeon-loft. It’s very pleasant out of doors at that time of the morning, but I’d rather have had my sleep out all the same.’

‘But we sent the pigeon off quite early,’ said Roger.

‘The bell began at five o’clock this morning.’

‘It was that wretched Sappho,’ said Nancy.

‘Perhaps we’d given her too much to eat,’ said Peggy.

‘I did give her some hemp,’ said Titty.

‘Hemp!’ said Nancy. ‘You must never give them hemp before a flight. But I expect she’d have dawdled, anyway.’

‘Oh, Sappho! Sappho!’ said Titty, who was looking into the basket that Mrs Blackett had brought with her.

‘Sappho, indeed,’ said Mrs Blackett. ‘Just idling about and then waking people up at five o’clock.’

‘Good,’ said Roger. ‘You’ve brought her back. So we’ve three pigeons in hand.’

‘Two and a half,’ said Mrs Blackett. ‘I don’t think Sappho ought to count.’

‘She always was undependable,’ said Nancy.

‘Well, don’t use her if you don’t have to. The other two were always better, weren’t they? … Ah, how do you do, Mrs Tyson. I hope they’re not giving you too much trouble. …’

‘So long as there’s no fires, I won’t complain. Fires is what I’m afraid of, with no water coming down the becks and all as dry as tinder. But if they could be more on time at night. … With the farm to run and all, I can’t be waiting about keeping meals ready. …’ And with that, Mrs Tyson made room in the doorway for Mrs Blackett and they went into the farmhouse for a little private talk, leaving the indignant and bothered prospectors in the farmyard.

‘Did you hear that?’ said Nancy. ‘And it isn’t as if we’d lit any. The mates haven’t even had a chance of boiling a kettle. And if only she’d let us do our own cooking, it wouldn’t matter to her how late we were.’

‘It’s jolly unfair,’ said Roger.

‘Look here, Mother,’ said Nancy, when Mrs Blackett came out again, ‘couldn’t you persuade her to let us cook? It’s simply awful having to start home ages before we’re ready.’

But Mrs Blackett would not even try. ‘It would be all very well,’ she said, ‘if there was water anywhere else. But there isn’t, and Mrs Tyson might easily say she wouldn’t have you here at all. I wouldn’t blame her if she did. And as for starting home early, just think how much earlier you’d have to start if you had to come all the way home to Beckfoot. No. I’m afraid you’ll have to make the best of it. And do, please, try to be in time for meals.’

‘If it rains and the beck on the Topps fills up again, it’d be all right for us to camp up there.’

‘I suppose it would,’ said Mrs Blackett. ‘But it doesn’t look much like rain. Well, good luck to you. I’m glad you saw nothing of your rival. …’

‘But we did. Almost as soon as we’d sent off Sappho. He was charging about all over the place. But we fended him off. …’

‘Oh, Nancy!’ said her mother, and looked at Susan.

‘It was quite all right,’ said Titty. ‘He went away of his own accord.’

‘I’m glad of that,’ said Mrs Blackett. ‘But don’t go and get into trouble with strangers. Better keep out of his way.’

Already she was sitting in the driving-seat and racing the engine. ‘And now,’ she said, ‘I must hurry back to my plasterers and painters. You needn’t send a pigeon today. But I’ll expect one tomorrow. Homer or Sophocles. Not Sappho, if you please.’ Rattletrap leapt forward. Mrs Blackett waved a hand, clutched at the wheel with it, missed the gate-post by an inch, and was gone.

‘Homer and Sophocles ought to give Sappho a talking to,’ said Dorothea.

‘They’ll have a chance today,’ said Titty, as she opened the door of the basket and let Sappho join the other pigeons in the big cage.

It was perhaps two hours later, but to Roger, lying in the bracken at the roadside, just opposite the gate to Atkinson Ground, it seemed much more like four. The expedition had been split in half. ‘We can’t keep out of his way,’ Nancy had said, ‘if we don’t know where he is.’ When, after waiting a long time for their sandwiches and thermos flasks, they had at last climbed the wood and come out on the Topps above the Great Wall, they had seen no signs of their rival. John had pointed out that he might have gone off the other way, and it had been decided that Peggy must lead a scouting expedition, while John, Susan, Nancy and Dick went on with the combing of the Topps. Everybody knew that Dick was too absent-minded for scouting, and, as a geologist, he was needed by the prospectors. Nancy would have liked to go scouting down to Atkinson’s herself, but Peggy was the only one of the more experienced scouts who had not been at Mrs Atkinson’s when the pioneers had first learnt that Squashy Hat was lodging there. It would never have done if Mrs Atkinson had recognised them and told Squashy Hat who they were. So Peggy had planted Dorothea with a whistle in a good place well above the Dundale Road, Titty at the point where the road dived down below the wood, and Roger opposite Atkinson’s gate, while she herself had crept through the trees to the Atkinsons’ garden and seen Squashy Hat smoking an after-breakfast pipe. She had come back and signalled this news to Roger. He had signalled it to Titty. She had signalled it to Dorothea, and Dorothea, after whistling to attract their attention, had signalled on the single letter ‘Q’ to let the prospectors know that they could work in peace for the enemy was safely in his earth. Then Peggy had once more gone down through the trees into the enemy’s country, and Roger, for a very long time indeed, had been lying on his stomach looking out across the road between the stalks of the bracken. Fern-like fronds of bracken shaded his head, but the sun scorched his back and two flies seemed to be taking turns in settling on his nose. They were small and black, but, he thought, very brainy for their size. Again and again he had waited with hand poised ready to bat them when they perched. Again and again he had been too late and batted his nose from which a fly had flown just as his hand came down. It was too hot, and batting his nose made him hotter. Besides, he ought to be keeping still, and he changed his plan and let the flies have things their own way and showed how an Indian would behave, stirring not at all, while a fly with cool, sticky, tiny feet, moved up his nose, down it, circled its tip, and walked slowly up one side of it. By squinting he could almost see it, not properly, but bigger than it really was, close under his eye.

How long had Peggy been in sight? Hang that fly. Far down the cart track leading through the trees to Atkinson’s, was a huge old oak tree. Roger could see its wide trunk, just where the cart track bent and disappeared. Only a moment ago, he could have sworn, there was no one there. And yet. … How long had he been squinting at that fly? … Now, clear enough, he could see Peggy, with her back to the tree, facing him, with one hand outstretched, and the other lifted, pointing just about at two o’clock. Q for Squashy Hat. … And then. … Yes. … Down went her left hand and up went her right … straight above her head. D … Danger. Squashy must be leaving the farm. He must be close by. Peggy had dropped flat to the ground in front of that old oak, and was wriggling back into the bushes. She was gone.

Roger, flies forgotten, turned and snaked away from the screen of bracken to a holly bush, behind which it would be safe to stand. From there he looked up the road along the edge of the wood. Was Titty on the look-out for him. She was. You could count on her for that. Q.D. … Roger saw her repeat his signal and vanish to signal it on to Dorothea. A moment later, faint and distant, he heard Dorothea’s whistle. Far out on the Topps the prospectors knew that Squashy Hat was on the move before ever he had left Atkinson’s wood. Good work. Jolly good work. Indians themselves couldn’t have sent the message quicker. And Roger crawled back to his post among the brackens and watched.

Yes. There he was. Roger, peeping through the bracken stalks, looking across the road, saw him coming up the Atkinsons’ cart track. Thin, long-legged, Squashy Hat was swinging along between the ruts. He was close to the gate. He was coming out on the road. He was on the road, within a foot or two of the silent watcher in the bracken. How loud his feet sounded. Hobnailed boots, thought Roger. All the Swallows and Amazons had rubber soles, because, as John had said when he was smaller than Roger was now, ‘You never know when you may get a chance of going aboard somebody’s boat.’ Rubber soles were good for scouting too. Clump, clump, clump, the hobnails rang on the hard road, and between the clumps the sharp tap of an iron-shod walking-stick. Squashy Hat did not seem to mind how much noise he made. Roger shifted a little to see the better. What was he carrying in the other hand? A milk-can? And he had a haversack over one shoulder. Roger wondered whether haversacks that swung at your side were as good as knapsacks that bumped up and down on your back. And there was his hammer, slung in a ring at the side of his haversack. Anybody could see he was a prospector. And talk about squashy hats! Roger had never seen a squashier.

And where was Peggy? Roger looked again down the cart track into Atkinson’s wood. Why didn’t she come along? Nothing to wait for after the enemy had left. Roger expected to see her come out from among the trees. But there was no sign of her. And Squashy Hat would be out of sight in a moment. He was moving with a long, easy stride, not hurrying, but getting fast over the ground. Going uphill, too, thought Roger. … What would happen next? And suddenly he drew in his breath so sharply that it almost turned into a yelp.

Someone, something, had clutched him by the ankle.

‘Shut up,’ hissed Peggy. ‘You’ll give us all away. It’s only me, you blessed gummock.’

‘But I never saw you cross the road,’ said Roger. ‘How did you do it?’

‘Just walked,’ said Peggy. ‘I Indianed a bit so as to get to the road a bit below the gate. Then I only had to wait till I could hear old Squashy pounding up the hill. Then I slipped across and Indianed along this side just for practice.’

‘I didn’t mind, really,’ said Roger.

‘Lucky he didn’t hear you,’ said Peggy. ‘I say. Did you see what he’s carrying?’

‘Milk-can,’ said Roger.

‘It isn’t,’ said Peggy. ‘It’s the rummest thing. I had a good look at it over the wall, while he was waiting for Mrs Atkinson to bring him out his sandwiches. It’s a pot of white paint.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘I don’t know. Come on and report to Nancy. We’ll pick up the others on the way. See if we can snake up to Titty without her spotting us. Come on. The main thing is not to touch anything that can make a noise. I’ll go first. You keep close behind and stop dead if you see me stop. …’

The prospectors on the Topps had been hard at work, though you cannot search as wide a strip of ground with a comb of only four teeth as you can with one of eight. They had been into two or three old workings, but had found none that looked at all like the place the old miner had described. They were well out in the wilderness when Dorothea’s whistle brought work to an end. They looked back towards Tyson’s wood. There she was, and there could be no mistake about the signal. A moment later she had vanished.

‘Good for her,’ said Nancy to herself, and waved to the others.

The four of them came together on a rocky hillock and waited. It seemed a long time before they caught sight of Squashy Hat coming along the Dundale road.

‘Sure it’s him?’ said John.

‘Of course it is,’ said Nancy. ‘Nobody else walks like that. Perfect ostrich.’

‘I can’t see Dot,’ said Dick, ‘or any of the others.’

‘They’ll be snaking,’ said Nancy.

‘There’s one thing,’ said Susan at last. ‘If we can’t see them, I don’t suppose he can.’

Nancy looked at John. Just the faintest ghost of a grin showed on both their faces. It was not fear of a rival prospector that was bothering Susan. Hers was an almost native fear lest this grown-up stranger should guess that he was being used for scouting practice by Titty and Roger. She did not worry so much about Peggy and Dorothea. They, after all, had mothers who perhaps would not mind. But she knew that her own mother, away in the South with the whooping Bridget, would much rather Titty and Roger fell down, or caught colds, or got dirty all over, than that anybody should even think they were letting themselves be rude. John looked at Nancy, and Nancy looked at John. They both knew Susan very well.

‘There they are,’ said Susan. ‘It doesn’t matter if he does see them now.’

The scouts had made good use of every bit of cover, and they were already on the Topps and well away from the Dundale road. Nancy waved to them, and they came on at a steady trot. Squashy Hat was making no attempt to come up into the country from which yesterday he had been so successfully fended off. He was sticking to the road. He disappeared now and then where the road dipped, but did not leave it until he was near the other side of the Topps, when they saw him climbing along the steep side of Grey Screes.

The scouts, breathless and terribly hot, dropped on the ground beside the prospectors.

‘He’s got a pot of paint,’ panted Peggy.

‘He didn’t see any of us,’ said Roger.

‘White paint,’ said Titty. ‘It’s a new tin. I was only two yards from the road when he went by.’

‘Oh, rot,’ said Nancy. ‘It’s probably something to drink.’

‘I thought it might be a milk-can,’ said Roger.

‘It’s paint,’ said Peggy. ‘I read the label on it.’

‘He must be up to something jolly rum,’ said Nancy.

‘Perhaps he isn’t prospecting at all,’ said Susan hopefully.

‘He’s got his hammer,’ said Roger.

‘Anyway,’ said Nancy, ‘so long as he’s up there, we can see him. No danger of being surprised. We may as well get on with the work.’

‘What about our knapsacks?’ said Roger. ‘Won’t it be easier to carry the grub if it’s inside.’

‘It is inside,’ said Susan. ‘Sandwiches and a thermos in each knapsack.’

‘Inside us, I meant,’ said Roger.

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ said Nancy. ‘And then we can travel light, and come back to collect the baggage on the way home.’

All afternoon a long line of prospectors worked across the Topps and back again making sure they missed nothing on two wide strips of that desolate country. All afternoon Squashy Hat was moving slowly about on the steep slopes of Grey Screes. For a long time even Nancy began to doubt whether he was indeed prospecting. Why, when the gold was somewhere on the Topps, should Squashy Hat clamber about those rocky slopes? But late in the afternoon they heard him. They were all together after looking at an old working, when, perhaps because for a moment no one was talking, they heard a faint, a very faint click far away.

‘Listen!’ ‘Listen!’ ‘ ’Sh!’ Everybody was asking for quiet from everybody else. They heard the click again. From far away, up the steep hillside, the sound carried in the windless air.

Dick had the telescope.

‘I can see him tapping,’ he said. ‘Look here. I’ll drop my hand next time I see him tap. … Now …’ His hand dropped, and a moment later that faint metallic click was heard by all of them.

‘He’s prospecting, all right,’ said Nancy.

‘But what on earth did he want the white paint for?’ said John.

Time went on, and Susan, remembering what had been said that morning, began to be worried about getting back to Mrs Tyson’s. They worked across to the hillock where they had left their knapsacks, and then moved slowly on towards the Great Wall and Tyson’s wood.

‘We simply must be in time tonight,’ said Susan.

‘We can’t go while he’s still on the prowl,’ said Nancy.

‘He’s coming down,’ said John.

And then there was a sudden yell from Roger, who was taking a turn with the telescope, and at first had failed to find him.

‘We told you it was white paint. We told you it was white paint. Look what he’s done!’

The telescope was passed from hand to hand. Squashy Hat was indeed coming fast down the mountain-side, but up there, where he had been during the afternoon, he had left his mark. Everybody could see it when he knew where to look for it … a round staring splash of white among the grey rocks.

‘But what’s it for?’

‘It may be just a trick,’ said Nancy. ‘To make us think he’s up to something there when he’s really busy somewhere else.’

Even Susan forgot Mrs Tyson and the time, while looking at that white spot, like a target, painted in that impossible place, and at the painter, Squashy Hat, who was hurrying down towards the road.

‘Perhaps he’s coming down now because he’s seen us clearing off,’ said Peggy.

‘Let’s not go,’ said Titty.

‘Let’s pretend to,’ said Nancy. ‘We can see if he goes home if someone goes up that tree by the old pitstead. Gosh, it is awful that we’ve got to go down to Tyson’s and leave him with the whole Topps to himself.’

They went down the gully in the rock, past the bramble thicket into the clearing the charcoal-burners had left. It looked even better than it had the day before. John climbed to the topmost branches of the old ash tree, from which he could see Atkinson’s farm and long stretches of the Dundale road.

‘Can you see him?’ said Nancy.

‘He’s walking jolly fast,’ said John.

‘Come along,’ said Susan. ‘We’re late already.’

‘We must make sure he goes home,’ said Nancy.

‘Go on,’ said John, from the tree-top. ‘I’ll catch you up.’

Susan started slowly on, but stopped. What was the good of getting back before anybody else?

Every now and then, when Squashy Hat was hidden by a dip in the road, there was a new alarm lest, now that they had gone, he should secretly turn up again towards the Topps. But he came steadily on, and, at last, the look-out announced that he had been seen at Atkinson’s. The look-out, a little ashamed now, slid down the tree and hurried after Susan.

‘We simply couldn’t have gone without making sure,’ said Nancy.

They went down the path at a quick, desperate trot.

An angry bell sounded down in the valley below them.

‘Where’s Dick?’ cried Dot suddenly.

‘Dick!’ shouted John.

‘Coming!’ His voice sounded from far above them. They slowed up a little to wait for him, though that bell went on ringing.

‘Hurry up,’ called Dorothea.

He caught them up at the bottom of the wood. In his hand was something like a blade of grass. He threw it away as they ran through the gate.

Mrs Tyson was standing outside the farm porch, and the bell was in her hand.

‘It’s not a bit of good my trying to keep things hot for you,’ she said.

‘We’re awfully sorry,’ said Susan. ‘We did try. …’

‘It isn’t only once,’ said Mrs Tyson. ‘It’s every day. …’

Roger wanted to say that they had been there only two days, but he thought better not.

The prospectors sat down to supper in deep gloom.