After an hour slogging down the gravel road, Henry’s thoughts turned to supper. He kept his eyes peeled for a welcoming sign on a gatepost. Once he found one, he would sing for his supper.
Henry whistled as he strolled. He was High-handed Hank, knight of the road, free to roam wherever adventure took him.
But his mind kept slipping back to Clickety Clack. He wondered if the injured hobo’s ankle was any better and hoped the old geezer had been able to make it to the outhouse by himself.
After rounding another bend in the endless road, Henry spied a faded hobo sign on a fencepost. This one was a flat-bottomed triangle with arms sticking out of two sides. He smiled. They looked like little hands held up in the air; maybe this family gave you two fists full of food.
Henry marched up to the back door and knocked firmly. A loud explosion made him whirl around. Terror seized him, rooting him to the spot. A grimy old man in filthy coveralls stood ten yards behind him, and he was holding a shotgun!
Henry could taste rock salt in the air.
“Get off my property before I blow you to kingdom come!” The angry man raised the weapon.
“S-s-sorry, mister!” Henry stuttered. “I was looking for a bite of sup… in exchange for me chopping some wood!”
“I don’t feed bums and I chop my own wood. Now get a move on!” He pointed the gun into the air and fired again.
Henry lit out of there as fast as his legs could carry him. Once he hit the woods, he stopped to catch his breath and watched as the crazy man stomped back into his house.
This was not what he had signed on for! Being shot at was not fun. He skirted the edge of the trees, keeping the house in view.
It was then that he spied a treasure worth two fists full of gold.
Two fat pies sat cooling in the kitchen window. His mouth watered. What did a mean old man like that need with two pies?
Now Henry Dafoe, nice upstanding boy who went to church on Sundays and hardly ever cursed, would never steal. It was wrong and against all the rules.
But High-handed Hank, knight of the road, abided by no such rules.
Henry darted from tree to tree, then edged his way along the wall of the house until he was under the kitchen window. Reaching up, he took one of the pies and dashed for the woods. At any moment he expected to feel rock salt smack him in the behind.
Once in the sanctuary of the trees, he grinned. Tom and Huck would be proud of him. He was a prairie pirate of the first order, plundering ships laden with gold. He looked down at his treasure and sniffed the spicy apple aroma. He thought how much old Clickety Clack would love a big piece of apple pie.
A sharp flash of guilt ran through Henry as he remembered all the things Clickety Clack had done for him. He sighed. He had to go back. He couldn’t leave the old guy alone; it wasn’t right. So what if he found his father next week instead of tomorrow? With the precious pie cradled safely in his arms, Henry started walking back toward the doctor’s faded red barn.
As Henry strolled into the barn, Clickety Clack was pouring a cup of the coffee he’d made on the potbellied stove. “Feel like a big slice of apple pie with that coffee?” Henry asked.
Clickety Clack looked up in surprise. “When I noticed your gear was gone, I wondered what had happened to you.” His eyes looked sad, and Henry felt a fresh wave of guilt. Then the old man’s expression changed. “But I see you’ve been out hunting the wild Canadian pie. Did you catch that one with a snare or a net?”
As they feasted on the best pie he’d ever tasted, Henry knew he’d done the right thing in coming back.
“So how did you come across this delicious masterpiece?” Clickety Clack asked after finishing his third slice.
Henry smiled. “It all started when I saw a hobo sign on a fencepost. I thought I’d go and offer my services in exchange for supper, like we did with that farm lady.” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “But I must need reading glasses. The farmer chased me off with a shotgun.”
At this, Clickety Clack gave him a startled glance. “What did this sign look like?” Henry described the triangle symbol and the old hobo burst out laughing. “You are one lucky boy, High-handed Hank. That means a man with a gun lives there and he ain’t afraid to use it. The best thing to do when you see one of those is to pass right on by. After seeing you write that sign for hopping a freight, it never occurred to me that you didn’t know what the signs meant.”
Henry looked surprised. “You mean I got it right and that’s what the picture of a train means?”
“Of course that’s what it means. That was why I thought you knew the code. Maybe I better have a look at that journal of yours in case you’ve got any more wrong.”
Henry retrieved his journal and proudly showed Clickety Clack his list of signs and their meanings. The old man read the list, then shook his head. “Who told you what those symbols mean?”
“No one. I’m excellent with puzzles and figured them out on my own,” Henry boasted.
“Well you figured these all wrong, High-handed Hank.”
Henry was about to protest, but the disaster with the triangle sign was too fresh. He shrugged, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Maybe I do have a thing or two to learn about these particular puzzles.”
Clickety Clack chuckled, then took out his pencil. “Now, let’s set you straight…”
Henry was amazed. So many of his guesses had been dead wrong: the top hat meant that a wealthy gentleman lived at that house and had nothing to do with funerals, and the cat alerted you that a kind old lady lived there—no fighting cats anywhere! Clickety Clack showed Henry the symbols for food or good drinking water, where work was available and where hobos weren’t welcome. There were symbols telling you where it was good to camp or that you were in a dangerous neighborhood.
When Clickety Clack saw the zigzag lightning bolt, he whistled. “You were lucky there too, son. That’s one to be avoided. It means a vicious dog is waiting to take a bite out of your rump.” He wrote the correct meanings beside the symbols and added a dozen more.
“It is like a secret language.” Henry looked at the list, which now filled four pages.
“That it is, Hank,” said Clickety Clack. “And it allows old hands like me to get by. The road is long for a man on the move.”
The hobo had a faraway note in his voice that reminded Henry of the wind sighing in the empty prairie sky.
They were bunking down for the night when Henry noticed Clickety Clack’s ankle seemed to be giving him less pain. “It looks like you might be healed up earlier than the doctor thought.”
“Oh, that! We’ll be on the road tomorrow. Doctors are always overprotective. I’ve done worse and didn’t take any time at all to lick my wounds. I’ll be fine tomorrow and we should be in Regina by nightfall.”
As Henry wrapped himself in his blanket, he realized that he’d nearly left Clickety Clack behind for nothing. They’d only lost one day and were rested and well fed because of it.
This was not how he’d imagined today would go, but as he fell asleep, he knew that loyalty was something he would never again take for granted.