2 A Bad Sign

CHAPTER 2 A Bad Sign As the boys had said, my pap hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was fine by me. I didn't want to see him ever again. He used to get angry with me and cuff me with the back of his hand, though I used to hide in the woods most of the time when he was around. Some people even said he had died, but I didn't believe them. I believed the old man would turn up again. But I wished he wouldn't.

The boys and I played robbers now and then for about a month. Then I quit. All the boys did. We hadn't robbed anybody, only pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on people in carts who were taking plants and animals to market. But we never robbed any of them. Tom called the hogs "gold treasure," and he called the turnips and stuff "jewelry," and we would go to the cave and talk about what we had done. I just couldn't see any profit in it. Three or four months passed and it was well into the winter now. I had been to school. I could spell and read and write a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five. I didn't think I could get higher than that if I lived forever. At first I hated the school, but by and by I found I could stand it. Whenever I got too tired of it I played hooky. The trouble that would bring the next day cheered me up. I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they

weren't so hard on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed were still a little uncomfortable. Before the cold weather came I would slip out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and that was restful for me. I liked the old ways best, but I was beginning to like the new ones a little bit, too. The widow said I was coming along and doing well. She said she wasn't ashamed of me. One morning I happened to knock over the salt shaker at breakfast, which was bad luck. It made me terribly nervous and worried. I felt so bad that I had to go for a walk to try and figure out how to keep off the bad luck. I knew something would happen. I went down to the front garden and climbed over a fence. There was an inch of new snow on the ground and I saw somebody's footprints. This person had come up from the quarry and stood around for a while. Then he went back around the garden fence. It was strange that he hadn't come in or knocked on the door after

standing around like that. I was curious. I was going to follow the tracks, but then I bent down to look at them closer. There was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, a sign to keep off the devil. It was something I recognized from my pap's shoes. I started running as fast as I could. I looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see anybody. I was at Judge Thatcher's as quickly as I could get there. He asked if I had come for some of the money he was keeping for me. "No, sir," I said. "I don't want it at all. I want you to take it. I want to give it to you—the six thousand and everything else." He looked surprised and couldn't seem to figure it out. "Please take it," I said. "And don't ask me anything. Then I won't have to tell any lies." It took some convincing. At last he made me sign a piece of paper. He said it would mean I

had given him all of my money and property. Then I left to find Miss Watson's slave, Jim, who had some magic items that were supposed to be able to tell the future. He knew all about good and bad luck. I told Jim that my pap was here again and that I had found his tracks in the snow. I wanted to know what he was going to do and how long he was going to stay. Jim took an old hairball that that had come from a bull, which he said was supposed to be magic. It was as big as a fist. Jim said it had a spirit inside. He shook it, listened to it, and dropped it on the floor. He did this again and again, and then he put his ear against it to listen. He said it wouldn't talk without money. I had an old fake quarter and asked if the hairball could tell the difference. Jim said it probably couldn't, so we cleaned up my quarter and put it underneath the hairball. He listened to it one more time and said it was ready to tell my fortune.

"Your old father doesn't know yet what he's going to do," Jim said. "Sometimes he thinks he'll go away and then he thinks he'll stay. The best is to rest easy and let the old man make his own way. But you are all right. You're going to have great trouble in your life, and great joy. Sometimes you're going to get hurt and sometimes you're going to get sick, but every time you're going to get well again. You should keep away from water as much as you can. And don't take any risks." I left feeling a little better, but still mighty nervous. Well I didn't have to wait too long. When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night, there sat my pap! I shut the door and when I turned around, there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time, because of how badly he treated me. I guess I was a little scared right then, too. But after I got over the surprise of seeing him so suddenly, I realized I wasn't scared of him very