Rufus M. (11 page)

"A tunnel!" he shouted, and he stooped over and entered the first red pipe, crawling through it and then the next and the next, all the way down the street. Sometimes the pipes fitted together neatly and there would be two or even three pipes to crawl through without seeing the sky.

When the other children in the neighborhood came home from school, they were delighted, too. No longer need they go over to Clark Street for crawling through the pipes. Here were their own, right here! Everybody wore tremendous holes in the knees of his stockings as the game of stump-the-leader took on new life.

"Follow me!" yelled Rufus, balancing precariously on the shiny rounded surface of one of the pipes and leaping down to crawl through the next.

Moreover there were ditches in the middle of the road to race through when the men had finished their work and gone away. Before they left they always placed smoky red lanterns and tar torches every few feet along the high piles of freshly turned dirt. Of course, there was a watchman to keep things in order while the workers were gone, but he stayed in, or near, a little wooden toolshed at the corner of Elm Street. Red and green lanterns hung from the door of it. There were a great many colored lights now, including the regular purple carbon street lamps along Elm Street, and it was a pretty sight to see them all flickering on a dark night.

"Like Christmas," said Rufus.

People had to stay on the side of the street they found themselves on. For instance, if you were on the Moffats' side of the street and wished you were on Mr. Buckle's, the oldest inhabitant's, side, you had to go all the way to Elm Street or Rock Avenue to cross over; that is, if you were a grown-up. Children, of course, had no difficulty scrambling up the hill and down into the ditch and up the other side. But grown-ups had to stay on the side of the street they were on.

Jane liked this commotion as much as Rufus. "Hello!" she yelled at the oldest inhabitant. "Hello!" he yelled back, putting his hands to his mouth and making a funnel with them, as though he were miles away at sea.

These pipes and ditches stayed in a state of semicompletion for a long time on the Moffats' street. The trenches were dug, the pipes were ready to be installed, but there they stayed. The men who were working on them had not come for some weeks.

"They forgot this block," said Rufus happily, for the sewers had been finished on every other street in town. All the streets had a gentle swell along the middle where the new sewers had been dug. But on the Moffats' street the pipes were still there to crawl through, the dirt hills made good slides to belly flop down when the snow and ice came, and the ditches were excellent for war games.

Every day, when Rufus ran home from school, he stooped down at the corner of Pleasant Street and crawled through the pipes to Ashbellows Place until he reached his house. One day he bent over and entered the first pipe as usual and started to crawl through. In the distance ahead of him, however, he saw two eyes shining in the dark, two green eyes. Rufus hastily backed out. Somebody was in there! Rufus climbed on top of the first pipe, lay on his stomach, hung his head over the edge, and looked in. The eyes were still shining green and they had not come any nearer.

"Hey!" said Rufus.

The eyes just stared.

"Who are you?" said Rufus.

The eyes did not blink.

"Come out," said Rufus.

The eyes shone green.

"You're nobody," said Rufus.

The eyes flickered. They seemed to come a little nearer and to turn yellow.

Criminenty!
thought Rufus.
This isn't a person. This is an animal. Maybe it's a wild animal—a wolf or a fox maybe.

Of course, there were no wolves or foxes in Cranbury, but neither were there any alligators and yet somebody had once caught a small alligator in the marshes at the shore near Orchard Grove. Nobody knew where it came from. It was a great mystery and people were still speculating. Since an alligator had been found in Cranbury, it was not too incredible to find a wolf or a fox occasionally. At least that is what Rufus thought as he stared in the pipes at these gleaming eyes.

No, you couldn't be absolutely certain that these eyes did not belong to a wolf or a fox. While Rufus was convincing himself of this, the eyes disappeared like lights going out. Whatever it was must have turned around and gone the other way.

Naturally Rufus did not crawl in after it. Rufus was cautious. He raced as fast as he could to the corner of Elm Street and he looked in at that end of the pipes. There they were! The eyes in the pipes! Gleaming yellow eyes!

"There you are!" said Rufus in excitement. He pursed up his lips. "Come on, come on," he coaxed, the way one does dogs or cats.

The longer Rufus looked at those eyes the more certain he became that they belonged to a wolf. "Come here, wolf," he said. He was not scared because he was very near his own home and, after all, the wolf was in the pipes. However, he was not going to run around crying, "Wolf! Wolf!" the way the boy did in the story of "The Sheep and the Wolf." He had come across that story in every schoolroom he had been in so far, Room One, Room Two, and Room Three. Also it was in a big book of stories the Moffats owned, and sometimes Jane or Joe read it out loud at home. He knew what the story meant very well, and he knew better than to run off and yell, "Wolf! Wolf!" arousing everybody in the town, until he had proof these eyes in these pipes were wolf eyes. Otherwise nobody would ever believe him if he really did see a wolf. You have to be careful, he cautioned himself. Of course, if Joey or Jane came along he could tell them. But not the town.

But if this animal never came out of the pipe, how could anyone tell what it was? He might not come out. He might stay in there. It was a nice safe place to be. What'd he do, though, when the men came back and started putting these pipes down in the ditch where they belonged? Then he'd have to come out and roam.

It is not good to have a wolf roaming around town. Or any other animal, a lion, a tiger, or a fox. Rufus decided to catch him. He would get a lasso and wait on top of this pipe and catch him when he tried to get out.

Suppose the animal went out the other end of the pipes while he was watching this! He ought to find someone to guard that end. Right now the eyes were still watching him. They stared at Rufus unblinkingly. Rufus couldn't look so long without winking. He had to wink often.

"Stay there," said Rufus. Nobody was around to guard either end, so Rufus ran home as fast as he could, around to the backyard and into the entry, where he found a piece of clothesline for a lasso. Jane was not at home. She was out with Nancy Stokes trying to get Red Cross members, Mama said. And Joey, of course, was still delivering his papers.

Rufus took a piece of bread and dashed out the front door, stepping over Mr. Abbot's rubbers. Mr. Abbot must have been in the dining room, trying on cassocks. There wasn't any sense asking him to help, because a grown-up probably would not have the patience to stalk the animal. Rufus went back to the corner and looked in the pipes. The eyes were gone. He ran down to the other end of the pipe line and looked in. Still no eyes! Maybe the animal had gone to sleep. He certainly had not come out in this little while when Rufus had been gone, not in broad daylight anyway, not if he were a wild animal anyway, Rufus reasoned.

"Where are you, wolf?" he asked. He wanted to get in the pipes and crawl through now. But, of course, with this animal in there that was impossible. He hoped he'd see the animal again. Otherwise how would anybody have the nerve to crawl through the pipes again? They'd always think, "Is the animal in there or isn't it?"

Rufus lay on his stomach on top of the pipe and he kept his eyes glued to the darkness inside. He did not see the eyes. Hughie Pudge came along and asked him what he was doing. Rufus told him to go down to the other corner and see if he could see anything in the pipes. Hughie did so but he soon tired of looking at nothing and said he had to go home. So Rufus went home, too.

He sat down on the porch. Catherine-the-cat was sitting in the last pale glow of the sun. Catherine was beginning to look old and worn. One side of her gray coat was singed a light brown because she always sat in the same position on the little swinging door over the grate of the kitchen stove.

"You should turn around and bake the other side once in a while," said Rufus. But Catherine-the-cat just closed her eyes in complete boredom.

Jane came running around from the backyard. "It's a long, long way to Tipperary," she was singing. She felt good because three ladies had joined the Red Cross and that made seven members she had gotten so far, if you could count Mrs. Price, who kept saying she was going to join but didn't have any change today.

"Hey, Jane," Rufus yelled above her singing. "There's an animal—a fox, a lion, or something, with green eyes—in the pipes. I seen him from both ends. Sometimes the eyes look yellow."

"Uh-hum," said Jane. "Where'd it come from?" She really thought this was one of Rufus's jokes.

Rufus could tell she thought he was joking. He was disgusted. "How do I know where it
came
from! All I know is its eyes gleam."

The way he said "gleam" sent shivers up and down Janey's spine. Maybe he wasn't joking. Sometimes animals escaped from somewhere.

"Goodness!" said Jane. "What's it gonna do? Is it gonna stay in there? When's it gonna go away? It oughtta be caught. It'll get up there in the woods by the reservoir and then who'll want to go up there and have picnics and pick violets?"

"Well, it's not in the woods now. It's in the pipes, resting," said Rufus. "So long as
it
is in the pipes though,
we
can't go in the pipes."

"Aw," said Jane, not believing again. "Can't be a
wild
animal. Not in Cranbury."

Now Rufus became really irritated. "Jane," he said in exasperation, "don't say
can't.
You never can be sure. One animal might have gotten away from somewhere."

Again Jane felt the shivers up and down her spine. Except for that alligator there never had been a wild animal in Cranbury. But there might be one. Rufus could tell she was more sympathetic in her attitude.

"Want to see if we can see him now?" he invited her.

Jane hugged her knees. "Supposin' he comes out while we're lookin'?"

"He'll be just as scared of us as us of him," said Rufus. "If he was in the woods, he probably wouldn't be as scared. Here in front of our own house we're the ones shouldn't be as scared. Besides, I'm gonna lasso him."

They went down the walk with Catherine-the-cat blinking her eyes in the sun and looking after them disdainfully. They met Joey coming up the street, balancing himself on the pipes.

"Hey, Joey," said Rufus. "'S'an animal in the pipes. A wolf or something. A fox, maybe."

Joey stopped, interested. Rufus wasn't joking. He was talking as though he meant it. Joe was a sensible fellow and it did not seem at all preposterous to him that there

might be a fox in the pipes. Especially a silver fox! Take this, for instance. Say somebody else in Cranbury had been reading the same ads he had been reading in the
Popular Mechanics
about raising silver foxes, and say this person had gone ahead and found the money to buy some, might not one easily have escaped? Of course!
What luck,
thought Joe. If he could catch this silver fox, and if the owner never claimed him, why, that was the beginning of his silver fox business!

The three children took turns peering in. Darkness was all they saw. Where were the eyes? After a long time, Rufus thought he saw them. It was like staring down the railroad tracks in the nighttime, waiting for the express to come, and seeing and not seeing and finally being sure you saw the headlight miles and miles down the track. Now he thought he saw the eyes. Then he didn't. Then he really did see them.

"Look!" he whispered to Joe.

Joey looked.

"You're right, fella," he said excitedly. "There he is, all right!"

Jane shivered. She took one quick look. She saw the gleaming eyes and she hopped onto the next pipe. "Goodness!" she said.

To Joey these eyes looked like fox eyes. He was sure of it. And through his mind raced a vision of not one fox but a dozen or more. A whole silver fox business, in fact, that could make the Moffats, well, not rich but...

The eyes came nearer. "Let me have your lasso, fella," said Joe. Rufus gave him his rope. But now the eyes stayed where they were. They came no nearer.

"Let's go and meet him," said Joe. "Naturally he's not just going to come out here and get himself caught."

"Inside?" asked Rufus, ready to crawl in.

"No. A cornered animal will strike," said Joe. "There are small openings all along the way between the pipes. He could get out of one of them and escape."

So they proceeded up the street, cautiously examining each opening. There were no eyes anywhere.

"They're out," said Rufus. He and Joey and Jane had reached the other end of the pipeline and they had not seen the eyes again. Disappointed, they went home to dinner.