The following Monday morning, an odd little caravan marched around the Scottsville public square toward the First National Bank. Old “Stump” Camp, in his black Sunday hat, and freshly shaven down to his lower cheeks where his wide-spreading whiskers began, led the group. By his side was Madame Zecatacas, the Gypsy Queen, her long earrings bobbing. Behind them, walked “Jack Stanley,” her son-in-law, and his wife. Their child was, at that moment, assisting Mother Camp to sugar doughnuts, eight miles away at Camp’s Mill.
“Stump” Camp was not ignored at the First National Bank, and when he escorted his followers into that austere financial institution and asked to see President Elder, he was led into the latter’s private office at once. What followed behind the closed door in the next twenty minutes or so was a question that more than worried the bookkeeper, cashier and clerk, Lafe Pennington, in the outside room.
“I don’t want to borry no money,” began Mr. Camp when President Elder greeted him with the usual banker’s coolness. “Nor I ain’t come to pay none.”
The banker made courteous offers of chairs to all.
“These air some ole friends o’ mine,” went on the mill owner, selecting a chair near a cuspidor, “an’ they’re a goin’ to help me help some one else.”
“Well, Camp, what can I do for you? Tradin’ horses again?”
The farmer-miller shook his head.
“Me an’ you knowed Bud Wilson’s father, Josiah.”
“Very well,” responded the banker. “And I’ve just come to know the boy.”
“So’ve I,” exclaimed Mr. Camp, drawing over and using the cuspidor. “That’s the pint. An’ to keep to the pint, I got to tell you somepin’ mebbe ye don’t know. Bud’s father was a neighbor o’ mine, as ye might say. An’ we farmers sort o’ keep clost watch o’ each other. When ye knowed Mr. Wilson, he lived in town.”
“Then he bought a farm out your way—out about Little Town.”
“He did. An’ what’s curious, he paid for it—cash—four thousand eight hundred dollars for eighty acres.”
The bank president seemed to be thinking.
“I suppose it’ll be Bud’s when the boy’s of age?” he suggested, at last.
“They ain’t no title to it,” remarked old Camp, with a judicial air.
“That’s what I was trying to recall,” said Mr. Elder. “Seems to me I’ve heard Attorney Stockwell say so.”
“There ye air,” exclaimed the bewhiskered mill owner, rising and striking the table. “Stockwell! There ye said it. He’s this boy’s gardeen an’ ought to be lookin’ out fur him ef all’s on the square. Why ain’t he cleared the title to that land? Why ain’t he, the old skin? I’ll tell ye why, Mr. Elder. He don’t want to.”
“How’s that,” asked the bank president, leaning forward, with interest.
“Anybody goin’ to buy that land offen the boy when he gits it ’thouten a title?”
“I reckon not,” ventured Mr. Elder.
“There ye said it,” snapped Mr. Camp, his whiskers vibrating in his excitement. “No one exceptin’ his gardeen mebbe fur little nor nuthin’.”
“You mean that the boy’s guardian has neglected this to injure the title to the property?”
“When the boy comes o’ age, the farm’ll be his. He ain’t no farmer, nur don’t want to be. He’ll put the track up fur sale. Who’ll buy it? Nobody—exceptin’ the gardeen—Mr. Lawyer Cyrus Stockwell, an’ at his own price.”
“Well,” asked Mr. Elder, leaning back into his chair, “what good will it do him? Won’t be worth any more to him, will it?”
“Onless he turns around an’ finds the persons ’at kin give him a title. But he won’t. Them folks is right here. They air a goin’ to make a deed right here this mornin’, an’ it’ll run to Bud Wilson. They air a goin’ to sign the dockyment right here that’ll make Bud’s farm worth one hundred and twenty-five dollars an acre o’ any man’s money.”
Then, while the interested banker followed old “Stump’s” explanation eagerly, Mr. Camp told how Jack Stanley and his wife, the direct heirs of William Reed and his wife, who had failed to properly transfer the property to Bud’s father, were ready and even eager to see justice done. They were prepared to sign a deed at once.
The keen, business man drew a long breath, and looked long and hard at the silent gypsies.
“Camp,” he said at last, “how’d you work this out?”
“Jack Stanley” spoke, for the first time.
In his rough way he told of his brief acquaintance with Bud from the time the boy came to him at midnight for coffee; how Bud had interfered to protect his mother-in-law from insult; how the boy had treated them as “white people,” and finally recalled to the bank officer and fair director how Bud had come to the rescue of himself and old Madame Zecatacas when they had been so unjustly arrested.
“That’s right,” mused Mr. Elder, “we couldn’t do a thing with him till we got you out. He’d work for us for nothin’, but not till we got you out of jail.”
“Didn’t I tell you,” exclaimed Jack to old Zecatacas. “Ain’t he on the square for fair? Dat’s why, mister.”
The wrinkled Gypsy Queen smiled.
“He is our friend,” she added in a broken voice. “To his friend, the gypsy gives all.”
“I ain’t no Romney,” added the man, shaking his head, “but the kid’s all right. It’s comin’ to him, and we’re goin’ to see he gets a square deal.”
President Elder sat silent for a few moments, and then drew Mr. Camp to the far side of the room.
“Camp,” he began, curiously, “what’s your interest in this boy?”
It was Mr. Camp’s chance. While the tobacco-chewing and illiterate mill owner rapidly related the story of the last two days, the dignified bank president chuckled, grinned, and finally burst into loud guffaws.
“And the joke of it is,” he said, when Mr. Camp had finished, “that Bud’s fright on the last day was altogether unnecessary. The machine is ours. The company accepted our offer by telegraph, waived their representative’s fee and called him off.”
“But Bud seen him waitin’ with the deputy,” insisted the mill owner.
“And I had the telegram to call him off in my pocket,” explained Mr. Elder.
“Then he wa’n’t goin’ to be arrested?”
Mr. Elder shook his head, and laughed again.
“Well,” said Mr. Camp dolefully, “ye might as well kill a feller as skeer him to death.”
Mr. Elder paced the floor a few moments. Then he asked:
“Where is Bud?”
“I’d a brung him, but we was scart he’d be put in jail. He’s down to the livery stable.”
“Can’t you all come back here in an hour,” asked Mr. Elder after another pause, “and bring Bud with you?”
“That’s our business to-day,” chuckled Mr. Camp.
When they had gone, the bank president sat back in his chair as if in deep thought for some minutes. Then he took his hat and walked hastily out of his room and through the bank. Mr. Elder went directly to the county courthouse. There, after using the telephone, he was joined by a lawyer—but not Attorney Cyrus Stockwell. Then the two men hastened to the private office of the judge of the county court, after which they went to the office of the attorney who had been summoned by telephone.
From this office, another telephone message was sent out, and in response to that, Attorney Cyrus Stockwell was soon hastening toward Mr. Elder’s lawyer’s office. Here there was apparently an animated conference. When President Elder finally made his way back to his own office, it was fifteen minutes after the appointed time. “Stump” Camp, Bud and their gypsy friends were waiting patiently under the bank awning.
With only a hasty grip of Bud’s hand, Mr. Elder led the party into the private office once more. He motioned them to chairs, and then, with a quick business air, drew out a deed, legally describing the Reed-Wilson farm and arranged it for the Stanleys to sign. They did it with apparent pleasure. Then he read it aloud. The consideration named was one hundred and fifty dollars. Bud pricked up his ears.
“Mr. Stanley,” explained the banker, “your friend Bud has some peculiar business ideas. He has just saved our fair association a good deal of trouble. He didn’t save us any money, but we’ve concluded that he saved our pride, and we agreed Saturday night to pay him three hundred dollars for what he’d done.”
Bud tried to speak.
“’Tain’t your time, yet, young man,” interrupted the banker. “I’m goin’ to pay these honest people one hundred and fifty dollars for their trouble in comin’ in here.”
Mr. Elder stepped out into the banking room, and a moment later returned with two packages of one hundred and fifty dollars each. One he handed to “Jack Stanley.”
“And now,” he added to the gypsies, “if you folks would like to do a little shoppin’ before you start back to the country, I’d like a few minutes’ talk with Bud and Mr. Camp.”
Stanley hesitated and looked at his mother-in-law, Madame Zecatacas. The latter turned toward Bud. The boy, hardly knowing what to do, paused a moment, and then, holding out his hand, pointed to his “good luck” ring, which he still wore. Stepping to Stanley, Bud took the package of money and pressed it into Madame Zecatacas’ hand.
“Here, Mrs. Zecatacas, I don’t hardly know what this all means, but this is from me to you. And ‘good luck’ with it.”
With dignity, the three gypsies slowly left the room.
For a moment, President Elder sat and drummed on the table with his fingers.
“Bud,” he said at last, “you seem to have the sudden faculty of making good friends. These good people—including my old friend Camp here—are no better friends of yours than I am. When I see any one gettin’ the worst of it, I want to give ’em a lift. That right ‘Stump’?”
“That’s my motto.”
“Well,” went on the banker, “you’ve been gettin’ the worst of it, Bud. You’re eighteen years old, and you’ve got the stuff in you to do things. But you’ve got to get an education.”
Bud smiled and shook his head doubtfully.
“Mr. Camp tells me Mr. Stockwell has put you out of his house, and that you are going to live with him.”
“If he’ll let me,” said Bud. “But he can’t keep me for nothing. I’ll have to work, and while I’m workin’ I can’t go to school.”
“Are you through the grammar school?”
“That’s all,” confessed Bud, his face reddening. “I never seemed to get ahead. I was always in trouble, and whenever I seemed to be gettin’ a start, Mr. Stockwell would take me out an’ put me to work a spell. Even ef I had the money, I ain’t never goin’ to the high school here. I’m too old.”
“What would you like to do?”
“I could go to the normal school, over to Green County, in the winter an’ work for Mr. Camp in the summer.”
“What’d that cost you?”
“Cost him ’bout eight dollars a week. Josh figured on it,” answered Mr. Camp.
“Well,” said Mr. Elder, throwing himself back into his chair, “you can do that!”
Bud gulped.
“I been doin’ a little hasty investigatin’ while I was out. What I found out I got to look into further, but it’s nigh enough right I reckon to make it worth tellin’. Mr. Stockwell, as your guardian and the executor of your father’s estate, ain’t made but one report to the court in ten years. Two years after your father died, he reported that he’d been rentin’ the farm at six dollars an acre, cash rent. That meant four hundred, and eighty dollars a year, or nine hundred and sixty dollars for the two years. Agin that, he offset one hundred and twenty dollars for taxes, five hundred and twenty dollars for your board and clothes, and two hundred and forty dollars ‘for fences an’ repairs.’ The court allowed it. Since that time, he ain’t made no report.”
Bud wrinkled his brow in an effort to comprehend. But old “Stump” Camp understood and chuckled.
“The fences don’t need rebuildin’ very often,” went on Mr. Elder, “and, allowin’ the same amount for your board an’ clothes, I figure that Mr. Stockwell must owe you considerable more than one thousand dollars.”
“He hasn’t got it to pay,” exclaimed Bud at once thinking of Mrs. Stockwell. “An’, besides, I don’t want it. He wasn’t very bad to me.”
“That’s for the Court to say,” continued Mr. Elder. “At least, since you’re not living with him now, there’s anyway over five hundred dollars a year comin’ to you from that land from now on.”
“And,” added Mr. Camp, crossing the room to the cuspidor, and parting his flowing beard, “in three years, when you git yer edication, there’ll be the eighty acres. I’ll give you ten thousand dollars fur it.”
“Mr. Elder,” said Bud at last, his voice choking, “I told you one day last week I wanted to do something in this town because I wanted to ‘make good.’”
The pleased and smiling banker looked at him. Then he pointed to the package of one hundred and fifty dollars on the table.
“That shows you made good with us,” he said, as Bud stood looking at the money.
“I didn’t mean that,” Bud exclaimed with feeling. “I wanted to ‘make good’ with some one that counted. If I ‘made good’ with you and with Mr. Camp, I’m satisfied—I’m happy.”
“Let’s all go down to my house for dinner,” said Mr. Elder, turning away abruptly as if to change the subject.
“I can’t,” answered Bud, picking up the package of bills. “I want to go right out and give this to Mrs. Stockwell. Mr. Camp,” he added, as he grasped the old man’s hand, “I’ll be waitin’ at the livery stable fur you as soon as I kin git back.”
The book you have just read is the second volume of The Aeroplane Boys Series. The first story is “In the Clouds for Uncle Sam, or, Morey Marshall of the Signal Corps.” It can be bought wherever books are sold as can the other new titles listed on page two.