There was a jagged hole in her fuselage. Her propeller was gone; her upper right wing was partly crushed. Her red and white paint was liberally streaked with rust dripping down from the Buick, and her smashed cowling lay in the mud. But she was a honey all the same. And her engine was in one piece. Even the spark plug was still perched on top, a quarter-inch-long white plug with Champion printed on its base. Rory stared at the plane, and stared. He thought and considered and scratched his chin.
"I could carve a new prop," he said hesitantly. "I could patch that wing and fix the body. Oh, it's crazy! Crazy!" His whiskers twitched with excitement. "I'd need glue and the right kind of paper, but with a whole dump I'm bound to find something. I'd need tools. Well, dumps have tools!" He began to grin. "I'm getting old and silly," he muttered. He examined her tires and her motor. He climbed up onto her lower wing and looked inside the cockpit. "I could cut holes in the firewall for cables, make rudder pedals . . ." And as he poked and investigated, Rory's crazy dream grew until already in his crotchety old mind the plane stood complete before him. Complete, and ready to fly.
It was then, right in the middle of his wild dream that he heard the birds in the garbage dump screaming hysterically and saw the sky darken as the flock raced toward him, dove low overhead, and began to circle just beyond him. They were after something, a dog or cat likely. Rory slipped out and climbed the trash heap behind the Buick until he could see what was going on.
It was a kid on a bike. The birds were having a regular fit, swooping down at the boy's head, and the boy trying to ignore them but ducking every few minutes as some bird came on stronger and nearly hit him. Rory watched, fascinated. He didn't like birds much, but he liked humans less. And this was some spectacle. "Why, those flappin' birds are starlings!" he muttered under his breath, scowling. Big purple-black birds with short tails, yellow beaks, and mean expressions. "I don't need a flock of starlings all over the place! There ain't a nastier-tempered bird . . ."
Well he didn't need a kid around either. Sure as shooting the kid would find that plane—unless the starlings drove him off. Rooting for the starlings, Rory slipped back to the Buick, dragged some rags and papers in to hide the plane, then went around through the dump and up another trash mountain and hid himself behind a bent baby buggy where he could look right out on the boy and the diving birds.
The kid was still trying to ignore the birds. He had leaned his bike against a jumble of tractor parts and was untying a cage from the bike rack. A cage! If the kid messed around with cages, you could bet he was the kind who set traps. Rory hated traps with a passion.
The boy fooled around for some time but did not remove the cage from the bike until the starlings, growing bored at last, perhaps because he ignored them, began to leave. They flew heavily off in twos and threes, then by dozens, back to the garbage dump, where Rory could hear them commencing to quarrel again. Now the boy, obviously relieved at the birds' departure, set the cage on top an old washing machine in a patch of sunshine, then went off to scrounge through the dump. Rory watched him. He would set aside an object now and then, a pitchfork with no handle, a bucket with a small hole. If the kid was scrounging junk, maybe he wasn't so bad. Rory leaned closer to see the cage and began to wonder what all that stuff on the bottom of it was. Looked like some lettuce leaves, a piece of chocolate cake, a lump of fur. A lump of fur? About that time the lump of fur moved, rolled over, and sat up, and Rory could see it was an animal about his own size, very fat, and very young.
It wasn't a mouse, it was far too big for a mouse. And too short-legged and too fat. It had practically no tail, just a stub. It had no ears that Rory could see. And hardly any nose, either. It was just a lump of an animal, but its eyes were bright and alert as it watched the boy. Pretty soon it leaned back against the cage, exposing its fat belly to the sun, closed its eyes, and seemed to doze off. Rory snorted. The young creature ought to be trying to get out of that cage, not lying there enjoying it!
The boy found an armature wound with copper wire and came back all excited to lay it beside the cage. "That thing's worth plenty!" he told the napping animal, who opened its eyes briefly and seemed to smile. Well the kid was scrounging junk to sell, then. Rory approved of that, it showed enterprise.
Pretty soon the kid sat down on a barrel next to the cage and took a sandwich out of his pocket. Rory's stomach growled with hunger. He'd forgotten all about making a fire and cooking his noon meal, and the day was getting on. The kid finished his sandwich and hauled out a chocolate bar, then began to talk to the furry lump as he fed it small bits of chocolate. "She didn't have to come barging in like that and find you. The old bat didn't have any business coming into my room with the door closed anyway! Dad wouldn't! I hope old Critch chokes! Housekeeper! Who needs a housekeeper! I would'a been fine by myself." The boy seemed almost on the verge of tears, and the young animal was standing up stretching its paws through the cage imploringly.
"You understand, don't you, Crispin?" The boy began to rub the animal's soft stomach. "And if I take you home again, she'll do what she said, you can bet on it. I thought she'd already killed you when she threw your cage out the door like that." He stared around the dump unhappily. "Got to find a place where you'll be safe. Some place where dogs and cats can't get in. Boy! Old Critch thought you were a rat! She'd never even heard of a lemming, the stupid woman!" The boy rose and adjusted the cage so it would remain in the sunshine. "I'll find a place, you'll see," and off he went around a pile of bed springs.
So that young animal was a lemming. Rory had some vague memory of hearing about lemmings—up in the far north where the snow was deep, he thought. He wanted to stay and talk to the lemming and to find out what the trouble was all about, but with the plane sitting there under the Buick, he knew he'd better follow that boy.
CHAPTER 4
rory raced around the dump for some time keeping an eye on the kid. Once his foot slipped and he made a slight noise so the kid turned, puzzled, and studied the place where Rory crouched. But Rory kept well hidden and at last the boy went on.
The kid wasn't a bad-looking sort. He must be about twelve, Rory guessed, and had freckles. Rory hurried to catch up with him, slipping along behind him more openly until he was walking practically in the kid's shadow.
And, just as Rory had feared, he was heading right for the turned-over Buick.
The Buick seemed to fascinate the boy. He stood staring as if he enjoyed the sight of the wheels in the air. Rory scowled. The kid was far too close and far too interested. Rory picked up a rock and shied it at a tin can, ducking behind an old boot as the boy spun around wide-eyed.
The kid looked around, puzzled, then turned back once again to the Buick. Rory slipped around a jungle of trash and squeezed in through the Buick's back window. His heart was pounding with apprehension. He didn't know what he meant to do, but he sure wasn't going to let the kid have that plane. His plane! Maybe he won't even see it, he thought. I covered it pretty good. But knowing boys, he wouldn't bet on that.