The Magic Wagon Read Online Free PDF

finally. It wasn't no replacement for the house and Mama and Papa, but it was better than stepping on a tack or getting jabbed in the eye with a pointed stick.
    I wished I could have turned back time some, been in our house. I'd even have liked to have heard Mama fussing over how much firewood Papa should have laid in, which was one of the few things he was always a little lazy on, and was finally glad to pass most of the job along to me. I could hear Mama telling him as she looked at the last few sticks of stove wood, "I told you so."
    On the morning after I'd spent my first night on my finished floor, I got up to take a good look at things, and see at what I could manage on crutches.
    There were dead chickens lying about, like feather dusters, pieces of wood and one mule lying on his back, legs sticking up in the air like a table blowed over. Didn't see a sign of the other mule or the cows.
    Wasn't none of this something I hadn't already seen, but now with the flooring in, and my immediate comfort taken care of,I found I just couldn't face picking up dead chickens and burning a mule carcass.
    I went back inside the tent and felt sorry for myself as that's all there was to do, besides eat, and I'd done that till I was about to pop. I wasn't such a great reader, but right then I wished Ihad me a book of some kind, but what books we'd had had been blowed away with the house.
    About a week went by, and I'd maybe got half the chickens picked up and tossed off in the ditch by the woodlot, and gotten the mule burned to nothing besides bones, when this slick-looking fella in a buckboard showed up.
    "Howdy there young feller," he said, climbing down from his rig. "You must be Buster Fogg."
    I admitted I was, and up close I seen that snazzy black suit and narrow brim hat he had on were even snappier than they'd looked at a distance. The hat and suit were dark as fresh charcoal, and the pants had creases in them sharp enough to cut your throat. And he was all smiles. He looked tohave more teeth than Main Street had bricks.
    "Glad to catch you home," he said, and he took off his hat and held it over his chest as if in silent prayer.
    "Whatsit I can do for you?" I asked. "Maybe you'd like to come in the tent, get out of this cold?"
    "No, no. What I have to say won't take but a moment. My name is Purdue. Jack Purdue. I'm the banker from town."
    Well, right off I knew what it was and I didn't want to hear it, but I knew I was going to anyhow.
    "Your father's bill has come due, son, and I hate it something awful, and I know it's a bad time and all, but I'm going to need that money by about" —he stopped for a moment to look generous —"say noon tomorrow. Least half."
    "I ain't got a penny, Mr. Purdue," I said. "Papa had the money, but everything got blowed away in the storm. If you could just give me some time —"
    He put his hat on and looked real sad about things, almost like it was his farm he was losing.
    "I'm afraid not, son, It's an awful duty I got, but it's my duty."
    I told him again about the money blowing away, how Papa had saved it up from selling stuff during the farm season, doing odd jobs and all, and that I could do the same, providing he gave my leg time to heal and me to get the work. Just to play on his sympathy some, I then went on to tell him the whole horrible truth about how Papa was killed and Mama blowed away like so much outhouse paper, and when I got through I figured I'd told it real good, cause his eyes looked a little moist.
    "That," he said, not hardly able to speak, "is without a doubt the saddest story I've ever heard. And of course I knew about it, son, but somehow, hearing it from you, the last survivor of the Fogg family, makes it all the more dreadful."
    He kind of choked up there on the end of his words, and I figured I had hold of him pretty good, so I throwed in how us Foggs had pride and all, and that I'd never let an owed bill go unpaid, and if he'd just give me the time to raise the money, he'd