“I’ll believe her!” the voice cried.
Charlie Heat spun around, still holding me in midair. There was nobody there—nobody, that is, apart from a strange-looking black-and-white horse.
“What was that?” shouted Charlie Heat.
“I said, I’ll believe her, Mr. Heat! Your cheating days are over!” the voice said again.
I could hardly believe it, but there was only one explanation. The horse was talking.
Charlie was so astonished that he let me drop with a thump.
“I … I…,” he stuttered.
The horse took a few steps forward, and as it did so I realized that I knew its voice. It was Aunt Japonica in another of her brilliant disguises.
Charlie Heat, though, did not know this, and he turned pale with fear. Then, turning on his heels, he shot off down the racetrack, squealing with fright.
“Quick!” said Aunt Japonica from within her horse costume. “Jump on.”
I looked at the horse’s back. It looked rather bumpy and uncomfortable, but I did as I was told.
“Ow!” came Aunt Thessalonika’s voice from behind me. “Careful where you put your feet.”
“Off we go,” called Aunt Japonica from the front, and off we went, with Aunt Japonica as the front legs and Aunt Thessalonika as the back. It was not a smooth ride, but it was certainly safer than Black Lightning.
Charlie Heat could not run very fast, and we were gaining on him. Ahead of us, though, was a large jump, and I wondered how he would deal with this. Surely that would stop him long enough for us to catch up with him.
“We’ve got him now,” panted Aunt Japonica. “He’ll never be able to get over that jump.”
I thought so too, but just at that moment, the running figure of Charlie Heat swerved to one side and went around the jump!
“Look at that!” shouted Aunt Japonica in indignation. “What a cheat!”
We galloped, or rather my aunts galloped, all the quicker, so angry were they with Charlie Heat’s behavior. We were now approaching the jump ourselves, and at any moment I expected my aunts to swerve and follow Charlie Heat around the side of the jump. But no. My aunts would never cheat, and with a great leap, the aunt-filled horse, with me on its back, sailed into the air and over the jump. For a terrible moment I thought I would fall again, just as I had done when Black Lightning launched himself over the jump, but somehow I managed to hang on. Then, with a thump, we landed and galloped away after the now very tired Charlie Heat.
Within minutes we had caught up with him. He was so tired and frightened, he could run no more.
“I give up! I give up!” he squealed as he collapsed to the ground, his white suit covered with mud.
I climbed down, and Aunt Japonica soon appeared from the front of the horse outfit. With a little struggling and pushing, both aunts had soon worked themselves free, and the outfit lay limp on the ground. There was shouting in the distance, and to my relief I saw Mr. Fetlock, together with Ed, Ted, and Fred, running over the grass to join us.
“Here’s the cheat,” said Aunt Japonica, pointing at the wretched Charlie Heat.
“Well done!” cried Mr. Fetlock, beaming with pleasure.
“Don’t congratulate us,” said Aunt Thessalonika modestly. “It’s Harriet Bean who deserves the praise.”
Mr. Fetlock warmly shook my hand, as did the jockeys. Then, while the men led Charlie Heat off for a little talk with the racetrack police, I helped my two detective aunts roll up their horse outfit and carry it back to Mr. Fetlock’s truck.
“That was a very clever plan,” said Aunt Japonica. “We had suspected Charlie Heat for some time, and this proved that our suspicions were right.”
I was puzzled. “But why did you suspect him?” I asked.
Aunt Japonica laughed. “It was simple,” she said. “Look at his name. There’s a strong clue there.”
I thought of his name. Charlie Heat. Mr. Heat. Mr. C. Heat. C. Heat. Cheat!
“I see,” I said, laughing. “That was a very good clue.”
“Yes,” said Aunt Japonica. “Sometimes names tell us a great deal. Did I ever tell you about how we caught a famous thief purely because I thought there was something funny about his name?”
“Oh, yes,” chipped in Aunt Thessalonika. “The case of Mr. R. O’Ber. That was a very interesting case.”
But there was no time for my aunts to tell me about it that day, as we had now arrived back at the truck and we could see that Mr. Fetlock had set up some sort of party to celebrate the end of the League of Cheats. There were delicious-looking cakes set out on a folding table and all sorts of wonderful sandwiches.
We had a very good feast. Even Black Lightning enjoyed himself and ate six cucumber sandwiches in one mouthful.
“A good mystery is always best when it’s over,” said Aunt Japonica as she licked the cream off her fingers.
“I agree,” said Aunt Thessalonika, her mouth full of sandwich.
“And so do I,” I said.
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA
Text copyright © 1993 Alexander McCall Smith
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2006 by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, and simultaneously in the United States of America and in Great Britain by Bloomsbury Publishing. Originally published in 1993 in Great Britain by Blackie’s Children’s Books/Penguin Books Ltd. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Knopf Canada and colophon are trademarks.
www.randomhouse.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948-
The cowgirl aunt of Harriet Bean / Alexander McCall Smith; Laura Rankin, illustrator.
(Harriet Bean series; bk. 3)
ISBN-13: 978-0-676-97778-3
ISBN-10: 0-676-97778-2
I. Rankin, Laura II. Title. III. Series: McCall Smith, Alexander, 1948-
Harriet Bean series; bk. 3.
PR6063.C326C69 2006 j823′.914 C2006-902589-4
For Alison Lyburn
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
The Cowgirl Aunt of Harriet Bean
Copyright
Dedication
An Invitation Arrives
A Very Peculiar Trip
A Very Surprising Story
Home on the Range…
Rustlers at Work
Anything Happens
The Rustlers’ Camp
How Cowgirls Fix Rustlers
An Invitation Arrives
I like getting letters from my aunts. Every morning, while my father is still having his breakfast, I go into the hall and check to see what the mailman brought. Often it’s dull, very dull—bills in brown envelopes or letters to my father about one of his inventions—but sometimes I see an envelope that lifts my spirits instantly. These are the letters from my aunts.
I have five aunts, you see. You may have read all about them before and, if you have, you’ll know all about how they were lost (which was my father’s fault) and then found again. And what marvelous aunts they turned out to be! There is Aunt Veronica, the strong lady at the circus; Aunt Harmonica, the ventriloquist; Aunt Majolica, the bossy one (who really isn’t so bad after all); and finally Aunts Thessalonika and Japonica, the private detectives and mind readers. Is that all of them? Let me see: Veronica, Harmonica, Majolica, Thessalonika, and Japonica. Yes, that makes five.
Just about every week one of my aunts writes to me. Sometimes it’s Aunt Veronica, who tells me where her circus is and what’s been happening there. These letters are very exciting. A few weeks ago, she wrote that one of the trapeze artists had fallen off the trapeze while swingin
g to and fro at the very top of the tent. Fortunately for him, he landed right in the middle of a trampoline that had been set up for the next act, and he bounced right back up to the trapeze again, the right way up. So it all had a happy ending.
Sometimes I get a letter from Aunt Harmonica, who gives me all the news from the opera house, where she is the official voice-thrower. Her last letter was very funny.
“We’ve just had a terrible emergency,” she said. “Halfway through a piece of music, the man who plays the tuba in the orchestra got a terrible attack of hiccups. You can imagine what it sounds like if you hiccup while you’re trying to play a great big instrument like the tuba. He couldn’t go on. So I had to crawl down into the orchestra pit in front of the stage and make a sound like a tuba for the rest of the piece. It wasn’t easy, but I did it, and I don’t think anybody in the audience realized what was going on!”
But the letters I most like getting are from my Aunt Thessalonika and Aunt Japonica. They write their letters together, and you never know which words have been written by which aunt! The only time you can tell is when they use different colored pens. It’s very easy then.
Their letters are full of the details of their latest case and can make quite scary reading. They often get into all kinds of trouble, but they always seem to get out of it at the end. Last week they had to hide under the bed of a very dangerous criminal when he suddenly returned home while they were searching his house for jewels he had stolen.
“When we heard him at the door,” wrote Aunt Thessalonika, “we had to find somewhere to hide. And the only place was right under his bed! So we slid under it and lay there, hoping that he’d go out again soon.
“Unfortunately, he did not go out. Instead, he came straight into the bedroom, changed into his pajamas, and went to bed! You can imagine how we felt. He was quite heavy, and the bed sagged, squashing us. At one point, your Aunt Japonica wanted to sneeze, and was only prevented from doing this by your Aunt Thessalonika holding firmly onto her nose.
“At last we heard snoring from above, and we started to crawl out. I’m sorry to say, though, that we found ourselves stuck, and the only way we could get out of the house was to make our way out with the bed still on top of us. So we did that, on our hands and knees, with the bed on our backs. And that is how we were when we met the policeman in the street outside.
“At first he accused us of stealing the bed, but when he saw who was tucked up inside it, still fast asleep, he changed his mind.
“ ‘We’ve been looking for him for a long time!’ he exclaimed. ‘Thank you very much!’
“So we carried the bed all the way down to the police station—with a little bit of help from the policeman, of course—and set it down there.
“You can imagine the surprise the jewel thief had when he woke up and saw where he was. He was not pleased!”
There had been many other letters like that, and I could hardly wait to see my two detective aunts again. We had had so much fun solving the mystery of the League of Cheats together, and I hoped they would soon invite me to help them out with another one of their cases.
I had a long wait, but at last it came. It arrived one Saturday morning, a letter from Aunt Thessalonika and Aunt Japonica, inviting me to come with them on what they called a “little trip.”
“We are going to America,” they wrote. “Would you like to come? That is, of course, if you are free and have nothing better to do.”
I could hardly contain my excitement, and I showed the letter to my father. As usual, he hardly paid it any attention, as his mind was on one of his ridiculous inventions. He was trying to invent a portable bath for people who go camping. It was a very strange invention. You got into something that looked like a large waterproof sack. Then you zipped it all the way up to your neck, connected it to a tap with a hose, and turned the water on. After that, you jumped up and down and the water went all over you. There was a plug down at the bottom.
When I showed him the letter, he was testing the plug, which did not seem to be working very well.
“A letter from those aunts of yours?” he said absentmindedly. “Asking you to go on a little trip? How nice. Well, of course you must go.”
“It’s all the way to America,” I explained, worried that he would object to my going so far.
“America?” he said. “Would you be able to get something for me there? You see, I need a special kind of plug. It’s bigger than this one, and it has an odd, slidy bit right here. They make them only in America. Could you pick one up for me?”
I was delighted, and I promised to get the plug. I wrote back to my aunts immediately and said that I would love to go with them to America and that my father had agreed to take me to the airport the following Saturday, which just happened to be the beginning of school vacation.
My aunts wrote back the next day.
“We’ll see you at the airport,” they said. “But you may not see us. Don’t worry, though. We’ll send you your ticket and you can just get on the plane. We’ll see you sooner or later.”
“Sounds very odd,” said my father when he read the letter. “But those two aunts of yours have always been a bit strange, if you ask me. I’m not so sure if going off to America is such a good idea after all.”
“But what about the plug?” I said quickly.
“Ah yes,” he said. “The plug. Well, perhaps it’s not such a bad idea after all, but please be careful. Those two aunts get into all kinds of trouble, so keep a close eye on them.”
“I will,” I promised. “Don’t you worry about that!”
A Very Peculiar Trip
I found myself counting the days until it was time to leave for America. Time dragged by slowly, but at last the day of departure came and there I was, my suitcase in my hand, standing in front of the airline desk. My father said good-bye and left me with one of the airline staff. She took my ticket and showed me where I could wait until it was time for the plane to leave.
I looked around the waiting room. There seemed to be hundreds of people milling around, all waiting to get on the plane. I expected to see my aunts, but there was no sign of them. Perhaps they would be the last to arrive and would board the plane just before the doors were closed.
After an hour or so, I still had not seen my aunts, and by now it was time for everybody to get on board. I was starting to get nervous, but I remembered what they had said in the letter and decided that I should do as they told me.
We all got on the plane and found our seats. It was a very full flight, and every seat seemed to be taken. Yet still there was no sign of my aunts. By now I was beginning to think that they had missed the plane after all. Perhaps their bus had broken down on the way to the airport, or perhaps they had even gotten on the wrong plane. I had heard of that happening before. People got on the wrong plane and ended up in the wrong corner of the world. Then a terrible thought came to me: perhaps I was on the wrong plane myself! Perhaps I would find myself in Bombay or Buenos Aires, or even Bulawayo! What would I do then?
It was too late. The doors of the plane had been slammed shut and the big engines started. Slowly we taxied out onto the runway, and then with a throaty roar the plane set off on its journey. Within seconds, we were in the air and headed up into the clouds. We were on our way.
Once we were airborne, I decided that I should stop worrying and enjoy the trip. I sat back in my seat and looked out the window. I was admiring the view, thinking how nice it would be to bounce up and down on top of the clouds below us, when there was a tap on my shoulder.
I looked around to see one of the stewardesses smiling at me.
“Would you like some orange juice?” she asked. “Or perhaps something to eat?”
I asked for orange juice, and the stewardess smiled and went off to get it. As she did so, a very strange feeling came over me. I had seen that stewardess before somewhere; I was sure of it. But I had never been on a plane before, and so I wondered how I could possibly know her.
&
nbsp; I was thinking about this, feeling very puzzled, when the stewardess came back and handed me a large cup of orange juice.
“I hope you enjoy that, Harriet,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sure I will …”
I stopped. She had called me Harriet. Yet how could she possibly know who I was?
I was about to ask, but she had already turned her back to me and was busy taking care of another passenger. I would have to wait and ask her when she walked past me again. I could find out her name and ask her where we had met before.
A few minutes later she came by.
“Excuse me,” I said, reaching out to touch the sleeve of her jacket. “Could you tell me—”
I did not have time to finish my question. The stewardess had turned to me and bent down to whisper in my ear.
“Can’t you see?” she whispered. “I’m your aunt Thessalonika!”
I was speechless. I looked at her closely and realized that it was true. Aunt Thessalonika was very well disguised, but it was clearly her. No wonder I had thought we had seen each other before! Of course I was relieved that I was not alone on the plane after all, but at the same time I wondered what on earth she was doing disguised as a stewardess. And where was Aunt Japonica? Was she disguised as one of the other passengers? Was that fat man sitting in the row in front of me really an aunt with a pillow stuffed into her pants? Nothing would surprise me with these aunts.
My question was soon answered—or almost answered. Several minutes later, walking down the aisle of the plane in a smart blue uniform, his cap under his arm, greeting the passengers, came the captain of the plane. Or was it? As he walked past my row of seats, he paused and smiled in my direction.
I looked up, unsure what to do. There was something familiar about him, although I couldn’t decide what it was. Was it something in his eyes? Or something in the way he walked? It was difficult to tell, but I had a very strong suspicion that the captain was none other than my aunt Japonica, heavily disguised of course, but nonetheless my aunt!