It was old Goliath who discovered that the gander was missing. But just then neither Poppy nor I cared a whang whether the crazy bird had skinned out of the barn of its own accord or had been stolen. What we were thinking of instead was the old man.
Carrying him into the house, we washed the blood from his grizzled hair, as it fringed his bald spot. The forehead high up had been bruised, as though from a club swat. Doctoring the bruise as best we knew how, and putting a bandage on it, we helped the vacant-eyed one back to bed, where his wife, as we could see her through the open door, was snoozing as peacefully as an over-fed kitten.
But she was out of bed the instant her eyes opened.
“Why!... What’s happened to Pa? Has he had another accident?”
“Hadn’t you missed him, Mrs. Doane?”
“Laws-a-me! Do you think I would have been lying here if I had known that he wasn’t in bed with me? Has he been sleepwalking again?”
Poppy didn’t say anything. For that was better, he thought, than saying too much.
“I knew he’d fall and hurt himself,” the woman ran on, to her own idea of things. “Oh, dear! Such a man! Must I strap him in bed hereafter, as they do with simpletons?”
Neither the leader nor I had asked the old man any questions about his accident. Nor had he mumbled more than a word or two all the time we were carrying him around and doctoring him up. For the most part he just stared at us, as though his whole brain had been stunned. Maybe, we thought, realizing that this was a much worse accident than the first one, he wouldn’t have to pretend dumbness now. We hoped, though, that the morning would find him all right again. Then we’d question him, with Ma’s help. And certainly we ought to get something out of him. For he wouldn’t want to hang on to his secret if the rest of us were liable to get what he got.
As though the night hadn’t been exciting enough for us, still another surprise jumped at us when we got back to the big bedroom. The desk was open! And everything in it had been carried away.