“He’s cured for a while now,” chuckled Joe, as the boys came up into the barnyard of Stummer’s farm.
“Cure him? Never!” exclaimed Frank. “He’ll be making us all step before the day is out.”
VI
The Old Mill
Carl Stummer, a lanky, shambling old farmer with drooping shoulders, a drooping mustache and a drooping pipe, was just coming in from the fields when the boys came through the barnyard gate.
How he managed to chew a straw and smoke a pipe perpetually at the same time was always a fascinating mystery, but he could do it and always seemed to derive a great deal of satisfaction from the feat, stopping only to change the straw or fill the pipe at intervals. Some people had been known to have seen him without the straw and some had seen him without the pipe, but no one had ever seen him without one or the other.
Chet Morton always stated it as a grave fact that Carl Stummer slept with his pipe in his mouth and a supply of fresh straws constantly by his bedside and that he changed them in his sleep.
“ ’Lo, boys!” he called, taking a firmer grip of the pipestem. “And what brings you here?”
“How’s the cherry crop, Mr. Stummer?” asked Frank.
“Fair to middlin’,” replied Mr. Stummer doubtfully.
This was a good sign, as Carl Stummer was rarely known to express an encouraging opinion about anything. If he said crops were poor, one might be reasonably certain that they were really fair. If he said they were “fair to middlin’ ” it might be inferred that they were excellent.
“Mother wants to know if you can let her have cherries to can this year.”
Mr. Stummer chewed with relish at the straw.
“Most probably she kin,” he agreed.
“She wanted to speak for them so that you’d keep her in mind at cherry-picking time.”
“I’ll remember,” promised Stummer. “Mrs. Hardy has always been a good customer of mine. You tell her she can have all of them cherries that she wants.”
“Thanks, Mr. Stummer. That’s all we called about.”
The farmer looked at them. His hands were plunged deep in the pockets of his faded overalls. The straw waggled beneath the drooping mustache.
“Out for a hike?” he ventured.
“Yes. We thought it would be a good day for it.”
“Yeah, pretty fair day for hikin’,” agreed Mr. Stummer, glancing at the sky to make sure. “Where you thinkin’ of goin’?”
“Oh, we don’t know. Just around the country.”
“Yeah? Not goin’ down by the old mill, are you?”
“Turner’s old mill?” asked Joe. “Down by the deserted road?”
“That’s the place. Down by the river.”
“Well, we hadn’t thought particularly about going down there. Why do you ask?”
The straw waggled more violently than ever. Mr. Stummer took a long drag at the pipe, which was in imminent danger of going out.
“Oh, I dunno,” he said, with a reflective sigh. “Just thought I’d say somethin’ about it. I wouldn’t go down there if I was you.”
“Why not?” inquired Frank. “I know the place is deserted and it’s almost falling down, but we can keep out of danger, can’t we?”
“It ain’t deserted now.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s three fellows running the mill now. Funny fellows they are. Been there for a couple of weeks.”
The boys looked at one another in surprise. Turner’s flour mill was located on a wild part of the Willow River. It had once been on a main road, but the construction of a new highway had left it on a deserted loop which was now seldom traversed. The mill had been abandoned for several years and seemed to have outlived its usefulness. No one had ever expected that the mill wheel would turn again.
“Are they running it as a flour mill?” asked Frank.
Stummer nodded.
“They don’t do much outside grindin’. I sent ’em some of my wheat, but their prices was too high. They nearly skinned me alive, so they don’t need to expect any more trade from me. I’ll send my grain into Bayport after this, where I’ve always been sendin’ it.”
“How do they expect to make a living then?”
“They ain’t lookin’ for trade from the farmers. Matter of fact, I don’t think they want it. They told me they’re gettin’ up some new kind of breakfast foods that the doctors are all goin’ to take up. There’s somethin’ secret about it,” went on Stummer, warming to the mystery. “They ain’t sayin’ anything until they get their patents. Why, they won’t even let a man go through the mill.”
“Three men, you say?”
“Yeah. Three fellers. Sort of onpleasant lookin’ chaps. And there’s a boy there too. I forgot about him. Looks somethin’ like you,” he said, pointing to Joe.
“Have you ever seen any of them before?”
Stummer shook his head.
“I guess they come from the city,” he hazarded. “They come away down here so they could be quiet and work at this here breakfast food stuff of theirs without bein’ bothered. That’s why I said you shouldn’t go down there. They don’t like people hangin’ around.”
“Makes me curious to see the place,” put in Jerry.
The other boys gave murmurs of agreement.
“Go along if you like,” said Stummer, shrugging his shoulders. “It ain’t none of my affair. Just thought I’d tell you, that’s all. They don’t like strangers around.”
“We won’t bother them,” promised Frank. “What do you say, fellows? Should we take a trip around that way or should we not?”
As usual, the mere fact that something of a mystery surrounded the old mill made all the boys eager to turn their steps in that direction.
“We’ll go down the old road, anyway,” said Joe. “I’d like to get a look at the place. It’ll give us somewhere to go.”
“Sure,”
