Chapter 5. The Big Bang Noise

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_ CHAPTER V. THE BIG BANG NOISE

It did not take Mrs. Bunker long to see what the matter was this time. As she came in sight of the barn she beheld the clothes basket dangling about half-way to the roof, swinging this way and that from one end of a rope.

On the other end of the rope Russ and Laddie were pulling, while in the clothes basket, his little face peering over the side, was Mun Bun.

"What are you doing? Let him down!" cried Mother Bunker, for Mun Bun was crying.

"We can't get him down!" shouted Russ. "The balloon won't come down!"

"Balloon? I don't see any balloon!" cried Mrs. Bunker. She thought, perhaps, as sometimes did happen, a balloonist from a neighboring fairground might have gone up, giving an exhibition as was often the case in the Fall. But all the balloons she saw were the toys Russ and Laddie had tied to the fence.

"Where is the balloon, and what do you mean by pulling Mun Bun up in the basket that way?" she asked.

"Mun Bun's in the balloon!" cried Russ.

"We got him up, but we can't get him down," added Laddie. "The rope's stuck."

And that is just what had happened. I think you can guess the kind of game Russ and Laddie had been playing when the accident happened? They had tied the clothes basket to the rope running over the wheel. The pulley had been used when Mr. Bunker kept a horse, for pulling the hay up from the ground to the second story of the barn.

Then, with the basket tied to the rope, Laddie and Russ had taken turns pulling one another up. The rope went around several pulleys, or wheels, instead of one, and this made it easy for even a small boy, by pulling on the loose end, to lift up quite a weight. So it was not hard for Russ to pull Laddie in the basket up to the little door of the hay-loft. Laddie could not have pulled Russ up, if Russ, himself, had not taken hold of the rope and pulled also. But they had lots of good times, and they pretended they were going up and down in a balloon.

Then along came Mun Bun.

"I want to play, too!" he cried.

"We'll pull him up!" said Russ. "He's light and little, and we can pull him up fast!"

So Mun Bun got into the clothes basket, and Russ and Laddie, hauling on the rope, pulled him up and let him come down quite swiftly.

"Oh, it's fun!" laughed Mun Bun. "I like the balloon!"

And it was fun, until the accident happened. Then, in some way, the rope became caught in one of the wheels, and when Mun Bun was half-way between the ground and the second story of the barn, there he stuck!

"We'd better holler for mother!" said Laddie, as Mun Bun, looking over the edge of the basket, began to cry.

"Maybe we can get him down ourselves," said Russ. "Pull some more."

He and Laddie pulled as hard as they could. But still Mun Bun was stuck in the "balloon."

"I want to get down! I want to get down!" he cried.

Then Laddie and Russ became frightened and shouted for their mother.

"Oh, you poor, dear little boy!" said Mrs. Bunker, as she saw what the matter was. "Don't be afraid now. I'll soon get you down."

She looked at the rope, saw where it was twisted so it would not run easily over the pulley wheels. Then she untwisted it, and the basket could come down, with Mun Bun in it.

"I don't like that old balloon!" he said, tears in his eyes.

"Well, Laddie and Russ mustn't put you in again," said his mother. "Don't cry any more. You're all right."

And, as soon as he saw that he was safe on the ground, and that the clothes basket balloon wasn't going to take him up again, the little chap dried his tears.

"What made you think of that game to play?" asked Mrs. Bunker of Russ and Laddie, when she had seen to it that they took the clothes basket off the rope.

"Oh, we thought of it when we saw our toy balloons go up in the air," said Russ. "We had a race with 'em, and Laddie's went higher than mine. Then he said wouldn't it be fun to have a real balloon. And I said yes, and then I thought of the rope at the barn and Norah's clothes basket and we made a hoister balloon, and Mun Bun wanted to go up in it, he did."

"And we pulled him, we did, and he got stuck," added Laddie. "I guess I could make up a pretty good riddle about it, if I thought real hard."

"Well, please think hard and don't get your little brother into a fix like that again," said Mrs. Bunker.

Of course Russ and Laddie promised that they wouldn't play that game any more, but this was not saying they wouldn't do something else just as risky. They were not bad boys, but they liked to have fun, and they did not always stop to think what might happen when they had it.

"What'll we do next?" asked Laddie, as they carried the clothes basket back to Norah's laundry.

"Well, we could----" began Russ.

Just then the supper bell rang.

"We'll eat!" cried Laddie. "That'll be lots of fun."

And after supper the six little Bunkers were too tired and sleepy to do anything except go to bed.

"But we'll have lots of fun at Grandpa Ford's," murmured Rose as she went up to her room.

"Yes," agreed Russ. "We'll have lots of fun, and we'll hunt around and find----"

Rose gave her brother a queer look and cried:

"That's a secret!"

"Oh, yes, so it is! That's a secret!" agreed Russ.

"What's a secret?" asked Vi, not too sleepy to put a question, if it was the last thing she did that day.

"Oh, we can't tell!" laughed Russ. "Wait until we all get to Great Hedge, and then we'll all hunt for it."

"Hunt for the secret?" asked Vi.

"Yes," answered Rose.

"Mother, Russ and Rose have a secret and they won't tell me!" exclaimed the little questioning girl. "Please make 'em!"

"Not to-night, my dear," said Mrs. Bunker. "Besides, if it is their secret it wouldn't be fair for you to know."

"But I want to, Mother!"

"We're not going to tell!" exclaimed Russ.

"Come now! Go to bed, all of you!" cried Daddy Bunker. "You'll have plenty of fun, and secrets, too, if you go to Great Hedge."

"Oh, then we must be going!" cried Rose, and Vi was so excited about this that she forgot to ask any more about the secret.

Mrs. Bunker thought it was only some little joke between her two older children. If she had known what they had heard out on the porch that afternoon she might have talked to them before they went to sleep. But Russ and Rose hid in their hearts what they had heard about the ghost of Great Hedge.

It was fully decided on the next day that the six little Bunkers and Daddy and Mother would go, shortly, with Grandpa Ford to his big estate in the country, just outside of Tarrington, in New York state. Russ and Rose listened carefully to see if they could hear any more about the ghost, but neither Mr. Ford nor Mr. Bunker mentioned it. And Mother Bunker was so busy, with Norah, getting the things ready for another trip, that she did not speak of it, either.

"My!" exclaimed Norah, as she helped sort out the clean clothes, "these six little Bunkers are getting to be great travelers. First they go to Grandma Bell's, then to Aunt Jo's and then to Cousin Tom's, and now to Grandpa Ford's. I wonder where they'll go next?"

"There's no telling," said Mrs. Bunker. "But we must take plenty of warm clothes along for them this time, as it will soon be cold weather and winter."

"I love to be in the country in the winter," said Rose, who was helping her mother. "You can have such fun snowballing."

"And making snow men and snow forts," added Russ, who came in to get a piece of string for something he was making. He went out whistling, and soon he and Laddie were heard pounding away on the back porch.

Russ was not happy unless he was whistling, or unless he was making something, just as Laddie was very fond of asking riddles.

"I guess maybe I got a riddle, now," said the little chap who was Violet's twin.

"Is it about Mun Bun and the balloon basket?" asked Russ.

"No, it's about why is a cat like a kite."

"It isn't," said Russ. "A cat isn't anything like a kite."

"Yes, it is, too!" declared Laddie. "They both have tails."

"Oh, well. But some kites don't have any tails," said Russ. "I know a boy, and he knows how to make kites that go up without any tails. So that riddle's no good!"

"Yes, it is!" insisted Laddie.

"Why is it?"

"'Cause some cats haven't got tails either."

"Oh, there are not any cats without tails."

"Yes, there are! You go and ask Mother. She showed me a picture of one the other day. I think it's called a Banks cat, 'cause maybe it lives in a bank, and it doesn't have any tail so it can't get caught in the door. You go and ask Mother if a kite isn't like a cat 'cause they both have tails, and some kites have no tails and so haven't some cats."

"I will!" exclaimed Russ. "I'll go and ask Mother if there's ever a cat without a tail!"

Away the two boys started, but they had not reached the house before, out in the street in front, they heard a loud bang, a most awfully loud bang. At the same time they heard their Grandpa Ford crying:

"Whoa! Whoa there! Don't run away!"

"Oh, what's that?" asked Laddie.

"We'll go and see!" exclaimed Russ; and the two boys set off on a run. _

Read next: Chapter 6. Off To Great Hedge

Read previous: Chapter 4. Russ Makes A Balloon

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