Big Chief Rainmaker
Big Chief Rainmaker
© 1968 by Bertrand R. Brinley
Illustrations by Charles Geer
I
T WAS ONE of those hot August days in Mammoth Falls
when even the dogs won't go out on the street, and you don't dare open
your mouth for fear of getting your tongue sunburned. I was sitting in
old Ned Carver's barbershop, thumbing through a magazine and waiting for
Mr. Carver to finish cutting Charlie Brown's hair, when Jason Barnaby
stumbled in through the door and flopped down in a chair to fan himself.
"How's the apples look this year, Jason?" mumbled Charlie Brown through
the hot, wet towel wrapped around his face. Jason's apple orchard up on
Brake Hill is the biggest orchard in the county. It's a regular showpiece
for visitors.
"Ain't gonna be no apples if we don't soon get some rain," whined Jason,
mopping his gray hair back off his forehead. "I never did see such a
hot spell as we're havin' now."
"Yes, sir!" Ned Carver agreed. "That little piece of grass in front
of my place is about burned to a crisp right now. I expect it's been a
month since we've seen a real rain."
"Longer'n that," moaned Jason. "Them leaves on my trees'll snap right
in two in your fingers, they're so dry."
"I hear tell Mayor Scragg is bringin' in some professional rainmakers,"
said Charlie Brown. "Some real experts from the Department of Agriculture
and the State University."
"Won't do no good," muttered Jason, stoically. "They tried that over
in Clinton last year, and it wasn't worth a hill of beans -- all them
birds with their blowin' machines and their silly airplanes! Pshaw! You
might as well get down on your knees and pray. When the Lord says 'Let
it rain!' it'll rain."
"That don't say you can't give the Lord a helpin' hand," said
Charlie. "The Mayor and the Town Council know what they're doing." Charlie
Brown is the town treasurer, and he's been on the Town Council for
thirty-one years. He owns the only funeral parlor in Mammoth Falls,
and everybody respects him. He generally knows what's going on in town.
Jason Barnaby didn't answer for a while. He was staring at the highly
polished toes of Charlie's black pumps.
"How come you're always wearing a new pair of shoes?" he asked finally. "I
swear you got more shoes than any man in town."
"Mind your own business!" said Charlie Brown. "We were talkin' about
the dry spell."
I didn't hear much of the rest of the conversation, because I kept
falling asleep like I always do in the barbershop -- especially on hot
days. I woke up when Mr. Carver snapped the hair cloth and said "Next!"
"Couldn't you Mad Scientists do something to bring on rain?" he asked
me with a chuckle, as I climbed into the chair. "You kids are always
getting mixed up in something crazy."
"I s'pose if anybody could make it rain, Henry Mulligan could," I said,
before I fell asleep again.
Old Ned Carver didn't know it, but he had started something. Before the
month was out he was wishing he'd kept his mouth shut.
The Mad Scientists' Club meets almost every day during the summer,
because we usually have some kind of a project going. When I went out
to Jeff Crocker's barn that afternoon to find the rest of the gang,
my head was full of crazy notions about how we might make it rain --
like dipping a huge sponge in Strawberry Lake and floating it over
Mr. Barnaby's apple orchard suspended from big balloons.
In the clubhouse I found Mortimer Dalrymple fiddling around with the
ham radio outfit and Homer Snodgrass stretched out on the rusty old
box-spring mattress in the corner reading a tattered volume of Rudyard
Kipling's poetry.
"Hey, listen to this!" said Homer.
"'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs
and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself --'"
"If I had your head I wouldn't want to keep it!" said Mortimer in a
loud voice.
Homer answered him with a raspberry and rolled over to prop his book
against the wall.
"Where's Henry and Jeff?" I asked. "I got important business to discuss."
"They're out in back, washing Mr. Crocker's car," said Mortimer.
Jeff Crocker's dad makes him wash the family car once a week. We're
all supposed to help, in return for using the barn as our clubhouse,
but mostly Jeff ends up washing it himself. Fortunately, he and Henry
were just about finished when I found them, and I told them all about
the conversation I had heard in the barbershop.
"I know it's been rough," Jeff said. "All the farmers around here are
complaining. My dad says there won't be enough hay to feed the horses
this winter if it doesn't rain soon."
"It's easy enough to make it rain," said Henry. "All you have to do is
create the proper conditions." Henry stopped wiping off the car, and I
could see he was thinking about the problem. I finished the last fender
for him.
"When are these professional rainmakers coming?" he asked.
"I don't know. But Homer's father should know, 'cause he's on the Town
Council."
"I suggest we don't do anything until after they've been here," said Jeff,
as he spread the rags out to dry. "After all, the town is probably paying
them a lot of money, and they might just make it rain."
"What do you think, Henry?" I asked.
"I think I've got an idea!" said Henry, and he walked straight down
the lane to the main road and went home and we didn't see him again for
three days -- which isn't unusual when Henry is thinking.
The rainmakers came, and we all went out to watch them set up their
machines. They had huge blowers that they used to create a white fog of
dust particles in the air, and they set them up on the hills all around
the valley. They also had two light airplanes operating out of the county
airport that they'd send up to seed the rain clouds whenever any appeared.
Dinky Poore was as inquisitive as usual.
"What's that white stuff they're blowin' into the air?" he asked Henry.
"That's silver iodide crystals," said Henry. "They're supposed to make
water vapor condense and form into drops of water. The trouble is, you've
got to have water vapor to start with, and the air's so dry right now
I don't think it'll do any good."
The rainmakers kept at it for two weeks, but they didn't do much
good. They got a spat of rain now and then, but not enough to sneeze
at. And every day they had a different excuse: The wind wasn't right,
or there weren't enough clouds, or they couldn't get the airplanes
into the air in time when a good cloud did appear. All in all, it was
an expensive operation, and the farmers were pretty skeptical about it
and were grumbling about the cost. Finally, Mayor Scragg and the Town
Council held a big public meeting, where everybody had their say, and
the general opinion seemed to be that rainmaking was for the birds. And
when Charlie Brown declared that the town just couldn't afford any more
rainmaking experiments, the whole idea was scrapped.
That was when Henry Mulligan decided it was time for the Mad Scientists'
Club to act. We had a meeting in the clubhouse, and Henry outlined the
plan to us.
"The trouble with most rainmakers," he said, "is that they spread
themselves too thin. You can't go firing silver iodide crystals into the
air willy-nilly. You've got to hit a particular cloud at a particular
time, and you've got to concentrate a lot of stuff in one place, to do
any good."
Henry pulled a long sleek-looking piece of tubing with fins on it from
under the table and showed it to us.
"This is a pretty simple rocket," he said, "but it'll go up high enough
to hit most rain clouds. Right here behind the nose cone is a cartridge
with a little gunpowder in it and a lot of silver iodide crystals. All
you have to do is explode the cartridge at the right time and spray the
crystals through the cloud. Grape growers in northern Italy have been
using these for twenty years to make it rain on their vineyards. They
just wait until a likely-looking cloud comes along, and then they blast
away at it."
"Holy mackerel!" said Freddy Muldoon. "You think of everything, Henry."
"I didn't think of it," said Henry. "I just read a lot."
"So do I," said Homer Snodgrass, "but I never seem to read the right
stuff."
"You don't learn much from poetry, that's a cinch!" said Mortimer.
"You do too! You just don't understand it!" declared Homer stoutly.
"How high up will that rocket go?" asked Dinky Poore.
"That depends on how we design it," said Henry. "Most rain-bearing clouds
form at about five thousand feet. It's simple enough to calculate the
size of the rocket and the amount of fuel we need to lift a cartridge
of silver iodide to that altitude. But we can explode the cartridge at
any altitude we want to. We just run a fuse through the cartridge to
the propellant chamber. When the fuel burns to the top of the chamber,
it ignites the fuse. If we want to explode the cartridge at three thousand
feet, we use a very short fuse. If we want to explode it at five thousand
feet, we use a longer one."
"Let's try it!" said Dinky Poore eagerly. Dinky's always ready to try
anything.
"First we've got to build the rockets," said Henry. "This is just
a preliminary design. We've got to flight test a few before we know
whether we have the right design."
The next few days we were busy as beavers. We'd spend half the night
building rockets in our machine shop, up in the loft over Mr. Snodgrass's
hardware store, and then we'd pedal out to a spot in the hills west of
Strawberry Lake to test-fire them during the day. We fired them in a
steep trajectory, slightly off the vertical, so the spent rocket bodies
would land in the lake. By watching for a splash as the rocket hit the
surface of the water, we could get a pretty precise measurement from
launch to impact. From this, Henry could tell us exactly how high the
rocket was going.
After we had fired about twenty rockets of different types, Henry declared
himself satisfied that we had the right design. Then we set to work and
built about thirty rockets, complete with cartridges filled with silver
iodide crystals and with different fuses. We designed them so the fins
would fit snugly inside a piece of corrugated rain spout which would
serve as the launching tube. We used a mixture of powdered zinc and
sulphur as the propellant and fitted each rocket with an electrical
squib for an igniter. We could have launched them by lighting a fuse
with a match, but Henry said this wasn't safe. In case one blew up,
he wanted everyone to be a safe distance away. So we rigged up a firing
circuit with dry cell batteries to ignite the squib.
"Now whatta we do?" asked Freddy Muldoon when we had finished the
last rocket.
Everybody looked at Jeff, who gives most of the orders because he's
president, and Jeff looked at Henry.
"I think we've got to prove we can do what we think we can do, first,"
said Henry. "Let's set up on Brake Hill near Mr. Barnaby's orchard and
stake a lookout there all day long. If any clouds come over, and we can
hit one and make it rain, then maybe we can expand our operations."
"I'm for that!" said Freddy, rubbing his pudgy stomach. "I'll volunteer
for lookout."
"Good!" said Jeff. "The lookout will have to go all the way to the top
of the hill to watch for clouds. That'll keep you away from the apples."
"Let the minutes reflect that I withdraw my offer," said Freddy.
"Noted, but not approved!" said Homer, who was taking notes. "It doesn't
make any difference, anyway. Most of Mr. Barnaby's apples are Baldwins,
and they're still too green to eat."
"You're talking to the champion green-apple eater of Mammoth County!" said
Freddy Muldoon.
The next morning we all packed a lunch and set out bright and early
for Brake Hill with a supply of rockets and a couple of launching
tubes. Mortimer and Freddy went to the top of the hill with a radio to
set up the cloud watch. But Freddy kept sneaking down to snitch apples
off the trees on the upper slopes of the orchard. By noontime he had
such a stomachache that he was rolling on the ground, and Mortimer had
to send him back down the hill to where we were. We just let him lie
around and groan all he wanted to.
By early afternoon a lot of clouds had begun to form on the horizon, and
Mortimer reported a couple of big ones being blown in from the east, right
toward Brake Hill. We got the launching tubes set up, pointing to where
we thought the clouds would come over the brow of the hill, and waited.
In about an hour a big puffy white one loomed over us, and Henry checked
out the firing circuit and then connected the batteries to the squib
leads in the rocket nozzles. We waited until the bulk of the cloud had
drifted directly over our heads. Then Henry said, "Fire number one!"
Jeff threw the switch to close the firing circuit, and the first rocket
swished into the sky, leaving a billowing cloud of smoke behind. We saw
a bright flash, and a few seconds later we heard a sharp report like a
large firecracker.
"That one exploded a little early, about forty-five hundred feet,"
said Henry. "I counted just four seconds from the flash to the bang. The
propellant must have burned too fast."
We saw the bright silver flash of the spent rocket tube as it plunged down
out of the cloud and caught the rays of the sun. We waited a long minute,
but nothing happened. The huge cloud continued drifting slowly over us.
"Fire number two!" said Henry.
I threw my switch, and the second rocket shot out of its launch
tube with a hissing roar. It veered to the right momentarily, then
straightened itself and plunged like a dart into the soft underbelly of
the cloud. Suddenly the whole cloud turned a brilliant golden yellow as
flaming particles shot through it in every direction; it looked as though
a bolt of lightning had struck it. Henry was jumping up and down even
before the report of the explosion had reached us, and Homer Snodgrass
was slapping him on the back.
"A hit! A hit! A palpable hit!" cried Homer.
"Let's wait and see! Let's wait and see!" cried Henry, trying to ward
off the blows.
It was then that we heard the
putt-putt-putt of Jason Barnaby's
rusty old Model-T Ford and turned to see it weaving and bouncing toward
us down the lane that led through the apple orchard. Jason's two German
shepherd dogs were galloping along beside the old rattletrap, barking
their heads off, and we could see a double-barreled shotgun clamped to
the windshield. Jason brought the rattletrap to a sputtering halt in a
cloud of dust and jumped down from the seat with the shotgun clenched
in one fist.
"What in tarnation are you young rapscallions doin' here?" he shouted at
us. "Are you stealin' my apples? What's them fireworks I been hearin'?"
Freddy, who had been lying on the ground, still writhing in pain, started
crawling for the bushes at the edge of the orchard. Dinky Poore's eyes
had popped wide open, and he was trembling like a leaf. Jeff Crocker
stepped forward.
"We weren't doing anything, Mr. Barnaby," he explained. "We were just
trying to make it rain."
"Trying to make it rain? If that don't beat all!" exclaimed old Jason,
whipping his hat off and slamming it onto the ground.
His face was redder than any apple in the orchard, and the veins in his
neck stood out as though he were going to have a fit of apoplexy. When
he bent over to pick up his hat, the startling contrast of the smooth
white top of his bald head made Mortimer Dalrymple burst out laughing.
"What are you laughing at, you young hyena?" Jason shouted. "If you
think you can --"
Suddenly Jason clapped his hand to his bare head. "What's that?" he
said. And he looked upward in time to catch another raindrop right in
the corner of his left eye. He wiped it off with a fingertip. Then
he stuck his tongue out and turned his face upward again. The drops
started coming down more rapidly -- big splashy drops that splattered
on the leaves of the apple trees and sent a cascade of tiny droplets
in every direction. Jason spread his arms out with the palms of his
hands turned upward and threw his head back. He held his battered old
felt hat out in front of him, as if to catch the precious drops and
hold them forever. He opened his mouth and tried to drink in the rain.
Several large drops hit him right in the face, and a trickle of water
zigzagged down the side of his weather-beaten neck and cut a channel
through the dust that covered his skin. Suddenly he started to gyrate
and cavort among the apple trees in a wild and spontaneous dance.
"Whoopee!" shouted old Jason. "It's rain, rain, rain! The rain's
a fallin'. The rain's a fallin'."
And it was. It came down in a regular torrent. We looked upward and saw
that the belly of the huge white cloud had broken open and dark streamers
of water vapor were cascading toward the earth. We had started a regular
cloudburst!
We scrambled to get all our gear together and pull it under the trees. The
two German shepherds were prancing around after Jason and paying no
attention to us.
"One thing we forgot to bring was umbrellas," said Mortimer.
"Not even Henry can think of everything," said Dinky Poore.
"You don't need no umbrellas!" came a voice from under the trees. "Get
under that tarpaulin in the back of the Model T and I'll ride you home."
We were soaked to the skin, but we laughed and shouted as we bounced
back through the orchard in Jason's ancient pickup.
"Tarnation! If that don't beat all!" muttered Jason, as he wrestled with
the wheel. "I think I'll crack open a jug of hard cider when I get back
to the house."
It didn't take long for the word to get around town that we had made it
rain on Jason's apple orchard. Old Jason drove us right into town and
stopped off at Ned Carver's barbershop on his way home. In a small town
the barbershop is better than the telephone exchange when it comes to
rapid communication. Mayor Scragg was among the first to hear about it,
and he stopped off at Henry's house that night and patted him on the
head and called him "Big Chief Rainmaker."
Charlie Brown, the treasurer, was a little dubious, though. If we could
make it rain every time a cloud came over, he wanted to know how much
it was going to cost the town to keep us in business. Jeff assured
him that we weren't interested in draining the town treasury. All we
wanted to do was help the farmers save their crops, and if the farmers
were willing to pay for the rockets and the zinc and sulphur we needed,
the Mad Scientists' Club was at their service.
After that, we were flooded with requests from farmers to set up rocket
launchers on their property and try to make it rain. We couldn't take
care of everybody, and we didn't want to play favorites, so we held a
meeting in the clubhouse to figure out what to do. Dinky Poore made his
usual suggestion about writing to the President for help and was voted
down as usual. Freddy Muldoon thought we could take care of everybody
if we just ran fast enough from one farm to another.
"Great idea, Pudgy!" said Mortimer. "Only I don't see any Olympic medals
hanging on
you. By the time you get through breakfast, it's time
for lunch. You sweat faster than you can run, and we wouldn't want you
to drown."
"OK, wise guy!" Freddy shot back. "At least when I step on a scale,
something happens. I thought maybe I could stick around here and man
the radio."
After a lot of discussion we made a revolutionary decision. For the first
time in the history of the Mad Scientists' Club we decided to ask Harmon
Muldoon's gang to help us out.
"This is a community project," Henry pointed out, "and there's no reason
to be selfish about it."
"Nuts!" said Freddy. "My cousin will hog all the credit. Besides, he
doesn't know anything about rockets."
"We can teach them all they have to know," said Jeff. "As far as the
credit goes, everybody already knows who Big Chief Rainmaker is."
Then we all stood up and gave Henry the Indian sign, and that was the end
of the meeting. Jeff Crocker was appointed ambassador plenipotentiary to
conduct negotiations with Harmon Muldoon, because he can beat anybody in
Harmon's gang at Indian wrestling. He didn't have to put the arm on them,
though. They jumped at the opportunity to get into the act.
We set up several launching sites at strategic locations that gave
us a chance to cover most of the farms in the valley on fairly short
notice. With Harmon's equipment added to ours, we had a pretty good radio
net operating from our clubhouse to Jeff Crocker's barn. We couldn't
be everywhere at once, even with six two-man teams manning the launch
sites, but we didn't have to worry about cloud watchers. Every farmer
in the valley was bombarding us with phone calls each time a wisp of
cloud appeared on the horizon.
We didn't keep count, but we must have fired about two hundred rockets
during the next two weeks. We didn't make it rain every time, of
course. Sometimes we might fire ten rockets before we got a good hit
on a cloud. And sometimes we might get a good hit, and still nothing
would happen. But we did manage to hit the jackpot often enough to make
the difference between a dry year and a drought. Most everybody in town
seemed to agree that Henry's idea had saved the farmers from a real crop
failure. People he didn't even know would wave at Henry on the street
and say, "Hi, Big Chief!"
The rest of us basked in Henry's reflected glory, of course, and we seemed
to get more smiles from the storekeepers than usual. Even Billy Dahr,
the town constable, looked as though he was glad to see us when one of
us passed him on the street. And Jeff Crocker's dad was no exception. He
was seen one day washing his own car, and he told a curious neighbor
that he thought Jeff needed a rest.
But somehow I felt uncomfortable about it all, despite our success. I
finally realized that it was because I once heard Henry say that you
can't tamper with nature without getting into trouble. And it didn't
take too long for Henry's observation to prove true.
Freddy Muldoon and Dinky Poore were manning the launch site out on
Blueberry Hill one day when a cloud about ten times the size of the Queen
Elizabeth came drifting over. They got all excited and started firing
rockets at it as fast as they could mount them on the launcher. They
weren't supposed to be out there, and there wasn't any sense in firing
at the cloud so soon, because it hadn't even gotten out over the valley
yet. But they wanted to show what they could do, so they blasted away
at it and finally scored a good hit. The cloud practically evaporated
and dumped torrents of rain on the hilltop. Dinky and Freddy fell all
over themselves in a mad scramble to get their ponchos on and pedal back
into town to brag about what they had done.
When they got down to the road that leads past Memorial Point, where the
old Civil War cannon is, they saw people streaming out of the woods by
the hundreds, slipping and sliding down the hill with their arms full of
blankets, tablecloths, picnic baskets, baseball bats, musical instruments,
and beer kegs. The sudden cloudburst had broken up the annual Kiwanis
Picnic and Songfest for the Benefit of Homeless Children and turned it
into a rain-soaked rout.
Joe Dougherty, who is president of the Kiwanis Club and trombone soloist
in the town band, was hopping mad. He complained loudly to Mayor Scragg
that the whole thing was a deliberate plot by those troublemakers in
the Mad Scientists' Club to ruin the annual picnic and sabotage the
Kiwanis Club's fund-raising program. He claimed that we had made it rain
intentionally, in order to get back at the Kiwanis for refusing to sponsor
our project to explore the bottom of Strawberry Lake. Henry and Jeff were
called on the carpet by the Mayor, and of course they denied having any
such intentions. But that didn't change the fact that the Kiwanis picnic
had been flooded out, and a strawberry shortcake the size of a bathtub
had to be abandoned in the middle of the clearing at Memorial Point.
Far from bragging about their prowess as rainmakers, Freddy and Dinky
were trying to deny any connection with the episode when Henry and Jeff
got back to the clubhouse.
"We were down by Lemon Creek all the time," said Freddy stoutly. "We
didn't even know any Kiwanis picnic was going on."
Jeff Crocker fastened a gimlet eye on him. "Joe Dougherty claims they
heard about five rockets fired just before it started to rain, and he
has four hundred witnesses to back him up. Who do you think fired those
rockets, Freddy?"
"Probably my cousin Harmon," said Freddy offhandedly, pretending that he
saw something very interesting outside the window. "He's always sneakin'
around where he's not supposed to be."
"It so happens that Harmon was here in the clubhouse with us all the
time," said Henry quietly. "And the rest of his gang were assigned to
man the launch sites south of town. I don't think it's very fair to try
and blame this on Harmon."
"OK, OK!" said Freddy, thrusting the palms of his hands upwards. "So it
didn't work!"
Our reputation managed to survive the episode of the Kiwanis picnic, but
not for long. Mortimer Dalrymple and Homer Snodgrass sat out the Brake
Hill watch one day at the edge of Jason Barnaby's apple orchard. It had
been three days since any good clouds had been sighted in the valley,
but there was a cool wind blowing in from the east that held promise of
moisture to come.
It was about noontime that a big black cloud came riding high over the
crest of Brake Hill. It looked like a prime thunderhead, and Homer and
Mortimer got the artillery ready. They hit it with two shots and ran for
cover among the trees in the orchard. They hadn't yet reached the shelter
of a tent they had strung between two of the trees when a deafening roar
surround them.
"What was that?" cried Homer. "Something hit me!"
No sooner had he said it than a hailstone the size of a pullet egg hit
him on the right shoulder.
"Geronimo!" cried Mortimer. "It's hailing doorknobs. Run for cover!"
They both dove under the tent while hailstones pelted the orchard all
around them and apples came thumping to the ground by the hundreds. The
accumulated weight of ice and Baldwin apples on the sagging eaves of the
tent finally collapsed it, and the two of them lay flat on the ground
holding the canvas about their heads for protection. The cloud was a big
one and it drifted on through town, leaving a trail of minor destruction
in its path, and finally spent itself in the hills across the valley.
A cast-iron straitjacket wouldn't have held Jason Barnaby still after
that one. He barged into Mayor Scragg's office and thumped loudly on the
Mayor's desk, complaining that half his apple harvest had been ruined. He
forgot all about the fact that he wouldn't have had any apples at all if
we hadn't brought rain to his orchard in the first place. Abner Larrabee's
wife, who is a social leader in town, wailed piteously in a letter to the
editor of the
Mammoth Falls Gazette that her prize peonies had
been stoned to death just before they reached the full glory of their
bloom. She complained bitterly about "wanton boys who create mischief
with their teenage pranks" and wondered when the Mayor was going to do
something about the problem of juvenile delinquency.
The episode of the hailstorm seemed to dampen some of the enthusiasm for
our project around town, but the more rain-thirsty farmers kept urging
us to continue. The editor of the
Gazette wrote an editorial in
our defense, in which he pointed out that our intention had been to do
the community a worthwhile service. And Henry admitted in an interview
for the paper that we didn't know all the answers yet about how to cope
with nature, but that any scientist knew that he faced certain risks
whenever something new was being tried. He promised that we would try
to learn all about hail clouds and avoid mistakes in the future.
A few days after the hailstorm, the town of Mammoth Falls awoke to find
itself shielded from the sun by a low and heavy overcast. The temperature
had dropped, and the hot spell seemed to be over. Everybody could smell
rain in the wind, and the town looked forward to the end of the long
summer drought. But still no rain came. For three days the overcast
continued, and the atmosphere was heavy. The cattle were restless,
and chicken farmers complained that the hens cackled all night and laid
no eggs.
On the fourth day we held a meeting with all the members of Harmon
Muldoon's gang, and everybody was in favor of giving nature the needle. We
decided to launch six rockets simultaneously from different launch sites
scattered around the valley to see if we could make the overcast give
out with some rain. We set up the radio net, and Henry gave a countdown
from the control center in our clubhouse. Five of the rockets fired
perfectly and exploded within seconds of each other in the dense cloud
cover. We later found out that Dinky Poore and Freddy Muldoon at the
sixth site had an argument over who was going to push the firing button;
after they both decided to let the other one push it, neither one would
agree to do it. So the argument ended up in a stalemate.
"What's the matter?" asked Henry, when he was finally able to get them
on the radio.
"Nothin'!" said Dinky. "That stupid Freddy is just too dumb to push
the button!"
Anyway, it rained all through that day and long into the night. Spirits
were high in Mammoth Falls, and we were once more in the good graces
of everyone. It was the first continuous rain of the summer, and the
Gazette that afternoon offered a one-hundred-dollar prize to anyone
who could correctly predict the number of inches that would fall. The
next morning it was still raining, with no sign of a letup. It looked
odd to see umbrellas on the streets and people wearing rubbers. But
nobody was grumbling about it, as they usually do when it's wet and
nasty out. The downtown merchants were doing a good business despite
the weather, and everyone was wearing a smile.
The smiles turned a little sour, though, by the time it had rained
for four days straight. It's a funny thing, but no matter how badly
people want rain, it doesn't take much of it to satisfy them -- and not
much more to make them gripe about the weather. By the end of the week
everyone was asking when the rain would let up, and a lot of people were
complaining about their cellars flooding. In Ned Carver's barbershop
the talk was about nothing else but the rain, and about the mud slides
that were occurring in the hills. The
Gazette was offering a
two-hundred-dollar prize to anyone who could predict the exact hour the
rain would stop.
It just kept raining. It didn't seem that the sun would ever come out
again. By the tenth day there was serious concern in Mammoth Falls,
and the Town Council was holding a special meeting to decide what to do
about Lemon Creek. It was up over its banks already, in some places,
and a couple of the back roads that crossed it had been closed. Nobody
could remember a flood in Mammoth Falls, but if the rain kept up, it
looked as though we would have one.
Henry and Jeff and I were sitting in the drugstore across from the Town
Hall having a malted milk when Mayor Scragg and some members of the
Council came in to get a sandwich. The Mayor cleared his throat with a
loud
harrumph, as he always does when he's about to say something,
and came over to where we were sitting.
"This is a fine mess you've gotten us into, Mulligan!" he said tersely.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, but I don't think it's our fault," said Henry,
staring into his malted milk.
"Well, you made it rain, with your crazy scientific gimmicks! Isn't
there some way you can stop it?" pleaded the Mayor.
Henry shook his head dubiously; then he looked at the Mayor sideways. "We
haven't gotten that far yet!" he said, staring into his malted again.
The rest of the Council members burst into laughter.
"Well, supposing you read up on it," said the Mayor gruffly. "It looks
as though we're going to have a serious flood."
"Nobody has ever figured out a way to make it
stop raining,"
said Henry with an air of serious concentration. "That's one of the
troubles with scientists. They know some of the answers, but not all
of them. It just goes to show that you can tamper with nature, but you
can't control her. She always strikes back."
"There must be something we can do!" said the Mayor, turning away.
"Yes, there is!"
"What's that?"
"You can pray!"
"Not a bad idea!" said the Mayor. "Supposing you start in!" And he went
back to his table to munch his sandwich.
Somebody took Henry seriously, because the following Sunday there was
a general day of prayer in all the churches in town. But it didn't
do any good. Monday morning dawned with a leaden sky and brought the
fifteenth consecutive day of rain on Mammoth Falls. The Civil Defense
Corps had put out a call for volunteers to sandbag the banks of Lemon
Creek so it wouldn't flood the business section. Some of the outlying
streets north of town were already under water. We got all the members
of Harmon Muldoon's gang together, and between us we had enough workers
to take over one whole section of the dike building. Everybody in town
who had a truck of any description was pressed into service, and by late
afternoon Mayor Scragg had declared a state of emergency.
The work at the creek bank went on all through the night under the glare
of searchlights which the Air Force had brought in from Westport Field. By
midnight, Lemon Creek was a raging torrent of muddy, turbulent water. Even
if we managed to contain the water within the sandbag dikes, there was
danger that the swollen stream would wash away the principal bridge at
the end of Main Street. Seth Emory, who is Director of Civil Defense,
and Police Chief Harold Putney made a survey of the entire line of dikes
and predicted that if it rained again on Tuesday the water would rise
more rapidly than we could fill sandbags. A flood was almost certain,
unless the rain let up.
In desperation, Mayor Scragg got on the telephone at his command post near
the bridge. He called the State University and the United States Weather
Bureau and got their expert meteorologists out of bed. When he asked them
if they knew of any way to make it stop raining, they both said he must
be some kind of a nut and slammed the phone down in his ear. The Mayor,
muddy and rain-soaked, turned away from the phone to confront Mrs. Abner
Larrabee and the members of her Garden Circle, who had him hemmed in.
"Mr. Mayor," said Mrs. Larrabee, in the tone of voice women use when
they think things have gone far enough, "what do you intend to do about
the rain?"
Mayor Scragg buried his face in his hands and sobbed loudly, twice. Then
he looked up, and a fiendish gleam leaped into his eyes. With magnificent
self-control he said, "Mrs. Larrabee, I intend to give you authority to
stop it!"
|
"Excellent!" said Mrs. Larrabee. "Then I have an announcement to make."
"Yes, Mrs. Larrabee," sighed the Mayor. "What is your announcement?"
"The ladies of the Greater Mammoth Falls Garden Circle, of which I am
president, and the ladies of the Mammoth Falls chapter of the Friends
of the Wildwood, of which I am also president as well as corresponding
secretary, have invited the members of the Daughters of Pocahontas and
their husbands to join them in an ancient Indian sun dance. It is a
ritual dance of the Pawnees, and one in which they had great faith."
"Yes, Mrs. Larrabee!"
"We intend to perform the dance at six a.m. tomorrow morning at Lookout
Rock on the top of Indian Hill. It's a most appropriate place, don't
you think?"
"Yes, Mrs. Larrabee!"
"We would like you and all the Town Council members to be there. We
think the whole community should support us."
"I'm sure they will, Mrs. Larrabee."
"But will you be there, Mr. Mayor?"
"Yes!" said the Mayor wearily. "I might as well be. My house will probably
be under water."
"And the members of the Council?"
"Yes, Mrs. Larrabee. They will be there."
This was something we couldn't afford to miss. Tired as we were, we
dragged ourselves to the top of Indian Hill in the pale gray light of
the morning. We had worked all night on the dikes, and there was nothing
more that could be done. If the creek rose any higher, the sheer weight
of the water would burst the sandbag walls.
It was a motley crowd that assembled in the grassy clearing behind
Lookout Rock that morning. A persistent drizzle was still falling
from the leaden overcast above, and most people were huddled under
umbrellas. Mrs. Larrabee was circulating among them, trying to persuade
everyone to take down their umbrellas and join in the dance. Meanwhile,
Abner Larrabee, with the help of a couple of other henpecked men, was
trying to coax a sodden mass of newspapers and twigs into flame.
The Daughters of Pocahontas had been using this clearing as a meeting
place for years, and they had arranged a lot of fieldstones in a circle
for seats. At one side of the circle was a sort of gateway, where you
were supposed to stop and pick up a twig to throw on the council fire
in the center as you entered the sacred circle. At the side opposite
the gateway was a large slate slab, suspended across two rocks, which
served as a kind of throne for whoever was the high muckety-muck of the
council. In the center was a ring of smaller stones to mark the spot
for the council fire, and this is where Abner Larrabee was striving to
get a blaze started.
We clambered up onto the top of Lookout Rock, which was directly behind
the throne, to watch the proceedings -- all except Dinky Poore, that
is. He curled up at the base of the rock in a poncho and fell fast asleep.
A lot of shouting went up from the women when the first flicker of flame
shot up through the stack of kindling Abner was fanning. Raincoats came
off, and somebody started beating a drum, and all of a sudden there were
about three dozen people inside the circle in full Indian regalia. The
crowd of onlookers pressed in closer, and before we could even start
laughing, Mrs. Larrabee was reciting a mystic chant in some language we
couldn't even understand. She was standing in front of the throne with
her face turned up to the sky and her arms thrust out to her sides with
the palms facing forward, toward the east. A rhythmic clapping from
those seated in the circle punctuated her chant, and every once in a
while they threw in another shout.
Pretty soon the men in the group stood up and started stamping their
feet in time to the clapping. The beat got faster and faster, and then
the chant turned into a song, which everybody was singing. Mrs. Larrabee
stepped forward to the council fire, where she raised her arms up high
and pointed her fingers toward the sky, and one of the men leaped up with
a large hoop in his hands and started gyrating wildly about the circle,
doing all sorts of fancy stunts with the hoop. Then all the men moved
in to form a ring around the fire and started to dance in a circle,
stamping their feet hard on the ground and throwing their heads back
every time they shouted. The women all joined hands and started moving
in a larger circle in the opposite direction.
Henry sat on the rock with his chin propped on his knees and stared at
the dancers. "Not very scientific!" he said.
Suddenly someone screamed, and all the men started beating on the fringes
of Mrs. Larrabee's Indian dress, which had caught fire from being
too close to the flames. But the dance went on without interruption,
in an ever-increasing cadence, and nobody seemed to notice that it had
stopped raining.
"Holy mackerel! There's the sun!" shouted Freddy Muldoon, standing up
on the rock and pointing across the valley. We all jerked our heads
around and, sure enough, you could see the top of it shining through
a rift in the clouds on the eastern horizon. Mrs. Larrabee heard the
shout and brought her head down out of the clouds. She shouted too,
and stretched her arms out straight toward the east. The song changed
to an even weirder tune, and all the dancers flung themselves about the
circle in wild abandon. Then the dance stopped suddenly, and they all
knelt down and bowed toward the east, placing the palms of their hands
flat on the ground.
There was a lot of cheering and back-slapping among the spectators,
and Mayor Scragg stepped forward with the members of the Town Council
and shook Mrs. Larrabee's hand. The full light of the sun had broken
through the rift in the clouds now, and it shone on the faces of the
dancers, which were all smeared with some kind of reddish-brown paint.
"I hope I never get old enough to dress up like that!" said Mortimer
Dalrymple.
We clambered down off the rock and joined the line of people moving
down the path toward the road. We passed right by Mrs. Larrabee, who
was still being congratulated by the Council members.
"Well, Big Chief!" she called out to Henry. "What did you think of
the dance?"
"Very nice!" said Henry politely. "You sure picked a good day for it!"
We woke up Dinky Poore and went on down the hill, muddy and tired and
a little bewildered. It looked as though it would be a nice day.
"I guess you were right again, Henry," said Freddy Muldoon. "Science
doesn't know all the answers."
"Neither does Mrs. Larrabee!" said Henry.
Last updated 4 Apr 98 by
max
Big Chief Rainmaker
Big Chief Rainmaker
© 1968 by Bertrand R. Brinley
Illustrations by Charles Geer
I
T WAS ONE of those hot August days in Mammoth Falls
when even the dogs won't go out on the street, and you don't dare open
your mouth for fear of getting your tongue sunburned. I was sitting in
old Ned Carver's barbershop, thumbing through a magazine and waiting for
Mr. Carver to finish cutting Charlie Brown's hair, when Jason Barnaby
stumbled in through the door and flopped down in a chair to fan himself.
"How's the apples look this year, Jason?" mumbled Charlie Brown through
the hot, wet towel wrapped around his face. Jason's apple orchard up on
Brake Hill is the biggest orchard in the county. It's a regular showpiece
for visitors.
"Ain't gonna be no apples if we don't soon get some rain," whined Jason,
mopping his gray hair back off his forehead. "I never did see such a
hot spell as we're havin' now."
"Yes, sir!" Ned Carver agreed. "That little piece of grass in front
of my place is about burned to a crisp right now. I expect it's been a
month since we've seen a real rain."
"Longer'n that," moaned Jason. "Them leaves on my trees'll snap right
in two in your fingers, they're so dry."
"I hear tell Mayor Scragg is bringin' in some professional rainmakers,"
said Charlie Brown. "Some real experts from the Department of Agriculture
and the State University."
"Won't do no good," muttered Jason, stoically. "They tried that over
in Clinton last year, and it wasn't worth a hill of beans -- all them
birds with their blowin' machines and their silly airplanes! Pshaw! You
might as well get down on your knees and pray. When the Lord says 'Let
it rain!' it'll rain."
"That don't say you can't give the Lord a helpin' hand," said
Charlie. "The Mayor and the Town Council know what they're doing." Charlie
Brown is the town treasurer, and he's been on the Town Council for
thirty-one years. He owns the only funeral parlor in Mammoth Falls,
and everybody respects him. He generally knows what's going on in town.
Jason Barnaby didn't answer for a while. He was staring at the highly
polished toes of Charlie's black pumps.
"How come you're always wearing a new pair of shoes?" he asked finally. "I
swear you got more shoes than any man in town."
"Mind your own business!" said Charlie Brown. "We were talkin' about
the dry spell."
I didn't hear much of the rest of the conversation, because I kept
falling asleep like I always do in the barbershop -- especially on hot
days. I woke up when Mr. Carver snapped the hair cloth and said "Next!"
"Couldn't you Mad Scientists do something to bring on rain?" he asked
me with a chuckle, as I climbed into the chair. "You kids are always
getting mixed up in something crazy."
"I s'pose if anybody could make it rain, Henry Mulligan could," I said,
before I fell asleep again.
Old Ned Carver didn't know it, but he had started something. Before the
month was out he was wishing he'd kept his mouth shut.
The Mad Scientists' Club meets almost every day during the summer,
because we usually have some kind of a project going. When I went out
to Jeff Crocker's barn that afternoon to find the rest of the gang,
my head was full of crazy notions about how we might make it rain --
like dipping a huge sponge in Strawberry Lake and floating it over
Mr. Barnaby's apple orchard suspended from big balloons.
In the clubhouse I found Mortimer Dalrymple fiddling around with the
ham radio outfit and Homer Snodgrass stretched out on the rusty old
box-spring mattress in the corner reading a tattered volume of Rudyard
Kipling's poetry.
"Hey, listen to this!" said Homer.
"'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs
and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself --'"
"If I had your head I wouldn't want to keep it!" said Mortimer in a
loud voice.
Homer answered him with a raspberry and rolled over to prop his book
against the wall.
"Where's Henry and Jeff?" I asked. "I got important business to discuss."
"They're out in back, washing Mr. Crocker's car," said Mortimer.
Jeff Crocker's dad makes him wash the family car once a week. We're
all supposed to help, in return for using the barn as our clubhouse,
but mostly Jeff ends up washing it himself. Fortunately, he and Henry
were just about finished when I found them, and I told them all about
the conversation I had heard in the barbershop.
"I know it's been rough," Jeff said. "All the farmers around here are
complaining. My dad says there won't be enough hay to feed the horses
this winter if it doesn't rain soon."
"It's easy enough to make it rain," said Henry. "All you have to do is
create the proper conditions." Henry stopped wiping off the car, and I
could see he was thinking about the problem. I finished the last fender
for him.
"When are these professional rainmakers coming?" he asked.
"I don't know. But Homer's father should know, 'cause he's on the Town
Council."
"I suggest we don't do anything until after they've been here," said Jeff,
as he spread the rags out to dry. "After all, the town is probably paying
them a lot of money, and they might just make it rain."
"What do you think, Henry?" I asked.
"I think I've got an idea!" said Henry, and he walked straight down
the lane to the main road and went home and we didn't see him again for
three days -- which isn't unusual when Henry is thinking.
The rainmakers came, and we all went out to watch them set up their
machines. They had huge blowers that they used to create a white fog of
dust particles in the air, and they set them up on the hills all around
the valley. They also had two light airplanes operating out of the county
airport that they'd send up to seed the rain clouds whenever any appeared.
Dinky Poore was as inquisitive as usual.
"What's that white stuff they're blowin' into the air?" he asked Henry.
"That's silver iodide crystals," said Henry. "They're supposed to make
water vapor condense and form into drops of water. The trouble is, you've
got to have water vapor to start with, and the air's so dry right now
I don't think it'll do any good."
The rainmakers kept at it for two weeks, but they didn't do much
good. They got a spat of rain now and then, but not enough to sneeze
at. And every day they had a different excuse: The wind wasn't right,
or there weren't enough clouds, or they couldn't get the airplanes
into the air in time when a good cloud did appear. All in all, it was
an expensive operation, and the farmers were pretty skeptical about it
and were grumbling about the cost. Finally, Mayor Scragg and the Town
Council held a big public meeting, where everybody had their say, and
the general opinion seemed to be that rainmaking was for the birds. And
when Charlie Brown declared that the town just couldn't afford any more
rainmaking experiments, the whole idea was scrapped.
That was when Henry Mulligan decided it was time for the Mad Scientists'
Club to act. We had a meeting in the clubhouse, and Henry outlined the
plan to us.
"The trouble with most rainmakers," he said, "is that they spread
themselves too thin. You can't go firing silver iodide crystals into the
air willy-nilly. You've got to hit a particular cloud at a particular
time, and you've got to concentrate a lot of stuff in one place, to do
any good."
Henry pulled a long sleek-looking piece of tubing with fins on it from
under the table and showed it to us.
"This is a pretty simple rocket," he said, "but it'll go up high enough
to hit most rain clouds. Right here behind the nose cone is a cartridge
with a little gunpowder in it and a lot of silver iodide crystals. All
you have to do is explode the cartridge at the right time and spray the
crystals through the cloud. Grape growers in northern Italy have been
using these for twenty years to make it rain on their vineyards. They
just wait until a likely-looking cloud comes along, and then they blast
away at it."
"Holy mackerel!" said Freddy Muldoon. "You think of everything, Henry."
"I didn't think of it," said Henry. "I just read a lot."
"So do I," said Homer Snodgrass, "but I never seem to read the right
stuff."
"You don't learn much from poetry, that's a cinch!" said Mortimer.
"You do too! You just don't understand it!" declared Homer stoutly.
"How high up will that rocket go?" asked Dinky Poore.
"That depends on how we design it," said Henry. "Most rain-bearing clouds
form at about five thousand feet. It's simple enough to calculate the
size of the rocket and the amount of fuel we need to lift a cartridge
of silver iodide to that altitude. But we can explode the cartridge at
any altitude we want to. We just run a fuse through the cartridge to
the propellant chamber. When the fuel burns to the top of the chamber,
it ignites the fuse. If we want to explode the cartridge at three thousand
feet, we use a very short fuse. If we want to explode it at five thousand
feet, we use a longer one."
"Let's try it!" said Dinky Poore eagerly. Dinky's always ready to try
anything.
"First we've got to build the rockets," said Henry. "This is just
a preliminary design. We've got to flight test a few before we know
whether we have the right design."
The next few days we were busy as beavers. We'd spend half the night
building rockets in our machine shop, up in the loft over Mr. Snodgrass's
hardware store, and then we'd pedal out to a spot in the hills west of
Strawberry Lake to test-fire them during the day. We fired them in a
steep trajectory, slightly off the vertical, so the spent rocket bodies
would land in the lake. By watching for a splash as the rocket hit the
surface of the water, we could get a pretty precise measurement from
launch to impact. From this, Henry could tell us exactly how high the
rocket was going.
After we had fired about twenty rockets of different types, Henry declared
himself satisfied that we had the right design. Then we set to work and
built about thirty rockets, complete with cartridges filled with silver
iodide crystals and with different fuses. We designed them so the fins
would fit snugly inside a piece of corrugated rain spout which would
serve as the launching tube. We used a mixture of powdered zinc and
sulphur as the propellant and fitted each rocket with an electrical
squib for an igniter. We could have launched them by lighting a fuse
with a match, but Henry said this wasn't safe. In case one blew up,
he wanted everyone to be a safe distance away. So we rigged up a firing
circuit with dry cell batteries to ignite the squib.
"Now whatta we do?" asked Freddy Muldoon when we had finished the
last rocket.
Everybody looked at Jeff, who gives most of the orders because he's
president, and Jeff looked at Henry.
"I think we've got to prove we can do what we think we can do, first,"
said Henry. "Let's set up on Brake Hill near Mr. Barnaby's orchard and
stake a lookout there all day long. If any clouds come over, and we can
hit one and make it rain, then maybe we can expand our operations."
"I'm for that!" said Freddy, rubbing his pudgy stomach. "I'll volunteer
for lookout."
"Good!" said Jeff. "The lookout will have to go all the way to the top
of the hill to watch for clouds. That'll keep you away from the apples."
"Let the minutes reflect that I withdraw my offer," said Freddy.
"Noted, but not approved!" said Homer, who was taking notes. "It doesn't
make any difference, anyway. Most of Mr. Barnaby's apples are Baldwins,
and they're still too green to eat."
"You're talking to the champion green-apple eater of Mammoth County!" said
Freddy Muldoon.
The next morning we all packed a lunch and set out bright and early
for Brake Hill with a supply of rockets and a couple of launching
tubes. Mortimer and Freddy went to the top of the hill with a radio to
set up the cloud watch. But Freddy kept sneaking down to snitch apples
off the trees on the upper slopes of the orchard. By noontime he had
such a stomachache that he was rolling on the ground, and Mortimer had
to send him back down the hill to where we were. We just let him lie
around and groan all he wanted to.
By early afternoon a lot of clouds had begun to form on the horizon, and
Mortimer reported a couple of big ones being blown in from the east, right
toward Brake Hill. We got the launching tubes set up, pointing to where
we thought the clouds would come over the brow of the hill, and waited.
In about an hour a big puffy white one loomed over us, and Henry checked
out the firing circuit and then connected the batteries to the squib
leads in the rocket nozzles. We waited until the bulk of the cloud had
drifted directly over our heads. Then Henry said, "Fire number one!"
Jeff threw the switch to close the firing circuit, and the first rocket
swished into the sky, leaving a billowing cloud of smoke behind. We saw
a bright flash, and a few seconds later we heard a sharp report like a
large firecracker.
"That one exploded a little early, about forty-five hundred feet,"
said Henry. "I counted just four seconds from the flash to the bang. The
propellant must have burned too fast."
We saw the bright silver flash of the spent rocket tube as it plunged down
out of the cloud and caught the rays of the sun. We waited a long minute,
but nothing happened. The huge cloud continued drifting slowly over us.
"Fire number two!" said Henry.
I threw my switch, and the second rocket shot out of its launch
tube with a hissing roar. It veered to the right momentarily, then
straightened itself and plunged like a dart into the soft underbelly of
the cloud. Suddenly the whole cloud turned a brilliant golden yellow as
flaming particles shot through it in every direction; it looked as though
a bolt of lightning had struck it. Henry was jumping up and down even
before the report of the explosion had reached us, and Homer Snodgrass
was slapping him on the back.
"A hit! A hit! A palpable hit!" cried Homer.
"Let's wait and see! Let's wait and see!" cried Henry, trying to ward
off the blows.
It was then that we heard the
putt-putt-putt of Jason Barnaby's
rusty old Model-T Ford and turned to see it weaving and bouncing toward
us down the lane that led through the apple orchard. Jason's two German
shepherd dogs were galloping along beside the old rattletrap, barking
their heads off, and we could see a double-barreled shotgun clamped to
the windshield. Jason brought the rattletrap to a sputtering halt in a
cloud of dust and jumped down from the seat with the shotgun clenched
in one fist.
"What in tarnation are you young rapscallions doin' here?" he shouted at
us. "Are you stealin' my apples? What's them fireworks I been hearin'?"
Freddy, who had been lying on the ground, still writhing in pain, started
crawling for the bushes at the edge of the orchard. Dinky Poore's eyes
had popped wide open, and he was trembling like a leaf. Jeff Crocker
stepped forward.
"We weren't doing anything, Mr. Barnaby," he explained. "We were just
trying to make it rain."
"Trying to make it rain? If that don't beat all!" exclaimed old Jason,
whipping his hat off and slamming it onto the ground.
His face was redder than any apple in the orchard, and the veins in his
neck stood out as though he were going to have a fit of apoplexy. When
he bent over to pick up his hat, the startling contrast of the smooth
white top of his bald head made Mortimer Dalrymple burst out laughing.
"What are you laughing at, you young hyena?" Jason shouted. "If you
think you can --"
Suddenly Jason clapped his hand to his bare head. "What's that?" he
said. And he looked upward in time to catch another raindrop right in
the corner of his left eye. He wiped it off with a fingertip. Then
he stuck his tongue out and turned his face upward again. The drops
started coming down more rapidly -- big splashy drops that splattered
on the leaves of the apple trees and sent a cascade of tiny droplets
in every direction. Jason spread his arms out with the palms of his
hands turned upward and threw his head back. He held his battered old
felt hat out in front of him, as if to catch the precious drops and
hold them forever. He opened his mouth and tried to drink in the rain.
Several large drops hit him right in the face, and a trickle of water
zigzagged down the side of his weather-beaten neck and cut a channel
through the dust that covered his skin. Suddenly he started to gyrate
and cavort among the apple trees in a wild and spontaneous dance.
"Whoopee!" shouted old Jason. "It's rain, rain, rain! The rain's
a fallin'. The rain's a fallin'."
And it was. It came down in a regular torrent. We looked upward and saw
that the belly of the huge white cloud had broken open and dark streamers
of water vapor were cascading toward the earth. We had started a regular
cloudburst!
We scrambled to get all our gear together and pull it under the trees. The
two German shepherds were prancing around after Jason and paying no
attention to us.
"One thing we forgot to bring was umbrellas," said Mortimer.
"Not even Henry can think of everything," said Dinky Poore.
"You don't need no umbrellas!" came a voice from under the trees. "Get
under that tarpaulin in the back of the Model T and I'll ride you home."
We were soaked to the skin, but we laughed and shouted as we bounced
back through the orchard in Jason's ancient pickup.
"Tarnation! If that don't beat all!" muttered Jason, as he wrestled with
the wheel. "I think I'll crack open a jug of hard cider when I get back
to the house."
It didn't take long for the word to get around town that we had made it
rain on Jason's apple orchard. Old Jason drove us right into town and
stopped off at Ned Carver's barbershop on his way home. In a small town
the barbershop is better than the telephone exchange when it comes to
rapid communication. Mayor Scragg was among the first to hear about it,
and he stopped off at Henry's house that night and patted him on the
head and called him "Big Chief Rainmaker."
Charlie Brown, the treasurer, was a little dubious, though. If we could
make it rain every time a cloud came over, he wanted to know how much
it was going to cost the town to keep us in business. Jeff assured
him that we weren't interested in draining the town treasury. All we
wanted to do was help the farmers save their crops, and if the farmers
were willing to pay for the rockets and the zinc and sulphur we needed,
the Mad Scientists' Club was at their service.
After that, we were flooded with requests from farmers to set up rocket
launchers on their property and try to make it rain. We couldn't take
care of everybody, and we didn't want to play favorites, so we held a
meeting in the clubhouse to figure out what to do. Dinky Poore made his
usual suggestion about writing to the President for help and was voted
down as usual. Freddy Muldoon thought we could take care of everybody
if we just ran fast enough from one farm to another.
"Great idea, Pudgy!" said Mortimer. "Only I don't see any Olympic medals
hanging on
you. By the time you get through breakfast, it's time
for lunch. You sweat faster than you can run, and we wouldn't want you
to drown."
"OK, wise guy!" Freddy shot back. "At least when I step on a scale,
something happens. I thought maybe I could stick around here and man
the radio."
After a lot of discussion we made a revolutionary decision. For the first
time in the history of the Mad Scientists' Club we decided to ask Harmon
Muldoon's gang to help us out.
"This is a community project," Henry pointed out, "and there's no reason
to be selfish about it."
"Nuts!" said Freddy. "My cousin will hog all the credit. Besides, he
doesn't know anything about rockets."
"We can teach them all they have to know," said Jeff. "As far as the
credit goes, everybody already knows who Big Chief Rainmaker is."
Then we all stood up and gave Henry the Indian sign, and that was the end
of the meeting. Jeff Crocker was appointed ambassador plenipotentiary to
conduct negotiations with Harmon Muldoon, because he can beat anybody in
Harmon's gang at Indian wrestling. He didn't have to put the arm on them,
though. They jumped at the opportunity to get into the act.
We set up several launching sites at strategic locations that gave
us a chance to cover most of the farms in the valley on fairly short
notice. With Harmon's equipment added to ours, we had a pretty good radio
net operating from our clubhouse to Jeff Crocker's barn. We couldn't
be everywhere at once, even with six two-man teams manning the launch
sites, but we didn't have to worry about cloud watchers. Every farmer
in the valley was bombarding us with phone calls each time a wisp of
cloud appeared on the horizon.
We didn't keep count, but we must have fired about two hundred rockets
during the next two weeks. We didn't make it rain every time, of
course. Sometimes we might fire ten rockets before we got a good hit
on a cloud. And sometimes we might get a good hit, and still nothing
would happen. But we did manage to hit the jackpot often enough to make
the difference between a dry year and a drought. Most everybody in town
seemed to agree that Henry's idea had saved the farmers from a real crop
failure. People he didn't even know would wave at Henry on the street
and say, "Hi, Big Chief!"
The rest of us basked in Henry's reflected glory, of course, and we seemed
to get more smiles from the storekeepers than usual. Even Billy Dahr,
the town constable, looked as though he was glad to see us when one of
us passed him on the street. And Jeff Crocker's dad was no exception. He
was seen one day washing his own car, and he told a curious neighbor
that he thought Jeff needed a rest.
But somehow I felt uncomfortable about it all, despite our success. I
finally realized that it was because I once heard Henry say that you
can't tamper with nature without getting into trouble. And it didn't
take too long for Henry's observation to prove true.
Freddy Muldoon and Dinky Poore were manning the launch site out on
Blueberry Hill one day when a cloud about ten times the size of the Queen
Elizabeth came drifting over. They got all excited and started firing
rockets at it as fast as they could mount them on the launcher. They
weren't supposed to be out there, and there wasn't any sense in firing
at the cloud so soon, because it hadn't even gotten out over the valley
yet. But they wanted to show what they could do, so they blasted away
at it and finally scored a good hit. The cloud practically evaporated
and dumped torrents of rain on the hilltop. Dinky and Freddy fell all
over themselves in a mad scramble to get their ponchos on and pedal back
into town to brag about what they had done.
When they got down to the road that leads past Memorial Point, where the
old Civil War cannon is, they saw people streaming out of the woods by
the hundreds, slipping and sliding down the hill with their arms full of
blankets, tablecloths, picnic baskets, baseball bats, musical instruments,
and beer kegs. The sudden cloudburst had broken up the annual Kiwanis
Picnic and Songfest for the Benefit of Homeless Children and turned it
into a rain-soaked rout.
Joe Dougherty, who is president of the Kiwanis Club and trombone soloist
in the town band, was hopping mad. He complained loudly to Mayor Scragg
that the whole thing was a deliberate plot by those troublemakers in
the Mad Scientists' Club to ruin the annual picnic and sabotage the
Kiwanis Club's fund-raising program. He claimed that we had made it rain
intentionally, in order to get back at the Kiwanis for refusing to sponsor
our project to explore the bottom of Strawberry Lake. Henry and Jeff were
called on the carpet by the Mayor, and of course they denied having any
such intentions. But that didn't change the fact that the Kiwanis picnic
had been flooded out, and a strawberry shortcake the size of a bathtub
had to be abandoned in the middle of the clearing at Memorial Point.
Far from bragging about their prowess as rainmakers, Freddy and Dinky
were trying to deny any connection with the episode when Henry and Jeff
got back to the clubhouse.
"We were down by Lemon Creek all the time," said Freddy stoutly. "We
didn't even know any Kiwanis picnic was going on."
Jeff Crocker fastened a gimlet eye on him. "Joe Dougherty claims they
heard about five rockets fired just before it started to rain, and he
has four hundred witnesses to back him up. Who do you think fired those
rockets, Freddy?"
"Probably my cousin Harmon," said Freddy offhandedly, pretending that he
saw something very interesting outside the window. "He's always sneakin'
around where he's not supposed to be."
"It so happens that Harmon was here in the clubhouse with us all the
time," said Henry quietly. "And the rest of his gang were assigned to
man the launch sites south of town. I don't think it's very fair to try
and blame this on Harmon."
"OK, OK!" said Freddy, thrusting the palms of his hands upwards. "So it
didn't work!"
Our reputation managed to survive the episode of the Kiwanis picnic, but
not for long. Mortimer Dalrymple and Homer Snodgrass sat out the Brake
Hill watch one day at the edge of Jason Barnaby's apple orchard. It had
been three days since any good clouds had been sighted in the valley,
but there was a cool wind blowing in from the east that held promise of
moisture to come.
It was about noontime that a big black cloud came riding high over the
crest of Brake Hill. It looked like a prime thunderhead, and Homer and
Mortimer got the artillery ready. They hit it with two shots and ran for
cover among the trees in the orchard. They hadn't yet reached the shelter
of a tent they had strung between two of the trees when a deafening roar
surround them.
"What was that?" cried Homer. "Something hit me!"
No sooner had he said it than a hailstone the size of a pullet egg hit
him on the right shoulder.
"Geronimo!" cried Mortimer. "It's hailing doorknobs. Run for cover!"
They both dove under the tent while hailstones pelted the orchard all
around them and apples came thumping to the ground by the hundreds. The
accumulated weight of ice and Baldwin apples on the sagging eaves of the
tent finally collapsed it, and the two of them lay flat on the ground
holding the canvas about their heads for protection. The cloud was a big
one and it drifted on through town, leaving a trail of minor destruction
in its path, and finally spent itself in the hills across the valley.
A cast-iron straitjacket wouldn't have held Jason Barnaby still after
that one. He barged into Mayor Scragg's office and thumped loudly on the
Mayor's desk, complaining that half his apple harvest had been ruined. He
forgot all about the fact that he wouldn't have had any apples at all if
we hadn't brought rain to his orchard in the first place. Abner Larrabee's
wife, who is a social leader in town, wailed piteously in a letter to the
editor of the
Mammoth Falls Gazette that her prize peonies had
been stoned to death just before they reached the full glory of their
bloom. She complained bitterly about "wanton boys who create mischief
with their teenage pranks" and wondered when the Mayor was going to do
something about the problem of juvenile delinquency.
The episode of the hailstorm seemed to dampen some of the enthusiasm for
our project around town, but the more rain-thirsty farmers kept urging
us to continue. The editor of the
Gazette wrote an editorial in
our defense, in which he pointed out that our intention had been to do
the community a worthwhile service. And Henry admitted in an interview
for the paper that we didn't know all the answers yet about how to cope
with nature, but that any scientist knew that he faced certain risks
whenever something new was being tried. He promised that we would try
to learn all about hail clouds and avoid mistakes in the future.
A few days after the hailstorm, the town of Mammoth Falls awoke to find
itself shielded from the sun by a low and heavy overcast. The temperature
had dropped, and the hot spell seemed to be over. Everybody could smell
rain in the wind, and the town looked forward to the end of the long
summer drought. But still no rain came. For three days the overcast
continued, and the atmosphere was heavy. The cattle were restless,
and chicken farmers complained that the hens cackled all night and laid
no eggs.
On the fourth day we held a meeting with all the members of Harmon
Muldoon's gang, and everybody was in favor of giving nature the needle. We
decided to launch six rockets simultaneously from different launch sites
scattered around the valley to see if we could make the overcast give
out with some rain. We set up the radio net, and Henry gave a countdown
from the control center in our clubhouse. Five of the rockets fired
perfectly and exploded within seconds of each other in the dense cloud
cover. We later found out that Dinky Poore and Freddy Muldoon at the
sixth site had an argument over who was going to push the firing button;
after they both decided to let the other one push it, neither one would
agree to do it. So the argument ended up in a stalemate.
"What's the matter?" asked Henry, when he was finally able to get them
on the radio.
"Nothin'!" said Dinky. "That stupid Freddy is just too dumb to push
the button!"
Anyway, it rained all through that day and long into the night. Spirits
were high in Mammoth Falls, and we were once more in the good graces
of everyone. It was the first continuous rain of the summer, and the
Gazette that afternoon offered a one-hundred-dollar prize to anyone
who could correctly predict the number of inches that would fall. The
next morning it was still raining, with no sign of a letup. It looked
odd to see umbrellas on the streets and people wearing rubbers. But
nobody was grumbling about it, as they usually do when it's wet and
nasty out. The downtown merchants were doing a good business despite
the weather, and everyone was wearing a smile.
The smiles turned a little sour, though, by the time it had rained
for four days straight. It's a funny thing, but no matter how badly
people want rain, it doesn't take much of it to satisfy them -- and not
much more to make them gripe about the weather. By the end of the week
everyone was asking when the rain would let up, and a lot of people were
complaining about their cellars flooding. In Ned Carver's barbershop
the talk was about nothing else but the rain, and about the mud slides
that were occurring in the hills. The
Gazette was offering a
two-hundred-dollar prize to anyone who could predict the exact hour the
rain would stop.
It just kept raining. It didn't seem that the sun would ever come out
again. By the tenth day there was serious concern in Mammoth Falls,
and the Town Council was holding a special meeting to decide what to do
about Lemon Creek. It was up over its banks already, in some places,
and a couple of the back roads that crossed it had been closed. Nobody
could remember a flood in Mammoth Falls, but if the rain kept up, it
looked as though we would have one.
Henry and Jeff and I were sitting in the drugstore across from the Town
Hall having a malted milk when Mayor Scragg and some members of the
Council came in to get a sandwich. The Mayor cleared his throat with a
loud
harrumph, as he always does when he's about to say something,
and came over to where we were sitting.
"This is a fine mess you've gotten us into, Mulligan!" he said tersely.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, but I don't think it's our fault," said Henry,
staring into his malted milk.
"Well, you made it rain, with your crazy scientific gimmicks! Isn't
there some way you can stop it?" pleaded the Mayor.
Henry shook his head dubiously; then he looked at the Mayor sideways. "We
haven't gotten that far yet!" he said, staring into his malted again.
The rest of the Council members burst into laughter.
"Well, supposing you read up on it," said the Mayor gruffly. "It looks
as though we're going to have a serious flood."
"Nobody has ever figured out a way to make it
stop raining,"
said Henry with an air of serious concentration. "That's one of the
troubles with scientists. They know some of the answers, but not all
of them. It just goes to show that you can tamper with nature, but you
can't control her. She always strikes back."
"There must be something we can do!" said the Mayor, turning away.
"Yes, there is!"
"What's that?"
"You can pray!"
"Not a bad idea!" said the Mayor. "Supposing you start in!" And he went
back to his table to munch his sandwich.
Somebody took Henry seriously, because the following Sunday there was
a general day of prayer in all the churches in town. But it didn't
do any good. Monday morning dawned with a leaden sky and brought the
fifteenth consecutive day of rain on Mammoth Falls. The Civil Defense
Corps had put out a call for volunteers to sandbag the banks of Lemon
Creek so it wouldn't flood the business section. Some of the outlying
streets north of town were already under water. We got all the members
of Harmon Muldoon's gang together, and between us we had enough workers
to take over one whole section of the dike building. Everybody in town
who had a truck of any description was pressed into service, and by late
afternoon Mayor Scragg had declared a state of emergency.
The work at the creek bank went on all through the night under the glare
of searchlights which the Air Force had brought in from Westport Field. By
midnight, Lemon Creek was a raging torrent of muddy, turbulent water. Even
if we managed to contain the water within the sandbag dikes, there was
danger that the swollen stream would wash away the principal bridge at
the end of Main Street. Seth Emory, who is Director of Civil Defense,
and Police Chief Harold Putney made a survey of the entire line of dikes
and predicted that if it rained again on Tuesday the water would rise
more rapidly than we could fill sandbags. A flood was almost certain,
unless the rain let up.
In desperation, Mayor Scragg got on the telephone at his command post near
the bridge. He called the State University and the United States Weather
Bureau and got their expert meteorologists out of bed. When he asked them
if they knew of any way to make it stop raining, they both said he must
be some kind of a nut and slammed the phone down in his ear. The Mayor,
muddy and rain-soaked, turned away from the phone to confront Mrs. Abner
Larrabee and the members of her Garden Circle, who had him hemmed in.
"Mr. Mayor," said Mrs. Larrabee, in the tone of voice women use when
they think things have gone far enough, "what do you intend to do about
the rain?"
Mayor Scragg buried his face in his hands and sobbed loudly, twice. Then
he looked up, and a fiendish gleam leaped into his eyes. With magnificent
self-control he said, "Mrs. Larrabee, I intend to give you authority to
stop it!"
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"Excellent!" said Mrs. Larrabee. "Then I have an announcement to make."
"Yes, Mrs. Larrabee," sighed the Mayor. "What is your announcement?"
"The ladies of the Greater Mammoth Falls Garden Circle, of which I am
president, and the ladies of the Mammoth Falls chapter of the Friends
of the Wildwood, of which I am also president as well as corresponding
secretary, have invited the members of the Daughters of Pocahontas and
their husbands to join them in an ancient Indian sun dance. It is a
ritual dance of the Pawnees, and one in which they had great faith."
"Yes, Mrs. Larrabee!"
"We intend to perform the dance at six a.m. tomorrow morning at Lookout
Rock on the top of Indian Hill. It's a most appropriate place, don't
you think?"
"Yes, Mrs. Larrabee!"
"We would like you and all the Town Council members to be there. We
think the whole community should support us."
"I'm sure they will, Mrs. Larrabee."
"But will you be there, Mr. Mayor?"
"Yes!" said the Mayor wearily. "I might as well be. My house will probably
be under water."
"And the members of the Council?"
"Yes, Mrs. Larrabee. They will be there."
This was something we couldn't afford to miss. Tired as we were, we
dragged ourselves to the top of Indian Hill in the pale gray light of
the morning. We had worked all night on the dikes, and there was nothing
more that could be done. If the creek rose any higher, the sheer weight
of the water would burst the sandbag walls.
It was a motley crowd that assembled in the grassy clearing behind
Lookout Rock that morning. A persistent drizzle was still falling
from the leaden overcast above, and most people were huddled under
umbrellas. Mrs. Larrabee was circulating among them, trying to persuade
everyone to take down their umbrellas and join in the dance. Meanwhile,
Abner Larrabee, with the help of a couple of other henpecked men, was
trying to coax a sodden mass of newspapers and twigs into flame.
The Daughters of Pocahontas had been using this clearing as a meeting
place for years, and they had arranged a lot of fieldstones in a circle
for seats. At one side of the circle was a sort of gateway, where you
were supposed to stop and pick up a twig to throw on the council fire
in the center as you entered the sacred circle. At the side opposite
the gateway was a large slate slab, suspended across two rocks, which
served as a kind of throne for whoever was the high muckety-muck of the
council. In the center was a ring of smaller stones to mark the spot
for the council fire, and this is where Abner Larrabee was striving to
get a blaze started.
We clambered up onto the top of Lookout Rock, which was directly behind
the throne, to watch the proceedings -- all except Dinky Poore, that
is. He curled up at the base of the rock in a poncho and fell fast asleep.
A lot of shouting went up from the women when the first flicker of flame
shot up through the stack of kindling Abner was fanning. Raincoats came
off, and somebody started beating a drum, and all of a sudden there were
about three dozen people inside the circle in full Indian regalia. The
crowd of onlookers pressed in closer, and before we could even start
laughing, Mrs. Larrabee was reciting a mystic chant in some language we
couldn't even understand. She was standing in front of the throne with
her face turned up to the sky and her arms thrust out to her sides with
the palms facing forward, toward the east. A rhythmic clapping from
those seated in the circle punctuated her chant, and every once in a
while they threw in another shout.
Pretty soon the men in the group stood up and started stamping their
feet in time to the clapping. The beat got faster and faster, and then
the chant turned into a song, which everybody was singing. Mrs. Larrabee
stepped forward to the council fire, where she raised her arms up high
and pointed her fingers toward the sky, and one of the men leaped up with
a large hoop in his hands and started gyrating wildly about the circle,
doing all sorts of fancy stunts with the hoop. Then all the men moved
in to form a ring around the fire and started to dance in a circle,
stamping their feet hard on the ground and throwing their heads back
every time they shouted. The women all joined hands and started moving
in a larger circle in the opposite direction.
Henry sat on the rock with his chin propped on his knees and stared at
the dancers. "Not very scientific!" he said.
Suddenly someone screamed, and all the men started beating on the fringes
of Mrs. Larrabee's Indian dress, which had caught fire from being
too close to the flames. But the dance went on without interruption,
in an ever-increasing cadence, and nobody seemed to notice that it had
stopped raining.
"Holy mackerel! There's the sun!" shouted Freddy Muldoon, standing up
on the rock and pointing across the valley. We all jerked our heads
around and, sure enough, you could see the top of it shining through
a rift in the clouds on the eastern horizon. Mrs. Larrabee heard the
shout and brought her head down out of the clouds. She shouted too,
and stretched her arms out straight toward the east. The song changed
to an even weirder tune, and all the dancers flung themselves about the
circle in wild abandon. Then the dance stopped suddenly, and they all
knelt down and bowed toward the east, placing the palms of their hands
flat on the ground.
There was a lot of cheering and back-slapping among the spectators,
and Mayor Scragg stepped forward with the members of the Town Council
and shook Mrs. Larrabee's hand. The full light of the sun had broken
through the rift in the clouds now, and it shone on the faces of the
dancers, which were all smeared with some kind of reddish-brown paint.
"I hope I never get old enough to dress up like that!" said Mortimer
Dalrymple.
We clambered down off the rock and joined the line of people moving
down the path toward the road. We passed right by Mrs. Larrabee, who
was still being congratulated by the Council members.
"Well, Big Chief!" she called out to Henry. "What did you think of
the dance?"
"Very nice!" said Henry politely. "You sure picked a good day for it!"
We woke up Dinky Poore and went on down the hill, muddy and tired and
a little bewildered. It looked as though it would be a nice day.
"I guess you were right again, Henry," said Freddy Muldoon. "Science
doesn't know all the answers."
"Neither does Mrs. Larrabee!" said Henry.
Last updated 4 Apr 98 by
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