Runaway Ralph - Beverly Cleary [22]
The campers finished a rousing chorus of You Are My Sunshine, when Ralph’s sharp ears caught a sound that had him on his feet in an instant. Pb-b-b-b. Pb-b-b-b. It was the sound a boy uses to make a toy motorcycle go! It was made softly as if by a boy alone in his thoughts. Garf had found Ralph’s motorcycle!
“Hey!” squeaked Ralph at the top of his small voice. “That’s my motorcycle!”
Garf stopped pushing the motorcycle across the bamboo leaves just long enough to make Ralph think he might have heard. Then, to Ralph’s disappointment, he put the motorcycle in the pocket of his jeans and went off toward his lodge for the rest period required of all the campers.
Ralph was so excited he left the bars of his cage and went for a run on his wheel. Garf spoke his language! He knew how to make the motorcycle go. There was hope after all. All Ralph had to do was explain to Garf—
As Ralph thought the matter over, his exercise wheel moved more and more slowly until it came to a stop and Ralph sat back on his haunches. His plan would not work. Until Garf was cleared of the theft of the watch, he was not going to risk coming into the craft shop. Ralph had to agree that Chum was right.
7
The Escape
Ralph was desperate to escape. His food supply was running low, and as Chum had predicted Garf stayed away from the craft shop. Ralph ran around the sides of his cage hoping that there might be an opening, one overlooked space wide enough for a mouse to squeeze through. There was none, as he had known all along. He pushed on the door with all his strength, but he could not budge it. He ran on his wheel in hope that it might just once take him someplace, but of course it did not. Ralph needed help.
“Hey, Chum,” he called over to the hamster, who was noisily wearing down his teeth on the bars of his cage. “You’re a stretchy fellow. See if you can stretch over here and pull this door open.”
For once Chum obliged by putting his shoulder to the bars of his cage, stretching his foreleg as far as he could, and reaching with his paw. He barely managed to flick a wire of the side of Ralph’s cage with a toenail.
“There must be some way we can get out of here,” said Ralph. “There’s got to be.”
“Not for me,” answered Chum. “I wouldn’t leave if I could. I’ve lived in a cage all my life, and I’m too old to start scrounging. Besides, I rather enjoy trying to bite the hands that feed me.”
“I would rather scrounge than starve,” said Ralph. He still had a supply of food, but he pawed through some old sunflower seed husks to make sure he had not missed any edible bits.
Over in the dining hall the campers, unaware that a mouse was soon to starve, sang with gusto:
“The ants came marching two by two.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The ants came marching two by two.
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The ants came marching two by two,
And the little one stopped to tie his shoe.”
As his food supply dwindled further, Ralph felt nervous and guilty. His mother had taught him to store food. The sight of the campers’ mosaics made of dried peas and beans was hard to bear. He felt he would no longer object to a little dried glue on his food. When Chum managed to toss an alfalfa pellet into his cage, he was humbly grateful.
Outside his cage the campers went about their activities unaware of the desperate mouse in the craft shop. Lana cradled Catso in her arms whenever she could catch him, and the smug look on that cat’s face was unbearable to Ralph. Karen returned to paint her bleach-bottle piggy bank. Everyone who passed her worktable asked if her watch had been returned, and Karen, busy with her piggy bank, shook her head.
Occasionally Ralph’s ears caught the familiar pb-b-b-b,