The Great Circus Train Robbery Read Online Free

fourteen. About steam trains. Dad found it on the web. If I write the essay, he’ll take me to the Springfield train show.  That’s a big one.  And if I win—”
    “You get to ride the Orient Express through Europe.”
    “How’d you know?”
    “You do? Really?”
    “Just kidding. But I do get to ride the Durango and Silverton in Colorado next spring. It’s a steam train, a real one. They keep stopping to fill up with water to make the steam. Dad’ll come with me—I mean, even if I don’t win the contest. You go up this long valley through miles of wilderness. Sometimes you’re on the edge of a cliff—you see wild elk, wolves and grizzlies down below. And if the train leaps the track—whee-ee...” He flung up his arms, did a cartwheel and fell flat on the ground. He grabbed his neck with his two hands and gagged, then did a slow agonized death on the grass.
    It was all so ridiculous, she wasn’t going to react. But she would like to ride that train. “If I pay, can I come along?”
    He jumped up. “If you help me research the trains. I’m going to the library at ten tomorrow morning. Ms. Delores has some books for me.”
    “She does? Okay then, I’ll go with you. We’ll start the spying at noon. You can do your spying from two to three, and I’ll take over again till five.”
    “What do you mean, my spying? Spying is your idea.” Spence went back to his train. He was getting more difficult to talk to these days. He didn’t go along with her ideas the way he used to. It might have something to do with the fact that he’d grown a quarter of an inch just this last month and she hadn’t grown at all. Soon he’d be her height—and then what?
    “My spying then.” She’d guessed she’d have to give in to him a little. “So I’ll be at your house at a quarter-to-ten. I mean it’ll be your essay, but I’d like to ride the train through those wild places. I’ve got some money saved up.”
    “Well, okay to the spying,” he said—with reluctance. “But I’ll have to ask Dad about the Colorado trip. It might be a ‘men only’ thing.”
    “Then when you get to be a man, you can go. See you tomorrow. Ta-ta.” She waved a limp wrist and skipped lightly away.
     

WEDNESDAY
     

5
     

ZOE MAKES A BARGAIN
     
    Ms. Delores had been a librarian at Branbury Public Library for twenty-nine years and this was her last,” she informed the children. “Thirty years and I’m done.”
    “Then what will you do with yourself?” Zoe asked.
    “Oh, sit around and drink tea and read all the books I never had time for. Go out to lunch with friends. Do church work—just so I don’t have to move around too fast.” She slapped her right hip and chuckled.
    She was a robust, pink-cheeked woman with wispy brownish-white hair, round wire-rimmed glasses and a big smile for everyone. Today she was wearing blue slacks and a light blue short-sleeved cotton shirt that revealed her smooth white arms. She had an inherited gene called Charcot Marie Tooth that gave her weakness in her feet and hands, she said, but never kept her from working. And she loved to work with kids.
    “I got my first library card in first grade,”  she told the children after she’d settled them comfortably in her tiny office that was filled with family photos.  “My twin sister and I would walk to the library and once a week we’d check out four books. We’d each read our own and then swap.”
    “Did you have a TV back then?” Zoe asked.
    “Oh, yes. I’m not that old! Mother got her first TV when we were in sixth grade—your age,” she said, grinning at them, “but she only let us watch it one hour a day.”
    “That’s all I get to watch now,” Spence said. “After I can prove to Mom I’ve done my homework.”
    “She’s a wise woman, your mom,” Ms. Delores said.  She cleared her throat. “Now I’m not supposed to just sit and chat. You’re here to talk about steam trains, Spence.”
    “Yes, ma’am. It’s this