Poppy Ott Hits the Trail

By Leo Edwards and Karl Wurf

Hundreds of thousands of boys who laughed until their sides ached over the weird and wonderful adventures of Jerry Todd and his gang demanded that Leo Edwards, the author, give them more books like the Jerry Todd stories with their belt-bursting laughs and creepy shivers. So he took Poppy Ott, Jerry Todd's bosom chum and created the Poppy Ott Series, and if such a thing could be possible—they are even more full of fun and excitement than the Jerry Todds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: May 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781479469970

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Table of Contents

POPPY OTT HITS THE TRAIL

BOOKS BY LEO EDWARDS

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

DEDICATION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

POPPY OTT HITS THE TRAIL

LEO EDWARDS

BOOKS BY LEO EDWARDS

THE JERRY TODD SERIES

Jerry Todd and the Whispering Mummy

Jerry Todd and the Rose-Colored Cat

Jerry Todd and the Oak Island Treasure

Jerry Todd and the Waltzing Hen

Jerry Todd and the Talking Frog

Jerry Todd and the Purring Egg

Jerry Todd in the Whispering Cave

Jerry Todd, Pirate

Jerry Todd and the Bob-Tailed Elephant

Jerry Todd, Editor-in-Grief

Jerry Todd, Caveman

Jerry Todd and the Flying Flapdoodle

Jerry Todd and the Buffalo Bill Bathtub

Jerry Todd’s Up-the-Ladder Club

Jerry Todd's Poodle Parlor

Jerry Todd's Cuckoo Camp

THE POPPY OTT SERIES

Poppy Ott and the Stuttering Parrot

Poppy Ott’s Seven-League Stilts

Poppy Ott and the Galloping Snail

Poppy Ott’s Pedigreed Pickles

Poppy Ott and the Freckled Goldfish

Poppy Ott and the Tittering Totem

Poppy Ott and the Prancing Pancake

Poppy Ott Hits the Trail

Poppy Ott & Co., Inferior Decorators

TRIGGER BERG SERIES

Trigger Berg and the Treasure Tree

Trigger Berg and His 700 Mousetraps

Trigger Berg and the Sacred Pig

Trigger Berg and the Cock-Eyed Ghost

TUFFY BEAN SERIES

Tuffy Bean's Puppy Days

Tuffy Bean's One-Ring Circus

Tuffy Bean At Funny Bone Farm

Tuffy Bean and the Lost Fortune

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2021 by Wildside Press LLC.

Originally published in 1933 by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

INTRODUCTION

Leo Edwards was the pseudonym of Edward Edson Lee (1884–1944), a popular and prolific children's author in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1897 Edward and his mother moved to Beloit, Wisconsin. In order to support her, he dropped out of school and went to work in a local factory. However, he continued to write, though met with little success. His first published short story appeared in 1909, when it won third place in a local newspaper contest. He also married in 1909, had his only child in 1913 (Eugene, the inspiration for Jerry Todd), and continued writing, still with little success. Switching careers, he entered the advertising field—where he would work into the 1920s, holding jobs with the P.B. Yates Machine Co., the Burroughs Adding Machine Company, and the Autocall Company.

Work for Autocall relocated him to Shelby, Ohio. Here he met some of the local children—including Donald Red Meyers, Howard Scoop Ellery, and Neuvill Peg Shaw—who would join the cast of his children’s stories. He also began to sell work regularly, beginning with The Cruise of the Sally Ann (published in 1920 in the Shelby Daily Globe.) Cruise when expanded became the basis for Jerry Todd and the Oak Island Treasure, which before its publication in book form appeared as a serial in Boys’ Magazine (September through November, 1920).

Many of the books were related. The Jerry Todd and Poppy Ott stories both took place in the fictional town of Tutter, Illinois—which was modeled on Utica, where Lee lived as a child.

Although highly popular with children, Lee never made a significant income from his fiction. He succumbed to illness in 1944 and was buried in Beloit, Illinois.

In all, Lee published five series of books: the Jerry Todd series (16 books); the Poppy Ott series (11 books); the Trigger Berg series (4 books); the Andy Blake series (4 books); and the Tuffy Bean series (4 books).

—Karl Wurf

Rockville, Maryland

DEDICATION

To

KAYO BRADISON

An Earnest Student, a Determined Athlete, a Trustworthy Scout and a Swell Pal

CHAPTER I

AT THE FOOT OF THE FALLS

As soon as the black-bass season opened up, in June, Poppy Ott got out his steel fishing rod and disappeared into the hills north of town. He was gone a whole day. And when he came back that night he had a face a foot long. He was worried about something. And yet he was peculiarly excited too. I could tell by the look in his eyes.

Say, Jerry, says he, when I dropped in on him that evening to get the news, what do you know about law?

What kind of law? says I, helping myself to a banana.

Poppy and his widowed pa are good feeders. They always have stuff sitting around in dishes. And if a fellow doesn’t fill up when he’s there, old Mr. Ott acts offended. Of course, I never offend him myself. Next to my pa I think he’s one of the finest men in the whole state. Yet, when he came to town, he was nothing more than a common tramp. As for Poppy himself, I never saw a more ragged kid in all my born days. But he soon proved that he had good stuff in him. Getting a job, he bought himself some decent clothes. That kind of shamed his pa, I guess. Anyway Mr. Ott decided to do a little work himself, and less loafing. Now he and Poppy (who got his odd nickname from peddling popcorn) have a comfortable home on the east side of town. And they both have the respect of everybody who knows them, which proves that rags are no handicap to an ambitious boy.

I took a shine to Poppy the first time I saw him, ragged as he was. Nor have we ever had a moment’s trouble since. He has his ideas and I have mine. And if I think mine are the best, I tell him so. But usually I have to admit that his are the best. Take that Stilt idea, for instance. Then came the famous Pedigreed Pickles, and still later the Freckled Goldfish and Tittering Totem. Very recently he had dipped into pancake flour—or maybe I should say Prancing Pancake flour. For that’s the peppy name he gave it. Boy, oh, boy! We sure had a time solving that mystery—for we bumped into a lot of stuff besides flour. Pirate stuff, mind you. Little did I dream, though, as I sat in his parlor eating bananas, with the cat in my lap, that an even crazier mystery was getting ready to jump out at us and grab us by the shins.

Poppy had said something about law. So I asked him again what kind of law he meant.

The kind, says he, that puts people into jail.

I took time out to search his face.

Poppy, says I severely, as I treated another banana to a free ride down my gullet, have you been fishing in somebody’s private pond?

No, says he truthfully.

Then what are you afraid of? says I.

I’m just wondering, says he, if the law would put me in jail for helping a runaway boy.

A runaway boy!

Evidently, says I, as I further searched his sober face, you saw something up the creek besides scenery.

I did, says he earnestly.

Well, says I, don’t keep me in suspenders.

I met a strange boy, says he. I never saw him before. And I doubt if you did either.

I know a lot of farm boys, says I. In fact, the most of the boys in my Sunday-school class live in the country.

You never saw this boy in a Sunday-school class. Nor in any other kind of a class.

Doesn’t he go to school?

No. He never saw the inside of a schoolhouse.

But how does he get by with it? says I, amazed. I thought every boy had to go to school.

He’d like to go to school. He told me so. But his aunt won’t let him.

And doesn’t he even know that the earth is round? I followed up.

Probably not.

How old is he?

Thirteen.

I was so amazed I forgot to reach for another banana.

Well, I’ll be cow-kicked, says I. What do you know about that? And right here in Illinois, too.

As I understand it, Poppy proceeded, "he has three aunts. But the only one I saw was an angular old battle-axe with a face like a granite tombstone. Hard and cruel. You know what I mean. She and her sisters kept him in a closet when he was a baby. But now they let him run wild in the woods."

Maybe he’ll turn out to be another Tarzan, says I, with mounting interest.

I feel sorry for him, Jerry. And if I can get him out of there, without crossing the law, I’m going to do it.

Does he wear pants, like us? says I, trying to picture him in my mind. Or does he have hair on him, like a monkey?

Please don’t make fun of him, Jerry, says old sober-sides. For he’s an object of pity.

Where in Sam Hill did you meet him anyway? I followed up curiously.

At the foot of Clarks Falls.

That’s a good place, says I, for a kid to run wild. For the rock piles up there are like young mountains.

"I never dreamed myself that Illinois had such hills, till I saw them with my own eyes. And the trees? Boy, there’s a forest up there that stretches for miles. A regular Amazon jungle."

Don’t overlook the bats, says I, drawing on my memory, and the rattlesnakes.

I didn’t see any bats. It was the wrong time of day. But I did surprise an old rattler. He was taking an afternoon nap on a big flat stone.

What happened when you woke him up?

Oh, came the pleasant reply, he twiddled his tail, sort of chummy-like, and then tried to bite a hunk out of me.

You’re lucky, I shivered, that his neck wasn’t as long as he thought.

Are there many snakes up there, Jerry?

I never saw but two or three myself. I dare say though they’re plentiful.

I wanted you to go with me this morning. But I noticed that you weren’t particularly keen about it. So I decided not to coax you.

Did you follow the creek all the way to the falls? says I, speaking of the little stream that trickles into the town from the northern hills.

Practically all the way. Once I climbed a rock pile and picked up the winding trail on the other side.

How long did it take you?

Four hours each way.

I’d hate to go on a hike like that all alone.

"It was kind of lonesome, he admitted. But it was fun. For everything that I saw up there was new to me. I caught a lot of fish too."

Where?—in the pool at the foot of the falls?

That’s where I caught the biggest ones. And I made a queer discovery too, Jerry—something that I’m going to follow up. But first I’ve got to rig up a diving suit.

I was staring at him now.

A diving suit? I repeated. What in Sam Hill are you talking about?

Jerry, he spoke earnestly, did you know that the early Indians used to mine lead near Clarks Falls?

I’ve heard, says I, that they got lead some place near here. But who told you about it?

"An old settler. According to his story this land at one time all belonged to the native Indians—the hills and hollows and everything else. Then the white men came. And the natives were gradually crowded back. Finally the redskins were taken away altogether and put on a government reservation. One of the last to go was a young brave by the name of Crow Foot. It hadn’t taken the new settlers very long to tumble to the fact that the Indians had a lead mine of their own. And so, when only Crow Foot was left, the crafty settlers tried to find out from him where the lead mine was. They needed lead, they said, for bullets. And they offered Crow Foot six ponies if he’d lead them to the secret mine. He might just as well, they said. For he was going away for good. And the hidden mine never would do him any good. Crow Foot, I guess, figured that the white men wanted to make more bullets so that they could kill more Indians. And so, true to his people, he started off alone on his pony. The white men, he said, would never find out where the lead mine was from him. But they did—almost. For that night a trapper found the Indian lying unconscious in the woods. He had fallen from his pony. It took a lot of faithful nursing to save his life. And in gratitude he drew a map for the trapper. If the good white man would go this way and that way, it was all drawn out on the hard ground with a stick, he’d find a hole in the rocks. And deep in this hole was the secret lead mine. The trapper, of course, thought that he was in luck. It would be easy, he figured, to find the hidden mine. It was his intention to sell the lead and get rich. And he