Emily's Fortune by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page A

nearest courthouse or whatever they’ve got, and we’ll sign a paper saying that you’re Emily Wiggins, daughter of Constance Wiggins, my sister, and I’m your legal guardian.” He gave her arm a little twist.“And from now on, you scheming, sniveling good-for-nothing, you’ll do as I say.”
    A week ago, perhaps, Emily Wiggins would have cowered before her uncle, too frightened to speak. But the long sleep in the stagecoach had refreshed her, the work at the way station had given her confidence, and the food had given her strength.
    Emily stared into the eyes of the man with the tiger tattoo and said, “I won’t.”
    A look of surprise flashed over Uncle Victor’s face, and then he growled, with a cruel smile, “You will!”
    It was then that Emily realized he was holding Rufus’s box.
Thumpa thumpa thumpa
—her heart almost stopped. She reached out to grab the box, but Victor only narrowed his eyes and held it out of reach.
    â€œWhen we get off this coach, Emily Wiggins, you will tell your aunt goodbye. And if you don’t…” He held the box up even higher, and Emily could hear the
scritch, scratch
of Rufus’s little claws on the sides as Victor tipped it back and forth. “If you don’t,” he continued, “if you give one hint to your aunt that you don’twant to go with me, I will squash your turtle flatter than an old piece of shoe leather. I will crack his head to pieces like a walnut. I will throw him in a pig trough for the hogs to eat, and I will make you sorry you were ever born.”
    Emily felt weak. How could this have happened? Jackson had planned her escape so carefully, and now…! For one brief moment, she
almost
wondered if Jackson had told her uncle where she was. But then Uncle Victor went on:
    â€œYou and that boy thought you could trick me, huh? Thought I’d go all the way to Redbud thinkin’ you were asleep under that old man’s jacket? When I finally figured out you’d stayed behind, I got off at a station to wait for the next coach to Redbud, ’cause I knew you’d be on it.” His eyes narrowed. “And every day a coach passed us going back to Callaway, a coach we could’ve been on, I got madder and meaner. If there’s any more trouble, first it’ll be your turtle that goes, and then it’ll be you.”
    Emily’s eyes flashed in return. “Even if I tell AuntHilda I want to go with you, she’ll know! She
knows
I don’t want to live with you, and she’ll
make
you let me go!”
    Her uncle laughed, a rumbling laugh from deep inside his chest, and his gold tooth gleamed. “I’ll bet I’m twice as big and twice as strong as that aunt of yours, and there isn’t a judge alive who’ll believe you rather than me, your next of kin. Even the Child Catchers know that!”
    One of the Chinese workers opened his eyes and watched for a moment, then closed them again. But Emily’s eyes filled with tears. How could she have believed that Jackson, her friend, could plan something like this? The man with the tiger tattoo didn’t need any help being mean. There was enough meanness inside him to fill a bathtub, Emily thought. Her tears only made him laugh, and every so often he would tip Rufus’s box and make him go skidding from one side to the other. Some of the Chinese workers watched and listened sleepily, then drifted off again.
    As the sky began to lighten, Emily pressed her face against the carriage window to stop the tears. She hadthought perhaps she would see signs of Redbud before they got there, but all she saw were scrub pines and sand and a coyote or two.
    Uncle Victor stared out the window over Emily’s shoulder. “If this isn’t the saddest, meanest, driest, hottest country I ever did see,” he said. “I’d get out right now if there was a living soul to put us up.”
    I could be