Jumper and Bertha

Jumper and Bertha

“What are you doing here?” said Bertha, a 47 year old widow.  A stray dog looked at her with big, brown eyes.  “Help me, Feed me!” it seemed to say.  Bertha was just about to slam the door, when she remembered Sandra.  Sandra was a Great Dane that Bertha had once owned.  She was loyal dog, and once even saved Bertha from a robbery.  But dogs don’t last forever.  Sadly, Sandra died of old age.  When Bertha saw the stray, she remembered Sandra.  “All right.” said Bertha.  She let the dog in.  As soon as the brown, bedraggled pup got inside, he started to jump all around.  “Stop!” cried Bertha “There are some rules in this house.  First of all, never jump around!”  The pup stopped jumping and stared at her with his head tilted to the side.  “Second of all, no running, and most importantly, no knocking things over especially, my 10,000 dollar Ming Dynasty Vase!”  The pup stood up, and started wagging his tail, sticking his tongue out.  “Good.  Time for dinner” The pup started to jump up and down. “Hey, remember no jumping!” reminded Bertha.  “One more thing before we eat.  Your name will be, Jumper.  Jumper is a good name for a dog like you.”  Jumper started to wag his tail and he followed Bertha out of the front room.  For dinner they had bread, pickles, and mustard.  “Now I have to go to town to get proper dog food”.  Jumper started to whine.  “Fine, you can come too.”  At the town, Bertha went to the General Store.  The General Store is a very big store with almost everything.  Bertha spent a lot of time in the General Store.  It was getting very dark.  Soon Bertha was the only one in the store other than an old lady wearing expensive jewelry, a clerk, and a funny looking man who was wearing a ski mask and had a very expensive looking ring. The ring was red had a gold lion and a snake intertwined.  “What?” thought Bertha “Something fishy is going on here.  Ski mask?”  “All of a sudden, the lights went out.  Bertha heard someone scream (probably the old lady).  Then the lights went back on.  The man with the ski mask was gone!  The old lady was lying on the ground unconscious.  All of her jewelry was gone!  Not only that was gone, but so was about half the things in the store!  The clerk was gaping and staring at nothing.  Jumper suddenly started to sniff.  “What happened?” Bertha asked the clerk.  “I don’t know.  All I know is that right at the moment the lights went out, I was helping this old lady bag her items.” The clerk answered.  Then Bertha turned to the old lady who was coming back to consciousness.  “Oh my goodness.”  The old woman said.  When she took a look at herself, on a mirror, which was hanging on the wall.  She gasped.  “Oh Lord.”  She said.  “What happened?”  Asked Bertha.  “My jewelry is all gone!”  “How did that happen?”  “Well, right before the lights went out I was bagging items with the clerk.” Bertha nodded.  “Then suddenly, the lights went out!  As soon as the lights went out I felt a hand pulling at my pearl chain necklace.  Then I screamed.  Then everything was black.”  “Thank you.” Bertha said.  She bought some dog food, and then brought Jumper outside.  As she was walking she thought about what had happened.  When she reached home, she immediately put Jumper to bed.  Then she lay down.  As soon as she hit the pillow, sleep claimed her.   The next morning, Bertha woke up with something jumping on her.  “Jumper!”  Jumper jumped off the bed, and ran downstairs.  Bertha opened the bag of dog food and poured it in a dog food bowl.  That dog food bowl used to be Sandra’s.  Jumper ate all the food, eagerly.  Bertha started leaving for work.  She worked as a scientist, in a lab down at the Franklin Institute.  She was one of the tour guides.  As she started putting on her uniform, Jumper looked at her and barked.  “I’m sorry Jumper.  I’m not allowed to bring dogs to the museum.  I’ll have to leave you at Jenna’s.  Jenna had gone to middle school with Bertha and they had been friends ever since.   After a 5 minute drive, they reached Jenna’s house.  Jenna welcomed them in warmly.  Bertha left after 10 minutes.  It took 30 minutes to get there.  Once she reached the museum, she was startled to see a man waiting for the museum to open.  Something was strange about the man.  She had a feeling she had seen him before, but where?  The man was very dignified.  He had an expensive looking top hat, a pair of what looked like gold glasses, a tie, and a black suit which looked as if it had never seen dust before, and he had a ring.  Wait a minute.  The ring was red.  It had a gold lion and snake intertwined on it.  The thief!  The man (a.k.a the thief) caught her looking at him.  He started to run.  Bertha ran after him.  The ring started to slowly slip down his finger.  Without the man noticing it, the ring started to slowly start to fall.  It fell on the sidewalk, but the man kept running.  Bertha took a deep breath.  She picked up the ring and slowly, tiredly, made her way back to the museum. The ring tightly clutched in her hand.  She had a long day of work.  She was thinking about the man while she drove back to Jenna’s house.  When she reached the house, Jumper started to paw on the screen door.  Jenna let Jumper out.  Jumper started to run to Bertha.  He knocked Bertha over.  “Whoa there!” Said Bertha.  “Goodbye!” said Jenna.  Bertha and Jumper drove home.  At home, Bertha put the ring in a small box.  The box was very beautiful.  It was one of the only things that Bertha had that was pretty.  The box was made of gold and had engravings of leopards, jaguars, tigers, and lions.  The inside of the box was red velvet.  Bertha put the ring on the velvet.  She slowly closed the box.  She then placed it on the top shelf in the living room.  Then she went to bed.  In the middle of the night Bertha heard something crash.  She didn’t get up because she thought it was Jumper getting up in the middle of the night.  She heard more crashes.  “Oh he’d better not have broken anything” thought Bertha.  She held up a candle and step by step slowly climbed down the stairs.  When she reached the bottom step and looked around, she saw a huge mess!  Cup and plated made of porcelain were broken and scattered everywhere, chairs were ripped, the fluff that was inside of them was flying everywhere, when she reached the kitchen she saw all of her food was spilled on the floor, knives and forks everywhere she looked.  She went to the dining room.  The chairs were turned over, shelves that were filled with books were on the floor and books with ripped pages were lying on the ground.  Bertha went on the living room.  Lying on the floor, with Jumper on top of him was a man.  The man was wearing a ski mask, and he was struggling to push Jumper off of him.  Bertha had not noticed that Jumper had grown that much.  He was almost four feet tall and about 101 lbs.  He was pretty heavy.  It would take a lot of strength to push him off.  Bertha went up to the man and took of his mask.  It was the well dressed man!  In his hand there was a box.  It was the box with the ring in it!  He had come back to steal the ring.  Luckily Jumper had stopped him from stealing the ring.  Bertha rubbed Jumper between the ears, and gave him a dog biscuit.  She then took the box from the man’s hand and put it in her pocket.  Then she went to the phone and dialed 911.  After a few minutes in which the man had tried to push Jumper off of him, the police had come.  One of them, a middle aged man with a start of a beard said, “Thank you for calling us.  This man has been accused for more than one robbery.  In fact one of them was the one when you were in the general store.  His name is Lucas Reinhold.  Descended from the notorious thief, Augustus Reinhold.  We thought the last names were just a coincidence.  Turns out when we looked at the family tree, we noticed that they were related.  They live at, 332 Apple cross lane” After the police had escorted the man to the patrol car, and drove away, Bertha started to wonder why Lucas came back for the ring.  “Something must be in the ring” she reasoned.  She started to press every nook and cranny on the ring.  Suddenly, when she had pressed the place where the snake and lion intertwined once, she heard a click.  Suddenly a tiny compartment opened up.  Inside the compartment was a key. “A key to what?” thought Bertha.  She stored the key in a box.  Not the same box as before, but a different one.  Bertha then took Jumper upstairs, and put him to bed.  Bertha walked to her bed and fell fast asleep.  The next day was a Sunday.  No work!  She woke up Jumper, and took him for a walk.  She took the key with her just in case someone came back for it.  She headed down Apple cross lane, when she remembered where the man had lived. 332 Apple cross lane.  She looked for 332.  330, 331, 332.  There it was!  A very old mansion.  She tried the door.  It wouldn’t budge.  She remembered the key.  She took it out and tried the door.  It opened!  When she went inside and saw what was inside she gasped.  Jumper wrenched the leash out of her hand and started to run around.  Bertha saw millions of jewels and pieces of gold.  These are all the things the man stole?  WOW!!!  Jumper kept jumping and knocking things over.  “We should probably give this to the museum” thought Bertha.  “It has survived for centuries.  I know we’ll donate it to the Franklin Institute!” They then called the police, the Franklin institute, and Jenna.  After a few days the whole room filled with gold was kept as a display room in the museum.  Bertha got a pay raise and she was even allowed to keep ½ of the gold!   “Well Jumper, we’re rich!” said Bertha one morning after the whole incident.  “We might move to someplace else! How would you like that.” asked Bertha.  Jumper barked, as if to say yes.  Bertha and Jumper appeared on the headline in the newspaper.  “The hero and her canine friend.”

                                                    THE END