New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club by Bertrand R. Brinley, Charles Geer

have to know," said Jeff. "As far as the
credit goes, everybody already knows who Big Chief Rainmaker is."
            Then we
all stood up and gave Henry the Indian sign, and that was the end of the
meeting. Jeff Crocker was appointed ambassador plenipotentiary to conduct
negotiations with Harmon Muldoon, because he can beat anybody in Harmon's gang
at Indian wrestling. He didn't have to put the arm on them, though. They jumped
at the opportunity to get into the act.
            We set
up several launching sites at strategic locations that gave us a chance to
cover most of the farms in the valley on fairly short notice. With Harmon's
equipment added to ours, we had a pretty good radio net operating from our
clubhouse to Jeff Crocker's barn. We couldn't be everywhere at once, even with
six two-man teams manning the launch sites, but we didn't have to worry about
cloud watchers. Every farmer in the valley was bombarding us with phone calls
each time a wisp of cloud appeared on the horizon.
            We
didn't keep count, but we must have fired about two hundred rockets during the
next two weeks. We didn't make it rain every time, of course. Sometimes we
might fire ten rockets before we got a good hit on a cloud. And sometimes we
might get a good hit, and still nothing would happen. But we did manage to hit
the jackpot often enough to make the difference between a dry year and a
drought. Most everybody in town seemed to agree that Henry's idea had saved the
farmers from a real crop failure. People he didn't even know would wave at
Henry on the street and say, "Hi, Big Chief!"
            The rest
of us basked in Henry's reflected glory, of course, and we seemed to get more
smiles from the storekeepers than usual. Even Billy Dahr, the town constable,
looked as though he was glad to see us when one of us passed him on the street.
And Jeff Crocker's dad was no exception. He was seen one day washing his own
car, and he told a curious neighbor that he thought Jeff needed a rest.
            But
somehow I felt uncomfortable about it all, despite our success. I finally
realized that it was because I once heard Henry say that you can't tamper with
nature without getting into trouble. And it didn't take too long for Henry's
observation to prove true.
            Freddy
Muldoon and Dinky Poore were manning the launch site out on Blueberry Hill one
day when a cloud about ten times the size of the Queen Elizabeth came drifting
over. They got all excited and started firing rockets at it as fast as they
could mount them on the launcher. They weren't supposed to be out there, and
there wasn't any sense in firing at the cloud so soon, because it hadn't even
gotten out over the valley yet. But they wanted to show what they could do, so
they blasted away at it and finally scored a good hit. The cloud practically
evaporated and dumped torrents of rain on the hilltop. Dinky and Freddy fell
all over themselves in a mad scramble to get their ponchos on and pedal back
into town to brag about what they had done.
            When
they got down to the road that leads past Memorial Point, where the old Civil
War cannon is, they saw people streaming out of the woods by the hundreds,
slipping and sliding down the hill with their arms full of blankets,
tablecloths, picnic baskets, baseball bats, musical instruments, and beer kegs.
The sudden cloudburst had broken up the annual Kiwanis Picnic and Songfest for
the Benefit of Homeless Children and turned it into a rain-soaked rout.
            Joe
Dougherty, who is president of the Kiwanis Club and trombone soloist in the
town band, was hopping mad. He complained loudly to Mayor Scragg that the whole
thing was a deliberate plot by those troublemakers in the Mad Scientists' Club
to ruin the annual picnic and sabotage the Kiwanis Club's fund-raising program.
He claimed that we had made it rain intentionally, in order to get back at the
Kiwanis for refusing to sponsor our project to explore the bottom of