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CHAPTER XIV
A PLOT THAT FAILED

Although taken completely by surprise Fred and Colon were not the kind of boys to flinch, or run from sudden danger.

They could see that the three fellows who surrounded them were gotten up just as might have been expected under such circumstances. When men or boys lay out to do a mean thing, they generally try to arrange it so that their identity may not be disclosed. These fellows had their hats drawn low down, their coat collars turned up, and, unless Fred's eyes deceived him, they also had handkerchiefs or some other kind of disguise fastened over the lower part of their faces, just as they may have read of desperate footpads doing out West, when holding up stage coaches.

There was really no time to note anything more. Uttering all sorts of angry cries in falsetto voices, the assailants bore down upon the two chums.

"Whoop! give it to 'em, Fred!" cried Colon, his long arms immediately taking on the appearance of a couple of old-fashioned flails, such as farmers used before the time of machine threshers.

Fred was already busily engaged. A thrill of satisfaction seemed to fill his boyish heart over the inspiration that had caused him to pick up that heavy walking-stick before sallying forth to cross over to Bristles' house.

It was certainly a handy thing to have around just then, with the odds against them, and that whirlwind attack on in full force.

After Fred had swung his stick a few times, and several loud thumps told that it had landed on each occasion, grunts began to change into groans. Of course it hurt, no matter where it landed, and once a fellow ran up against such punishment, the chances were he would not feel just the same savage inclination to press the attack that he had before "taking his medicine."

Colon, too, was doing gallant work, though he possessed no club or cane, and had to depend upon his fists alone. He was tall, and had a terrific reach, so that he could land his clever blows without being severely punished in return.

One thing the two chums were careful to do, – not separate. Although they had had no chance to settle on any plan of campaign, they seemed to just naturally understand that in their case union meant strength. Accordingly they kept back to back, and in that way managed to hold off all assailants.

Afterwards Colon used to say that their defence had been conducted along the famous "hollow square" plan, peculiar to British troops for centuries, in that they kept their faces to their foes, and their lines intact.

Of course this sort of vigorous work could not last very long. It was too one-sided, with Fred pounding two of the unknown fellows with his father's walking-stick, as though that might be the regular mission of such heavy canes.

There was a final scramble, in which blows were given and taken on both sides. Then a gruff voice, considerably the worse for wear and lack of breath, gasped out:

"Scoot, fellows! it's all off!"

Immediately the three mysterious assailants turned and ran away. Fred noticed with more or less satisfaction that a couple of them seemed to wabble considerably, thanks to the whacks he had managed to get in with his heavy stick.

"Go it, you cowards!" shouted Colon after them. "For three cents I'd give chase, and hand you a few more good ones. But unless I miss my guess, one of you'll have a black eye to-morrow, for I plunked you straight. Whew! I'm out of wind with all that rapid action work, Fred!"

Fred himself was breathing rather hard, because of the way in which he had been compelled to exert himself in the melee. So neither of them made the slightest move to advance any further, content to stand there, puffing heavily.

Then Colon began to chuckle, louder and louder, until he broke out into a hearty laugh, at the same time doubling up like a hinge, after an odd way he had.

"Got 'em going and coming, didn't we, Fred?" he wanted to know, when his merriment had subsided in some degree. "They caught us napping, that's right, but say, did it do 'em much good? Not that you could notice. Let me tell you that's a sore lot of fellows to limp all the way home to Mechanicsburg to-night."

"What makes you say that, Colon?"

"About Mechanicsburg, you mean?" remarked the tall boy. "Why what else would we think, but that the trick was planned, and carried out by some of that gang of up-river fellows? Haven't we run up against the same lot before, and would you put it past them to try to lame a fellow, so he couldn't take part in a race, and let their side have a clear field? Huh! easy as falling off a log to see how the ground lies."

"But Colon," objected Fred, "remember what Felix Wagner said to us about playing the game fair and square? I don't believe he'd descend to any such mean dodge as this, nor most of the other fellows up there – Sherley, Gould, Hennessy, Boggs and then some. If this was a set-up job, I'd rather believe it originated nearer home than Mechanicsburg."

"A set-up job!" roared Colon. "You never heard of one with more of the ear-marks of a lowdown game than this has. Why, they planned to get you to cross here all by yourself, and then lay you out so you couldn't run for a month. Didn't I see how they kept kicking at my shins all the time, and I reckon that's what they did with you. I've a welt on my leg right now from a heavy brogan; and I'd like to bet you they put on that sort of foot-wear so as to make their kicks hurt like fun."

"Yes, they did seem to keep kicking at me, every chance they found," admitted Fred, as though partly convinced by the other's argument.

"See?" flashed Colon. "I told you how it was. They had that all laid out, and after it was carried through you'd be laid up and lame for the whole of the Spring. When a fellow means to run a twenty-five mile race, he's got to keep in tiptop condition right along, or he'll get soft; and if you couldn't practice every day, why what would be the use of your starting in? Five miles would make your ankle so sore you'd have to be carried home on a hayrick."

"They tried their level best not to give themselves away," continued

Fred.

"Hardly ever used their voices, – only when they just had to grunt and groan, after you touched 'em up with that bully walking-stick. Fred."

"And," continued Fred, "they had their hats pulled down over their faces, collars turned up, and some sort of thing over their chins, so their best friend wouldn't have recognized one of them."

"Oh! it certainly was a pretty smart trap, and it failed to work on account of a few things the plotters hadn't thought of," observed Colon, with a vein of satisfaction in his voice.

"One of which was my great luck in having you along with me, Colon."

"Oh! I don't know that that counted any to speak of," objected the other. "Why, when I saw the way you slung about you with that walking-stick, Fred, I knew as sure as anything they were in the soup. And chances are, it'd have been just the same if you'd come along here by yourself. The biggest piece of luck you had was when you took that notion to carry your dad's heavy cane."

"Perhaps you're right, Colon," admitted Fred, as he felt of the heavy stick, and then remembered with what a vim he had applied it without stint wherever he could get an opening. "And I ought to really thank Flo Temple for that, oughtn't I? Only for the way she joked me about needing a crutch or a cane, I'd never have thought of playing it on Bristles. And I want to tell you I'd hate to have this thing laid on me, good and hard. Wherever I struck, it's raised a whopping big welt, I calculate."

"Well, if you could tell from the way they hollered every time it struck, that goes without saying," laughed Colon. "And I'll have lots of fun out of this, every time I think of it. Did you hear what that leader said when he knew they'd have to own up beat? 'Scoot, fellows! it's all off!' I guess it was, for if they'd held out much longer, we'd have floored the whole bunch."

"I was wondering what his voice sounded like," said Fred.

"Oh! I'd take my affidavit that he had a hickory nut in his cheek right then, so as to disguise his voice, if he did have to speak any," Colon went on to say, and in this way proving that he was ready to give their unknown assailants credit for utilizing every possible device that would insure the successful carrying out of their miserable scheme.

"I knew a fellow who did that same thing once upon a time," Fred hinted.

"Yes, and it was somebody we happen to know right well, too," agreed Colon; "in other words, Mister Buck Lemington, the clever and unscrupulous son of Sparks Lemington, one of Riverport's leading citizens, and a chap who lies awake nights hatching up plans for getting the better of a friend of mine."

"Hold on, Colon, go a little slow about accusing anybody before we've got the least bit of evidence. This might be a different crowd. Perhaps it'll turn out they're from Paulding, where I've heard there's a certain sporting element that's taken to betting on baseball games and athletics and such things, now that horse racing and making pools have been knocked out by law."

"Shucks! now, I hadn't thought of that before," assented the tall boy, in a grudging fashion, as though he disliked giving up any cherished idea that may have seized upon his mind with conviction. "And if they've gone and put up money on Paulding breasting the tape first, why, of course they might plot to do something to lame the best runners in Riverport and Mechanicsburg. But Fred, in that case they'd be apt to send men here to knock you. These were boys!"

"Yes, that's so, Colon, and it looks like a weak link in the chain, doesn't it? But since the game didn't pan out the way they thought it would, perhaps these fellows will fight shy of trying anything like it again. We'll take a look around to-morrow, and see if we can notice any signs of their being on the hurt list among Buck's crowd."

"That's the ticket, Fred!" said Colon, jubilant. "That black eye would tell the story, wouldn't it, now? And then if Clem Shooks or Oscar Jones is seen to limp painfully, and grunt every step he takes, that ought to mark him as one of your poor victims."

"The whole three of them galloped off, didn't they?" asked Fred just then.

"I should say they did, and as fast as they could skip. But what makes you ask that, Fred?"

"I thought I heard a movement in this patch of bushes here, that's all; but it may have been a bird or a rabbit. Shall we start along now, Colon?"

"Just give me half a minute, will you, Fred?" begged the tall chum, who was fumbling in his vest pocket.

"What do you want to do?" asked Fred.

"Oh, strike a match, and take a little peep around," he was told. "Never know what you might strike. Remember picking up a sleeve button once, after I'd been set on by a couple of fellows in the dark; and it gave the game away. Oh! yes, I returned the button, but my bruises felt a heap better after I'd given the fellow a double dose."

He immediately snapped the match off, and began moving around close to the bushes. Fred heard him sing out before half a dozen seconds had passed.

"Well, this is great luck, Fred!" Colon exclaimed. "Here I've found a hat trampled in the dirt. Maybe now that will tell the story. Hold it, please, while I strike another match. Let's look inside. What's this I see? First thing is the well known trademark of our enterprising Riverport hat dealer. Then here's some initials in gold fixed inside. What d'ye make 'em out to be, Fred?"

CHAPTER XV
CLINCHING EVIDENCE

"As near as I can make out, they're C.J.," said Fred, after he had taken a look, before the match flickered, and went out in the night breeze.

Colon burst into another laugh.

"Told you so, Fred!" he remarked, triumphantly. "You don't need to guess twice to know whom that set belongs to. Let me mention his name to you – Conrad Jimmerson, and this is what proves it. I'd just keep that old hat, and make him eat it, if I were you."

There was another rustling in the bushes, and Fred glanced that way as though a trifle suspicious, but made no move to investigate.

"Oh! I don't know that I'll go as far as that," Fred observed, "because, while a fellow may have to eat crow once in a while, swallowing his own hat would be asking too much of him. But there's another way to rub it in."

"How?" asked Colon.

"Suppose now I took this hat to school Monday," continued Fred, seriously enough, "and told the story of how we were waylaid by three mysterious chaps, who did their level best to injure us about the shins, and without any doubt meaning to knock us out from taking part in the big race? Don't you think nearly everybody would be warm about it?"

"Hot about the collar as they could be, and ready to take it out of the hide of the three guilty ones, if only they knew who they were," the other boy affirmed in his positive way.

"Well, I might put this old hat on exhibition, and ask every boy to take a good look at it before seeing the tell-tale initials inside. Then we'd hear what they thought, and if any of them recognized the same. In that way, Colon, it ought to be easy to run down the rascal."

"Yes," added the tall boy, "and once you nailed him, it wouldn't be so hard to make him own up who his cronies were. He's a coward, when you pin him down. I'd dare him to stand up and have it out with me. Then p'raps it was C.J. who rammed his old eye so hard against my fist, trying to feaze me. Oh! the evidence is going to accumulate against him like a regular old mountain. There's that rabbit of yours moving again, Fred. Queer all this row didn't start him off, isn't it?"

"I just happened to think," remarked Fred, "that we're on a false mission, after all."

"Right now, you mean, don't you, Fred?"

"Yes, because it wasn't Bristles at all I was talking with, but one of this same crowd. No wonder his voice sounded so queer to me, and muffled." Then Fred had to laugh, after which he went on to say, "And to think how sly he was making out the cause of it to be that sudden cold he'd taken."

"That was a mighty clever dodge, let me tell you," Colon went on to say. "You see, he knew you'd notice the difference in voices, for even over the wire it's easy to recognize a friend's way of speaking; so he fixed it up, with a nut in his cheek, and then told you about the cold."

"And that cough, why, I tell you it was splendidly worked, and whoever carried it out was a sharp one, Colon."

"However do you guess it was done?" asked the tall chum.

"Well, there must have been a fourth member of the gang, who had his part of the game to play. Chances were he was to go into some place downtown where they have a public 'phone booth, at exactly eight o'clock, and call me up. The other three were to be hiding here before that time, waiting for me to cross over. And I must say it worked out to a charm – only for the walking-stick, and you, Colon. They didn't figure on my receiving such important reinforcements at the eleventh hour, as to turn the tide of battle."

"Talk to me about Blucher coming up to help Wellington at Waterloo, you were in just as good luck to-night. And the French didn't feel any more sore when they had to run, than Buck and his pals do right now. I'd give thirty cents to see what the lot of them are doing this very minute; rubbing their bodies, and saying everything mean about us they can think of. Ho! ho! ho!"

Colon seemed to extract a considerable amount of amusement out of this unexpected happening. He evidently considered that he had been in for more or less luck simply because he happened to be in Fred's company when the other ran into the ambuscade. Colon was not averse to an occasional measure of excitement, and although not all considered a pugnacious fellow, he could at the same time hold his own when difficulties arose.

"Of course," pursued Fred, "if I thought it worth while I could easily find out who sent that message to me, and played the part of Bristles."

"You mean by going to telephone headquarters, and learning who connected with your number tonight about eight; is that it, Fred?"

"And after they had told me it was, say, Dudley's drug store," Fred continued, as if figuring it all out, "I could step in there and ask Gussie Lightly what boy used the booth about that time."

"Easy enough, because of course Gussie knows all the boys about town, and if it was Ben Cushing or Clem Shooks or Oscar Jones, he could tell you right off the reel. Why don't you do it, Fred?"

"I may when I get home, because it can all be done just as well over the wire you know," the other replied. "Gussie is a good friend of mine, I feel sure, and if only he knew what a mean game had been set up on me, he'd do anything to square matters."

"And at school Monday," Colon suggested, "it might be a good thing for you to be able to prove it was one of Buck's cronies that talked with you, making out to be Bristles, who hasn't any cold at all."

"I'm glad of that, too," Fred observed, "because I was feeling that he couldn't go along with us tomorrow on the trial spin."

"It was a dirty trick, Fred, but I must say pretty well worked out. I can see the fine hand of our old friend, Buck, back of it all. There isn't another fellow in all Riverport who could get up such a combination. Buck's as full of schemes as an egg is of meat. That's why the others all flock after him. He's got the brains, and carries the money too."

"Now, while it seems that Bristles didn't call me up, and beg me to come over, as we're already part way there, we might as well finish the lap, Colon."

"Oh! you know I gave him to understand that maybe we might run in on him," he was told by the other.

"But it's too bad," remarked Fred, grinning broadly.

"About what?" demanded his friend.

"We're going to be badly disappointed, I'm afraid."

"We are, eh? I'd like to know how that comes, Fred?"

"Why, we laid out to hear the most thrilling thing that ever happened, you see," the other told him, in a voice of mock disappointment. "When Bristles with the muffled voice and the bad cold told me he'd just burst if he didn't have someone to confide in right soon, he got me worked up to fever pitch. Now I've had to cool down. There isn't going to be any development. Our hair won't have to stand tip on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine. In so many words, Colon, it's all off, you know."

"I'm afraid it is, Fred," admitted the other, sadly, "and I'm some disappointed, too, because you had my curiosity whetted up. Why, I couldn't begin to tell you all I expected to hear when Bristles got busy. Course, knowing about that Corny as you did, it was easy to figure out how he might be the one Bristles meant to tell about. Well, that ends it, and Fred, hadn't we better be hunching out of this, if you think there's no more hats or other trophies of the great victory lying around?"

"Yes, we'll be over at Bristles' place inside of five minutes more," Fred announced.

"If he happened to have his window open I wouldn't be surprised if he heard us carrying on high over here in the field," suggested Colon, and there was an air of expectancy in his voice, as though such a thing would not have been at all unpleasant to him.

"One thing sure," Fred asserted, confidently, "he'll kick up an awful row just because he didn't happen to be in the little affair. Bristles never wants anyone to get ahead of him, when there's action stirring."

"No more he does," Colon echoed. "Here, suppose you keep this old hat. I'm given to being careless, and I'd be apt to drop it somewhere. No danger of you doing that, Fred; you're always as particular about such things as an old maid."

"You can make your mind tip that when the evidence is needed to show up the owner of this hat at school, it will be forthcoming. I'll take it home with me, and keep it safe and sound."

The two boys were already moving off, heading across the field. They could easily see the lights in the Carpenter house, which was only a short distance away, though if one went around by the road it would take some fifteen minutes to make the journey.

They did not bother to look back after they had quitted the vicinity of the big cluster of bushes. Had they done so, and the starlight been strong enough for them to see as a cat does at nighttime, Fred and Colon might have discovered a bare-headed figure that came creeping out of the bushes. This wretched person looked after them with more or less grumbling and complaining, as though not at all relishing some of the things so recently spoken by the two chums.