Kitabı oku: «Cupid of Campion», sayfa 2
“You aren’t hurt, are you?” enquired the sailor-clad youth, drawing near and really looking sympathetic.
“Hurt!” echoed Abe, rising as he spoke “I’m sore; and,” he continued as he craned his neck to see what had happened to his clothes, “my overalls is torn.”
“So they is,” assented Clarence, his love of mischief once more in the ascendant. “How much are those overalls worth?”
“I paid eighty-five cents for them.”
“Very good. I’ll give you two dollars instead of one. Is that all right?”
“Suppose you pay me now,” suggested Abe, holding out his hand.
“No you don’t,” answered Clarence. Our young lover of adventure was not of a suspicious disposition; nevertheless it was plain to him that Abe, once he had the money, would, as like as not, either attempt to take revenge for the indignities shown him, or desert at once and leave his charge to shift, as best he might, for himself. In fact, it would be just like Abe to refuse the further services of the boat. “We’ll take our swim first, and then when we’re on the boat and in sight of McGregor I’ll pay you the two dollars.”
Still rubbing himself, and muttering savagely under his breath, Abe led the way down. The descent was soon accomplished, and presently the two boys were disrobing.
“My ma told me that I might take a swim this morning,” remarked Clarence, “provided I went in with some person who knew the river well, and who could show me a good place. Do you know the river and how to swim well?”
“I guess I do. Why, I know this river by heart.” Here Abe paused, gazed carefully at the boat, and suddenly brightened up as though some happy thought had found lodgment in his primitive brain. “And look here,” he continued impressively, “I want to show you something. You see that place where my boat is?”
“Seems to me I do.”
“Well, going down the river from where that boat lays is the most dangerous spot you can find. It is a risk for the best swimmer – big men swimmers – to go in there.”
“See here, I don’t want to go and get drowned,” protested Clarence. The young gentleman, having doffed his sailor costume, revealed to the admiring eyes of his companion a beautiful brand new bathing suit of heavenly blue, evidently put on for this occasion. Clarence had left home that morning prepared to go swimming.
“Oh, you won’t get drownded; there’s a place up stream just a little ways that I told you about where a hen could swim. We can row up there in no time. Get in the boat, in the stern, and I’ll row you.”
“As you say, so shall it be, fair sir,” and with this Clarence tumbled into the boat.
“That’s it,” said Abe, encouragingly, as he proceeded to shove the boat into the water.
“Hey! You’ve forgotten the oars,” said Clarence.
For answer Abe continued to push the boat.
“The oars! The oars!” cried Clarence.
“You don’t need no oars,” shouted Abe as with a tremendous effort he sent the boat spinning out into the current. “Now, smartie, I’ve fixed you! You stay right in there where you are, or you’ll be drownded sure.”
The boat with its solitary occupant was now fully thirty feet from the shore. Clarence, possessed of one single-piece swimming suit and nothing else in the world, turned pale with alarm.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he cried.
“There ain’t no meaning,” returned Abe, thoughtfully going through the pockets of Clarence’s sailor suit. “You just sit tight and maybe you’ll land in St. Louis by the end of the month.”
“Look here, I’ve got to be back at McGregor by twelve o’clock,” remonstrated Clarence, “You’re carrying this joke too far.”
“You’ll not see McGregor today, nor yet tomorrow,” answered Abe, grimly, as he wrapped up in Clarence’s handkerchief the paper money and the silver which he had found.
Clarence noticed with dismay that his boat, now at least twenty-five yards from the shore, was going down the stream at what seemed to him a very rapid rate.
In the meantime, Abe, having securely hid the money, stood on the shore and grinned triumphantly at the boy in the boat.
“You will use big words, will you? You will try to be funny, will you? You will shove me down the hill; you will come round here showing off in your dandy clothes! Next time you get a chanst, you won’t be so smart – Now, what have you got to say for yourself?”
The youth in the current saw that, so far as the butcher’s boy was concerned, his case was hopeless. In reply, then, to this question, he opened his pretty mouth, lifted his head proudly, and carolled forth:
“Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!”
As Clarence was singing, Master Abe, throwing out both hands in a gesture of defiance, suddenly bolted into the bushes. He was gone, leaving on the shore his own and Clarence’s clothes.
The deserted youth in the boat came to an end of his singing. He had sung bravely to the last note. He never sang “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay” again. Abe was gone: he was alone. Clarence at last gave in. He burst into tears and wept for some time in sore bitterness of heart.
CHAPTER IV
In which Clarence Esmond, alone and deserted, tries to pray; and his parents defer their trip to the Coast
After all, Clarence was but fourteen years of age. He was brave beyond his years. He had a craving for adventure. But, picture to yourself a lad in a thin blue bathing suit, in an oarless boat, alone on a great river. Clarence was really a good swimmer. He was at home in any lake; he had disported many a time in the salt water; but a river with its unknown dangers was new to him. The fear of the unknown, therefore, coupled with the warning of the butcher’s boy, kept him in the boat, when in fact he could easily have made the shore. Adventure is all very well in its way, but one likes to meet that fair goddess with reassuring companions. No wonder, then, that the boy broke down.
For some minutes he continued to sob. His grief was poignant. Chancing to glance over the side of the boat, he saw his features, tear-stained and swollen, reflected in the clear water. It was the first time that he had ever seen his reflection when he was in heavy grief. He looked again, and then suddenly broke into a laugh.
“Never say die,” he muttered to himself, and forthwith, putting his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, he began to meditate.
What would his parents think about it? They would search, they would find his clothes upon the river bank and conclude naturally that he was drowned. Perhaps, however, Master Abe would reassure them on that point. Clarence did not know that Abe, having taken to the bushes and making his way into the interior of Iowa, had already dickered with a farmer’s boy for an old pair of overalls and was now doing his best to put as wide a distance between himself and McGregor as possible.
Once more Clarence raised his head and looked about him. The sun was now in mid-heaven and, shining down upon the boy’s unprotected calves and shoulders, promised to leave the memory of that adventurous day in scarlet characters upon his tender skin. On one side flowed the Wisconsin into the Mississippi; on the other the Iowa hills frowned down on him. The river itself was clear of craft. Water, water, everywhere; and standing sentinel over the mighty stream the hills of two sovereign states. Hotter and hotter fell the rays of the sun.
“Lord, have mercy on me,” exclaimed Clarence. He really prayed as he uttered these words.
Clarence, it must be confessed, knew very little of prayer. They did not specialize on that form of devotion – nor, in fact, on any form of devotion – at the academy of which for two years he had been a shining ornament. Vainly did he try to cudgel his brain for some other prayer. Even the Our Father, recited in tender years at his mother’s knee, he had forgotten.
The sun grew hotter; it was getting almost unbearable. Clarence was driven to action. After some effort, in which he skinned his knuckles, he succeeded in dislodging one of the two boards serving as seats. Placing this next to the others he threw himself below, doubled up so as to get himself as much as possible under the welcome shade, and – happy memory – murmured:
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray to God my soul to keep:
And if I die before I wake,
I pray to God my soul to take.”
In saying these homely but beautiful lines, our adventurer had no intention of courting slumber. Nevertheless, he was sound asleep in ten minutes. The incidents of the morning, the climb up the hill, the rowing, the brush with the tramp – all these things, combined with the fact that he had stayed up late the night before and had risen that morning at five o’clock, sent him into a slumber the sounder for the quiet and the freshness of the great river.
About the same hour in which Clarence had snuggled low down in the boat and presently fallen into deep slumber, a gentleman came hurrying down to the McGregor boat-landing. He was a rather handsome man in the prime of life, dressed in a manner that showed he belonged to the many-tailored East. He was pulling at his mustache, gazing anxiously all about him, and betraying in many ways nervousness and anxiety.
“Beg pardon,” he began, addressing a group of men and women who were waiting for the ferry-boat that plied between McGregor and Prairie du Chien, “but have any of you chanced to see a boy of fourteen in a white sailor suit about here? He’s my son.”
“Did you say a white sailor suit?” asked a man of middle age.
“Yes.”
“Why, I think I saw a boy dressed that way this morning. As I was coming down the street, towards nine o’clock, I saw a boat going down stream with two people in it. First, I thought the one rowing was a girl; I took another look, and I could almost swear it was a boy dressed in white. They were gone down some distance, and so I couldn’t say for sure.”
Just then a young man of about twenty-one dressed in flannels joined the group.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “I’m a stranger here, and am rowing down the river from LaCrosse to Dubuque. This morning I locked my boat here, leaving the oars in it, and went for breakfast and a little stroll into the country back of McGregor. My boat has disappeared.”
“Was it painted green?” inquired the first informant, “and did it ride rather high?”
“Yes, that’s the boat.”
“Well, the boat I saw, with, I thought, two boys in it, one in a white sailor suit, must have been your boat.”
“Strange!” exclaimed Clarence’s father. “My boy, I am sure, would not do such a thing.”
“What about the other boy?” said an old inhabitant. “There’s a no-account fellow here-abouts named Abe Thompson. He was the butcher’s boy and got fired early today. He’s disappeared this morning, too, and I’ll bet my boots that he’s the one who went off in that boat.”
“That reminds me,” put in another member of the group. “When the St. Paul came in here this morning, the passengers were all talking about a small boy rowing a boat up near Pictured Rocks, who tried to cross their bow. The Captain had to stop the steamboat and he said that the two boys in that boat seemed anxious to commit suicide. When the Captain roared at the oarsman and called him a jackass, the kid smiled and asked which one of the two he was speaking to.”
“That was my son Clarence beyond a doubt,” said Mr. Esmond with the suspicion of a smile. “It would be just like him to cut across the bow of a steamboat, and that question of his makes it a dead certainty. The boy sat up until one o’clock last night reading Treasure Island. He’s very impressionable, and he left the house this morning with his heart set upon meeting with an adventure of some sort or other. It’s near twelve o’clock now, and we were to start for the coast at one-forty. Can’t I get a motorboat around here somewhere?”
The man who had been the first to give information then spoke up.
“Sir,” he said, “I have a fairly good motorboat at the McGregor landing. It will be a pleasure for me to do anything I can to help you.”
“Thank you a thousand times. Let’s get off at once. My name is Charles Esmond.”
“And mine,” returned the other, “is John Dolan.” The two, as they made their way to the motorboat, shook hands.
“This is awfully kind of you,” continued Mr. Esmond, as he seated himself in the prow.
“It’s a pleasure, I assure you. I’ve really nothing to do at this season, and so I pass most of my time on the river.”
As he spoke these words, the boat shot out into the water.
“Now,” continued Mr. Dolan, “as a working hypothesis, we may take it for granted that those boys went to Pictured Rocks; everybody goes there. So we’ll make for that place and reach it, I dare say, in six or seven minutes.”
“I hope nothing has happened,” said the father. “This morning my wife had a bad sick headache, and Clarence was overflowing with animal spirits. We had promised him, the night before, a ride on the river and a swim. He had never been on the Mississippi, and he was all eagerness. To make matters worse, I got a telegram this morning to send on a report on a Mexican mine – it’s my business, by the way, to study mines here, in Mexico, and, in fact, almost anywhere. That report meant two or three hours of hard work. So I told Clarence to run out and get some good boatman, if he could, and go rowing. I cautioned him to be careful about where he went swimming and not to go in alone. He promised me faithfully to be back at twelve. Now I have no reason to think the boy would break his word. In fact, I had an idea that he was truthful.”
“You talk of your boy,” observed Mr. Dolan, “as though you didn’t know him very well.”
Mr. Esmond relaxed into a smile.
“It does sound funny, doesn’t it,” he said. “The fact of the matter is that I really have very little first-hand knowledge of him. At the age of five, Clarence learned how to read, and developed a most extraordinary passion for books at once. If allowed, he read from the time he got up till he went to bed. I never saw such a case of precocity. It was next to impossible to get him to take exercise. His mother did her best to restrain him, and I did my share too, though it was very little, as I was away looking up mines nine months out of the twelve. When the boy was eleven, it became clear that some radical action had to be taken. I looked around for some school that would suit or rather offset his idiosyncrasy. After no end of inquiries I discovered Clermont Academy in New York State, where athletics were everything and such studies as reading, grammar and arithmetic were a sort of by-product. Clarence has been there for three years, and, up to a week ago, his mother and I never saw him from the time of his entrance. Well, he’s a changed boy. He is fairly stout, and muscular beyond my most sanguine hopes. He is up in all sorts of games. In fact, in his class – boys of twelve to fourteen – he’s the leader. All the same, I blush to say that I really know very little about my boy.”
“Perhaps the lad is a genius,” suggested Mr. Dolan.
“Some of my friends have made that claim and accused me of trying to clip his wings. All the same, I want my boy, genius or no genius, to grow up to be a hale, hearty man.”
“Halloa!” exclaimed Dolan. He had turned the boat shoreward. Before the eyes of both lay in full view on the bank two suits of clothes. The boat had scarce touched the shore, when Mr. Esmond jumped from it and ran to the spot where the clothes lay spread upon the ground.
“My God! These are my son’s,” he cried, gazing with dismay upon the white sailor suit which he had caught up in his hands. His face quivering with emotion, he stood stock still for a moment, then sank upon the ground and buried his head in his hands.
“And this,” said John Dolan, looking closely at the abandoned overalls, “belongs to that ne’er-do-well butcher’s boy. It looks bad. They must have gone swimming here.”
Mr. Esmond arose and looked about.
“Where’s that boat they had?” he inquired.
“It may have drifted away,” answered John. “Or, more probably, that butcher’s boy, who is a known thief, has hidden it somewhere. He knew very well that there would be a search for it.”
“Say, Dolan, you’ll stand by me, won’t you? I am almost in despair; the thing is so sudden.”
“I’ll do anything you want.”
“Well, you leave me here and run back to McGregor. Send word to my wife that I am detained – don’t let her think or even suspect that our boy is drowned – and to put off our trip to the Coast, as I cannot make the train. Tell her to expect me and Clarence before supper. Then get the proper officials of McGregor to come here at once and drag the river. Hire any extra men you judge fit. Don’t bother about expense. Now go and don’t lose a moment.”
Left alone, Mr. Esmond made a careful search, tracing the boy’s steps in their ascent to Pictured Rocks. He went part of the way himself, crying out at intervals, “Clarence! Clarence! Clarence!” There was no answer save the echoes which to his anxious ears sounded far differently from the “horns of elfland.”
Again and again he called. And yet Clarence was not so far away – hardly half a mile down the river, locked in slumber, and, as it proved, in the hands of that bright-eyed goddess of adventure whom the reckless lad had not in vain wooed.
Returning to the shore, Mr. Esmond on further investigation traced his boy’s footprints to the river’s banks. At this juncture, several motorboats arrived, each carrying a number of men, and soon all were busy dragging the river.
At six o’clock John Dolan insisted on bringing the despairing father back to McGregor.
“Dolan,” he said, as they started upstream, “have you any religion?”
“I hope so. I’m a Catholic.”
“I don’t know what I am; – but my poor boy! His mother ought to be a Catholic, but she was brought up from her tender years by Baptist relations with the result that she’s got no more religion that I have. When my boy was born, I started him out on the theory that he was not to be taught any religion, but was to grow up without prejudices, and when he was old enough, he was to choose for himself. All the religion he ever got amounted to his saying the ‘Our Father’ and ‘Now I lay me down to sleep.’ At that school he’s been going to there’s no religion taught at all. I wish I had done differently. Think of his appearing before a God he never thought of. Some of our theories look mighty nice in ordinary circumstances. But now! My son is dead, and without any sort of preparation.”
“We can pray for him; we can hope.”
“Well, if his soul is saved,” said Esmond gravely, “it’s not because of me, it’s in spite of me.”
When the bereaved father reached the hotel, the despair in his eyes told the tale to his wife. Let us drop a veil over that scene of sorrow – the sudden loss of an only child.
CHAPTER V
In which Ben, the gypsy, associates himself with the Bright-eyed Goddess in carrying out her will upon Master Clarence Esmond, and that young gentleman finds himself a captive
It was the time when the night-hawk, soaring high in air and circling wantonly, suddenly drops like a thunderbolt down, down till nearing the ground it calls a sudden halt in its fall, and cutting a tremendous angle and letting out a short sound deep as the lowest string of a bass violin shoots up into the failing light of the evening; it was the time when the whippoorwill essays to wake the darkening sky with his insistent demands for the beating of that unfortunate youth, poor Will; it was the time when the sun, having left his kingdom in the western sky, stretches forth his wand of sovereignty from behind his curtains and touching the fleecy clouds changes them into precious jewels, ruby, pearl, and amethyst; it was, in fine, the time when the day is done and the twilight brings quiet and peace and slumber to the restless world.
However – and the exception proves the rule – it did not bring quiet and peace and slumber to Master Clarence Esmond. In fact, it so chanced that the twilight hour was the time when he was deprived of these very desirable gifts; for his sleep was just then rudely broken.
First, a feeling of uneasiness came upon his placid slumbers. It seemed to him, in those moments between sleeping and waking, that a very beautiful fairy, vestured in flowing white, and with lustrous and shining eyes, appeared before him. She gazed at him sternly. “Oh, it’s you, is it?” murmured Clarence. “I’ve been looking for you, star-eyed goddess. Be good enough, now you’re here, to supply me with one or two first-class adventures in good condition and warranted to last.” In answer to which, she of the starry eyes extended her wand and struck her suppliant a smart blow on the forehead. As she did this, the light in her eyes went out, her form lost its outline, fading away after the manner of a moving picture effect into total darkness.
Clarence’s eyes then opened; it was not all a dream – the loose board above him had fallen and struck him on his noble brow. Also, although his eyes were open, he could see very little. Almost at once he realized where he was. Almost at once he recalled, with the swiftness thought is often capable of, the varied events of the day. Almost at once, he perceived that the boat, no longer drifting, was moving swiftly as though in tow.
Clarence sat up. There was a splashing of the water quite near the boat. He rubbed his eyes and peered into the gathering darkness. A brown hand, near the prow, was clasped to the gunwale. Then Clarence standing up looked again. From the hand to the arm moved his eyes; from the arm to the head. Beside the boat and swimming vigorously was a man, whom, despite the shadows of the evening, Clarence recognized as young and swarthy. They were rapidly nearing shore.
“Say!” cried Clarence. “Look here, will you? Who are you?”
The swimmer on hearing the sound of the boy’s voice suspended his swimming, turned his head, and seeing standing in what he had supposed to be an empty boat, a young cherub arrayed in a scanty suit of blue, released his hold and disappeared under the water as though he had been seized with cramp.
The boat freed of his hand tilted very suddenly in the other direction, with the result that the erect cherub lost his balance so suddenly that he was thrown headlong into the waters on the other side.
Simultaneously with Clarence’s artless and unpremeditated dive, the strange swimmer came to the surface. He had thought, as our young adventurer subsequently learned, that the figure in the boat was a ghost. But ghosts do not tumble off boats into the water; neither do ghosts, when they come to the surface, blow and sputter and cough and strike out vigorously with an overhand stroke, which things the supposed ghost was now plainly doing. The stranger, therefore, taking heart of grace, laid the hand of proprietorship upon the boat once more. Clarence from the other side went through the same operation.
“What did you spill me for?” he gasped.
“I didn’t know anyone was in the boat,” returned the stranger with a slightly foreign accent. “When you stood up and spoke, I was plumb scared.”
“I really think I’m rather harmless,” remarked the boy, blithely. “Never yet, save in the way of kindness, did I lay hand on anybody – well hardly anybody. Where are we anyhow?”
“We’re on the Mississippi River,” returned the other guardedly.
“Oh, thank you ever so much. I really thought we were breasting the billows of the Atlantic.”
Meanwhile, they had drawn within a few feet of the shore, on which Clarence now cast his eyes. On a sloping beach in a grove surrounded by cottonwoods blazed a ruddy fire. Standing about it but with their eyes and attention fixed upon the two swimmers was a group consisting of a man a little beyond middle age, a woman, apparently his wife, a younger woman, a boy a trifle older and larger than Clarence, a girl of twelve, and five or six little children. In the camp-fire’s light Clarence perceived that they were, taking them all in all, swarthy, black-haired, clad like civilized people, and yet in that indescribable wild way of which gypsies possess the secret.
“Come on,” said the man, as the boat touched the shore.
“Excuse me,” said Clarence politely, “but I’m not dressed to meet visitors. The water is fine anyway; and it’s not near so dangerous as it’s cracked up to be. Can’t you get a fellow at least a pair of trousers?”
“You’ll stay here, will you?”
“I certainly will,” answered the youth, turning on his back and floating. “I’ve had enough of being out on the Mississippi to last me for several weeks at the very least. Go on, there’s a good fellow, – and get me something to put on.”
With a not ill-natured grunt of assent, the man walked up the sloping bank. As he passed the watchful group he uttered a few words; whereupon the larger gypsy boy came down to the shore and fixed a watchful eye upon the bather, while the others broke up and gave themselves to various occupations. Clarence’s rescuer went on beyond the fire, where two tents lay pitched beside a closed wagon – a prairie schooner on a small scale. After some search in which the young woman assisted him, he issued from the larger tent with a pair of frayed khaki trousers and an old calico shirt.
Returning to the river’s edge, he beckoned the swimmer, who, quick to answer the call, seized the clothes and darted behind the largest cottonwood. Clarence was dressed in a trice.
“I wish,” he observed, walking up to his rescuer, “to thank you for saving me. I’ve never been on a big river before; and I was afraid to try swimming. I say,” and as Clarence spoke, he gazed ruefully at his nether garment, “who’s your tailor?”
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Clarence Esmond, age 14, weight 110 pounds, height five feet two in my – ”
“And how did you come to be in that boat?”
Clarence, involuntarily gazing at his frail craft and noticing that the older gypsy, assisted by the boy, had already beached it, and was now getting ready to give it a new coat of paint, proceeded to tell at some length his various encounters with the bright-eyed goddess of adventure since his departure that morning from McGregor. While he was telling his rather incredible tale all the party gathered about him. Not all, he observed, were gypsies. The little girl of twelve was as fair-skinned as himself. She was a beautiful child, with face most expressive of any passing emotion. It was to her that Clarence presently found he was addressing himself. One of his subtle jokes, lost on the gypsies, drew a smile of appreciation from the little girl. She was dainty in her dress – which was in no respect gypsy-like.
“There’s another adventure here,” Clarence reflected. “Where did they get her?” However, he was content to keep these thoughts to himself. At the conclusion of his story, Clarence addressed himself to the young man.
“And now, sir, where am I?”
“You’re in Wisconsin.”
“Oh, I’ve crossed to the other side, have I? And about how far down the river am I from the town of McGregor?”
“You are – ” began the younger gypsy, when his senior cut him short, and spoke to him hurriedly for some minutes in a language strange to Clarence’s ears.
“I say,” interrupted Clarence, “my folks must be awful anxious about me. Would you mind letting me know how far I am from McGregor? I want to get back.”
“You are over thirty-five miles from McGregor,” said the older man, thoughtfully doubling the actual distance.
“Whew! Where can I get a train? I’ve got to get back.”
“Hold on,” said the elder; “what does your father do?”
“He’s a mining expert.”
“Is he rich?”
“I suppose he is. That’s what people say; and if you get me back, I’ll see that you’re paid.”
Again the two men conferred. Watching them eagerly, Clarence gathered these items of information: the elder was called Pete, the younger, Ben; they were not in agreement, coming almost to blows; Pete was the leader.
After further talk the two women were called into council. Suddenly the older, a withered hag with deep eyes and heavy and forbidding brows, turned to Clarence.
“Your hand!” she said, laconically.
“Charmed to shake with you,” responded the amiable adventurer, extending his open palm.
Instead of clasping it, the woman caught it tight, and dragging Clarence close to the fire began eagerly to scrutinize the lines on his palm.
“You’ll live long,” she said.
“Not if I have many days like this,” commented Clarence.
“You’ll have lots of wealth.”
“No objection, I’m sure, ma’am.”
“You will learn easy.”
“That’s the very way I propose to learn.”
“You’ll marry three times.”
“Oh, I say; cut out at least two of those wives, won’t you?”
“You’ll have a big family.”
“No objection to children, ma’am.”
Suddenly the woman paused, gazing fixedly at the boy’s palm.
“Oh!” she suddenly screamed. “The cross! the cross! It’s there. I see it. Say, boy, you’re a Catholic.”
“You’re another,” retorted Clarence, indignantly.
“You are! You are!” And with a cry like that of some wild animal, the woman ran and hid herself in the larger tent.
“Boy,” said Pete, “we’re going to take care of you.”
“Thank you; but if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon take care of myself.”
“You’ll do as I tell you,” said Pete, gazing angrily at the lad. “You may be a fraud. We will find out, and if your story is true, we’ll see about getting you back to your people.”
“Oh, you will, will you? – Good night!” and with this Clarence turned and dashed up the river. Pete, followed by Ezra, was after him at once. The old man was quick to catch up with him, and he made this fact known to the boy by striking him with his closed fist a blow on the mouth which brought him flat to the earth. Pete kicked his prostrate prey as he lay, and was about to renew his brutality, when Ben roughly pulled his senior away.
“Look here!” cried Clarence ruefully, as he picked himself up. “Next time you want me to do something, tell me. You needn’t punch ideas in through my mouth. I guess I can take a hint as well as the next one.”
“You’d better do what Pete says,” whispered Ben not unkindly. “It’s no use trying to get away from him. I’ll be your friend.”
“Thank you. By the way, would you call kicks and cuffs adventures?”
