Kitabı oku: «Bobby Blake on the School Nine: or, The Champions of the Monatook Lake League», sayfa 7
CHAPTER XVII
ON THE TRAIL
The school chums sat up late in the dormitory that night, nursing their bruises, and by the time they had got through applying arnica and other lotions, the place smelled like a hospital.
How they could bring the trick home to those who had played it was a problem that was too much for them at the present. They felt sure that the bullies would deny it if taxed with it, and there was no way of actually proving it, no matter how sure they might feel in their own minds.
The matter could of course have been carried to the authorities of the school, and there is no doubt that they would have looked upon it very gravely because of the serious accident that might have resulted from it. But their code of schoolboy ethics was to keep the teachers out of such things and fight it out among themselves. They felt reasonably sure that sometime or other they would get even, and they bided their time.
It was a very lame and sore lot of boys who dragged themselves out of bed when the rising hell rang on the following morning.
“Scubbity-yow!” exclaimed Fred. “I feel as though I’d been in a railroad smash-up.”
“I’m one big ache all over,” groaned Pee Wee.
“One big ache is right,” grinned Mouser. “You couldn’t be a little one if you tried.”
“My joints creak like a wooden doll’s, every time I go to move,” complained Sparrow.
“I bet I’ll go to pieces on the stairs and have to be shoveled up in bits,” prophesied Skeets.
“We’ll each keep a part to remember you by,” laughed Bobby. “Quit your groaning, you fellows, and let’s go down to the table. You’ll feel better when you get filled up.”
The filling up process was carried out with neatness and despatch, and when it was over the boys were inclined to look on life in a more cheerful way.
“We can’t do anything this morning on account of lessons,” remarked Bobby. “But as soon as they’re over this afternoon, let’s make a break for that hill and see what we can find out.”
“And see how Hicksley and his pals act in the classrooms,” suggested Skeets. “That may give us a tip to go by.”
“I don’t count much on that,” said Mouser. “They’ll be on their guard and won’t want to give themselves away.”
To a certain extent this proved true. There was no attempt on the part of the bullies to gloat over the victims of their trick. But the boys surprised furtive grins and winks that passed between the three when they thought no one was looking, and this confirmed their suspicions that now were almost certainties.
“They did it all right,” pronounced Fred. “I’m sure of it from the way I saw them grinning at each other. But they’ll laugh on the other side of their mouths before long.”
As soon as the boys were free from their duties, they went with all speed to the scene of their misadventure. And again they lamented, when they saw by daylight how thoroughly the hill was spoiled for coasting.
“There must be bushels and bushels of ashes!” exclaimed Mouser, as his eyes roamed over the lower half of the hill.
“It beats me how they managed to get it all here,” observed Skeets.
“It must have been brought a long way,” commented Sparrow. “There’s no place round here they could have got them from.”
“They couldn’t have carried all that stuff themselves,” said Bobby thoughtfully.
“It would have been an awful job,” added Howell, “and those fellows don’t like work well enough for that.”
“They might have hired a man with a horse and wagon,” suggested Skeets.
“If that’s so, there must be some tracks in the snow,” returned Bobby. “Scatter out, fellows, and see if you can find any marks of hoofs or wheels.”
They followed his directions, and in a moment there was a cry from Sparrow.
“Here’re the marks of wheels,” he called. “But I don’t see any horse tracks.”
There, indeed, were the clearly defined print of wheels leading in a roundabout way toward the town. As they looked a little more closely they could see too where a man’s feet had broken at places through the crust of snow.
“It must have been a hand cart,” said Bobby, “and you can see that it held ashes from the bits that lie along its tracks. That’s what they brought it in and you can bet on it.”
“There aren’t many hand carts in town,” observed Fred reflectively. “How many do you fellows remember seeing?”
“The laundryman has one,” replied Howell, “and the paper man has another. Those are the only ones I know of, except that shaky thing of Dago Joe’s.”
“He’s the fellow!” cried Fred excitedly. “None of the others would lend their carts for anything like that.”
“Let’s follow up the tracks and see where they lead to,” suggested Sparrow.
This was detective work to their liking and even Pee Wee made no objections to the tramp over the snow.
Their satisfaction was increased when they found that the tracks led straight to the roundhouse. Here there were great piles of ashes that had been dropped from the fire boxes of the locomotives when they were being shifted or put up for the night. It was quite clear that here was the place where the hand cart had been filled.
But their elation received a sudden check when they prepared to trace the wheel prints to the shabby shack in town where Joe lived with his numerous brood. For now they were in the outskirts of the town, where wagons were coming and going all the time, and the tracks they had been following were lost in a multitude of others.
They looked at each other a little sheepishly.
“Stung!” muttered Fred.
“Bum detectives we are,” grinned Sparrow.
“We’re up a tree now for sure,” declared Sparrow.
“All this walk for nothing,” growled Pee Wee.
“We do seem to be stumped,” admitted Bobby. “What do you say to going to Joe and asking him right up and down whether he did it or not?”
“Swell chance we’d have of getting anything out of him,” commented Mouser.
“He’d lie about it sure,” declared Sparrow.
“I suppose likely he would,” agreed Bobby. “But we might be able to tell something by the way he acts. It won’t do any harm to try anyhow.”
They found Dago Joe pottering about some work in the small yard in front of his shack. But Joe had seen them coming and his uneasy conscience had taken alarm. If he had had time, he would have slipped inside the house and had his wife or one of the children deny that he was at home. But it was too late for that, and he took refuge in the assumed ignorance that had served him many times before.
He greeted them with a genial smile that showed his mouthful of white teeth which was the only personal attraction he possessed.
“Goota day,” he said blandly.
“How are you, Joe?” said Bobby, as spokesman for the party. “Been pretty busy?”
Joe’s mouth drooped.
“Not do nottin much,” he answered. “Beesness bad, ver’ bad.”
“Carry any loads of ashes lately?” Bobby went on.
Joe looked puzzled. Then a light came into his face.
“Hash?” he said delightedly. “Me likea hash. Tasta good. Bambino like it too.”
“Not hash, but ashes,” returned Bobby, joining in the laugh of the rest of the boys. “You know, ashes – what falls out of the stove, wood ashes, coal ashes.”
Joe’s face resembled that of a graven image.
“No unnerstan,” he said, shrugging his shoulders with an air of perplexity.
In the face of his determination, the boys saw that it was of no use to prolong the conversation.
“You’re a good actor, Joe,” said Bobby, half vexed, half amused, as the boys turned to go.
Joe showed his teeth again in an engaging smile that embraced all the party and waved them a cordial good-bye.
“How sweetly the old rascal smiles at us!” grinned Mouser.
“Laughs at us, you mean,” snorted Fred. “He’s tickled to death inside to think of the way he’s got the best of us.”
“I bet if we asked him if he’d like to have us give him five dollars, he’d understand, all right,” laughed Sparrow.
“He couldn’t grab the money too quick,” agreed Skeets.
“Well, we haven’t wasted our afternoon anyway,” Bobby summed up. “We’ve found out how the ashes were taken there, and we feel dead certain in our own minds that Joe did it. We know, of course, that he didn’t do it of his own accord. Somebody hired him to do it. Now if we could only find some one who saw Hicksley and Joe talking together, it would help some.”
“But that wouldn’t prove anything,” objected Sparrow. “They might be talking about the weather.”
“Or about hash,” interjected Pee Wee.
“Hash seems to stick in your crop,” grinned Skeets.
“I wish some of it were sticking there right now,” answered Pee Wee, “especially if it were like the hash that Meena makes.”
“By the way, fellows,” chimed in Fred, “it must be close to supper time this very minute. Let’s beat it.”
They started off on a run.
“The one that gets there last is a Chinaman,” Skeets flung back over his shoulder.
Pee Wee was the Chinaman.
CHAPTER XVIII
A HARD HIT
The next morning the boys woke to the realization that it was St. Valentine’s Day. There were valentines in their mail, valentines that had been slipped slyly into their pockets, valentines that had found their way under their pillows.
Some of them were the grotesque “comics” that were on sale in the village stationery store, while others were mere scrawls adorned with so-called pictures, and had been made by the boys themselves with pen and pencil.
There was not much art about them, but there was a good deal of fun, and that was all the boys were looking for. Most of them were based on nicknames that the boys carried or on some event in their lives that was known to the rest.
Mouser, for instance, was pictured with his own face on the body of a mouse who was creeping toward a cage in which a big piece of cheese was temptingly displayed.
Skeets was buzzing about as a big mosquito, over the bald head of a fat man, who was getting ready to crash him as soon as he should settle down.
Fred’s red head had been drawn in red ink, and above his flaming mop one boy was holding a frying pan and another was breaking eggs to cook an omelet.
The boys had learned from Fred of the time when Bobby had coasted down the Trent Street hill and gone head over heels into the drift. Bobby’s head could not be seen but his two heels were waving wildly in the air and on one of them was the word “Bobby” and on the other “Blake.”
Of course Pee Wee had not been overlooked. He was shown as a big fat boy, and each of his knees had a dog’s head on it. The dogs were barking furiously. This was supposed to indicate his “barked” shins.
Because Billy Bassett was always asking questions with his conundrums, he was shown as a great big question mark with the word “guess” underneath.
Sparrow Bangs sat on a branch with a flock of birds, singing with all his might, while in the bushes a hunter was taking careful aim and getting ready to fire.
Under most of the pictures there were verses that brought forth shrieks of laughter – usually from all, but sometimes from all but the recipient.
As a rule, it was pure fun without any sting in it, though Fred pointed out that the hair in the picture was a good deal redder than that which really waved over his freckled forehead. Pee Wee too was sure that he was not anyway near so big as the human mountain that his picture showed him to be.
There was plenty of chaff and laughter as the boys pored over the valentines, and they would have gladly spent more time discussing them. But as Fred had said, Valentine’s Day was only a “fake” holiday, and the hard-hearted teachers insisted on lessons and recitations. So the pictures were hastily thrust into pockets until they had more time to look at them and the boys trooped over to the classrooms.
Several times through the morning’s work, they noticed that Tom Hicksley shot furious glances at them and this aroused their curiosity.
“His royal highness seems mighty sore about something this morning,” Fred whispered to Bobby.
“Got out of bed the wrong foot first maybe,” replied Bobby.
“I hope he’s got something to feel sore about,” snapped Fred.
What that something was they learned after the lessons were over, and they stood chattering with their friends, a little way off from the main building.
Hicksley came up to them, accompanied by Bronson and Jinks. There was an ugly look in the bully’s eyes and he held a folded sheet of paper in his hand.
“Which one of you boobs sent me this valentine?” he asked threateningly.
“How do you know that any of us did?” replied Bobby in Yankee fashion, answering a question by asking one.
“I know that some of you did, because you butted in on me before,” replied Hicksley.
“When was that?” asked Fred aggravatingly.
“You know well enough,” growled Hicksley, who was not any too anxious to recall his bully-ragging of the old soldier.
“Oh, yes, I remember,” put in Mouser, as though he had just thought of it. “You remember, fellows, how Hicksley reached out his foot and tried to trip the old man up.”
“I didn’t,” cried Hicksley untruthfully. “He fell over it by accident.”
“And I suppose it was an accident that you kept at him with the feather so that he couldn’t get any sleep?” retorted Fred.
“That’s neither here nor there,” snarled Hicksley, dodging the matter. “What I want to know is which one of you sent this valentine?”
“What are you going to do if you find out?” asked Bobby innocently.
“I’m going to give him a trimming that he’ll remember,” growled Hicksley.
Bronson and Jinks ranged up alongside of him as though to assure him of their support, and it looked as if trouble were coming.
“Give it to him good and plenty, Tom,” said Bronson.
“The whole bunch of them need a licking,” added Jinks.
“It will take more than you to give it to us,” blazed out Fred defiantly.
The bullies were much larger and stronger than any of the boys opposed to them. On the other hand, the smaller boys had a larger number, so that if a tussle did come, the forces would be about equal.
“What is this valentine you’re making all this fuss about?” demanded Bobby.
“Here it is,” cried Hicksley furiously, thrusting it forward. “And I’m going to make the fellow that sent it pay for it.”
The boys crowded round and looked at it curiously, at the same time keeping wary eyes on the bullies.
The picture was fairly well done, and had evidently taken a great deal of work and time on the part of the one who had made it. It represented a boy taking a dead mouse from a blind kitten. The boy was grinning, and the kitten was pawing wildly about, trying to get back its mouse.
To make sure there could be no mistake, the kitten had a card around its neck bearing the words, “I am blind,” and under the figure of the boy was scrawled the name, “Tom Hicksley.”
The boys roared with laughter, and Hicksley’s temper rose to the boiling point.
“Own up now, which one of you did it,” he demanded fiercely.
“Whoever did it knew you pretty well, Tom Hicksley,” said Fred.
“What do you suppose the picture means?” inquired Mouser, as though he could not quite make it out.
“I think it means that the fellow who would take a dead mouse from a blind kitten is about as mean as they make them,” put in Sparrow.
“Mean enough to torment a poor old soldier, I shouldn’t wonder,” added Shiner, pouring oil on the flames.
“Are you going to tell me who did it?” snarled Hicksley once more, snatching back the valentine, which he now regretted having shown, and doubling up his fist.
“I would have done it if I’d thought of it,” Fred came back at him.
Hicksley sprang forward, followed by Bronson and Jinks.
The boys stood their ground and there was a wild mix-up. In a moment they were all down in the snow in a flying tangle of arms and legs.
There was no telling how the tussle would have terminated, though Hicksley was getting his face well washed with snow that the boys were cramming into his mouth and eyes, when a shout arose:
“Cheese it, fellows, there’s a teacher coming!”
The combatants scrambled to their feet and scurried in all directions, and when Mr. Leith, the head teacher, arrived on the spot, there was no one to be seen.
Bobby and his friends found themselves, red, panting and uproariously happy, in their dormitory, where they flung their books upon their beds and fairly danced about with glee.
“I jammed so much snow in Tom Hicksley’s mouth that I bet he’ll taste it for a month,” chortled Fred.
“They tackled the wrong bunch that time,” gurgled Mouser.
“They thought we’d run,” chuckled Bobby.
“Wasn’t that a dandy valentine?” demanded Skeets.
“What a fool he was to show it,” grinned Pee Wee. “Now it’ll go all over the school.”
“Who do you suppose sent it?” wondered Shiner.
“I’d give a dollar to know,” declared Fred.
“All right,” grinned Sparrow, holding out his hand. “Pass over the dollar.”
“You?” cried the other boys in chorus.
CHAPTER XIX
SPRING PRACTICE
“I’m the fellow who did it,” admitted Sparrow modestly.
“Sparrow, old scout, you’re a wonder!” cried Mouser, clapping him on the back.
“It hit him right where he lived,” chuckled Skeets.
“That pays him up for scattering ashes on the hill,” grinned Fred.
“He’ll never hear the last of it as long as he stays in school,” said Shiner. “Every once in a while a dead mouse will turn up on his desk and make him hopping mad.”
“He’ll never be much madder than he was this morning,” put in Skeets. “His eyes were fairly snapping.”
“Bronson and Jinks got theirs, too,” said Pee Wee. “I guess they’ll think twice before they pick on the other fellows again.”
“They’ve been rather quiet since the goat tumbled them over at our last initiation,” laughed Bobby, referring to an incident of the previous term, “but since Hicksley came they’ve been getting ugly again. I guess what they got this morning will hold them for a while.”
As a matter of fact, the bullies did seem to be somewhat dashed by the stout resistance that the smaller boys had put up and they did not refer to the valentine again. They were only too willing to have it forgotten, and Tom Hicksley ground his teeth more than once at not having kept it to himself.
Spring was now at hand, coming this year a little earlier than usual. The snow disappeared from the ground, the ice vanished from the lake, and the soft winds that blew up from the south turned the thoughts of the boys to track games and baseball.
Fred and Bobby had done a good deal of practicing in the gymnasium and were in prime condition. But actual practice on the diamond was the real thing they wanted, and they were delighted when the ground had dried out enough to play in the open air.
Frank Durrock had been busy for a month past, getting all the details perfected for the entrance of Rockledge into the Monatook Lake League. But now everything was ready and he could devote himself to picking the members of the team.
This proved to be no easy matter. An unusually large number of good players were at Rockledge, and the struggle for places on the nine was interesting and exciting.
It seemed that Bobby should play in the pitcher’s box and Fred at short stop. They had both done exceedingly well at those positions the previous spring and fall. But there was a new boy, Willis by name, who had been a good short stop on his home nine before he had come to the school, and it seemed to be a toss up between him and Fred as to who could do better in the position.
Bobby, too, had rivalry to face in the person of Tom Hicksley.
On the first day that they actually had field practice, Hicksley came out on the ball ground in an old uniform that proclaimed that he had once been a member of the “Eagles” of Cresskill, his native town.
Frank knew that he had been a pitcher, and so he put him in the box and had him toss up some balls for the rest of the team in batting practice.
And Hicksley did exceedingly well. Whatever his defects in character, he certainly knew how to pitch. He had a good outcurve, a fair incurve and a high fast ball that Bobby himself generously declared to be a “peach.”
Hicksley’s height and strength, too, were greater than Bobby’s, which was not to be wondered at when it was considered that he was three years older. But he was inclined to be a little wild, and his control was not as good as Bobby’s.
But what made his work of special interest to Frank was that he pitched with his left hand. Most of the pitchers in the new league were right-handed, and the boys were used to hitting that kind of pitching.
Frank felt that with a left-handed pitcher he would have the other fellows all at sea when it came to “lining them out,” and for that reason he watched Hicksley with the closest attention.
“He puts them over all right,” conceded Bobby, as he watched Hicksley winging them over the plate.
“Yes,” said Fred, “when he gets them over at all. But lots of them don’t even cut the corners. He’ll give too many bases on balls.”
“And a base on balls is as good for the fellow that gets it as a base hit,” commented Mouser.
“His arm seems to be all right, but we don’t know how he’ll act when he gets in a pinch,” said Skeets dubiously.
“That’s what makes Bobby so strong as a pitcher,” said Shiner. “No matter how tight a hole he finds himself in, he’s cool as an iceberg.”
“That’s so,” remarked Pee Wee, who was too fat and too slow to play himself, but was an ardent rooter for the home team. “I’ve never seen Bobby get rattled yet.”
“That’s because there isn’t a bit of yellow in him,” said Fred, throwing his arm affectionately about his chum’s shoulder.
“And I’ll bet that Hicksley has a yellow streak in him a yard wide,” snapped Sparrow.
“Oh he may not be that way when it comes to baseball,” remonstrated Bobby who always tried to be fair. “At any rate he ought to have a chance to show what he can do before we make up our minds about him. You fellows know that I don’t like him a bit more than you do, but that doesn’t say he may not be a good baseball player.”
Jinks was not on the nine, but Bronson, who was a good batter and a fair fielder, was expected to play center field. They were both delighted at the showing that their crony was making and were loud in their applause. Their praise was so extravagant in fact that it was clear that they did it to depreciate Bobby.
“You’re the best pitcher we ever had at Rockledge, Tom,” cried Bronson, casting a side glance at Bobby to make sure that he heard.
“You lay over them all,” crowed Jinks. “There’s no one else can hold a candle to you.”
“Here, cut that out, you fellows,” called Frank Durrock sharply. “Blake has proved what he can do and I don’t want any talk like that. He won both of the last games he pitched against Belden, and any one who can do better than he did will have to be going some.”
“You bet they will,” cried Fred loyally, and there was a round of hand clapping from the other boys, with most of whom Bobby was a prime favorite.
Frank’s hearty defense put Bobby on his mettle, and when his turn came to put the balls over, he did so with a snap and skill that delighted his friends.
The practice all around was sharp and spirited, and Frank was greatly encouraged as he saw how well the team took hold. But it would not do to play too long on the first day, and after an hour or so, he called a halt.
“We want to keep an eye on those fellows, Bobby,” remarked Fred a little uneasily as they were going toward the school. “They’re going to crowd you out if they can.”
“Let them try,” replied Bobby. “I’m going to try my best to hold up my end with Hicksley and beat him if I can. But if he can prove that he’s a better pitcher than I am, I won’t kick if I have to play second fiddle. I’d be willing to do anything to help Rockledge win.”
