Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration: HE DESCENDED THE SLOPE]




THE SAFETY FIRST CLUB


  BY
  W. T. NICHOLS

  Illustrated by
  F. A. ANDERSON

  THE PENN PUBLISHING
  COMPANY PHILADELPHIA
  1916

       *       *       *       *       *

COPYRIGHT 1916 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY

[Illustration]

The Safety First Club

       *       *       *       *       *

  _To
  M. H. M._

  _A youthful critic with the precious art of
  combining frankness and friendliness,
  this book is appreciatively dedicated_




Introduction


The Safety First idea, along with some other sound rules of conduct
which have been hammered out by hard experience of the race, is often
easier to put into words than into practice. Like other brakes on
machines or men it sometimes seems to cause too much friction, with
resulting protest, especially from youngsters impatient of warnings of
dangers possible rather than presently pressing.

The fact is, however, that these objectors fail to recognize the true
spirit of the rule. Nobody expects active boys and girls to be wrapped
in cotton wool and stored away out of all harm’s reach. They have
their work to do in the world, and in doing it must take certain risks
as the rest of us do. But there are unnecessary risks, just as there
are other risks which are not to be avoided; and it is in shunning
these unnecessary risks, in learning that reasonable caution is not
cowardice, that recklessness is no proof of bravery, and that the way
to redeem a mistake is not to repeat it, that the rule is to be truly
honored.

In “The Safety First Club” and the volumes which are to follow it are
set forth certain adventures of boys who have to deal with problems
such as confront healthy young Americans, boys well intentioned but not
wise beyond their years, fond of the open, restive under restraint. It
is the author’s hope that in their haps and mishaps they may be found
likably human.




Contents


       I. “HEDGEHOG DAY”                           11

      II. SAM TAKES CHANCES                        23

     III. THE LUCK OF A LONG SHOT                  34

      IV. THE CLUB GETS A NEW NAME                 43

       V. SAM FACES THE MUSIC                      61

      VI. DEALING WITH THE OGRE                    72

     VII. THE RECKONING                            87

    VIII. BEGINNING THE TEST                       96

      IX. POKE AND STEP PUT THEIR HEADS TOGETHER  111

       X. QUEER TROUBLES                          124

      XI. THE CLUB GETS A CLUE                    135

     XII. PUNISHMENT POSTPONED                    146

    XIII. NOT ON THE PROGRAM                      159

     XIV. SENT TO COVENTRY                        173

      XV. THE CLUB ENDORSES ITSELF                182

     XVI. SAM HAS A RUDE AWAKENING                194

    XVII. MORE SURPRISES                          202

   XVIII. LON DISCUSSES CROOKED THINKING          211

     XIX. OF DUELS AND CONSCIENCE                 222

      XX. SAM MAKES A SPEECH                      230

     XXI. LON PLAYS DETECTIVE                     239

    XXII. TOM ORKNEY CHANGES HIS INTENTION        252

   XXIII. LON GATES ENTERTAINS                    266

    XXIV. PETER GROCHE SCORES AGAIN               281

     XXV. THE BLIZZARD                            294

    XXVI. OLD FRIENDS MEET                        307

   XXVII. PETER’S GRUDGE                          319

  XXVIII. SAM MAKES CHOICE                        334

    XXIX. SQUARING THE ACCOUNT                    343

     XXX. IN FULL SETTLEMENT                      355




Illustrations


                                     PAGE

  HE DESCENDED THE SLOPE    _Frontispiece_

  HIS FINGER TREMBLED ON THE TRIGGER  37

  “YOU’RE LOOKING FOR TROUBLE”       156

  “HOLD HARD, THERE!”                216

  “HE’S COMING ’ROUND ALL RIGHT”     283

The Safety First Club

       *       *       *       *       *

The Safety First Club




CHAPTER I “HEDGEHOG DAY”


Sam Parker stepped out upon the side porch of his father’s house,
closing the door behind him with a slam. There was a frown on his face,
which by no means became it; and the corners of his mouth drooped
sulkily. He was, as a matter of fact, in a fit of temper, which did
not lessen as he surveyed the dull, gray sky, and saw its promise of a
dismal day.

“’Nother spoiled Saturday!” he grumbled. “Nowhere to go and nothing to
do--oh, thunderation!”

Now, to tell the truth, it may be that the weather had much to do with
Sam’s pessimism, just as it often influences persons a great deal older
and wiser than this boy of sixteen. Sam, commonly, was good-natured
enough. This day, though, things had seemed to go wrong from the very
start. He had overslept; one of his shoes had contrived to hide itself
under the bureau; his necktie stubbornly had declined to slip into a
smooth and even knot; he was late at breakfast, and the oatmeal was
cold, and the eggs were as hard as the Fate which he was beginning to
suspect was pursuing him. He had attempted criticism, and his father
had checked him rather sharply with the reminder that the breakfast
hour was 7:30 and not 7:50. His mother had not hastened to his defense;
and even Maggie, the cook, frequently his ally and dispenser of
consoling doughnuts and cookies, had failed him when he sought sympathy
in the kitchen.

“You got up wrong foot foremost,” she told him. “Get along with you
now! This is bakin’ day, and I can’t be bothered.”

Sam, thus repulsed, had clumped out of the kitchen; stormed into the
hall; snatched up his cap and reefer; stamped across the dining-room,
and flung himself out of the house, without visible improvement in
his spirits or his condition. If it was dark within, it was gloomy
without. He looked up the street and down; nobody was in sight. He
buttoned his coat to the neck, and thrust his hands into his pockets:
the world, he perceived, was chilly as well as lonely. Then, of a
sudden, he grinned, fleetingly and reluctantly, at vagrant memory of
the old story of the child that threatened to go out and eat two smooth
worms and three fuzzy fellows because nobody loved it. The baby’s
troubles were ridiculously like his own, and for a trying second he
realized the resemblance. Then he was frowning harder than ever, with
mouth drooping still more sulkily.

In sunnier moods Sam Parker was a good-looking boy. Nobody would have
called him pretty; he wasn’t of the “pretty” type, being, indeed,
rather wholesome and hearty, with plenty of color in his cheeks--and
not a few freckles. For a youth who was rapidly adding to his inches,
in the process known as getting his growth, he carried himself well;
though, as everybody knows, this period in a boy’s life is not that
at which grace of figure or movement is most marked. In other words,
there were times when Sam did not know what to do with his hands or
his feet, and impressed the painful fact upon all beholders, especially
because of a certain impulsiveness, which led him now and then into
embarrassing ventures.

Standing on the porch and glowering at all he beheld, Sam was not
attractive. Hannibal, his bull terrier, trotting from the barn,
noted the storm signals his master was flying, and halting at a safe
distance, made great pretense of scratching for a flea which did not
exist. Sam whistled, and Hannibal grew busier than ever. The boy took
an impatient step, and the dog stopped scratching and bolted for the
barn.

Sam, striding after him, pulled up abruptly. A thick-set man in cap,
and overalls, and boots, and with a carriage rug in one hand and a
brush in the other, appeared in the big doorway.

“H’lo, Sam!” was his greeting. “Good day, ain’t it?”

“Good for nothing!” snapped the boy. “Rotten weather!”

The man’s eyes twinkled. They were pleasant eyes, with little fans of
fine wrinkles at the corners, and they lighted up his smooth-shaven,
weather-beaten face amazingly.

“Huh! Guess you ain’t looked at the calendar lately. This ain’t June;
it’s the fust day of December. And I’m tellin’ you this is pretty good
weather for December. What if there ain’t no snow? The wheelin’s all
right--your daddy took the car out this mornin’.”

Sam nodded. “I know--he went over to Epworth.”

“Why didn’t you go along?”

“What’d be the use?”

Now, this was not strictly ingenuous. Possibly because of his sulks,
Sam had not been invited to accompany his father.

“Sure enough! What’d ’a’ been the use?” said the man with an odd grin.

Sam reddened. “Look here! Bet you I could have gone if I’d wanted to,
Lon!”

Lon, otherwise Alonzo Gates, hired man and general factotum, made no
response to the challenge, but fell to dusting the rug vigorously. Sam,
gloomy browed, drew nearer.

“Tell you, Lon, I could have gone. No fun, though--ride’s too cold.
That’s the trouble with this weather--no coasting, no skating, no
football, nothing!”

“So?” said the man non-committally.

Hobe, the barn cat, sauntered out of the door. Sam kicked at the
animal, which took refuge behind a wooden bucket standing just inside
the sill, and from this cover snarled defiance. Whereupon Sam kicked
again. This time his foot struck something--the bucket. Over it went,
and out shot a gallon or two of soapy water. Hobe darted back into the
barn. Lon moved aside nimbly, but not nimbly enough. Splash! went the
water upon his boots.

“Wal, now, but you have gone and done it!” he ejaculated. “Nice mess to
clean up, ain’t it?”

In Sam’s perverse mood the one thing he cared for was to hide the
regret he felt.

“Huh! Oughtn’t to have stuff standing round like that. Why didn’t you
tell me?”

Lon paused in his labors. “My! but this world’s awful crowded this
mornin’, ain’t it?” he remarked. “First there wasn’t room for you ’n’
Hobe; then you jest couldn’t stand for that bucket treadin’ on your
toes. Wal, wal!”

Sam snorted wrathfully. What wouldn’t he have given for speech so
cuttingly sarcastic that Lon must throw up his hands and beg mercy!
But, effective words failing him, he could do no better than offer
sounds which were disagreeable rather than intelligible.

Lon chuckled; then grew serious. “See here, Sam!” said he. “I kind o’
guess this is hedgehog day for you, ain’t it?”

“Huh?”

“When you come to think it over,” Lon went on, “a hedgehog’s about
the one critter you can’t think of as ever snugglin’ up nice and cozy
to anything or anybody. Now, I knew a feller once that had a tame
woodchuck that liked to be patted; and I’ve seen the tigers and big
cats in circuses purrin’ round their trainers; but I never heard tell
of a hedgehog actin’ real sociable and wantin’ to sit in anybody’s
lap. And, so far’s I can rec’lect, I never run across a hedgehog that
you’d call all-around popular with the neighbors. Whenever one gets
close to anybody, he sticks his spines into him. And when a human
gets to actin’ like a hedgehog--why that’s when he’s havin’ a hedgehog
day--see?”

“Huh!” said Sam again.

Lon gave the rug another flick with the brush.

“By and large, son,” he remarked, “it ain’t good business to have
hedgehog days. I know, I know! When you’re feelin’ that way, that’s the
way you feel, as the fox said to the bear in the trap. But you ain’t
doin’ yourself no good, and you ain’t any perticular help to the rest
of the community.”

“Hang the community!”

“Jest what the hedgehog says,” quoth Lon tranquilly. He carried his rug
into the barn; brought out another; brushed skilfully for a minute.

“Hunt up some of the boys, Sam,” he advised. “Try lowerin’ your spines,
and see if they won’t keep down after a while.”

“Don’t want to.”

“Bad as that, eh?”

Sam disdained to make reply. Lon pursed his lips.

“Sonny, this won’t do. It’s bad medicine. Say, where’ll you be at if
you behave like this when you go to St. Mark’s?”

“I’ll get along all right.”

Lon brushed furiously for a little. “I--I dunno’s there’s but--but one
way--for some folks to learn things,” he said jerkily. “When you’re
there--jest one among two-three hundred boys--it’ll be different, now I
tell you! We put up with you; they won’t.”

“Huh! Who’s afraid?”

“I’d be--if I was you.”

“Bah!”

Lon shook his head. “Sam,” he said, “if I thought this was a real
in-growin’ attack, I’d be worried a heap wuss than I am. But I’m
worried enough as it is. Now, I’ll give you a good tip. If you don’t
want to see the other boys, go for a good, long tramp. Walk it off!
That’s jest what the real hedgehog can’t do--his legs ain’t long
enough.”

“No fun walking--day like this.”

Lon was a patient soul. “Wal, why don’t you go huntin’, then?”

“What for? Rabbits?”

“If you can’t get anything bigger. But you might land a shot at a deer.
’Member what day this is? First of December! Law on deer goes off, and
stays off till the fifteenth.”

“Oh!” said Sam. In the new interest he almost forgot, for an instant,
that he had a grievance against the universe. But it was only for an
instant. “But I wouldn’t have the luck to get a shot at a buck, or a
doe, either. The crowd will have started out early, and scared every
deer within ten miles of town,” he concluded pessimistically.

“Don’t be too sure of that.”

“’Tis sure!” Sam insisted. “Then what’ll I do for a gun?”

“Got your own, haven’t you?”

“What! Try for a deer with a ‘twenty-two’?”

“Why not? It’s big enough, if it gets to the right spot.”

Sam fell back to his second line of defense. “Well, there’ll be no deer
anywhere near town.”

“Who says so?”

“I do!” snapped the boy.

Lon bent toward him, and lowered his voice. “Sam, a feller was tellin’
me last night about a herd that’s been feedin’ in close--right back of
old Bill Marlow’s barn--big buck and three-four more. Old orchard in
there, you know. And that’s so nigh to town most folks won’t look for
’em there. But there they be--or there they were as late as yesterday,
anyhow. And, by gum! if I was you, I’d scout out that way on the
chance--that is, if your mother says it’s all right,” he added hastily.

In spite of himself, Sam’s ambition was fired. A shot at a deer! That
would be worth while.

“You--you’re certain they were there yesterday?” he asked.

“Bill Marlow told me himself. And you can be sure of one thing--he
didn’t tell many other folks. Bill ain’t no gossip.”

Sam nodded. He knew something of Mr. Marlow’s habit of taciturnity.
Doubter though he might be, the prospect was brightening. He had heard
old hunters tell stories of cases in which deer had been killed almost
in the outskirts of the village, while sportsmen ranging farther afield
had been rewarded with sight of neither buck nor doe.

“Well, I suppose I might as well have a look,” he said not too
graciously.

“Of course you might!”

Sam took a step toward the house. “Of course, with my luck----”

“Oh, you never can tell,” Lon reminded him.

“Still, I might as well be wasting time that way as any other,” said
Sam sourly, and quickened his pace.

“Don’t forget to tell your mother!” Lon called after him.

Sam waved a hand in reply, and went on to the house.




CHAPTER II SAM TAKES CHANCES


In simple fairness it should be said that Sam Parker meditated no
breach of parental authority. Indeed, as he was permitted to own a
little rifle, and to hunt for small game, it was possible that no
serious objection would have been raised to his quest for deer, though
there might have been scant faith in his success. But Sam, as it was
fated, was not to secure permission for his expedition.

Mrs. Parker was not in the dining-room. Sam saw that the room was
unoccupied, and went on to the library. It, too, failed to reward him
for his search. So did the living-room. He strode into the hall, and
took station by the foot of the stairs.

“Mother! Oh, Mother!” he called. “Say, Mother! Mother!”

There was no reply from above stairs or below.

“But I say, Mother!” His voice rose shrilly in his impatience. “Where
are you? Oh, Ma, Ma, Ma!”

A door at the back of the hall opened, but the head which appeared was
that of Maggie.

“Don’t make such a racket, Sam!” she cautioned. “What do you want,
anyway?”

“Where’s Mother? I’ve got to see her--right off!”

“Well, she ain’t here.”

“Why not?” demanded the boy hotly.

Maggie tossed her head. “Because she can’t very well be in two places
at once. And she’s run over to see Mis’ Lake for a minute.”

Sam stamped his foot. “Minute--nothing! I know what that means. She’ll
stay half an hour.”

“Well, why shouldn’t she, if she wants to?” said Maggie coolly. And
then, being busy, she closed the door and went back to her work.

Sam scowled; hesitated briefly; reached resolution; marched into the
library. His little rifle stood in its appointed place against the
wall, beside his father’s double-barreled gun. “The armory corner” of
the library was a family joke; for though Sam’s rifle was frequently
in use, the shotgun had not been taken out of the room in years. It was
a fine weapon, of a noted make, and highly prized by its owner, who,
however, had not hunted for many seasons; though regularly he planned
expeditions in the woods, and bought a fresh stock of ammunition.

Sam laid eager hold upon his rifle; then, of a sudden, seemed to be
seized by scorn of it. After all, it was never meant for big game. Why,
with its short cartridges and light charges of powder, it was hardly
more than a toy! Really, it was intended for target practice.

“Yet, for all that, it’s a rifle,” said the boy to himself. It was odd
how, once his prejudice was aroused, arguments presented themselves to
strengthen his objections. “And the law says you can’t hunt deer with
rifles.”

Here he was speaking by the book. The statute, which provided an open
season from December 1st to December 15th, also forbade the use of
rifles by sportsmen. Possibly a very lenient judge might have held that
Sam’s “pop-gun” hardly classed with the high-power, long-range weapons
against which the law was aimed, and might have deemed it annoying
rather than dangerous to two-footed or four-footed creatures; but Sam,
at the moment, was not disposed to be liberal in his interpretation. He
restored the piece to its place. He picked up the shotgun.

Temptation was strong upon him. Wasn’t it true that if he had not
been told that he could use the gun he also had not been expressly
forbidden to lay hands upon it? Nothing had been said about it either
way. And didn’t his father wish him to have some knowledge of firearms?
Of course he did! Oh, but it was a wonderfully persuasive voice,
which seemed to be whispering in his ear! It was so seductive that it
frightened him--a very, very little.

Sam hastily put down the gun. Yet he lingered in its neighborhood. Half
absently he opened a drawer in his father’s desk. There, in a corner,
was a paper box, labeled “3-1/4 drams, smokeless; shot 00.” Cartridges
for deer shooting! Surely here was Fate’s own finger pointing the way.

The boy drew a long breath. He lifted the cover of the box; took out
half a dozen of the cartridges; thrust them into a pocket. Then he
caught up the shotgun, and strode out of the library.

There was nobody to halt him or question him. Maggie was fully occupied
in the kitchen, and his mother had not returned. Leaving the house by
the front door, he avoided chance of observation by Lon Gates, who
still was at work in the barn. Not that Lon would have stopped him;
for the hired man would have supposed him to be sallying forth with
his mother’s permission. Nevertheless, Sam preferred to have his going
unnoted. He turned the corner of the house--the corner away from the
barn; stole back through the yard; climbed a fence, and found himself
in a narrow lane. It led to a side street, which, in turn, brought him
to a road running into the country.

His gun tucked under his arm, Sam walked briskly; and as the Parker
house happened to be on an edge of the town, it was but a very few
minutes before he had open fields on either hand. Ahead of him was
the low hill on which the Marlow farmhouse stood; and farther on were
loftier wooded summits. In summer the scenery of the region was
pleasantly picturesque, but on an overcast December day a stranger
might have found the prospect somewhat dreary. Sam, cheered by the
spirit of adventure, and the better for the exercise, began to shake
off his sulkiness; and he was whistling almost blithely when, at a
bend in the road, he saw two boys approaching. Physically, they were
in marked contrast. One was tall and thin, with a peculiarly angular
effect at elbows and knees; the other was short and plump, with a
round, good-humored face. Both hailed Sam eagerly.

“Hi there! Where are you going? What you doing with that artillery?”
sang out the tall lad.

“Don’t fire! I’ll surrender,” chuckled his companion.

Sam halted. He brought his gun to parade rest. An onlooker might have
suspected that he was not seeking secrecy regarding errand or armament
in the case of these two friends.

“Hullo, Step!” said he. “Same to you, Poke! And what am I doing? Oh,
just looking around on the chance of bagging something.”

The tall youth was carrying a package, wrapped in a newspaper. He laid
it on the ground, and took the gun from Sam’s hands, balancing the
weapon lovingly and finally raising it to his shoulder.

“Gee, but what a daisy!” he exclaimed. “Whose is it? Yours?”

“Oh, it isn’t exactly mine, Step, but I’m using it,” said Sam.

Any boy could have told how Clarence Jones came by his nickname. “Step”
was an abbreviation of “Step-ladder”; and undeniably Master Jones
did bear a resemblance to that valuable, if not graceful, article of
household equipment.

“Here, let me take the shooting-iron!” the plump youth urged. His name
was Arthur Green, but he was called “Poke,” because one so easily could
dig a finger into his fat sides. Having placed the basket he had been
carrying beside Step’s bundle, his hands were free to lay hold upon the
gun. There was a little tussle, and Poke captured the prize.

“My eyes! but this is a crackerjack!” was his comment. “Jiminy, but
you’re the lucky chap, Sam! What are you after?”

Sam did his best to appear blasé. “Oh, thought maybe I might get a shot
at a buck.”

The reception of the remark was not flattering. “You!” jeered Step;
Poke laughed.

“Why not?” Sam demanded, indignantly.

“That’s ri-right; why not?” Poke was quivering with amusement. “All
you’ve got to do is to hold the gun and pull the trigger; and if only a
deer happens to walk in the way, the gun’ll do the rest.”

Sam snatched the weapon from the jester. “Oh, cut the comedy!” he
snapped. “There’s nothing funny about it. I’ll bet you fifty men and
boys are out for deer to-day, and I’ve just as good a chance as any
of them can have of running into a herd. And if I want to take a
chance----Come, now! what’s ridiculous in that?”

Step was disposed to side with Sam. “There’s sense, Poke. Stop your
kidding. I want to ask Sam something.”

“Well, what is it?” queried Master Parker guardedly.

“It’s about St. Mark’s. Are you sure you’re going there?”

“Why--why----” Sam hesitated. “Why, I’m practically sure, I guess.
Father and I were talking it over last week; and I gathered that if I
passed the mid-year examinations here he’d let me transfer.”

Step was rubbing his chin. “Well, that’s what I wanted to know. I’ve
been campaigning to get my folks to send me, but they’re hanging off
till they learn what your father will do with you.”

Sam’s petulance had vanished. “Great Scott, Step, but it would be
cracking if we could go together!” he cried. “Say, Poke, get after your
family! We three have been pals ever since we can remember. It’d be
bully to take the gang to St. Mark’s.”

Poke shook his head. “Too bad, but there’s no hope for me. Little old
High School has got to be good enough for Yours Truly.”

“Oh, the school’s all right,” said Sam. “Only--as my father puts
it--it’s case of general versus special. We can fit for college here,
but the preparatory course is but one of several, while at St. Mark’s
it’s the whole thing. That ought to mean a better ‘fit.’ And you know
the fun the fellows have there, and the athletics, and all the rest of
it.”

Poke’s expression was uncommonly serious. “You’ve set your heart on
going, Sam, haven’t you?”

“It’ll be broken if I don’t go.”

Poke gave a funny little sigh. “Oh, well, they’ll need some of us to
stay home and run the errands, I reckon. And I guess I’m unanimously
elected. Here’s one, for instance.” And he picked up his basket.

“What have you got there?” Sam asked.

“Eggs! Two dozen--all Mrs. Trask could spare. And fifty-five cents a
dozen! Say, when I’m carrying this basket, I feel like a walking cash
register!”

Step had resumed possession of his package. “And here’s one of Mrs.
Trask’s roosters--five and a half pounds, dressed. I’m some plutocrat
myself.”

Sam shouldered his gun. “We’re all pretty richly loaded to-day,” said
he. “I suppose if I kill an eight-point buck you won’t care to have me
send a haunch to either of you?”

“Oh, well, I’ll take it--as a favor to you,” quoth Step.

“Same here!” chimed in Poke. Then he was seized by an idea. “Look here,
Sam! If you shoot anything--short of a heifer calf--bring it down to
the club this afternoon, and we’ll have a feed. Both of us are going to
be there.”

“But come, anyway,” urged Step. “If you don’t hit bird or beast, you’ll
have a story to tell of the big ones that got away.”

Sam nodded. “All right; I’ll be there,” he promised readily.




CHAPTER III THE LUCK OF A LONG SHOT


At the base of the hill crowned by the Marlow house the woods came
close to the road. Years before the pines had been cut off, and in
their place had come in a second growth of hard wood, scrubby, tangled
and dense. On many of the trees, especially the oaks, dead leaves still
were thick, affording cover for game and adding considerably to the
difficulties of hunting novices.

Sam climbed the fence, and plunged into the thickets to the right.
It was his intention to work around the base of the hill, and thus
reach the old orchard, of which Lon Gates had spoken; but he quickly
discovered that the plan was more easily made than carried out. There
was a good deal of underbrush, and the ground was rough, stony in
places and swampy in the tiny valleys. Moreover, as he tried to advance
as silently as possible, and to keep a keen, if limited, lookout,
his progress was slow as well as wearisome. With all his vigilance,
however, he saw nothing and heard nothing to indicate the presence of
anything which would serve as target for his aim. No rabbit scurried
away, and there was no whir of wings among the branches. As for
deer--why, there was nothing to hint that buck or doe was to be found
thereabouts.

He had slipped a couple of cartridges into his gun, and felt prepared
for any emergency; but an emergency declined to present itself. Even
when he reached the little brook, which skirted the hill, the silence
of the woods was unbroken, except by the subdued murmur of the stream.
He paused for a moment, listening intently but vainly; then moved on,
following the course of the brook. The going was now a trifle easier,
though clumps of trees and bushes still narrowed the view.

For perhaps a quarter of an hour his progress was absolutely
uneventful, and unrelieved by even a false alarm. A turn in the brook
warned him that he had passed the farmhouse, and was nearing the old
orchard. More cautiously than ever he changed his course, and began to
climb the slope on his right, the first, as he knew, of a series of low
ridges. He reached its top without mishap, and halted to reconnoiter.

From somewhere, afar off, the wind brought a sound to his ears, which
set his pulse bounding and made him tighten his hold on his gun. It was
a sound he could not mistake, faint though it was. Some other hunter
had found something to fire at; perhaps the lucky fellow had sent a
charge of buckshot into a deer!

Just in front of Sam, and on the verge of the farther slope, was a mass
of tangled bushes. He dropped to his knees, and slowly tunneled a way
through the barrier. From its shelter he could look down into a ravine,
beyond which rose the second ridge.

For several minutes he lay motionless in his burrow, peering into the
gully and straining his ears for the rustle of branches or the crack of
dried twig. Once he thought he heard both from the lower ground to his
left; but he could not be sure, and the disturbance was not repeated.

[Illustration: HIS FINGER TREMBLED ON THE TRIGGER]

Suddenly, from another direction--straight across the ravine and near
the top of the ridge--came sounds of movements in the undergrowth.
Instinctively, Sam brought the gun to his shoulder; its muzzle barely
protruded from the branches. His finger trembled on the trigger. And
then his eager eye had a glimpse of a darker patch amidst the dried
leaves, a patch which seemed to be moving very, very slowly.

Sam had heard tales of “buck fever,” and had laughed at the plight
of its victims; but now he could sympathize with them. His heart was
pumping furiously; he was trembling from head to foot; every muscle
seemed to be relaxed and helpless. And, as if to mock him, that dark
spot across the ravine grew clearer and more distinct. It was too high
from the ground to suggest the presence of any of the smaller animals
likely to be found in the woods.

“That--that’s a deer over there!” Sam told himself desperately. “It--it
can’t be anything else!”

With an effort he summoned all his will. The swaying barrels along
which he glanced steadied. His finger pressed the trigger. There was a
roar which seemed to him as loud as thunder. His right shoulder ached
under what was like a smart blow from the butt of the gun. A thin wisp
of smoke blew away from the muzzle, and was lost in the branches.

On the other side of the gully was violent commotion. The dark spot
vanished. In its stead appeared the bare head of a man!

Sam uttered a queer, faint, choking cry of horror. The gun dropped from
his hands. His head sank to the ground, and he lay, face downward, for
the moment utterly overcome. Through his recklessness and folly he
had shot a fellow being. Terrible certainty was his that he had not
missed his aim, and that he had wounded, perhaps fatally, the victim
of his criminal carelessness. There flashed upon him all the possible
consequences of his act--arrest, imprisonment, disgrace; sorrow and
suffering for his parents; pain and anguish for the stranger, even if
he survived his wounds.

For a little Sam closed his eyes, but he could not keep from his
ears the ominous sounds from the other ridge. The man had not cried
out; but there was a wild crashing of brush, as if he were writhing
convulsively in the thicket. Presently the sounds grew less distinct.
The man must be weakening from loss of blood! Sam’s imagination
pictured him lying in a crimson pool, and the boy shuddered at the
thought. Yet it nerved him to the duty which he knew was his to do.

Sam had faults enough, but lack of courage to face the music, as the
saying goes, was not among them. Plainly, the way for retreat was open
for him, if he chose to take it; there was nobody to interfere. But
Sam, once he had recovered somewhat from the shock of his disaster, set
himself resolutely to the task of making such amends as he might.

He crawled out of the protecting bushes, and got upon his feet. For
a moment or two he stood, listening intently; but now there was no
sound from beyond the ravine. Then, with a sort of grim and unhappy
determination, he began to descend the slope. At the bottom he paused
again, but heard nothing either to lessen or to increase his anxiety.
Then he went on, climbing doggedly and steadily to the clump where
first had appeared the dark spot, and then the head of a man. The
quiet of the place was unbroken. A new and terrible fear laid hold upon
him: perhaps the wounded man had already succumbed. It needed all his
grit and courage at last to part the branches and look in at the spot
where the man had stood.

Sam looked, and looked again; and felt that he could not believe the
evidence of his eyes. For three or four feet in each direction the
brush had been trampled down, but there was nobody there!

A great sense of relief filled the boy. At all events, he had not
killed anybody! There was even a second in which he cherished wild hope
that what he had seen had been merely a vision raised by some trick of
over-taxed nerves. But the hope was doomed to swift dismissal. There
was blood on the dried leaves on the ground--not much blood, to be
sure, but enough to make a fresh, dark stain.

Kneeling, Sam examined the sanguinary traces very carefully. As he
rose, his expression curiously combined satisfaction and bewilderment.
It was manifest that the stranger’s wound had neither bled copiously
nor crippled him; and that he had been able to make off. But whither
had he gone? Why had he not charged across the gully? And why had he
not raised a warning shout to prevent a second shot?

“Jiminy!” said Sam to himself. “Jiminy! but I don’t believe he got
sight of me at all! I was covered by the bushes, and there was hardly
any smoke, and if he were looking another way--why--why----” He broke
off, frankly unable to weigh and decide the probabilities of the
strange affair.

There still remained the possibility of finding and following the man’s
trail; but Sam was not especially skilled in such matters. He fancied
that for a few yards he could make out evidences of somebody forcing a
way through the undergrowth, but then he came to a sort of woods path
along the backbone of the ridge, and there lost the slender clews upon
which he had depended. Certainly he could discover no more drops of
blood.

Sam went back to the trampled space, and searched it minutely from end
to end, and from side to side. He had his trouble for his pains. He
found nothing to throw light upon the mystery.

“Well, this does beat me!” he confessed, and shook his head in
perplexity. “I never heard of anything like it. And I don’t want to
hear of anything like it again--ugh!” He gave a little shiver. “I know
when I’ve had enough--and too much. I’m going home, and I’m going to
get there, and put up this gun, as quick as my legs will carry me to
the house. And you can bet I’m going to keep quiet about this. And--and
I hope the other fellow will keep quiet, too. Come now, Sam Parker!
Brace up! Forward march!”

Thus encouraging himself, Master Sam set off at a round pace for the
highway, but when he reached it his speed lessened. He had a new sense
of merciful escape from perils when he was out of the dark woods and in
the open road; and with it came a peculiar weakness and uncertainty in
his knees. He was glad to sit down on a boulder beside the ditch and
rest for what seemed to him a long, long time. Finally he rose, and
trudged toward the town. He went slowly, and his face was thoughtful.




CHAPTER IV THE CLUB GETS A NEW NAME


It was well after noon when Sam came up the narrow lane behind the
Parker place, and scaled the back fence. Hasty observation from its top
showed him that the coast was clear. He stole through the yard, kept
the house between himself and the barn, and let himself in at the front
door.

The house was as quiet as well ordered homes generally are at that
hour, when dinner has been disposed of, and supper is still afar off.
Sam tiptoed into the library. With feverish haste he put his father’s
gun in its place, first removing the cartridges from the breach. Then
he opened the desk drawer, and restored his stock of cartridges to
their box. He hesitated a moment over the empty shell, being, indeed,
tempted to slip it in with the rest. At a casual glance the box would
then seem to be full. But Sam, with all his imperfections, was not
given to tricks and deceits.

“I won’t do it!” he said, with decision, and slipped the shell into his
pocket.

As he stepped into the hall, Maggie hailed him from the top of the
stairs.

“Is that you, Sam?” she called. “I thought I heard the front door open,
and I wondered who ’twas.”

So she hadn’t seen him enter the house; therefore she could not
know that he had been carrying the gun. Thus was another danger of
investigation avoided.

“Yes; I came in that way,” he said. “Father home yet?”

“No.”

“Where’s Mother?”

“Lon’s drivin’ her over to see old Mis’ Hardee at Webster Mills.”

There are times when things do seem to have been arranged most
fortunately. Sam could have thrown up his cap and cheered. But Maggie
was beginning to descend the stairs.

“Look here, Sam Parker! Why didn’t you come home to dinner?” she
demanded.

“Oh, I’m all right. I don’t want anything to eat.”

Maggie continued to descend the stairs. “Don’t, eh? Where’d you get
dinner? Did the Joneses invite you?”

“No.”

“The Greens, then?”

“Why--why--no; they didn’t.”

Maggie had reached the foot of the flight. “So you come traipsin’ home
after everything’s cleaned up and put away, and expect me to muss up
my kitchen for you? I like that! Well, you can just guess again, Sam
Parker!”

“But I don’t want anything, Maggie!” Sam said pacifically. “Honest, I
don’t. I’m not hungry.”

“That’s lucky--seein’s there ain’t anything,” said Maggie drily.
However, she was moving toward the kitchen. “Come along with you,
though!” she flung over her shoulder.

Sam followed her meekly. “You don’t need to bother,” he insisted.

Maggie paid not the slightest heed to his protests. “Don’t see how
folks can expect to keep a house decent, with all the overgrown boys in
town runnin’ in for snacks between meals,” she grumbled. “Well, now
you’re here, you might as well sit down.” She pointed to a table, bare
but spotlessly clean. “S’pose I’ll have to give you some dry bread or a
cracker, maybe. And the water from the faucet’s cold enough to drink at
this time of year.”

Sam sat down. “Oh, anything’ll do,” he said humbly.

“Umph!” said Maggie, and opened the door of the oven. “Well, I do
declare! How’d that happen?” And from the oven she took a plate, on
which was a generous slice of steak, also a big potato. “Goodness
gracious! but I must be gettin’ flighty! I’d ’a’ said for sure I put
those things in the ice chest. Don’t it beat all how things happen!
Course, the meat’s cooked hard as a rock, but you might as well have it
as Hannibal.” She set the plate on the table with a bang. “Well, now
the stuff’s before you, what are you goin’ to do with it?”

Sam showed her. In spite of the morning’s adventures he had an
excellent appetite. Maggie, observing, brought a glass of milk and a
large piece of pie from the pantry. Then, standing before him, she
studied the youth closely.

“Sam, what you been doin’? What mischief you been up to?”

“Noth--nothing,” mumbled Sam.

Maggie shook her head. “Don’t you try to tell me, Sam Parker! I ain’t
known you years and years for nothing. Where you been?”

Sam took thought. Maggie was his sworn ally and help in time of
trouble, but he feared she couldn’t be brought to look kindly upon the
incidents of his morning.

“Oh! I--I went for a--for a walk--out in the woods,” he stammered.

“Then what?”

“Then I came home,” said Sam.

“So I see!” quoth Maggie drily. “But go on! As you were sayin’----?”

Sam wriggled. “This--this is bully pie, Maggie,” said he, in an effort
to change the topic.

Her severity of expression deepened. “Mebbe it is, Sam. But you can’t
have another piece ’less you ’fess up.”

“But I--I can’t confess.”

“Bosh!” said Maggie tartly.

Sam, in his turn, regarded her gravely. He had no intention of
confiding in his old friend, but plainly it was a point of interest
to learn if he struck people as one who was burdened with a terrible
secret.

“Well, I got awfully tired, for one thing,” said he. “And it was chilly
and--er--er--and lonesome. And so I show it, do I?”

“You show something fast enough--I ain’t sure what.”

“Oh!” said Sam, and pushed back his chair. He got upon his feet, and
crossed to the door. His hand on the knob, he looked at Maggie, whose
brow was furrowed.

“Say, it was mighty clever of you to save my dinner. Thank you a lot!”
he cried. Then he opened the door, and went out hurriedly.

The talk in the kitchen had given him warning. If he would not rouse
suspicion, he must increase the gaiety of his air and manner. As he
strolled down the street, he was whistling shrilly; and he shifted to a
merrier tune when he turned in at the gate of the Joneses’ place, and
walking up to the door of a small and very trim outbuilding, knocked
thrice.

A few months earlier Mr. Jones, disposing of a pony, whose legs had
become a good deal shorter than Step’s, had turned the pony’s quarters
over to his son, with the understanding that the little house was to
be used for a club, which the boys were forming. Step and his chums at
once took possession. They worked like beavers, cleaning, sweeping,
painting and furnishing the building, and succeeded in making for
themselves a very attractive meeting place. The club--it was called
the Adelphi--had flourished mightily, and membership in it was highly
prized.

Sam’s triple knock brought no response, being, indeed, somewhat of an
empty form and ceremony; and after waiting for a moment--this, too, was
part of the accepted program--he opened the door and walked in. Step
and Poke were in the lounging room, recently the space given to the
pony cart. Its walls were gay with college pennants, photographs, and
pictures cut from magazines and newspapers; in one corner was a lounge,
worn but still useful; the chairs represented contributions from the
attics of several families; there was a serviceable table, on which
stood a shaded lamp; and an oil heater effectually dispelled the chill
of the afternoon air.

“Hi there, fellows!” Sam sang out. “What are you doing to kill time?”

It had been his desire to impress them with his ease of mind, but
neither betrayed much interest in his mood. Step, huddled in an old
steamer chair, was a picture of depression and angles, with his knees
almost on a level with his ears, and his long arms sagging till his
hands touched the floor. Poke was standing before a blackboard, which
hung on the wall. As he turned to regard the newcomer, his round face
was puckered in a frown.

“Oh, you, Sam?” he said absently.

“Oh, you?” croaked Step like a dismal echo.

Sam glanced from one to the other. “What’s the row?” he inquired. “You
two look like chickens with the pip.”

“Chickens? Ugh!” Step fairly shuddered.

“Huh!” snorted Poke; and turning to the blackboard, dabbed viciously at
it with the eraser which he had in his left hand.

“What are you doing?” queried Sam. He moved nearer to Poke, and glanced
curiously at the board. It had borne, in bold lettering:

  _Adelphi Club
  Rules and By-laws._

Now, however, there was only a chalky smear to show where the lines had
been. “What are you doing?” he repeated. “Say, you’ve spoiled it!”

“Huh! This club needs a new name,” growled Poke. “I’m trying to think
of one that’ll fit.”

Sam wheeled and addressed the youth in the chair. “Step, what ails him?
What ails you? What’s the matter, anyway?”

Step clasped his hands about his knees. “What ails us? Guess you
wouldn’t be asking if you knew!”

“Course I wouldn’t!” Sam agreed rather testily to what might be called
a fairly self-evident proposition.

“Hang the luck!” groaned the doleful Step.

Poke whipped about. “Confound it, but there’s more than luck!” he
cried. “You’re letting us off too easy, Step. Oh, I know--I know what
you’d say! We didn’t mean to have it happen, but it did happen; so
what’s the use in talking? And it was just like a lot of other things
that keep happening to us, and will keep on happening till we have more
sense.”

“Huh!” came from the depths of the chair.

Sam dropped a hand on Poke’s shoulder. “Translate, won’t you? You’re
worse than old Cæsar when he tells about building his bridge.”

“Darn that dog!” wailed Step.

Sam tightened his grip on Poke’s plump shoulder. “So there was a dog,
was there?” said he. “That’s a start, anyway. Go on!”

Poke wriggled free. “Yes; there was a dog, and it was that big hound
of Mr. Mercer’s. And it came along, and smelled Step’s chicken, and
grabbed for it, and gobbled it, and knocked over my basket of eggs, and
ran away. And we chased it, but couldn’t catch it. And Step lost his
chicken, and every one of my eggs was smashed. And ain’t that trouble
enough for one day?”

“But I don’t quite understand. It--it’s sort of complicated. I don’t
see how the hound could grab the chicken and upset your basket all at
once.”

Poke shifted weight from one foot to the other. “Well--well, you see,
we--we’d sort of stopped to look at a knife Tom Appleton had bought;
and we’d set the bundle and the basket on a stone wall; and the dog hit
both when he jumped for one. That was the way of it. And say! did you
ever hear of anything worse?”

Sam’s smile was bitter. “Anything worse!” he repeated scornfully. What
was a poor tale of broken eggs and looted chicken to one who, by pure
mischance, had shot a man?

Poke resented his friend’s tone. “Huh! Much you know about it! Dollar
and ten cents’ worth of eggs gone--just like that!”

“And a five-and-a-half-pound rooster--five and a half pounds dressed!”
chimed in Step.

“Oh, well, that was hard luck,” Sam admitted. It had occurred to him
that it was not wise to withhold sympathy if he would avoid suspicion
of cherishing some terrible secret of his own.

Poke was one of those ordinarily cheery souls who, on occasion, take
melancholy consolation in contemplation of misfortunes.

“I’ve been thinking things over,” he declared. “I’ve got an idea.
It isn’t the thing itself that bothers, but the consequences. Look
here, now! Mother had promised to make two angel cakes--takes eleven
eggs for each cake. And she’d promised one for the church supper, and
Jennie was to have the other for her club. And now Mother has got to
disappoint the supper committee, and they’d told her they set ’special
store by her angel cake. And she’s hot! And Jennie--say, Sam, if you
had a sister, you’d know the fix I’m in. Jennie’s just sizzling. So I’m
keeping away from the house. Gee, I’d never go home if I could help
myself!”

Step waved a long and pitiful hand. “Company for dinner to-morrow!” he
said simply. “I’m lying low myself.”

Sam meditated briefly. Since that terrible moment on the ridge he had
gone through half a dozen phases of emotion. He had ranged from terror
to exultation. His plans had varied from full confession to absolute
silence. Now he was disposed to follow a course of inaction, based on a
belief that the man had not been badly hurt, and that perhaps nothing
ever would be heard of the affair. Of course, if report should be made;
or if it should prove that the wounds were serious; or if the victim
should turn out to be a poor man unable to pay a doctor’s bill--well,
he wouldn’t cross bridges till he came to them. And, meanwhile, he
would try to bear himself as if nothing untoward had happened--and
thank his lucky stars that he could keep his secret, even for a time.

“Well, that was hard luck!” he said again, and put more heart in the
speech.

Poke returned to the blackboard. “Might as well learn a lesson when
there’s a lesson to be learned,” he rumbled. “Struck me, too, we
ought to post something here to remind us that it pays to keep out of
trouble. I’d like to give the club a name that’d mean something--see?
I can think of mottoes enough--‘Look before you leap, and then go
’round,’ and ‘You never can tell when it’s loaded,’ and a lot of
others--but I’m stumped for a name. Now, if I----”

There he broke off. Sam, elbowing him out of the way, stood before the
board. For a second young Parker hesitated. Then he caught up a piece
of chalk, and scrawled in big letters:

  _The Safety First Club_.

Poke clapped his hands. “Jiminy! but that’s just the idea I was groping
for. Prime, ain’t it, Step?”

Step nodded gloomily. “Fa-fair,” he admitted.

Sam laid down his chalk. He dusted his hands a trifle theatrically.

“Like the name, do you?” said he. “Came to me all of a sudden.”

“It’s a crackerjack!” declared Poke warmly. “Hits the nail right on the
head. But that makes me think, Sam--where’s that deer you were going to
hit? Haven’t got that haunch in your pocket, have you?”

“No,” said Sam curtly.

“Bet you didn’t see a deer!”

“I--I didn’t.”

Poke was beginning to recover his spirits. “Huh! Knew you wouldn’t,”
said he, and chuckled fatly. “This country’s hunted to death. Why, so
many men with guns were out to-day that one of ’em had to let drive at
another, just for something to shoot at.”

“What!” gasped Sam. “What’s that? What do you mean?”

“Just what I say.”

Sam pulled out his handkerchief, and wiped drops of cold sweat from his
forehead. “But--but----” he faltered.

“It isn’t a case of ‘but’ or ‘if.’ Step there knows all about it. He
saw them bringing him in.”

Sam’s brain was reeling. “Bring-bringing him in?” he quavered.
“Then--then he was badly hurt, after all! And who--who was he?”

Poke was staring in bewildered fashion at Sam. “What’s upsetting you?
Why, you’re white as a sheet!”

“Never mind me! Who--who was it?”

“Peter Groche.”

“Pe-Peter Groche? And--and he--he’s wounded--maybe dying?”

Poke laughed explosively. “Not he! Old rascal was never born to be
shot.”

“But you said they--they were bringing him in?”

“Yes--to the lock-up!”

Sam dropped into the nearest chair. “I don’t--don’t under-understand,”
he said weakly.

“It’s clear enough. Peter shot somebody else--or tried to.”

Step joined in the conversation. “Well, he did wing him,” was his
contribution.

“Where?”

“Oh, grazed his head, and plunked him in one hand,” said Step.

Sam dug his finger-nails into his palms. “I don’t mean that--at least,
that wasn’t what I tried to ask about. Where did the shooting take
place?”

“Out beyond Marlow hill somewhere. But you steered that way, didn’t
you?”

“In that general direction.” By a mighty effort Sam controlled his
voice.

“Then you may have been within a half mile of Peter Groche,” Step went
on. “Maybe you heard his gun. Well, if you didn’t, he fired it, anyway.
And he ’most got his man for keeps. But the Major wasn’t hurt badly,
and he had had a glimpse of Peter a little earlier, and knew about
where he was. So he beat it through the woods after him, and overtook
him near the back road. And just then, by luck, along came Sheriff
Whaley. So the sheriff and the Major asked Mr. Peter a question or
two; and, getting no satisfaction, loaded him in the Whaley wagon and
brought him in. And there’s going to be a trial Monday morning. And I
guess it’s going to go hard with Groche. You see, he’s had a quarrel
with the Major, and there are witnesses to testify that he made threats
to get even. Then, too, there was an empty shell in one barrel of his
gun, and he wouldn’t give any explanation of how it happened to be
there. So I reckon he’ll get all that’s coming to him. The Major’s a
bad man to have on your trail--hardest man in town, by thunder!”

“Maj-Major----?” Poor Sam’s tone was that of one whose hopes are
dwindling fast.

“Yes siree! Hardest man in Plainville is Major Bates!” declared Step.
“Anybody that harms him’ll be put through the works, I tell you!”

Sam got upon his feet. With trembling limbs he moved to the door.

“Why, what’s the matter?” Step called after him.

“What’s your burning hurry?” asked Poke.

Sam opened the door. “That stove makes it too stuffy in here,” he told
them. “I--I’ve just got to have fresh air.” And out he went, closing
the door behind him with a force suggesting that he did not care for
company in his rambles.




CHAPTER V SAM FACES THE MUSIC


Almost every town has the misfortune to include among its residents
a few persons perhaps best described as “undesirable citizens.” In
the case of Plainville by far the most undesirable of these was Peter
Groche, idler, sot, brawler, and petty thief. On several occasions
vigorous efforts had been made to rid the community of his presence;
but Peter, unchastened by thrashings or jail sentences for robbing hen
roosts or clothes-lines, persisted in turning up like the worst of bad
pennies. There was, therefore, general satisfaction in the town when
news spread that, at last, he had been caught in an offense so serious
that Plainville reasonably could hope to be relieved of him for a term
of several years; especially as the irascible, determined and energetic
Major Bates was directly interested in his prosecution.

Mr. Parker, returning from his trip to Epworth, heard the news
down-town, and brought it home with him. Across the supper table he
discussed the matter with his wife, and found her quite of his opinion
that a shining example should be made of Peter Groche. The topic,
in fact, fairly shared their attention with the annoying absence of
the son of the house. Sam had not been home for dinner, Mrs. Parker
announced; and now he appeared to have forgotten the supper hour.

“I don’t know what has come over the boy,” she said. “He went out right
after breakfast, and nobody but Maggie has seen him since. She says
he came in about two o’clock and had lunch; and then went out again.
I think you’d better talk to him seriously. He doesn’t understand how
important it is to a growing boy to have his meals regularly.”

“Very well; I’ll take him in hand,” said the father.

Mrs. Parker gave a little sigh. “Ah! I feel, sometimes, as if Sam were
growing away from me. He’s getting to be such a big fellow, you know.
Now and then I can’t but have my doubts that I’m capable of managing
him.”

“Still, you’ve done very well so far,” her husband assured her. “Sam’s
a pretty good boy, as boys go. I don’t happen to think of any other
youngster for whom I’d care to exchange him. But if he’s getting beyond
you--well, I’ll try my luck. Only”--he hesitated--“only, when I do,
perhaps you’d better make it a strictly masculine session. I may have
to lay down some rather rigid rules, and--well, it will be just as well
not to have an over-merciful court of appeal too conveniently at hand.
Send him to me when he comes in, and Master Sam and I will reach an
understanding.”

So they arranged it; and so it came to pass that when Sam walked into
the library--the clocks were striking eight as he entered--his mother,
after gently chiding him for his tardiness, slipped out. The shaded
light, by which his father was reading, left the ends of the room in
shadow, and Sam lingered for a moment by the door. At last he came
forward, halting directly in front of his father.

Mr. Parker looked up. “Well, young man----” he began, but suddenly his
tone changed sharply. “What in the world have you been doing, Sam? You
look as if you’d been dragged through a knot-hole!”

Sam’s wan smile was more eloquent than his speech. “I shouldn’t wonder
if I did, sir. I’ve been walking around and--and thinking.”

“Where have you been walking?”

“Around town, sir--up and down the streets--anywhere.”

“Thinking all the while?”

“Yes, sir; thinking hard.”

“Been alone?”

“All alone.”

“Umph!” said Mr. Parker.

Sam licked dry lips. “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve thought it
out,--what I ought to do, sir. And--and I’m here to make a clean breast
of things.”

The father studied the boy’s face for a moment. “Sam,” he said slowly,
“Sam, I can see that you’re greatly exercised about something or other.
What it is I don’t know. I had intended to have you on the carpet for
being late for dinner and supper, but I’m afraid this is something
more serious. But whatever it is, I hope you’ll do just what you say
you wish to do--make a clean breast of it.”

“And face the music!” There was a new note in the boy’s voice, a firmer
note.

“That’s part of the game of life, Sam--if you play the game fairly and
squarely.”

Sam drew a long breath, and made his plunge. “Father, you’ve heard
about the arrest of Peter Groche? They say he shot at Major Bates.
Well, he didn’t--but I did!”

Mr. Parker bent forward; he was looking into the boy’s eyes, and the
boy did not quail under his scrutiny.

“I don’t ask you if you’re in earnest, Sam. I know that you are. Go on!”

“I took your gun this morning, and went out to the Marlow woods. I’d
been told there were deer there. I was crouching under some bushes, and
looking across a hollow, when I saw something dark on the other side.
It moved, and I fired. Then a man’s head showed. I didn’t recognize
him. I was so scared that I burrowed deeper in the bushes--hid for a
while, sir. Then I realized I ought to do something. So I crossed the
hollow. I found blood spots, but the man had gone away. It seemed
as if he couldn’t have been badly hurt. Then I came home. I hoped I
wouldn’t have to tell anybody, but--but now they’ve locked up Peter
Groche for what I did.”

“When did you learn of the arrest?”

“This afternoon.”

“And since then?”

“I’ve been thinking it over--fighting it out with myself, sir.”

Mr. Parker rose and crossed the room. He picked up the gun, threw open
the breach, peered into the barrels.

“You fired only once?”

“Only once, sir. Here’s the empty cartridge.” Sam took the shell from
his pocket.

Mr. Parker put the gun in its place, and went back to his chair. There
was a little pause; then said he:

“You had your mother’s permission, did you, to take that gun?”

“No, sir,” said Sam.

“Or to go hunting?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you seek it?”

Sam shook his head. “She was out, and I--well, I didn’t wait for her to
come home.”

“I see. By the way, were you under an impression that I had ever
authorized such an expedition?”

“No, sir,” said Sam frankly. “But, then, you’d never forbidden it,” he
added.

“There are several things it has never occurred to me to forbid you to
do,” said his father drily.

Sam nodded. “That’s so, sir. I don’t think much of the excuse.”

“There we are of a mind. So you must have realized that you were doing
wrong.”

“I didn’t bother--think, I mean--about that part of it; that is, I
didn’t seem to comprehend how wrong the thing might be. Of course, I
understood that it wasn’t exactly--exactly proper.” Sam had difficulty
in picking the word, and did not appear to be over-pleased with his
choice.

“Go on,” said his father. “Tell me just what you did when you reached
the Marlow woods.”

Sam obeyed. Very carefully he went over the incidents of the morning.
He described his cautious advance through the thick growth, his
ascent of the first ridge, his discovery of the dark object across
the ravine. In detail he explained how he had conquered his attack of
“buck fever”; how he had taken aim and fired; how he had been overcome
by consternation when the head of a man appeared. He did not deny that
he had been slow in crossing the gully. In fact, he made no attempt to
present his case in a more favorable light than it deserved.

Mr. Parker did not interrupt the story.

“Sam,” he said, at its close, “this is an extraordinary yarn of yours.
It is borne out in part by the empty cartridge shell. I can see,
too, that one barrel of the gun has been discharged. Also I am fully
convinced that you have tried to present the exact truth about the
shooting. I shall assume that the facts are as you have stated them. I
don’t need to add that they make the case very serious.”

“I--I’m afraid it is, sir.”

“Yet you haven’t hesitated to make confession?”

Sam moved uneasily. “I--I--oh, but I did hesitate, sir. It was a hard
pull to bring myself up to the point. I guess I walked miles and miles
before I was ready to come back and tell you everything.”

“I wonder,” said Mr. Parker meditatively, “I wonder if it occurred to
you that you might run away from all the trouble.”

The boy reddened. “It did occur to me, sir. And--you may think it
a funny way to put it, but it’s true--my legs just seemed to be
determined to carry me down to the railroad station. And they did! I
was there a long time, looking at time-tables.”

“But finally they lost interest?”

“Yes, sir. I’d reasoned it out that there could be no use in bolting;
it wouldn’t help anybody.”

“It very seldom does help anybody, Sam.”

“I guess that’s so, sir.”

There was a long pause, which Mr. Parker ended.

“Sam, we’ve got to consider the next step--no doubt you have considered
it; for it necessarily follows your statement. You’ve declared your
faith, so to speak; now you’ve got to supplement faith with works.”

The boy nodded. “I know, sir. They’ve locked up Peter Groche. We--I,
that is--have got to get him out; for he’s innocent.”

“Precisely.”

Sam could not repress a shudder. “He’s in the police station for
something I did. When they release him, I suppose I’ll have to take
his place. I don’t know much about law, but that would seem to
be--er--er--to be----”

“Essential justice?” queried his father.

“That--that’s my idea, sir.”

“I see. But how do you plan to bring it about?”

Sam squared his shoulders. “By going down to the station and telling
the officers what I’ve told you--everything. Then they’ll have to let
Peter Groche go. And they--they can keep me.”

“That would be a simple method; but there may be a better one--not so
direct, but probably more effective.”

Sam stared at his father. “More effective?” he repeated.

“Yes. The officers might be slow to act. You have to remember that they
think the case against Groche is pretty strong.”

“But they’d have to believe me,” Sam urged.

“Not so fast, son! Don’t forget that there is a good deal of
circumstantial evidence against Groche. Your story would certainly
create a doubt--and a strong doubt--in his favor; but with his
reputation for evil doing, they would be reluctant to let him go and
risk making a mistake. No; there is a surer way to achieve the result.”

“And that is----?”

“To go straight to Major Bates and give him your version.”

“Oh!” gasped Sam, and blanched at thought of confronting the
redoubtable Major, by long odds the most terrifying, overbearing and
truculent person in all Plainville. “Oh, I--I’d rather not, Father!
They can put me in a cell if they want to, but----”

Mr. Parker rose to his feet. “We’ll go to the Major--at once!” he said,
with decision.




CHAPTER VI DEALING WITH THE OGRE


Major Bates lived in a big, brick house, made gloomy and forbidding by
tall evergreen trees growing close to its walls. It had been, in its
day, one of the noted mansions of the town, and still maintained much
of its former state. Its hedges were trimmed to a nicety; its graveled
walks were straight of edge and free of encroaching grass; its lawn
was the smoothest to be found for miles around; the brass rails beside
the steps shone with frequent polishing. Yet, with all this care,
there was something cheerless about the place, something suggesting an
institution rather than a home. To his few cronies the Major admitted
that he liked to keep his premises “well policed,” as he termed it, in
memory of his army days; but the townspeople generally were of opinion
that the verdict of a clever woman hit the case perfectly.

“Wonderfully kept up; marvelously well ordered; excellent for
everything--except comfortable living.”

Such was her summary. Perhaps nobody but the Major would have taken
serious objection to it. He was quite sure that things were as he
wished to have them; and it did not occur to him that anybody else was
called upon to consider the matter.

This evening he was sitting alone in the big room he called his den, a
room whose walls were lined with bookcases, gun racks and cabinets, and
decorated with antlered heads of moose and deer. The pictures were few
but good. Each hung as if its top had been adjusted with the aid of a
spirit-level. The books on the shelves were like soldiers on parade.

The master of the house, seated before his open fire, curiously matched
the room. He was very neat and precise in dress; he held himself
stiffly, and after a fashion which caused careless observers to credit
him with greater height than he possessed. As a matter of fact, he
was rather short in stature and thin to gauntness; though it seldom
occurred to anybody to speak of him as a little man. Perhaps this was
due to his domineering manner and striking face. The Major was a person
to attract attention in any company. He had a shock of iron-gray hair,
bushy eyebrows, a fiercely beaked nose, and a bristling moustache and
goatee. His eyes were keen and piercing, and not often inclined to
friendliness.

It need hardly be said that he was not on terms of intimacy with the
youth of Plainville. Not that they ventured to annoy him--far from it!
Two-thirds of the boys in town would cross the street to avoid meeting
him, no matter how clear might be their consciences of recent offense
against him. But the Major, striding along, swinging his cane and
grumbling to himself as he advanced, was just the sort of figure to
which peaceful folk involuntarily yield the crown of the way. And this
evening, though he was not marching belligerently through the town, but
was sitting before his cheery fire, he looked even more warlike--and
war-worn--than in his public appearances. There was a patch of
court-plaster on his cheek, and his left hand was wrapped in a bandage.

There was a deferential knock, and the door of the room opened. In
stepped a man servant, severe of countenance. He advanced to the Major,
and halting, stood at attention.

“Mr. Parker--to see you, sir,” he reported. “Yes, sir; Mr. Parker and
Master Parker.”

The Major scowled. “What! Parker and that boy of his? What’s he here
for? But show Parker in, of course. If the boy doesn’t want to come,
don’t urge him. Perhaps he’ll wait in the parlor.”

But Master Parker, albeit he gladly would have lingered behind, was not
to be permitted to escape his ordeal. With dragging foot he entered the
den at his father’s heels, and stood unhappily clutching his cap, while
his elders shook hands somewhat formally.

“Ah, Mr. Parker, glad to see you!” said the Major. “Be seated, I beg
you. And come up to the fire. Chilly evening, sir; chilly, though
seasonable.”

“Major Bates, permit me to present my son, Samuel,” said Mr. Parker.

Sam stepped forward with a resigned hopelessness like that of a
condemned criminal. He felt himself quailing before the Major’s eye;
but felt a surprising--and vaguely encouraging--heartiness in the grip
the old soldier gave his timidly extended hand.

“Samuel, I trust you are well,” quoth the Major, courteously enough.
Then, not being impressed with the importance of minors in the scheme
of the universe, he turned to the boy’s father, after suggesting to his
youthful caller that he, too, take a chair near the fire.

Mr. Parker cleared his throat. “Ahem, ahem! Major, I have been given to
understand that you have been the victim of an unfortunate accident.”

“Accident!” The Major sat straighter in the chair in which he had just
seated himself. “Sir, that’s misuse of English. What I was victim of
was a most cowardly and scoundrelly attack. Thank heaven, though, the
perpetrator of the outrage was at once apprehended and taken into
custody.”

“You’re sure of the identity of the----”

The Major’s eyes flashed; he was guilty of the discourtesy of
interrupting a guest.

“Am I sure? Sir, I am as absolutely certain of the miscreant as I am of
this”--he touched the court-plaster on his cheek--“and of this”--he
waved the bandaged hand. “I’ve two good reasons to remember him, sir.”

“But, Major----”

“Pardon me a moment! You may not know, but it is the fact that the
fellow has threatened, repeatedly, to do me harm. It’s an old grudge.
Years ago I was fortunate enough to be active in sending him to jail,
and he’s never forgotten my modest service to the general welfare.
Only last week--on the public street, sir--he reviled me, and declared
that he would have revenge. It was a fortunate warning, sir; for this
morning, when he and I met in the woods--oh, yes; we passed within ten
yards of each other--I took care to keep a weather eye open for just
some such performance as he undertook. I’d kept his general bearings,
and when he blazed away at me--why, sir, I rushed for him. And by Jove!
I got him--as good as caught in the act, sir!”

“But not quite caught in the act, sir. There must have been an
interval----”

The Major raised a hand. “Pardon me again! Sir, what you speak of
is a trifle, a bagatelle. And there was plenty of circumstantial
evidence--empty shell in the right-hand barrel of his gun--barrel
fouled by the discharge. And he attempted no denial. Why, sir, he
merely stood there and cursed me to my face, the scoundrel!”

“And yet,” said Mr. Parker evenly, “I fear you were--and are--in error.”

“Eh?” The Major bristled. “Eh? You fear I’m in error? Most
extraordinary statement, sir! Do you mean to insinuate that nobody shot
me?”

“I merely suggest that you may not have been shot by Peter Groche.”

“But who else under the canopy could it have been?”

“I am afraid, as I told you--afraid that it was my son.”

“What!” Up sprang the Major. “Man, what do you mean? This boy?”
He whipped about, and peered at Sam. “Why, he’s a mere child!
Preposterous, sir; utterly preposterous!”

“I wish that it were!” said Mr. Parker, with feeling. “But the fact
remains that he insists he was gunning this morning in Marlow woods;
and that he declares that he mistook a man for a deer, and fired at
him.”

“Tush, tush! That’s all a piece of boyish imagination. He’s been
reading dime novels! Haven’t you, young man?” And the Major shook a
bony forefinger in Sam’s face.

“No, sir; I haven’t.” Sam spoke firmly, and his eyes did not fall
before the Major’s.

“Do you expect me to believe you were the fellow who winged me?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Major went back to his chair. He dropped into it almost limply.
“Out with your story, boy!” said he. “I’ll listen--I’ve got to, I
suppose.”

The dreaded moment had arrived. Sam nerved himself to the task before
him. The keen, old eyes under the bushy brows never left his face. He
felt that they were penetrating every secret of his soul. But, after
all, he had nothing but the truth to tell; and there was nothing he
wished to conceal. Slowly at first, and then more rapidly, if not more
easily, he reviewed the events of the morning. He dealt with his hunt
through the woods; described the twin ridges and the valley between.
Then the Major broke in upon him.

“By Jove, boy, but you have the lay of the land pat!” he exclaimed. “Go
over that again, please--about the bushes where you hid, and the others
where you saw something move.”

Sam repeated this part of his story. The Major stalked to a closet, and
stalked back, carrying a woolen cap, dark red in color.

“Was that what you saw?” he demanded grimly.

“It might have been--I’m not certain.”

The Major thrust a finger into a hole in the cap.

“That’s where one shot went through. But, by the great horn spoon,
Parker! what’s a man to do to secure reasonable safety in the woods
these times? I put on a red cap to warn gunners not to pot me for a
deer. Have I got to wear sleigh-bells, or carry an automobile horn, to
let ’em know it’s a human being that’s coming? I must say things are at
a pretty pass, when anybody who wants venison has to take his life in
his hand to get it!”

“Agreed!” said Mr. Parker. “That’s one of the reasons why I’ve
practically dropped hunting. But that cap, now--strikes me the red
might not show very clearly among the dead leaves.”

“What I saw seemed to be dark rather than red,” Sam explained.

The Major pulled at his tuft of beard. “All most extraordinary and
yet--queer how the thing might have happened, as the boy says. I’d
half made up my mind that scoundrel was gunning for me; so, naturally
enough, when that charge of buckshot came my way, I looked where I
thought it probably came from. And the puff of smokeless powder isn’t
much--it’d have been gone in a few seconds. And sound fools you on
direction. Expecting attack from a certain quarter, I’d be pretty sure
to place the sound there, whether or no. And the boy declares he was
right across the gulch? Umph!”

Sam resumed his account. He made confession to his fright; to the
moments which passed before he dared to look at the farther ridge, even
though he heard the loud crackling of branches.

The Major nodded. “That fits, too. Soon as I could wrap a handkerchief
about the bleeding paw I was off after Groche. But finally you crossed
over to see what you’d bagged, eh? Umph! Why didn’t you run away?”

“I--I didn’t think I should.”

“Wanted to, didn’t you?”

“Indeed I did, sir!”

“Umph!” said the Major again. “Well, go on. What did you find?”

Sam described the trampled brush and the spots of blood on the leaves.
Also he related his vain effort to follow the trail.

The Major was scowling fiercely. “That’s all, eh? Enough, too, I must
say! No, it isn’t, either. Look here, young man! I suppose I must
accept this story. You’ve just missed committing murder--yes, murder!
Abominable recklessness, abominable! And criminal, highly criminal!
You’ve rendered yourself liable to a heavy penalty. You’ll have to
suffer----”

Mr. Parker spoke sharply and emphatically: “That is not at present
under discussion. Our immediate interest is justice to a wrongly
arrested man.”

Up went the Major’s warlike eyebrows. “Eh? What’s that? Justice,
you say?” Then he whipped about to Sam. “Boy, do you understand the
situation in which you’ve placed yourself? Want justice done, do you?
That’ll mean trouble for you. Don’t quibble! Why didn’t you let well
enough alone?”

“Why--why, sir----”

“Umph! Your father’s responsible, of course, for your telling the
story.”

Again Mr. Parker intervened. “Not so fast, Major. Of his own volition
Sam told me what had happened. The affair was a complete surprise to
me. It was my suggestion that he repeat his statement to you rather
than to the police--and there my responsibility begins. But I’ll add
that, as it has begun, I shall regard it as continuing until this
matter is settled.”

“Eh?” The Major looked more hostile than ever. “Am I to accept that as
a declaration that you are backing the boy?”

“You may accept it as meaning that while I regret deeply his rashness
and its results, now that he has made confession, I’m backing him, as
you term it--and I shall continue to back him.”

There could be no mistaking Mr. Parker’s earnestness and determination.
A thrill shot through Sam. He flashed a grateful glance at his father;
then turned to face the Major.

The countenance of the grizzled warrior offered a rare study in
conflicting emotions. It betrayed anger, but it also suggested chagrin.
Moreover, there was a hint of admiration. There was an instant in which
Sam believed that the Major was about to attempt personal chastisement
on the spot; there was another in which he wondered if the old man were
not struggling with a sense of helplessness. Then, of a sudden, the
Major laughed explosively.

“Ha, ha! By the great horn spoon, Parker! I’d do the same, if I stood
in your shoes! Blood’s thicker than water, every time. Ought to
be, by Jove! when it’s good blood. And it’s good blood that’s made
your boy own his mistake and step forward, like a man, to bear the
consequences. I hate a sneak, but I take off my hat to a real man, no
matter whether he’s young or old. There, there! Hear me out! This thing
came near enough to being my funeral to justify me in attending to the
arrangements. I’ll telephone to the police, and withdraw my charge
against Groche; and I’ll keep my own counsel about why I withdraw it.
That’s all right--accidents will happen, and when you’re satisfied a
thing is an accident, there’s nothing to do but grin and bear it. Our
young friend here can learn a lesson, and be more careful in future. No
need for him to gossip about it, eh?”

Sam was speechless at this amazing turn for the better in his affairs;
but his father came to the rescue.

“Major, you’re most kindly and generous. If there’s anything I can do,
command me! If Groche threatens proceedings for illegal arrest you must
permit me to guarantee you against loss in any way.”

The Major shook his head. “Very good of you, sir, but
unnecessary--quite. Groche’s language was so abusive that a charge of
noise and brawl would lie against him; and, no doubt, the officers will
hold him overnight for safe-keeping, and turn him loose in the morning.
And he’ll be content to drop the case, so far as the law goes; for he
has no love for courts of any sort. But, young man”--he turned to Sam,
and there was a wry grin curling his fierce moustache--“young man,
you’ve robbed me of the consolation of being a public benefactor. If
I could put that scoundrel behind the bars, at cost of a flesh wound
or two, I’d count the pain as nothing compared with the service to the
community.”

Sam found tongue. “I wish I could tell you, sir, how sorry I am
for--for shooting you.”

Once more the Major laughed, and his hand fell, in friendly fashion, on
Sam’s shoulder.

“Boy, I’ve been wounded four times,” he said, “but this is the first
time the fellow who hit me has had the grace to apologize.”




CHAPTER VII THE RECKONING


Sam awoke to find the sunshine pouring through the window of his room.
Overnight there had been a change for the better in the weather, and
Sunday had dawned clear and bright.

The boy yawned, stretched himself luxuriously, rubbed the lingering
sleepiness out of his eyes. There was a blissful moment, in which
he felt himself in harmony with the unclouded morning, refreshed,
untroubled. Then, of a sudden, came recollection of the events of the
day before, and understanding that there was still a reckoning to be
paid. He might have nothing to fear from courts and officers of the
law; Major Bates, ordinarily warlike, had been brought to prefer peace
to hostilities; but he had yet to reach complete understanding with his
father.

Mr. Parker and Sam had exchanged hardly a word while they walked home
from the Major’s house; but at their own door the father had paused
briefly.

“You’d better turn in, Sam,” he had said. “We’ll have to go over this
matter pretty carefully, but I’m not prepared to do so to-night. And I
fancy your own ideas will be none the worse for a little revision, and
a clearer head in the morning.”

But Sam, going to his room, had found himself very wakeful. Half an
hour later his mother had looked in, and discovered him, fully dressed
and huddled in a big chair; and glad, indeed, to see her, as it
proved. She had had no reproaches to shower upon him--Sam had wondered
if his father’s explanation of his misdeeds had not been extremely
merciful; and she had slipped an arm about him, and “mothered” him most
comfortingly. And, presently, had appeared her handmaiden and his own
loyal ally, Maggie, bearing a tray on which were a bowl of milk and a
plate of crackers. Sam, who might have vowed that he wasn’t hungry,
in a second had become acutely aware of a lack of something under his
belt, and had fallen to with a right good will, his mother watching him
approvingly and Maggie voicing her satisfaction in her own fashion.

“Well, say, ma’am, will you look at that, now? It’s not a morsel of
supper the poor boy’ll have been puttin’ tooth to! And him sayin’
nothing about it--no; nor his father, either! They’re like as two peas
in some ways, ma’am. Oh, them men, them men!”

       *       *       *       *       *

These were the brighter spots in Sam’s memories. They were pleasant
to dwell upon; but they could not relieve the general gravity of the
case. A very sober youth it was who dressed mechanically and in due
course appeared at breakfast. A deal to his surprise his father and
mother greeted him quite as usual. There was nothing to suggest that
they regarded him either as a repentant offender or as a hero. At
Sunday-school he had another experience of the same sort; for his
friends hailed him with matter-of-fact heartiness. Both Step and Poke
appeared to have lived down their domestic unpopularity, resulting from
the incident of the hungry hound, and to be disposed to regard the
world cheerfully, with no suspicion that he was not entirely of their
way of thinking.

There was interest displayed in the news that Peter Groche, after a
night in the lock-up, had been released from custody; but it occurred
to none of Sam’s chums to connect the circumstance with his adventures
as a deer hunter. Groche, presented with his freedom, had walked
off, mumbling and grumbling. The popular theory was that, sooner or
later, he would try to “get even” with the Major, his old grudge being
heightened by the recent episode.

“Funny how the Major let up on him!” Poke ruminated. “Well, you never
can tell what’ll happen. But I guess there must have been some weak
spot, after all, in the case. If there wasn’t, the Major would have
hung on like a bulldog.”

“Gee, but I wouldn’t have him after me--not for a farm!” quoth Step.

Sam held his peace. He might have shed fresh light upon the
peculiarities of the old soldier, but the present time was not
opportune. He had little share in the talk as the boys walked home
together; and the mood of silence held him through dinner. Then his
father proposed a stroll, and the boy accepted the invitation.

On the top of a hill overlooking the town--not only a sightly place but
also one ensuring freedom from interruption--father and son had their
discussion calmly and deliberately.

“Sam,” Mr. Parker began, “I’m not going to preach a sermon, but I’m
going to take a text. You supplied it when you told me last night that
you didn’t regard lack of direct prohibition as making a very good
excuse for what you did. The trouble is, you reached that opinion after
the fact. In the beginning, I dare say, it seemed quite reasonable to
do the thing which wasn’t forbidden.”

“Well, sir, I--I did it,” said Sam sheepishly.

“Exactly! And, in doing it, you yielded to impulse.”

“I sup-suppose so.”

“You had no wish, no intention, to harm anybody,” Mr. Parker went on.
“You desired to go hunting--I’ve felt the desire; I know what it is.
Then there was my gun, fairly thrusting itself upon you--seemed that
way, didn’t it?”

“You’re telling it, sir, as if you’d stood in my shoes.”

“Many a time! I’ve been a boy myself. Also I haven’t forgotten, Sam,
the scrapes into which I fell. Some of them taught me a lesson--a
lesson you’ll have to learn some day. But to get back to the gun. There
it was, ready to your hand. You took it. You put a supply of cartridges
in your pocket. Your mother was not at home. You were too impatient
to await her return. So off you hurried, taking chances, but meaning
no harm. You were very sure of yourself; you knew something about
firearms; you were confident that you wouldn’t hurt yourself or anybody
else. You thought you were extremely careful in the woods. Yet there
you took another chance, still meaning no harm, but barely escaping
homicide.”

“I know that, sir.”

“You can count yourself most fortunate that the results were not more
serious. But I won’t dwell upon what might have happened. What did
happen was quite enough to give you food for thought, and to point the
moral of your experience. And that is that before you go ahead you
should do your best to be sure you’re right.”

“After this I’ll be sure!”

Mr. Parker smiled a little oddly. “I ask only, Sam, that you do your
best to be sure. Often you have to take risks--the practical point is
to avoid the unnecessary risks. Hear me through! At sixteen you’re not
going to develop the wisdom and foresight of a grown man. I’m not going
to demand the impossible. I am going, though, to urge you to profit by
the mistakes you’ve made--and that, Sam, is the one best use to make of
mistakes.”

“You mean, not to repeat ’em?”

“That is precisely my meaning.”

“Trust me!” cried Sam, with conviction.

“I am going to trust you,” said his father. “In the first place, I am
going to assume that we have no need to talk about punishment; perhaps
you’ve had a reasonable amount of it as it is, for I suspect you have
passed some very trying hours. At the same time, though, I’m not
prepared to treat this affair as a wholly closed chapter. I think it
will be better for all concerned if you regard yourself, for the next
few months, as on probation.”

“I don’t quite understand.”

“Well, in other words, you may consider yourself as under test. And the
test will be the extent to which you have profited by what has taken
place.”

“Oh!” said Sam. “Then you’re waiting to see if I’ve really learned the
lesson?”

“You have the idea.”

Sam knit his brows. “It’s awfully kind of you, Father--it’s greater
mercy than I’d hoped for. I--I’ll try my prettiest to deserve it.
And--and will everything go on just as--just as before?”

“As nearly as may be. Only that brings me to my second point. It has to
do with St. Mark’s.”

“Oh!” said Sam again, a bit apprehensively, it must be admitted.

“I think,” said his father slowly, “that for the present we’ll hold in
abeyance any plans for sending you away to school. Don’t regard this as
a punishment; it is merely part of the probation. St. Mark’s, as you
know, allows its students much liberty. It treats them almost as if
they were men. And, frankly, Sam, it remains for you to prove that you
deserve such confidence. As the boys say, it’s up to you.”

The blow to the boy’s hopes was harder than his father realized. For
months Sam had been counting upon an early transfer to the famous
preparatory school. At his books, and in sports, he had striven with an
eye to the St. Mark’s standards; he had read everything concerning the
academy upon which he could lay hands; he had thought of St. Mark’s by
day and dreamed of it at night. And now, of a sudden, he learned that
his goal was not near, but at a distance which seemed to be all the
more unhappy because of its vagueness. Yet, very pluckily, he rallied
from the shock.

“Yes, sir; it’s up to me--I understand,” said he. “I’ve got to show
that I’m not an utter idiot, that I have some common sense. And I will
show it, I will! If I don’t, I won’t be worth sending to St. Mark’s
or--or anywhere else!”




CHAPTER VIII BEGINNING THE TEST


The junior class of the Plainville High School probably was neither
much better nor much worse than the classes which had preceded it,
and the other classes which were following it, along the paths of
knowledge. It had its bright boys and girls and its dullards; its
examples of industry and of idleness; its workers and its shirkers; its
happy-go-lucky members, who made the most of the day without thought
of the morrow, and its budding politicians, who laid wires and pulled
them with an eye to future advantage. Perhaps the most distinguishing
peculiarity of the class, however, was the influence exerted by a group
of boys, with some of whom we have become acquainted.

Just why the Safety First Club (lately the Adelphi) should have been
so potent a factor was not easily explained. The faculty, which
had suspicion rather than understanding of the fact, did not try
to explain it, while certain ambitious youths, not of the charmed
circle, insisted that it could not be made clear. The club did not
include the coming valedictorian or salutatorian; it had none of the
most distinguished athletes; yet the truth remained that its backing
was a prime necessity to secure success in any class undertaking. If
there were a fund to be raised for the ball team, or if a picnic were
planned or a Christmas jollification, wise promoters at once sought the
endorsement of the club. As it usually was given in generous measure,
there was little general criticism of the coterie, though, as was
inevitable, there were envious ones who lost no opportunity privately
to say unpleasant things about the members, singly and collectively.

In this, of course, jealousy figured. Several of the boys deeply
resented the failure of the club to invite them to become members; and
the feeling was bitterest in the case of one Thomas Orkney.

Now and then one comes upon a striking example of the square peg
in the round hole. Orkney did not fit. He was comparatively a new
boy in Plainville, having lived there but two or three years, and
having come with some very firmly established notions of his own
importance. At bottom he had his virtues--plenty of them, no doubt;
but they were overlaid and concealed by a highly unfortunate manner.
His early study had been under tutors, who had helped him to better
knowledge of his text-books than to preparation for what may be called
the rough-and-tumble experiences of recitations in a large class. If
he blundered, and the division laughed, that was a black day in his
calendar; and he scowled and sulked, and cherished a grudge against
those who had led in the merriment. Worst of all, he often found
means to settle these scores, and so had contrived to make himself
exceedingly unpopular among his classmates; though, as it happened,
he also drew to himself a few supporters and adherents from among the
discontented element, which is so frequently to be observed in any
organization.

While it could not be said that the juniors were sharply divided into
factions, it was certainly true that the relations of the club and of
the Orkney “crowd” were strained. Recently there had been two or three
incidents, trifling in themselves, but together doing a good deal to
increase the rivalry.

Oddly enough, Step Jones, one of the most peaceful of mortals, had
succeeded in enraging Orkney. Step, as a rule, was no shining star of
scholarship; but by some mental twist he was a very planet in Greek. In
Latin he was merely fair, and in French not quite so good, while the
less said of his algebra and geometry the better; but, in the speech
of his friends, he took to Greek as a duck takes to water. Poke Green
accused him of “reading ahead” in Xenophon for the fun of the thing;
and declined to withdraw the charge in spite of his almost tearful
denials, holding, indeed, that it was confirmed by Step’s success in
translating a “sight” passage, which Tom Orkney had stumbled over. Poke
forgot all about the episode in an hour, but Tom added another to his
growing list of grievances against the club. His average for the term
was far above Step’s, but he begrudged the lanky youth even a trifling
triumph. And then came the matter of Willy Reynolds.

It may throw light upon the personality of Master Reynolds to explain
that he was equally well known as Willy and the “Shark,” neither
being used offensively, though one had a suggestion of mildness and
the other of ferocity. He was, in fact, a little fellow, slender,
stoop-shouldered, and physically the weakest boy in the class. Yet
no other junior was less teased or picked upon. Practical jokers
passed by Willy Reynolds. There was a gravity about him, not owlish,
but distinctly discouraging to frivolity; and an almost hypnotic
influence in his meditative and unwavering gaze. He had the prominent
eyes of the near-sighted; and he had, too, the unconscious trick of
staring steadfastly at man or thing of whose very existence he was
barely conscious; and as he stared through big, round lenses, set in
a heavy black frame, the effect was impressive, if not terrifying.
Consequently, even the most mischievous of his mates preferred to let
him alone, especially as they had honest respect for his signal ability
in his specialty.

Young Reynolds was a mathematician born. Languages he endured as
unavoidable subjects of study; but he reveled in equations and
demonstrations, made child’s play of the required algebra and
geometry--thereby earning his nickname of the “Shark”--and carried on
advanced work under the eye of the principal, himself an adept of the
mathematical brotherhood. Willy, of course, was destined for scientific
courses at college; but meanwhile, tarrying with the junior class, he
filled his contemporaries with wonder and admiration. For example, he
solved at sight a problem to which Tom Orkney had devoted vain and
wearisome hours. It was all in the day’s work for the Shark, but Orkney
noted another score to be repaid with compound interest.

Sam Parker had been a witness of Tom’s discomfiture on both occasions;
but, as may be imagined, was not concerning himself deeply with the
sullen youth’s moods. As he himself would have put it, he had troubles
enough of his own, and was fully occupied with his own affairs when he
went to school on Monday morning. On the way he fell in with Step and
Poke. The latter was full of the mystery attending the release of Peter
Groche.

“It’s mighty queer--our folks were talking it over at breakfast,” said
he. “Course, there was a mistake somewhere, or Major Bates never would
have let him go. But Peter didn’t let out a word--just growled, and
grumbled, and took himself off, shaking his head. He wouldn’t deny that
he shot the Major. The police asked him about it, but he gave them no
satisfaction. He’s a bad one, I tell you! Regular Indian, if he gets
down on anybody!”

“All the more wonder that the Major dropped the case,” declared Step.
“He knows Groche from A to Z.”

Poke wagged his head. “There you are! Makes the business all the
queerer. Each of them is a sticker, in his own way. And the Major had
Groche just where he wanted him. And then, all of a sudden, he let up!
What do you make of that, now?”

“Beats me,” Step confessed.

“What’s your notion, Sam?”

Sam did not meet Poke’s inquiring glance. “I think,” he said slowly,
“that something must have happened to show the Major that Groche hadn’t
shot him.”

“Huh! How do you make that out?” queried Step.

“That’d mean somebody else did the shooting,” observed Poke, the
philosopher. “The Major was hit, fast enough--peppered in the head and
in one hand. And he didn’t do it himself.”

“Of course not,” said Sam.

“Therefore, some one else did. The Major was sure Groche was the some
one. Then he wasn’t sure. In between he’d found out something. Q. E.
D.--as the Shark would remark.”

“Q. E. D.,” repeated Sam, for want of anything better.

Step grunted. “Huh! Bet you he’d found out who was who and what was
what! But that just thickens the fog.”

“How so?”

“Why didn’t he have the other fellow locked up in Groche’s place?”

“Jiminy! that’s a good point!” cried Poke.

Sam said nothing, and for a moment the three trudged on in silence.

“Oh, well,” said Poke at last, “the Major knows now, but we’ll know
sooner or later.”

“How’s that?” Sam asked quickly.

Poke shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, things are bound to come out. They
always do. It’s just like a dog burying a bone--if he doesn’t dig it
up, some other dog will.”

“Don’t you believe a secret can be kept?”

“Well, I can’t remember keeping many myself,” chuckled Poke. “And they
say murder will out, you know. This wasn’t murder, of course, but it
came uncomfortably near it.”

“It sure did!” agreed Step.

Sam dug his hands deeper in his pockets. Being human, and
companionable, and very fond of Poke and Step, he had been sorely
tempted to confide in his friends. But the Major had warned him
not to gossip about the affair, and the Major’s wish naturally had
great weight. As for Poke’s theory that the story would become known
generally, sooner or later--well, Sam had his doubts. So far as he
knew, only his parents and the Major shared with him knowledge of what
had happened in the woods.

In school that day Sam studied hard and paid close attention to the
recitations. That was part of his plan for proving to his father that
he could deserve confidence. When the class was dismissed, he made
careful selection of the books he would need for home study, and so was
a little behind his mates in leaving the building. Within a hundred
yards of the school-ground gates, however, he overtook a group of boys,
clustered closely about two disputants. One, as he saw, was Step; the
other, Tom Orkney.

From a little distance the Shark was regarding the squabble through his
big glasses.

“What’s the row about?” Sam asked as he came up.

“Nothing!” said the Shark. “That’s why they’re making such a fuss.”

Sam laughed, but quickly grew serious. Both Step and Tom were talking
loudly, each hurling threats and defiance at the other; Step’s long
arms were going like a windmill’s, while Orkney’s fists were doubled.
From his acquaintance with the methods of adolescent controversy it
appeared to be probable that words were about to lead to blows.

“Just one of Orkney’s grouches,” the Shark went on indifferently. “He’s
been ruffling his feathers at Step ever since that business in Greek
the other day.”

Sam nodded. “That, eh? But they’re going too far--they’ll be mixing it
up.”

“Well, Step’s got the reach by fully four inches.”

“Maybe, but Orkney’s a tough customer.”

The Shark turned, and deliberately inspected Sam from head to foot.
“You could do him up,” he said with cold-blooded calmness.

“Perhaps. That isn’t saying Step could, though. He hasn’t weight
enough.”

At this instant Orkney, catching sight of Sam in the background,
changed his tactics. He moved away from Step, and lowered his hands.

“So that’s the game, is it?” he taunted. “Keep blustering, but be sure
not to hit a fellow till your gang’s here to back you--that’s your way,
Step Jones. Had to wait for Sam Parker, didn’t you?”

Step’s anger was that of the patient man, slow to kindle but hard to
extinguish. He struck at his opponent, but long as his arm was, missed
him by inches.

Sam instinctively started forward, and forced a way through the ring.
Tom fell back a pace.

“That’s right! Pile on--the whole gang of you!” he shouted.

Step, for his part, was more than ready to accept the challenge; but
Sam intervened. Impulse--he was willing enough to fight Orkney--had
yielded to sobering second thought. It behooved a young man, intent
upon establishing his self-control and common sense, to avoid brawling
over a trifle on the public street. Sam’s hand caught Step’s collar.

“Here! Drop the fighting!” he commanded.

Step wriggled, but the grip on his collar did not yield.

“Oh, let me at him!” he begged. “We might as well have it out--he’s
been pestering me for a week.”

“Never mind! He’ll stop it now.”

“Oh, I will, will I?” snarled Orkney. “I’d like to know who’s going to
make me!”

“I might,” said Sam simply.

“Bah! Dare you to try--alone!”

“That’s the way I will try it--some day,” Sam told him. “But not now;
no, not now.”

“That’s right--safety first!” sneered the other.

Sam grinned; and it was an odd grin. “Certainly; safety first!” said he.

Step ceased to struggle; but, twisting his neck, stared at his friend.
And then the Shark chose to advance.

“Sam’s right,” he announced coolly. “This is no place for a scrap.
Besides, there’s no reason for one. Orkney, you’re a chump to be peeved
at Step for doing you up in Greek, or at me for putting you out at
geometry. See here! You’re a pretty good, all-round performer, but you
can’t beat specialists at their own specialties. Get that? And there’s
no use in being a general sorehead.”

It was eloquent tribute to the Shark’s moral influence that Orkney
appeared to be impressed. At all events, though he scowled fiercely,
he received the advice in silence. Two or three boys on the outskirts
of the group began to move off. To Sam it seemed to be probable that
the storm had blown over. He released his hold upon Step’s collar;
whereupon Step, still wrathful, took two long strides; found himself
beside Orkney; plucked off his opponent’s cap, and sent it flying
through the air. It sailed over a fence, struck the trunk of a tree,
and dropped to the ground.

Orkney bristled, but Sam already had laid hands upon Step, and was
dragging him back.

“Here! Quit all this foolishness!” the peacemaker ordered.

“Make him get that cap, then!” Orkney insisted.

“Won’t!” cried Step, and struggled to break from Sam’s hold.

Again the Shark intervened. “No; it was a kid trick, but now that it’s
done, we’ll let it stay done. Orkney, if you hadn’t bulldozed Step,
and started the whole thing, the cap would still be on your head. So I
guess it’s up to you to put it back there--or let it stay where it is.”

“Sure! It was a six-year-old’s performance, but the Shark has the right
notion,” Sam agreed.

There was an instant in which Orkney hesitated between war and peace.
Then he reached a decision which was compromise--and as unsatisfactory
as compromises often are. He neither gave battle nor retrieved his
headgear. Instead, with a parting scowl, which included all the allies,
he wheeled, and marched away, bareheaded.

“You, Step, you bring that cap to my house, or you’ll be sorry!” he
called back over his shoulder.

“Never!” shouted Step defiantly.

The Shark stared at the retreating figure. “I’ll be hanged if the whole
bunch oughtn’t to be back in the kindergarten,” was his comment. “Of
all idiocies! You plumb make me tired, Step--you and that runaway pal
of yours!”

“But you wouldn’t get his cap for him if you were in my place,” Step
insisted.

“But I’m not in your place,” said the Shark drily.

Sam shook his head. “Let’s stop this squabbling, fellows. One row’s
enough at a time. Or, better yet, let’s end one without starting
another.”

The Shark’s expression was thoughtful. “If we have ended one,” said he.
“Orkney’s a queer duck. There may be more to this ridiculous affair
than we dream.”




CHAPTER IX POKE AND STEP PUT THEIR HEADS TOGETHER


Memory of the successful raid by Mr. Mercer’s big hound and its unhappy
results rankled in the breasts of Poke and Step.

It was one thing, they agreed, to be joint victims of hard luck; but
it was quite another thing--and a deal harder to endure--to behold
the author of their misfortunes jogging about the streets, wholly
unpunished for his misdeeds. Step even had a gloomy notion that the dog
was plumper than usual, which, if well founded, was higher tribute to
the nourishing qualities of the looted chicken than to the prevalence
of even-handed justice, to Step’s way of thinking. This view, confided
to Poke, met ready acceptance.

“Sure thing! And there ought to be something we could do about it,”
observed Poke.

“Oh, I’ll find a way to get even,” Step declared.

“How?”

“Oh, you wait, and you’ll see,” said Step darkly.

Poke, as has been related, had leanings toward philosophy. Now he
meditated briefly.

“See here, Step!” he said. “If you’re going to get at this thing, you’d
better get at it right. You ought to teach him a lesson.”

“That’s just what I’ll do!”

Poke shook his head. “No; you don’t get me. You’re thinking of letting
drive a stone at him, or giving him a whipping, but what’d be the use?
He wouldn’t know why you did it.”

“Huh! Guess he would,” growled Step.

“He wouldn’t,” Poke insisted. “That is, he wouldn’t unless you schemed
out a way to remind him of the stolen rooster. There’s got to be
something to make him see there’s a connection--get me?”

Step sniffed contemptuously. “What you want me to do? Make him a speech
or send him a letter about it?”

“Neither,” quoth Poke calmly. “But unless you make him understand that
he’s being punished for stealing, he’ll think you’re thrashing him out
of pure meanness.”

Step rubbed his chin. “I suppose that’s so,” he admitted. “But how can
you work it? How can you make him understand? I’m weak on dog-lingo,
myself.”

Poke smiled, a little pityingly. “Listen, and I’ll tell you something
I read the other day. There was a chap who owned a dog, and he was a
bully dog, except that he would steal chickens. So the man tied a dead
hen to his collar, and left it there till--well, till that dog didn’t
want ever to see another one or get anywhere near it. And that’s my
idea--something like it, anyway--for teaching the hound a lesson.”

Step began to take interest. “Gee, but you have got an idea there!
Only, if there’s anything left of the chicken he stole, we don’t know
where to find it. And----”

“Don’t need to!” Poke broke in. “Look here now! Say you’re dealing with
chickens. What do you come to first?”

“Hen-house,” said Step promptly.

Poke frowned. “No, no! Wake up! You come first to the feathers.”

“Oh, that way? Yes!”

The frown vanished. “Exactly!” said Poke. “So, if we teach that dog to
let feathers alone, he won’t bother many chickens--see?”

Step’s manner was slightly skeptical. “Oh, that’s easy to talk about,
but, practically, how are you going----”

Poke didn’t let him finish the sentence. “Ever smell burning feathers?
Well, I guess you have, all right! And don’t you think that if we tie
a pail to his collar, and there are some burning feathers in the pail,
Mr. Dog’ll get enough of chickens to last him a lifetime?”

Step was a generous fellow; he didn’t grudge a friend a triumph.

“Gee, Poke, but you’re a corker! How’d you ever work that out? But I
say! I can improve on the pail. Up in our attic’s one of those queer,
old-fashioned lanterns with tin sides punched full of holes--like a
colander, you know. And there’s a double chain to it--guess they used
to hang it up outdoors. And there are snaps on the chain--might have
been made for us. Only”--he paused an instant--“only how’re you going
to be sure the stuff will burn?”

Poke smiled the smile of easy confidence. “Don’t you worry! A few rags
soaked in kerosene, and stuffed in with the feathers will take care of
that, all right!”

From this discussion and activities which followed, it happened that
when Sam turned a corner near Mr. Mercer’s gate he came upon his two
chums engaged in friendly overtures to a large and somewhat suspicious
dog. Poke, as he saw, had a tempting bit of meat, while Step held
behind him a rusty contrivance of tin, from which loops of still more
rusty chain depended.

“Halloo! What’s up?” Sam demanded curiously.

“Oh, first class in dog manners--that’s all,” responded Step lightly.

Poke whistled softly, and held the meat nearer the dog, which took a
step forward, halted, eyed the tidbit greedily.

Sam, far from clear as to what was afoot and inclined to caution not
only by his new resolves but also by acquaintance with other ventures
of his friends, watched the proceedings dubiously.

“I don’t yet grasp what’s the game,” he remarked.

Poke was lavishing blandishments upon the dog, and extending the bait;
so it was left to Step to make explanation.

“It’s that chicken business. We’re going to get even--teach him a
lesson, I mean.... Got a scheme, a crackerjack scheme. Just you keep
your eyes peeled.”

“They’re peeled, all right, but----” Sam hesitated an instant. “I say,
you fellows, better not get in trouble. Remember, you belong to the
Safety First Club!”

“Huh! No chance of trouble--for us!” Step insisted. “Look here, Sam!”
He displayed part of the chain with a snap at the end. “Two just like
this--see? Well, we’re going to pass one of ’em around the dog’s neck,
so-fashion.” In illustration he wound the chain about his own left
wrist and for good measure took an extra turn. “Then we fasten it.”
Another illustration, the rusty spring of the catch being moved with
some difficulty. “Then, having fixed it so he can’t get rid of it,
we----”

There Step broke off, for good and sufficient reason. For things were
beginning to happen, and the procession of events was moving with
startling speed.

The dog, sacrificing caution to appetite, came within Poke’s reach;
whereupon Poke, dropping the meat, caught the hound as he tried to
gobble up the bait; deftly slipped the second chain about the animal’s
neck, successfully worked the snap at the first attempt; wheeled;
whipped out a match; struck it, and lighted a rag protruding like a
fuse from the old tin lantern, which had been brought from behind
Step’s back, as that youth gave Sam an object lesson.

The kerosene-soaked rag flamed fiercely; almost instantly, dense black
smoke began to pour from the holes in the lantern. Poke, who had
been busy with the contrivance and the dog, with never a thought of
complications involving his comrade, sprang back with a shout of glee,
which perhaps added somewhat--though increase was scarcely needed--to
the terror of the hound, which gave a panic-stricken howl and a
tremendous bound.

Step, who had been tearing desperately and quite vainly at the chain
about his wrist--the rusty catch stuck as if it had been soldered--was
caught off his balance; dragged forward and into a run, which, under
the circumstances, he could not check. The big dog, as heavy and
powerful as many a sledge-team leader of the Far North, bolted wildly,
yet with a general purpose; and this purpose being to seek asylum from
the infernal machine at his heels, he dashed through the gate and
toward the house, Step following, willy-nilly, his long legs flying
and his long arms going like the arms of a windmill in a gale; while
dangling from the chain between dog and boy, the old lantern emitted
great volumes of choking smoke of most evil odor.

“Say, Step, where you going?” shouted the bewildered Poke, who was
still unaware of the difficulty in which his chum was involved. “What’s
the matter? The pair of you look like an engine going to a fire!”

Now to this Step, for perfectly good reasons, made no reply. And Poke,
seeing that Sam was running after his friend, joined in the pursuit. So
the procession swept up the drive, turned a corner of the house, and
headed for the side porch, under which the dog had a den of his own,
entrance to which was secured by a break in the latticework. Through
this opening he shot with a final tug of such violence that Step was
jerked forward, falling on his knees, with his head close to the
barrier. And as by this time his fright fairly matched the dog’s, and
as he fell to shouting for help as lustily as he could against the odds
of the suffocating smoke, which poured through the lattice, and as the
dog was howling more madly than ever, it may be imagined that there was
a pretty to-do under and about the side porch of the Mercer house.

Sam and Poke, naturally enough, tried to drag Step back from his most
unpleasant position; but the dog had braced himself, or the chain had
caught on some obstruction, so that the only result of their endeavors
was to pull Step’s knees from under him, drop him flat on his stomach,
and leave him, if anything, rather more helpless than before. Moreover,
the cook came hurrying from the kitchen and the hired man from the
barn; and jumping to the conclusion that where there was so much smoke
there surely must be fire, both dashed buckets of water with better
intention than aim. Very little of the water passed through the
lattice; a fair share of it spattered Sam and Poke, and a great deal
drenched the unhappy Step.

The cook ran back to the kitchen for a fresh supply; but, luckily, the
hired man, sighting the chain extending from Step’s wrist, laid hold
upon it, and tugged with all his strength, and the dog, recognizing his
voice, changed tactics, and charged from under the porch, bounding over
the prostrate Step so swiftly that he turned a complete somersault,
when the chain tautened again. The old lantern, still smoking
voluminously, fell between boy and dog.

“Jee-rusalem!” gasped the hired man in bewilderment.

“Sa-sakes alive!” quavered the cook, who had reappeared with a freshly
filled bucket.

Poke began to laugh hysterically; but Sam kept his wits. He caught
the bucket from the woman’s hand, and plunged the lantern into the
water. There was a long, hissing sound, a final puff of steam--and then
comparative peace.

Step sat up. The dog, trembling like a leaf and whining weakly, crawled
to the hired man. From the vantage ground of the porch the cook spoke
wonderingly and reprovingly:

“Well, I vum, but you boys do beat my time! What on earth do you think
you’re up to? Playin’ horse with poor Hector there?”

“No--not a bit; ’twasn’t that at all!” protested Step.

The cook sniffed. “Feathers--burnin’ feathers! I can tell ’em every
time! But what’s your notion in puttin’ ’em in that thing?” And she
pointed at the ancient lantern.

Step got upon his feet. He fumbled at the chain at his wrist; and, by
an irony of fate, the old catch now gave at a touch. Step rubbed the
flesh into which the links had sunk. He tried to summon a propitiating
smile.

“Oh, the feathers?” he said very mildly. “Oh, yes; the feathers.
Why--why, we--we thought Hector there--he--well, he ought to know about
’em.”

“Land o’ love! but the boy’s crazy!”

The hired man scratched his head. “Must say it looks like it, Katy.
Still, I dunno--boys’ll be boys. And this young man acted ’sif he was
willin’ to learn same time Hector did. They were sharin’, and sharin’
alike, on the smudge-pot, te he!”

Step scowled, but Poke burst into a roar of laughter, which eased the
situation. The cook chuckled; Sam smiled. The hired man smote his thigh
with his hand.

“Gee-whillikens! but I never saw the like of it! And I guess no great
harm’s done. Don’t seem to be no fire under the porch.”

Then Poke found tongue. “It’s this way: The dog stole a chicken,
and got us into a scrape. We thought we’d--er--er--we’d teach him
a lesson and sicken him of stealing. And feathers and chickens go
together--and--er--er--get the idea, don’t you?”

“Sorter!” grinned the hired man. “Kind o’ think I do, sonny. And
t’other fellow got tangled up, somehow. Wal, yes, I do see how ’twas.”

“Then, if you don’t mind, we’ll be going home.”

The hired man waved his hand. “I would, if I was you,” he said. “I’d go
home and get into some dry clothes.”

The three friends moved down the drive, with Step, a truly disconsolate
and melancholy figure between the other two. For a little none of them
spoke. It was left to Poke to break the silence with one of his bits of
philosophy.

“You’ve got to live to learn,” quoth he. “Now, who’d have thought--no
use, though, crying over spilt milk! And what on earth made Step want
to chain himself up--no; we won’t talk about that, either. But I say,
Sam, I tell you there’s a lot of sense in that notion of yours! Safety
First for me after this--yes, sir; Safety First every time!”




CHAPTER X QUEER TROUBLES


It is not to be supposed that Sam Parker, in spite of his exhibition of
new self-control in the affair of Step and Tom Orkney, had taken on the
gravity of years. There was, indeed, a change in the boy, but it was
subtle rather than manifest. Sam worked a little harder than before,
but played with no lack of zest. It was to be noted, however, that
there was a decrease in the number of scrapes into which he fell.

Perhaps Hannibal, Sam’s bull terrier, was first to perceive, if not to
understand, the change. Hannibal was a sagacious animal, beyond the
follies of puppyhood, but still full of interest in the doings of his
master and his friends; fond of a long tramp in their company; and very
pleased to doze comfortably in a corner of the club room. The new days
were much to Hannibal’s liking. Sam never had been cruel to him, but at
times may have been a bit thoughtless. Now, though, Hannibal enjoyed a
degree of consideration quite unparalleled in his experience.

Lon Gates, shrewdly observant, began to remark that Sam’s visits to the
barn resulted in less disturbance of its orderly arrangements.

“Ain’t had a hedgehog day lately, have you, Sam?” he queried. “World
don’t seem to be so all-fired uncomfortably crowded as it was, eh? And
I dunno’s there’s so much genooine solace in kickin’ over buckets as a
feller might think there was.”

“True enough, Lon,” said the boy soberly.

The hired man grinned cheerfully. “They say nobody has to hunt for
trouble, and I guess there’s sense in that. Still, it’s amazin’ how
often trouble’ll let you alone if you don’t go stirrin’ it up. There’s
that wuthless scamp, Peter Groche, now. He wouldn’t ’a’ been locked up
over night if he hadn’t been so cantankerous. Course, they really took
him in on suspicion, and I must say Groche is about the suspicionest
nuisance that infests these parts. And all he got out of bein’ ugly was
a sleep behind the bars.”

“That’s so,” said Sam.

“Funny how close-mouthed the Major is ’bout the whole business,” Lon
went on. “If only he’d talk he’d make things easier for quite a lot of
the chaps that was out gunnin’ that day.”

“Yes?”

Lon chuckled. “Te he! There’s always a reg’lar bargain sale rush
when the season opens, but this year it was wuss than usual. Seems
as if everybody was sort o’ venison hungry; so it turns out there’s
about a dozen fellers who ain’t been able to prove what you’d call a
water-tight alibi. That is, they can’t bring witnesses to show that
they didn’t pot the Major; and they’re bein’ joshed half out o’ their
lives, some of ’em. You see, first and last, a sight o’ folks must
have been prowlin’ through Marlow woods that mornin’, and none of ’em
happened to think to keep a time register. The huntin’ crowd’s all tore
up about it.”

“No doubt,” said Sam. If he had cared to meet Lon’s eye, he might have
noted a twinkle, suggesting that the hired man had theories of his own
as to the identity of the careless sportsman. But Sam avoided Lon’s
gaze, and Lon chose not to make direct inquiry.

“Well, this world does see a heap of entertainin’ things, comin’ and
goin’,” he observed. “Good scheme, too--keeps folks from stagnatin’ and
gettin’ as dull as ditch water. Plainville’s perkin’ up a lot because
of the Major and his unknown party o’ the second part, as we’d be
sayin’ if you and me was lawyers.”

Here Lon spoke within the truth. The town was making a nine days’
wonder of the affair; and what the town talked, the school talked, and
the club.

Sam, so far as he could, kept out of the discussions; permitted his
chums to speculate as they pleased; and watched and waited for the
interest in the matter to wear itself out.

Oddly enough, Peter Groche appeared to be following the same policy. He
was about town as usual, doing odd jobs when work was unavoidable. No
improvement was reported in his habits, but even in his cups his tongue
was not loosed, so far as his feud with Major Bates and its recent
development were concerned. He grumbled and made threats, to be sure,
but he had been grumbling and threatening people for years; and from
his incoherent growls his cronies gained no information. If he had an
inkling of the secret of Marlow woods, he was keeping it to himself.

Step’s quarrel with Tom Orkney seemed to have led to nothing, even
in the way of reprisals. There was no second demand upon Master
Jones to recover the cap, nor was there formal notice that he should
repay the owner for the seized property. In debates at the club the
probability of the latter course had been stoutly upheld by Poke Green,
who developed such concern in the outcome that he made a searching
expedition, from which he bore back tidings that the cap was not to
be found where it had fallen. Step insisted this merely went to show
that Orkney, when the coast was clear, had returned to the scene and
regained possession of the cap, thus avoiding loss and “saving face.”

“But he’s wearing another bonnet,” Poke pointed out.

“Oh, that’s because he’s too stuffy to admit the truth,” Step declared.
“He’s as stubborn as a mule--that’s the whole case in a nutshell.”

The club agreed with this opinion of Orkney more heartily than it
endorsed Step’s performance, which was held to be juvenile, albeit
not without provocation. Sam’s interference was accepted with respect
rather than warm approval. As Poke put it, somebody, sooner or later,
would have to thrash Orkney; and Step might as well have tried his
hand. Whereat the Shark spoke up from his corner.

“Say, that’s nice doctrine to be preaching at the Safety First Club!”

For an instant Poke was abashed. “Why--why, there’s something in that.
I guess I wasn’t thinking of our new name.”

“Well, Sam was,” said the Shark crisply.

“Huh!” grunted Poke. He glanced thoughtfully at Sam; seemed to be about
to continue; changed his mind, and let the subject drop.

Sam went home that afternoon to find Lon in uncommonly bad humor.
Somebody, it appeared, had opened a faucet in the barn, and left the
water running in a merry stream. As a result, half the floor had been
flooded, and annoying, if not heavy, damage had been caused. Lacking
evidence to the contrary, Lon was disposed to hold Sam responsible.

“But I had nothing to do with it,” the boy explained. “I don’t know how
it happened.”

“Foolin’ ’round here, wasn’t you, after school?”

“Yes--but I didn’t touch the faucet.”

“Guess you’re gettin’ absent-minded.”

Sam reddened wrathfully, but kept his head. Very clearly he realized
that he had a deal at stake. A youth on probation, as he was, must shun
rages as well as keep his record clean.

“Look here, Lon!” he said. “I’m not joking--I’m in earnest. And I tell
you I’m not to blame. I mean it--honor bright!”

Lon rubbed his chin. “I swan, but it plumb beats my time! You’re sure
you didn’t do it, and I’ll swear I ain’t been walkin’ in my sleep and
cuttin’ up didoes for more’n a year. Yet here was the water goin’ like
all possessed! Now, who set it goin’?”

“I didn’t,” said Sam decidedly.

“Hanged if I believe you did!” Lon had been studying the boy keenly.
“You’ve got as much of Old Nick in you as the next ’un, generally, but
you _have_ been behavin’ pretty well lately. And you ain’t a liar any
time. So it looks as if we’d got to add this to the list o’ mysteries,
’long with who struck Billy Patterson. Only I do wish I could lay hands
on the skunk that made all this mess, and argy with him a while on
the error of his ways.” And Lon frowned as he turned his gaze to the
water-soaked planks.

Sam went on to the house, but only to find himself again in the rôle of
defendant. The complainant this time was Maggie, who swooped down upon
him when he entered the kitchen. She caught him by the arm, dragged him
across the room, and pointed tragically to a tub, in which were soaking
several mud-stained garments.

“See all the trouble you’re makin’ me, you imp!” she cried. “How do
you s’pose I’m a-goin’ to do all the work of this big house, with you
snoopin’ round, and breakin’ my clothes-line, and lettin’ down half a
wash into the dirt? All them things to be put to soak and done over! I
tell you I just won’t stand it, I won’t! We’ll see, Mr. Sam, what your
mother’ll have to say to such tricks!”

Sam wriggled free. “But, Maggie, you’re all wrong,” he protested. “I
didn’t break the clothes-line.”

Maggie sniffed incredulously. “Course not! Must have been Hannibal or
the cat! Go ’way with you, tryin’ to bamboozle me with such talk!”

Poor Sam felt like throwing up his hands in despair, or bursting into
vehement denials. But once more he was reminded of the stake for which
he was playing.

“Honestly, Maggie, I had nothing to do with dropping the wash,” he
declared so emphatically that she could not but be impressed. “I didn’t
even notice that you’d hung it out. And as for breaking the line----”

“Well, somebody broke it!” said Maggie tartly. “Look at it!” And she
snatched a coil of rope from a shelf above the tub.

Sam gravely inspected the parted strands.

“Well, it is broken, fast enough,” he began. “That is”--he was peering
hard at the end of the line--“that is, it isn’t broken--I was mistaken;
this has been cut.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cut with a knife--and a sharp knife, at that. Made a clean gash. No
accident there, Maggie!”

The cook took time to make careful examination.

“My stars, Sam Parker, but you’ve got a head on you, after all!” she
declared. “Who’d ’a’ thought it! No; I don’t mean the head--it’s the
miserable meanness of the job. But who on earth would be so ugly?”

“I don’t know,” said Sam. “Anyway, though, I’m not the fellow.”

“Well, puttin’ it that way, I don’t suppose you are,” Maggie admitted.
“But I’d give a pretty penny to be able to figure out who is.”

“So would I,” Sam agreed gravely.

He had cause to repeat the statement in the next few days. Things went
wrong about the Parker place with peculiar persistence. Valuable young
trees were broken down; gates, supposed to be kept closed, were found
open; Hannibal, for whose care Sam was responsible, was missing over
night and came limping home in the morning in badly battered condition.
And in each instance it appeared to be incumbent upon the son of the
house to prove his innocence. It is an old rule of the books that
there is much difficulty in establishing a negative proposition. Sam’s
patience was sorely tried, but he kept his wits about him, remembered
the demands of his situation, and did his best to win confidence by
deserving it.

He had his suspicions, of course, that there was something more than
mere coincidence in the succession of troubles. Also he had a theory
as to their cause. In amateur fashion he undertook detective work. In
other words, so far as he could, he maintained a close, if unobtrusive,
watch upon the doings of Tom Orkney.




CHAPTER XI THE CLUB GETS A CLUE


It was Friday evening, and the Safety First Club was in full session.
Sam, Step and Poke were gossiping about school affairs, and with them
was Herman Boyd, a new member and a brother junior. Willy Reynolds
and Harry Walker, otherwise known as “Trojan,” a recently admitted
classmate, were playing checkers in a corner.

The Shark, who was human enough to have his little affectations,
pretended to care not at all for the game, holding it to be a poor and
trifling substitute for chess; but it was to be observed that he was
doing his best to win. Moreover, when he did win, he chuckled gleefully.

“Hew-ee! You ought to have known that last move was coming,” he told
his opponent. “But you gave me the opening, and then I had you.”

Trojan Walker laughed. “I’d have known all about it if I could see
around two corners at once as you do. Never mind, though! I’ll win yet.
Set up your men, Shark.”

Poke strolled over to the players while they were ranging their pieces.

“Fellow who wears glasses like the Shark’s ought to be able to see
everything,” he remarked idly. “All the same, Trojan, you’ll notice he
isn’t making out much about Orkney’s schemes.”

“Humph! What can Tom do?” objected Herman Boyd. “That row of his with
Step is ancient history.”

“Sure! And the time for a come-back was right after the row,” chimed in
Trojan.

Poke wagged his head sagaciously. “Don’t fool yourselves!” said he.
“Orkney is a sticker. He’s got it in for Step, and for Sam, for that
matter. We haven’t had the last of the business, not by a long shot.”

“Hear that, eh, Sam?” asked Herman.

Sam rose from his chair, and crossed to the checker players’ corner.

“I heard it,” said he.

“Well, do you agree?”

“Yes,” said Sam brusquely.

For a moment nobody spoke. All his friends realized that he was taking
the matter seriously.

“Why--why--you must have some reason, of course?” Herman ventured.

Sam hesitated. “Maybe it’s more hunch than reason.”

“But what gave you the hunch?”

“Oh, one thing and then another.”

“Huh! That sounds like some of my answers in history!” quoth Poke.
“It’s specially like those I make when I’m meeting a total stranger of
a question, and trying to be polite, if not communicative.”

The Shark wriggled in his chair; he was growing impatient to resume
play.

“Your move, Trojan!” he snapped.

“Wait a minute!” said his opponent. “Sam’s going to elucidate.”

“Well, things have happened and kept on happening,” Sam began; “things
that can’t be explained except----But I say, Shark! What on earth’s the
matter?”

Young Reynolds, who had turned from the table in disgust at the delay,
of a sudden had uttered an exclamation and started to his feet.

“Speak out! What is it?” Sam demanded.

The Shark pulled off his spectacles; held the lenses to the light;
inspected them closely; shook his head.

“No; they’re not clouded,” said he, half to himself. “Very curious, I
do declare!”

“What’s curious? And what are you driving at?”

“Of course, it might have been a tricky reflection,” mused the Shark.
“Or, maybe, it was just an optical illusion.”

Sam caught him by both shoulders. “Wake up! What are you talking about?”

“Then, again, the doctor tells me eye-strain works queerly sometimes.”

Sam shook the slender youth vigorously. “Get back to earth! Let’s have
some sense out of all this. Thought you saw something, didn’t you?
Well, what was it?”

“Man looking in the window!” said the other calmly.

“Oh!” cried Sam, and whipped about. Certainly no face now was pressed
against the pane. He ran to the door, opened it, and sprang into
darkness, closely followed by all the other members of the club except
the Shark, who was busying himself in polishing his glasses and
replacing them on his nose. This task was completed to his satisfaction
when the boys came straggling back. Their search had been utterly
without result.

They crowded about the Shark, and rained questions upon him. Just what
had he seen? How long had he seen it? What had he to say for himself,
anyway?

The Shark waved them back. “Here! Don’t walk all over a fellow!”
he cried. “What I saw--or thought I saw--was a head. I had just a
glimpse--there one instant, gone the next--presto, change business!
Looked like a human head.”

“You said it was a man’s,” Sam reminded him.

“Well, it might have been a boy’s--I couldn’t make it out clearly, you
understand. It was vague, shadowy.”

“Then, of course, you didn’t recognize the face?”

“No,” said the Shark. “And you’ll understand, too, that I don’t insist
that I really saw anything. You know, these glasses of mine--chance of
freak of refracted light--all the rest of it. What’s the good, though,
of getting all stirred up about it? If anybody was outside, he’s far
enough away now. I’ll bet he’s running yet if he heard the crowd
galloping out after him. Sit down, Trojan! You haven’t won a game.”

Walker plumped himself into a chair. “Well, you are a cool hand!” he
said, with a touch of admiration. “But I’m going to beat you this time,
all the same. Whose move is it?”

Step lounged across the room, but the others stood watching the play,
which went on briskly, and to the advantage of the mathematical genius.
The Trojan, beaten rather disgracefully, pushed back his chair.

“Tackle him, Poke,” he urged. “Or you take him on, Sam. This isn’t my
night, I reckon.”

Poke grinned. “Age before beauty! Go ahead, Sam.”

But there was to be no more checker play in the club just then. For,
while Sam paused, debating his chance of coping with the skilful Shark,
there was a loud crash of a breaking window pane, a little shower of
fragments of glass fell to the floor, and a big stone shot across the
room, just missing the boys standing by the table, which it struck with
great force. Over went the table with a crash, rivaling that of the
window. Over, too, went the Shark, untouched but thoroughly startled by
the bombardment.

Sam and Poke, Step and the Trojan and Herman Boyd poured out of the
club like bees sallying forth to defend the hive. Around the corner
of the building they raced, eager to detect the enemy. Prompt as they
had been, however, they were too late. The night was very dark; there
was much shrubbery about, which, even in its leafless state, afforded
cover. The stone-thrower was gone. The boys could not detect a darker
shadow betraying his whereabouts, and there was no sound of fleeing
feet.

Sam and Poke turned to the right, and the others to the left, spreading
out as they neared the barn. The course taken by Sam and his comrade
led toward the house, round which they worked their way as rapidly as
possible. Strain their eyes as they might, they saw nothing to arouse
suspicion; nor were they better rewarded when they moved to the
street, and peered up and down road and sidewalk.

“Clean get-away,” Poke said reluctantly. “Fellow must have bolted just
as soon as he let drive. And it must have been the chap the Shark saw
at the window, of course. What a pity he hasn’t a decent pair of eyes!”

“It’s the biggest kind of a pity,” Sam agreed. “This affair is no joke,
Poke. If that stone had struck one of us--whew!”

Poke laid a hand on Sam’s arm. “Come now!” He dropped his voice almost
to a whisper. “Fellow who threw that stone was pretty savage, or crazy,
or--or revengeful. And--and you won’t need maps or foot-notes to
understand who I reckon he is.”

“I wouldn’t ask but one guess,” said Sam.

Poke was silent for a moment, listening intently. “The others have
had no better luck than we,” he reported. “Might as well go back, I
suppose.”

“All right,” Sam agreed, and they moved toward the club-house.

Meanwhile the Shark, who had picked himself up from the floor and
found that he was none the worse for his upset, had been making an
investigation on his own account. First, he raised the big stone,
shifting it meditatively from one hand to the other, as if he were
estimating its weight. Then he crossed to the window and measured the
height from the floor of the jagged hole in the glass. This done, he
furrowed his brow, pulled out pencil and note-book from his pockets,
and fell to making a calculation of some sort. He was still engaged in
this when Sam and Poke entered.

“No luck!” Poke informed him. “The fellow got away.”

The Shark didn’t look up. “Hm-m! Thought he would.”

“So that’s why you didn’t try to chase him?”

“Partly. ’Nother reason was that I wanted to do some figuring.”

“On what?”

“Oh, don’t bother me!” snapped the Shark. “I’m right in the midst of
things.”

Poke frowned. “You needn’t be so snippy. Sam and I have done some
figuring, too, and we’ve been quicker about it than you. And we
know--what we know.”

The Shark raised his eyes. “Umph! Don’t be too all-fired sure,” he
counseled.

Poke took a step toward him. “See here, you owl! Our figuring has made
us certain--morally certain, that is--that we know who threw that
stone.”

Usually the gaze of the Shark was unwavering, but now he was blinking
rapidly.

“Go slow, Poke,” said he. “Moral certainty doesn’t answer problems in
mathematics.”

“Bosh! This isn’t mathematics.”

“’Deed it is!”

“Hold on, boys!” said Sam. “You’re getting nowhere. Now, Shark, listen!
Poke and I believe that Tom Orkney did this thing. We hate to think he
would, but we believe it because----”

“Because you’re wrong. Tom couldn’t have done it--at least, I don’t
admit that he could. It won’t work out that way.”

“Work out?”

The Shark nodded. “Of course, I have to depend on estimates, and I
don’t pretend that I can show exact results,” he began; but paused as
Step strode into the room, closely pursued by Boyd and the Trojan.

In the middle of the floor Step halted. Not a word said he, but raised
a hand dramatically.

The hand held an object, recognized at sight by every boy there. It
was the cap, owned by Tom Orkney, which had figured in the celebrated
quarrel.




CHAPTER XII PUNISHMENT POSTPONED


There was a long pause, and a very significant pause it was. The
boys stared at the cap in Step’s hand; then they glanced from one to
another. Here and there a head nodded, as if in answer to an unspoken
question; but it was left to Poke to break the silence.

“Jupiter crickets! That settles it, I guess. Well, I never have liked
Tom Orkney, but I didn’t think him up to this sort of thing!”

“Or down to it!” cried Herman Boyd.

“Now you’re talking!” chimed in the Trojan. “Lowest-down trick that
ever was!”

“Trick! Huh! Worse than that!” growled Poke. “Why, that rock might have
killed one of us!”

The Shark appeared to be estimating the weight of the stone. “Yes; it’s
heavy enough,” he said calmly. “If it had struck anybody squarely, the
result might have been fatal.”

There was a wrathful gleam in Sam’s eye. “Where did you find the cap,
Step?” he demanded. “Let’s get down to business.”

“It was on the ground, back of the barn--low limb of one of the apple
trees must have knocked it off his head. Great luck that I stumbled
upon it; and that was just what I did. Too dark to see anything, but my
foot caught in something, and I stopped and picked the something up.
And here it is!”

Poke was wagging his head in his peculiar fashion. “Fellows, it’s as
plain as day. Orkney has been too proud to wear the cap to school, but
he didn’t mind putting it on at night, when nobody would notice it.
Then he came sneaking around the club-house. The Shark must have had a
glimpse of him at the window. When we went out to see who was there,
he lay low. As soon as we came back into the house, he let drive the
boulder at the first chance, and then bolted for all he was worth. He
had such a start that he got away; but he didn’t dare stop to pick up
the cap. And now, I say, we have him where we want him.”

“You bet we have!”

“That’s hitting the nail on the head!”

“Gee! but it was a cowardly job!”

So spoke the Trojan, Step and Boyd. Poke warmed to his theme, after the
manner of orators, encouraged by applause.

“We’ve got him where we want him, and we’ll put him through the works.
I tell you, he’ll be mighty sorry before this thing is ended. Why, he
ought to be arrested and sent to jail!”

“H-m-m-m!” It was a murmur tinged with disapproval, which Poke did not
fail to perceive.

“Wait a minute, fellows!” he said hastily. “I know what you’re
thinking, and I guess you’re right. We can take care of this case
ourselves. We will, too! If the club can’t defend itself, it ought to
go out of business.”

There was another murmur, all approval.

“It may have been Step’s scrap in the beginning, but it’s our scrap
now,” Poke went on. “It’s a club affair. That stone was thrown at the
bunch--at Sam, for instance, as much as at Step.”

The Shark grunted. “Huh! Be accurate, Poke, be accurate! It wasn’t
thrown at Step at all. He was out of range--across the room from the
rest of us. He wasn’t in sight from the window.”

“Eh? What’s that?”

“It was the fact--come to think of it,” Step himself admitted. “I
remember I’d left the crowd.”

“Humph! Don’t see that that makes any difference,” argued Poke.

“It doesn’t--in one way,” said the Shark. “In another, it does. It
means that the person who chucked that stone wasn’t especially after
Step. No doubt he took a good look into the room before he let drive.
And, as I recall the position of each of us, Sam stood where he must
have been the real bull’s-eye of the target.”

“But what diff----”

The Shark did not let Poke finish the query. “The difference between
getting things straight or crooked,” he rapped out. “How can you solve
a problem----”

“Oh, hang mathematics!” Poke interrupted, in turn. “Cut ’em out! This
isn’t a recitation; it’s a row! Let’s hear what Sam has to say.”

Sam had been keeping silent, but with growing difficulty. He was, as
we know, naturally impulsive, and still a beginner in the practice
of the policy of Safety First. Moreover, he was not a fellow of the
sort to make ready excuse for attacks which smacked of cowardice or
treachery; and his patience had been sorely tried by the series of
depredations about his home. While his clubmates had debated, he had
been considering not only the stone-throwing but also the earlier
instances of what he was now sure was somebody’s revenge. The cap
apparently settled the question of identity. Likewise, the Shark’s
observation regarding the target had its weight. Sam struggled to keep
his temper, but it was like a case of bottling steam in a boiler and
fanning the fire beneath. When you treat a boiler so, there is likely
to be an explosion.

“What have I to say?” The words seemed to force themselves from his
lips. “You fellows don’t dream how much I could say! This thing
to-night is only a link in a chain.”

The others stared at him in amazement.

“Link--link in a chain?” Step repeated.

“Just that! A chain of meannesses! Listen!” And Sam went on to describe
briefly, but forcefully, the persecution to which he believed he had
been subjected. “And now we’ve had the stoning,” he added. “There is
one explanation, and only one. Tom Orkney has dropped Step and taken me
on. He hates me more for interfering than he hates Step for squabbling
with him. And just as that’s the only explanation, there’s just one way
to handle the case--and that’s for me to settle with Tom Orkney. And I
will--don’t you worry!”

None of his hearers took his words lightly. All were ready to consider
them very gravely. Here, indeed, was an issue for a youthful court of
honor; and it behooves such courts, young or old, to pass judgment in
all solemnity.

“Well, I guess you’re entitled,” said Poke slowly.

The others, with one exception, nodded assent. The Shark looked
unconvinced.

“Talking about chains,” he remarked, “you mustn’t forget the old rule:
the chain’s no stronger than its weakest link. And there is a link
that may be weak. I don’t say it is, but I do say it may be.”

“Rats!” snapped Step.

The Shark wheeled to face him. “Rats nothing! What’s the record--the
school record--for the shot put?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The record. What is it?”

“Oh, thirty or thirty-five feet for the twelve-pound shot.”

The Shark frowned. “Confound it! but can’t you chaps make anything
exact? ‘Thirty or thirty-five feet’! How’s anybody to make computations
with all unknown quantities?”

“What are you trying to compute?”

The Shark juggled the stone, which he still held. “Humph! This weighs
more than twelve pounds, I’ll bet--may run up to fifteen,” said he.
“But what am I figuring on? Why, the amount of force required to send
it through the arc this stone described.”

“Twelve to fifteen pounds!” jeered Step. “Seems to me you’re furnishing
some of the unknown quantities yourself.”

“I am,” said the Shark. “I admit it. I also admit that I can’t reach
satisfactory results from such data. But the results I do get--subject
to revision, of course--make me doubt that Tom Orkney could have done
the job. When I have the stone weighed, and when I measure the distance
across the room, and add a good estimate of the distance the thrower
stood from the window, I believe I can plot a curve----”

A chorus of shouts interrupted him. The non-mathematical members of the
club would have none of such follies. Evidence? Wasn’t the cap evidence
enough to convict Orkney?

Stoutly the Shark maintained that one should not put too great faith in
circumstantial evidence.

“What! You’d put more in your old curves and calculations?” cried Step.

“Every time!” vowed the Shark.

Sam cut short the discussion. “Look here, fellows!” he said sharply.
“I’m going to thrash Orkney, and there’s no more to be said about it.”

“Well, thrash ahead!” growled the Shark. “I don’t object to the general
proposition; but I am pointing out that you may be wrong as to your
reason for thrashing him.”

“I’ll risk that!” cried Sam hotly. “And I’ll even the score at the
first chance I get.”

This decision, warmly admired and praised by the club, seemed to be
in a fair way for accomplishment on Monday when Sam, walking alone to
school, met Orkney at a street corner.

Meditation had cooled his anger, but had not lessened his determination
to have a speedy accounting. He put himself in Orkney’s path, and gave
him monosyllabic greeting.

“Huh!” It must be confessed that there was a distinctly challenging
note in Sam’s growl.

“Huh!” responded Orkney. In fairness it is to be stated that he
betrayed no sign of anxiety; and instead of halting, stepped aside and
passed the boy holding the center of the walk.

Sam turned, and overtook him in three long strides. Then they moved on
together, but with a space of three or four feet between them.

Orkney gazed straight before him. The sullenness of his expression may
have been a trifle more marked than usual. Sam, studying him from the
corner of an eye, decided that his enemy was merely playing a waiting
game.

There was a moment’s silence. Then said Sam, very grimly:

“This thing has got to stop--see?”

The tone was more impressive than the words. Orkney stopped, and
inspected the other coolly.

“Has, eh? Well, what might ‘this thing’ be?” he inquired.

“You know well enough!”

“Guess again. I don’t.”

“You do.”

A dull red showed in Orkney’s cheeks. “That’s the same thing as telling
me I don’t tell the truth.”

“Does sound like it.”

“Mean to call me a liar?”

“Yes--if you say you don’t know.”

Orkney’s fists clenched; but Sam, warily watching, saw that the enemy
kept himself in hand.

Again there was a pause. Sam broke it:

“There’s no use in your trying to put up a bluff. It won’t go. You
understand perfectly what I mean.”

[Illustration: “YOU’RE LOOKING FOR TROUBLE”]

“I understand that you’re looking for trouble,” said Orkney slowly.
“That’s nothing new with you and your crowd--you think you own the
earth, and you’d like to fence in this part of it for your own
stamping grounds. You had things your own way till I came along, and
you’ve always been down on me because I wouldn’t tail on after your
procession. You’d rather interfere with me than eat, any of you. Why,
just the other day Step Jones----”

“Leave Step out of this!” Sam interposed. He had not been able to
reconcile himself wholly to Step’s performance; and Orkney having found
a weak spot in his armor, his tone was more belligerent than ever.
“You’re dealing with me and not with Jones this time. And Step doesn’t
beat dogs, and cut clothes-lines, and heave rocks through windows.”

“Well, who does?”

“You do!” roared Sam.

Orkney pulled up. He faced his accuser, and his eyes did not fall
before Sam’s.

“Parker, you’re talking like a wild man,” he said.

“Wild, am I? Not much! I’ve got proof!”

Orkney shrugged his shoulders. “It’s plain enough you’re looking for
a fight, and don’t care how you get it. Now, I tell you, in the first
place, that all this stuff you’re hinting and insinuating is gibberish
to me; and in the second place that if you want fight I’ll give you all
you’re looking for and more, too.”

“Now?” demanded Sam.

“No,” said Orkney, and grinned a queer, savage grin. “What’s more, you
know why I won’t fight now. It’s my day to speak for the Lester prize,
and a pretty chance I’d have for it, wouldn’t I, standing up before the
school with a black eye or a cut lip? You talk about bluffs! Where’s
there a bigger bluff than asking a fellow to fight when you know he
can’t take you on? Or maybe this is your game: You’re scheming to
batter me up so that one of your gang can carry off the Lester, eh?”

“I hadn’t thought of the prize-speaking!”

“Well, I’ve been thinking of it for some time. And I don’t propose to
let you ruin my chances.”

Sam fell back a pace. There was an element of reason in the other’s
contention, which he could not ignore.

“Well, if I let you off now----” he began.

Orkney’s grin was sardonic. “‘Let me off’ is good, but we’ll also
let that pass. I’m busy this morning, as I’ve explained, but after
that--well, you can suit your own convenience in picking a time for
taking a good licking.”

“This afternoon, then----” stormed Sam.

“Oh, suit yourself!” said Orkney curtly, and marched off.




CHAPTER XIII NOT ON THE PROGRAM


Sam, following his enemy at a more moderate pace, was burdened by a
peculiar sense of helplessness. He was troubled by no doubts of the
justice of his cause; but he was annoyed and perplexed by the obstacles
Fate threw in his way. They were the harder to consider philosophically
because he was quite sure that he was obeying his new rule of Safety
First, and that Orkney’s guilt was clearly established. At the same
time he had to admit that Tom had offered valid grounds for delaying
combat. Altogether the case struck him as one of difficult application
of entirely sound principles.

As he turned a corner, however, he forgot Orkney for a little; for
within a dozen yards of him he beheld two men in conversation. And one
of the men was Major Bates. The other was Peter Groche.

Sam almost halted. He gazed in surprise at the two. The Major had
never appeared to be straighter, or fiercer, or more bristling; while
Groche’s slouch was never more pronounced. The ne’er-do-well was
listening sulkily to the Major’s very energetic remarks, occasionally
growling a brief reply to the veteran.

As it chanced, Sam had not met the Major since the night he had made
confession. A glance was enough to show that he had nearly recovered
from the effects of his wounds; and the ear testified that the vigor of
his speech was in no wise abated.

After a second’s hesitation Sam advanced. As he neared the men, Groche,
seeming, of a sudden, to catch sight of him, wheeled and shuffled off,
growling as he went. The Major swished his cane, as if he regretted
that it might not descend upon the retreating legs. Then he, too, saw
the boy, and the severity of his expression lessened a trifle.

“Ah, young man!” he said. “Ah, good-morning!”

“Good-morning, sir,” said Sam.

The Major tapped the sidewalk smartly with his cane. “I’m out of
hospital. Am I to regard myself as in receipt of your felicitations?”

“’Deed you are, sir!” Sam assured him with unfeigned warmth.

The Major’s eyes twinkled. “Mutually satisfactory state of things, eh?
I’m pleased myself. Fact is, I’m so overflowing with good will this
morning that I’ve been trying to improve that vagabond.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sam.

“By Jove! but I fancy I made it clear even to his befuddled wits that
there is no profit in persistently remaining a social liability. I
warned him that if he didn’t mend his ways he’d end in state’s prison.
Big, hulking brute like that’s liable, some time, to commit a felony.”

Sam glanced at the retreating Groche. The fellow _was_ big and hulking,
and brutish as well--an ugly customer, in short.

“Has he been bothering you again, sir?”

“No,” answered the Major. “I rather anticipated some of his
characteristic attentions, but he has quite neglected me. Not that I
complain--certainly not! Only I took occasion to point out to him the
exceeding unwisdom of again annoying me. Odd, too, how he took the
advice. Leered at me, and mumbled, but made no distinct threats. But
I must not detain you, young man. You, I infer, are on your way to
school?”

“Yes, sir,” said Sam again.

“Then proceed. A moment, though!” The Major’s bushy eyebrows met in
a frown, which wholly lacked ferocity. “Your holidays are at hand, I
believe. Some day, when you’re at leisure, I should be glad to show you
my modest collection of weapons of war and the chase. Ought to interest
you, as a budding sportsman with a promising record of large game!”

The Major’s eyes were twinkling once more. Sam blushed hotly.

“I’ll be very glad to come, sir,” he said.

“Then I have the honor to wish you a very good morning,” quoth the
Major; and they parted in friendly fashion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Both Major Bates and Peter Groche soon lost first place in Sam’s
consideration. The school session promptly put the Orkney affair to the
fore.

The Lester prize for declamation was one of the great honors of the
course, and competition always was keen. The contest covered a full
term, two boys and two girls entering the lists each Monday. Usually
they were seniors, elocution being part of the required work of the
final year, but sometimes juniors volunteered, often with a notion of
“working off” the requirement ahead of time, but occasionally with a
hope of winning.

There could be no doubt that Tom Orkney did his best to win. As it
happened, he was fortunate in his competitors. The other boy was a
senior, who took the platform simply because he had to take it, and who
raced through his selection with an eye single to ending the ordeal
in a minimum of time. Then two girls performed conscientiously but
ineffectively. And then came Orkney, junior and volunteer.

Tom had chosen an ancient favorite “speaking piece,” so ancient,
indeed, that a giggle ran through the hall when the principal
announced, “The Parting of Marmion and Douglas.” But the merriment
quickly died, as the boy swung into Scott’s stirring verse.

“Good work!” was the involuntary and whispered tribute of Step Jones,
who sat beside Sam. “Awfully good work, confound him!”

Sam nodded. Orkney was revealing unexpected dramatic fire; and,
unpopular as he was with his audience, was capturing its admiration.
One might suspect that he had had professional coaching, but one could
not deny that it had been worth while.

There was loud applause--not the customary ripple of hand-clapping but
a spontaneous and hearty demonstration--and Tom was smiling when he
made his bow to his schoolmates, and another bow to the principal, and
came down the steps from the stage. It was not a pleasing smile, for
there was in it more than a trace of supercilious triumph.

“Hang the chump! Look at the smirk of him!” complained Step.

Sam made no answer. Orkney was approaching, and for an instant the eyes
of the rivals met. Sam’s expression did not change, but the other’s
smile lost the little charm it had. Sam found it bitterly taunting; it
seemed to say to him, “This was what you schemed to prevent, eh? Well,
you didn’t do it, did you?”

Step drove an elbow into his ribs. “You can’t spoil that mug by
pounding it! Say, though! When are you going to get at it?”

“Soon as I can,” said Sam simply.

“Date with him?” whispered Step eagerly.

“Not exactly.”

The classes were rising to march out of the hall, but Step found time
to make a suggestion.

“Maybe you can catch him down at the pond this afternoon. They say the
ice is at last strong enough to hold.”

“I’ll be there,” Sam promised.

Mild as the season had been, the temperature had been falling steadily,
if slowly; and the skim of ice on the big mill-pond on the outskirts
of Plainville had thickened until it had been for some days in rather
perilous use by venturesome skaters. Now, however, Sam believed it
was reasonably safe; and when he descended the slope to the pond, its
surface was dotted with swiftly gliding figures.

Directly in front of him a lively game of hockey was in progress. To
the right, and safely removed from the rushes of the players, were boys
and girls, skating singly, or in pairs, or in long lines, hand in
hand. To the left, near the dam, were a few youngsters.

Sam shook his head as he observed them. The ice always was thinner
there than in other parts of the pond, and there was seldom a season
in which somebody did not regret rashness in straying too close to
air-holes. At a time like this there was more or less danger anywhere
in the neighborhood of the dam.

“It ought to be roped off,” he told himself; but as there appeared to
be no means to carry out this precaution he sat down on the bank and
began to put on his skates. This he did leisurely, pausing now and
then to run his glance over the skaters. At a little distance up the
shore some of the larger boys were building a fire, and were having
trouble, their fuel consisting chiefly of long boards torn from an
abandoned ice-house. Here a little crowd clustered. Sam thought he had
a glimpse of Orkney, but was not certain. As he tightened his last
strap, however, and stood up, Step came along, arms and legs flying in
an effort to recover the partly lost art of the Dutch roll. At sight
of Sam the lanky youth went through some extraordinary contortions,
checked his speed, and glided alongside his friend.

“Say! It’s all right--he’s here!” was his greeting.

“Who’s here?” asked Sam, quite unnecessarily.

“Humph! Who you s’pose? Deacon Pender?”

“No,” said Sam coolly. “I don’t imagine you were thinking of the
deacon.”

“You bet I wasn’t!” rapped Step. “I was thinking of Tom Orkney.”

Sam peered at the crowd by the fire. “Queer I can’t make him out,” he
remarked.

“He’s down at the lower end--along with those kids.”

“Oh!”

Step was grinning. “Oh, he tried to butt into the hockey game, but the
fellows gave him the cold shoulder. So he had to flock by himself till
he saw the young ’uns. He’s with ’em now, teasing and tormenting ’em, I
reckon.”

Sam struck out with the experimental feeling of one on runners for the
first time in months; made a wide circle, and came back to Step.

“Bit rusty, but I’ll get the swing all right in an hour or so,” he
reported.

Step brought him back to the previous question, so to speak.

“What do you want? Don’t mean to fight him on skates, do you?”

“Certainly not,” said Sam testily. “What put such a notion in your
head?”

“Well, what are you here for?” demanded Step pointedly.

“Don’t expect to have a fight before all this crowd, do you?”

“Seems to me you’re getting awful fussy.”

“I am, if ‘fussy’ consists in objecting to scrapping with half the town
rubbering.”

Step looked hurt. “Don’t you want anybody but yourself to have any fun?”

“I don’t intend to entertain Plainville in a body.”

Step’s expression was bewildered. “Say--say, you ain’t crawling, are
you?” he queried.

The suspicion stung Sam’s pride. “Crawling? Not on your life! I’m
looking for Tom Orkney, and when I find him I’ll ask him to walk back
in the woods with me--he’ll know what for. And you can come along, and
one or two of the others, but----”

The cloud vanished from Step’s brow. “Oh, that’s all right!” he said
heartily. “Can’t have a mob trailing along, of course. But I say!
There’s Orkney now--just shooting out from behind the point. He’s
chasing one of the kids.”

Sam’s glance followed the direction of Step’s extended arm.

“Yes, that’s Orkney, fast enough. But what’s he doing?”

“Pestering the youngster!” snapped Step. “Can’t you see? And I declare,
if it isn’t Little Perrine he’s worrying!”

Sam watched the swiftly moving figures, one short and slender, the
other tall and stout. Little Perrine, barely in the lead, seemed to be
hard pressed, for he dodged frequently without being able to throw off
his pursuer.

Suddenly Step cried out sharply: “The miserable bully! Look, Sam! he’s
driving the kid right down to the dam, where the ice won’t hold him for
a minute!”

“Confound it all!” fumed Sam. “Why won’t people think of Safety First?
Why won’t----”

There he broke off, aghast at the catastrophe he beheld, but Step’s
voice rose shrilly:

“Great Scott! it’s happened! They’re in--both in!”

With appalling swiftness the ice had yielded beneath the weight of
the two, and Little Perrine, vanishing as if through a trap-door in a
stage, had been followed almost instantly by Orkney.

Step started to the rescue, striking out wildly and shouting as he
raced down the pond at top speed. Sam, about to join in the dash,
checked himself. He knew well enough how the thin ice near the dam,
once broken, would crack and crumble under even slight pressure.
“Safety First!” was the thought which flashed upon his brain; safety
not so much for himself as for the pair struggling in the water.

Other skaters were speeding after Step: but Sam, turning, hurried to
the heap of boards near the fire. He caught up the longest plank on
which he could lay hands, and skated down the pond with all the speed
his burden permitted. Before him other would-be rescuers, halted by
the widening circle of open water, were moving about aimlessly, if
pluckily, getting in one another’s way, and risking a general break-up
of the ice under their weight. One youth, indeed, had slipped over the
edge, but luckily had been dragged back, suffering no more serious
consequences than a drenching to the waist.

Orkney was clutching desperately with one hand at the crumbling edge of
the ice. At first Sam saw nothing of Little Perrine, but as he dropped
his board and thrust its end over the water, he had a glimpse of the
boy’s head, pressed close to Orkney’s breast. So Tom, having caused the
disaster, was doing what he could to save an innocent victim! Such was
Sam’s belief, and the belief of Step and the rest.

The long plank swung nearer and nearer to Orkney. He grasped it, drew
himself forward, threw an arm over it; his other arm was still about
Little Perrine. Sam, kneeling on the board with Step anchoring its end
to the thicker ice, got a firm grip on Orkney’s coat collar. Then came
the tug of war. It lasted for thrilling seconds, of which Sam was to
have only confused memories, in which were mingled the ominous cracking
of the ice, the shouting of the spectators, his own cries of warning
to the crowd to move back, Orkney’s struggles, the ghastly pallor of
Little Perrine’s face. Slowly, by inches, they gained. Then with a
report as sharp as that of a pistol a foot or two of the edge gave
way; Orkney dropped back till his shoulders were submerged; Sam’s arms
were plunged in water to the elbows. Then Tom made a mighty effort.
Sam exerted all his strength. What had been lost was recovered and
retained. Then there was another clear gain; and, in an instant more,
Orkney and Little Perrine had been dragged to safety.

Tom was able to raise himself on an elbow, but Little Perrine lay
unconscious and motionless.




CHAPTER XIV SENT TO COVENTRY


It was a disagreeable morning, dully lowering and overcast, with now
and then a flurry of snowflakes bearing promise of a heavier fall to
come, but a crowd of boys and girls lingered in the school yard.

There seemed to be a curious constraint upon everybody. There was
no shouting, no practical joking, no horse-play; but there was much
low-toned talk in the groups, in which the classes appeared to have
gathered unconsciously. Now and then, when late comers hove in sight,
there was a stir of expectancy, and necks were craned as eager glances
were directed toward the gate. Sam Parker, arriving with Poke Green,
was greeted by a murmur of applause; and, flushed with embarrassment,
made his way to a party of his chums, who chanced to be standing near
the steps leading to the big door.

“Come on--let’s go in!” he said. “What’s everybody waiting for?”

Step Jones laughed harshly. “Ho, ho! This is a reception committee,
Sam--reception committee and committee of the whole. It’s for T.
Orkney’s benefit.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Sam protested.

“Humph! I may be, but if I am, I’m not lonesome.”

“That makes the thing all the worse.”

“Can’t be much worse than it is.”

Sam shook his head. “Oh, be fair!” he urged. “Remember, Orkney held on
to Little Perrine like a good fellow.”

“Yes--after he’d driven him into the water!” growled Step.

“But----”

“But it was like locking the door after the horse was stolen,” Poke put
in.

“Right you are!” contributed the Trojan.

“Well, what’s the latest news?” asked Sam. “How is Perrine this
morning?”

“Mighty badly off, I hear,” Step told him.

“Delirious all night,” added the Trojan.

Sam looked perturbed, and with reason. “Little” Perrine, as the boy was
known to his mates, was a delicate chap, clever at his books--he was a
high school freshman at ten--but weak physically and of an extremely
nervous temperament; just the sort of lad, in short, to suffer most
from such an experience as he had undergone in the icy water. Moreover,
he was the pet of the school, and any harm done him would be bitterly
resented by the pupils. Indeed, the case promised to go hard with the
unpopular Orkney, even if more encouraging tidings were received from
those caring for one regarded generally as the victim of his malicious
pursuit.

The Shark came hurrying up the walk, carrying a great bundle of books.
He nodded at his clubmates, but did not halt. Poke chuckled softly as
he passed them.

“There’s cold-blooded science for you!” said he. “Much the Shark cares
for a trifling matter of life or death when he’s got a real juicy lot
of equations on hand! Why, he put in all yesterday afternoon figuring
away with the principal, and now he’s going to have another crack at
him before the bell rings. I met him last night, and asked him what he
was up to, and what do you suppose he said?”

“Give it up,” said the Trojan.

“So do I,” quoth Step.

“Trajectories!” cried Poke with all the scorn he could command.

Step rubbed his chin. “Well, it takes all sorts of people to fill up
the world. But there are mighty few like the Shark, I’ll bet you!...
Hulloo, though! There’s Jennie Bruce. She lives next door to the
Perrines, and she can tell us the latest.”

Others had the same thought, and crowded about the girl who had just
entered the yard. There was a moment’s waiting, and then an angry
murmur ran through the throng.

“Whew! That means he’s worse!” Step inferred.

Jennie Bruce broke through the press. She came straight to Sam.

“You should have heard first of all,” she declared. “You pulled both of
them out, you know.”

“I hope it isn’t bad news,” said Sam.

“It’s bad enough. No; Little Perrine isn’t dead. He’s better this
morning, but the doctor says he may not be able to be out for a week.
But that isn’t it, at all!”

“Isn’t what?”

“What I’ve got to tell you, Sam Parker. It’s about last night--and
almost all through the night. Poor Little Perrine was out of his head,
raving. He seemed to be going over and over it, and then beginning
again and going all through it.”

“That is, through the accident?”

Jennie’s eyes flashed. “Accident! You know well enough it was something
else. Oh, well, perhaps it was partly accident, but it was something
else, too. Don’t stop me! I don’t call it all accident when the poor
little fellow was just driven out upon the thin ice! And while he was
delirious he kept crying out, ‘Don’t let him get me! Stop him! Don’t
let Tom Orkney get me!’ Why, we could hear him over at our house. It
was awful!”

“Gee, but it must have been tough!” cried Step.

“Tough!” For a moment Jennie regarded Master Jones half pityingly.
“Mercy! but you boys have weak ways of putting things! If you’d heard
him shrieking----”

“Hold on!” the Trojan broke in excitedly. “Here comes Orkney!”

There may have been method in the circumstance that Orkney was reaching
the school grounds but a few minutes before the opening hour. Perhaps
he had hoped that most of his mates would be within the building when
he arrived, but he did not falter when his glance fell upon the crowd.
Of its temper he could have had little doubt, though probably he had
not foreseen the hostility of the reception which awaited him.

Three or four senior girls near the gate deliberately turned their
backs to him. As many senior boys looked him full in the face with no
sign of recognition.

Orkney squared his shoulders, and raised his head. Looking straight
before him, he walked up the path. No one addressed him, and he spoke
to nobody till he came to Sam.

“Parker!” Tom’s voice was low and not quite steady.

“Well?” said Sam coldly.

There was a little pause. Orkney was meeting Sam’s searching gaze
without flinching, but his sallow face had taken on a grayish pallor.

“Parker, I’ve got something to say to you. And I want to say it now.
Yesterday you yanked me out of a bad fix. It was a great job you did.
I’d like to have you know I appreciate it, even if I don’t seem to be
able to say much more than ‘Thank you!’”

“Oh, that’s all right!” said Sam, hastily and, it may be, gruffly.
“Don’t bother your head about it. Forget it!”

“Can’t!” growled Orkney, gruff in his turn. “That brings me to
something else I’ve got to say and you’ve got to hear. That other
matter--you know?”

Sam nodded. The “other matter,” of course, was the engagement to fight.

“This--this is harder to--to get right.” Orkney plainly found
explanation difficult. “You put something up to me, and I said yes. I
meant yes; suited me. But you’ve complicated the situation. When you
pulled me out of the pond you tied my hands--don’t you see that?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You did, all the same. I won’t go into details, with all these
long-ears rubbering; but you don’t need details, anyway.”

The youths referred to as “long-ears” had the grace to retire a pace
or two, but their liking for their critic was not heightened.

“I get your drift--guess I do,” said Sam. “But here! You’re free to
forget yesterday’s business. Wish you would!”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t--if I could!” There was an ugly gleam in
Orkney’s eyes. “That’s out of the question, though. So my hands are
tied, as I tell you.”

“They needn’t be.”

Orkney shook his head. “It’s all very well for you to take that
attitude, but I can’t. I’m in your debt--deep in it. So there are
things I can’t do that I’d mighty well like to do.” And again the ugly
gleam was in evidence.

A wave of the old anger seemed to sweep over Sam.

“Go ahead and try ’em, then!” he cried savagely.

Two spots of red, of a sudden, burned in Orkney’s cheeks, but he kept
his self-control.

“There’s no use talking--I can see that,” he said grimly; turned, and
marched alone up the steps to the great door.

The decisions of youth are decisions of a drumhead court-martial, to
be carried out on the spot.

The school had but one verdict to give in the case of Thomas Orkney.
As he disappeared in the corridor, there was a chorus of hisses and
groans.




CHAPTER XV THE CLUB ENDORSES ITSELF


The promise of the snow flurries had been borne out in full measure,
and now the country about Plainville was covered by a thick, white
mantle. Real winter had come at last, for after the storm there had
been a sharp drop in temperature, forecasting not only a “white
Christmas” but also holidays brisk and invigorating. And Friday night
had arrived, with its relief from school cares, and the Safety First
Club was in full session. All the members were in attendance, and all
were discussing the most sensational bit of news the town had enjoyed
since the mysterious wounding of Major Bates.

Tom Orkney had run away!

The fact was established beyond doubt or denial. The boy was gone,
nobody knew whither. There was, to be sure, a somewhat popular theory
that he had fled to a neighboring large city; but the theory was based
on conjecture, and wholly lacked convincing proof.

For forty-eight hours Plainville had been talking about his
disappearance, but the topic had lost nothing of its interest. At the
club Poke held the floor, and submitted his philosophic view of the
case to his friends.

“Orkney’s a stubborn brute, as you fellows very well know. When he
makes up his mind, it’s made up, and it stays made up. He’s bolted, and
he’ll take precious good care not to come back right away. Where do I
think he’s gone? I don’t know, but I’m sure he’s gone far enough. And
if you insist on having my personal opinion, I think it’s good riddance
of bad rubbish.”

“Humph! Haven’t seen me shedding the sorrowful tear, have you?”
demanded Step.

“I haven’t seen any tears,” said Poke. “Why, Orkney hasn’t a friend
left, after the way he treated Little Perrine! Don’t you remember how
everybody cut him that last day in school?”

“Must have been pretty hard for him,” Sam observed thoughtfully.

“I don’t believe a soul spoke to him,” Poke went on. “That is, none of
the fellows or the girls did. The teachers, of course, had to; but they
said just as little as they could. Why, he was called up but once, and
that was in the Greek class.”

Step moved uneasily. “Say, though! That was a star translation Orkney
made! Jiminy! but he must have had an iron nerve to keep his wits about
him, with all hands doing their best to show how they despised him.”

“Just what it was--case of nerve!” cried Poke. “Bet you I know just
how he felt. He was saying to himself, ‘I’ll show this gang that they
can’t rattle me; I’ll show ’em that I don’t give a whoop for their
opinion. Let ’em hiss me! I’ll go through this day and prove that they
can’t even rattle me.’ And that is just what he did. And when school
was dismissed, he walked out as coolly as if he didn’t understand that
nobody would travel with him for love or money. You know he’d been
building up a sort of crowd of his own? Well, every one of the bunch
quit him when the pinch came. But he kept a stiff upper lip right to
the end!”

“He surely did,” admitted the Trojan, with a touch of reluctant
admiration.

“But all through it he must have been planning what he’d do. My notion
is that when he went down the school steps he was saying to himself
that it was for the last time. He’d been scheming out what would come
next. In the afternoon he got together the few things he meant to take
along. He ate supper with his folks as usual. Then he slipped out of
the house. And that’s the last anybody in Plainville knows certainly
about Tom Orkney.”

From his corner the Shark shot curt comment: “Big mistake he made! Case
of quitting!”

“How do you figure that out?” asked Herman Boyd.

“Ran away under fire, didn’t he?”

“But he’d stood the fire all day.”

“Umph! That wasn’t enough.”

Poke waved a hand. “Listen, you fellows! I’ve been meditating on that
part of it. And I’ve doped it out this way: Orkney had pride enough to
carry him through one day--pride and nerve are the same thing with him,
I reckon. But when it came to facing other days, and other days, and
then some more--why, that’s where a chap would have to have the backing
of a clean conscience. And there were all the tricks he’d played on
Sam, and the chance he took of killing one of us with that big boulder,
and the dirty deal he gave Little Perrine--why, his conscience must be
as spotted--as spotted as an old blotter!”

“So that’s your diagram?”

“Well, as I say, that’s the way I see it.”

The Shark’s lip curled. “Huh! Easy to see what you hope’s true!”

“Well, what’s your mathematical calculation, old Dry-as-Dust?”

“Oh, go on!” snapped the Shark. “You’re the lecturer.”

Poke needed no urging. “Well, I tell you he’d made up his mind to
beat it, and he did. And he got away, all right. You know his aunt
telegraphed, and telephoned, and called in the police, and offered a
hundred-dollar reward; but there was no clue anywhere. Hard luck for
her that Tom’s father is out West! They say she’s almost crazy.”

“And Tom’s mother is away, too,” said the Trojan.

“Yes; she’s visiting down South. Those are things, though, we’ve
nothing to do with.”

“That’s a queer way to put it,” grumbled the Shark.

“Not at all,” Poke insisted. “You don’t get my point, which is that
we may not be responsible for those things, but we are responsible
for others. One of them is that we’re the fellows who got on to
Orkney’s meannesses, and that Sam here promised him a thrashing and a
showing-up. Then, somehow, I can’t help feeling that Sam, in fishing
Orkney and Little Perrine out of the pond, helped to bring things
to a head. But from the very first--from the time Orkney came to
Plainville--it has been our crowd that blocked him, that took the shine
off him. The Shark downed him in ‘math,’ and Step made a monkey of him
in Greek; but, most of all, we--this club--kept him from bossing the
class. And for that, I believe, we ought to be proud to be responsible.”

“Some speech, Poke!” cried Herman Boyd.

“Shouldn’t wonder if there were something in the idea,” contributed the
Trojan.

“Thanks, kind friends!” chuckled Poke; but quickly grew serious again.
“In a nutshell, my notion is this: If Tom Orkney has been driven out of
town, we’ve driven him--and a good job, too, from first to last!”

Two or three heads nodded vigorous assent; but there was a little
pause. Step broke it.

“Sam, you’re keeping mighty quiet. What’s your opinion?”

Sam hesitated. “My opinion? I--why, I don’t know that I’d go quite as
far as Poke goes, but----”

“But I’m right, in the main,” Poke insisted.

“Well, I guess we’ve been justified in everything we’ve done,” Sam told
him. “I know I’ve tried to be fair. And, certainly, there has been
evidence enough.”

“You’re right there!” cried the Trojan.

“Every time!” quoth Step.

“I vote aye,” said Herman Boyd.

“Well, everybody knows where I stand,” declared Poke. “We’re unanimous.”

“Hold on a minute!” The Shark rose from his chair, and came forward.
“You fellows are talking about justification and evidence, eh? I
suppose you’re sure Tom Orkney threw the stone through that window,
for instance?”

“If he didn’t, who did?” demanded Step hotly.

“Answer my question first.”

“Certainly we’re sure it was Orkney.”

“I’m not, then,” said the Shark. “Fact is, I’m practically sure it
wasn’t he.”

“Oh, come off your perch!”

“I won’t. You can call it a perch if you wish; but I know what I’m
standing on, and that’s more than you can claim.”

“Give the infant prodigy and foster-brother of the Binomial Theorem his
inning!” sang out Poke. “Go to it, old Four Eyes!”

The Shark, in no wise disturbed by the raillery, produced and unfolded
a big sheet of paper, bearing a curious diagram and what appeared to be
an elaborate calculation.

“The problem may be stated thus,” he began. “Given a weight of fifteen
pounds, seven and nine-tenths ounces, what is the force required to
propel it for a distance of thirty-five feet?”

“Thirty-five feet? How do you get that?” queried Step.

“The table stood eighteen feet from the window,” the Shark explained.
“The table-top, which the stone struck, was two and a half feet from
the floor. I estimate that the stone, if it had not struck the table,
would have traveled at least five feet farther. Then it was thrown from
a point at least twelve feet from the building--if you take the trouble
to inspect the ground you will see that the thrower must have been so
far from the wall to have secure footing. Now then, eighteen and five
and twelve make thirty-five.”

“Go on!” urged Step.

“We have the weight of the object moved, and the distance moved. To
aid us in plotting the curve of flight of the object, we have three
known points, or, rather, two known points and one which can be closely
approximated. We know the height from the floor at which the stone
broke the window-pane--seven feet, nine inches. The table-top, as I
have said, was thirty inches from the floor. The approximated point is
the distance from the ground (or, rather, from the level of the floor
projected for the calculation twelve feet beyond the window), at which
the stone began its journey. This distance was not less than five feet
nor more than six, allowing for a rise in the ground, and assuming that
propulsion began about on a level with the thrower’s shoulder. But
whether it was five or six----”

“Hold on! Hold on!” cried Step. “You’ve got me going!”

“Huh! Can’t be made clearer, can it?” expostulated the Shark. “But if
you’ll look at the diagram----”

Step threw up his hands in burlesqued horror. “No, no! Take it away! I
can’t bear the sight of the thing out of school hours!”

“Never mind about the pretty picture, Shark!” chimed in the Trojan.

“No; if we follow the tune, it’ll have to be by ear,” chuckled Poke.

The Shark shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I didn’t believe you fellows
had the sense to understand the process,” he said frankly. “Still, I
thought I’d give you a chance. But if I’ve got to jump to the result,
I’ll tell you that, having secured my data, I proved conclusively that
the stone was thrown by somebody with a lot more muscle than Tom
Orkney has. Why, the low trajectory----”

Two or three of the boys were grinning. “There, there! Don’t call
names!” jeered Herman Boyd.

The Shark’s glance went from one to another of his friends.

“Oh, well,” he said resignedly, “I guess it’s useless. Only you may be
interested to know that the principal went over my work and verified
it.”

“What! Didn’t tell him, did you?”

“No; of course not. Had a supposititious case, naturally.”

“Oh!” said two or three, in relieved chorus.

The Shark put the paper back in his pocket. “All right,” he said. “You
haven’t disappointed me. I know your limitations.”

But Poke was disposed to argument. “Look here, Shark! You’re banking
too much on your rules and formulas. Remember the professors who said a
curved ball couldn’t be pitched, and proved it--on paper?”

“Different case--nothing to do with this one.”

“But you overlook the evidence of the cap,” declared Step.

“Bother the cap!” said the Shark, and snapped his fingers. “Doesn’t
interest me. It might have got there a dozen ways. What I’m trying to
tell you is something that’s absolutely established--mathematically
established. And you won’t listen!”

“We might--if you’d just figure out who except Tom Orkney would have
done the job.”

“Hang it, I’m no fortune-teller!” growled the Shark.

Again Step appealed to Sam. “What’s your notion? Don’t you still think
the club is all right, and Orkney is all wrong?”

“I think,” said Sam, honestly and with full conviction, “I think
the weight of the evidence is against him, in spite of the Shark’s
calculations. I’ve tried not to be hasty----”

“That’s right--Safety First!” cried Poke.

“And so the Safety First Club is all right!” chimed in Step jubilantly.




CHAPTER XVI SAM HAS A RUDE AWAKENING


“Wal, I dunno. Once there was an old feller that complained the eels
didn’t squirm’s lively as they uster when he was a boy; but, somehow,
I reckoned his memory was playin’ tricks with him. It’s the same way
with the weather. All the oldest inhabitants’ll keep on tellin’ you the
climate’s changin’, and losin’ its grip; but I guess, fust and last,
there ain’t much difference. Why, when I was a youngster, they had a
joke that this would be a rattlin’ good country if the sleighin’ didn’t
get sorter thin for three months in the year; but I don’t recall makin’
snowballs on the Fourth of July. And, when you think it over, you’re
likely to be enjoyin’ just about as much concentrated winter this
minute as anybody ever really needed in these parts.”

Thus Lon Gates rambled on for the entertainment of Sam Parker, bustling
about his work in the barn the while. It was a fine, clear morning,
the air still and crisp, and the snow glittering in the bright sunshine.

“Maybe--but this is a bully day,” said Sam cheerfully.

There was a twinkle in Lon’s eye. “Lot better’n that other Saturday,
when the hedgehog had all his spines on end, eh? Wal, the weather does
make a pile o’ difference in the human feelin’s. And, as I was sayin’,
we’ve got jest about enough winter to be real comfortable right this
minute--plenty of snow for haulin’, and cold enough to fill the bill.
Even zero when I got up this mornin’, and ’tain’t more’n ten above
now. And it looks ’sif there wouldn’t be a thaw for a good spell. And
that’ll help the lumbermen to get out their logs. Your father can tell
you what that means to the fellers in the woods.”

“I’ve heard him talk about it,” said Sam. Mr. Parker was interested
in several tracts of woodland; and though his son never had visited a
lumber camp, he had some idea of the methods pursued.

“Ought to get him to take you on one of his trips,” Lon observed.
“He’ll be makin’ one before long.”

“Wish he would!” said Sam.

Lon bustled into the harness-room. In a moment Sam heard a sharp
exclamation of surprise; and out popped Lon, carrying a heavy collar
with dangling traces.

“Jest look at that!” he stormed. “Suff’rin’ snakes! but that’s the wust
yet! What skunk do you s’pose’d be mean enough to carve a brand new
harness that way?”

The leather of the collar was deeply gashed in several places, and the
traces were almost severed.

Sam made close examination of the cuts.

“Well, Lon,” he said, “I can’t prove it, of course; but I believe that
job was done by the same person who left the water running, and let
Maggie’s clean clothes down into the mud, and has been raising all the
rest of the hob around here.”

“Maybe. Same line o’ business. But who’d do it?”

Sam hesitated. “I--I--well, I’ve had a suspicion all along, but lately
it has become practically a certainty.”

“Speak up! This thing’s past endurin’. Who’s the party?”

“Well, everything points to one person.” Sam was trying to show
judicial moderation.

“Who’s he?” asked Lon impatiently.

“Tom Orkney,” said Sam.

“What! The kid that ran away?”

“Yes.”

Lon looked puzzled. “Sure, be you?”

“Morally sure.”

“Wal, I ain’t, then,” said Lon. “Why ain’t I? Orkney’s been gone
two-three days, hain’t he?”

“He has.”

“Then we’ve got to leave him out. This job was done last night.”

It was Sam’s turn to betray bewilderment. “But--but we know he’d be
ready to do it, and there’s nobody else who would. And----”

“No; you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree!” Lon declared. “I was lookin’
over the harnesses yesterday, and there wa’n’t even a good-sized
scratch on this one. So ’twa’n’t Orkney, Sam--not unless he come back
to do this ’special.”

“But he did the other things,” Sam insisted.

“Swear to it, could you?”

“Why--why, I could--almost.”

“‘Almost’ don’t go--not in swearin’ folks are guilty.”

“I know that. But we’ve had a lot of evidence----”

“What kind o’ evidence?”

Sam frowned. “Why--why, it has been circumstantial evidence, but there
has been a lot of it. And Orkney has had a chronic grouch all along.
And he has had it in for all my crowd. And, finally, he ran away.
That’s the same as confessing, isn’t it?”

“Confessin’ what?”

“Oh, everything,” said Sam vaguely.

Lon took a moment for thought.

“Sam, I can’t help thinkin’ there’s a mistake somewhere. Now, you mean
to be square and fair, and so do your chums, but you haven’t liked this
Orkney. I dunno’s there’s any reason why you should like him, but that
ain’t the question. I plumb despise a rattlesnake, but I’ve got no call
to insist he’s stealin’ my fire-wood. Follow the argyment, do you?”

“Yes; but----”

“Hold on! Wa’n’t there nothin’ nowhere along the line to make you
doubt if you were right?”

“Nothing,” Sam insisted; then recalled the Shark’s contention, and made
amendment. “There was nothing, that is, except that Willy Reynolds
figured it out that Orkney couldn’t have thrown a stone that smashed a
window in our club-house. And the Shark--Willy, I mean--is a crank on
mathematics. And we found a cap of Orkney’s----”

“One he’d been wearin’ that evenin’?”

“Well, nobody saw him wearing it--nobody saw him, for that matter; for
he ducked and ran. And though a face showed outside of the window, the
fellow who noticed it didn’t recognize it. But the cap belonged to
Orkney.”

Lon did not appear to be deeply impressed.

“Thing like that depends on a lot of other things,” said he.

“But Orkney didn’t try to deny anything.”

“Oh, put it up to him, good and straight, did you?”

“Why--why, in a way.”

“Jesso! But you didn’t say, ‘Now, Orkney, what did you do this thing,
and that thing, and the other thing for?’”

“Well, I hinted at things I was going to thrash him for, and----”

Lon laughed. “Ho-ho! Now we’re gettin’ down to cases. You said, ‘I’m
goin’ to lick you,’ and he said, ‘Come on and try it.’ Sam, it’s been
a good while since I was a boy, but I guess that’s jest about what I’d
’a’ said to a feller of my own size that promised me a hidin’. And I
wouldn’t ’a’ asked a bill o’ particulars.”

Sam took a turn the length of the barn floor and back. Lon certainly
was presenting a new aspect of the case, a disturbing aspect,
unsettling, destructive of comfortable confidence.

“Look here, Lon! What makes you take sides against me?” the boy asked
querulously.

“I don’t,” was the curt reply.

“But----”

“Wal, I’ll explain. First place, such didoes as somebody has been
cuttin’ up round here don’t quite fit in with what a feller like this
Orkney would be likely to do. Maybe he’s a surly customer, but, after
all, he’s had good bringin’ up. Second place, bein’ away from town,
he couldn’t have chopped up the harness last night. Third place, I’m
gettin’ kind of a hunch that I may be able to dig up a clue or two.”

“Connecting somebody else with the case?” queried Sam incredulously.

“Yep.”

“But who----”

“Don’t ask me that, Sam, till I’ve looked around a bit. If I’m
right--well, you’ll say it’s the queerest piece of business you ever
heard tell of.”

“Oh, don’t stop there!”

“Got to. It’s kinder shapin’ up promisin’, but I ain’t sure. And in a
matter like this it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

There was a wry smile on Sam’s face. “Safety First!” he said in a tone
which made Lon gaze at him curiously.

“Jest what do you mean?” he asked.

But Sam turned away without answering. Indeed, to make full explanation
would have been difficult; for he could have said little more than that
he was experiencing a peculiar sensation, to be likened to that of one
rudely awakened from a complacent dream.




CHAPTER XVII MORE SURPRISES


Sam walked out of the barn without any clear notion of what he ought to
do; but when he reached the gate his step quickened.

It was Saturday; the morning was his own. It had flashed upon him
that he could not do better than investigate the matters which had
first seemed to be so conclusive of Orkney’s guilt. Granting that Tom
probably had had nothing to do with the damage to the harness, he
would attempt to remove all doubt from the value of the best piece of
evidence for the prosecution, so to speak. This was the cap found by
Step near the club-house.

When Master Jones had snatched the cap from Orkney’s head, and thrown
it over a fence, it had dropped upon the dead turf in old Mrs.
Benton’s yard. The club’s theory was that the owner had recovered it
subsequently and secretly. It remained for Sam to try to discover what
really had happened.

Mrs. Benton, if advanced in years, was active and alert. She answered
her door-bell in person, and led Sam into her spotlessly neat
sitting-room.

The boy plunged at once into his errand. Had she chanced to see a cap
lying on her lawn, and did she know what had become of it?

Mrs. Benton nodded vivaciously. A cap--a boy’s cap? Of course, she
remembered.

“When I looked out of my window that morning, there it was in plain
sight,” she said. “And I must say it looked awfully careless and
shiftless--I don’t know what strangers would have thought of the folks
living in this house. So I went right out and brought the cap in.”

“And--and--and that was in the morning?” Sam faltered.

“In the morning--early.”

“Somebody came to claim it?”

“Nobody came. I declare! I don’t see how young folks get so regardless
of things these days! And that was a perfectly good cap--that is, it
would have been perfectly good if it hadn’t been left out in the damp
all night.”

“Is it still here, ma’am?”

“Bless you, no, child! It’s gone.”

Sam leaned forward in his eagerness. “Gone where, ma’am?”

“Into the rubbish can, of course.”

“Oh!” said Sam, and sank back in his chair.

Mrs. Benton’s eyebrows rose a trifle. “Bless me, but you wouldn’t
expect me to keep my house cluttered up with all sorts of other
people’s odds and ends, would you?”

“No, ma’am,” Sam hastened to assure her. “But--but did it stay in the
can?”

Mrs. Benton met question with question. “Why? Was it yours?”

“Oh, no,” said Sam. “It wasn’t mine, but I--I--well, I was sort
of--sort of interested in it. Do you know what became of it?”

“That’s just what I don’t know.”

“Oh!” said Sam again.

The lady did not miss the disappointment in his tone.

“Somebody took it out of the can,” she explained. “It wasn’t the
garbage collector, for that wasn’t his day to come ’round. But I
remember that I disposed of the cap after breakfast, and that, when
I carried out some potato peelings an hour or two later, the cap had
disappeared. There often are people prowling through the alley, you
know--tramps, some of ’em--and it was a pretty good cap, after all, if
a body wasn’t over-particular. And you say it wasn’t yours?”

“No, ma’am,” said Sam, and rose a bit hastily. “But I’m very much
obliged for the information.”

Mrs. Benton followed him to the door. “You’re thanking me for very
little,” she remarked. “But if it’ll be any help to you, in whatever
you are after, I can add that the cap was taken out of the can
somewhere between nine and ten o’clock that morning.”

And in the hour mentioned, as Sam was quite aware, Tom Orkney was fully
accounted for, having been in his place in school!

Sam’s step was slow as he moved away from the house, and his brow was
furrowed. Undeniably the case against Orkney was weakening. Equally the
case for the Safety First Club was tottering.

There came to Sam unhappy recollections of talk about the chain of
proofs and its various links, among them the cruelty to Little
Perrine. Well, there was nothing for it but to go on with the inquiry
he had begun.

Little Perrine, he was told, was very much better, and would be glad to
see him. The convalescent was sitting up in bed, and was in excellent
spirits.

“Hullo, Sam!” he called out gaily. “Gee, but it’s good of you to look
me up! Sit down, and tell me all about how you pulled Tom Orkney and me
out of the pond. The folks won’t tell me half enough.”

Sam drew a chair close to the bed.

“Oh, it isn’t much of a yarn,” he said modestly. “I happened to have a
plank, so it was no trick at all.”

Little Perrine smiled. “That’s what you say! Doesn’t match the stories
other people tell--and I guess they’re nearer the real truth. Everybody
declares you did a star job. Funny, isn’t it, that I don’t remember
anything about your part of it? One instant Tom Orkney was grabbing for
me, and trying to drag me back, and the next--crash! There I was in
the water, and Tom had jumped in after me, and was holding me up. Then
everything was blurred, and there was a queer singing in my ears--and
the next I knew, here I was, in bed. And then things got to whirling
round, and I was going through it all again and again. Jiminy! but I
bet I yelled like a good fellow!”

“Pretty close call for a kid like you,” said Sam.

“Poof! I’m tough!” insisted the boy. “I’d have been all right--crawled
out myself, I would, if it hadn’t been for that sleepy feeling that
came over me. But it was all right, anyway. There was old Orkney to
hold my head out of water, and you were coming on the run. But, as it
is, Orkney’ll have a good laugh on me, I tell you.”

Sam grasped the fact that Perrine had not been informed of Tom’s
disappearance.

“Oh, so he--he’ll have the laugh on you?” he asked uncertainly.

“Sure! You see, he’d been telling me to keep away from the thin places.
When he came along I was doing stunts--seeing how close to a blow-hole
I could skate, you know; and he made a fuss about it. Why, he grabbed
me, and lugged me back to shore, and tried to make me promise to quit
the funny business. But I got away from him, and beat it for the dam. I
didn’t think he’d dare chase me, he weighs so much more than I do. But
he pelted after me, and he’d have got me if I hadn’t kept dodging. And
then--well, then the thing happened. But old Orkney was a brick, wasn’t
he?”

Sam strove to make fitting reply, but achieved only a choking sound.

“Why, what’s the matter?” demanded Little Perrine. “And what makes you
look so queer?”

Sam wiped his forehead with his handkerchief; he had a sense of
fighting for time.

“Oh, looking--looking queer, was I?”

Little Perrine grinned. “Say! It was as if I’d hit you between the eyes
and dazed you.”

Sam laughed, but it was a forced laugh and unconvincing.

“I guess this room’s pretty warm,” said he, and got upon his feet.
“I’ll have to be going. You’ll be out, I suppose, in a day or two?”

“Yes. But if you meet Orkney, tell him to come to see me. You wouldn’t
mind taking the message, would you? Of course, I know he hasn’t been
pals with your crowd, but after all that’s happened----”

“If I should see Tom Orkney I’d be only too glad to deliver your
message,” said Sam heavily.

Another link in that famous chain had been fractured. By the testimony
of the best possible witness Orkney had not imperiled Little Perrine’s
life by driving him upon the thin ice; but, on the contrary, had risked
his own to protect the younger and frailer boy.

With dragging step Sam went back to Lon Gates.

“I might as well speak plainly, Lon,” he said. “I’m all unsettled in my
ideas.”

Lon regarded him keenly. “So? Ain’t that Orkney the all-round cut-up
you thought he was?”

“I--I guess I’ll have to take back some of the things I said.”

“So?” Lon repeated.

“Yes--so!” said Sam with more spirit. “And since it’s so, and since
somebody must have made all the mischief, and since it isn’t likely
Orkney was the guilty one--why, Lon, I’d amazingly like to know whom
you suspect.”

The hired man rubbed his chin. “Wal, I dunno. As things was, I didn’t
intend to say nothin’ more till I was surer of my ground. But, seein’
how you’ve kinder cooled down and come to be ready to accept the light
o’ reason, maybe I might’s well breathe a whisper or two of what the
little birds may, or may not, have been tellin’ me.”

“This has been a day of surprises,” said Sam, “but I’m ready for some
more. Fire ahead!”

Lon came a step nearer. They were alone in the barn, but he dropped his
voice almost to a whisper.

“Wal, then, I will. Remember that day you went out and potted Major
Bates?” he began.




CHAPTER XVIII LON DISCUSSES CROOKED THINKING


Perhaps you have had the trying and distressing experience of
discovering, of a sudden and without warning, that what you devoutly
had hoped was a closely guarded secret appeared to be no secret at
all. If you have suffered such a shock, you will understand Sam’s
sensations. The unfortunate affair of Marlow woods was by no means
ancient history, but gossip about it had dwindled, and he had come to
believe that the town had set it down as one of those mysteries which
never are solved. Yet here was Lon, referring to it as nonchalantly as
if it were matter of common knowledge!

For a moment Sam stared, wide eyed and open mouthed, at his ally.
Mentally and physically he was overcome. Speech failed him, and he sank
weakly upon a feed-box, beside which he had been standing.

There was a touch of sympathy in Lon’s manner. “Sorry if I’ve rubbed
your fur the wrong way, Sam. Course, though, when you asked me----”

Sam found tongue. “How did you know? Who told you?”

“Lot o’ folks.”

“A lot!” gasped Sam.

“Yep; a lot. Bill Marlow, and your father, and Maggie, and the Major,
and you----”

“Me!” In his amazement Sam was careless of grammar. “Me? Why, I never
breathed a syllable!”

Lon grinned. “Wal, you wa’n’t exactly chatty; that’s a fact. But I
guess ’twas the things you didn’t say that told me most. Same way with
your father. Didn’t know, did you, that I saw him one mornin’ swabbin’
out that gun of his? And he hadn’t been huntin’, and he wasn’t goin’
huntin’. Then there was Maggie. One day we was discussin’ your life
and public services, and I sorter gloomed about you, and she flew at
me like a hen protectin’ her last chick from a hawk; and then I knew
well enough you’d been in some particular big scrape, and she knew, or
guessed, more or less what ’twas. Then there was the Major----”

“The Major!”

“Sure! ’Nother case of what you might call eloquent silence. When he
turned Peter Groche loose, what more did he do? Nothin’! What more did
he say? Nothin’! And the Major ain’t the party to let somebody put a
few buckshot into him and grin and bear it uncomplainin’. He’d ’a’
railroaded Peter Groche to jail with all the pleasure in life, and he’d
’a’ done the same thing to any other man that played he was an old
buck. But the Major’s a good sport, after all; he hates to fuss with
anybody that ain’t his size. See where the argyment’s leadin’, don’t
you? So, when you ’fessed up----”

“When I ’fessed up!” Sam seemed to be capable of nothing but
repetitions.

Lon chuckled a bit complacently. “Wal, Sam, that’s where I’m on dead
reckonin’. But when I’d chewed it all over a few times, it struck me
that you was jest the kind of a feller to own up when you saw somebody
else was in trouble for what you’d done; and that the Major was jest
the old hardshell to be tickled by your givin’ a square deal to that
miserable critter, Groche. Course, I’ve kept my eyes and ears open,
and I’ve been down town nights, and I’ve talked with folks, and I’ve
picked up little things here and there that fitted together. And so I
got four, not by puttin’ two with two, but by addin’ an eighth, and
three-sixteenths, and a half, and three-quarters, and so on and so on.
And--wal, that’s about all of that chapter.”

“Lon, you’re a wonder!”

“Pretty nigh right, wa’n’t I?”

“Nearer than that.”

“Wal, you see, I knew one Sam Parker like a book. And when something
happened one mornin’, and he dodged talkin’ about where he was jest
then or what he was doin’--wal, I had a mighty good start on Shylock
Holmesin’.”

“Sherlock Holmesing,” Sam corrected mechanically.

“Same family, anyhow.”

There was a pause. Then said Sam:

“Lon, I didn’t wish to keep the truth from you especially. If I’d
talked about the affair, there’s nobody who’d have heard more about it
than you would. But I was advised not to confide in anybody.”

Lon nodded. “Right enough! And I wouldn’t have yipped if, somehow,
things hadn’t worked around as they have. And I jest had to let the cat
out o’ the bag if I was goin’ to point out the dog I believe has been
snappin’ at us. You want to find out who ’tis I suspect, don’t you?”

“Most certainly!”

“Peter Groche!” said Lon emphatically.

“Peter--Peter Groche?” Astonishment again possessed Sam. “Why--why
should he have a grudge against me? Didn’t I save him? Didn’t I keep
him out of jail? Didn’t they have what seemed to be a complete case
against him?”

“Like enough.”

“Then, too,” urged Sam, “he could have had no notion that I was mixed
up in the case. The Major didn’t tell him; nobody else told him. But
if he had known, he ought to have been grateful. Either way the thing
isn’t reasonable.”

“Huh! Peter ain’t, neither!” grunted Lon.

“But what’s that got to do with----”

[Illustration: “HOLD HARD, THERE!”]

Lon loved an argument. “Hold hard, there!” said he. “To get at things
you’ve got to start right. And it ain’t startin’ right to talk about
Peter Groche and reasonable things in the same breath. Look here, now!”
Lon picked up an empty liniment bottle, and stood it on its neck;
whereupon the bottle fell over on its side. “See what’s happened, don’t
you?”

“But it was upside down.”

“Exactly! But that’s the way with Peter Groche--with his brains, I
mean. Your mistake is tryin’ to figure on him as a reasonable bein’.
But Groche, for years and years, has been like that bottle--all upside
down. He’s been carousin’, and loafin’, and stealin’. All his thinkin’
has got warped, and twisted, and crooked.”

“Then he’s crazy!”

“Not quite that. But he ain’t what folks call normal. Oh, I know the
breed!”

Sam racked his memory. “You mean he’s a--a degenerate?” he queried.

“That’s the ticket! He’s like pizen ivy: he began by bein’ no good, and
he’s got wuss and more of a nuisance the more he spreads out.”

Sam shook his head doubtfully. “All the same, I don’t follow your
argument, Lon. If there’s anything to it, we’d have to figure that
Peter had some cause to suppose I was in the scrape; for we might as
well drop the notion that, all of a sudden, he’d begin to persecute me,
unless he had some tip. But I’ve told you I’m sure nobody gave him one.
And as I didn’t see him in the woods, he wouldn’t have seen me there.”

“You can’t prove that,” Lon declared. “He’s an old hand at deer
huntin’, out o’ season as well as in; and he keeps his eyes peeled
mighty sharp. It’s ten to one he had a peek at you, and knew within
five rods where you were, when the Major was hit. So it was an easy
guess for him, when he was arrested, that you’d figgered in the
combination.”

“But----” Sam began.

Lon interrupted him. “You listen, son! I’ll bet you he not only saw
you, but believed you saw him. And he was keepin’ tabs on you and on
the Major, too--’tain’t a bad idea, at that, for anybody in the woods
in the deer season to watch his neighbors and what they’re about. Wal,
then, we have Peter, as keen as a weasel, and full as vicious--we have
him, I say, with his eyes and ears busy. Bang! goes your gun. Peter
hears it. He waits for what’ll happen--always a chance that if you’ve
really sighted a buck, the critter may come his way. Wal, again, in a
minute or two, something does come, but it ain’t nothin’ on four legs.
It’s the Major, and the Major’s fightin’ mad. Somebody’s winged him,
and he thinks it’s Peter; but Peter don’t need no map to show where you
come in.”

“But I----”

“Let me finish! Peter, bein’ Peter, acts accordin’. He jumps to a
conclusion--and that’s that you’ve done what he’d do himself, if he was
in your shoes. He figgers you’ve blazed away, and run up to find a dead
deer, and come on the Major, dazed and ragin’, and grabbed the chance
to put the blame off on somebody else. He credits you with knowin’ the
reputation of the Groche fam’ly hereabouts, and with settin’ the Major
on a false trail that leads straight to one Peter o’ that name. Then,
havin’ set the Major goin’, you vamoose--and that’s what Peter Groche
would ’a’ done himself, if he’d been in your fix. What say to that,
Sam?”

“I--I don’t know what to say. Only, when the sheriff arrested him, why
didn’t he deny----”

Once more Lon stopped the boy in mid-sentence. “There you go
again--forgettin’ Peter ain’t like most folks! It’s where the crooked
thinkin’--and the crooked livin’--comes in. The Major’s in a passion,
and Peter has jawed back till he’s ’bout as mad himself. Most likely
the sheriff can’t make head nor tail o’ what he’s growlin’. And Peter’s
got his reputation, and everybody knows he’s made threats against the
Major, and one barrel of his gun has been fired. So the sheriff thinks
it’s a pretty clear case, and loads Peter in his wagon, and hauls him
to the lock-up. By that time Peter, mebbe, has been workin’ his crooked
wits. He sees well enough nobody’d believe him just then if he said he
didn’t do it, so he doesn’t waste his breath that way. And mebbe, too,
he gets a notion the case against him won’t be so all-fired convincin’
when it comes to a trial, the evidence bein’ circumstantial, you see.
Perhaps he’s schemin’ for damages for false arrest--and then, all of
a sudden, they turn him loose. And so he skulks off, with a grudge
against everybody, but a particular one against Sam Parker, Esq., who,
he believes, lied about him to save himself. Sense, ain’t it--Peter’s
kind o’ sense, that is?”

Sam pondered. “Why--why--perhaps.”

Lon wagged his head sagely. “Wal, I’m tellin’ you, Sam, a grudge is
jest the one thing in this life Peter’ll live up to. He means to take
it out o’ your hide. Now, when things went wrong about the place, and
kept on goin’ wrong, and I saw they weren’t due to your footlessness, I
had half a notion some kid might be at the bottom of the trouble. But
then I began to miss things from the barn--a spare bit, then a wrench,
then a new sponge; and I’ll admit that did sort o’ suggest Groche’s
manners. And weren’t you tellin’ me a while ago that one of your crowd
figgered it out that no boy could have chucked that boulder through
your club-house window? Wal, Groche could ’a’ done it. He’s as strong
as an ox, confound him! Come now! Piece it all together, and own up it
makes quite a case!”

“Perhaps it does,” Sam admitted.

“But I don’t convince you completely?”

Sam hesitated. “Why--why, I don’t know, Lon. I’ve had a lot of jolts
to-day, and I’ve got to do some thinking before I can be sure of
anybody.... Or of anything!” he added, after an instant’s pause.




CHAPTER XIX OF DUELS AND CONSCIENCE


The club received such report as Sam felt free to make of his
investigation with interest rather than with regret for its share in
the misfortunes of Tom Orkney.

If Sam had told the whole story, including the affair in Marlow woods
and Lon’s suspicions of Peter Groche, the crowd, doubtless, would
have buzzed with excitement, and, incidentally, felt some sympathy
for Orkney; but, given merely new light on the matter of the cap and
a revised version of the incident at the pond, the boys, as a rule,
fell back upon the declaration that Tom was a “grouch,” anyway, and
declined to take to themselves any especial culpability. Somebody had
committed the depredations at the Parker place; somebody had smashed
the club-house window. Maybe Orkney hadn’t done these things, but
wasn’t he a chronic sorehead? Of course, it was hard luck for him to
be deemed Little Perrine’s persecutor instead of protector, but the
misunderstanding was general and not the particular error of the Safety
First Club.

Even the Shark, who might have spoken from the text of “I told you
so,” let the opportunity pass. His calculations of the flight of the
boulder had started him upon an agreeable inquiry into the subject of
projectiles, and, as Poke declared, he was as far in the clouds as if
he had been sent there by one of the big mortars about which he was
reading.

In the club’s opinion that there was nothing to be done, Sam was in a
way to coincide, though he would have phrased it that nothing could be
done at present. Yet something should be done. This was clear in his
mind, though he seemed to be unable to hit upon a practical suggestion.

No news came of the missing Orkney.

Lon Gates, playing detective at every opportunity, confessed that he
found nothing either to shake or to confirm his theory of the guilt of
Peter Groche. The man, after hanging about town as usual, had dropped
out of sight, leaving no word of the destination for which he was
bound.

Then came Christmas and a fortnight’s vacation, and Sam shared
cheerfully in the festivities of the season. He was in excellent
health; he liked fun; he indulged vigorously in winter sports; his
appetite remained admirable. But, for all that, there was a change
in the boy, quite unobserved by his father, who was held by business
cares; vaguely felt by his friends, and distinctly marked by his
mother. Mrs. Parker took occasion to have several long talks with
her son. She was sure that he had something on his mind, but all her
tact did not lead him to confidences. Sam understood her solicitude,
and was grateful, if reticent. A fellow who was trying to prove his
self-reliance, he reasoned, must work out his problems for himself.
Not that he would have declined counsel from older heads--probably he
would have welcomed a chance to accept his father’s advice, the affair
appearing to him to be peculiarly one for masculine consideration; but
he would not seek it.

Mr. Parker, as has been related, was very busy. For one thing, he was
arranging a trip into the woods with a capitalist from New York, and
plans for the expedition took up much of his time. For another, his
method of dealing with Sam on probation was to interfere as little as
possible with the boy’s affairs. Sam’s school reports were good; he
seemed to be avoiding scrapes; he had distinguished himself in the
rescue of Tom Orkney and Little Perrine. On the whole, the father was
well pleased with the situation as he observed it.

Sam himself was not pleased. It is not good to have a sense of
uncertainty, and of baffled intentions to do right. On the one hand was
his remembrance of his precautions in trying to follow out his motto of
“Safety First”; on the other, an uneasy conviction that Tom Orkney had
suffered unjustly. Sometimes one seemed to outweigh the other; again he
vacillated miserably between the two opinions. And one day, not long
after Christmas, when his doubts were assailing him sorely, he recalled
the Major’s invitation, and sought diversion in a visit to the veteran.

The Major received him with marked favor, cracked a joke or two
about his big game record, and began to make the round of what was
really a fine collection of arms. There were flint-lock muskets and
fowling-pieces; muzzle-loading and breech-loading rifles; cutlasses,
sabers and bayonets; huge, old-fashioned horse pistols, revolvers and
even a modern, compact, automatic weapon. Of these the Major spoke
briefly; but he lingered longer over a case in which lay a brace of
pistols, very old in pattern, but of exquisite workmanship.

“I wonder, Sam,” he said, “if you ever have seen such fellows as these?
What do you think they are?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, sir,” Sam answered.

“Well, what do you imagine they were used for?”

“I haven’t a notion.”

The Major wagged his head. “My boy, it’s a testimonial to the progress
of the world that you haven’t a notion. Time was, I’m sorry to say,
when a fine, upstanding lad like you would have known only too well
what these were and how they were used. These are dueling pistols, sir!”

“Oh!” cried Sam, and bent over the case with increased interest.
“And--and were they ever--ever----”

“They were,” said the Major drily. “Oh, yes--more than once. Genuine
article, I do assure you! But that sort of thing is over and done with,
fortunately.”

Sam straightened his back. “I’ve read about duels, of course. And some
of the books speak as if there must have been lots of them.”

“Too many!” snorted the Major. “That’s perfectly true, sir. Principle
was all wrong, but it took centuries to make the discovery. Honest men,
honorable men mistakenly believed that the way to do justice and to
accept justice was by killing each other or standing up to be killed.
All wrong; all wrong, sir! The law is the law, and to it we must look
for redress for injuries.”

“Yes, sir,” said Sam, a deal impressed by this testimony from
one commonly reputed to be a stubborn and unyielding antagonist.
“Only--only”--a curious thought had thrust itself upon him--“only, can
you always be sure of what the law is? I mean, that is, can you always
be sure of what you ought to do?”

“Eh?” The bushy eyebrows came together as if the Major were perplexed
by the question.

“Can you always find a law--or a rule--that applies?”

“Well, a law is general in its terms, of course. And you’ve some
special instance in mind, haven’t you?”

Sam hesitated. “I--I--well, I’m thinking of a case in which a fellow
acted on what he thought was full justification, and found, afterward,
that--well, that there had been a lot of mistakes.”

“Honest mistakes?”

“Yes, sir. Only----”

“Pardon me!” the Major interrupted. “Let me cite a case. Once a friend
of mine, who had to carry a great deal of money, was set upon by masked
and armed men. In what he fully believed was self-defense he shot and
killed one of them. It proved that the attack was the work of rash
practical jokers. My friend was acquitted, justly. Now, was his case
like that which you are considering?”

Again Sam hesitated. “Yes--and no, sir. My case isn’t quite so clear.”

“Little prejudice to begin with--biased judgment?” queried the Major
keenly.

“That’s the trouble, sir,” said Sam frankly. “The evidence looked all
right, but how can I be certain that it ought to have seemed so?”

“Difficult!” said the Major tersely.

“Well, sir, what would you do if you were in my--if you were in the
fix?”

The Major put his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “My boy,” he said very
gravely, “you’re dealing with a problem which neither I nor anybody
else can solve for you. It is a problem to be settled by law, but
the law is that of your own conscience. Now, I submit, the court of
conscience is supplemental to the courts of the land, but it is severer
in its judgments. The other courts may give you the benefit of a doubt,
but hardly the court of conscience. And if there were prejudice----”
There he checked himself. “No; I’ll say no more; for I’ve no right to
seek to influence you unduly. You must reach your own decision for
yourself.”

“I understand, sir,” said Sam, with a gravity matching the Major’s.

The pressure on his shoulder increased. “If I’m a judge of human
nature, young man,” the Major declared, “you _will_ settle this thing
for yourself, and you’ll settle it right!”




CHAPTER XX SAM MAKES A SPEECH


It was late in the afternoon of Sam’s visit to the Major, and the club
members were gathered in their house.

Sam, silent and preoccupied, was sitting in one corner. The Shark,
in another, was somewhat skeptically regarding Step Jones, who was
describing, for the benefit of the assembled company, a number of big
fish that day caught through the ice of the mill-pond. Step’s arms were
long, and his imagination was active.

“Gee, but those pickerel were regular old granddaddies!” he averred.
“Smallest was this long.” He spread his hands. “Then came two or three
about this size.” Another illustration. “Then there was the biggest.”
And Step’s hands were moved farther apart.

“Aw, come off!” jeered the Trojan. “You’re thinking of ’em all, put end
to end.”

“I’m not,” Step insisted. “What’ll you bet ’twasn’t this long?”

“Huh! You’re dreaming!”

“Dreaming nothing! Didn’t I see the fish?”

“You didn’t see any five-foot pickerel.”

“Tell you I saw one the length I’m showing you.”

Up sprang the Shark, and strode across the room, pulling a tape-measure
from his pocket as he advanced. A good deal to Step’s embarrassment,
he insisted upon making careful measure of the distance between the
outstretched palms.

“Four feet, three and seven-eighths inches,” he announced. “Umph! Some
fish, Step; yes, some fish!”

Step lost no time in lowering his arms. “Well, you fellows can josh if
you want to; but you can’t prove I’m wrong.”

There was a shout of derision.

“No, sir--I won’t take off an inch!” declared Step.

The Shark grinned. “All right, Step. Only that couldn’t have been a
pickerel; it must have been a muskellunge.”

“’Longe in the mill-pond! Sure thing!” snickered Poke.

“No, no,” Herman Boyd put in. “Step’s mixed--that’s all. He’s thinking
of what Sam caught--Little Perrine and Tom Orkney.”

Over in his corner Sam roused at the name. “Who’s talking about
Orkney?” he called out.

“I am,” said Herman.

“Any news of him?”

“No, thank fortune!” Herman was not an especially vindictive fellow;
but he had disliked Tom exceedingly.

Sam rose, and came over to the group about Step.

“Listen, you chaps; I’ve something to say about Orkney,” he began.

“Speech, speech!” shouted Poke.

“Very well; I’ll make a speech,” said Sam. “You may not agree with me,
but I’m going to give you the truth as I see it. We’re wrong in this
Orkney business; we’ve been wrong all along.”

There was a ripple of dissent.

“Oh, I say, Sam!” protested Poke. “That’s going too far.”

“Not at all,” Sam insisted. “We were wrong in charging Orkney with a
lot of things he never did.”

“I know--you’ve harped on that before.”

“Well, I’ll harp on it again.”

“But we thought he did ’em. He was mean enough to do ’em, if they’d
occurred to him.”

“Go to it, Poke!” cried Step. “Now you’re shouting!”

Sam frowned. “Here!” he said impatiently. “Do I get my chance to talk,
or don’t I?”

Poke made a burlesque bow. “Sir, I yield the floor,” said he.

“I say we made a mistake, and I mean it,” Sam went on. “Not liking
Orkney, we forgot the old rule that you’ve got to hold anybody innocent
of a charge till he’s proved guilty. Don’t stop me! You’ll try to argue
that we had evidence against him, but, as we know now, it wasn’t proof,
by a long shot. There was that business of the cap. Did we investigate
it? We didn’t. If any one of us had taken the trouble to ask Mrs.
Benton about it at the time, there’d be another story to tell. Then
every one of us jumped to the conclusion that Orkney came near drowning
Little Perrine. Evidence? We hadn’t a bit.”

“But people said----” Poke began.

“Confound what people said! They knew no more than we did. They
were jumping to conclusions, too. But we were saying things on our
own account. Right here, in this room, Poke told us that we were
responsible for blocking Orkney’s ambitions from the first, for taking
the shine off him; that the Shark eclipsed him in mathematics and Step
skimmed the cream from the Greek; that the crowd of us kept him from
bossing the class. And all of us chimed in, and said it was so, and
patted our own backs, and----”

“Hold on, Sam!” the Shark broke in. “How’d we do that? We’re not
contortionists.”

“Hang it all! Don’t interrupt! You know what I mean.”

“I don’t know; I infer,” corrected the Shark. “Be accurate, be
accurate!”

Sam’s temper flared. “What’s the matter, anyway? Don’t you want to hear
me?”

“I do,” said the Shark calmly. “You’re talking sense. Therefore use
sensible language.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” Sam promised, “but listen to me, anyway.
What I’m getting at is that, as Poke had it, if Orkney was driven out
of town, we had a lot to do with the driving. We called it a good job,
but was it? It was _not_! We didn’t play fair; we didn’t give him a
square deal. He was entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and we always
counted the doubt against him. I know, I know what you’re thinking--he
_was_ a cub, and a chronic grouch, and a trouble maker; but the ugly
fact remains that we accused him of a lot of things he didn’t do, and
had no intention of doing. And I say, in such a case, it’s up to us to
see that, at last, he gets a square deal. I don’t say it so much for
his sake as for our own.”

“Umph! Matter of self-respect?” queried the Shark.

“Just that!” said Sam emphatically.

For a moment there was silence.

“But, Sam!” ventured Herman Boyd. “Aren’t you piling it on this crowd?
Suppose Orkney was--er--er--os--os--what’s that word I want?”

“Ostracized?” suggested Step.

“That’s it--ostracized. Well, suppose that was what happened to Orkney.
We didn’t do it--all. The whole school had a hand.”

“That doesn’t relieve us of responsibility for our part.”

“You’re right, Sam,” said Poke very soberly; for like the others he
felt the influence of Sam’s earnestness. “You’re right. We’ve got some
responsibility. We were boasting of it the other day, and we can’t
crawfish and shirk it now. But what’s the practical thing? What can we
do about it?”

“That’s it! What can we do?” echoed Step and the Trojan.

“We can talk, argue,” Sam explained. “We can tell people Orkney has
been misjudged. We can spread everywhere the truth about Little
Perrine.”

“Well, I’ll go so far, gladly,” said Step.

“Same here!” cried the Trojan.

“Of course,” agreed Poke.

The Shark was frowning slightly. “If you fellows had listened to my
demonstration about the flight of the boulder, you wouldn’t have to
listen now to Sam. But it’s better late than never.”

“Oh, cut the crowing!” said Step testily.

“Might as well--it’ll be the same story over again next time I try to
put anything before you in black and white.”

Step turned to Sam. “I don’t like Orkney,” he said. “I never expect
to like him. But I’ll promise to help set him right with the school.
If there were any way to find him and bring him back, I’d jump at the
chance.”

“Guess you can make that promise for the whole club!” exclaimed Poke.

“Sure!” cried the Trojan. The others nodded, a bit solemnly.

“Then we’ll consider it a definite agreement,” said Sam. “If any of
us get a clue, a tip, a hint, the whole club will pull together in
whatever may be done.”

Step laughed rather vaguely and glanced at the Shark.

“What are the mathematical odds against getting a clue, old Headlights?
Figure ’em out for us.”

The Shark’s lip curled. “Can’t! Problem’s all unknown quantities. But
you may have bull luck. It’s always coming to blooming idiots.”

Sam interposed in the interest of peace.

“Stow the joshing, fellows! We’ve reached an understanding, anyway.
It’s settled that if anybody gets news of Orkney the club is to share
it. I admit I don’t know where it can come from, but I’ll hope for it,
all the same.”

Sam spoke guardedly enough, and with no suspicion that at that very
moment Lon Gates lay in wait for him. And Lon had news, interesting
certainly, and perhaps important.




CHAPTER XXI LON PLAYS DETECTIVE


“See that, sonny?” Lon, having captured Sam at the gate and led him
to the privacy of the barn, had taken a wrench from a shelf and was
displaying the implement with much complacency. “’Member it? Ought to!
It’s the wrench I told you the other day was lost, strayed or stolen.”

“Oh!” said Sam. “And so you found it?”

Lon chuckled. “Wal, I did sort o’ stumble on it, as you might say. Only
there was more’n plain stumblin’ involved, seein’ as how I had to take
it away from Peter Groche. And Peter don’t willingly give up what ain’t
his--not so long as he has his health.”

“Then Peter’s turned up again!”

“He’s turned up--this afternoon. Guess he’s turned down again, though,
before this. I’ll tell you how ’twas.”

“Wait a minute! If he had the wrench, he’d stolen it from us. If he
stole it, there’s no doubt left that he played all the other tricks!”

Lon thrust a hand into the bosom of his coat, and struck an attitude.

“Now what do you think o’ me as a sleuth? Ain’t I a reg’lar Shylock
Holmes?”

“Sherlock Holmes,” corrected Sam.

“Oh, wal, Shylock’s the name that sort o’ sticks in my head. Guess he
must ’a’ been Sherlock’s brother. But then there was Hannibal, too.”

Sam threw up his hands in mock despair. “Go on! Give me the yarn!”

“Wal, me ’n’ Hannibal was goin’ down-town to do an errand for your ma,
and we cut across by Lane’s blacksmith shop. The door was open. I was
for paradin’ by, unnoticin’, but Hannibal began to growl and scooted
for that door. Somethin’ made me whistle him back, and I was tickled
I did; for when I peeked in, there was Peter Groche, big as life and
uglier’n ever, tryin’ to sell this wrench to old man Lane for a dime. I
knew it was ours the minute I clapped eyes on’t, but I jest thought I’d
wait a little and listen to what Mr. Groche was purrin’. And he was
explainin’ to Mr. Lane that he’d been away for a day or two, and that
he was back in town jest to settle his affairs, ’cause he’d picked up a
reg’lar job, choppin’ in the woods up Payne’s Stream, and he was goin’
there soon’s he’d cashed in on a little portable property he had no
further use for. And then, seein’ as how Hannibal was gettin’ uneasy, I
walked in and took Mr. Groche by the collar, and walked him out o’ the
shop, and took away the wrench, and told him I guessed there was one
bargain sale he’d have to call off.”

Sam’s eyes were opened widely. “Gee! but it took nerve to tackle him!
They say he’s an awful scrapper.”

“Mebbe it wasn’t his scrappin’ day. And, of course, a bull terrier
growlin’ ’round a feller’s legs is kinder disconcertin’--say, Sam,
Hannibal showed plain enough he’d got a score to even with Groche.
Don’t wonder at that! ’Member the mornin’ the dog come limpin’ home?
Wal, anyhow, Peter didn’t put up a fight. He jest scowled, and cussed,
and swore he’d found the wrench. Then I told him I supposed the wrench
must ’a’ met him on the street and followed him home, and he shut up
on that part of it. Then I called him a thief, and a few other pet
names; and he acted queer, I swan he did!”

“What did he do?”

“Swelled up like a frog. Didn’t call names back at me, but behaved
contemptuous-like, as if I was a cheap ’un to worry about a plain old
wrench. Said he had money enough to buy me; or, anyhow, he knew where
he could get a bunch of it for the askin’. Then I laughed at him, and
he puffed up more’n ever. What’d I think of an even hundred dollars,
heh? Wal, it was his, whenever he chose to say ’bout a dozen words.
And there wa’n’t nobody else in Plainville that could say ’em. He knew
something, he did! And then he sputtered so there was no makin’ head or
tail of his nonsense.”

Sam caught Lon’s arm. “What else happened? Tell me--quick!”

There was an excitement in the boy’s tone that made Lon stare at him.

“Why--what--what’s stirrin’ you up, Sam?” he demanded.

“I’ll tell you afterward. Go on!”

“Huh! That’s what Groche did. You see, Hannibal lost patience and
took a nip at his calf, and Peter jest missed kickin’ Hannibal; and
it struck me the gaiety of our social circle was gettin’ feverish. So
I grabbed Hannibal’s collar, and told Groche that if I saw him again
I’d have him arrested for thievin’. Over on the railroad a freight was
gettin’ ready to pull out on the branch line. I hinted he’d better jump
it, and let it give him a lift, if he was headin’ Payne’s Stream way.
And I was sorry he couldn’t stay to collect that ghost hundred dollars
he was dreamin’ about, but Hannibal wouldn’t be denied much longer; so
he’d better beat it. Which also he done.”

“You mean he ran for the train?”

“Yep! And caught it--saw him.”

“And he’s going to Payne Stream?”

“Looked mighty much that way. But what you drivin’ at, Sam?”

“Wait a minute! Father’s camps are up there, aren’t they?”

“Yes; he’s got gangs lumberin’ three-four places along the stream.”

“Hurrah!” cried Sam.

Lon’s jaw sagged. “What--what in Sam Hill’s got into you? This ain’t
the Fourth of July.”

Sam was still clutching the man’s arm. “Look here, Lon! Wake up! Groche
has been up-stream, got a job, come to town for some reason or other.
You’ve started him back.”

“Jesso!”

“He boasted he could make a hundred dollars by telling something?”

“That’s what he said.”

“But you didn’t give him a chance to earn the money?”

“No. Still, of course, most likely he was lyin’----”

“For once he may have been speaking the truth. And it happens there’s
just one way to pick up a hundred in Plainville so easily.”

“How’s that?”

“By winning the reward for news of Tom Orkney!”

Lon’s expression was crestfallen. “Of all the chuckleheads!” he
groaned. “And I didn’t tumble! I guess I’m jest a one-idea-at-a-time
feller. But that one idea that I’d got Groche dead to rights on the
stealin’ seemed big as a mountain--hid everything else. But I’ll bet
you’re right! Groche spotted the kid up in one o’ them camps on Payne
Stream, and came back to collect easy money----”

“Sure he didn’t get it?” Sam broke in.

“Yep! I scared him off. You see, ’twas a mite livelier’n I let on
jest now. And what between me ’n’ Hannibal and that wrench--reckon
I was wavin’ it sort o’ free and vi’lent--and the risk o’ bein’
arrested--wal, I guess Groche was glad to go while the goin’ was good.
Then, too, he may ’a’ figgered he could come back to pick the plum when
things had quieted down--see?”

Sam nodded. Lon was no braggart; no doubt the brush with Groche had
been very nearly a full-sized fight.

“Wal, what’ll you do now?” Lon queried curiously. “Say! That hundred’d
come in pooty handy, eh?”

“Oh, I couldn’t take it!” Sam said quickly. “That doesn’t mean,
though----”

There he checked himself; wheeled; and strode toward the house. His
brain was working actively; a plan was taking shape, a plan hard to
execute, perhaps, yet not impossible. And if it could be carried out,
it might go far toward wiping out the balance against the Safety First
Club in the matter of Tom Orkney.

Sometimes Fortune comes to meet those who seek her favors. No sooner
had Sam set foot in the house than he realized that there was an
unusual air of excitement in the normally tranquil establishment. Nor
had he long to wait for enlightenment.

The supper bell rang, and very willingly he took his place at table;
for, as has been set forth, his cares had not blunted his appetite.
Three minutes later, however, he had laid down knife and fork, and was
listening eagerly.

“We ought to make a fairly early start in the morning,” his father
remarked. “Warren will arrive on the nine o’clock train this evening,
and can get a good night’s rest. Perhaps we’d better have breakfast
about seven.”

Mr. Warren was the New Yorker Mr. Parker was to take into the woods!
And they were to depart in the morning for the camps on Payne Stream!

“Father!” cried Sam.

Mr. Parker glanced in surprise at his son. “Well, what is it, young
man?” he asked.

“The biggest favor I ever begged of you! Take me with you!”

“On this trip?”

“Yes, sir. I can’t tell you how much I want to go.”

Mr. Parker shook his head doubtfully. “It’s a long haul--we’re going in
to the new camps, and maybe beyond them. I’m afraid----”

“But it’s such a tremendous favor, Father!”

“Exactly! But----” Mr. Parker paused. He had noted Sam’s earnestness;
had marked how the boy was bending forward, and how his hands gripped
the edge of the table. “But, you see----” Now he had caught his wife’s
eye, and again hesitated. For some strange reason she was endorsing
her son’s plea. He read the unspoken message; he saw her little nod of
affirmation. “Why--why, give me a moment to consider,” he concluded.

“It’s vacation, you know,” said Mrs. Parker softly.

“I know--but I hadn’t thought of----”

“But you’ll think of it now, won’t you?” implored Sam.

Once more husband and wife exchanged glances.

“The fact that I hadn’t thought of taking you, Sam, doesn’t bar
considering the proposition now,” said Mr. Parker. “Well, I dare say it
can be arranged if----”

“Bully!” cried Sam enthusiastically. “Oh, but that’s fine, sir! And I
want my crowd to go--the club--you know, sir!”

“What!”

“Yes, the club--all of ’em. That’s the best part of it.”

“Possibly--for the club,” said Mr. Parker drily. “But I’m not planning
a wholesale migration.”

“Still,” suggested Mrs. Parker, “there’s the big sleigh.”

“There is.”

“And the boys wouldn’t mind a little crowding.”

“Not they! Warren may have prejudices.”

“You can share the front seat with him. And I believe the roads are
well broken.”

“Only so far as the first camp.”

“But that’ll do for us,” cried Sam. “You can leave us there, and go on
with Mr. Warren, and pick us up when you come back. You won’t be more
than a couple of days away from us, and we’ll keep out of mischief.”

“Why not put Lon in charge of the boys?” added Mrs. Parker.

Her husband laughed outright. “It’s no use--I’m outvoted two to one!
But that is a happy thought about Lon. And jammed as we’ll be, an extra
passenger will make little difference. Only understand, son!” He turned
to Sam. “You’ve promised good behavior. Don’t forget that.”

Sam was grave enough. “I won’t forget that I’m on probation, sir.
But--but then it’s settled?”

“You may consider it so.”

“Whoop! Excuse me, please!” Up sprang Sam so hastily that his chair was
almost overturned. He dashed into the hall and caught up the telephone.

Mr. Parker glanced inquiringly at his wife.

“There’s more animation than I’ve seen manifested for weeks,” he
observed. “Sam has seemed to be rather subdued lately.”

“I’ve noticed it. And I confess I haven’t understood it.”

“Effect of his escapade with my gun, perhaps?”

“Not wholly. I’m sure there’s something else on his mind.”

From the hall floated Sam’s eager voice:

“Course your folks will let you go, Step. Make ’em, make ’em!... Yes,
yes; I tell you there’s a special reason. Biggest chance that ever
happened!... No, no; I can’t tell you now, but we’ll get the gang
to the club, and you’ll have the whole story.... No, no--just bring
along your snow-shoes.... But you’ve got to come--every fellow’s got
to!... What’s that?... Sure, there’s a clue!... No; I shan’t talk over
the wire.... Get permission to come along; that’s all you need worry
about.... Say, hang up now, won’t you? I want to catch Poke and the
rest before any of ’em go out for the evening.”

Mr. Parker smiled quizzically. “My dear lady,” he said, “I confess that
I find difficulty in comprehending the mental processes of your son.”

His wife gave a little sigh. “Ah! Sam is too much for me sometimes.
And this is one of the times. But”--and her face brightened--“but I’m
confident he has some excellent reason for setting his heart on this
expedition.”

“Well, I hope so, at least,” said Mr. Parker, rather resignedly.




CHAPTER XXII TOM ORKNEY CHANGES HIS INTENTION


There are three ways in which one may travel from Plainville to
the woods about Payne Stream. One is partly by rail, involving a
jolting journey over the branch line to a flag-station, and then a
trip over roads which quickly dwindle to trails. The other routes
are by highways, neither being direct. Mr. Parker, choosing the more
promising of the two, brought his party in sight of the No. 1 camp in
mid-afternoon.

The pace had been very moderate, but rather because Mr. Parker
spared his horses than because of hard going. In the more thickly
settled districts the sleighing was excellent, while the last lap of
the journey was over a “tote road,” worn smooth by the passage of
sledges carrying supplies to the lumbermen. Midway there had been a
stretch, over which travel evidently had been very light. Here, as
Lon explained to the boys, was a district of abandoned farms, some
of whose houses, fast falling into ruin, he pointed out to them. Then
he indicated groves of flourishing young trees, growing on land which
within his memory had been under cultivation, and philosophized a
little on the “hard grubbin’” on the hill farms.

Wrapped in their fur coats, Mr. Parker and Mr. Warren shared the front
seat, and afforded shelter for the other passengers. The rear seats had
been removed from the sleigh, and Lon and the boys filled the bottom
of the vehicle, with plenty of straw and robes to keep them warm. On
the whole they did very well; though it is not to be denied that they
were quite willing to alight and stretch their legs when the sleigh
drew up at the door of a big log hut, low but long and with an ell at
the rear. Smoke was curling from two chimneys, one in the middle of the
main building and the other in the ell, but nobody was in evidence.
When Mr. Parker raised a shout, however, the door opened, and out came
a thick-set, ruddy, middle-aged man, in sweater, corduroys and heavy
boots.

“Hullo there!” he sang out cheerfully. “Glad to see ye, Mr. Parker!
Wasn’t lookin’ for ye quite so early. And this is Mr. Warren, ain’t it?
Proud and happy, sir, to make your acquaintance. Wha’je think of this,
now? Kinder remind ye of Fifth Avenue, eh?”

“Well, I’ve seen snow on the avenue--when it was very new snow--that
looked like that you have here,” said Mr. Warren.

The thick-set man chuckled, and shook hands with Mr. Parker. Then he
repeated the ceremony with Mr. Warren, being duly presented as Mr.
Kane, foreman, or “boss” of No. 1 camp. Then for the first time he
seemed to observe Lon and the club.

“Hullo some more--a whole lot more!” he exclaimed. “Wha’je got in
behind, Mr. Parker? New crew of lumberjacks?”

Mr. Parker briefly explained, and there were more introductions.

“Kinder wedged in, ain’t they?” inquired Mr. Kane. “Guess I’d better
play block and tackle.”

With that he put out an arm, caught Step by the collar, and fairly
swung him to the ground. Whereupon Step’s friends swarmed over the
side of the sleigh, and fell to stamping their feet vigorously, in an
effort to quicken sluggish circulation.

“Go in, boys, go in,” Mr. Kane urged hospitably. “Go in and warm up.
Goin’ to let these fellers stay with me, ain’t ye?” he added.

“Yes,” said Mr. Parker. “Hope you can put ’em up, and put up with them,
for a day or two, while Warren and I go farther on.”

“Sartain sure! Plenty o’ room, and grub, and blankets. Only ain’t ye
goin’ to stop at the Hotel de Kane?”

“On the way out we will. Just now I’m anxious to get in touch with
Wells----”

“Wal, now, if he didn’t go through to No. 2, not half an hour ahead of
ye!”

Mr. Parker cast a weatherwise look at the sky, and gathered up the
reins.

“Then I think Warren and I will push on,” said he. “There’s a feel of
more snow in the air, Kane. So, if you’ll just keep a sharp eye on
these young scamps and show them what a lumber camp is like----”

“Trust me!” chuckled the cheery foreman.

Sam had drawn a little apart from his friends and was glancing keenly
about him. At that hour, of course, the choppers were at work, probably
at some distance from the camp, but other employees might be in or near
the cabin. Already he had observed a fat man peering from the door of
the ell. That would be the cook, no doubt. The jingle of bells told him
that his father was resuming the journey, and his ears warned him that
Mr. Kane was shepherding his flock of guests indoors.

Sam was as chilled and stiff from the long ride as were his friends,
but he still lingered at his post of observation. It was no more than
a chance, at the best, that Orkney, if he had come to the woods, was
at this especial camp; but Sam was making the most of the chance. In
full session of the club it had been decided that, if the runaway were
discovered, Sam should first reason with him in private, falling back,
if necessary, upon the support of the others.

Except where a clearing had been made for the camp, and where ran the
narrow tote road, towered tall pines, doomed to fall as the choppers
worked their way from the borders of the tract to its center. Here
the snow had fallen deep and without drifts, such as the travelers had
seen in the more open country. Sam shivered a little. The cheerful
and vociferous boss had followed his charges into the cabin, and, of
a sudden, the watcher was oppressed by the silence and the loneliness
of the woods. Instinctively he took a step toward the main door of
the camp; halted; listened intently. Then he heard again, and with
certainty, the sound which he had half believed a trick of imagination.
It was the crunch of dry snow under a hurrying foot.

Sam strode forward. As he turned the corner of the building, he caught
sight of a figure moving obliquely toward the runner tracks leading to
No. 2 camp. In spite of the low-drawn cap and the rough Mackinaw he
recognized Orkney.

“Slipped out of a back door, and around the other side of the camp and
started for another get-away,” he reflected. “Bound not to be seen, if
he can help it. Thunder, but he is as stubborn as they make ’em!”

Orkney was in haste, but Sam pursued still more rapidly. The tote road
bent sharply to avoid a great boulder. Orkney vanished around the
bend, without giving evidence that he suspected he was followed; but
when Sam passed the big rock, and thus shut himself from view from
the camp, he beheld Orkney, faced about and standing defiantly in the
middle of the road.

Sam, too, pulled up. For a moment neither boy spoke. Sam advanced a
pace. Orkney contented himself with holding his ground.

“Well, what do you want?” he growled.

“You,” was Sam’s terse response.

“Cut out the guff! I’m in a hurry.”

Sam took another step forward. “See here, Orkney! I’ve got things to
tell you. You made a mistake when you bolted.”

“That’s my own lookout. I’m satisfied.”

“I’m not.”

“Huh! It’s no affair of yours.”

“I tell you it is,” Sam insisted. “Helped drive you out of town, didn’t
I?”

“What’s that? ‘Drive me out?’” snorted Orkney. “Not much! Nobody drove
me--least of all you and your gang of swelled heads!”

Sam kept his temper. “Might as well face things as they are. You ran
away because everybody was down on you, because everybody cut you,
because----”

“Not on your life!” Orkney broke in fiercely. “I don’t care a rap for
the whole school or the whole town!”

“All the same you couldn’t stand the gaff. So you turned tail and
bolted. And here I find you a wood-chopper and----”

“No siree! Can’t you get anything straight? I’m cookee. Know what that
is? Cook’s helper. Or, rather, I was. I’ve quit the job. I’m moving on.”

“You’re running again--from us!”

“I’m running from nobody. But I don’t choose to stay where a lot of
prying sneaks are butting in.”

Sam took another step. This proffering of the amende honorable was
proving to be even more difficult than he had feared, but he kept
himself in hand.

“Orkney,” he said earnestly, “you’ve got to hear me. The other day I
charged you with a lot of rascality. I was mistaken. I take back what
I said. Then, like everybody else, I thought you as good as shoved
Little Perrine into the pond. That was another mistake; I’m sorry for
it.”

Orkney was more puzzled than pleased. “Eh? Sorry, are you? Well, if you
want to apologize----”

“Apologize” is a word which, sometimes, grates on the ear. Sam flushed.

“Go slow there!” he said sharply; then, with a change of tone, went on:
“If I’m apologizing, it’s for the things I did because I was fooled,
deceived. And the club are with me in this. But I’m not apologizing,
and they’re not apologizing for thinking you a grouchy sorehead. You’ve
made your own troubles, mostly. We’ll let that pass, though. I’m not
here to call you names; I’m here to tell you that, if you’d stuck it
out and not run away, things would have cleared up for you. As it is,
we’re ready to do what we can for you if you’ll come back. We’ll spread
the truth. You can make a fresh start.”

“With the help of your bunch! I see myself doing it!”

“Look at the case fairly. We came here in the hope of finding you. We
came to make the offer.”

“Got a tip where I was, eh? Well, I know who gave it. Fellow from
Plainville, who’d been hanging around the camp, disappeared for a
couple of days, and then came back.”

“Groche--Peter Groche? Is he here now?”

“Was this morning. It was none of his business, and it’s none of yours,
Parker--mixing up in my affairs this way.”

“But it is our business!”

Orkney’s jaw was thrust forward obstinately. “See here, Mr. Sam Parker,
you’re going too far. You’re banking on a notion that on account of
what you did for me at the pond I’ve got to come when you whistle. Get
that out of your head! I told you I couldn’t very well fight you--you
know why--but there’s a limit. You don’t own me!”

Sam had not thoroughly mastered the rôle of bearer of the olive branch.
“Mighty glad I don’t own you! If I did, I’d get rid of you very quick!”
he rapped out. “And if you want to fight--why, the slate’s clean; you
don’t owe me anything.”

Orkney dropped a bundle he had been carrying under one arm. Sam,
observing this readiness to clear for action, struggled between zest
for the fray and duty, as he saw it.

“Listen, you--you chump! Show common sense, can’t you? Come home with
us. We want you to have a square deal. We’ll back you up--so far as we
can. Little Perrine swears by you--we’ll spread his story. And there’s
another thing--maybe you don’t guess how awfully broken up your aunt
is. She’s almost crazy. She’s done everything she could to trace you.
She’s offered a reward----”

“What’s that? A reward?”

“Yes--hundred dollars for news of you.”

“Oh-ho!” Orkney’s cynical grin was a taunt in itself. “Oh-ho! So that’s
your lay, eh? You’re after me because you and your gang are after the
hundred? Well, you don’t get either--see?”

Orkney had passed the limits of endurance. Rage seized Sam. To be
charged with mercenary motives was more than he could bear. He sprang
at Tom, and at the same instant that vigilant youth leaped to meet the
attack. There was a furious exchange of blows, each combatant seeking
to inflict punishment and making no effort to avoid it. Then the pair
grappled, and swayed back and forth, struggling desperately for the
mastery.

It was a fight, and a real fight; but one carried on under unusual
conditions. Both boys were in heavy winter clothes; there had been no
time to discard overcoats or jackets, or even the thick gloves they
wore. So they were, in some degree, like armored knights of old, come
to grips in full panoply, by which they were at once hampered and
protected; while the yielding snow offered most uncertain footing. Now
they were in the tracks of the tote road; now they had reeled into snow
that rose above their plunging knees; now they were floundering back to
the path. Sam, slipping, went to his knees. Orkney, over-eager to press
his advantage, lost it; for though he landed a blow on his opponent’s
forehead, it was at cost of the precious “under hold.” Sam’s arms
were locked about Tom’s waist; his chin was pressing hard against the
other’s shoulder. Orkney swayed backward under the pressure. He made a
frantic effort to break free; failed; lost footing. Down he went into
the deep snow, Sam falling upon him and still holding him fast.

But the battle was far from ended. Orkney writhed and twisted. He
struck at Sam, raining ineffective blows upon his head and shoulders.
He kicked furiously, sending the snow flying in showers. Indeed, he
fought determinedly but vainly, until at last Sam, keeping his wits,
had slowly shifted position, and was astride his prostrate foe’s
body. Then, with one of Sam’s hands at his throat, and the other
hand clenched and poised above his unprotected face, Orkney sullenly
accepted defeat and ceased to struggle.

“You--you had enough?” Sam panted.

“Y-Yes!” gasped Orkney with all imaginable reluctance.

“Give up?”

“Yes.” It was barely a whisper, but Sam caught the word.

“All--all right!” he said, breathlessly but cheerfully, and got upon
his feet.

Orkney sat up, but did not attempt to rise. His expression betrayed
intense chagrin.

“I--I won’t admit you--you licked me, but--but you got me down,” he
said brokenly. “And--and I gave up. But that--that doesn’t settle
anything.”

To his surprise Sam laughed.

“Sure settles one thing, Orkney! You said you--you wanted to fight
me, but couldn’t--’member? Well, somehow, we seem to have dodged the
difficulty.”

Tom seemed to find a certain grim consolation in this aspect of the
case.

“That’s so. But--but what do you want me to do now?”

“Stand up!” said Sam promptly. “We’ll brush the snow off each other.
Then we’ll go back to the camp. You’d better slip in the way you
slipped out. I’ll go in at the front door, and tell the fellows you’re
working here, and I’ve had a talk with you. Then you’ll happen along
naturally. The crowd will be decent.”

Orkney made a grimace. “S’pose I’ll have to see ’em--might as well have
it over. But see here, Parker! Mind you, I haven’t promised to go back
to Plainville.”

“But you’ll think it over?”

“Well,” said Orkney reluctantly, “I’ll agree to that. Yes; I’ll stay a
day or two, anyway, and think it over.”




CHAPTER XXIII LON GATES ENTERTAINS


What easily might have been an embarrassing situation was dealt with
capably by the Safety First Club. Hardly had the jovial Mr. Kane
welcomed the belated Sam and demanded how in the world he had happened
to stray from the rest of the party and what he had been doing to amuse
himself out in the cold; and hardly had Sam explained as nonchalantly
as might be that he had chanced to meet a schoolmate, who was serving
as cookee to the camp, and had paused for a chat with him, when the
door in the partition shutting off the cook’s domain opened, and Orkney
appeared.

There was brief, but tense, silence as Tom advanced toward the group.
Then Step, who chanced to be nearest, spoke.

“H’lo, Orkney!” said he brusquely but not harshly.

“Howdy, Step!” responded Tom, quite in the same manner.

“Oh, up here for a while, eh?”

This was Poke’s contribution. The others nodded, a bit stiffly, maybe;
and the Shark regarded the newcomer solemnly through his glasses.
Nowhere was there sign of hostility, even if warmer welcome were
lacking. There was not a boy there but guessed shrewdly at what had
taken place; but not for love or money would one of them have betrayed
his knowledge by speech or look. At times the methods of youngsters
in their teens curiously resemble those of Indians--at least, to the
extent of jealous hiding of emotion. Both Tom and Sam bore a mark or
two of their encounter, but for the present these were things to be
carefully ignored.

Mr. Kane, as he himself would have said, “sensed” something queer; but
though he glanced quickly and inquiringly from face to face, he could
make nothing of the manner of his guests. And then Orkney going about
his duties and the boys resuming their talk, he gave up the problem,
and turned to Lon, from whom he demanded the latest news of the outside
world.

It was Sam’s first opportunity to inspect a lumber camp, and he
studied with keen interest the long, low room, with its walls of logs,
its big stove, its line of bunks against each wall, and its “deacon’s
seat,” or bench built beside the bunks. The windows were few and small.
Roughly as the house was built, it was very solidly put together, while
drafts were lessened by moss packed between the logs. Here and there
hung spare clothing and extra boots. There was no attempt anywhere at
adornment or decoration, but order of a sort seemed to be maintained,
the order which places everything where it can be most handily come at.

Dusk was falling, and the choppers began to straggle into the camp.
With them came the “yard men,” whose business it is to handle and pile
the logs, and the teamsters. Strapping big fellows were most of Kane’s
crew, roughly clad for rough work, hard as nails, and hungry as bears.
Among the last to arrive was Peter Groche, who slouched into the big
room, grunted when his eyes fell upon Lon and the boys, halted for
an instant, regarding them evilly, and finally made his way to what
appeared to be his especial corner. There he remained until the whole
company trooped through the doorway in the partition to the combined
kitchen and dining-room.

This filled the ell of the camp. There was a range in one corner, and a
table of boards ran the length of the room, benches serving as seats.
Behind these were two bunks for the cook and the cookee. The supper,
everything being eaten from tin plates, made up in quantity what it
lacked in variety. Beans, baked with pork, formed the principal dish,
most excellent beans and in seemingly inexhaustible supply. Then there
were enormous camp doughnuts, which would have appalled a dyspeptic,
but which proved to be singularly toothsome and comforting after a day
in the open. Tea, sweetened with molasses, was drunk from tin cups.
The boys may not have been able to match the huge appetites of the
woodsmen, but they ate and ate until, as Poke whispered to Step, he’d
have to stop or hitch two belts together; for the food, simple as it
was, was well cooked and tempting enough to hungry folk, young or old.

Sam divided attention between Orkney and Peter Groche. The cookee, of
course, was busy throughout the meal, devoting himself to his tasks
and going about them in businesslike fashion. Sam fancied Tom was not
in high favor with the men, though it certainly could not be alleged
that he neglected them. Still, Tom’s was a dogged and silent manner of
performance not calculated to secure popularity anywhere.

At table Groche’s appearance was at its worst. He ate greedily and
enormously, fairly shoveling the food into his mouth. Sam observed that
the man kept his eyes on his plate, spoke to none of his neighbors,
and showed no interest in the talk which began to be heard when the
supper drew to a close. He was the first to rise, and shuffled out as
if glad to go; but when the boys trooped into the main room, there was
Groche, perched in his corner and sucking at a black pipe. And there he
remained until dislodged by no less heroic a champion than the Shark.

Now the Shark, as has been related, had the quaint habit, into which
near-sighted persons, given to reflection, sometimes fall, of fixing
his gaze upon some object and holding it there without any especial
concern in the object, or consciousness of its existence. As it
happened, the Shark had chanced to wonder what might be the weight of
a layer of snow two feet deep, spread evenly over one square mile; and
being more charmed with the computation than with the conversation of
his friends and hosts, he sat down opposite Peter, brought him into
range of his big spectacles--and promptly forgot his very existence.

Groche, on his part, woke up gradually, as it were, to the baleful and
unwinking intensity of the scrutiny to which he seemed to be subjected.
He glared at the Shark, growled deep in his throat, tried to stare down
the unconscious youth over the way. Failing utterly in this, he dropped
his eyes, pulled desperately at the black pipe, shifted position, stole
a side-long glance at his vis-à-vis. The Shark was still contemplating
him with unruffled composure and deadly concentration.

Groche bent forward, scowling his fiercest. The Shark ignored the
demonstration. Groche made an abrupt and threatening motion. The Shark
didn’t move an eyelash. A strange fear clutched the heart of the
ne’er-do-well. He had heard frightful tales of the evil eye. What the
evil eye might be he had no notion, but also he had no intention to
risk learning. Up he jumped, retreating the length of the room; while
the Shark, wholly absorbed, stared at the wall instead of Mr. Groche,
without being aware of the change in view.

Sam, the observant, had not missed Groche’s strategic movement, though
he did not grasp its cause. Nor did he fail to perceive that Peter from
his new post was sourly surveying the group by the stove, with especial
regard for Lon and himself. But then came Orkney to distract Sam’s
attention.

Tom, his work finished, took the place the Trojan made for him on the
bench. His air was not markedly sullen, but it was reserved; and it
could not be denied that the talk, which had been going merrily enough,
began to drag. Sam, hurrying to the rescue, started a topic, which
drooped and languished. Tom was attentive but unresponsive; so were the
club members. Both sides were trying to be fair, and the result was
chilling.

Sam caught Lon’s eye, and telegraphed a message for help. Lon
understood. He nodded in reply. Clasping his hands about a knee, he
fell to rocking his body back and forth. Of a sudden he broke into a
loud laugh.

“Haw, haw, haw! If he wa’n’t jest the plumb ridiculousest old critter!”

“Who was?” asked Herman Boyd.

“Old man Wallowby,” chuckled Lon. “Dunno jest what made me think of
him. Long before the time of you boys he was.”

“I remember him,” said Mr. Kane. “Queer old codger as ever was. Folks
used to say there was only three things he never seemed to get around
to--washin’, workin’, or worryin’.”

“Jesso!” Lon agreed; then made correction: “Say, though! There was one
time he was worried, fast enough. Ever hear tell o’ the night he fit
the bear?”

“Fit a b’ar?” echoed the foreman. “No; new one on me.”

Several of the lumberjacks, who had been listening to the talk, drew
closer.

“There’s two-three b’ar hangin’ ’round No. 3 camp,” one of them
volunteered.

“Never mind them, Jake,” interposed Mr. Kane. “Le’s hear about old
Wallowby’s run-in.”

Lon ran a glance about the expectant group.

“Wal,” he drawled, “I dunno’s I can tell the story the way Wallowby
told it to me, but I’ll try. You know, the old humbug uster give out
that he was a nat’ral bonesetter, and uster wander about, foragin’ off
the country and pretendin’ to look for broken bones. That’s how he got
wind of old Calleck, who must ’a’ been a good deal of the same breed.
Only Calleck was a yarb doctor, and a bigger freak’n Wallowby himself.
He was all the while prowlin’ through the woods, diggin’ up roots for
his medicines; and he called himself a hermit; and he built himself a
mighty queer house off by his lonesome, a stone house, and----”

“I’ve seed it,” one of the men broke in. “What’s left of it’s standin’
over on the South Fork, not ten mile from here. But ’twa’n’t all stone.
Calleck got tired o’ luggin’ rock, and topped it off anyhow he could.”

“Like enough!” said Lon. “I’ve never been to the house, but that’s
about the fashion old Calleck’d ’a’ done any job. But I’ll get on to
where Wallowby and the bear come in. Wallowby’d been cruisin’ down in
the villages, and I guess he’d sorter wore out his welcome in spots.
Way he put it to me was he got to longin’ for the congenial society
of a brother scientist, and so he tramped off to find Calleck. He’d
never seen him and he didn’t know jest where the stone house was, but
everybody was amazin’ glad to give him directions and push him along;
and so he moseyed up into the woods.

“It was along in December, but the ground was still bare; though it had
been mighty cold, and it kept gettin’ colder all the while Wallowby
climbed the hills. Got dark, too, and the wind was risin’. ’Cordin’ to
Wallowby ’twas perishin’ cold, and black as a cellar, before he woke to
the fact that he was as good as lost.

“He stopped and tried to figger out his bearin’s, but it was no use.
It was a second growth, hard wood country, with a lot o’ scrub stuff
mixed in; and he’d been fallin’ over roots, and duckin’ branches till
his notions o’ north and south was twisted as a corkscrew. Looked like
he was in for a night in the brush, but to keep from freezin’ he
wrapped an old blanket shawl--he always carried one--around his head,
and kept goin’. ’Twa’n’t no pleasure trip, believe me! He shivered when
he told about it, but he owned up he shivered wuss that night when he
thought he heard something pantin’ off to the right. What with the old
shawl over his ears he wa’n’t quite sure; but, anyhow, he stepped out
livelier’n ever, and then plunk! he bust through a bush and into a
clearin’. And in the clearin’ was a big black spot that meant a house
o’ some sort.

“Wallowby made for that house same’s a woodchuck makes for his hole
when there’s a dog after him. He went round the corner of it so fast
that he couldn’t stop, when, all of a sudden, he saw waddlin’ ’round
the other corner something big and black, and loomin’ like a mountain.
And he heard that pantin’ so loud it sounded like a steam engine. And
then, not bein’ able to clap on the brakes quick enough, he butted
fair into the thing. His hands hit the thing’s body, and he could feel
thick fur. He tried to yell, but all that’d come out of his throat was
a hoarse growl. And then what was like a big claw raked his arm, and
laid open three-four deep gashes across the back of his hand.

“’Twas a mutual surprise party all right. Wallowby turned, and headed
for the bush, as if he was more like a scared jack-rabbit than a
woodchuck. But he didn’t go far. He fell over a root, and before he got
up it broke on him that the bear was makin’ for cover on the other side
o’ the house.

“Wallowby told me he didn’t lose sight of the argyment that, if he
didn’t get into that house, he’d freeze. With the blood tricklin’ from
his hand he wa’n’t anxious to risk old Bruin changin’ his mind and
comin’ back, so he sneaked round to the back o’ the place. He had no
weapon but a jack-knife with a broken blade, but he got it out.

“‘And would you believe it?’ he says to me. ‘It was like Tophet for
darkness, but, jest as I got to the house, that miserable critter came
pantin’ at me! He let drive with that murderin’ claw of hisn, and I dug
into him with the knife. And then, somehow, each of us was reminded
of his own business, and done accordin’. I got back into the brush,
and sot there thinkin’. I was all of a sweat, and freezin’ at the
same time; for the chill was gettin’ into the very marrow of my bones.
And, pooty soon, studyin’ that lump of a house like it was a chicken
pie Thanksgivin’ mornin’, I managed to make out the chimney against
the sky. It was a whoppin’ big chimney, big enough for a man to drop
through. And the roof sloped ’most to the ground.

“‘Wal,’ says Wallowby, tellin’ the story, ‘I didn’t need two hints. I
got holt of the edge of that roof, and I wriggled up and clumb to the
chimney. And then I heard that pantin’ ’tother side o’ the stack, and
next minute me ’n’ that fool bear was buttin’ our heads together. I
rolled down the slope and over the edge, and ’most druv the breath out
o’ my body. But, all the same, I heard an awful thud as the bear fell
off ’tother side.

“‘Wal, I sat there a minute or two gettin’ my wind back and my mad
up. I couldn’t stay where I was--I’d ‘a’ froze stiff. And if I’d got
to bet by a bear, I’d be something better’n a cold lunch, anyhow.
And, besides, all my life I’d been helpin’ sufferin’ humanity dirt
cheap; but I drew the line at sellin’ my life anything but dear to
a wuthless old he-bear. So up I got, grippin’ the knife, and started
full tilt for the front door. If that bear interfered, he’d take his
chances o’ gettin’ hurt. But would you believe it? Just as I dove for
the door he riz up in the darkness ahead o’ me and done the same thing,
simultaneous. We whanged away at each other, and then, sir, sure as I’m
standin’ here! we jammed through that door together; and fell over a
stool; and he went one way, and I went another. And the knife flew out
o’ my hand, and hit a log smoulderin’ on the hearth, and a flame shot
up. And there on his hands and knees, glarin’ at me and wheezin’ like a
broken bellows, was the ornariest old codger in a buffalo coat you ever
set eyes on!

“‘“Wal,” says I; “wal, but you got a mighty peculiar way o’ treatin’
company! Ain’t you got no better manners?”

“‘“Why--why”--Calleck gasps--“I--I took ye for--for a bear.”

“‘“Same here,” says I; “only vicy versy. And what you want to go
pantin’ like one for?”

“‘“It’s the--the asthmy,” says he. “And what for do you go--go
traipsin’ ’round with--with that mess o’ shawl disguisin’ the human
figger?”

“‘I stuck out my bleedin’ hand. “Anyhow, I ain’t grown claws,” says I.

“‘“Huh! neither have I,” says he, and shows what he’s carryin’. And
it’s a little rake he uses to dig for his roots.’

“And that,” Lon concluded, “is old Wallowby’s own yarn o’ the biggest
bear fight that ever was pulled off in these parts, I guess.”

There was a roar of applause and laughter, led by the cheery boss of
the camp; even Tom Orkney was grinning. Sam sent a grateful glance at
the breaker of the social ice. And then, as Mr. Kane prepared to match
one bear story with another, he saw Peter Groche get upon his feet and
lounge clumsily to the door.




CHAPTER XXIV PETER GROCHE SCORES AGAIN


Sam had found his bunk-bed of spruce boughs amazingly comfortable and,
snuggling under the blankets, had promptly dropped asleep. He was
healthily tired from his day’s travels; it was odd, therefore, that
distressing dreams came to disturb his rest. He began to toss and turn,
and writhe and groan. A giant’s hand, clutching at his throat, seemed
to be about to strangle him. There was a crushing weight upon his
chest; a trip-hammer was beating furiously in his head. Then some vague
monster had seized him, and was bearing him away with appalling speed.

The boy cried out in terror, and struggled desperately. Of a sudden he
was free of the monster’s grasp; he was falling from a dizzy height,
and about to be dashed to pieces. And then, just as destruction
impended, the dream passed, and he awoke to a reality sufficiently
perilous.

He was lying, half in, half out of the bunk. The camp was full of
smoke, dense, acrid, stifling. His eyes smarted and his throat was
parched and burning. At his side lay Poke, breathing stertorously.
Sam made him out by a flickering light, which came from the direction
of the cook’s quarters. Beyond him was Step, raised on an elbow and
coughing chokingly.

“Fire! Fire!” A startled voice raised the alarm, and others repeated
the cry. Men began to stagger by him, stumbling as they went and
groping wildly. Then three or four, led by Mr. Kane, charged the other
way. The boss was shouting orders. There was the crash of an axe
vigorously plied. The glass fell from a shattered window, and a draft
of cool air fanned his face.

Sam, fully awake at last, sprang from the bunk. Step, too, had gained
the floor. Between them they dragged Poke from his blankets, and put
him on his feet.

“Take him out, Step!” Sam directed, and set himself to the task of
rousing the Trojan, who appeared to be in the half unconscious
condition in which Poke was. The Shark, having very calmly adjusted his
spectacles on his nose, was tugging at Herman Boyd’s shoulder. Sam lent
a hand, and with his aid Herman was started for the door.

Tom Orkney overtook them. He was breathing with difficulty, but managed
to gasp out that the ell was all ablaze. Then came the foreman and a
lumberjack, carrying a helpless form.

“Cook--right where smudge was thickest--overcome,” Tom explained
hoarsely.

Through the doorway they pressed into the cold, still air of the
starless night. Mr. Kane touched Sam’s arm.

“All your crowd out? Good! Keep ’em out till we get the fire under.
’Twon’t be long, what with unseasoned logs and the snow on the roof.”

Then he was dashing back into the camp, and shouting orders to his men.
Tom Orkney bent over the cook, who was lying in the snow.

[Illustration: “HE’S COMING ’ROUND ALL RIGHT”]

“He’s coming ’round all right,” he reported. “We’ll bring out some
blankets----”

Sam and Step rushed into the camp, and emerged with their arms filled
with heavy coverings. Tom made use of two, while the others were
distributed among the boys. Luckily they had turned in “all standing”
and were fully clothed except for their shoes, which Step recovered by
a second trip into the building.

“Lon’s safe--saw him in there,” said he. “When he heard we were all
right he stayed to help fight the fire. Gee, but the kitchen’s a
furnace!”

“I know--I saw it, and I don’t understand it,” Orkney declared. “There
was some grease about, of course--can’t help that with all the frying.
Still, the way the blaze ran----”

There he checked himself. “You mean you suspect----?” queried Step.

“I mean it spread mighty fast,” said Orkney drily.

“Think it caught from the stove, don’t you?”

“Huh! Cook’s a very careful man.”

A bucket brigade was forming to bring water from a hole chopped in the
ice of the stream, and the boys volunteered their services. Somebody
had found a ladder, and now the fire was being attacked from the
roof as well as below. Mr. Kane had plenty of men, and employed them
skilfully, though, of course, his equipment was limited. The roof of
the ell fell in, and for a few minutes flames shot through the opening
thus left, but their inroads upon the main camp were quickly checked,
the heavy logs of the walls, the snow, and the lack of wind all
contributing to the result. In half an hour the fire was under control,
and in another Mr. Kane officially declared it out.

Two or three men were told off to build a new partition, temporarily
filling the gap caused by the fire, and the rest of the crew and the
boys gathered about the big stove in the main camp. Garments drenched
in the bucket brigade service were hung up to dry; the cook, now quite
recovered, brewed a great can of steaming tea. Then there was a sort
of informal roll call. None of the boys appeared to be the worse for
his adventures, and the lumberjacks seemed to find the break in the
monotony of life rather enjoyable. But the foreman, “counting noses,”
as he put it, made a startling discovery.

Peter Groche was missing!

Nobody could recall seeing the man after the alarm was given. Anxious
search of the ruins of the ell, conducted by the aid of lanterns,
revealed no charred evidences that he had perished. It led, however, to
the discovery of a half-burned cloth, smoked and discolored, and giving
forth the unmistakable smell of kerosene.

The cook rushed out of the camp, returning presently with a five-gallon
can.

“See this!” he cried excitedly. “And this!” He held the can upside
down, but no stream poured from its open neck. “Nigh full ’twas
yesterday, and now it’s dry as a bone! That’s why the fire went through
my place in jumps. He must ’a’ sneaked in and soused everything with
the stuff after I went to sleep.”

“Huh! He might ’a’ done it with a waterin’ cart for all you’d knowed
it, once you got to snorin’!” jeered one of the choppers.

The cook hotly insisted that he had full right to sleep soundly after
feeding a “gang of two-legged wolves,” but the foreman stopped the
controversy.

“Steady there, all around!” he commanded. “This is a crazy job, but
it’s a bad job and a state’s prison job. But sure’s my name’s Kane,
I’ll land the scoundrel that done it!” He glanced at his watch. “It’ll
be gettin’ light in half an hour. Dayton and ‘Stub’ Cyr, I want ye!”

Two of the men--stout fellows both--stepped forward.

“You take after Groche. You know the woods. He’ll have left a trail----”

From the background somebody spoke. “My snow-shoes are gone. He’s stole
’em!”

“Like enough! And that’ll mean Groche won’t stick to the tote road.
He’ll strike out ’cross country--Canady way, mebbe.”

Lon pushed to the front. “See here!” said he. “Let me in on this, will
you? Guess I’ll toddle along with your two.”

“Eh?” said Mr. Kane in surprise.

Lon’s expression was determined. “Sure’s I’m risin’ two-year old, this
is my party, as you might be sayin’. I got a sorter runnin’ account
with that critter. And I can tell you this: he wa’n’t aimin’ to singe
your hair, Mr. Kane, so much as he was layin’ for me and some other
folks. I oughter tackled him last night, but I didn’t; and now I’ve got
all the more reason for tacklin’ him good and plenty. And I’m makin’
no brags, but if I lay paws on him, I’ll bring him in, and don’t you
forget it! So, if you’ll jest fit me out with snow-shoes and one or two
other trinkets, I’ll be a heap obleeged to you.”

The foreman inclined his head. “All right--jest as ye say, Gates.
’Nother pair o’ long legs like yourn won’t do no harm to the hunt.
We’ll outfit ye.”

Lon crossed to Sam.

“You see how ’tis,” he said, lowering his voice. “I jest plain got a
call for this job. Your father’d say ’twas all right if he was here.
But if I take my eye off you for a while, Sam, you’ve got to give me
your word you’ll keep out o’ mischief and keep the rest out of it. I
guess you can do it--you’ve been toein’ the mark like a major lately.”

Sam’s eyes twinkled. “Like Major Bates, for instance?”

“Yep--seein’ as how he’s the only real, blown-in-the-bottle major I
know. And that reminds me: this trip I’ll be a genooine Shylock Holmes.”

“Sherlock Holmes,” Sam corrected.

“No,” Lon insisted; “Shylock’s better. Chap, wa’n’t he, that stood out
for his pound o’ flesh? Well, that’s me--only I’m goin’ to bring in
nigher two hundred. And I’m goin’ to bring it in on the hoof--Peter
Groche’s hoof, at that!”

So matters were arranged. As soon as the light strengthened
sufficiently, Lon and Stub Cyr and Dayton set out. Meanwhile, the cook
had contrived breakfast. The bill of fare was that of supper, but
Sam observed that the tin plates were not heaped so lavishly. And,
observing, he was stricken by doubts.

At the first opportunity he drew Mr. Kane aside.

“I wish you’d tell me something,” he said. “The fire has left you short
of supplies, hasn’t it?”

“Wal, kinder,” the boss admitted. “Most of the grub, ye see, was stored
in the ell. But ye needn’t worry; we won’t starve. I’ve started a team
for Coreytown for supplies. It ought to be back by night.”

Sam meditated for a moment. “Look here, Mr. Kane! We’re half a dozen
extra mouths to feed, and we can’t help being more or less in your way.
And there isn’t any reason why we should stay. All of us brought our
snow-shoes, and it’ll be just as much sport--yes, more--to be marching
out on them as to be tramping about the camp. Father’ll understand.
With the early start we’ll make, we can reach Coreytown long before
dark. It isn’t over a dozen miles----”

“Call it fifteen.”

“Well, fifteen, then. It’ll be bully fun for us.”

It was the foreman’s turn to deliberate. “Wal, I dunno. Hate like time
to be seemin’ to throw ye out! Only we can’t make ye extry comfortable,
mussed up the way we be. And goin’ out would be safe enough. Track’s
plain, and the road’s broke. I dunno, I dunno.”

“I think we’d better not stay, sir.”

“Wal, suit yerself, of course. There’s kinder a feel o’ more weather in
the air, but likely’s not it’ll hold off a spell. And the road’s in
good shape. Then, too, there’s the short cut. If ye knew the lay of the
land it’d save you a lot o’ distance. The road’s the long way ’round,
ye know--makes jest about a right-angle.”

The Shark and Step, who had come up, overheard this.

“You mean, then,” queried the former, “that we could lessen effort by
taking the hypothenuse?”

The foreman smiled. “Or words to that effect, sonny.”

“I comprehend the proposition perfectly,” the Shark solemnly assured
him. “It may be regarded as elementary.”

“I’m for the march,” Step declared. “Say, it’ll beat old Xenophon’s
Anabasis to a frazzle!”

“I’m for anything that’ll do that!” cried Poke, who had joined the
group. “_Enteuthen exelaunei_ on snow-shoes, by Jiminy!”

“Umph! Never did get the hang o’ French myself,” quoth the boss. “But
you fellers’d better talk over things in plain English. Then let me
know what ye decide on.”

Herman Boyd, called to the conference, added his vote to those of his
friends. Tramping out on snow-shoes would be the greatest kind of a
lark. The Trojan was of the same opinion.

Tom Orkney and Mr. Kane were in consultation in a corner. When the
foreman moved off, Sam joined Orkney.

“The boys are unanimously for tramping down to the settlements,” said
he.

“I know. The boss told me how you felt,” Tom answered.

“Seems wisest. Grub’s short here, and the trip will be easy. Lon can
come out when he’s ready. Most likely my father will pick him up.”

“Yes.”

There was a pause, not free from embarrassment.

“I--I hope you’ve been thinking things over,” Sam ventured. “You said
you would, you know.”

“I have thought them over,” said Orkney stolidly.

“You’ll come with us?”

Orkney hesitated. “I--I--well, I’ve laid the facts before Mr. Kane.
And he--he’s a mighty square man, Parker!”

“He’ll release you? And you’ll come?”

“Yes,” said Orkney very soberly; “yes, I’ll come.”




CHAPTER XXV THE BLIZZARD


The youthful adventurers were on the march, and were tramping along on
their snow-shoes in high spirits. Long-legged Step led, followed in
order by Poke, Herman Boyd, the Trojan and the Shark. Then came Orkney,
lagging a little, with Sam at his heels. All were warmly clothed, but
their luggage was of the lightest, being limited, indeed, to a small
axe, carried in a holster, attached to Herman’s belt.

For a half mile the tote road led through a growth of pine and spruce;
but then, at the crest of a little hill, they came to a more open
tract. The road bent to the left; but straight before them was an
inviting slope.

Sam saw the leaders halt and put their heads together. When he came up
to them Step was speaking eagerly.

“Why not, fellows? Gee, but we might as well have all the fun that’s
going! Who wants to go poking along an old sleigh track when he might
be cutting across country? And think of what we’d save! Mr. Kane said
the road made a right angle--you figure it out, Shark.”

“Huh! No given quantities,” snapped the Shark.

“Why not? Call it fifteen miles to Coreytown. Say the angle is
half-way. What’s the answer, Old Skeesicks?”

“Nine-decimal-point-two-plus,” answered the Shark promptly.

Step was exultant. “What did I tell you! Six miles to the good!”

“But what’s the direction?” demanded Sam.

“Why, straight ahead,” said Step, and pointed down the slope.

“How do you know?”

“Must be.”

“I don’t see why.”

Poke took a hand. “Look here, Shark! Can’t you figure out the course?”

The Shark frowned. “You never heard of the word ‘exact,’ did you? You
want me to treat a wiggling road like two straight lines meeting at a
right angle. But if you’ve got to assume everything, you might as well
pile it on. So, if you assume that there is a right angled, isosceles
triangle--two sides equal, understand?--then each of the acute angles
will be of forty-five degrees. And so, to travel to the hypothenuse,
you’d steer forty-five degrees from the line of the road.”

“Oh, sure!” said Step hastily. “Sure you would! But I haven’t a
compass, or dividers, or--or whatever it is you use.”

“Got a watch, haven’t you?” snorted the Shark. “Well, use that! Fifteen
minutes on the dial equals ninety degrees. Forty-five degrees is the
same as seven minutes, thirty seconds. There’s your angle for you. Hang
it! don’t you fellows know anything?”

Step pulled out his timepiece. “Fine! Just as I said--straight ahead.
And say! See that big hill--way off--pointed top! It’s a bit misty, but
it’s right on our line, and it makes a cracking landmark. Come on, you
chaps!”

“Suits me,” said Poke.

“Ditto,” declared the Trojan.

“Here also,” chimed in Herman Boyd.

The Shark, scornfully indifferent, said nothing. Tom Orkney also was
silent. It was a trifle, but significant: he was with the club, but not
of it.

Sam’s expression was dubious. The “weather,” forecasted by the camp
boss, seemed to be threatening to break. The low lying clouds had
grown denser in the last quarter hour, and the wind was rising. In
the shelter of the pines its strength had not been manifest, but once
beyond the edge of the woods, nobody could fail to heed the force of
the chilling blasts. Still, it would be as keen along the tote road as
anywhere else. Sam was not losing sight of his motto of “Safety First”;
but at the moment it did not occur to him that harm was likely to
befall half a dozen active, able-bodied youngsters. Yet he hesitated.
The plan had been to follow the road, and it had been approved by Mr.
Kane.

Step, confident in the support of a majority of the club, started down
the hill. After him trailed the Trojan, Poke, Herman Boyd, and the
Shark. There was nothing for Sam to do but to follow, in company with
Tom Orkney.

At first progress was easy. The snow was smooth, and though the wind
increased it was at their backs. Presently there was a brisk snow
squall, the tiny flakes driving in a blinding cloud. Step quickened his
pace, and led the party to the shelter of a clump of trees.

The squall passed, but left a narrowed horizon. The peak of the big
hill, which was to have served as a guide-post, had vanished. There
was even a good-natured dispute as to the general direction in which
it lay. Step, insisting that he was certain of its bearings, set off
again, leading in a détour about the grove. Then came a hill, not
lofty but so steep that he circled its base. Down upon the squad swept
another squall, fiercer than the first. The boys struggled through it,
enjoyed a moment’s respite, and again found themselves in the midst of
swirling, stinging clouds of icy particles.

Orkney was having trouble with the snow-shoes he had borrowed from Mr.
Kane; the Trojan took a header over a fallen tree; Poke slipped down
a bank. None of the mishaps was serious, but together they served to
bring the party to a halt.

When the savage gusts subsided for a little the boys moved on. Step,
as guide, did his best to hold a straight line, but failed signally.
The country was broken, irregularly wooded, full of hummocks and
tiny valleys as confusing as a maze. Moreover, the snowfall was
becoming heavier, being so dense at times that it shut off the view as
completely as if it were a fog.

An over-tight thong made Herman Boyd fall out of line to readjust the
fastenings of one of his snow-shoes; and he was so long in rejoining
the party that Sam passed a word or two of caution. “Don’t straggle”
was his advice. Its effect was seen in a closing of the gaps. By this
time there was no shouting or joking. Nobody was frightened, but it had
dawned upon the most heedless of the club that they had their work cut
out for them. Halts became more frequent; in them there was a tendency
to huddle.

According to Sam’s reckoning the trail leading from the branch railroad
to the camps crossed the district in which they were, but they had not
stumbled upon it. Still, it could be missed easily; for it was little
traveled, and such drifts as were forming would quickly hide its
traces. Orkney thought that Peter Groche might have taken the short-cut
on his last trip from Plainville, but did not believe that it had been
used by anybody else in a week. Presumably the tote road was to their
left, but its distance was indefinite. As for turning back--well, Sam
considered the idea but briefly. It would involve not only a hard tramp
in the teeth of the storm but also confession of failure. Besides, to
find the camp would be no easy matter; for in many places the party’s
own tracks undoubtedly had been blotted out.

In a general way Step, as well as Sam, had counted upon keeping the
wind at their backs; but in one of the pauses for rest the Shark called
attention to the fact that his spectacles were dimmed by a thin layer
of snow on the lenses.

“Been driving straight in my face for the last three minutes,” he
declared. “We’re utterly twisted, or the gale’s shifting every which
way.”

“Well, I’m doing my best,” Step insisted. “Say, though! If you’re so
clever in turning a watch into all sorts of things, make it a compass,
won’t you? Seems to me I’ve heard it can be done.”

“Certainly it can,” said the Shark. “Very simple method. Only you’ve
got to be able to see the sun. No chance of that now.”

There was dismal murmur of assent. Overhead there was no break in the
dark clouds.

When the next halt was made, debate on the direction of the wind was
resumed. It led to agreement that, as the Shark’s phrase was, it was
shifting every which way. There was agreement, too, that its force was
waxing. And, having reached these not very cheering conclusions, they
could do nothing but trudge on.

Half an hour later they had impressive evidence of the danger of
their plight. Herman Boyd, falling out again to retie his snow-shoes,
had such difficulty with the stubborn rawhide that he lost sight of
his companions, and, when he tried to overtake them, discovered that
their tracks, made but a few minutes before, had been obliterated by
the driving snow. Meanwhile the others, alarmed by his absence, had
turned back, in open order, at Sam’s suggestion; but, even with this
precaution, covering as much ground as possible, they nearly missed
Herman. Luckily the Trojan, on the extreme left of the line, finally
heard a faint shout, and answering lustily, had the relief, presently,
of seeing the wanderer flounder out of the heart of a blinding cloud of
flakes.

Then came a council of war. There must be no more straggling. Whatever
happened, all must keep in touch.

Poke was the next to be found in trouble. Down he slumped in the
snow, and feebly resisted when Sam and Orkney tried to raise him. The
web of one of his snow-shoes had pulled away from the frame, and,
incidentally, had wrenched his ankle. All this involved a halt, while
the Trojan and Step repaired the damaged shoe with a spare strip of
rawhide--it was a slow and painful job for numbed fingers--and Sam
argued zealously with Poke on the exceeding folly of dropping into a
doze.

When they went on, a change had been made in the procession. Step now
kept close to the crippled Poke, giving over the leadership to Sam,
who, on his part, brought the Shark to the second place in the line.
The Shark, as has been said, was physically the weakest of the club,
but so far had fared better than some of his stouter friends. As before
Orkney acted as rear guard.

Sam’s plan was simple, but perhaps as wise a plan as he could have
made in the conditions. It was to find the valley of some stream and
follow it out of the hill country. In the lowlands there would be the
chance of reaching some farm, if not a village. Shelter was coming
to be the first great need. The storm was getting worse and worse.
The snow was falling as heavily as ever, the wind blew with almost
hurricane fury, and the cold was intense. It penetrated the heaviest
coats and mufflers. The boys shivered even as they toiled on, pluckily
if weariedly following their guide.

For a little, Fortune seemed to be kinder. They came to what may once
have been a woods road, which for half a mile gave them a clear, if
winding, path. Then the road ended in a tangled, upland swamp, through
which there was no passage.

While they slowly circled the obstacle Sam’s brain was busy. It was his
business, evidently, to search for the brook draining the swamp; but
so great was the extent of the marshy tract that at last he gave up the
task, and turned into a ravine leading between low hummocks. After him
trailed a slow procession, its pace regulated by the limping Poke.

Sam turned to the Shark.

“How far have we come--if you had to guess?” he asked.

“Don’t know.”

“Guess, anyway.”

The Shark took thought for a moment or two. Then he glanced at his
watch.

“We’ve been out six hours and----”

Sam groaned. “Six? I feel as if it was nearer twenty-four!”

“It’s six. We traveled fast at the start, but we’ve been crawling
lately. Call it twelve miles, all told.”

“Oh, more than that!”

“Huh! Guess yourself, then!”

“But even twelve ought to bring us somewhere. And the farms stretch
some distance this side of Coreytown.”

“Umph!” was the Shark’s non-committal comment.

Sam glanced ahead. They were nearing the mouth of the ravine, beyond
which the ground appeared to fall sharply. Again he turned to the Shark.

“Never saw a fiercer storm,” said he.

“Blizzard!”

“May last a couple of days.”

“They do,” said the Shark grimly, and burrowed deeper in the upturned
collar of his coat.

“Well, we can’t stand much more like this. We’ll have to stop and try
to do something--rig a windbreak, maybe.”

“And freeze?”

Sam’s eye rested for an instant on the laboring Poke.

“Perhaps we can get a fire going. Anyway, we’ve got----”

There he broke off, amazed by the eagerness with which the Shark was
rubbing his glasses with gloved fingers.

“What is it?” Sam asked in haste.

Out shot the Shark’s arm. “Look yourself! There’s something yonder! Oh,
if only----”

But his speech was drowned by a jubilant shout. In spite of the
driving snow, and in spite, too, of a veil of intervening branches, Sam
had made out a chimney and the shoulder of a steep roof.




CHAPTER XXVI OLD FRIENDS MEET


Down the slope rushed the boys like charging troops bursting into an
enemy’s stronghold. Cold and weariness were forgotten. They dashed
through drifts; they broke through thickets; they swung themselves over
the ruins of an ancient rail-fence. Then they were in a clearing, and
hurling themselves at the door of a little house, against which the
snow lay banked to the window sills.

Sagging hinges and rusted bolt gave before the attack. The door
yielded, and in poured the club like an irresistible tide. Once within
the shelter, however, the boys pulled up abruptly, glancing about them
with expressions portraying wonder and disappointment.

At a glance it was plain that the house had not been tenanted for a
long time. The room in which they found themselves was fairly large,
but bare of furnishings, unless a broken chair, an empty box and a
strip of ragged carpet in one corner could be so described. A great
fireplace at one end yawned cold and empty. Dust and cobwebs were
everywhere, and such light as sifted into the place came through breaks
in the windows rather than through the grimy panes remaining intact.
Overhead was a ceiling of rough boards, through whose cracks much snow
had sifted, testifying to the condition of the roof; while beneath
each window a considerable bank of snow had formed. The walls gave
protection, in a measure, from the blasts, but the air had a damp chill
more paralyzing than the cutting wind.

Sam was the first to rise to the situation.

“Here, fellows, we’ve got to have a fire!” he sang out. “Herman, take
that axe of yours and go for the old rails in the fence. Step and
Trojan, go with him, and mind you lug in the driest stuff you can
find--if there is anything dry. Shark, help Poke out of his snow-shoes.
Now, Orkney”--he turned to the silent Tom--“you and I’ll tackle the
fine work. Got any matches?”

Orkney drew a handful from his pocket. “Lucky I was cookee at No. 1,”
said he. “Had to look after the fires, you know.”

Sam had torn a board from the old box, and with his knife was ripping
off long, curling shavings. He had built them in a neat pyramid on
the hearth, when Step and the Trojan staggered in, their arms full of
billets. They stood, watching Sam closely, while he made careful choice
of their offerings. As he had feared, none of the wood could be called
dry, though some of it was not quite so wet as the rest.

Poke and the Shark were beating their arms against their bodies.

“Guess I’ve got a few frosted fingers, all right!” Poke announced
ruefully.

“Then don’t get too close to the fire at the start,” Sam counseled.
“Now a light, Orkney! Touch her off!”

Tom’s chilled hands threatened to bungle the task, but Sam, for reasons
of his own, did not offer to assist. He wished Orkney to feel that he
was to be counted a full companion in the adventure.

Orkney, sheltering a flickering match in his palm, knelt by the
fireplace. Most cautiously he thrust the match into a crevice in the
pile of shavings. A tiny flame shot up. It spread swiftly, the yellow
tongues licking the heavier wood stacked above the kindling. Sam sprang
to the box, and ripped off pieces of the sides. These he deftly placed
on the blazing shavings. Steam and smoke began to rise, and, caught in
a down-draft from the long unused chimney, belched into the room in a
choking cloud.

Sam again raided the broken box, and Orkney followed his example. One
on each side of the hearth, they fed the fire with strips of board,
till at last the heavier wood was fairly ignited. The chimney by this
time was warming to its work, and drawing fiercely.

The Shark, rubbing his nose in curiously experimental fashion, was
surveying Poke intently. Suddenly he bent; picked up a handful of snow
from a drift under a window; crossed to Master Green, and without
warning fell to scrubbing that young man’s nose. Poke with a howl
shrank back.

“What the dickens do you think you’re trying to do?” he demanded
indignantly.

The Shark shook his head reprovingly. “That’s it--spoil everything!
They say that’s the way to treat a frosted nose, but how am I going to
find out if you won’t stand still?”

Poke tenderly caressed the feature under discussion. “What do you want
to know for?” he inquired.

“Because I guess my nose is nipped, too,” said the Shark calmly. “So I
thought I’d see how the treatment worked.”

Herman Boyd entered, fuel bearing. He brought a report, too, that
between the old fence and a fallen tree near by there need be no lack
of fire-wood.

Sam cut pieces from the old carpet, and stuffed them into the holes in
the windows. Orkney, taking a hint, replaced the door in position.

“Say, you two!” Step called out. “You act as if you thought we were
going to make a regular visit.”

“Maybe we are,” Sam told him. “We’d be crazy to go on while the
blizzard lasts.”

“Right you are!” Step agreed, but drew a long face.

For a moment the boys listened to the howl of the gale. Then Poke
settled himself on the floor near the fire.

“Might as well make yourselves comfortable, fellows,” he remarked. “I’d
rather be here than outside, I tell you!”

The Shark followed his example, and so did the Trojan and Step. Orkney
and Sam took opposite ends of the semicircle. Poke was smiling a sickly
smile.

“I believe in making the best of things,” he announced. “I’m not
exactly happy--my ankle hurts and my nose’ll never be the same to
me that it was--but I’m not kicking. I’m glad to be here, as I’ve
explained. But how long do you expect to linger in this bower, Sam?”

“I think we’ll have to stay all night, anyway.”

“Huh! Any idea where we are?”

“Not an idea.”

“I scouted around a bit,” said Herman. “No sign of a road or other
houses.”

Sam nodded. “My notion,” he said, “is that we’ve tumbled on some
way-out, back-of-nowhere abandoned farm. It’s been abandoned so many
years that the brush has sprung up all about it. Somehow I don’t
believe it’s near any village. And now that we’re here--well, Safety
First, you know.”

“That’s right!” chimed in the Trojan.

“We’ll be safe enough,” Sam went on. “We’ll lay in plenty of wood, and
keep the fire going--and that’s about all we can do.”

Poke laid a hand on his stomach. “That’s well enough,” said he. “Only
do I hear anybody suggest dinner or supper? If it’s just the same, I’d
like to have ’em both right now.”

The Shark pulled out a big camp doughnut. “The cook gave me this, bless
him!” he remarked.

“I ate mine, worse luck!” sighed Herman.

“And I also,” groaned Poke. “It went ages ago.”

“Same here!” declared the Trojan.

Both Sam and Orkney, it proved, had been provident. Each produced a
doughnut.

“Share and share alike,” Sam ruled. There was some demur from Poke, but
the division was made. In a few moments the last crumb had vanished.

“My! but that’s just an appetizer!” sighed Poke.

It occurred to Sam that diversion was needed. “You firemen, rustle in
more wood--a lot of it!” he directed. “Orkney, it looks as if there
were a back room. Let’s explore!”

The “back room” proved to be a shed-like extension, in worse condition
than the house itself. It yielded, however, a number of mildewed sacks,
a wooden bucket, and a battered iron pot, in which, hung from a crane
in the fireplace, snow could be melted.

Herman, Step and the Trojan brought in huge armloads of wood. They
declared that it would be needed; that the temperature was falling, and
that the night would be Arctic.

“Whoof! but it’s awful outside!” Herman avowed. “Bet it’ll hit thirty
below!”

This, as the boys knew, was by no means improbable. In Plainville
thermometers now and then showed such readings in cold snaps, while
even lower marks had been recorded in the hills.

Sam built up the fire with generous hand. Its light as well as warmth
was welcome, for the early dusk was closing in. The boys ranged
themselves before the hearth. Coats were stripped off; shoes were
removed, and toes were toasted comfortably. After all, the adventurers
could count themselves lucky. If they had doubts on the point, they had
but to listen to the shriek of the wind and the crackling sound of the
snow driving against the windows.

There was little talk. Now and then one or two of the party uneasily
shifted position, but the others seemed to be content to sit quietly,
gazing thoughtfully at the fire. The Shark especially was absorbed in
reflections.

Step, his right hand neighbor and one of the more nervous of the
brotherhood, wriggled his long legs, stretched his arms, turned, and
peered at the impassive Shark.

“Oh, I say!” he broke out impatiently. “What’s the use of being a
graven image? Come to life, Shark!”

Very deliberately the youth addressed gave his attention to Step.

“Huh! I’m very much alive,” he remarked calmly. “I’m doing something
with such brains as I happen to have.”

“How? What?”

“I’m thinking.”

“How we’ll get out of this fix?”

The Shark frowned. “That would be wasted effort. There’s nothing we can
do till the storm ends. Meanwhile, I entertain myself sensibly.”

“But how?” Step insisted curiously.

An instant the Shark hesitated. “I--I don’t know that you’d be
interested.”

“Hang it! I’d be interested in anything.”

“Very well, then,” said the Shark. “Visualize a cube!”

Up went Step’s hands. “Don’t shoot! I’ll come down. Also I’ll bite.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a catch, isn’t it? Go ahead! Spring your joke!”

The Shark looked disgusted. “Joke nothing! See here, Step! You know
what a cube is, don’t you? Well, visualizing one means just picturing
it in your mind. Remember the formula, don’t you, for A + B, cubed?
It’s A cubed + 3A squared, B + 3AB squared + B cubed. Now, take numbers
instead of letters--take easy numbers. Call A + B fifteen.”

“Er--er--all right. It’s fifteen. I don’t object.”

“Likewise, we’ll call A ten and B five. Therefore the block
representing the cube of A + B will be made up of a cube of A--say,
we’ll call the units inches----”

“I’m willing.”

“Then the cube of A,” the Shark went on, “will be a rectangular block,
ten inches in each direction. On three of its faces we place what I may
term flat blocks, each ten inches square and five inches thick--they’re
the A squared B fellows. Then come what we’ll describe as the long
blocks, five inches two ways and ten inches the other. Finally, there’s
the cube of B, a block five inches high, five inches wide, five inches
thick. Putting these together, and picturing each clearly in mind----”

Step’s long arm shot out. His hand fell on the Shark’s shoulder.

“You villain! You traitor! Doing stunts like that--in vacation! You
ought to be----”

But the Shark didn’t wait to hear the punishment he deserved. He shook
off Step’s hand. He glared at the critic.

“Course I’m not fooling with any kindergarten fifteen!” he cried hotly.
“Just mentioned that to try to get down to your understanding. But I
have been working ninety-seven, and I tell you----”

But what the Shark had to tell was to remain his secret. From without
the house came sounds, clearly to be distinguished from the tumult of
the gale.

Blows were falling upon the door. The boys sprang to their feet, but
before they could respond to the summons the door was thrust back, and
into the room reeled a man, covered with snow from head to foot. After
him hobbled a second man, like the first plainly in sore straits from
his battle with the blizzard, but holding fast to the end of a rope,
which was passed about the leader’s body and knotted securely below his
shoulder blades.

From the club rose a shout, which mingled wonder and welcome. For the
man who held the rope was Lon Gates, and the man he drove before him
was Peter Groche.




CHAPTER XXVII PETER’S GRUDGE


Groche, stumbling forward, pitched in a heap on the floor. Lon,
staggering to the wall, clung to it for support.

“You--you fellows--here--all of you!” he gasped.

“All of us--safe and sound,” cried Sam, and tried to lead him toward
the fire. Lon resisted.

“No, no! Take--take it easy. I--I’m better off here for a while.
But--but what you doin’--doin’----” his voice trailed weakly.

In a dozen sentences Sam told him. Lon’s eyes opened wide.

“Wal, wal! And the storm catched you! And such a whopper of a howler of
a storm, gee whillikens!”

“We know about it. But where did you come from?”

Lon pulled off his cap, and bending down, scooped up a handful of snow
from the drift under the window.

“Wait a minute--fust aid treatment fust!” said he; and began to rub his
face and ears. “No; lemme be! You--you can’t help me. I’m like--like an
old cat--got to lick my own scratches.”

Perforce Sam desisted. Lon, working deliberately and carefully, winced
now and then.

“Got through the hide in places,” he admitted. “This ain’t no night for
a polar bear to be out. Wow! but that wind did sting and cut!”

Sam laid finger on a clean gash in Lon’s coat. “Wind didn’t do that,
did it?”

“No,” said Lon; but he limped to Groche and studied the prostrate
figure for a moment before he went on:

“No; knife done it--’twas his only good jab at me.”

Lon drew a little nearer the fire, but kept a wary eye on Groche. His
voice was gaining strength, though he still spoke huskily.

“Wal, three of us started from the camp, you know. Stub picked up the
trail. It led north. That meant the critter was steerin’ for the
Canady line. But the storm turned him back--that’s how I got him.”

“You alone?” asked Sam eagerly.

“I’m comin’ to that. One time it seemed ’sif the blow was goin’ to
spoil our chances, for it drifted the trail over; but it headed
Groche off, too. He knew he couldn’t buck a blizzard. So, finally, he
give up and made a ’bout face. We three’d separated--spread out, you
know--lookin’ for his tracks. So there wa’n’t nobody with me when,
all of a sudden, I clumb over a little rise, and there was Mr. Peter
leggin’ it before the wind for all he was wuth. And I was right atop of
him, ’most. And then I got this.” And Lon touched the cut in his coat.

“But you had a pistol, hadn’t you?”

Lon’s smile was grim. “Kane had seen that I was heeled proper, but I’d
sot my heart on roundin’ up my man without makin’ a sieve of him. Why,
I’d even took a rope along to hog-tie him. So I didn’t shoot. I jest
clubbed the revolver and patted him over the head with it till the butt
broke off. By that time, though, he was ready to quit.”

“Great Scott, but what a fight it must have been!”

“Wal, ’twas quite some. What with him tryin’ to carve me up, and me
doin’ a bass drum solo on his head--oh, wal, you can figger out as well
as I can what happened. I was too busy to be takin’ picters. But I’ll
say this for him: he fit like a wildcat.”

“How about your end of it?”

Lon shook his head. “Sam, I’m a man o’ peace. And I got enough of the
other thing to-day to last me till I’m ninety-eight and come into my
second wind. But that’s all I know about the scrap.”

For a space nobody spoke. Every one of the boys was picturing for
himself that desperate grapple of two strong men, struggling for
mastery in the midst of the raging storm.

“But afterward--after you’d downed him--what happened?” queried Sam at
last.

“Mighty little--for a while. I was hopin’ the lumberjacks, missin’ me,
would scout back and pick us up, but they didn’t come. Reckon they
were havin’ troubles o’ their own. Finally, seein’ as how keepin’
still meant freezin’, I tried to work toward the camp. But bless you,
boys! it wa’n’t no use; I couldn’t find my own tracks. And I’d got all
tangled on direction. So I reasoned with Groche for a spell--he knows
them woods better’n he knows any book. I roped him the way he’s fixed
now, and told him, ‘Giddap! Le’s go somewhere.’”

“And then----?” Sam urged.

“Yes; tell us!” chimed in two or three of the others.

Thus encouraged, Lon told his story, and a strange story it was of
captive forced to guide captor; of slow and painful plodding through
growing drifts; of halts in the lee of wood or hill, while the storm
increased, and the wind blew more fiercely, and the cold deepened.
After a time he felt sure that Groche, while avoiding the camp, had
some other refuge in mind.

“He’s brute enough,” Lon explained, “to have the brute’s instinct for
makin’ for a burrow. So I give him his head, and let him go it.”

How long they toiled on, or how many miles they covered, Lon had no
notion. The feeble light of afternoon faded into the gloom of night.
Yet Groche seemed to be sure of his course. Lon even fancied that there
was a slight increase in the pace. And then, of a sudden, he saw the
flicker of the fire through a window of the old house.

“Then you’ve no more idea than we where we are?” said Sam.

“No more idea than----” Lon began, but broke off abruptly, as his
glance, ranging the room, fell upon something which caught his
attention. He stepped close to one of the walls, peered at it sharply,
and gave an odd laugh.

“Wal, I’ll be jiggered! Who’d ’a’ thought it? Lookee here, boys! Stone
work part way up, then wood! Say, but it beats cat fightin’!”

“What do you mean?”

Lon turned to the group by the fire. He was grinning in spite of his
weariness.

“I mean this is the house old Calleck built up in the woods, the house
where old Wallowby fit the bear. So that’s proof of the story--see?”

“Proof!” cried the Shark skeptically.

“Why not? Said there was such a house, didn’t I? Sure I did, and now I
go and produce it. Rest follows as a matter of course.”

“Rats!” snapped the Shark in disgust.

“Rats nothing!” jeered Step. “All you’ve got to do, Shark, is to--to
visualize it--yes, that’s the scheme. Take a dose of your own medicine
for keeping the brain clear, can’t you?”

“Bosh!” growled the Shark; and in high dudgeon turned his back on
the company. It happened that, as a result of the movement, he faced
Groche, upon whom unwittingly he trained his gaze, while he meditated
darkly upon the extreme unreason of his clubmates.

Groche had been lying like a log on the floor, but now he stirred
restlessly. He raised himself on an elbow. For a moment he tried, as he
had tried once before, to stare down the unblinking Shark; and failed
as completely as he had failed on the former occasion. He struggled to
a sitting position. He raised an arm, as if to ward off the hypnotic
influence of the steady eyes behind the big glasses. And he broke into
speech, incoherent, savage, and terror-stricken.

Lon limped forward, but Sam was before him, catching Groche’s arm. At
this the ruffian turned upon him.

“You--you, I’ll get ye, if I hang for it!” he shouted. “You’re at the
bottom of it all! You lied about me, and you set that old bloodhound,
Bates, on me!”

“But you’re mistaken; I didn’t,” Sam said earnestly.

“You done it, you done it!”

Sam glanced at Lon. “I guess you reasoned out the truth of it,” said he.

Groche swore viciously, tried to rise; groaned, and sank back to the
floor.

“You lied about me, and threw that job o’ yourn on me!” he snarled.
“I’ll get even with ye, I’ll get even with ye yet, if I die for’t!”

Lon wagged his head sagaciously. “Jesso, Sam, jesso! Them’s the
undoubted sentiments o’ Peter Groche, Esq. Once--twice, comin’ along,
I tried to talk with him, but all I could make out was that he’d got
it in for you for keeps. And as for the why of it--wal, I dunno’s
you’re ready to have that talked over in open meetin’.” And Lon winked
meaningly.

“Oh!” Because Sam understood, his tone was startled. “Oh! That?”

“Exactly! The beginnin’ o’ the trouble,” said Lon, and winked again.

“The be--the beginning----” Sam repeated doubtfully.

Perhaps Lon felt himself justified in dwelling on his own shrewdness.

“Fact is, Sam,” said he, “you’re kind o’ bothered, because you’re still
half calculatin’ on what a reasonable bein’ would ’a’ done. But Groche,
as I’ve told you, ain’t reasonable--not our kind o’ reasonable. Jest
bear that in mind. Allow that he got it into his crooked brain that he
hated you--hatin’s his long suit, I reckon. Now, you’re thinkin’--bein’
what you are, you can’t help thinkin’ it--that when nothin’ much
happened to Peter, and they let him go, he ought to have realized
he’d been mistaken, somehow, in draggin’ you in. But that ain’t Peter
Groche’s method. He’d got you in his bad books, and there you stayed.
It’s all plain as print to me, son. It’s one idee at a time for Peter,
and he ain’t the sort o’ feller to go seekin’ further light, or askin’
the questions a decent man would ask. What if he was let out? He’s
been put in, and that was all he thought about. So he ’tended to all
the sculduggery about our place--which was bad enough. But he hated a
mite too hard, and went a mile too far, when he played firebug; and now
we’ve got him for something that’ll spell state’s prison for him. And
that’s why I was so dead sot on bringin’ him in alive.”

“I see,” said Sam gravely.

Now, to this conversation there had been a group of eager, if
puzzled, listeners. Save for Groche’s reference to Major Bates as a
“bloodhound,” and the discussion of his brief confinement, no clue to
the mystery had been given to the boys; and these matters carried a
suggestion so unexpected and so surprising that none of them readily
grasped it. When Sam said, “I see,” two or three of the others moved
uneasily.

“Jiminy! I don’t!” cried Poke explosively. “I don’t want to seem prying
or inquisitive, but you’ve got me guessing. It’s worse than Greek; for
that I can dig out, if I have to. But there’s no vocabulary to help
here.”

Sam’s glance went from one to another of his friends. He read in the
face of each something very like the thought Poke had put into words.
He drew a long breath.

“Fellows! I’ll tell you. I meant to keep it a secret, but I guess
you’re entitled to know. What Lon referred to as the beginning of the
trouble was--well, it was the--er--er--the accident to Major Bates. I
shot at what I thought was a deer in Marlow woods, and I hit the Major!”

“Whew!”

“You did that, Sam!”

“Shot the Major!”

“Jupiter crickets, but I wouldn’t have been in your shoes for a farm!”

So the club voiced its astonishment. Sam waited for the hubbub to
subside. Then said he:

“I intended to say nothing to anybody, but when Groche was
arrested--why, there was only one square thing to do. The old Major was
bully; so was my father. Groche was turned loose, and I supposed that
was the end of the story. But then things began to happen--you know
well enough what they were, and how we explained ’em.”

Two or three nodded; as many more stole repentant glances at Tom Orkney.

“We made a bad mistake,” Sam went on. “I won’t dwell on all the
mistake led to; but I will say that it seems to me a clear case of one
blunder brought about by another. If I hadn’t shot the Major, there
wouldn’t have been any raids on our barn--and we’re certain Groche
was the raider: so far Lon’s theory is backed by facts. I blundered
by believing somebody else did the tricks, and that led to the third
blunder in jumping to the conclusion that the somebody smashed the club
window that night. Wait a minute, though!” He turned to Orkney. “You’re
following this, aren’t you? You get the combination all right?”

“Yes,” said Orkney simply.

“There was a complication that night. Remember the cap of yours that
Step threw over Mrs. Benton’s fence?”

“I remember it--but I never saw it again.”

“Well, we found it outside the club. What we thought about it was
another of the mistakes. Not till a good while later did we learn that
Mrs. Benton had put it in her rubbish can, and somebody prowling
through the alley had carried it off.”

“Groche--sure’s you’re a foot high!” commented Lon. “He’s always
skulkin’ through the back-streets. Pinched it, didn’t you, Peter?”

But Groche, though stirred by Lon’s toe to make answer, merely growled
inarticulately.

“Well, I think we can safely assume Groche did take it,” Sam continued.
“Even at first the Shark raised a doubt----”

“Doubt!” broke in the Shark. “Huh! Don’t you fellows know an absolute
demonstration when you see one? What I proved was that that stone was
thrown by a grown man, and a strong man, to boot!”

“Well, it’s all part of the chain,” said Sam. “One thing is linked with
the next. If I hadn’t shot the Major, Groche wouldn’t have had a grudge
against me, you fellows wouldn’t have been mixed up in the trouble, we
wouldn’t have had reason to make a trip to the camp, we wouldn’t be
here storm bound. And--and”--he glanced at Orkney--“and things that
have happened wouldn’t have happened.”

A readier fellow, a more tactful fellow, might have found in Sam’s
words something very like an overture for full reconciliation. More or
less clearly everybody understood the situation. All eyes were upon
Orkney, some openly, some covertly; but even in the flickering light of
the fire Tom’s face bore a curiously set and stolid expression.

Poke relieved the tension.

“Ha, ha!” he laughed. “Jiminy! but I can’t get over it, Sam! Think of
you going out and potting Major Bates, of all men! And then think of
you keeping it a secret from the crowd! That’s funnier yet. But the
funniest thing of all is that we didn’t dope it out. Why, there hasn’t
been one of us that didn’t feel you were acting as if you had something
on your mind. Yet with all the Shark’s calculations and with all my
good common sense, we were as unsuspecting as babes in the woods!”

“Common sense! Poke’s common sense!” roared Step. “Say, that’s the
richest joke sprung in a hundred years!”

Peter Groche, aroused by the shout which met this sally, lifted his
head. He stared evilly at Sam, and his features were contorted as
grotesquely as a gargoyle’s.

“He tried to plant the job on me, I tell ye!” he growled hoarsely.
“Boy, I’ll get ye for that--I’ll get ye if I swing for’t!”

“Wal, I guess you’ll have to wait and do a little time fust in a cell,”
quoth Lon.

Peter Groche made no reply. His head had sunk to the floor.




CHAPTER XXVIII SAM MAKES CHOICE


The long night had dragged to an end. A pale glimmer at the windows
told of the coming of a clouded dawn, while outside the old house the
storm raged in unabated violence.

Sam, awakening from a doze, replenished the fire. The other boys were
still sleeping, each in the posture which, to his notion, minimized
the hardship of a bed of rough planks. The Shark was rolled up like
a ball; Step lay flat on his back, his long arms and legs sprawling;
the Trojan had pillowed his head on Herman Boyd’s shoulder; Poke, his
forehead resting on his arm, was breathing very regularly and audibly;
Tom Orkney, a little apart from the others, was stirring restlessly.

Lon was sitting beside Peter Groche, for whom the remnants of the old
carpet and the bags from the shed served as a mattress. Peter was
either ill or shamming artfully. Lon and the boys had had a hard time
with him during the night; for though at intervals he lay in what
seemed to be a stupor, these had been separated by quarter-hours and
half-hours in which he writhed and struggled and cried out deliriously.
They had done the little they could for him; and Lon had remained on
duty as combined guard and nurse.

Sam dropped beside his ally.

“Well, how is he?” he whispered.

“Dunno,” Lon answered dubiously. “If he was anybody else, I’d call him
a mighty sick man. Bein’ Peter Groche, mebbe he’s soldierin’. He’d be
powerful glad to get away--don’t lose sight o’ that.”

Sam bent over the suspect. Groche’s face was flushed; his breathing was
labored.

“Certainly he’s feverish, Lon. And he couldn’t feign that, could he?”

“Umph! I ain’t no doctor.”

“Wish you were!”

“So do I,” said Lon. “As ’tis, I dunno--the pair of us went through
enough to send some folks to hospital, what with that rassle and then
the tramp through the drifts. And I did hammer him up--had to, or
he’d ’a’ done for me. Clear case o’ survival of the fittest--feller
that fit hardest, you know. And I ain’t in what you’d call the pink
o’ condition myself. Sam, I’m as stiff as a bunch o’ ramrods, and I
ain’t got a j’int that feels as if it had been greased in a coon’s age.
That’s one trouble--I don’t dare take chances with him. If he got two
jumps’ lead, I’d never catch him. And for all his takin’s on, and his
wild yellin’, and them fever signs--wal, jest remember he’s as tough as
an oak knot and as crafty as a fox. And he’s got the biggest kind o’
cause to bolt, if he can. Arson’s a state prison job, sonny.”

“So I suppose. Only”--Sam hesitated--“only that wouldn’t be ground for
failing to call a doctor or--or carrying him to one.”

Lon listened for a moment to the shriek of the gale.

“You’re right enough, Sam,” he admitted. “But he can’t be took out--not
in a blizzard like this, ’specially as we don’t know where to take him.
And as for tryin’ to go for a doctor--wal, it’d be risky, mighty risky.
I ain’t in shape, but I wouldn’t dare leave that wildcat with you boys,
anyhow. And as for sendin’ any of you, that’d be a big risk, too.
’Tain’t ’sif we knew where we were, you know; and I’d hate to take
chances o’ losin’ worth-while youngsters for the sake o’ that critter.”

“But can’t anything be done?”

“We can wait for the storm to blow itself out.”

“But how long will that be?”

“Dunno. The big blizzard of ’88 done business for three days.”

Sam rose. He tiptoed to the door, and peered through a yawning crack
beside it. Then he came back to Lon.

“I can’t see much change, except that the clouds are not quite so low
or so heavy. And it’s colder than ever.”

“Like enough! Nor’easter shiftin’ to nor’wester.”

Sam took thought, and while he deliberated, Step awoke, sat up, yawned
loudly. Poke followed suit, and in a moment more Herman Boyd and the
Trojan were rubbing their eyes. Then the Shark uncoiled himself. Last
of all Orkney shook off his slumbers.

Sam turned again to Lon.

“Look here!” he said in a low tone. “We can’t stay here three days.”

“Probably we won’t have to.”

“That’s too uncertain. We’ll have to do something. We haven’t a crumb
of food, and we’re half starved.”

Lon nodded sympathetically. “I know, I know! If I had a hedgehog here,
right now, I’d eat him raw, quills and all.”

Again Sam studied the flushed face of Peter Groche.

“Lon, there _is_ something to do!” he said. “We’ve got to do it. We’ve
got to send out an expedition for help.”

“But, Sam, I tell you I ain’t fit, and----”

“You’re to stay here, and watch Groche.”

“But who’ll go?”

“Two of the crowd.”

“Countin’ yourself one of ’em?”

“Certainly! And I’ll pick the other.”

With an effort Lon got upon his feet. He limped across the room and
back again.

“No use, Sam!” he groaned. “I’d stall worse’n a balkin’ mule in the
fust forty yards. No; you’ll have to give up the notion.”

“But my notion is that you’re to stay here, and watch Groche.”

“All right--but you’ll stay, too. I’d be plumb crazy to let you go.
’Tain’t ’sif we had the lay o’ the land. If we had, ’twouldn’t be so
much like startin’ from nowhere for nowhere, in a blizzard, and with
the thermometer ’way below zero.”

“But we do know where we’ll start from--that is, we have a general
idea.”

“Eh?”

“Wait a minute!” said Sam. “This is Calleck’s house, isn’t it?”

“Ain’t any doubt o’ that, but----”

“But Calleck’s house stands near the South Fork. Don’t you remember
what the lumberman said? Don’t you know he told us Calleck started to
build with stone, but finished the house any way he could? And doesn’t
that description fit this place?”

“It sure does. This is Calleck’s cabin, fast enough. Still----”

Again Sam interrupted: “You know--in a general way, as I say--how the
South Fork runs?”

“Y-e-s,” Lon admitted reluctantly. “Empties into Blake’s River right at
Coreytown.”

“Exactly! And the lumberjack said the house was about ten miles from
the camp. Now, I’ve been trying to figure out the map, as the Shark
would figure it, and I don’t believe we’re three miles from the
village.”

The Shark had caught the mention of his name; also he had grasped the
problem presented.

“Three miles?” he repeated. “Huh! good enough--as a guess. Of course, I
don’t call that figuring. If you’ll give me the true distances----”

“Never mind, Shark!” said Sam promptly. “We’ll waive decimals and let
it go at three miles, more or less. Then all we’ll have to do will be
to find the South Fork, and follow the valley down-stream. And there’s
a doctor at Coreytown, I’m sure; and the people won’t have to be asked
twice to help us out.”

Lon rubbed his chin. “Umph! There is a grain o’ sense in the scheme.
Say, though, Sam! Where’s that Safety First idea you uster have on your
mind?”

“It’s there now--Safety First for the whole crowd!”

Lon glanced at Groche. The light was strengthening, and the alarming
appearance of the man’s face was undeniable. A very sick man was Peter
Groche, at least to the eye of a layman.

“Jiminy, but something’s got to be tried!” Lon confessed. “And
followin’ the South Fork would be different from stragglin’ aimless. I
dunno, I dunno!”

Sam pressed his advantage. “I do know, then. And Lon! The quicker I
start, the better.”

“I reckon that’s true,” said Lon slowly. “Yes; if you’re dead sot to
go, there’s no good in lingerin’. And you’re as husky as any of the
boys. But who’ll you be takin’ with you?”

As one the club stepped forward, and volunteered.

“Choose me, Sam!”

“No; I’m the one!”

“Here, I’m your man!”

“Say! I’ve got a right to go!”

“Cut it out! He wants me, I tell you!”

They rained their appeals upon him, the Shark last but not the least
earnest:

“Take me, and I’ll figure out anything you want. I don’t care if the
thing’s all guesses and unknown quantities!”

But Sam met the eager glances of none of his friends. His eyes were on
Orkney, standing aloof and gravely observant.

There was a tense pause. Then said Sam, very quietly, yet with a ring
in his voice:

“Sorry I can’t say yes to everybody. But--but whenever you’re ready,
Orkney, we’ll make the plunge.”




CHAPTER XXIX SQUARING THE ACCOUNT


Imagine a winding valley, sparsely wooded, deeply banked with snow; a
valley through which the gale sweeps with unchecked fury, whipping the
bare limbs of the trees, catching up the crest of one shifting drift
and sending it, a swirling mass of white, to build up another snowy
ridge, in its turn to be leveled by the caprice of the storm; a valley
bare of habitations, as lonely and deserted, apparently, as if it were
buried in the depths of a great forest. Such was the course along which
Sam and Tom Orkney fought their way. The cold was intense. The wind
cut like a knife. Its force was so great that, when the windings of
the valley forced them to face it, they could make progress but at a
snail’s pace.

By Sam’s reckoning they had made about a mile of their journey. How
long a time it had taken he did not know--an hour certainly, perhaps
much more. There had been frequent halts, both for consultation and
rest; for here and there thickets were obstacles to the advance, while
both boys felt the weakening effect of their fast. They were not
acutely hungry, but each was aware of a dully persistent sense of a
void beneath his belt.

Studying the storm, however, Sam had caught a gleam of encouragement.
Surely the clouds were riding higher, and were showing signs of
breaking. The wind was not increasing. It was unlike the rising and
falling squalls of the day before; for it was now a steady, hard blow.
This change, along with the drop in temperature, convinced him that Lon
had been right in assuming that the gale had hauled into the northwest,
with a promise of clearing, if not warmer, weather. Though the air was
full of flakes, caught up by the wind, the snowfall had almost ceased.

Sam put his mouth close to Orkney’s ear.

“Guess it’s blowing itself out!” he shouted.

Orkney nodded. “My notion, too. But it won’t quit for a while yet.”

“Sure! Nothing for us but to plug ahead.”

And they “plugged.” The slang fitted the case. Orkney’s foot caught
on a hidden root, and he pitched forward on hands and knees. The snow
yielded under his weight; an unsuspected bank revealed itself; and Tom,
the center of a small avalanche, slid a dozen yards toward the frozen
surface of the South Fork.

Sam, hurrying after him, helped him to regain his feet. “Thanks!” said
Orkney, and shook himself like a Newfoundland emerging from a swim.

In five minutes he had his chance to reciprocate. Sam caught a bad fall
over a boulder, barely hidden by a drift.

“Glory! That shook me up!” Sam confessed. “’Twouldn’t be a good thing
for a fellow to be out here alone and get hurt, eh?”

“No,” said Orkney.

“But, pulling together, we’ll pull through!” cried Sam, and clapped him
on the shoulder.

They went on, but only to share a mishap. The snow had bridged a brook
running down to the Fork; and the arch caved under them. Down they went
to their armpits in the snow. They scrambled out of the hole uninjured
but breathless.

“We--we’ll look out for those places,” Sam panted; but in spite
of their watchfulness he soon was caught in a worse trap. Another
gully--and deeper--lay beneath a smooth surface. Sam, being slightly
in the lead, vanished almost at the feet of the astonished Orkney, who
dropped to his knees, groped in what was like a white whirlpool, and
was lucky enough to lay hold of Sam’s collar. Then, by dint of much
tugging and hauling, aided from below by the victim of the accident, he
at last succeeded in rescuing his companion from the depths.

This time both boys were glad to lie on the drift for a time, while
they were regaining wind and strength. Sam was the first to speak.

“Good turn you did me then. Regular cavern down there. Rather think
there was water at the bottom of it.”

“Might be,” said Orkney. “Maybe rapids in the brook--they don’t freeze
up often.”

Sam gave his companion a friendly dig in the ribs.

“Guess that came near evening up a little thing I did for you
once--that pond business.”

“Nonsense!” said Orkney gruffly. “Come on! Let’s move!”

He got upon his feet, and Sam followed the example.

“Right! Mustn’t let ’em get tired waiting back at Calleck’s old house.
Wonder what they’re doing now.”

“Envying me the chance you gave me!” said Orkney sharply; and plowed
ahead without waiting for a reply.

Sam trudged after him. No doubt Orkney had spoken no more than the
truth. The members of the club, tarrying with Lon and Peter Groche,
would envy the adventurers. Some of them, Sam feared, might find it
hard to forgive the preference he had shown Orkney; but he did not
repent his choice. Physically, neither Poke nor the Shark was fit
for such a forced march; Step was not a powerful fellow; Herman Boyd
and the Trojan were sturdy chaps, with plenty of grit, but somewhat
dependent upon good leadership. Orkney, on the other hand, not only
had dogged resolution and persistence, but also worked well in “double
harness,” as Sam phrased it. He was as far from yielding too much
as from claiming too much. Though he might lack certain agreeable
qualities, he was showing sound mettle under strain.

If Sam did not regret his selection of a companion, still less did he
question the venture they were making. As he reasoned out the plight of
the party, there was more than the condition of Peter Groche to warrant
the expedition. As things were, two or three days might pass before
anybody realized that the club had gone astray in the woods. Mr. Kane
would suppose the boys had followed the tote road to Coreytown, and had
reached the village; while the people there had had no warning that the
party was on the way, and so would have no cause to send out searchers
for the wanderers.

“Clear case of having to help ourselves,” Sam reflected; and pressed on
determinedly.

But it was slow work, exhausting and taking toll of brain as well as
muscle. Sam was no longer reckoning time or distance. Sometimes he led;
sometimes Orkney. Often both halted, and, dropping in the snow, lay
there till one or the other staggered to his feet, and gave a hand to
his comrade.

They still kept to the valley, but by degrees were drawing away
from the stream and climbing the right bank on a long diagonal.
This resulted not so much from intention as from various obstacles
encountered along the lower slope. The higher ground seemed to be
clearer, the drifts not so deep. Once they came to a long stretch,
where the gale had almost swept away the snow. Here they made easier
progress, though it was far from rapid. In spite of their exertions the
cold had laid numbing hold upon them, and their limbs were heavy as
lead.

It had come to be a question of endurance, of tenacity as well as
courage.

Their danger was great. In their plight they had to fight a constant
temptation to pause over-long in the partly sheltered hollows among the
drifts. There was another temptation to close their eyes and burrow
deeper in the snow; but always one or the other roused to the fatal
peril of yielding. Now it was Sam, and again it was Orkney, who shook
off the numbing spell of the storm, and dragged the other from his
resting place in the snow.

There could be no turning back. Each understood that they must push on
at all hazards.

Both Orkney and Sam had heard tales of lives lost in the great blizzard
of 1888, and other tales of men perishing in storms by no means so
furious or prolonged as that famous tempest. Hardly a winter passed
without claiming its victims even in the thickly settled region about
Plainville; and though these unfortunates for the most part were thinly
clad, poorly nourished tramps or human derelicts, there were not
lacking instances of able-bodied men losing their way and succumbing to
exposure. And here was a storm, not quite equaling the great blizzard,
perhaps, yet accompanied by quite as bitter cold.

So, at least, the boys were misled by no false estimate of their
desperate straits. Dulled though their senses might be, they did not
lose grasp of the truth that they must struggle on and on, so long as
strength remained to put one foot before the other.

Yet, though they but vaguely perceived it, a slight change for the
better was taking place in the weather.

Overhead there were rifts in the clouds. To the northwest a patch of
pale blue sky showed for a moment; was lost; reappeared, and grew in
size. But the gale still blew strongly, if not with quite its earlier
savage fury; and there was no rise in temperature.

They toiled on doggedly. Still veering slightly to the right, they came
closer and closer to the summit of the ridge. Finally they gained it.
Beyond was a broader valley.

Sam clutched Orkney’s arm.

“Look!” he gasped. “Yonder--a house! See it? Not a mile away!”

“There’s another--nearer--lower down!” cried Tom.

Sam gazed hungrily in the direction in which the other pointed.

“I see it! We can make it! Hur-hurrah!”

“Hur-hurrah!” echoed Orkney; but he caught at Sam’s arm, as Sam had
caught at his. For a moment they clung to each other, swaying with
weakness, dazed a little, it may be, by the sudden brightening of their
hopes.

“Let--let’s rest a bit,” said Sam unsteadily. “Then--then we’ll go
ahead. Noth-nothing can stop us now!”

“Not when we can see smoke whipping from that chimney!”

“Sure! Smoke means fire--and people--and everything!”

“And almost within arm’s reach!”

In fact, the house with the smoking chimney was a weary distance from
them; but unexpected help was nearer at hand. For, while they still
stood gazing into the broad valley, a curious procession emerged from a
clump of woods at the bottom of the hill. It was a long line of yoked
oxen, pair following pair through the snow, while about them floundered
shouting men, urging them on with whip and goad.

Sam’s voice rose in an exultant cry. “See that! Whole neighborhood
turned out to break roads! Come on, Tom; come on!”

But Orkney, clutching his arm the tighter, held him back.

“Wait a minute! I’ve got to tell you something. I want to tell it
now--while we’re alone.”

“Oh! another time----”

“There’ll be no other time as good,” Tom insisted. “Look here, Parker!
I’ve never hit it off with you, with your crowd. We’ve jarred each
other. You didn’t like me; I didn’t like you. But now I’ve seen your
bunch in trouble, and I’ve seen how you stick together through thick
and thin. And your fellows have been fair to me.... I’ve never had a
crowd like that. I didn’t believe there could be such a crowd.... No;
don’t try to pull away! You’ve got to hear me! I started back with
you, because that seemed to be the sensible thing to do. I expected
the fellows would roast me, snub me, rub it in that I’d been a fool
to bolt. I meant to stand it and say nothing; but back in Plainville
I’d get even, fast enough.... Well, if I kept quiet, I saw things. It
just forced itself on me, after a while, that maybe I hadn’t got along
with you because I didn’t know how to get along with anybody.... I
heard what you said about your mistakes and the crowd’s mistakes, and I
understood. Bother all that, though! I know I’ve made enough mistakes
of my own.... Hold on! There’s one thing more, and it’s the biggest
thing of all--to me. Every one of your fellows wanted to come with you
on this trip, but you chose me. It was the biggest thing you could
have done for me. It squared the account--and more.... And that’s all
I’ve got to tell you, except that the slate’s clean, so far as I am
concerned; and that I won’t worry you or your crowd. I’m going back to
Plainville, and I’m going to take my medicine. And I reckon you won’t
hear me whine.”

Sam, genuinely embarrassed yet honestly pleased and relieved, tried to
escape the restraining hand.

“You--you bet I won’t, Tom!” he said awkwardly but kindly. “No danger
of that! You’ve proved the stuff that’s in you--the gang knows it as
well as I do. And--and after this day--I don’t believe you’ll find
things in Plainville so hard, after all.”

Then he freed himself, and started down the hill. The men in the road
caught sight of the figures on the ridge, and raised a welcoming hail.




CHAPTER XXX IN FULL SETTLEMENT


Plainville was on the last day of the nine traditionally allotted to
discussion of affairs of high interest or importance.

The town had been stirred by the story of the adventures of Sam and
his friends, and the boys, a good deal to their surprise, had found
themselves treated like heroes. Plainville had had a taste of the big
storm--huge drifts still rose in many places--and was ready to give
full credit for plucky endurance of the hardships, both of the club’s
wanderings to the old Calleck house and of the forced march of Sam and
Orkney to the settlements; while the dash of a rescue party to the
stone house and its return with the other members of the club, and Lon
and the stricken Peter Groche, formed another chapter which caught the
public fancy.

Groche was still in Coreytown, under treatment by doctors and guard
by officers. The event proved that he had not been shamming that night
when Lon watched him with suspicious eye. A very sick man, indeed, was
Peter for a few days; but now tidings had come that, thanks to a rugged
frame and a vigorous constitution, he was beginning to rally, with
every prospect that, presently, he would be well enough to stand trial
on the very grave charge of arson. Some doubt was expressed, to be
sure, of his mental condition; but the chances were strongly in favor
of his retirement behind the walls either of prison or asylum. At all
events, Plainville heartily endorsed the opinion of Major Bates, and
counted itself well rid of its least desirable citizen.

The Major, it is to be related, took keen delight in Sam’s version
of the happenings in the woods, and learning, incidentally, that
the secret of his wounds had become public property--at least, the
property of the club--invited the boys to dinner, in order, as he
explained, that he might present his side of the case. For the club it
was an occasion of impressive state and ceremony, but the Major was
a delightful host, quickly put them at their ease, told lively tales
of war and peace, and finally made a speech which brought out three
rousing cheers for Sam Parker and three times three for the orator.

Tom Orkney was at the dinner. The Major invited him, along with the
rest and quite as a matter of course. And Tom, though his manner was
reserved, didn’t fail to enter into the spirit of the occasion.

To tell the truth, his reception, in general, had been beyond his
expectations. Had he been older and more experienced, he might better
have understood that little heed is given to an old story when a new
story is being told. Tom Orkney, runaway, was an old story; Tom Orkney,
joint adventurer with the club, was a new story. Moreover, Little
Perrine had been singing his praises, and Sam and his friends were
losing no opportunity to proclaim his pluck and grit. So, when school
opened after the holidays, Orkney, to his bewilderment, found himself
enjoying a degree of favor in curious contrast to the chill reception
for which he had nerved himself.

Lon Gates still limped slightly, but otherwise appeared to be none
the worse for his battle with Peter Groche. Lon was not boastful. He
pretended to make a joke of his capture of the desperado; and, in
private, confided to Sam that he felt a bit like a fellow who had been
able to bring in a stolen horse, but hadn’t known enough to lock the
stable door before the horse was stolen.

“So I reckon I ain’t quite so much of a genooine Shylock Holmes as I
let on to be,” he added. “Course, as the old lady said when she broke
her false teeth on a hick’rynut but didn’t swallow ’em, things might
be wuss, but then again they might be better. I ought to ’a’ had that
Groche locked up for stealin’ the wrench, when I had him dead to
rights; but I didn’t know enough. If I’d foreseen what was comin’----
Oh, wal, if I’d been able to do that, folks’d been dragging me off to
be President of the United States, instead o’ lettin’ me stay here to
help your father try to keep you in order.”

Mr. Parker, weather bound in No. 3 camp by the blizzard, had had
his first intimation of the club’s peril and escape when he reached
Coreytown on his way out. He came home to find Sam comfortably
settled. The father listened attentively to the son’s narrative, but
made no comment. Sam was puzzled a little by this, and not a little
disappointed. He would have given much to know precisely his father’s
opinion of his conduct throughout the episode.

But Mr. Parker reserving judgment, Sam went about his own affairs, and
was very busy. There was school, with study and recitations; coasting,
sleighing and snow-shoeing filled the afternoons; then there was a club
question, which brought him into frequent conference with the other
members. And at last this question was decided; and it was the evening
of the ninth day; and he was hurrying through his supper because,
decision having been reached, the club was to meet that night in full
session.

Sam had made his excuses, and was rising from the table, when his
father detained him.

“I wish you’d give me a few minutes, Sam,” he said. “It’s something
which may interest you. Step into the library, and I’ll join you
presently.”

Sam, at once curious and impatient, had not long to wait. Mr. Parker
seated himself at his desk, glanced at a memorandum, turned to the boy.

“Well, Sam,” he said slowly, “about time we took account of stock and
balanced the books, isn’t it?”

“I--I suppose so, sir,” his son answered uncertainly.

“Let’s see! Some weeks ago we reached an understanding. There had
been an untoward incident, due to your--er--er--well, call it your
precipitancy. At the time it seemed wise to put you on probation. Well,
how have you behaved?”

“Why--why”--Sam stammered--“why, I--I’ve----”

Mr. Parker’s glance was searching, but his lips were smiling.

“To the best of my information, you’ve behaved remarkably well!” said
he emphatically.

“Oh!” It was all Sam could say.

“Yes,” his father went on. “I’ve been at some pains to inquire into
your conduct. I’ve examined and cross-examined Lon and the boys who
were with you at the camp and afterward. By the way, two of them were
unusually excellent witnesses.”

“Yes, sir?” said Sam questioningly.

Mr. Parker’s smile broadened. “One was Willy Reynolds, who----”

“What! The Shark?... That’s a nickname we have for him, you know.”

“Ah! The Shark?”

“Yes, sir--he’s a bug on mathematics.”

“A bug, therefore a Shark--I don’t quite master the sequence of ideas,
but never mind that! Master Reynolds struck me as a quaint person, but
instructive. He seems to seek precision of statement, and begrudge
unnecessary words. Then there was young Orkney--very intelligent
fellow, and a very good friend of yours, isn’t he?”

“I hope so!” said Sam with sincerity.

“They were the star witnesses, but all testified to the same
effect--that you acquitted yourself creditably. Now, I don’t say that
you displayed the wisdom of age--I’ve told you that I do not look for
the head of sixty on the shoulders of sixteen--but you do seem to have
combined a degree of prudence with resolution and resourcefulness in
emergencies. All the boys say you were practically in command of the
party. If that is true, even if you didn’t keep your friends from
trouble, you brought them out of it. And that brings me from past to
future. Once I told you I hesitated to let you go to St. Mark’s because
I feared you couldn’t take care of yourself. Now what shall I say when
I find you caring for others as well as yourself?”

Sam drew in his breath sharply. “Oh! St. Mark’s! Why--why, sir, I--I
haven’t thought of it lately.”

“Well,” said his father quietly, “you are at liberty to think of it
now.”

Sam tried to utter his thanks--and failed. There was a lump in his
throat which forbade speech.

“It happens,” said Mr. Parker, “that I have had some talk recently with
Mr. Jones and Mr. Green. Both seem to be willing to have their boys go
to the school if you go, too; though Mr. Jones favors the change next
September rather than at the close of this term.”

Then Sam found tongue. “Hurrah! Step and Poke going, too! And
September’ll suit me just as well. I’ll be glad to finish out the year
here. And--and it doesn’t have to be kept a secret, does it?”

“Not unless you so desire.”

“Whoop!” shouted the delighted Sam, and rushed out of the library.
Thirty seconds later he was out of the house, and running toward the
club.

All the other members were present when he burst in upon them; but
before he could recover breath to spread his news, the Shark interposed.

“Don’t you try to start anything, Sam, till we’ve ’tended to business.
Look here!” He pulled out his watch. “Seven-twenty-eight--and the time
set’s seven-thirty.”

“Bother your watch, Shark!” cried Step. “Likely’s not it’s ’way off.”

The Shark frowned upon the doubter. “This watch,” he said severely,
“has an average gain of twenty-two seconds, plus, a month. It was set
by a jeweler’s chronometer four days ago. If you will take the trouble
to compute the error which has arisen since then, and subtract----”

“Hold on! No rough work like that goes!” jeered Poke. “Twenty-two plus
nothing! What’s the fraction? If we’re going to be accurate, let’s be
accurate!”

For an instant the Shark stared at Poke.

“You--you talking of accuracy! Holy smoke!” he growled in disgust. “You
couldn’t tell a vernier from a vulgar fraction!”

Sam thought he saw a chance to break in.

“Listen, you fellows----” he began; but this time the Trojan stopped
him.

“Put it off till the show’s over, Sam. We want this thing done right,
you know.”

“Sure! And you’ve got to make the speech, Sam!” chimed in Herman Boyd.

Sam’s jaw dropped. “Speech? Oh, thunder! but I can’t!” he protested.

“All the same, you’ll have to. It’s got to be put straight--the way we
feel about it--all that.”

Poke wagged his head knowingly. “It’s the proper caper,” said he, in
his philosophical fashion. “People always make speeches when they’ve
got to break the ice and don’t know exactly how to go about it.”

Here was American common practice, if not the soundest of doctrine.
The club was impressed.

“That’s so,” said two or three together.

“But----” Sam’s objection was cut short by a knock at the door.

The Trojan pushed him forward. Plainly there was no escape from the
rôle his friends were forcing upon him.

Sam opened the door. Then, rising to the occasion, he caught the hand
of a youth who stood on the step, and drew him into the room. Back of
him the other boys formed a smiling semicircle.

“Tom Orkney,” said Sam very earnestly, “you don’t know how pleased I am
to see you here. But I want you to understand that your election was
unanimous, and that every one of us is mighty glad to have you a member
of the Safety First Club!”

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are
mentioned, except for the frontispiece.

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.

The following change was made:

p. 339: hand changed to land (the land. If)