Читать книгу: «Bobby Blake on the School Nine: or, The Champions of the Monatook Lake League», страница 4

CHAPTER IX
A COWARDLY TRICK

“We seem to have this car almost all to ourselves,” remarked Mouser, looking around.

“We ought to call it the Rockledge Special,” laughed Pee Wee.

“Perhaps Tommy might object to that,” said Bobby.

“Go as far as you like,” grinned Tommy.

The travel was indeed very light on that particular day. There were only six or eight people scattered through the car. This was due in part to the snowstorm. Nobody would do much traveling on such a day unless it was absolutely necessary.

Half-way down the car, and on the other side of the aisle, a very old man was seated. He was evidently traveling alone. His hair was gray and scanty and his face was seamed with wrinkles. It was clear that he was very tired, and every once in a while his head would drop on his breast in a doze from which he would awake with a start at any sudden jar of the train.

“It’s too bad that such an old man should have to be going on a journey all alone,” remarked Bobby with quick sympathy.

“Yes,” agreed Fred. “He must be awful old. He looks as if he was as much as eighty.”

“He’s a Grand Army man too,” observed Mouser. “You can see that from the hat he has there up in the rack.”

“He may be going to visit some of his children,” suggested Pee Wee.

“More likely he’s going to the Old Soldiers’ Home,” conjectured Bobby. “You know there is one a little way the other side of Rockledge.”

“I’ll bet he could tell some mighty good stories about the war,” said Fred.

“I’d like to see all that he has seen,” mused Bobby.

“Or do all that he has done,” added Mouser. “It must be great to have been in a big war like that.”

“Maybe he was at Gettysburg,” guessed Pee Wee.

“Or marched with Grant or Sherman,” chimed in Fred.

Their youthful imaginations quickened as they recalled the exciting scenes in which the veteran might have played a part, and they had a deep respect for him now as he sat there in his old age and weakness.

“I’d almost like to go up and get him to talking,” ventured Fred. “We might get him started on the war. It’s all very well to read about it, but there’s nothing like hearing from one who has been through it.”

“I don’t think I would if I were you,” objected Bobby. “He’s probably too tired to do much talking and would rather be left alone.”

“There’s another fellow going up to him now,” replied Fred, “and I’ll bet he’ll get some good stories out of him.”

He indicated a large overgrown boy who seemed to be about fourteen years old. Up to now, he had been seated on the other side of the aisle from the veteran. But now he had risen and gone over in his direction. But instead of slipping into the seat beside him, as the boys had expected, he sat down in the seat directly behind him.

“Guess again, Fred,” laughed Pee Wee good-naturedly.

“Everybody’s hunches go wrong sometimes,” answered Fred defensively.

“What’s the fellow up to anyway?” asked Mouser, with a sudden stirring of curiosity.

The newcomer seemed to have a long feather in his hand such as is commonly used in feather dusters. While the old man’s head drooped in a doze, the boy reached over and tickled the back of the old man’s neck with the tip of the feather.

The veteran reached up his hand fretfully as though to brush away a fly that was annoying him. The boy drew back and snickered audibly.

The boys looked at each other indignantly.

“What do you think of that?” demanded Mouser.

“Queer sense of fun some people have,” snorted Pee Wee.

“He’s a cheap skate,” declared Fred angrily.

“He ought to have a thrashing,” exclaimed Bobby.

Several times the scene was repeated, and the would-be joker was in high glee at the success of his trick.

At last the old man gave up the attempt to sleep, and straightened up wearily in his seat.

The joker looked around the car as though seeking for applause, but the silly grin on his face stiffened into a scowl as he met only contemptuous glances.

But his delicate sense of humor was not yet exhausted. The old man rose from his seat to go to the back of the car to get a drink of water. As he passed the fellow’s seat, the latter reached out the tip of his foot. The veteran tripped against it, stumbled and had all he could do to keep from falling by clutching the back of a seat.

This was the last straw and the boys were furious. By a common impulse they sprang out of their seats and went quickly down the aisle to where the fellow was sitting.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” snapped Bobby.

“You’re too mean to live!” blazed out Fred.

“A fellow that’ll torment an old man like that ought to be tarred and feathered,” blurted Mouser.

“And ridden on a rail,” finished Pee Wee.

The fellow looked at them with surprise that was mingled with alarm as he noted their wrathful faces. He jumped up and stood with his back toward the window.

Now that they saw him at closer range, their first impression of him was confirmed. He was strong and muscular, but the strength of his body was belied by the weakness of his face. It was a thoroughly mean face, pallid and unhealthy looking, with a loose mouth and shifty eyes that dropped when you looked straight into them.

“What’s the matter with you boobs?” he demanded, in a voice that he tried to make threatening. “You’d better mind your own business. Who asked you to butt in?”

“We didn’t need any asking,” replied Bobby. “We saw what you did to that old man. You seemed to think it was funny, but we think it’s mean and sneaking.”

“And you’ve got to stop it,” put in Fred.

“It will be the worse for you if you don’t,” added Mouser.

“I’ll do just exactly what I want to do,” was the ugly reply, “and I’d like to see you Buttinskis stop me.”

“We’ll stop you quick enough,” said Bobby, “and the first thing we’re going to do is to make you change your seat.”

“Oh, you own the car, do you? I’ve paid my fare on this train and I’ll sit anywhere I want to. Any one would think you were president of the road to hear you talk.”

“We’ll do something besides talk in a minute,” Mouser came back at him.

“What’ll you do?” jeered the bully, though his voice now was getting unsteady as he saw that the boys were in earnest.

Fred leaned forward, snatched the fellow’s cap from his head and threw it in a seat some distance away.

“Follow your hat and you’ll find your seat,” he cried.

The fellow started forward in a rage, but just then the conductor came into the car. He came forward briskly.

“Here, none of this!” he exclaimed. “You boys mustn’t do any scrapping on this train. Get back in your seats now, all of you, and behave yourselves.”

The boys slowly obeyed, although Fred, whose fighting blood was up, had to be urged along a little by the others.

“No sense in not minding the conductor,” counseled Bobby. “We’ve carried our point and that’s enough.”

They had indeed carried their point, for the fellow, having regained his cap, slumped down in the seat where Fred had thrown it, and for the rest of the trip the old man was left in peace.

Nor did the bully try to get even for his discomfiture. But if looks could kill, the boys would surely have been withered up by the angry glances he shot at them from time to time.

“He’s a sweet specimen, isn’t he?” chuckled Mouser.

“A nice thing to have around the house,” commented Pee Wee.

“He’d brighten it up on rainy days,” laughed Bobby.

“A cute little cut-up, all right,” affirmed Fred.

“I’d hate to have him at Rockledge,” said Mouser.

“Perhaps he’s going there, for all we know,” Pee Wee suggested.

“I hope not!” exclaimed Fred. “Bronson and Jinks are about all we can stand as it is.”

“Wouldn’t Bronson and Jinks be glad to have him there?” said Bobby. “They’d be as thick as peas in a pod in less than no time.”

But further comment was cut short by the brake man throwing open the door and shouting:

“All out for Rockledge!”

CHAPTER X
ROCKLEDGE SCHOOL

The boys reached instinctively for their bags. Then they remembered that they had none, and looked at each other with a sheepish grin on their faces.

“Nothing doing in that line,” mourned Fred. “I wonder if we’ll find them in the station.”

They stepped off the platform into a crowd of their schoolmates, who had come down to welcome them. There they were, shouting and laughing and all talking at once – Billy Bassett, Jimmy Ailshine, “Sparrow” Bangs, Howell Purdy and a host of others. They fairly mobbed the newcomers and were for dragging them off at once to the trolley car that ran to the school. But the boys explained that they first had to look after their missing baggage and they all trooped into the station.

“Haven’t we got a lot to tell you fellows!” exclaimed Mouser. “You just wait till you hear it all!”

“Caught in a snowslide,” volunteered Pee Wee.

“Held up by tramps,” declared Fred.

“Robbed of all we had,” added Bobby.

These tantalizing bits of information only served to whet the appetite for more. Their friends crowded around them open-eyed, and questions shot out at them like bullets from guns. The boys suddenly found themselves exalted to the rank of heroes. But they bore their honors meekly enough, although they were almost bursting with the feeling of their importance.

They were delighted to find their missing bags and suit-cases waiting for them. The conductor had known the station their tickets called for, and had left the articles in the care of the Rockledge station agent.

There was a telegram too from Mr. Blake to Bobby. He had wired the money to Roseville and Mr. Stone had seen to it that it was sent on to Bobby at Rockledge. Mr. Blake’s telegram was a lengthy one and full of anxiety. In it he told Bobby to wire at once on his arrival at Rockledge, which Bobby promptly did.

Mr. Stone had sent a separate telegram also on his own account. He stated briefly that the robbers had not yet been caught, but that the police were busily hunting for them and hoped to get them soon.

“Well,” sighed Bobby, as he folded up the telegram, “I suppose all we can do is to watch and wait.”

“Wait for the watch you mean,” laughed Mouser.

“Now don’t start anything like that,” grinned Fred. “You’ll start Billy Bassett going if you do, and I can see that he’s got a lot of conundrums all ready to fire off at us.”

“Who’s that talking about me?” laughed Billy, coming forward. “Let him say it to my face.”

“Ginger thought you’d be springing something on us,” replied Pee Wee, “and we were getting ready to duck.”

Billy looked aggrieved.

“You fellows don’t know a good riddle when you hear one,” he remarked scornfully.

“How do you know?” countered Mouser. “You never give us a chance to try. Spring a real good one and see how quick we’ll tumble.”

Billy looked dubious but took a chance.

“Well, take this one, then,” he said. “What is it that happens twice in a moment, once in a minute, and not once in a thousand years.”

The boys put on their thinking caps, but the problem was beyond them, and Billy strutted around with a triumphant look upon his face.

“Don’t seem to be any too much brains in this crowd,” he said, in a superior way.

“Give us time,” pleaded Mouser.

“Maybe it’s because it’s so bad and not because it’s so good that we can’t guess it,” conjectured Fred.

“Take all the time you want,” said Billy patronizingly, “but I guessed it as soon as I heard it.”

As they had no evidence to the contrary, they had to take Billy’s word for this.

They pondered it for several minutes, but no answer was forthcoming.

“Nobody home,” taunted Billy. “You’re a bunch of dead ones for fair.”

“I’ll give it up,” said Mouser.

“Let’s have it, Billy,” surrendered Fred.

“I’ll be the goat,” said Bobby. “What’s the answer?”

“The letter M,” crowed Billy.

Disgust and discomfiture sat on the boys’ faces.

“Rotten,” groaned Pee Wee.

“The worst I ever heard,” grunted Fred.

“Wish I had a gun,” remarked Mouser.

“It’s a mighty good one,” defended Billy. “But what’s the use in giving you fellows something to chew over. It’s like casting diamonds before swine.”

“You mean pearls,” corrected Mouser.

“Well, I may be mistaken about the diamonds,” Billy came back at them, “but I’m dead sure about the swine.”

The laugh that followed told Billy that he had made a hit, and he swelled up like a pouter pigeon.

“I’ve got another good one,” he volunteered, “a regular peach. Why is – ”

But here the boys fell on Billy in a body and he was forced to hold his “peach” in reserve for another time.

Bobby by this time had finished all he had to do in the station, and the boys gathered up their recovered suit-cases and made a bee line for the trolley. A car was coming, not a block away, and they piled aboard almost before it had come to a stop with wild clatter and hubbub. But the motorman and conductor were used to the uproar and the pranks of the Rockledge boys, and what few other passengers there were smiled indulgently.

Rockledge was a lively little town with good stores and pleasant residence streets shaded by handsome oak trees. There were gas and electric lights, a number of churches and all the usual appurtenances of a bustling village that hoped some day to become a city. And not the least of the things in which the townspeople took pride was Rockledge School.

Dr. Raymond, the head of the school, had been fortunate in choosing its location. He had been able to secure, at a remarkably low price, a beautiful private estate, whose owner had died and whose family had moved away. There were several buildings on the grounds and these he had remodeled and adapted to the purposes of a school, and he had built up an institution that was well and favorably known in all that section of the State.

The school was select. By this is not meant that it was in the least degree snobbish. Dr. Raymond hated anything of that kind, and the school was run on a purely democratic basis, with every pupil on exactly the same level, whether his parents happened to be rich or poor. But the doctor was a great believer in the personal influence of teacher over pupil, and this could not be exerted so well if the classes were large. So the school was limited to fifty pupils, and this limit was never exceeded. At this figure the school was always full, and there was usually a waiting list from which any vacancy that might occur could be quickly filled.

The doctor himself was a scholar of high standing, and he had surrounded himself with an efficient staff of teachers. Discipline was firm without being severe, and the boys were put largely on their honor to do the right thing. There was a society called the “Sword and Star” to which admission could be gained only on the ground of scholarship and good behavior.

Bobby had won membership in this the year before and had also gained the Medal of Honor which was allotted each year to that pupil who, in the judgment both of his teachers and school-fellows, had stood out above all others. Fred, who was more flighty and less inclined to study, and whose “red-headed” disposition was always getting him into trouble, was not yet a member of the society, but had faithfully promised himself that he would win membership in the term just beginning.

A ride of only a few minutes brought them close to the school grounds and the boys prepared to get off. Tommy Stone was to stay on the trolley car, which ran as far as Belden School.

Tommy had kept himself rather in the background during the trip. He happened to be the only Belden boy on the car, and, owing to the intense rivalry between the two schools, a Belden boy was usually as popular with the Rockledge boys as poison ivy at a picnic party. But just now Tommy was traveling under the protection of Bobby and his party, and this saved him from the horse play he would otherwise have had to undergo.

“Good-bye, Tommy!” said Bobby, as he got ready to leave the car. “Tell your father when you write to him how much obliged we are to him for all he has done for us. I’m going to write him a letter myself about it to-morrow.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Tommy. “Your father would have done the same for me if I’d been in the same fix as you fellows were.”

“And tell the Belden boys that we’re going to trim ’em good and plenty when the baseball season begins,” laughed Mouser.

“Don’t be too sure of that,” grinned Tommy in return. “But I’ll tell them and they’ll be all ready for you.”

The boys dropped off the car, and in a few minutes saw the school buildings looming up before them.

“Scubbity-yow!” cried Fred, dropping his suitcase and executing a jig. “The old place certainly looks good to me.”

“Seemed a long way off a few hours ago when we didn’t have a cent to our names,” remarked Mouser.

“Looked as if we’d have to walk the ties to get here,” laughed Pee Wee.

“And think how many stone bruises you’d have got,” suggested Bobby.

“‘Barked shins,’ you mean,” corrected Mouser. “They’re the latest thing in Pee Wee’s collection.”

The fat boy grinned. He was too happy or perhaps too lazy to enter any protest just then.

The school was beautifully located on a high bluff overlooking Monatook Lake, a sheet of water, nearly oval in shape. It was about ten miles long and five miles wide at its broadest part. There were several small islands scattered over the lake, and, as may be imagined, these were favorite resorts of the boys when they were permitted to visit them.

A strong fence guarded the edge of the bluff for the entire length of the school grounds. A winding staircase led from the top of the bluff to the boathouse and the lake level.

Just now Monatook was clothed in an icy mantle that shone like silver under the light of the moon which had just risen. It was a scene of wintry splendor that gladdened the heart to look upon.

There were four buildings on the grounds. In the main building, which was made of brick and sandstone, the classrooms and dining-room were located. The basement had two sections, one for the kitchen and the other for the indoor gymnasium.

On the upper floor were ranged the dormitories. These were two in number. There were beds for twenty boys in each one. Then there were five separate sleeping rooms, each one designed for the use of two boys.

A little off from the main building, but connected with it by a portico, was a roomy house in which the doctor and his family lived, together with the members of the teaching staff.

Besides these there were a gate-keeper’s cottage, where the servants slept, and a minor building used for storage purposes.

The grounds were skillfully laid out, and with their well kept lawns and shaded paths formed a very attractive campus. To supply the athletic needs of the boys there was a football field, a baseball diamond, and tennis and basketball courts.

So that the boys who had the luck to be sent by their parents to Rockledge School were usually convinced before they had been there long that their lines had fallen in pleasant places.

“Well, I suppose the first thing we’ll have to do is to report to Dr. Raymond,” said Bobby.

“He’ll know that the school can go on all right now that we’re here,” grinned Mouser.

“I suppose we’ll have to let him know that we’re on deck,” admitted Fred, “but let’s get it over in a hurry and get some grub. I’m hungry enough to eat nails.”

“Couldn’t we get something to eat first?” asked Pee Wee wistfully.

“You ate enough at Mrs. Wilson’s to last for a week, I should think,” said Bobby.

“I notice that you weren’t very far behind,” retorted Pee Wee.

They trooped into the doctor’s office and found him busy with some papers, which he laid aside at once, however, as he stood up to greet them.

He was a tall, spare man, with a clean-cut face and kindly eyes that usually had a humorous twinkle in them, although they could flash fire if he caught any of the boys doing a mean or tricky thing. He smiled cordially and shook hands with them all.

“You’re a little later than you expected to be, aren’t you?” he asked. “I was looking for you on an earlier train.”

“We’ve had a hard time getting here,” smiled Bobby, and in a few words he told of the stirring adventures through which the little party had gone that day. The doctor listened intently, surprise, indignation and sympathy in his eyes.

“It was an outrage!” he exclaimed, when Bobby had finished, “and I will get in touch with Mr. Stone at once and lend him any aid I can in catching the thieves. But I am very glad and thankful that it was only a loss of money and property. Those rascals might have used personal violence. I’ll telephone to-morrow to a number of different towns, giving a description of the tramps and urging the authorities to be on the look-out for them. The sooner such fellows are put in jail the better.”

He made notes of as many points about the robbers as the boys could remember, especially of the scar of one man and the limp of the other. As to the third man, the boys were somewhat hazy. He was just “plain tramp.”

“And now,” said the doctor, his eyes twinkling, “I suppose there’s no need of asking you boys whether you are hungry.”

There was an eager assent on the part of the other boys and a heart-felt groan from Pee Wee.

“Of course it is long after the usual supper hour,” smiled the doctor, “but go over to the dining-room, find the housekeeper and tell her I want her to give you the very best meal she knows how to get up.”

There was no need of a second injunction, and the boys wished the head of the school good-night and were off to hunt up the housekeeper.

“Isn’t the doctor a brick?” ejaculated Mouser. “I thought he’d keep us there half an hour or more talking about the work for the coming term and what he would expect of us.”

“That’ll come later,” said Fred. “Just now he knew that we were hungry.”

“That’s what makes him such a bully sort,” said Bobby. “He hasn’t forgotten that he was once a boy himself,” he added, with a happy sigh.

And this, perhaps, was as high tribute as could be paid by one of his pupils to the master of Rockledge School.