Fred Fenton Marathon Runner: The Great Race at Riverport School

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XV

CLINCHING EVIDENCE

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

Colon burst into another laugh.

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

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

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

"How?" asked Colon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"About what?" demanded his friend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER XVI

TELLING BRISTLES

"Hello there, Fred, and you too, Colon; glad to see you both! Step in, and come upstairs with me to my den, won't you?"

In this fashion did Bristles meet the two visitors at the front door, and convinced by the warmth of the reception that they were going to be welcome guests, Fred and the tall boy fell in behind the one who had admitted them. Presently they found themselves comfortably seated in such chairs as decorated the so-called "den," which was a small room on the top story, where Bristles kept his belongings and did his studying.

"Glad to see your bad cold is a lot better, Bristles!" remarked Colon, with a sly wink over toward Fred, who chuckled.

Bristles of course looked puzzled.

"I suppose that's, some sort of a poor joke," he ventured, cautiously, glancing from one to the other of his visitors; "but me, I'm groping all around in the dark, and don't seem to catch on. S'pose you open up, and explain how it works, Colon."

The tall boy allowed his eyebrows to go up as though tremendously surprised.

"Do you mean to tell me, Bristles Carpenter, that you didn't call up Fred, here, a little while back, and while begging him to hurry over, as you had something important to explain, say you'd taken such a cold you could hardly speak plain?"

"What, me? Say, you're dreaming, Colon. I never said a word of that, and right now I haven't got the least bit of a cold!" exclaimed the other, indignantly. At the same time he began to show a certain amount of curiosity, for his good sense warned him there must be a story back of Colon's strange accusation.

"And you didn't interrupt yourself several times to say, 'Oh! excuse me, while I cough!' and then start in whooping it up so hard Fred here had to take the receiver down from his ear or go deaf?"

"Oh! Come off, and tell me what all this silly stuff means!" demanded the still more mystified boy. "Has anybody been playing a rousing good joke on Fred, and making out to be me?"

"That's about the size of it, isn't it, Fred," Colon assented, eagerly enough. "It was a rousing enough joke, while it lasted, but the trouble is that it turned out to be one of those back-action, kicking jokes, that turns on the jokers, unexpected like. This one left a black eye, and a whole lot of black and blue marks behind it – that is, we believe so, and have a pretty good reason, too."

"All right, now tell me what it all means, please," Bristles pleaded, seeing that the tall chum was really in earnest.

Colon explained, and as he finished, the astonished listener demanded:

"But what d'ye reckon it all means?"

"Both of us noticed that their main plan seemed to be to kick at our shins every chance they got," explained Fred, "and Colon says they had heavy brogans on, too. It's a hard thing to say, Bristles, but we honestly believe they meant to lame us, so we couldn't be in shape to run to-morrow, and perhaps at the time of the great Marathon, too."

Bristles clenched his hands, and looked savage.

"Well, what d'ye think of that now for a savage trick?" he exclaimed. "I wouldn't believe it of those Mechanicsburg athletes, who've always seemed a pretty decent bunch of fellows."

"Hold on," said Fred. "Go a little slow, Bristles."

"What for?" demanded the other, impetuously and fiercely.

"Because you're making the same mistake Colon here did at first," he was told.

"About the boys up the river, you mean, Fred?"

"Yes. It isn't fair to accuse them without any proof," the other told him.

"But the Paulding crowd – " stammered Bristles, evidently taken aback.

"Get closer home," warned Colon. "What d'ye want to go climbing all over the country for, when you've only got to use your nose to smell a rat right in old Riverport!"

"Jupiter Pluvius! you must mean our old friend, Buck!" ejaculated Bristles, his elevated eyebrows indicating his astonishment. "Tell me about that, will you? Has he actually come to life again, and been up to his old tricks?"

"We're dead sure of it," Colon told him, nodding his head at a lively rate.

"Then chances are you recognized one of the bunch?" suggested Bristles.

"No," said Fred, "we couldn't do that very well, because they changed their voices, and had their faces hidden by their hats, coat collars, and even some sort of cloth that seemed to be tied about their jaws. But after the scrap was over, we picked up a clue that we think will give the game away."

"What, Fred?"

"Take a look at this old hat, Bristles," continued the other, as he drew the article in question from his pocket.

"Well, I'm looking at it," he was told.

"Ever see it before?" asked Colon, eagerly.

"Of course I wouldn't like to raise my hand, and swear to it," remarked Bristles, slowly, "but I want to say this looks mighty like a yellow-colored hat I've seen a certain fellow wear, time and again."

"Suppose you go a little further, then, and mention his name," proposed

Fred.

"Conrad Jimmerson!" promptly replied the other.

Colon laughed gleefully.

"Now turn the hat around, Bristles," he cried, "and look inside!"

Upon doing so the other uttered an exclamation.

"Here they are, two letters that give the thing away – C.J. as plain as print could be!" was his cry.

"Glad that you think the same way we do," Colon told him. "And now, I reckon you wonder what Fred's going to do about it."

"If it were myself, I'd take this hat to Cooney, and ask him if it was his," Bristles went on to say, in his fiery fashion. "Course he'd have to acknowledge the corn, and then I'd proceed to give him the licking he deserves."

"We'd kind of expect that of you, Bristles," remarked Colon, magnanimously, "but you see, Fred'n me, we made up our minds that we'd given that bunch a pretty good layout as it was. What they need is something to show the people of this town what a tough lot that Buck Lemington is dragging around with him."

"But how could you do that?" the other asked.

"Fred thought of taking the hat to school, and telling the story around, to the teachers and the pupils," Colon explained, in his accommodating way. "When they learned how these toughs meant to injure Riverport's chances of winning the great Marathon, just to gratify a little private spite, the town would soon get too hot for Buck and his cronies. They'd have to emigrate for a little while, till the storm blew over."

"That sounds good to me!" declared Bristles, changing his way of thinking, for while a very determined boy, he could always be reached by argument, and was open to conviction, "and I hope you carry the plan out, Fred. I'd just like to see those boys put under the ban for a while. Some of them by rights ought to be in the State Reformatory, according to my notion. They're getting too fresh with what they call their pranks, and don't even stop at endangering human life."

"Well, of course we're glad that you haven't such a terrible cold, Bristles," remarked Fred, "but all the same Colon here is sorry for one thing."

"What might that be?" asked the said Colon.

"You see," continued Fred, "after I told him about how you called me up, and wanted an interview right away, because you had something important to tell, Colon here began to get terribly excited. He kept wondering what it was you meant to explain; and I know that after we'd run that mob off, nearly the first thing he said was that he felt cheated out of a sensation, because you didn't want me so bad after all."

At that Bristles laughed loud and long, at the same time looking queerly at his guests out of the tail of his eye.

"Too bad to disappoint you, isn't it, fellows?" he went on, in a tone of mock sympathy, "but say, maybe I might scare up some little news after all, that'd kind of take the place of the thrilling story they hatched up for me."

"Let it be on the strict level then, Bristles," warned Colon, severely, as he shook his forefinger at the other; "we don't want you to invent any old yarn just to please us."

"What I'm going to tell you," began Bristles, very solemnly, "is straight goods, believe me. I don't know whether Fred here will think it of much importance, but late this afternoon I chanced to run across an old acquaintance. Guess who it was, boys."

"Huh! I bet you it was Corny Ludson!" exclaimed Colon, quick as a flash.

Bristles started, and looked keenly at the long-legged chum.

"Well, you hit mighty close to the bull's-eye, then, Colon," he remarked; "but you forget I never saw that same Corny Ludson in my life that I know of, and so how could he be an old acquaintance. But he's got a little girl named Sadie, a niece, or ward, or something like that, you may remember."

"Then you saw her?" asked Fred, eagerly enough, for he had been wondering lately what could have become of those two children.

"Not only saw her," continued the other, "but talked with her."

"Tell us about it, Bristles," urged Colon.

"Why, it was this way," began the other, complying briskly. "She was just coming out of the cheap grocery, and had several bundles in her arms, as if she might have been buying bread, and some such things. I knew her just as soon as I set eyes on her, for she wore that same old frowsy red dress, and had a little tad of a shawl pinned over her shoulders. The poor thing looked like a wind'd blow her away, with her thin, pinched face, and big startled eyes."

"Oh! let all that drop, Bristles," expostulated Colon. "What we want to know is, how did you come to speak to her, and did she remember you?"

Bristles was bound to tell his story in his own way. Without paying any attention to this nagging on the part of the tall chum, he kept facing Fred, and went on deliberately.

"There was a horse and buggy standing at the curb, and say, you never in all your life saw such a dilapidated outfit. Talk to me about the famous 'one hoss shay,' it couldn't have been a circumstance beside that rig. Everywhere the shafts were tied up to hold, the harness patched till it looked all strings, and the animal, well, he was a walking skeleton. Any other time I'd have laughed myself sick, but I couldn't do that then, with that poor little thing being the one that drove such an outfit."

"What did you say to her?" asked Fred.

"Oh! I said 'howdy-do, Sadie, don't you remember me?' and she looked scared at first, and then she actually smiled. She said she hadn't forgotten the two boys on the river, who had been so kind to Sam and her. I asked her where she'd been all this time, and she looked kind of confused and said, 'Oh! around everywhere!' as if they might be a pack of regular Gypsies, and never knew what it was to have a home of their own."

"But you say she had some sort of a rig with her," expostulated Colon at this point of the narrative, "and wouldn't that look as if they'd squatted down somewhere or other, for a spell?"

"Maybe it would," replied Bristles, "but the chances are they only borrowed the outfit for the occasion from some poor farmer, paying for its use by fetching him home some supplies from town. But just then I remembered about that pin we found in the cave, and I took it out of my pocket, unwrapping the paper, and all of a sudden holding it before her."

"Did she recognize the breast pin?" Colon asked.

"You'd have thought so by the way her little face lighted up," said the other, "and reaching out the hand that didn't carry a package, she took bold of it. Then I made a fool move, just like my silly ways. I sprung the trap too soon!"