Bobby Blake on the School Nine: or, The Champions of the Monatook Lake League

“I had one,” replied Mouser, “but it’s in my bag on the train.”

None of the others had one and Bobby came to a quick decision.

“There’s no other way,” he announced. “We’ll have to go back and ask Mrs. Wilson. She’ll know all about the trains and what’s the best station for us to go to.”

They trudged back rather forlornly and explained their plight to Mrs. Wilson, who was full of sympathy.

“I’d like to have you stay here all night,” she volunteered, “and Mr. Wilson will take you over to the station in a rig to-morrow morning.”

They thanked her heartily, but explained that this was out of the question. They would be missed from the train, telegrams would be flying back and forth and their parents would be anxious and excited. They must get to some place where they could either telegraph or, better yet, get a train that would land them in Rockledge that afternoon or evening.

“I’ll tell you what to do,” she suggested, as a thought struck her. “You can’t get a train on this line you’ve been traveling on until very late to-night. But there’s another road that crosses this at a junction about two miles from here and connects with the main line that goes on to Rockledge. There’s an afternoon train on that line that you’ll have plenty of time to make, and it will land you in Rockledge before night. There’s a telegraph office there too, and you can send any messages you like before you board the train.”

“That’s just the very thing,” cried Bobby with enthusiasm.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” chuckled Mouser.

She gave them very careful directions for finding the station, and as there was none too much time and the walking was bound to be slow they set out at once, after thanking their friend for having come a second time to their relief.

Their path led for the most part through a wood and they passed no other houses on their way. Even in summer it was evident that the locality was wild and deserted. Now with the snow over everything it was especially desolate.

“You might almost think you were up in the Big Woods,” commented Mouser.

“That’s what,” agreed Fred. “It would be a dandy place for train robbers and that kind of fellows.”

“I’d hate to be wandering around here at night,” remarked Pee Wee, who was panting with the exertion of keeping up with the others.

“It would give one a sort of creepy feeling, like being in a cemetery,” assented Bobby.

Suddenly Fred uttered an exclamation.

“There’s a little house right over in that hollow,” he cried, pointing to the right.

“More like a hut or a shack than a regular house, seems to me,” grunted Mouser.

“I don’t believe there’s any one living there,” commented Pee Wee.

“Yes, there must be,” declared Bobby. “I can see the light of a fire shining through the window.”

The hut in question was a dilapidated structure of only one story that stood in a little hollow just off the road. It was in the last stages of decay and looked as though a strong wind would blow it to pieces. There were no fences nor barn nor any wagon or farm implement in sight.

Yet that some one lived in the crazy shack was evident, as Bobby had said, by the red light that came flickeringly through the only window that the cabin possessed.

“Let’s stop there for a minute and get warm,” suggested Fred. “Then, too, we can make sure that we’re still on the right road to the station.”

“What’s the use?” cautioned Bobby. “We got left once to-day by stopping too long.”

“It will only take a minute,” urged Fred.

As the others also wanted to stop, and Bobby did not wish to insist too much, they all went down into the hollow together.

The snow of course deadened their footsteps, so that whoever was in the cabin had no notice of their approach.

Fred, who was in advance, rapped on the door.

There was silence for a moment and then the door swung open and a rough looking man appeared on the sill.

“What do you want?” he asked gruffly.

“We wanted to ask directions about the road,” said Fred, a little dismayed by the fellow’s surly manner.

The man looked them over for a moment, noticed that they were well dressed and hesitated no longer.

“Come in,” he said briefly, and stood aside for them to pass.

CHAPTER VI

HEAVY ODDS

Although feeling rather uneasy because of the man’s rough manner, the boys hardly saw what they could do but accept the invitation, and they went inside. The next moment they wished they had not.

There were two other men within the hut besides the one who had opened the door. They were seated at a bare pine table, and on the table there was a bottle of liquor. There seemed to be no other furniture in the miserable room, except a rusty wood stove, which was at white heat, two or three stools and a pile of hay in the corner, which evidently served as a bed.

The heat inside was stifling, and the room was rank with the fumes of liquor. The unshaven faces of the men were flushed, their eyes red and bleared, and a greasy pack of cards told of their occupation when they had been interrupted.

“Tramps,” whispered Bobby to Fred, who was nearest. “Let’s get out of this.”

“You bet,” returned Fred, as he made a motion toward the door.

But the man who had let them in now stood with his back against the closed door, looking at them with an ugly grin on his face, a face which was made still more repellant by a livid scar up near the temple.

“What do these young buckos want here?” asked one of the men at the table, rising and coming toward them. As he did so, Bobby noticed that he limped a trifle.

“We stopped in for a minute to ask if we were on the right road to the station,” said Bobby in a tone which he tried to render as careless as possible.

“You did, eh?” said the man. “Well, just wait a minute and I’ll tell you.”

He and his companion approached their comrade at the door, and for a few moments there was a whispered conversation. Then the man with the scar, who seemed to be the leader of the gang, turned to Bobby.

“You’re on the right road all right,” he said.

“Thank you,” returned Bobby. “Then I guess we’ll be getting on.”

The man laughed at this.

“Guess again, young feller,” said one of them.

“What’s your hurry?” asked the lame man.

“We don’t often have such nice young kids drop in to keep us company,” sneered the man with the scar. “Take off your hats and stay awhile.”

The boys’ hearts sank. They no longer had any doubts of the evil intentions of the men who held them virtually prisoners. They had fallen into a den of thieves.

“We’re going now,” declared Bobby, in a last desperate attempt to bluff the matter through, “and if you try to stop us it will be the worse for you.”

The men laughed uproariously.

“A fine young turkey cock he is!” croaked one of them. “We’ll have to cut his comb for him.”

“You’ll get your own cut first,” shouted Fred, who was blazing with anger. “Don’t forget that there are policemen and jails for just such fellows as you are.”

“Shut up, Redhead,” commanded the scar-faced man, adding insult to injury.

Then his jocular manner passed and was replaced by a wicked snarl.

“Hand over what money you’ve got in your pockets,” he commanded, “and turn your pockets inside out. Do it quick too, or we’ll skin you alive.”

There was no mistaking the menace in his tone. He was in deadly earnest and his eyes shone like those of a beast of prey.

There was nothing to do but to obey. His victims were trapped and helpless. They were only eleven year old boys, and were no match physically even for one such burly ruffian. Against three, resistance would have been ridiculous.

Boiling with inward rage, they slowly and sullenly handed over the contents of their pockets. None of them had any great amount of money – only a few dollars for spending allowance. But taken altogether it made quite a respectable sum, over which the robbers gloated with evident satisfaction. Probably their chief calculation was the amount of liquor it would buy for their spree.

But even with this the thieves were not content. Bobby’s silver watch, a scarf pin of Mouser’s, Fred’s seal ring and Pee Wee’s gold sleeve buttons went to swell the pile. They even carried their meanness so far as to rob the lads of their railroad tickets. Then when they found that there was nothing else worth the plucking, the leader opened the door.

“Now beat it,” he growled, “and thank your lucky stars that we didn’t swipe your clothes.”

Half blinded with wrath, the crestfallen boys climbed out of the hollow and into the road which they had left in such high spirits a few minutes before. They had been stripped clean. If their outer clothing had fitted any of the rascals they would have probably lost that too. They were utterly forlorn and downhearted.

If they had lost their possessions after a hot resistance against those who were anyway near their age and size, there would at least have been the exhilaration of the fight. But even that poor compensation was denied them. The odds had been too overwhelming even to think of a struggle.

At first they could not even speak to each other. When they attempted to find words they were so mad that they could only splutter.

“The skunks!” Fred managed to get out at last.

“The low down brutes,” growled Mouser.

“Every cent gone,” groaned Pee Wee. “And those sleeve buttons were a Christmas gift from my mother.”

“And that silver watch was one my father gave me on my last birthday,” muttered Bobby thickly.

“If they’d only left us our railroad tickets!” mourned Fred.

“That was the dirtiest trick of all,” put in Mouser. “You can understand why they took the money and jewelry. But they probably don’t have any idea in the world of using the tickets.”

“Likely enough by this time they’ve torn them up and thrown them into the fire,” Pee Wee conjectured.

“Don’t speak the word, ‘fire,’” said Bobby. “If we hadn’t seen the light of it through the window, we wouldn’t have gone in there at all.”

“It was all my fault,” moaned Fred. “What a fool stunt it was of me to want to stop there anyway.”

Bobby could easily have said, “I told you so,” but that was not Bobby’s way.

“It wasn’t anybody’s fault,” he said. “It was just our hard luck. We might have done it a thousand times and found only decent people there each time.”

“Lucky I gave that dime to Betty this morning anyway,” grunted Fred. “That’s one thing the thieves didn’t get.”

The remark struck the boys as so comical that they broke into laughter. It was the one thing needed to relieve the tension. It cleared the air and all felt better.

“Talk about looking on the bright side of things,” chuckled Pee Wee.

“You’re a wonder as a little cheerer-up,” commented Mouser.

“That’s looking at the doughnut instead of seeing only the hole in the doughnut,” laughed Bobby.

After all they were alive and unharmed. The thieves might have beaten them up or tied them in the cabin while they made their escape.

“Things might have been a great deal worse,” said Bobby cheerfully, putting their thoughts into words. “The money didn’t amount to so much after all, and our folks will send us more. And we may be able to have the tramps arrested and get back our other things. We’ll telegraph just as soon as we get to – ”

But here he stopped short in dismay.

“We haven’t even money enough to pay for the message!” he exclaimed.

“Perhaps the station man will trust us,” suggested Fred.

“I think there’s a way of sending messages so that the folks who get them pay on the other end,” said Pee Wee hopefully.

None of the boys were very clear on this point, but it offered a ray of cheer.

“We won’t need to send more than one message anyway,” said practical Bobby as they trudged along. “Some of our folks might be away and there might be some delay in getting to them. But I know that my father is at home and I’ll just ask him to send on enough money for the bunch of us. Then you fellows can square it up with me afterwards.”

They had reached the outskirts of a village now and the walking had become easier. They quickened their pace and soon came in sight of the station.

“There it is!” cried Fred, and the boys broke into a run.

CHAPTER VII

PAYING AN OLD DEBT

As Bobby’s watch had been the only one in the party, the boys had not been able to keep track of the time during the latter part of their journey, and they were a little fearful that they might be late for their train.

They were relieved therefore to learn they were in plenty of time. The train was not regularly due for half an hour, and owing to the snowstorm it would probably be an hour or more behind time.

The station agent at Roseville, as the town was named, had charge of the telegraph office as well. He was a kindly man and listened with the greatest sympathy to the boys’ story. His indignation at the robbers was hot, and he promised to put the constable on their trail at once.

“It’s a beastly outrage,” he stormed. “That old deserted shack has been too handy for fellows of that kind. They make it a regular hang-out. We’ll clean out the gang and burn the place to the ground. I’ve got to stay here now until after the train leaves, but as soon as it’s gone, I’ll get busy.”

He assured them that he would send on the telegram to be paid for at the other end, and the boys, possessing themselves of some blanks, withdrew to a quiet corner to prepare the message.

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