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

“That’s all right,” agreed Fred. “The trouble is that each fellow will want to go off in the first six.”

“We’ll soon settle that,” replied Sparrow. “We’ll draw lots and then nobody will have any kick coming.”

This proposal was greeted with acclamation, and amid a great deal of chaff and laughter the lots were drawn.

The lucky ones happened to be Fred, Bobby, Mouser, Sparrow, Skeets and Pee Wee.

“We’ll let Pee Wee go in the middle,” laughed Fred, “and we’d better take care to keep close to the side of the road. He’ll need more room than any of the rest of us.”

“I’d hate to have him plunk into me,” grinned Bobby. “It would be a case for the doctor, for sure.”

“For the undertaker, more likely,” chuckled Mouser.

“You fellows think you’re smart, don’t you?” grunted Pee Wee. “All the same I bet I’ll fetch farther than any of you.”

“Hear who’s talking,” jibed Sparrow. “We’ll leave you so far behind you won’t be able to see us with a telescope.”

They ranged their sleds side by side and lay upon them flat on their stomachs, holding firmly on the sides in front in order steer correctly.

“Are you all ready?” asked Howell Purdy, who had been chosen to give the word.

“Ready,” they answered.

“Then go!” shouted Howell.

The six sleds shot forward with a rush.

CHAPTER XVI

WHO WAS GUILTY?

For the first third of the distance, the ice was as smooth as quicksilver, with never a lump or hummock to mar the surface. The sleds flew down the frozen surface, gaining a velocity that took the boys’ breath away and almost frightened them.

Then suddenly there was a jar, a chorus of shouts, and they were thrown headlong over the fronts of their sleds, landing in a confused heap of limbs and bodies, while the sleds relieved of their burdens swirled around aimlessly for a time and finally came to a stop.

A yell of consternation and alarm came from the mass, as the boys tried to struggle to their feet.

Those who had been left at the top of the hill, hearing the yells and knowing that some accident had happened, came slipping and scrambling down to the scene of the disaster.

They helped the half stunned victims to their feet, and for a time there was a wild hullabaloo of questions and answers as they tried to solve the mystery.

Fortunately none of them was badly hurt, though at the rate they were going it might very easily have turned out to be a tragedy.

Most of the boys had rubbed pieces of skin off their arms and legs, and Fred had a cut in his scalp from which the blood was flowing.

“What did it?” shouted Howell.

“I don’t know,” replied Bobby hesitatingly. His head was going round like a top.

“M-must have hit a tree trunk or something like that,” stammered Sparrow.

“That isn’t it,” replied Howell, looking around him. “There isn’t anything of that kind in sight as far as I can see. Just wait a minute till I get Sam Thompson’s flashlight.”

Luckily Sam had it with him and promptly handed it over.

Howell flashed it about him and gave a shout.

“It’s ashes!” he cried. “The whole hill’s littered with ’em.”

“Ashes?” came a chorus of surprised questions.

“That’s what it is,” declared Howell emphatically. “There are heaps and heaps of ’em. I’ll bet they reach clear down to the bottom of the hill.”

He went down further and confirmed what he had said. He had no trouble in walking, for he could not have slipped if he had wanted to. The whole lower surface of the hill was strewn with ashes that spoiled the coasting for that night utterly, and promised to ruin it for many days to come.

A wave of wrath and fierce indignation swept over the boys as they heard Howell’s report.

“Who could have done it?” was the question that came to the lips of all.

“Could it have been the town council?” suggested Skeets. “They might have done it to keep the horses from slipping.”

“They never did anything like that before,” objected Sparrow.

“And if they were the ones, they would have made a clean job of it and gone right up to the top of the hill,” said Mouser. “But you fellows will notice that it was perfectly clear for a long part of the way down.”

“Mouser is right,” declared Bobby. “Somebody did this just to spoil our fun.”

“And they wanted us to be fooled and get started down so that we’d get a tumble when we came to the ashes,” added Fred. “That’s why they left it smooth at the top.”

“Some of us might have been killed,” groaned Skeets, gingerly soothing an injured knee.

“And it’s only a bit of luck that we weren’t,” growled Fred.

“My shins are barked for fair,” moaned Pee Wee, “and that’s no joke this time either.”

“Whoever did it was a low-down skunk,” burst out Howell angrily.

“He might have been a murderer,” added Skeets.

“I’d like to have my hands on him for a minute,” declared Fred.

“Well, our fun is over for this night anyway,” said Bobby sadly.

“And for a whole lot of other nights,” put in Pee Wee. “Those ashes will get ground in and there’s no sweeping ’em off.”

“We’ll have to wait for another snow storm before we can do any more coasting,” wailed Sparrow.

It was a sorely disgruntled band of boys who gathered up their sleds and limped slowly to the top of the hill. One of the sleds was smashed and all had been more or less scratched and bruised.

Once at the top, they squatted down on their sleds and held a council of war.

“Now, fellows,” said Bobby, “we’ve got to get to the bottom of this thing somehow. The ashes didn’t come there of themselves. Somebody put them there, and whoever it was knew that we were out for a grand coasting bee to-night. So it must have been some fellow in the school.”

“I hate to think that there’s any fellow at Rockledge who could do such a dirty trick,” remarked Howell. “If we can find out who it was we ought to tell Doctor Raymond about it and have the fellow sent away from school.”

“No,” objected Bobby. “This is our affair and we oughtn’t to bring the teachers into it at all.”

“The question is who could have done it,” put in Skeets.

“Whoever did it is mean enough to steal sheep,” growled Fred.

“Or take the pennies from a dead man’s eyes,” added Mouser.

“I can figure out just three fellows in the school who could do a thing like that,” said Howell.

“Bill Bronson.”

“Jack Jinks.”

“Tom Hicksley.”

The answers came from as many different lips, and the readiness with which they were accepted was not at all flattering to the boys who bore the names.

“It may have been one of those three or all three together,” said Bobby, coming nearer to the mark than he knew.

“That reminds me,” cried Fred suddenly. “Tom Hicksley was practicing on the flying rings when we were talking this thing over in the gymnasium this morning.”

“That’s so,” chimed in Mouser. “And I remember now that he seemed to stop all of a sudden and slip away. I didn’t think anything about it then, but I remember it plainly now.”

“He owes some of us a grudge for what happened on the train,” remarked Pee Wee.

“And he said then he’d get even with us,” observed Fred.

“There’s one thing we fellows have forgotten,” said Skeets. “Whoever did this would want to be hiding around and see what happened. We ought to hunt them out and pay them up.”

This seemed likely enough and the boys looked eagerly about them.

“Doesn’t seem to be any place up here where they could hide without our seeing them,” remarked Mouser.

“No, but there’s a lot of bushes at the side of the road half way down the hill,” put in Sparrow. “Let’s go down there.”

They went down in a body. There was no one there, but as they got to the other side of the bushes they could faintly make out three figures retreating in the distance.

They were too far away to be recognized and they had too long a start to make it worth while pursuing them, but from their general size and build the boys had little doubt as to who they were.

“What did I tell you?” cried Fred. “I knew that they were the only ones who could do a thing like that.”

“It seems that the whole bunch of them are in it,” remarked Mouser.

“I’ll bet that Hicksley went straight to them and cooked this up when he left the gym this morning,” conjectured Sparrow.

“That makes something else we owe those fellows,” growled Skeets.

“We owed them enough without that,” said Howell. “The big bullies have tried to pester the life out of us ever since we’ve been at Rockledge.”

“Our turn will come,” replied Bobby with conviction. “But now, fellows, we might as well hustle back to the dormitory. There’s no use of staying here any longer.”

They made their way back to the school with very different feelings from those they had when they left it.

“A holiday spoiled,” grumbled Mouser.

“And there’s only two more holidays this month,” observed Sparrow.

“Two!” exclaimed Bobby. “There’s only one more and that’s Washington’s Birthday.”

“How about St. Valentine’s Day?” objected Sparrow. “That’s only two days from now.”

“Oh, that’s only a fake holiday,” replied Fred. “Lessons will go on just the same.”

“I don’t care whether it’s a fake holiday or a real one,” answered Sparrow. “I’m going to get a lot of fun out of it just the same.”

CHAPTER XVII

ON THE TRAIL

The school chums sat up late in the dormitory that night, nursing their bruises, and by the time they had got through applying arnica and other lotions, the place smelled like a hospital.

How they could bring the trick home to those who had played it was a problem that was too much for them at the present. They felt sure that the bullies would deny it if taxed with it, and there was no way of actually proving it, no matter how sure they might feel in their own minds.

The matter could of course have been carried to the authorities of the school, and there is no doubt that they would have looked upon it very gravely because of the serious accident that might have resulted from it. But their code of schoolboy ethics was to keep the teachers out of such things and fight it out among themselves. They felt reasonably sure that sometime or other they would get even, and they bided their time.

It was a very lame and sore lot of boys who dragged themselves out of bed when the rising hell rang on the following morning.

“Scubbity-yow!” exclaimed Fred. “I feel as though I’d been in a railroad smash-up.”

“I’m one big ache all over,” groaned Pee Wee.

“One big ache is right,” grinned Mouser. “You couldn’t be a little one if you tried.”

“My joints creak like a wooden doll’s, every time I go to move,” complained Sparrow.

“I bet I’ll go to pieces on the stairs and have to be shoveled up in bits,” prophesied Skeets.

“We’ll each keep a part to remember you by,” laughed Bobby. “Quit your groaning, you fellows, and let’s go down to the table. You’ll feel better when you get filled up.”

The filling up process was carried out with neatness and despatch, and when it was over the boys were inclined to look on life in a more cheerful way.

“We can’t do anything this morning on account of lessons,” remarked Bobby. “But as soon as they’re over this afternoon, let’s make a break for that hill and see what we can find out.”

“And see how Hicksley and his pals act in the classrooms,” suggested Skeets. “That may give us a tip to go by.”

“I don’t count much on that,” said Mouser. “They’ll be on their guard and won’t want to give themselves away.”

To a certain extent this proved true. There was no attempt on the part of the bullies to gloat over the victims of their trick. But the boys surprised furtive grins and winks that passed between the three when they thought no one was looking, and this confirmed their suspicions that now were almost certainties.

“They did it all right,” pronounced Fred. “I’m sure of it from the way I saw them grinning at each other. But they’ll laugh on the other side of their mouths before long.”

As soon as the boys were free from their duties, they went with all speed to the scene of their misadventure. And again they lamented, when they saw by daylight how thoroughly the hill was spoiled for coasting.

“There must be bushels and bushels of ashes!” exclaimed Mouser, as his eyes roamed over the lower half of the hill.

“It beats me how they managed to get it all here,” observed Skeets.

“It must have been brought a long way,” commented Sparrow. “There’s no place round here they could have got them from.”

“They couldn’t have carried all that stuff themselves,” said Bobby thoughtfully.

“It would have been an awful job,” added Howell, “and those fellows don’t like work well enough for that.”

“They might have hired a man with a horse and wagon,” suggested Skeets.

“If that’s so, there must be some tracks in the snow,” returned Bobby. “Scatter out, fellows, and see if you can find any marks of hoofs or wheels.”

They followed his directions, and in a moment there was a cry from Sparrow.

“Here’re the marks of wheels,” he called. “But I don’t see any horse tracks.”

There, indeed, were the clearly defined print of wheels leading in a roundabout way toward the town. As they looked a little more closely they could see too where a man’s feet had broken at places through the crust of snow.

“It must have been a hand cart,” said Bobby, “and you can see that it held ashes from the bits that lie along its tracks. That’s what they brought it in and you can bet on it.”

“There aren’t many hand carts in town,” observed Fred reflectively. “How many do you fellows remember seeing?”

“The laundryman has one,” replied Howell, “and the paper man has another. Those are the only ones I know of, except that shaky thing of Dago Joe’s.”

“He’s the fellow!” cried Fred excitedly. “None of the others would lend their carts for anything like that.”

“Let’s follow up the tracks and see where they lead to,” suggested Sparrow.

This was detective work to their liking and even Pee Wee made no objections to the tramp over the snow.

Their satisfaction was increased when they found that the tracks led straight to the roundhouse. Here there were great piles of ashes that had been dropped from the fire boxes of the locomotives when they were being shifted or put up for the night. It was quite clear that here was the place where the hand cart had been filled.

But their elation received a sudden check when they prepared to trace the wheel prints to the shabby shack in town where Joe lived with his numerous brood. For now they were in the outskirts of the town, where wagons were coming and going all the time, and the tracks they had been following were lost in a multitude of others.

They looked at each other a little sheepishly.

“Stung!” muttered Fred.

“Bum detectives we are,” grinned Sparrow.

“We’re up a tree now for sure,” declared Sparrow.

“All this walk for nothing,” growled Pee Wee.

“We do seem to be stumped,” admitted Bobby. “What do you say to going to Joe and asking him right up and down whether he did it or not?”

“Swell chance we’d have of getting anything out of him,” commented Mouser.

“He’d lie about it sure,” declared Sparrow.

“I suppose likely he would,” agreed Bobby. “But we might be able to tell something by the way he acts. It won’t do any harm to try anyhow.”

They found Dago Joe pottering about some work in the small yard in front of his shack. But Joe had seen them coming and his uneasy conscience had taken alarm. If he had had time, he would have slipped inside the house and had his wife or one of the children deny that he was at home. But it was too late for that, and he took refuge in the assumed ignorance that had served him many times before.

He greeted them with a genial smile that showed his mouthful of white teeth which was the only personal attraction he possessed.

“Goota day,” he said blandly.

“How are you, Joe?” said Bobby, as spokesman for the party. “Been pretty busy?”

Joe’s mouth drooped.

“Not do nottin much,” he answered. “Beesness bad, ver’ bad.”

“Carry any loads of ashes lately?” Bobby went on.

Joe looked puzzled. Then a light came into his face.

“Hash?” he said delightedly. “Me likea hash. Tasta good. Bambino like it too.”

“Not hash, but ashes,” returned Bobby, joining in the laugh of the rest of the boys. “You know, ashes – what falls out of the stove, wood ashes, coal ashes.”

Joe’s face resembled that of a graven image.

“No unnerstan,” he said, shrugging his shoulders with an air of perplexity.

In the face of his determination, the boys saw that it was of no use to prolong the conversation.

“You’re a good actor, Joe,” said Bobby, half vexed, half amused, as the boys turned to go.

Joe showed his teeth again in an engaging smile that embraced all the party and waved them a cordial good-bye.

“How sweetly the old rascal smiles at us!” grinned Mouser.

“Laughs at us, you mean,” snorted Fred. “He’s tickled to death inside to think of the way he’s got the best of us.”

“I bet if we asked him if he’d like to have us give him five dollars, he’d understand, all right,” laughed Sparrow.

“He couldn’t grab the money too quick,” agreed Skeets.

“Well, we haven’t wasted our afternoon anyway,” Bobby summed up. “We’ve found out how the ashes were taken there, and we feel dead certain in our own minds that Joe did it. We know, of course, that he didn’t do it of his own accord. Somebody hired him to do it. Now if we could only find some one who saw Hicksley and Joe talking together, it would help some.”

“But that wouldn’t prove anything,” objected Sparrow. “They might be talking about the weather.”

“Or about hash,” interjected Pee Wee.

“Hash seems to stick in your crop,” grinned Skeets.

“I wish some of it were sticking there right now,” answered Pee Wee, “especially if it were like the hash that Meena makes.”

“By the way, fellows,” chimed in Fred, “it must be close to supper time this very minute. Let’s beat it.”

They started off on a run.

“The one that gets there last is a Chinaman,” Skeets flung back over his shoulder.

Pee Wee was the Chinaman.

CHAPTER XVIII

A HARD HIT

The next morning the boys woke to the realization that it was St. Valentine’s Day. There were valentines in their mail, valentines that had been slipped slyly into their pockets, valentines that had found their way under their pillows.

Some of them were the grotesque “comics” that were on sale in the village stationery store, while others were mere scrawls adorned with so-called pictures, and had been made by the boys themselves with pen and pencil.

There was not much art about them, but there was a good deal of fun, and that was all the boys were looking for. Most of them were based on nicknames that the boys carried or on some event in their lives that was known to the rest.

Mouser, for instance, was pictured with his own face on the body of a mouse who was creeping toward a cage in which a big piece of cheese was temptingly displayed.

Skeets was buzzing about as a big mosquito, over the bald head of a fat man, who was getting ready to crash him as soon as he should settle down.

Fred’s red head had been drawn in red ink, and above his flaming mop one boy was holding a frying pan and another was breaking eggs to cook an omelet.

The boys had learned from Fred of the time when Bobby had coasted down the Trent Street hill and gone head over heels into the drift. Bobby’s head could not be seen but his two heels were waving wildly in the air and on one of them was the word “Bobby” and on the other “Blake.”

Of course Pee Wee had not been overlooked. He was shown as a big fat boy, and each of his knees had a dog’s head on it. The dogs were barking furiously. This was supposed to indicate his “barked” shins.

Because Billy Bassett was always asking questions with his conundrums, he was shown as a great big question mark with the word “guess” underneath.

Sparrow Bangs sat on a branch with a flock of birds, singing with all his might, while in the bushes a hunter was taking careful aim and getting ready to fire.

Under most of the pictures there were verses that brought forth shrieks of laughter – usually from all, but sometimes from all but the recipient.

As a rule, it was pure fun without any sting in it, though Fred pointed out that the hair in the picture was a good deal redder than that which really waved over his freckled forehead. Pee Wee too was sure that he was not anyway near so big as the human mountain that his picture showed him to be.

There was plenty of chaff and laughter as the boys pored over the valentines, and they would have gladly spent more time discussing them. But as Fred had said, Valentine’s Day was only a “fake” holiday, and the hard-hearted teachers insisted on lessons and recitations. So the pictures were hastily thrust into pockets until they had more time to look at them and the boys trooped over to the classrooms.

Several times through the morning’s work, they noticed that Tom Hicksley shot furious glances at them and this aroused their curiosity.

“His royal highness seems mighty sore about something this morning,” Fred whispered to Bobby.

“Got out of bed the wrong foot first maybe,” replied Bobby.

“I hope he’s got something to feel sore about,” snapped Fred.

What that something was they learned after the lessons were over, and they stood chattering with their friends, a little way off from the main building.

Hicksley came up to them, accompanied by Bronson and Jinks. There was an ugly look in the bully’s eyes and he held a folded sheet of paper in his hand.

“Which one of you boobs sent me this valentine?” he asked threateningly.

“How do you know that any of us did?” replied Bobby in Yankee fashion, answering a question by asking one.

“I know that some of you did, because you butted in on me before,” replied Hicksley.

“When was that?” asked Fred aggravatingly.

“You know well enough,” growled Hicksley, who was not any too anxious to recall his bully-ragging of the old soldier.

“Oh, yes, I remember,” put in Mouser, as though he had just thought of it. “You remember, fellows, how Hicksley reached out his foot and tried to trip the old man up.”

“I didn’t,” cried Hicksley untruthfully. “He fell over it by accident.”

“And I suppose it was an accident that you kept at him with the feather so that he couldn’t get any sleep?” retorted Fred.

“That’s neither here nor there,” snarled Hicksley, dodging the matter. “What I want to know is which one of you sent this valentine?”

“What are you going to do if you find out?” asked Bobby innocently.

“I’m going to give him a trimming that he’ll remember,” growled Hicksley.

Bronson and Jinks ranged up alongside of him as though to assure him of their support, and it looked as if trouble were coming.

“Give it to him good and plenty, Tom,” said Bronson.

“The whole bunch of them need a licking,” added Jinks.

“It will take more than you to give it to us,” blazed out Fred defiantly.

The bullies were much larger and stronger than any of the boys opposed to them. On the other hand, the smaller boys had a larger number, so that if a tussle did come, the forces would be about equal.

“What is this valentine you’re making all this fuss about?” demanded Bobby.

“Here it is,” cried Hicksley furiously, thrusting it forward. “And I’m going to make the fellow that sent it pay for it.”

The boys crowded round and looked at it curiously, at the same time keeping wary eyes on the bullies.

The picture was fairly well done, and had evidently taken a great deal of work and time on the part of the one who had made it. It represented a boy taking a dead mouse from a blind kitten. The boy was grinning, and the kitten was pawing wildly about, trying to get back its mouse.

To make sure there could be no mistake, the kitten had a card around its neck bearing the words, “I am blind,” and under the figure of the boy was scrawled the name, “Tom Hicksley.”

The boys roared with laughter, and Hicksley’s temper rose to the boiling point.

“Own up now, which one of you did it,” he demanded fiercely.

“Whoever did it knew you pretty well, Tom Hicksley,” said Fred.