Chapter 16

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!"

"You told her where you'd found it, said you thought it might be hers, just because you remembered her wearing something like that, didn't you?" asked Fred.

"Sure I did, and you just ought to have seen the scared look that came over her face," Bristles admitted. "She looked all around as if she was afraid that Corny'd be popping up, and then shook her head again and again, saying the pin wasn't hers. But, Fred, I know the poor little girl was telling a fib, because she was afraid if she owned up to the old piece of fake jewelry that she seemed to value so much, it might get somebody in a peck of trouble; and we know who that is, don't we?"

"We certainly do!" replied Fred; and he started to tell Bristles how Colon learned Corny Ludson had also been in Riverport that afternoon, acting in a suspicious manner.