Part 9

"Didn't they take our canoes in the first place?"

"But they didn't keep them," said Horrors. "That Kingdon is as square a chap as I ever saw."

"What's that?" exclaimed Kirby. "Have you fallen in love with him?"

"Well, I can't say I hate him just because he is ready to fight, as long as he fights fair."

"I could lick him, easy," boasted Kirby.

"A lot you could! Ask Joe, here, whether Rex Kingdon's got a hard fist."

The Indian lad's countenance denoted his feelings on this point. Although he did not speak, his expression was a threat that none of the others quite understood.

"Look here," insisted Pence argumentatively, "let's settle this. Why should we leave Storm Island?"

"For one reason," said Kirby, "because Kingdon can get us put off any time he feels like it."

"Will he feel like it?"

"Why won't he?" asked Ben Comas.

"He says," returned Pence, "that he likes to have us here to row with, and why shouldn't we accommodate him? He hasn't got so much the better of us. We've had just as much fun out of it as he and his crowd have."

"Quibb will be coming around again," prophesied Kirby.

"Don't you believe it. Kingdon has settled that. He'll keep away from Storm Island. We'll take Rex Kingdon at his word. He says he likes to fuss with us. Let's give him all the sport in that line he wants."

Joe Bootleg's gloomy face caught the attention of the black-eyed lad. "You going to stay here, Mr. Pence?" the Indian asked.

"That's my intention, Chief."

"Them fellers stay?" demanded Joe, pointing off at the catboat.

"Sure."

The Indian turned and started into the woods. He carried the camp hatchet that had been borrowed from the Walcott Hall boys.

"Where you going, Joe?" asked Ben, as Horace gave the fellow no further attention.

"Chop more firewood," grunted Joe Bootleg.

But he clutched the hatchet handle with a grimness that might have startled the others had they seen his face. The fire of revengeful determination burned hotly in Joe Bootleg's heart.

*CHAPTER XXII.*

*THE BOULDER ON THE HILLSIDE.*

The _Spoondrift_ and her crew came back from the fishweir with several varieties of edible fish that the pondmen had given the boys. They had a feast that night at the camp, and even Cloudman admitted that, for once, it was a "square meal."

Midkiff, unlike the others, could not easily forgive Rex and the others for letting Horace Pence and his friends off so easy.

"You're piling up trouble for yourself and us," he told Kingdon. "Fellows like those over at that camp would cut your tugs and let the horse run away any time you weren't looking--and think 'twas fun."

"We'll be looking," laughed Kingdon.

"Yes, we will! That Indian, for instance, could be planning something against us right now, and we wouldn't know it, would we? He's a wicked-looking chap, and he hasn't forgotten how you mauled him around that night in the dark."

"Nor have I forgotten how he mauled me," said Rex, with some feeling. "My dainty little foot is tender yet. But maybe my upper deck is loaded with a grand scheme to get even." He finished with a soft laugh.

"Yes it is!" scoffed the gloomy one, with scorn. "I know about the kind of plans you have in your mind."

Midkiff really admired Kingdon's whole-hearted and friendly way of settling the matter of the permit and the remaining on the island of the other campers. Nobody but Rex, it seemed to him, could have done just that--and done it so well. Furthermore, he had not lingered around to receive any expressions of gratitude, or to make the chaps with Pence feel uncomfortable. He had taken his own friends away at once, leaving the surprised and shame-faced crowd to recover from the jolt his action had given them.

Midkiff was sure he couldn't have done such a thing himself. Indeed, he wouldn't have done it under any circumstances. Heaping coals of fire on the heads of his enemies was not John's way of settling any dispute. He could fight, or he could argue; but it was not in him to be a generous--indeed a prodigally generous--enemy. Besides, he did not believe that it would improve Pence and his friends. He considered them beneath contempt and incapable of holding a generous sentiment for an instant.

Kingdon suddenly laughed at him again. "I'm glad I haven't your suspicious nature, Jawn," he drawled, shrugging his well-built shoulders.

They went up to the open field in the middle of the island the next forenoon, and before long Pence and his three white companions strolled into view. If Ben, Pudge and Kirby felt any embarrassment, and showed it, not so Horace Pence. He was his usual careless and cheerful self.

Kingdon left it to Pence to make advances, and presently Horace wanted to try his arm. Kingdon caught for him, never uttering a word of encouragement or criticism all the time the black-eyed chap was working, although Pence was using all the speed at his command.

"I say," called Horace at last, "what d'you think of them?"

"You don't want to know what I think, do you?" Kingdon asked quietly.

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't," returned the heated Pence.

"I think you're likely to throw your arm out of joint, if you keep on," was Kingdon's frank response. "I'd take care if I were you. You don't put the ball over; you let it fly anywhere, as long as you put steam behind it."

Pence was unable to hide his chagrin. He flung the ball as far as he could across the field, and sullenly started back for his camp. But he slipped on his sweater as he went. He had remembered Kingdon's advice of the week before.

"He got what he asked for, and didn't like it," Peewee snickered.

"Shows his bringing up!" muttered Cloudman.

"Regular Chesterfield for manners!" chuckled Red Phillips.

Midkiff, too disgusted to speak at all, looked his contempt.

They forgot that it took training of the right kind for a young fellow to get into the habit of controlling his temper. Kingdon might have been intentionally aggravating, for he went off whistling in the other direction, and alone. One could seldom tell whether Rex was perturbed or not. At least, on this particular occasion he showed no apparent feeling for Horace Pence.

None of the others followed Rex at the moment, and he slipped into the woods alone while his mates were picking up the bats and recovering other articles. He did not care to be questioned just then. Nevertheless he was smiling. He was wise enough to appreciate how Horace Pence felt.

Going whistling down the aisles of the wood, but bearing off the usual route to their camp, Kingdon suddenly came upon something that stopped him.

"Hul-_lo!_" he murmured, startled if not surprised. "Who's been chopping down trees?"

The spot was almost directly above their camp. The steep hillside fell away to the small plateau on which the Walcott Hall boys had set up their tent. Below that was the cove, with its pebbly, narrow, crescent beach, and the catboat courtesying to the swell of the water. Kingdon could get a glimpse of her stick through the trees.

Here, just before him, a goodly sapling had been cut off near the ground. That, in itself, was an infringement of the rules laid down by the Manatee Company. Rex had been warned against cutting wood of this kind for any purpose whatsoever on Storm Island.

"Now, who did this?" muttered the lad again. "Surely none of our fellows."

His quick eye saw something in the grass, and he hastened to pick it up. A hatchet, with one side of the blade rusted.

"Our extra hatchet! The one that MacComber fellow borrowed. I'm sure he didn't return it!"

He went on a little way and saw where the sapling, all of four inches through at its butt, lay half hidden in the rank weeds and grass. It seemed that the stick had been cut wantonly, after which the marauder had tried to hide it.

"I'm sure none of our fellows would have done such a thing. Here's the hatchet," Kingdon told himself.

He went on a little farther, and came to the opening above the camp. The forest trees seemed to withdraw on either side and leave a small, wedge-shaped pasture on the hillside, with the thin edge of the wedge up-hill. Down the slope, not two hundred yards away, was the tent.

Kingdon's gaze swept the opening in the forest, studying every detail of the narrow landscape. Suspicion had been bred in his mind. It was more, an intuition that all was not right.

He walked slowly down the hill, observing several outthrust rocks and one rounded bowlder directly in his path. Apparently a dog had tried to dig a woodchuck out from under the upper edge of that bowlder.

Kingdon passed on. Then he turned, startled, and went back to the gray rock. The thought had flashed through his mind that there were no dogs on Storm Island!

At least, he had neither seen nor heard a dog since his party had arrived. A dog had not dug under that bowlder, nor would a groundhog have left so much loose soil at the mouth of his burrow.

Kingdon stopped and studied the situation. There was a small rock lying just above the bowlder and about two feet from its uphill edge. This smaller stone had recently been placed there.

He walked back to the felled sapling at the edge of the wood. Its butt, freshly cut from the stump, should be white. Instead it was crusted with earth.

Rex returned down the hill again, and stood for a minute by the great gray bowlder, testing one hand upon it, thinking. His gaze scrutinized minutely every foot of the slope below him. Presently, his face frowning and thoughtful, he sought the path by which he and his mates usually descended the hillside, and arrived at the camp before the others.

*CHAPTER XXIII.*

*A THREATENING SKY.*

Rex had brought the camp hatchet and placed it where everybody could see it. None of his fellow-campers spoke of its return. They were all hungry, and they hurried through dinner, took a nap, and then made for the sound while the tide was up.

There was a good diving place just east of their cove, and within a few rods of the spot where the other fellows moored their canoes. When the Walcott Hall boys arrived at the bathing place the four white youths from the other camp were already in the water. Joe Bootleg seemed to have a constitutional objection to water for bathing purposes.

With a driftwood plank they had found, Midkiff and Phillips rigged a diving-board. The rocks which weighted its shoreward end sometimes slipped off and "dumped" the diver ingloriously into the deep hole under the bank, but that merely added to the sport.

Peewee hailed Pudge MacComber, with whom he had struck up something of a doubtful friendship, and soon four of the other fellows were at the spot where the Walcott Hall boys bathed.

Pence, a fine swimmer, dove like a shark and stayed under water longer than anybody in the crowd, save Kingdon himself. The two raced informally from the diving hole to the canoes and back again, and it seemed that Pence had a wee bit the better of it.

"You do that Australian crawl fine," Kingdon told the black-eyed chap frankly.

"That's one thing I do all winter. There's a corking pool in our town gym., and I don't often miss a day."

"Swimming and rowing are as good all round training stuff as a fellow can do," Kingdon said. "Gives you wind and what Downs, our coach, calls stamina. You handle a paddle like a veteran, Pence. How are you with the oar?"

"So-so," Horace replied languidly. "Had good crews at Belding where I went for a year. I made Number Two eight."

"Belding?" ejaculated Kingdon. "Did you go to Belding?"

"I went and then I came away again," laughed Pence with that unpleasant curl of his lip. "Didn't stay long."

"Why not?"

"I rather think my absence was requested because of something regarding a calf being led into chapel and tied in the pulpit. Had a kind of a weak-voiced chaplain and the calf helped him out in bellowing."

"Boys will be boys," Kingdon said sadly, "and calves will be calves. Sometimes it's hard for the faculty to tell 'em apart."

Pence's eyes twinkled with appreciation. "At least, they didn't make the mistake of rusticating the calf instead of me."

"After that?" quizzed Rex.

"After what?"

"Belding wasn't your last school? Where do you go now?"

"I've finished school. Nothing to it," yawned Pence.

"That reminds me," Kingdon said quickly. "Those fellows sailing the _Nothing To It_ claim to be the fastest crew in these parts in eight-oared shell."

"_Nothing To It_?" echoed Pence.

Rex told him about the Blackport Boat Club fellows and their boasting. "I'd dearly love to get hold of that old boat of theirs, train a bit, and see how bad they could trim us in a race."

"But you five fellows can't handle an eight-oared shell," the black-eyed youth said.

"No. But we five, with your four, could. Even Pudge would do as ballast. Have to work in Hicks as cox."

Pence stared and laughed shortly. "You're a queer fellow," he said. "Anybody'd think we were bosom friends of yours.'

"Bosom enemies," responded Kingdon. "What's the odds, enemies or friends? We might work up a good crew and have a little fun with that _Nothing To It_ crowd."

"You must have sport on the brain, Kingdon," drawled Horace.

"Sure. Clean sport. There's nothing like it. I can have a fine time with the worst enemy I've got, if he only plays the game--_any_ game--fair."

"Suppose you've got plenty of deadly enemies?" was the other's rejoinder.

"Got one, I fancy, right in your crowd," Kingdon said, with rather a meaning inflection to his voice.

Horace stared at him. "Oh, I wouldn't worry about Ben Comas."

"I don't. It's your Indian chum, Joe Bootleg."

"Joe? Tut, tut! He's as tame as----"

"As a tarantula," finished Kingdon, laughing again.

"I'll have an eye on him," said Pence, rather sneeringly smiling once more. "But you don't expect a fellow like him to play any game fair?"

"Not so's you'd notice it," Kingdon cheerfully returned. "But you other fellows, now--take for instance yourself, Horrors."

The other straightened up on the rock where they were sitting in the sun, at a distance from the other fellows, and looked with hard eyes at Rex. "What do you mean?" he questioned. "I don't just get you."

"Consider your pitching," Kingdon said coolly. "It's crude."

"Crude?"

"Very."

"Say, I've got some reputation as a pitcher around home."

Rex repressed a laugh. "Others before you have been Walter Johnsons around home, but have lost their reputations as soon as they got away anywhere."

"What's the matter with my pitching, anyhow?"

"I've told you that you lack control, but you need experience and training in other things. Speed is a great thing, I'll admit, when a pitcher mixes it with brains."

"Perhaps I've got as many brains as your friends Midkiff and Cloudman," flared Horace. "I suppose you think them Mathewsons?"

"They're steady and dependable, at least."

"Plugging horses!" snapped Pence. "No real stuff."

"I've seen fellows who didn't succeed though everybody thought they had the 'real stuff,' and I've seen 'plugging horses' who climbed steadily and surely to the top. Brilliancy is sometimes nothing but a flash in the pan."

"Is that so?" demanded the heated Horace. "I don't suppose I'd make any showing at all on the diamond of that fancy prep. school of yours?"

"Oh, you're baseball material; no doubt of that," answered Kingdon carelessly. "I figure Stanley Downs would place you about on the Number Three scrub."

"_In_-deed?" exploded Horace.

"Yes. We're weak in our pitching staff, too. I could use a southpaw like you, even if you came in as a freshman, with the school nine this fall."

Kingdon said it in such a matter-of-fact way that the other stared at him for a full minute before demanding: "What's this you're driving at? What's the big idea?"

"I might use a fellow like you on the pitching staff of the Walcott Hall nine, if he was amenable to discipline and I could work with him this summer."

"You go fish!" jeered Pence, rising suddenly to cast himself into the sea and swam away.

"Now, let that idea rattle about in that dome of yours, Horrors," chuckled Rex, also rising. "We'll see what comes of it."

That evening, while supper was cooking, Rex strolled up the hill over-looking the camp. He glanced at the bowlder, and again found the stick that had been cut and hidden at the edge of the wood. Apparently no one had been there since he made his previous examination.

The next day the Walcott Hall boys saw Joe Bootleg and Harry Kirby paddle away from the island in one of the canoes, and knew the pair were going for provisions. When Kingdon and his chums went up to the ball field, the former was not surprised to see Horace Pence there, alone.

Pence lay languidly in the shade, chewing a grassblade, and watched the workout of Midkiff and Cloudman, without comment. On this occasion Kingdon was intentionally sharp with both his moundsmen. He criticized them so severely that Midkiff became a boiling volcano of wrath, and Applejack was as wild as a tiger. But neither of them answered back.

Further than being catcher, Rex was captain of the Walcott Hall nine. Off the field he was even more easy and democratic than most fellows, but in practice or in a game he was the leader, and would brook no rebellion against his authority.

When Cloudman had come in and joined the sullen Midkiff in the shade, Rex whipped around to look at Horace Pence. "Want to get out there and see if you can find the pan to-day?" he asked. "I can give you a little time before sending those babies of mine out to practice base throwing."

"If you talk to me the way you have been ballyraggin' those chaps, I'll maybe punch your head," drawled Horace.

"That would be careless of you. You might make me cry. You might wake up," Kingdon shot at him with surprising fierceness, "and find yourself in the hospital!"

Horace laughed. Then he drawled, as he walked out toward the pitcher's box: "My goodness! You're some bully, aren't you? Where's your umpire?"

"Want one?"

"I'm going to show you I can cut the platter."

"I don't see any of your crew here."

"Call one of yours. I can stand him. That sunny-tempered chap you call Midkiff is my choice. He just loves me, I know. If he says it's a fair ball I shall know I've earned it."

"Jawn, as a favor to me, please," begged Rex, adjusting his mitt.

He knew Midkiff was doubtless stewing in the red-pepper of his own temper. Therefore he was suddenly mild as milk in begging John's assistance; so mild, indeed, that John was forced to repress a smile as he reluctantly came forward.

With Pence working, however, Rex continued mild and encouraging, almost complimentary at times; for he was honestly desirous of developing this southpaw with the phenomenal speed. To Kingdon's mind, here was a fellow who, having speed, could be taught control; a fellow who, if he wished, could contain himself and be, on the surface at least, as cold as a glacier.

When Horace Pence considered it best to check his temper, he could do so. Kingdon had perceived that. The question was, did he care enough about baseball and about excelling in the game to hold a tight rein on that flaring rage that the lift of his upper lip indicated?

With Midkiff and Cloudman, both tempestuous natures, there was an advantage. Each was inspired by the thought that he was working for his Walcott Hall; and the biggest and most sweetening thing in a school-boy's life is his loyalty to his school. In a miniature way, it is the feeling which every citizen should hold for his country; it is that not easily explained virtue called patriotism.

Somewhere else it has been pointed out that Rex Kingdon was so successful in molding his comrades, even those who did not much admire him, to his will because he possessed an ability to read character. It was really the foundation of his success in sports.

He had read Horace Pence like an open book from the start. He saw just the sort of hot-as-fire, cold-as-ice kind of a youth Horace was. Reckless, bold, dishonorable, yet clean in his habits because he abhorred viciousness. Pence was secretly proud of his influence over others, but too proud in another way to put forth much effort to hold that influence. Never, for one moment, did he think of exercising his power for the good of others.

For all such faults, Rex believed that discipline of the right sort would turn Horace into a real pitcher and a real man as well. Everything depended upon leading him into the proper path through an appeal of some sort that, while opening his eyes to what was wrong, would rouse his ambition to do right.

Rex kept all this to himself. On this present occasion, despite all that had led up to Horace Pence's work-out, with Midkiff as umpire, the session went through, as Peewee said, "without a skid." Even Midkiff, had he admitted it, would have been forced to acknowledge that the dark-eyed fellow showed distinct signs of improvement.

"How does the arm feel?" asked Kingdon, when they had finished.

"Just getting warmed up--as though I hadn't used it at all."

"Therefore now's the time for you to come in from practice. It's all right under conditions that demand it, to put everything you've got on the ball and work till the old wing just about drops off. But overwork in practice is as foolish and harmful as too little work. Some fellows, who might be pitchers, kill their arms before they ever get into any real games."

Pence did not scoff at this. There was nothing offensive or "preachy" in the way Rex spoke. His manner was as sincere and friendly as if Horace had been one of his chosen chums.

That afternoon the mainland grew hazy, clouds began to gather, and a threatening sky presaged heavy weather.

"Seems to me those canoeing fellows have bad luck," Red Phillips said, as the Walcott Hall boys lazed around the campsite waiting for a contrary fire to burn up briskly so supper could be made. "Look at it now."

"Hasn't that Injun and Kirby got back?" questioned Peewee.

"If they have, I don't see the second canoe over there," Red yawned.

"If they haven't started from Blackport by this time somebody'll tell them not to," Midkiff said.

"They had a leg-o'-mutton sail," said Kingdon. "They could skim over with this breeze. It won't rain yet awhile, and the wind's only puffy."

"I'd rather be on _terra firma_ just the same than out in a canoe on this sound," Red declared.

Without feeling any disturbance about the absent Indian and Kirby, Kingdon climbed to a point above the camp where he could see far away along the sound shore of the island to the westward. In fact, he stood upon the great gray bowlder which had already attracted his attention.

Was that a small sail away to the west? He had no glass, and could not be sure. If it was, the craft was so close under the island that it almost immediately was wiped from the range of his vision. It might have been nothing but a flash of surf. If it were a boat, it had been beached in safety by its crew, who feared the threatening aspect of sea and sky more than they did the sign-boards of the Manatee Lumber Company.

Rex was climbing down from the eminence when he fancied he felt the bowlder move under him. His efforts to descend seemed to contribute a rocking motion to the granite.

"A rocking stone?" muttered Kingdon, leaping down. "If it is so easily tipped off its balance----"

He tried a dozen times, and from as many angles, to rock the bowlder. It weighed several tons and of course he might as well have taken hold of the corner of Old Hall and tried to topple it over.

Finally he went back to the tent, for the other fellows were calling him.

*CHAPTER XXIV.*

*A LUCKY MOVE.*