CHAPTER VIII.

Bully Carson Explains.

THE shrewd eyes of Colonel Carson sparkled with a sly twinkle. He sat before his deep-throated fireplace, in his home in Carsonville. Into the room he had called his son Bully, to receive from him a full account of the recent startling happenings, and the result of the investigation which had followed.

Bully had come in prepared to put his part in the affair in the best light possible. Yet he would speak to his father with more openness than he would to any one else, for it was known that the elder Carson had sown, in his youth, a pretty big crop of wild oats himself.

With that sly, humorous twinkle, Carson turned on his hopeful son. In a way he was proud of Bully, though he raged at him daily.

“I hear ye got out of it, Bully, but it took some hard work and tall lyin’. I’ve jest got home, but I’ve been hearin’ about it; I’d been down to that investigation myself if I’d been here. Prob’ly some o’ the things I’ve heard ain’t so. So ye can jest straighten me out about it.”

This was so much better than Bully had anticipated that the sour expression passed from his coarse red face. Feeling more comfortable, he stood up, with his broad back to the fire, and, taking out a cigar, bit off the end of it and scratched a match.

“Well, ’twas the funniest and sing’larest thing that ever came down the pike, dad, and for a while it looked ’s if they had me in bad. It was Clancy and Kess that went gunnin’ for me, and come nigh bringin’ me down. But I’ll git even with ’em for that, see!”

He lighted his cigar, and stood smoking.

“And me and Chip Merriwell are due to have some interestin’ times, too. They’re all in together, and he has hit at me more than once.”

“Young Merriwell was in a box or trunk in the baggage car, unconscious and about dead, when they put it off here, and you was charged with havin’ that trunk or box put on the car. Of course you didn’t, and know nothin’ about it. You’re a mighty big fool at times, Bully, but you’re not so big a one as that; and there’d have been no sense in it.”

Bully’s face glowed to a dull and angry crimson, as he recalled the grilling he had been put through by the police officers because of that accusation.

“Me and that young Hindu, Kadir Dhin, was charged with doin’ it; and they’d have fastened it on _him_ sure if Colonel Gunn hadn’t come to his help; for, you see, it was Kadir Dhin’s Hindu trunk that they found Merriwell in. It looked mighty bad for him a while, and looked bad for me, too, jest because I had been with him not long before, and had given the baggage man a quarter at the station for bringin’ down for me a box of stuff from Dickey’s that it would have cost me a dollar to send in the reg’lar way.

“There’s a whole big story back of it, dad,” Bully explained, “and there were some things I didn’t know myself until Gunn made that statement to the officers. Kadir Dhin had been treating me fine as silk, and I was going around with him a lot. He had spendin’ money, and he wasn’t afraid to blow it. It wasn’t my bizness to ask him how he got it. Yet he came to Fardale, as you recklect, as a sort of charity student. I thought he had mebby been gamblin’, and had been lucky.

“He was talkin’ ag’inst Merriwell, and plannin’ ways to do him, and I liked that. And we did ‘do’ him, in the end, as I’ll tell you.

“It started when that girl was missin’ out of Gunn’s house, where she has been stayin’. Old Gunn sent out an alarm about it, and telephoned the constable. In a little while it seemed as if half the town was searchin’ for her. Kadir Dhin and me had been trying to annoy Merriwell that forenoon, when he was out sleighin’ with her, by follerin’ him round in another sleigh.”

“You did that?” growled the elder Carson, with a sniff of displeasure, as he pulled at his yellow-gray goatee. “’Twasn’t the act of a gentleman, son.”

But Bully answered, with a careless laugh:

“Anyhow, ’twas fun. We was hopin’ to make him so mad that afterward he would want to climb us, and so give us a chance to double on him together and trim him good. Kadir Dhin had it in for him for a knock-out blow Merry had given him, and I’ve got some things to remember.

“Well, when she was missin’ that afternoon, and we saw Merriwell goin’ toward the lake lookin’ for her, we follered him again. When we got down there, I turned back, because it was so cold; so I didn’t see what happened, and there’s two stories about it.

“Kadir Dhin says he found the girl bewildered and wanderin’ about in that timbered cove beyond the Pavilion, and was tryin’ to lead her home, when Merriwell came on him and attacked him; the attack comin’ so sudden, Kadir Dhin says, that he had no time to defend himself before he was knocked stiff in the snow.

“I think that’s right, too,” said Bully. “For that’s the way he told it to me, when he met me again, close by the corner, at Gunn’s. Merriwell had brought the girl home, and was then in the house. Kadir Dhin had follered. And, say, he was lookin’ wicked; a man lookin’ as he did then would sure put a knife in a feller in the dark!

“As he begun to tell me about it, we walked on, over toward the barracks. He was ravin’. There’s nobody much at the barracks now, because nearly all the fellers have gone home for the holidays. And we stood there, talkin’ it over, Kadir Dhin sayin’ he wished Merriwell would come along, on his way to his room in the barracks; that he wanted to meet him there, and settle with him.

“And just then we saw him comin’ from Gunn’s. Kadir Dhin put his hand in his coat pocket, and I thought he was divin’ for a knife.

“‘None o’ that,’ I says to him; ‘there’s two of us’; and, if he had a knife, he didn’t draw it. But he turned a funny yellow kind o’ white, and I knew that something was coming. ‘Go at him fair,’ I says, ‘and I’ll back you.’”

“Right out in public, too!” commented Colonel Carson; “shows how many different kinds of idiot y’ aire, Bully!”

“It seemed quiet enough; nobody on the parade ground, and didn’t seem to be anybody in the barracks. Anyhow, then was the time, if it was to be done; and you’re to recklect that it wasn’t me, but the Hindu, that planned it.

“‘I want to speak with you,’ said Kadir Dhin, when Merriwell came up; ‘I’m goin’ to settle with you right now!’ He didn’t strike out at him, but slid his hand along, as if he was tryin’ to get Merriwell by the throat. At that, Merriwell hit him and knocked him back against the barracks wall. And then I came in.”

He stopped and drew in his breath heavily.

“When you fight your own battles, Bully, I don’t object; but when you fight those of other people, and no coin coming in for it——”

“That’s all right, dad; but I’d owed Merriwell a licking a long time.”

“And you took that chance to pay it?”

“I guess he thinks I paid him; but for a while he prob’bly wasn’t in a condition to appreciate it. We left him layin’ there in the snow. When we had started off, we saw him crawl to his feet and stagger int’ the buildin’.” Bully laughed gleefully. “He sure was lookin’ sick!”

“And this young Hindu went away with ye?”

“He went as far as the street corner beyond the parade ground. And I didn’t see him again until we was both of us hauled up before the officers, here, charged with puttin’ Merriwell in that trunk and tryin’ to kill him.”

“How did he git into that trunk?” the elder Carson demanded. “You said it was Kadir Dhin’s!”

“Blessed if I know how he did git into it!” Bully declared. “Jest between you and me, dad, it looks like Kadir Dhin went back there to the barracks and mebby found him in a faint from that lickin’, and put him in. But Kadir Dhin says he didn’t. Merriwell told the officers that after he got to his room he fainted, and that when he came to he was here in Carsonville, and he didn’t know, himself, how ’twas done. Kadir Dhin told the officers that _he_ didn’t go back to the barracks at all, after leaving me at the corner; but that after a while he went down to the station, and when he saw the trunk there he looked at it, wonderin’ whose it was, as it looked so much like his, and had no marks on it.

“And it was right there,” said Bully, “when he wasn’t being believed, and the thing would have been cinched on him, that Colonel Gunn came popping in to his rescue, with the most amazing yarn ye ever listened to.”

“I think I heard some o’ that; but you go over it, for mebby I didn’t git it straight. Seems to me, Bully, you was mighty reckless all along, and it’s a wonder to me y’ ain’t in the jail.”

He was looking at Bully closely; his brows were furrowed, and the half-humorous light had faded out of his eyes. He was again pulling at his yellow-gray goatee, this time nervously.

“Colonel Gunn said,” Bully explained, “that a Hindu soldier who had killed the girl’s father in France was known to be somewhere around here, and once before had tried to carry her off; and ’twas his belief that this Hindu had got into the barracks.

“And then,” added Bully, “to bolster this, they brought on again the hackman who had taken the trunk to the station. He had said that a dark-faced feller, who was dressed in the Fardale cadet uniform, had hired him to take the trunk to the station; and he had identified Kadir Dhin as bein’ that feller. But now, when he heard what Gunn said about it, he backed water, and admitted that though the dark-faced feller looked like Kadir Dhin, it might not have been him; he couldn’t identify Kadir Dhin as being the one, he said. Now, what d’ye think of that?”

“Lied!” snorted Carson.

“But Kadir Dhin has told me himself that he knows nothin’ about it.”

“He lied, too!”

“Anyway, they let Kadir Dhin off, on account of what Colonel Gunn told ’em; and now officers are out lookin’ for the other Hindu.”

“They won’t find him,” said Carson.

He glared at his son.

“Bully, I’ve tried to give ye some instructions, ye know. I’ve said to you that a man is ginrally justified in takin’ a sportin’ chance on ‘most anything that promises good money, but that to be safe he’s allus got to keep on the right side o’ the law.”

“Wasn’t I?” Bully roared. “I might ’a’ been fined for fightin’, but what else? I didn’t have anything to do with that trunk bizness.”

“Who checked that trunk?”

“Nobody. That’s the funny part of it. The men at the station shoved it into the car without noticin’, seein’ it there with other trunks, and the baggageman didn’t notice; or, he says he didn’t, until Clancy called it to his attention.

“Clancy and Kess thought they had heard some one groaning in the trunk, and when it went into the car they went in, too; and then when they heard the sound again, in the car, they raised a row, and the trunk was put off here and opened.

“Now, there’s the case,” said Bully, breathing heavily. “Only, the baggageman will get fired; for he was held here and questioned by the officers, and when they drove him into a corner he had to admit that he had received a quarter from me for carryin’ the box I brought down from Dickey’s. I had told that, to save my own bacon, when it seemed they was goin’ to prove that I had given him the money for transportin’ the trunk; and he had to say that it was so, that it was only the box I had paid for.”

“I reckon that baggageman lied about knowin’ no more than he said about the trunk,” Carson observed. “Don’t you think he did, Bully?”

“I don’t know, dad.”

“Well, it’s mixin’. Where’s Merriwell?”

“He’s been sent home; he was all in, hardly able to tell his story. I may git fined yet,” he added uneasily, “for toyin’ with him too rough there at the barracks. But Clancy and Kess are still here and——”

“Keep away from ’em.”

“Dad, I won’t,” Bully declared; “not until I’ve finished with ’em. And there’ll be some good money, as well as satisfaction, in linin’ up ag’inst ’em. It will be Kadir Dhin and the Duke and me and a lot more, inside the barracks and out, that will be havin’ some interesting sessions with Clancy, Merriwell, and company. Dad, you can count on that. And the Duke—well, you know he has got money to burn, and I’ll never refuse to help him burn it. He’s been talkin’ to me since this examination, and he says that this whole thing can be used to put Chip Merriwell on the run, and we can now down him.”

The twinkle came again into the eyes of the elder Carson. He admired pluck, and had been a rough-and-tumble fighter in his youth.

“I can’t jest approve of the way two of you jumped onto Merriwell,” he observed; “things like that tend to accumulate a reppytation for cowardice, Bully. Reppytation is a thing to be considered. Basil, or the Duke, as you call him, is a fool with money, and I can’t blame ye much for wantin’ to git next. But be careful, Bully. A sportin’ proposition is one thing, but takin’ criminal chances is another. Allus keep on the right side o’ the law, Bully; in the long run it pays better.”

He tugged at his goatee again.

“But that cur’us trunk case is shore mixin’. Bully, I think more’n one feller done some tall lyin’!”