SPRING came early, but none too early for the majority of Beaufort people. In particular, none too early for Ned, whose ankle was proving a check on his farther winter sports; and none too early for Tom, to whom Christmas had brought a gun which he had hardly been able to use even on rabbits; and none too early for Bob, who, as has been said, was not a cold-weather dog.
With the advent of the south winds and the steady dripping thaw, Ned’s ankle and Tom’s cough—keepsakes from that memorable Newton trip—rapidly disappeared; and the nearer ventured the ducks, the stronger felt the two boys. Together—Tom no longer Ned’s squire, but now, by virtue of that Christmas present, become his brother-at-arms—they haunted the levee, watching for the flight to set in and the ice to go out.
Bob accompanied them. But he was not especially interested in ducks. Dread of gun forbade him to hunt them, alive; and instinct forbade him to gnaw the bones of them, dead. Summer really was Bob’s only unclouded season, for then he could share in all Ned’s excursions. Still, even a dog cannot go through life without trials.
All through the spring vacation that ice which had made such good skating on the Mississippi hung and hung, regardless of the fact that its mission had been fulfilled, and that it ought to leave the field to the hunters. Meanwhile the wild fowl had been making use of the Missouri waterway; and when, at last, the blockade in the Mississippi was lifted, and in the shape of enormous floes of slush swept down the channel, mashing against the piers of the Beaufort bridge and piling up on the shores, the relief was too late.
Most of the ducks had passed by, on another route, and Ned and Tom had killed never a one.
Tom was disappointed beyond measure. His new gun yearned for its first duck, and but illy submitted to the superior blood-record of Ned’s gun. Probably this is why, in its mistaken zeal, it brought to bag what it did.
The duck crop being a failure, the boys had to content themselves with the snipe crop. After the ducks, save now and then a wood-duck or a blue-winged teal which had decided to stay all summer, were beyond reach of even a thirteen-inch cannon, not to speak of a twelve gauge single-barrel, jack snipe and plover still lingered in the marshes and along the edges of the streams.
It was the second Saturday in April, and Ned and Tom were among the sloughs across the river, raking the country for whatever might be so unlucky as to offer itself as an acceptable target. The withdrawal of the ice from the Mississippi had given release to that in the sloughs, and everything was springlike and green and watery.
Now it was afternoon. As to what the boys had thus far secured, the less said, the better. Of course, one cannot have good luck on every trip. But there was a chance, yet, to round out the day well, had not Tom’s gun, impatient and unruly, sailed in without waiting, and on its own hook.
The slough was on the boys’ right. They were walking single file—Ned carelessly a few paces ahead, or Tom carelessly a few paces behind, just as critics choose—on the alert for game. It might be a pair of plover winging overhead, or a jack snipe whisking from under their feet, or, possibly, a belated duck squawking from its covert, or—something else.
“Boom!” And Ned was on his knees, and, astonished, was trying not to fall farther.
It had happened so very suddenly. The first thing that he knew, his ears had been deafened by a tremendous crash, and at the same instant he had been struck a violent blow on the back, and thrown forward. The next thing that he knew, he was tottering on his knees, and Tom was bending over him, wailing:
“I’ve killed him, I’ve killed him! Oh, dear, what shall I do!”
“I know you didn’t mean to, Tom,” comforted Ned, still rather hazy as to just what had taken place.
“Are you dying, Ned? Don’t die! Oh, don’t die!” pleaded Tom.
Ned examined himself, inwardly, a moment, to determine what his exact state might be. He could place no pain; but this was what seemed awful: that he might be dreadfully wounded somewhere, and yet not know it!
“Where did it hit me, Tom?” he asked, faintly, and not daring to stir.
“I shot your shoulder all to pieces!” cried Tom, wildly. “And my gun wasn’t even cocked!”
Ned fearfully looked over at his left shoulder. He beheld his coat at that spot in tatters, and his whole left sleeve torn so that it hung in only threads.
With such havoc made, surely there ought to be pain; but on the contrary the sole sensation was a curious numbness in his left side and extending to his left elbow.
He wondered if it could be true that he was about to die. He found himself not afraid, although it was hard to die away off there, in the open country, beside a slough. He was sorry for himself, and for his father and mother, and for Tom. What would Bob think? What would the boys and girls say? Poor little Zu-zu would cry and cry, and keep his duck wings forever.
“Can you move your arm? Try!” implored Tom.
Ned cautiously tried, and found that he could swing his arm and wiggle his fingers. But it was as though he was experimenting with the arm of somebody else.
Both were now becoming somewhat more hopeful. Of the two, Tom, as was natural, was the more excited and frightened, because upon his head rested the accident, and because it was he who could view the full extent of the damage.
Ned could only imagine; Tom could both see and imagine.
“I don’t believe I’m shot so bad, after all,” mused Ned, easing himself by settling back upon his heels. “It doesn’t hurt a bit.”
“But you are! I’m afraid you are!” moaned Tom, pitifully. “And it’s all my fault, though I don’t see how it ever happened.”
From the appearance of that back it seemed to Tom that the whole load must have entered Ned’s shoulder.
“Isn’t any one in sight to help us?” queried Ned.
“Not a soul,” said Tom, with a quaver of despair in his voice. “Shall I fix you as good as I can, and then run like lightning and get a wagon, or something?”
“I bet I could walk as far as the road,” asserted Ned, pondering. “That would be a better place to leave me, for people are more apt to come along there, you know.”
“But I hate to have you walk, Ned,” said Tom. “It might not be right for you.”
Nevertheless he took Ned’s hand and helped him get on his feet—which was done with no apparent harm.
“I don’t need to be held up,” objected Ned, as Tom started to put an arm around his waist, and lead him off. “You carry the guns. You weren’t going to forget them, were you?”
Tom raised Ned’s gun from the spot where it had dropped when Ned himself had dropped, and then gave his own, lying where he had flung it, a kick.
“It can stay here and rust, for all of me,” he declared. “I’ll never touch it again; never.”
“Shucks, you will, too,” scolded Ned. “Now you pick it up.”
So Tom roughly picked it up. Together the two boys—the injured and the sound—slowly walked across the field, with Tom watching Ned askance, as if expecting him to keel over at any instant.
Ned, however, while keeping himself well in hand, and on the lookout for any new and warning symptoms, did not feel the least discomfort from the motion.
His shoulder was numb, and only numb.
To reach the road they had to cross a railway track; and as they neared it Tom halted and cried, joyfully:
“Listen!”
A clattering rumble, around the curve, fell upon their ears.
“A train—it’s a train!” cried Tom. “You stay here and I’ll go ahead and stop it.”
“Maybe it won’t stop,” said Ned.
“Yes, it will. I’ll make it,” assured Tom, running forward. “They wouldn’t go on and leave you here to die!”
Uncertain as to how he would do it, but determined to stop the train at all hazard, Tom flew for the track.
Around the long curve swept the Pacific Coast Limited, due in Beaufort at 3:21. The engineer, peering ahead, was startled to see, planted between the rails in the rapidly nearing distance, a boy with a gun in each hand, threatening the advance of the train.
The engineer opened the whistle valve, and the engine sounded its angry, impatient command: “Out of the way!”
Tom saw the white flare of steam, and a second later heard the quick shriek of warning. But he never budged. He only waved his arms and guns.
He tried to make the engineer know; now he flourished the guns, and now he patted his left shoulder, and now he pointed off toward Ned, and wept aloud in his fear that he was not being understood.
The engineer and the fireman noted the gestures, and saw that the boy stubbornly stood and budged not.
It seemed to be a question of either slowing down or running over him.
To Tom it was a question of either saving Ned or being run over.
The engineer’s hand tightened on the air-brake lever. The other hand grudgingly jerked the throttle.
Tom saw the engine still closing in upon him at relentless speed—and he only gestured the more.
Then, on a sudden, with grinding of wheels, and a disgusted wheeze, the train stopped; the pilot of the engine just touched his boot-legs.
“What’s the matter with you, eh?” demanded the engineer, savagely, leaning out of his window.
“A boy’s been shot! He’s got to be taken to town right away,” explained Tom, hastening around beside the cab, and looking up at the grimy face far above him.
He clutched the cab steps imploringly, resolved that the train should not start without him.
The fireman had jumped to the cab door and was listening.
“Well, where is he?” demanded the engineer.
“There——” began Tom, but he was interrupted by a brakeman, who, followed by the conductor, came running up from the foremost coach.
“What’s the matter here?” asked the brakeman.
“A boy’s shot, and you’ve got to take him to Beaufort,” announced Tom, again.
“Where is he?” snapped the conductor, now taking hold of affairs.
“He’s coming. All right, Ned,” encouraged Tom, beckoning to Ned, who was walking as fast as he could, through the field, toward them.
“That him?” demanded the conductor, shortly.
“Yes, sir,” replied Tom. “He’s——”
“Go ahead,” ordered the conductor, turning on his heel, to the engineer. “Young man, this is a dangerous business you’re in—stopping limited trains just for the fun of it. I’ve a mind to take you to town and turn you over to the officers.”
He glared at Tom, and the brakeman glared at Tom, and the fireman and engineer glared at Tom, and all the faces stuck out of the windows of the line of coaches glared at Tom.
The engineer reached for the throttle, and Tom reached for the conductor’s coat-tail.
“Oh, but it’s true, it’s true!” cried Tom. “He is shot. I shot him myself. You look at his shoulder and you’ll see. Please wait! Please wait, just a second. If it isn’t so, you can do anything to me you like. See—how his left sleeve is all torn.”
“Have him hurry up, then,” said the conductor, moved by Tom’s appeal, and able to see for himself that evidently something was wrong with Ned.
Tom dropped his guns, and jumping down the slight embankment sped to Ned, to help him pass a barbed wire fence, and climb the gravelly slope.
“By Jinks—the boy is hurt!” observed the brakeman.
The conductor tapped with his foot impatiently.
“At any rate, he’s making us lose lots of time,” he remarked.
“All aboard!” he called, as Tom and Ned toiled up to the track. And he added, kindly, as the sight of Ned’s pale face and tattered back impressed him: “Get in the first coach, lad. Help him in, Jack.”
With a boost from the brakeman Ned safely landed upon the vestibuled platform. At the same instant, as though he had touched a concealed lever, the train started, so eager was it to be again under way.
Ned, with Tom steadying him, entered the coach, and sat meekly in the seat next to the door. The conductor came to interview them, and curious passengers crowded around; the news that “a boy has been shot” had spread adown the long line of aisles.
Tom answered a multitude of questions; and Ned, too, had his share. He told everybody, in reply to their queries, that he felt all right, but in truth his shoulder was beginning to throb and sting.
Presently a physician came through, and after a keen look into Ned’s face, and a light fingering of the arm and shoulder, pronounced no bones broken; and being told that the victim was going only to Beaufort gave it as his opinion that the wound should wait, rather than be examined on the train.
Over the bridge rumbled the train; and in a moment Ned and Tom, two forlorn figures, descended at the depot.
Their car had stopped beyond the depot crowd, and nobody noticed them emerge from the vestibule, upon the bricks below. Tom, who had halted a limited train, was equal to this next crisis.
The hacks and ’buses were at the other end of the depot, but across the wide brick walk he saw Luke Denee’s white horse and veteran express and transfer wagon, with Luke himself standing by it, waiting for whatever hauling the train might have brought him.
“Oh, Mr. Denee! Mr. Denee!” called Tom, running forward. “Won’t you carry Ned Miller up town—he’s been shot!”
“What’s that?” inquired Luke, bustling forward. “Ned Miller? Where is he—why, bless my soul!” catching sight of Ned himself. “Who shot him?”
“I did. My gun went off by accident,” explained Tom, wearily; he was growing tired of confessing it so often. “He ought to be got to a doctor right away.”
“You bet I’ll take him, and we’ll get him there in a jiffy,” assured Luke. “Golly the grog and the great horn spoon, Ned boy—did Tom take you for a goose, or a snipe, or what?”
“A what, I guess,” replied Ned, as Luke helped him into the rear of the wagon, and settled him upon a trunk. The train was pulling out, and from every window the passengers’ faces stared out upon them.
Barely waiting for Tom, with the two guns, to leap into the wagon, Luke plumped upon the seat and lifting the lines clucked vigorously to his white horse. The report of Ned’s plight was now being repeated from mouth to mouth through the depot and vicinity, and as the wagon rolled away and turned down the street it was followed by a murmur and many eyes.
With Ned sitting upon the trunk, and Tom standing beside him to steady him, and Luke laying the whip on his astonished steed, the wagon rattled down the thoroughfare. Scenting something wrong, the people whom it passed gazed after it in wonder.
“Where to? Which doctor?” asked Luke, over his shoulder.
“Dr. Mathews—he’s the one the Millers use,” directed Tom. “Is that all right, Ned?”
Ned nodded.
Dr. Mathews’ office was at his house, and luckily they caught him in. Ned was wearing a hunting coat, and an ordinary coat under it. The doctor put him in a chair, and not saying “by your leave” swiftly and skilfully cut away the layers of cloth, and ripping up the shirt underneath laid bare the shoulder.
Tom, gazing, beheld a group of little round, blue holes, and some smears of blood.
“Oh, dear!” he groaned. “Isn’t that awful!”
The doctor was delicately inserting a slender steel probe into one of the holes. Ned, hunched over, holding his breath and clenching his teeth, feared a sorry time.
“Does it hurt you much?” asked the doctor, gently exploring with the probe.
“N-n-no, it doesn’t,” replied Ned, relieved. He could not feel the probe at all.
“Numb, eh?” remarked the doctor. “Well, that’s good.”
“Is it very bad, doctor?” asked Ned.
“Not a bit of it!” assured the doctor, cheerfully. “Just a flesh wound, and in a week or so you’ll be as well as ever! You’ve been struck by only—let’s see—ten, eleven, thirteen—by thirteen shot, and they’re on top of the shoulder-blade, every one of them, so far as I can tell.”
“Oh, I’m so glad!” sighed Tom, bursting into tears. Now that the worst was over, he collapsed.
“Don’t cry, Tom, old fellow,” begged Ned. “Everything’s all right, now.”
“Yes, indeed,” assured the doctor. “But you had a very, very narrow escape. The load must have passed between your shoulder and neck—and if it had swerved a fraction of an inch to the right, or so as to enter lower, you’d have bled to death long before this.”
“Oh, Ned!” exclaimed Tom, aghast at what might have been.
“But it didn’t swerve, you know,” prompted Ned.
Here Mr. Miller, frightened as he never had been frightened before, rushed in. Bad news travels fast.
“Ned!” he cried, at the sight of his son under the probe.
“Now that will do, Mr. Miller,” cautioned the doctor, smiling to quiet his fear. “Ned is right side up, and almost ready for another hunt. He’s pretty tough, you must understand.”
“Nothing serious?” questioned Mr. Miller.
“Not in the slightest,” asserted the doctor, with a belittling shake of his head, and withdrawing the probe from the last hole. “I’ll simply dress this place with antiseptic, and you can take him home in my carriage. Just have him keep quiet for a few days, and I think that he’ll soon be as fit as a fiddle.”
So Ned was carried home in Doctor Mathews’ carriage, his father driving. Tom was left to bring the guns, and answer queries along the way.
One would suppose that Mrs. Miller, by this time, would have been so used to having Ned return after having figured in some hair-breadth escape, that she would take no especial notice of such a little thing as thirteen shot in his left shoulder.
But when she witnessed him gingerly clamber down upon the horse-block, his arm in a sling, she acted as though this was his first, instead of maybe his hundredth, accident.
Yet the thirteen shot in his shoulder did not concern her so much as did the rest of the load, that had passed so near, just missing his neck and his lungs.
Bob followed Ned in from the gate, and sniffing the antiseptic, and wondering why his master did not respond, as usual, to his energetic greetings, remained upon the front porch, to consider the new smell, and ponder over what was up.
Ned’s wound did not trouble him much. He got his hurts easily, as a rule, and just as easily he was rid of them. Young blood is good blood for healing purposes, as well as for purposes in general.
Tom was constant in his attentions, as were Zu-zu and Mrs. Pearce. They sent or brought fruit and books and everything that might benefit or amuse.
Neither of the boys could understand why Tom’s gun had exploded, when it wasn’t cocked. However, upon examining the cartridge it was found that the cap bore a faint dot, where the plunger of the gun had rested upon it. The cap had been too sensitive, and a light jar had sent it off.
“Still, I’d no business to have it pointed toward you,” asserted Tom, when Ned tried to excuse him.
“Tom says he guesses you’ll never want to go hunting with him again,” said Zu-zu, one day, on paying a visit to Ned. “He says he’s never going again, either.”
“That’s all nonsense,” vowed Ned. “You tell him so, Zu-zu. He’s the safest fellow in the world to go with, now, he’ll be so mighty careful. My folks think that way, too.”
When Zu-zu went home she carried in a little pill box six shot that the doctor had cut out from just beneath the skin of Ned’s back, where they had come to the surface; and right and left she proudly showed them among her friends.
Only one thing remains to note. Ten days after the shooting, Mrs. Miller finally succeeded in tracing to its source an unsavory odor that had been bothering her, about the house, for some time. She searched Ned’s ill-fated hunting coat, and with a cry of disgust bore it, at arm’s length, into the room where Ned, with the contented Bob beside him, was sitting.
“What do you think I found?” she asked, thrusting in her hand, and drawing out, between her finger tips, a mass of feathers.
“It’s a plover!” fairly shouted Ned, with a howl of laughter. “That’s what I shot the day I was hurt. I’d forgotten all about it. Ugh! Take it away!”
“And Tom was so jealous that he shot you!” retorted Mrs. Miller, hurrying out. “Well, his bag was the biggest, I think.”
MRS. Miller, can’t I take Ned fishing?” asked Tom, through the open door.
He and Ned and Bob were sitting on the front porch. It was two weeks after the shooting accident, and Ned, aside from the arm still carried, for safety, in a sling, was apparently as hale as ever. Never a day passed that Tom was not in to see him at least once, and often more frequently, and visits from Hal and other friends swelled the calling list.
Ned had told so many times just “how it felt” to be shot, that now it was an old story, and he was getting tired of being the fashion.
“Why——I hardly think it would be wise, Tom,” responded Mrs. Miller, from within.
“But fishing’ll soon be over—that is, the best of it,” pressed Tom. “Perch are running thick as flies, so you can catch them as fast as you can throw in and pull out. Hen Swiggert brought home a hundred and four yesterday, and he was gone just part of a day. It’s too bad Ned has got to miss the fun.”
“’Twouldn’t hurt me a bit, mother,” urged Ned. “’Twould do me good.”
“I think you ought to keep quiet,” declared his mother.
“He can be just as quiet as he is here,” argued Tom. “We’ll go over on Eagle. I’ll row him, and we’ll get up in Catfish Slough, and all he’ll need do will be sit in the shade and fish. He can fish with one hand, easy.”
“Of course I can,” agreed Ned.
“Well, we’ll see what the doctor says about it,” promised Mrs. Miller; and that was the best word that the boys could squeeze out of her.
The doctor said: “Go ahead, but don’t get heated.”
“Isn’t he a dandy doctor, though!” exclaimed Ned, reporting to Tom.
“When I’m sick he’s the doctor I want! I’ll tell my mother so,” answered Tom. “When a fellow’s ready to go out he doesn’t keep him in!”
The boys had planned to use the scull-boat; but unluckily it turned out that Hal wanted the craft upon the same day as they, and Ned said, “All right.”
“I should think Hal could let you have the boat, considering you’re hurt,” hinted Tom. “Why can’t he?”
“He and Orrie Lukes are going up the river and stay all night,” explained Ned; “and they haven’t any other boat they can sleep in very well. The scull-boat’s dandy for sleeping in because it hasn’t any seats.”
Which was true.
“We can hire a skiff from Commodore Jones, I suppose, then,” said Tom, but in a tone not wholly satisfied.
“I suppose we’ll have to,” replied Ned. “We’ll get the No. 19—she pulls the easiest of any. But I’d rather have the scull-boat.”
“I tell you what!” exclaimed Tom, struck with an idea which had popped into his brain. “We’ll get a boat down at the Paper-mill Slough and then all we’ll have to do will be to row across.”
“Whose boat?” queried Ned.
“Oh, I don’t know,” answered Tom. “Anybody’s’ll do. There are always a lot of skiffs tied along shore there—old leaky things, but good enough for us to fool with.”
“It wouldn’t be stealing, would it?” asked Ned, anxiously.
“No; I wouldn’t call that ‘stealing,’” asserted Tom. “Some of them don’t belong to anybody, ’special. They’re just used by the South Beaufort fellows to monkey in, and aren’t even locked. Nobody’ll care a bit if we take one for a day, and bring it back. It’ll save us a big row up against the current, too.”
“Save you, you mean,” corrected Ned. “I can’t row, except with one hand.”
“You shan’t row a stroke!” decided Tom, alarmed lest Ned might be going to try. “I’m running this shooting-match!” Then he added, doubtfully: “Zu-zu wants to go.”
“Let’s take her,” urged Ned. “Of course! She wouldn’t be in the way a bit.”
“Girls are a kind of bother, usually, out fishing, but Zu-zu’s different from most of them,” said Tom, highly pleased.
“Zu-zu’s got sense. She doesn’t just stand round and squeal,” observed Ned, sagely.
“That’s right. I’ll say it, if she is my sister,” agreed Tom.
Half-past five o’clock Saturday morning found the four of them—Ned and Tom and Zu-zu and Bob—at the Paper-mill Slough. Ned had under his sound arm his and Tom’s jointed rods, while Zu-zu proudly bore a slender little pole purchased for her by Tom, on the previous evening. Tom was in charge of a basket of lunch.
This basket vexed Zu-zu, who would have preferred that each one carry a few slices of bread and butter and sugar done up in a paper bag, just as the boys did when they went alone. But her mother had insisted upon the basket, with lunch in it for three. Ned was to furnish nothing; he was guest of honor.
Bob carried himself.
The morning was ideal—dewy and balmy and clear. Zu-zu, who rarely had been up so early before, and who looked on this outing as the greatest event of her life, was in the seventh heaven of delight over everything; even Bob could not keep back a few yelps; but Ned and Tom, as befitted old hunters and fishers, used to all hours and to all sights, were very matter-of-fact and stoical.
Indeed, Ned had thought it quite out of keeping with his dignity to have his mother arise before him, and hover over him while he ate his early breakfast, to make sure that he was well provided for and that his shoulder was not troubling him!
The sun was half an hour high, and, peeping over the trees of Eagle, opposite, was shining across the smooth waterway. Fish were jumping, birds were twittering, and the air was deliciously fresh.
With their noses resting upon the shore, and the little ripples lapping against their sides, just below the paper-mill there were, as Tom had predicted, quite a number of skiffs, of various shapes and in various stages of ruin. But, contrary to that which he had predicted, all seemed to be padlocked, with chains, to rings and staples.
“That’s a pretty idea!” grumbled Tom, prying along the line. “You’d think the old shebangs were worth something!”
“Isn’t it almost stealing, Ned?” inquired Zu-zu. “Tom says it isn’t.”
“N-no,” replied Ned, weighing the pros and cons of the matter. “You see, if we find a boat that’s unlocked it’s a pretty sure sign that either it hasn’t an owner, or else the owner doesn’t care if people borrow it. We’re just going across the slough in it.”
Zu-zu accepted the decision as final; Tom and Ned ought to know. She looked on anxiously as Tom examined the various fastenings. What if the trip had to be given up!
Bob sat down near Ned, and whined. He wondered why this fussing and delay. It was only a short swim.
“Hurrah—here’s one that’s only tied,” announced Tom.
“Goodie!” exclaimed Zu-zu, jumping up and down.
Ned heaved a sigh of relief, and Bob pricked up his ears.
“Come on, Zu-zu,” said Ned, descending to the boat, at the bows of which Tom was fumbling.
The boat proved to be the worst of the lot. It was a clumsy-looking, flat-bottomed affair, with square ends, and unpainted.
“What are you going to row with?” asked Zu-zu, stopping short.
Ned stared at Tom, and Tom stared at Ned. Somehow, oars had not occurred to them, although had they thought, they would have known that whatever the boat, the oars would not be left in it.
“I’ll paddle with a board,” declared Tom. “You get in while I’m hunting one.”
“Sit in the other end, Zu-zu,” bade Ned, holding out his hand to help her as she sprang from seat to seat. Bob was less polite. He rushed rudely past her, as if afraid of being left, and planted himself in the stern.
“Bob! Shame on you,” reproved Ned. “Don’t you know that the rule is ‘ladies first’?”
“But that’s meant for men, not dogs, isn’t it, Bob?” comforted Zu-zu, perching herself beside him, and sitting on her feet to keep them out of the water that swished about in the leaky craft.
Tom, with a piece of board in his hands, hurried back, and when Ned had securely squatted upon a seat in the middle, with a lusty heave he slowly started the heavy boat from its mooring-place, and tumbled in.
He stood up, and with a long, sweeping motion paddled first on the one side and then on the other. The craft, with its load, gradually crept toward the shore of Eagle, a stone’s throw away. Zu-zu, fixed in the spot assigned her, longed to trail her hand in the water, but refrained. She did not dare so much as move, lest she should become a “bother.”
Under Tom’s efforts they floated into the narrow mouth of a little bayou, called Catfish Slough, which wound through the island and emptied into Beaver Lake, in the centre of the island.
“Gracious, but this is hard work!” spoke Tom, after they had run aground several times in rounding corners. “The old thing won’t answer her helm.”
“Poor Tom,” cooed Zu-zu.
“Let’s get out and walk,” proposed Ned. “It’ll be quicker, and easier, too.”
Bob already was walking—or, rather, scampering. According to his custom, as the boat approached the land he had deserted.
“Let’s,” chimed in Zu-zu.
Tom swung the unwieldly craft in broadside against the bank, where trees and bushes came clear to the water’s edge, and all disembarked—although by different methods. That is, Zu-zu skipped out, Ned leaped out, and Tom merely stepped out, so that he could stoop and tie the chain painter to a root. Bob was present to welcome them.
“There!” Tom said. “We’ve got here, anyway.”
“Nobody’ll take it, I guess,” remarked Ned.
“Not if they have to row it,” asserted Tom.
“It’s the Black Swan!” cried Zu-zu, gazing back upon it. “See? It has the name on the—the—well, I don’t know whether you say stern or bow, but it’s right under where I was sitting.”
“Huh! Black Swan!” commented Tom, in scorn. “They ought to name it Mud Turtle.”
“You ought not to complain, Tom,” lectured Zu-zu. “You might have had no boat at all.”
Then she suddenly closed her lips, and grew red, for fear lest she might have said too much.
But Ned and Tom only laughed good-naturedly.
They walked ahead for a short distance, following a path along the little bayou, until they came upon a place where the bank was rather high, and the water before it was unusually wide and deep.
“This will do, won’t it?” spoke Ned, who was in advance, halting.
“I guess so,” replied Tom, also halting.
Zu-zu said nothing; she had faith in the two boys. Bob dashed up and pausing an instant to catch the drift of things, dashed off again. When he was in the woods he was always very, very busy.
The bothersome basket, which nevertheless was soon to make itself exceedingly agreeable, was dropped at the foot of a tree; the boys fitted together the joints of their rods, and Ned baited Zu-zu’s hook for her, that she might be first to throw in. Although he was limited to one arm, he could use the fingers of both hands.
Presently Zu-zu was staring at her cork, bobbing upon the ripples.
“Oh, it’s under—it’s under!” she cried. “What shall I do?”
“Pull it out, quick!” commanded Tom.
Thereupon Zu-zu gave a tremendous jerk, twitching high into the air an astonished perch, which fell back with a splash. The empty hook landed among the bushes far behind.
“Oh, dear! It got away!” complained Zu-zu.
“You mustn’t jerk so hard, Zu-zu,” advised Ned. “Watch how we do it.”
At that instant his bobber, too, wavered, and ducked, and he cleverly lifted to land a fat yellow perch.
“I’ve got one, too!” exclaimed Tom.
“Hurrah!” laughed Ned, joyfully. “They’re biting fine, aren’t they?”
“Poor things—just see how they flop,” said Zu-zu, watching Ned string his spoil. “Do you suppose it hurts them so very much?”
“I don’t believe fish feel as much as we do, or they wouldn’t have been made to be caught,” replied Ned.
“Well, please don’t handle them any rougher than you can help,” begged Zu-zu; and plunged in thought, she freed her line from the bushes, and dropped it in the water again.
Nothing more happened to her cork, and after guarding it for some time, while her companions were pulling out fish right along, she hopped up, and saying: “I shan’t fish any more; I’m going to find Bob and look for flowers,” she tripped back into the woods.
Ned lifted her hook and glanced at it.
“Why, your hook isn’t baited!” he called after her. “No wonder you didn’t catch anything.”
“I don’t care,” answered Zu-zu. “I hate to see them flop so.”
Ned baited it and let it down again.
“We’ll give you all that are caught on it, anyway,” he said.
Each of the boys was fishing with three hooks on a line; and the perch bit so boldly that often three were hauled out at a time, with others chasing them clear to the surface, trying to take the worm from their mouths.
Sometimes a round sunfish elbowed a perch out of the road, and grabbed the bait, only to meet a sudden fate.
Zu-zu’s pole and hook and line, attended to now by Tom and now by Ned, added to the general collection—and very nearly did more!
“Tom! Grab Zu’s pole—quick! I can’t!” warned Ned, abruptly, himself engaged in safely landing two large perch.
It was high time, indeed, that somebody came to the rescue, for behold, Zu-zu’s cork was completely out of sight, and her pole, pulled by an invisible force, was sliding into the water!
“It’s a pickerel—it’s a big pickerel!” cried Tom. “I saw his tail!”
He sprang for the pole—and at the very moment, with a bound and a splash, that blundersome Bob bolted into the water, from the other side, and made for their spot, laying a course that would cut exactly across Zu-zu’s line.
“Go back, Bob! Bob, go back!” ordered Ned, furiously.
But Bob swerved not. He merely flirted the water out of his ears, as if to say: “I don’t hear you,” and ploughed on, barking his defiance.
Mr. Pickerel took alarm. Any fish might, with Bob’s legs, working like the flappers of an immense turtle, bearing down upon him. He darted for cover. The line grew taut—and then relaxed, limp and lifeless, while the thrill all went out of the pole in Tom’s eager hands.
“He broke the hook!” mourned Tom, hauling in.
“Oh, Bob!” accused Ned.
Bob clambered up, shook himself, and hied into the woods once more. The bayou was free for all, and he saw no reason why he should not swim in it. He certainly had to cross, some way.
“He was longer than my arm!” asserted Tom, grieved, and gazing with regretful eyes at the worthless shank dangling where the pickerel ought to have been.
“Shucks!” muttered Ned; and his tone held a world of vexation and disappointment.
Zu-zu came upon the scene. She heard the sad tale without being in the least vexed.
“I don’t care a bit,” she said. “I’m glad the fish got away. He didn’t want to die, I’m sure. And we have lots of other fish, you know.”
It was plain to the boys that Zu-zu, being a girl, could not understand what a truly great loss had been suffered. So they did not argue the case.
As suddenly as they had commenced, the perch stopped biting. The corks lay idly upon the surface. The sun was high o’erhead. The dragon-flies shot here and there over the water, and the gnats buzzed around the fishermen’s ears, and the ears of Mistress Zu-zu.
“Let’s eat,” suggested Tom.
“Yes, let’s eat,” wagged Bob, appearing as if by magic.
The rest of the company being of the same mind, the napkiny depths of the basket were laid bare—and the way that basket heaped coals of fire upon the heads of those who had despised it was a caution!
Fish bit only slowly during the remainder of the day. One might have thought that they had worn themselves out with their greedy efforts of the early morning. Zu-zu and the two boys idled in the shade on the turf, and Bob, tireless, roamed east, west, north and south. If the island, formerly his home, recalled any memories to his doggish mind, he showed no will to sit and dream over them.
The shadows of the trees were long and pointed, bridging the bayou, when the boys drew in the lines, and unjointed the poles, and counted their fish.
“How many?” asked Ned.
“Fifty-three,” proclaimed Tom. “How many you got?”
“Forty-two,” answered Ned. “You beat me.”
“But you had only one arm,” reminded Tom.
“Let’s see—fifty-three plus forty-two—that makes ninety-five; and then there’s the big fish that got away, which makes ninety-six!” exclaimed Zu-zu. “My, what a lot! You ought to put some of them back.”
“We’ve put the big pickerel back; that’s all we can spare,” asserted Tom, ruefully.
They retraced their steps of the morning, along the path, until——
“Say—where’s our boat?” cried Ned, astounded.
They had arrived at the spot where they had left the Black Swan, but the craft had disappeared.
“Certain this is the place?” asked Tom. “Yes, it must be,” he continued. “There’s the root I tied to.”
“Somebody came along and helped himself, that’s all there is to it,” declared Ned.
“Maybe it just floated off,” guessed Zu-zu.
“No, it couldn’t; or else it would have come our way, with the current, you know, Zu-zu,” corrected Tom. “I call that a downright mean trick, to take our boat like this.”
“But we did the very same thing, ourselves. The boat wasn’t ours in the first place,” retorted Zu-zu, daringly.
“Well, the only thing to do is to follow on up the slough, and if we don’t come across the boat we’ll have to wait for somebody to take us over to the paper-mill,” spoke Ned.
They followed Catfish until they reached its head, where it branched off from Paper-mill Slough. They caught not a glimpse of the Black Swan. As they reached the shore the Beaufort whistles were blowing six o’clock. The sun was slipping behind a heavy bank of clouds, and dusk was at hand. The three could not make out a single person anywhere near them, to succor them, and standing there upon the muddy strand, with darkness closing in, and with nothing to eat and no place to sleep, they felt like forlorn, shipwrecked sailors.
Bob, however, curled himself in a ball, and went into a shivery doze.
“Here come some people,” announced Tom.
Through the mist now rising out of the water a boat approached from the town side of the slough. It carried a dozen Eagle Islanders who worked at the sawmills, and were returning home for the night.
“I’ll go and ask them to take us over,” volunteered Tom.
“No, I’ll go,” cried Ned. “They’ll listen quicker to a fellow with one arm.”
The islanders landed some distance above the little party, and tumbled out so quickly that by the time Ned had arrived all but one had trudged into the woods. This one was bending over, fastening the boat.
“Hello,” hailed Ned. “Can’t you please take us over the slough? We’ve lost our boat.”
But the man only grunted, and shook his head; and picking up his dinner bucket and coat, and the oars, stolidly tramped away.
Ned, indignant, examined the boat’s chain, with the hot idea of using the craft, anyway; but he found that it was padlocked.
He went back to his companions, who had been eagerly watching, and reported.
“Oh, dear, what shall we do?” wailed Zu-zu, beginning to be dismal from the mist and the shadows, and the suspicion that everybody but them was going to supper.
“We’ll yell like everything, and attract some one’s attention on the other side,” proposed Ned.
“I’d swim and get a boat, if the water wasn’t so cold,” said Tom.
“Don’t try, Tom. You’d get a cramp,” begged Zu-zu.
The boys shouted, and Zu-zu screamed, and all waved their handkerchiefs, while Bob raised his head in astonishment. Presently Tom panted:
“Somebody’s putting out in a boat, all right enough. Keep it up.”
From the mainland opposite, where lights were beginning to twinkle, a boat, barely seen against the dark shore-line, was starting out into the slough. They heard the rattle of the oars dropping into the oar-locks.
“Keep yelling,” gasped Ned.
And they did, until it was plain that the boat was making for them.
“It’s the Black Swan!” whispered Zu-zu, excitedly, as the craft neared.
“Oh, no,” scoffed Tom.
“But it is, it is!” insisted Zu-zu. “I know it is!”
And as it glided up through the muddy shallows at their feet they saw that the Black Swan it was. The rower stood up, and turned to face them. He was Big Mike!
Bob growled.
“Want to go across?” asked Big Mike, with a grin.
“Yes—that is, we’ve lost our boat,” stammered Ned, awkwardly.
“Get in; I’ll take you,” offered the South Beauforter.
“Will you? Good for you!” exclaimed Ned.
“I should say so!” spoke Tom.
Zu-zu was too flabber-gasted by the sudden presence of this arch ogre to say a word.
They marched in. Bob followed, with a dash to get past his enemy in safety.
“Was it you folks that took this boat? I found her up Catfish a little ways,” queried Big Mike, pushing off.
“Well—yes. You see, it was unlocked, and we didn’t know it belonged to anybody especial, and we wanted to get across,” explained Ned.
“It didn’t make no difference,” said Big Mike. “If I’d knowed who had it I wouldn’t have cared. Only, I thought some of them Dutch on the island had got it. They’re all the time doin’ that.”
“Let me row,” urged Tom.
“Naw; she rows easy after she gets started,” grunted Big Mike.
“It’s an awful nice boat. Did you name it?” piped Zu-zu, timidly, hoping to please their dreadful host. Who knows—he might be planning to dump them in the slough, and drown them!
Big Mike wriggled uneasily, evidently flattered.
“Naw; she was named before I got her,” he answered. “She ain’t very pretty, but she’s good enough for ’round here.”
“How’s your shoulder?” he asked, gruffly, of Ned.
“It’s about well. It wasn’t much, anyway,” responded Ned.
They were half-way across, and the rest of the distance was covered in silence, save when once Big Mike remarked again gruffly: “Perch runnin’ thick, ain’t they?” to which both boys assented.
“We’re much obliged, Mike,” spoke Ned, as they rose to step out. “Aren’t we, Tom?”
“Yes, sir-ee!” exclaimed Tom.
“Oh, ’twasn’t nothin’,” growled Big Mike, tying the boat. “I jest heared somebody yellin’, an’ thought I’d go over an’ get ’em. I seen there was a girl, and a feller with one arm done up.”
Ned whispered to Tom, and Tom nodded, and with a gesture passed a string of fish to Zu-zu.
“Here,” said Zu-zu, holding out the string to Big Mike.
“I don’t want ’em,” declared Big Mike, straightening after his task.
“But we ought to pay you for the use of the boat,” said Zu-zu. “And for coming after us, too; and we’ve got more fish than we can eat. There—you’ll have to take them,” and she dropped them in a scaly heap at his feet. Then the three of them hastened up the bank, with Bob, glad to be free from the presence of his foe, frisking ahead. Looking back, they saw Big Mike slowly lift the fish, and, shouldering his oars, start off, no doubt homeward.
“Big Mike’s not so bad, after all; is he?” asserted Zu-zu.
“No,” agreed Tom and Ned.
Bob did not join in this opinion. Nothing that Big Mike would do could make up, in the mind of Bob, for past offenses.
BOB had now rounded into a fine, strong dog, pleasing in manners and respectable in appearance. At the time of his rescue from the barn by Ned and Hal he was in his hobbledehoy period—in dogs, as in boys, that awkward, sappy state betwixt puppyhood and eye-teethhood. Out of this he had grown up, under the good food and kind treatment of the Miller household, into a dog who was a credit to the family.
He was rather larger than a pointer should be, with a head unusually wide and full, a sign of great intelligence. His nose was a bit blunt; and this, and his head, and his stubbornness, caused critics to hold that somewhere in his ancestry was a strain of bulldog blood.
His ears were thin and long and velvety, drooping below his chops; his lips were loose and swaying, and the skin of his neck was loose and wrinkly. His eyes were a beautiful, faithful brown. His coat was a rich mahogany, and was even and glossy. He had a magnificent chest—broad, massive, with a bone that jutted out like that of a turkey gobbler. Behind it was a barrel of a body, which all of Mrs. Miller’s stuffing never could make else but lean; while his ribs narrowed away until at his flanks they ended in a sad hollow.
In truth, Bob’s front half was much superior to his rear half, which ran off into a short, stubby tail tipped with a warty knob. Whether some accident had happened, to blight this tail in Bob’s infancy, or whether his mother’s family had been so unexpectedly large that there had not been material enough for finishing Bob completely, no one could say. At any rate, he was not fitted with a tail such as a dog of his size and breed should have, and he was always more or less conscious of the fact.
Reference has been made to Bob’s grin. When he was tickled over anything his whole upper lip curled back, exposing a row of shining white teeth and brilliant red gums. Thus, grinning at one end and wagging at the other, he tried to show his pleasure. However, it was not a becoming face that he made when he grinned, and many people, not used to his oddity, mistook it for a snarl, and were afraid. As soon as they came to know him, they understood what a good-natured fellow he was.
Indeed, a more good-natured dog never lived. Also, never lived a dog queerer and more human. No one made his acquaintance but to like him, and he was suffered to do things that would have earned rebuke for any dog but him.
When Ned was absent at school, sometimes Bob would become lonely, and would start out to find his master. In manner unknown—but through his nose, or ears, or eyes—he had discovered the room in which Ned was caged during school hours, and there, in his quest, he would betake himself.
If the door was open, in he would saunter, and sniff down the aisle; and perhaps the first hint to Ned of Bob’s presence would be that sturdy head laid, amid titters, upon his knee.
As a rule Ned was asked by the teacher to escort Bob to the door again. But occasionally Mr. Bob would choose, rather, to climb into an empty seat, and there, by quietly curling for sleep, make amends for his intrusion. In this case he was allowed to remain, and the room speedily forgot that he was there.
At the stroke of the bell, Bob always promptly arose and trotted out.
Whether or not he learned anything of mathematics or physiology or grammar during his snooze may be a mooted question; but Ned and friends claimed that he did.
When it happened that Bob did not find Ned’s seat occupied, he hopped into it, and there sat bolt upright, as if to fill the vacancy, until Ned returned. Once in a while he would refuse to get out—and then would be hauled down by the collar, and led in disgrace to the door.
With all the wisdom got in school, nevertheless Bob did many foolish tricks. For instance, he should have known better than to bury pancakes in the fall, expecting to dig them up and eat them in the winter! When the pancakes were buried, they and the ground were soft together; but when they were sought again, a month or so later, they came up—if at all—in flinty shreds scarcely to be told from the dirt. Yet Bob seemed not to foresee this; and even during winter thaws he persisted in scratching small holes and placing in them buckwheat cakes, for use in the future!
He so loved to bury things that his nose was nearly always crowned with a little ridge of soil. Once he brought home a five-pound roast of beef, which a neighbor had got at the butcher’s with intent to have it for dinner. Bob buried it in the garden, and for a week and more regularly uncovered it, took a few delicious gnaws, and covered it up again.
Ned was obliged to find the neighbor another roast.
Bob was a dog not easily convinced. This is a polite way of putting it, for the trait was neither more nor less than downright stubbornness. When he would not do a thing, he wouldn’t, until at last persuaded by kind words, or hope of reward, or fear of punishment.
Ned found that patience and gentle argument were better than blows, to make Bob yield, so threshings were dropped from the list of “persuaders.” Bob had a keen sense of shame, and the tone of the voice could make him feel worse than the hardest licking.
His stubbornness was twice very nearly his death. The first time, he was simply bound not to budge one inch from the way of a heavy farm wagon. He lay flat in the road, and waited for the wagon to turn out for him. But the wagon kept upon its route, and Bob, still sticking to his position, did nothing but howl his protests as the wheels passed over his back.
His bones being soft, he arose unhurt, and stalked off in the sulks.
The second time had as a scene the approach to the high trestle bridging a slough just beyond the farther end of the river bridge. Ned and Bob had been for a walk, and upon the return Bob had refused to walk the trestle. According to his custom he flopped down, like a spoiled child, on the spot.
Ned went ahead, hoping that at last Bob would arise and follow. He had gone a short distance, leaving Bob sprawled on the gravel in the middle of the railroad track, when suddenly he heard the rumble of a train, nearing from behind.
“Bob! Here, Bob! Here, Bob!” he called, running back.
But Bob dumbly declined.
“Get up! Bob! Get up!” cried Ned.
Bob, with his master coming from one way and the train coming from the other, stayed on his spot, deaf to the appeals of the former and the warnings of the latter.
The engine reached him first. Ned, horrified, saw him hurled into the air, up, up, twenty feet, his legs dangling and his ears flopping. Turning slow somersaults down he came, clear of the trestle, into the depths below. Ned caught a glimpse of the engineer and fireman looking back from the cab and laughing, which made him mad.
The first freeze of the fall had covered the slough with an inch of ice. Down dropped Bob, as swiftly as though he were from the dog-star, and lit squarely, in a sitting position, on a shallow place.
The sound of a shrill yelp floated up to Ned, leaning over to gaze. Bob bounced to his feet, and leaving the outlines of his hind parts, with a hole marking where his tail had bored, across the slough he fled, his ki-yi’s drifting behind him, fainter and fainter.
After much whistling Ned found him again, hiding in the woods. In body Bob was uninjured, but his feelings had been hurt; and for some time he could not be made to believe but that a mean trick had been played upon him by Ned and the train.
Finally he allowed himself to be coaxed upon the trestle, and with whimper and trembling, with tail between his legs and with many a backward glance, he made the journey across.
Thereafter he took the trestle in a hurry, without a sign of hesitation. He had learned a lesson.
Bob’s stubbornness was not always of mischief to him. Sometimes it stood him in good stead, and above all in his fights. Now, Bob was not willingly a fighter. There were times when he would run from a dog not half his size. This lack of spirit was a cause of great vexation to Ned, who, while he would not have Bob a bully like some dogs, upon the other hand would not have him a craven and a coward.
But when cornered, or when once started, Bob was a perfect demon at a fight. The dog that picked upon him, thinking to be able to nag him without return, was likely to have a sudden rush of trouble.
Bob’s great jaws closed on him with a grip that no struggles could break. When Bob bit, he bit for keeps.
He had, in Beaufort, two particular enemies—almost the sole enemies that he knew. Both were white bulldogs; one lived down town in a drug store, and the other lived behind a picket fence, out toward the flats.
Up and down before this picket fence would race Bob, and up and down behind it would race his enemy, and between the pickets sped a thousand names and epithets, the most stinging in dog language.
These were Bob’s moments of bravery; but let the bulldog dart out at him, around a corner or through a hole, and Bob would flee for dear life, with his foe bellowing at his heels.
This state of affairs lasted for several months, until, one day, Bob was surprised and crowded against a high sidewalk, and obliged to make a stand. The bulldog, after worrying him for a short space, on a sudden found himself matched against a very angry lion. Bob’s temper was roused. He outweighed the bulldog, he outdid him in strength and agility, and that canine had a sorry time before the people who gathered could force Bob’s teeth to unclose from a certain white fore-leg. As for Bob, the loose skin about his throat had been all that the bulldog could seize.
This bulldog’s day as an ogre was over. Henceforth he was a wiser and more humble animal.
The drug store dog learned a like lesson in a like way. One evening he cornered Bob in between some dry goods boxes, and set about to have fun out of him. The “fun” ended with Ned dancing around in dismay, while a policeman, by the aid of lighted matches and the handle of his club, induced Bob to let go! Then the bulldog’s owner, crestfallen and wrathful, carried his fallen champion home in his arms.
Bob proudly trotted on his way, licking his bloody chops. His enemy was retired for a week, and came forth again more discreet, and smelling of arnica.
Yet, with all his victories, Bob never went around with a chip on his shoulder. He much preferred peace to war.
Bob’s greatest gift was swimming. The pointer family is supposed not to like the water, especially, save as a relief from the heat; but be it hot or cold, Bob was ever ready for a plunge. His favorite fun was to get out in the middle of the river, where the current was deepest and swiftest, and swim up stream. He would do this with no object, it seemed, except showing off his powers in the water.
Ah, what a grand swimmer Bob was! With his splendid fore-shoulders high and dry above the surface, and his mighty chest throwing the waters aside in a rolling wave, he would plough his path, regardless of the distance, to the goal. If permitted, he would swim for hours at a time—aimlessly paddling hither and thither, chasing stray bits of wood and even bubbles.
He would make a pretense at diving, but this consisted simply in sticking his head under, and withdraw it in a instant, coughing, and shaking the water out of his ears.
Had he not been gun-shy he would have been an ideal retriever for ducks. Indeed, Ned taught him to retrieve sticks and balls, and other things thrown for the purpose; and whether or not Bob had seen them drop, by ranging in circles he always found them and laid them at his master’s feet.
Ned also taught him to “charge.” Bob would stay crouched against the walk or road until Ned or Mr. Miller had gone on for a block, perhaps; his eyes would be shining with eagerness, and his body fairly quivering with excitement.
“Come on, Bob,” would sound the whistle.
One note was enough. Up would he leap, and like a cannon-ball down would he streak, yapping with glee at every jump. He never grew tired of this game.
He would mind Ned or Mr. Miller—but upon Mrs. Miller or Maggie, the girl, he used to impose dreadfully. Let them try to stir him from the space that he had chosen before the kitchen or dining-room stove, and he would give a growl so gruff as to frighten them into the distance again. They would not catch the chuckle under the growl. However, he never tried to fool Ned or Ned’s father. When they said “Get up,” Bob got!
If he decided to accompany Mrs. Miller or Maggie, he always managed to do it. They might send him back, as they supposed, a dozen times; he only made a short circuit, and sneaking along behind fences and sidewalks would come out upon them, and grin. In spite of their scolding, and the stones and sticks that they tried to throw at him, he persevered, and had his way.
He did not bamboozle the two other members of the family. It was only the women upon whom he played tricks. He knew that, with all their threats, they could not bear to hurt him.
His bedroom was the barn loft, save when, in the hottest weather, he moved down-stairs. His favorite bed was a burrow in the hay; when a fresh load arrived, Bob would dig and nose into it, until he had made a long hole extending so far back that, in his nest at the end of it, he was quite out of reach.
To Bob, Ned was the whole world. It offered no bliss that could equal the touch of Ned’s hand, and no music that might equal the sound of Ned’s voice. Just to be near Ned was joy enough for Bob, and if allowed to snuggle at his master’s side he was in ecstasy. A kind pat and an encouraging word was all the reward that he wanted, no matter how hard had been his task. Ned was at once his playmate and his king, and life held nothing more.
ONE o’clock in a morning of the last of May, and the Miller household, all unconscious of disaster, was soundly slumbering. Then in amidst Ned’s dreams crept a dull series of noises, which became a persistent pounding. Ned imagined that he had dived under his scull-boat, and that the other boys were hammering upon the hull, outside, to bother him. He struggled to escape, but somehow he seemed unable to get to the top again. This is the way with dreams.
Mr. Miller, too, heard a pounding; only, he awakened enough to know that it was a real pounding, upon the front door, and was no dream.
He sprang from bed, and sticking his head out of the window over the porch called:
“What’s the matter down there?”
“Are you folks all dead?” called back a man. “Get up! Your barn’s afire!”
And Mr. Miller suddenly saw that the night around-about was strangely lighted.
Ned was still striving to escape from under the scull-boat, when he was brought to the surface in a flash by his father’s commanding voice:
“Ned! Ned! The barn’s on fire!”
“Oh, dear!” wailed Ned, striking the floor in a heap.
“Keep cool, Ned,” encouraged his father. “And dress as fast as you can.”
Trying to force his eyes open, and collect his senses, Ned fumbled for his clothes. Now the night in his room was turned to day by a glare of red light, and he could see flames reflected in the mirror of his bureau. In through the window floated a sharp crackling.
“Oh, dear!” he groaned, again, his too-eager hands making sad work of his dressing.
He heard his mother’s exclamations of alarm, and his father’s replies to calm her; and without, echoed the feet of running men, the cries: “Fire! Fire! Fire!” and the doleful rise and fall of the water-works whistle.
His father rushed heavily down the front stairs, and the door slammed behind him.
Ned, his clothing only half fixed, instantly followed. As he flew through the back hall he glimpsed Maggie, wringing her hands, quite beside herself with grief and fright.
“Oh, Neddie!” said his mother, whom he passed at the head of the stairs, her hands filled with valuables.
He did not reply, but dashed down, and out of the back door.
The whole west end of the barn, joining the wood-shed, was blazing. His father was already attacking the sliding carriage-door (fastened from within), with an ax, while a little group of spectators, anxious to help, stood about him.
“Where’s the key to this?” demanded a man, who was tugging at the padlock of the smaller single door.
“Under the step—I’ll find it!” gasped Ned, stooping and groping in front of the sill.
The key had slipped into a crack, but he drew it out, and put it to the padlock.
“Bob! Here, Bob! Here, Bob!” opening the door, he shouted, up the loft stairs just before him.
At his words the flames and smoke sucked down upon him, nearly stifling him.
“Bob! Here, Bob! Here, Bob!” he hallooed again.
But no Bob. With a sob in his throat Ned sprang across the threshold, only to be seized from behind and dragged back, while the flames, disappointed, licked after him into the outer air.
“You little fool—are you trying to kill yourself?” roughly asked the man, holding him tight.
“But my dog’s in there!” cried Ned, straining to break away. “Here, Bob! Here, Bob!” he called.
“He’s a goner, then,” declared the man. “Don’t you see? The whole loft’s ablaze!”
“Y-y-yes, I see,” quavered Ned, growing limp with a sense of the awful thing that had happened. Oh, Bob, Bob, Bob!
He ceased his efforts to be free, and the man released him.
In the meantime Mr. Miller’s blows had splintered a hole so that he was enabled to reach in and lift the hook. The sliding door crashed open, and in through the smoke he dashed, seized the buggy by the rear axles, and dragged it into the yard. Its varnish was blistering from the heat.
Time for rescuing anything else was not given. In a fierce tide a torrent of blaze from the burning hay above poured out between the warping boards, and bending inward with the draft filled the doorway. Through the barn, top to bottom, ravaged the fire-giant with his flaming sword.
Still the water-works whistle was tooting and yodling, but not a hose cart had arrived. The crowd was growing rapidly, for the fire, fed by a ton of hay, and a quantity of grain, was lighting up the vicinity for blocks. There was a constant volley of queries about the hose-companies, and a constant gazing down street for some sign of their coming; Mr. Miller was in despair; but no cart was yet on hand.
The kitchen gable was beginning to smoke. Ned hurriedly coupled the garden hose to the faucet set in the foundation of the house, and turned the nozzle upon the scorching paint. The stream appeared ridiculously small, and was bent and shattered by the storm of inrushing air.
Mr. Miller crawled through a second-story window above the kitchen roof, and hung a coverlet, hastily jerked from a bed and soaked with water, over the gable where the heat seemed worst. A line of men was formed from the pump and from the kitchen sink, up the back stairs, and passed buckets of water out to him. These he emptied over the coverlet, and here and there over the shingles.
Below, inside, were Maggie and Mrs. Miller, the one naturally as strong as any man, the other nerved, by the crisis, to unusual strength, standing at the faucets of the sink and filling pails, pitchers, wash pans, anything that might serve to supply the line of men.
Outside, with the fire baking him, behind, and the spray from the nozzle drenching him, in front, Ned valiantly plied his stream. On a sudden it died away to a mere trickle. The hose, under the increased pressure put on by the water-works, had burst.
Ned dropped the nozzle. At the same instant a chorus of shouts arose, and a score of hands were upstretched, pointing at a spot where, eight feet above the kitchen roof, under the exposed gable-peak of the main portion of the house a flicker of flame was licking along.
Mr. Miller, bareheaded, his eyebrows and hair singed by the waves of heat, from his position upon the sloping roof of the kitchen, heard the cries of warning, and saw the blaze which had passed his defenses, and was in his rear. But in vain he dashed water at it. Protected as it was by the overhanging eaves, and occupying a place awkward for him to reach, it resisted all his efforts.
“Climb up with a rope!” yelled some voices.
“Get a ladder! A ladder’s the thing!” yelled others.
But nobody seemed able to find rope or ladder, and the flame continued to grow.
Ned shot through the kitchen and up the front stairs. He bolted into his room—it was hot as a furnace, poor little room!—and snatching his ball of trot-line from the drawer where it had lain nearly a year, bolted out again. He scrambled through the open window of Mr. and Mrs. Miller’s bedchamber, and running along the roof of the front porch shinned up the water-spout and was upon the house-top. He scaled the steep slant, and now, balanced astride the peak, shuffled toward the farther end. The crowd saw him, and cheered.
In a moment his astonished father beheld him perched on the burning gable.
“Ned! Go down,” exclaimed Mr. Miller.
Ned wasted no time in arguing.
“Tie a bucket or something on this,” he called, lowering his trot-line as he unwound it.
Mr. Miller grabbed a small tin pail which was just being passed out to him, and fastened it to the dangling cord. With the water splashing from it Ned hauled it up, and the crowd of spectators watched, breathless.
All he could do was to lean over as far as he dared and dash its contents up under the eaves; a groan from the watchers told him that he had done no good. Although attacked from above and below, the tiny blaze lived on.
The fire had spread from the Miller barn westward, and by means of the on-stretching sheds was eating its way, rod by rod. The Millers’ next door neighbors, on the west, were battling stoutly, with garden hose and buckets, and the structures across the alley had caught.
These were low sheds, and not barns, so that the houses were not apt to catch. The Miller house was the only one that seemed doomed. Try as they might, neither Ned nor his father nor other eager helpers could put out that steady flame under the eaves; and now the kitchen eaves, also, were smoking and smouldering in a dozen places. The kitchen roof was getting so slippery that Mr. Miller could hardly move about on it.
“Clang! Clang! Clang!” The approach of succor faintly fell on Ned’s ears. The hose-carts, at last!
“The hose-carts! They’re coming now!” he shouted to his father.
“The hose-carts! There come the hose-carts!” murmured the crowd in swiftly increasing tones.
“Hurrah!” cheered Ned, scrambling back over the roof to the porch.
“Thank God!” sighed Mr. Miller; and then he could not refrain from adding, as he had a right to do, the mild criticism: “And it’s about time they came, too.”
Indeed it was. Down the dark street, shaded by the trees, appeared four spots of light. “Clang! Clang! Clang!” louder sounded the gongs—never a more welcome sound. With tramp of feet and hoarse shouts up raced the rival carts of the Pole Star and Defiance companies, drawn by their volunteers, and unreeling their hose as they came.
With a crash and a shower of sparks the loft of the barn fell in, but there still was plenty of work for the two floods that presently gushed from the fire nozzles. Mr. Miller hastily ducked through the window, and above his head spattered a heavy stream before which the impudent blaze beneath the main gable was blotted from existence. A driving deluge swept against the kitchen, and all those little flames that had been taxing the bucket brigade vanished in a twinkling.
The house was saved; but seldom house had more narrow escape!
Ned, climbing in again from the porch, had proceeded to do something that long had been on his mind. His loaded shotgun cartridges! Supposing the house should burn and they should explode and injure people! He had a vague notion that he would be liable to arrest for having kept powder around. Besides, he did not want anybody to be hurt. So he groped his way into the attic, and piling the shells in his arms carried them down and laid them under the front steps. Then he breathed easier.
He found that his care had been needless. The house was out of danger, and already the fire, in its march from shed to shed, had been met by the nozzle-men and stayed in its tracks. Two streams were playing on the barn, their water hissing among the red-hot embers. Other hose companies had arrived, and under the efforts the glare of a few moments before had sunk to a fitful glimmer.
Mrs. Miller and Maggie turned from their labors at the sink to the gasoline stove and made a huge bucket of coffee. This they served to the chilled, tired members of the bucket brigade, who were wet with perspiration as well as with splashes from the pails.
Ned now found time to recognize in the throng of helpers and onlookers people from far and near. The whole town was there—and had come, as the funny costumes proved, in a great hurry.
Hal and Tom appeared in breathless haste, and sought him out, and condoled with him.
“It’s too bad, Ned,” said Hal. “But I don’t believe that even if the hose companies had got here sooner they could have saved the barn. That hay made an awful blaze.”
“Why didn’t they come sooner?” demanded Ned.
“Why, they had the wrong signal,” explained Tom. “They went ’way off in North Beaufort, and then they saw the flames and turned ’round.”
“Didn’t you save a thing?” asked Hal.
“Just the buggy,” answered Ned, with a gulp as heart-sickness rose in his throat.
“Oh, pshaw!” exclaimed the two boys, their tones expressing much more of sympathy than the mere words tell. Ned walked away, and they kindly let him alone.
By twos and threes the crowd thinned out. There was nothing now to see. Gradually, as the need for their streams ceased, the lines of hose were wound on their reels.
Darkness settled over the scene.
Before going to bed again the Millers had much to do. While they themselves, with other fire-fighters, had been busy in the rear of the house, a swarm of eager townsmen had been invading the front part, and lugging out everything movable upon which they might lay hands. Chairs, books, sofa, pictures, rugs,—all had been hurriedly borne across the street and piled in a heap.
Even carpets had been pulled from the floors, and bundled into the outer air.
On the top of the pile sat, as if on his own quarter-deck, Commodore Jones. The commodore might be styled as in undress uniform; slippers, trousers, and a red bandanna to keep the night damp from creeping down the neck of his nightshirt forming his outer costume.
“Who is it?” asked Mr. Miller, peering up at him, through the dusk.
“Oh, it’s only Jones. I was kinder keepin’ an eye on these things o’ yourn,” wheezed the commodore, carefully descending.
“Well, I’m sure we’re much obliged, commodore,” said Mr. Miller, knowing the voice.
“You see,” exclaimed the commodore, “I looked out o’ my winder, and I thought this whole end of town must be burnin’. An’ after I’d got started, I heared it was your barn an’ house, an’ I reckoned I’d come on an’ lend a hand. An’ bein’ as I can’t stand a wettin’ I thought I’d mount guard over your truck, here. I’ve been burned out, myself, an’ I know how more things are lost by bein’ stole an’ damaged than by the fire itself.”
“It wasn’t necessary, quite, to carry out so much,” observed Mr. Miller, surveying, as best he could, the heap of goods.
“They was a leetle premature, that’s a fact,” agreed the commodore. “It’s a pity you ain’t goin’ to move; you’ve got a fine start at it.”
With the aid of the commodore and a few neighbors the Millers placed their household furnishings back under cover. Ned carried his cartridges indoors, again. Mrs. Miller declared that she could not sleep with her kitchen in such shape—the floor one big puddle and streaked with mud—and she and Maggie went at it with mop and broom. They not only cleaned the floor, but also the porch and the back stairs, which were wet from top to bottom with the overflow from the pails and pans.
This done, the Miller household retired to resume its broken slumbers. But during the rest of the night Ned, for his part, slumbered only by snatches, now thinking that he smelled smoke from some fire anew, and now thinking that he heard Bob appealing to him. Several times he found his pillow wet with tears, despite his efforts to shut them back.
At last he gave way, and blubbered well in the dark, while he moaned: “Bob! Dear old Bob!”
Nevertheless, all the time in his breast was a faint hope that perhaps, by hook or crook, Bob was living. It did not seem possible that he should be dead—gone forever.
However, in the morning the insurance men, poking among the ruins, found him. He was in the midst of the charred hay. The flames had scarcely touched him, and Mr. Miller said that a painless death by the thick smoke had come upon him in his burrow without his ever waking.
Ned was glad to believe it, and was happier. He took only one look at the still body of his faithful, loyal chum, and walked away across the desolated yard, scarred and marred by the midnight events. He noted naught of this desolation without, for his eyes were brimming, and within, around his heart, reigned a greater desolation.
Later, where the horse’s stall had been, were found four horseshoes—these, and nothing more. Yet the fate of Fanny appeared to Ned as nothing, beside the fate of Bob.
He went to school, as usual. Zu-zu came running up to him.
“Oh, Ned! Is Bob really dead?”
Ned nodded. Whereupon Zu-zu burst into tears and fled up the school steps, into the shelter of the hall.
Ned wished that for the moment he, too, were a girl, so that he might act as he felt.
WOOD-PILING time had come again. It found a new barn and a new shed already standing, in place of the old ones, upon the Miller premises. The scorched house had been repainted and the blistered buggy had been revarnished. Thus far the damage by the fire had been made good. But here the work must stop, for no new Bob could fill the place of the old Bob.
Bob had long been put away; still Ned often dreamed of him, and while knowing that such a thing was impossible, was always expecting to meet him, suddenly, around some corner. No other dog would Ned have, although his father told him to get whatever kind he chose. To Bob—faithful, human Bob,—there could be no second.
The long vacation had begun, and Ned was making his morning attack upon his eleven loads of slabs—that annual visitation to which he was subjected—when he heard a familiar whistle, answered it according to the code, and presently saw Hal climb over the alley fence.
“Hello,” greeted Hal. “Got to work?”
“Yes,” replied Ned, gloomily. “Just look at the wood, will you!”
“Want to know something?” queried Hal—news fairly sticking out all over him. “Well, listen here. What do you suppose old Belton has got planted ’way off behind his house! Watermelons!”
He paused in order to give his audience time to swallow the startling fact.
“Whereabouts?” asked Ned, delight in his tone.
“Near the ravine, beyond the grapes,” answered Hal. “He thinks he has them hid, I guess; but I ran slap into them yesterday when I was taking a short cut to the creek. Come on, and I’ll show you.”
“I can’t come now,” said Ned, slowly. “I’ve got to pile wood till noon. But I’ll go with you right away after dinner.”
“Well, you come around, then,” agreed Hal.
Squire Belton’s “place,” at the outskirts of the town, was a standing challenge, for half the year, at least, to the Beaufort youth. Of course, the squire was only prudent in guarding his fruit as he did. He grew fruit to sell, not to donate to greedy boys. But they regarded him as a cantankerous, mean old codger, and perfectly lawful prey.
It was very tantalizing to trudge along the dusty road, on a day of late August, and to gaze helplessly at those trees laden with their delicious, beckoning apples! However, the squire’s big white house commanded this orchard, and its windows were ever staring, and the squire himself or some of his family never failed to catch the least wavering from the straight path of honesty—in this case the path outside the orchard fence.
In addition, the barbed wires of the fence were close together, and as tight as fiddle-strings—ugly things to scale when the squire’s vigorous yellow dog was coming full tilt.
There were grapes, too; and these were on the slope, facing the house, and in plain sight from the porch and sitting-room.
Orchard and vineyard stayed proof against nearly all plots and attacks. But now, thanks to Hal’s “short cut,” for two Beauforters, anyway, a new field of action was opened.
Hurrah for the melon-patch!
His mind filled with the bright prospect, Ned gobbled a hasty dinner, and made a bee-line for Hal’s house.
Together they took their way to the limits of town, and cunningly made a circuit of the Belton premises until safe from those prying, alert windows and the ever watchful yellow dog. Then Hal led his companion into the ravine that pierced the squire’s lands. Amidst a jungle of undergrowth they worked a course, and when Hal gave the word warily mounted the flank.
“There!” said Hal, when they had gained the crest.
In front of them lay a small, secluded area of low vines, with every few feet a smooth, green oval showing itself—peaceful promise of a fine feast to come.
“Isn’t this luck!” whispered Hal.
“Say!” sighed Ned, overcome by his feelings.
Having surveyed, they beat a crafty retreat. So very cautious were they, that on their way home they scarce even dared discuss the find. It seemed too good to be true, and might vanish.
That evening, when at supper Mr. Miller remarked that an extraordinary crop of melons was in view, Ned was so startled that he dropped his knife. Yet his father’s words had no reference at all to Squire Belton!
As the days passed Ned and Hal made regular visits to the melon-patch. When speaking of the patch, so careful were they that they always said “it,” and by “it” each knew what the other meant. Thirty yards was the nearest that they ventured to “it,” since this was the space separating “it” from the ravine. They kept their secret to themselves, deeming that they could manage the raid—and the melons—without help. Ned wanted to let Tom in, but Hal thought that two was enough, and inasmuch as the patch was his by reason of discovery, Ned could only yield.
Week by week the melons swelled. The exact time for making closer acquaintance with them was hard to decide upon. The raid must not be too early, and on the other hand there was danger that it might be too late. Finally, Ned and Hal could no longer stand it. Melons were beginning to appear in market. The moment for action had come.
The boys chose a Tuesday night as the date for the attack. Ned invited Hal over to spend the evening at his house, and to sleep there. As this was nothing out of the way, it drew no suspicion.
They retired early up-stairs, the better to talk. They simply had to talk, or they would have exploded. About ten o’clock, when the household was quiet and abed, they climbed out of the window of Ned’s room, scampered softly in their stockinged feet across the sloping roof of the little side porch, lowered themselves to the ground, hurriedly put on their shoes, scurried for the back fence, vaulted it, and at last were safely in the protecting alley.
There was no moon, and, old woodsmen though they were, their way seemed to get all mixed up, full of sticks and cans and holes and hillocks. Even in the most open road they were continually stepping on things that snapped or clattered, and they imagined that the whole country around-about must be aroused by the noise!
Faint in the distance, or near at hand, barked dogs of farmyard and town-yard. An owl hooted in an accusing tone, and Pete, Deacon Rogers’ venerable clay-colored horse, from his pasture wheezed at them through the misty blackness.
“What’s that!” exclaimed Hal, huskily, startled; and Ned, too, jumped at the sound.
Had they not been setting out to “hook” melons, they might have been braver. A nagging conscience is a bad escort, especially on a dark night!
They entered the ravine. What a ravine that was! Not very kindly by day, by night it was downright wicked! Every twig thrust up a finger to trap their feet; every branch shot out a hand to slap them in the face. And there was not a single guide-post. Darkness had swallowed all landmarks, and the boys could only guess.
When it seemed that they surely ought to be opposite the proper spot, they climbed the steep slope.
“Hurrah!” cheered Hal, beneath his breath, when they reached the top. “We’ve just struck it! Here’s the poplar we go by!”
“Sh!” hissed Ned.
As they crossed the thirty yards that lay between them and the patch, how the weeds crackled under their tread! At length they arrived at the fence bordering the little field; formerly a fence with sagging, swaying barbed wires betwixt which even the most awkward person ought to slip without touching, but just at present a demon of a fence which left a stinging scratch along Ned’s back, and with a tearing sound clutched Hal by the trousers.
“Jiminy!” exclaimed Hal.
“Shut up!” cautioned Ned.
And they were among the vines!
The only thing they could do was, carry off as many melons as they were able—one under each arm—and eat them. The chief reward would be the glory of having got ahead of Squire Belton. How mad he would be when he found, in the morning, that he had been outwitted!
The boys groped about on the ground, with hands and feet as happened to be most convenient. What is apt to be the case, the fruit which they felt now here, now there, did not quite suit them. They fancied that a bit farther on they would come across some better in quality. Since they could take only a small quantity, they wanted it to be high in quality.
So they proceeded, step by step, always in the hope that they would light upon the melon, a melon worth while.
“Cr-rash!”
“Oh, thunder!”
Hal had tripped on a vine, and had been sent sprawling.
“Bow-wow-wow! Bow-wow-wow-wow! Bow!”
The Belton yellow dog! Nothing was left for them but speedy flight. What a watchful animal that was!
“Leg it!” ordered Ned.
At the instant of the accident to Hal, Ned had been fingering a sphere of unusual fatness. Now with a jerk he wrenched it from its stem, and hugging it in his arms put his command into practice. He “legged it.” So did Hal.
All sense of direction was lost to them; they remembered not which was north or which was west; their sole thought was to escape the attack of the yellow dog. Off to the left they dashed, dimly believing that they were heading for the ravine.
“Look out for the barbed wire!” gasped Hal.
But they met with no fence, where they expected. Crunch, crash, stumble and plunge, through the vines, out from the vines, and into a clump of raspberry bushes! Cracky! How those bushes punished them! Yet on they ploughed, each for himself, Ned clasping his melon, and the yellow dog yelping in their wake.
Out from amidst the raspberries—and suddenly Ned was hurled backward for a complete somersault! A wire fence, fortunately not barbed, had caught him fiercely, raising a huge welt across his chest and another across his knees.
“Hurt you?” panted Hal, alarmed, bringing up just in time.
“Not much,” panted Ned.
With a rush they overcame the fence. Their hope lay in motion on and on, until that dog was safely behind.
“Bow-wow-wow-wow! Wow! Wow-wow-wow!”
He was hard at their heels. Gallant old fellow, no doubt he enjoyed many a hearty laugh over it all.
Hello! The vineyard! They had actually been running toward the house, instead of away from it. No wonder the dog was so excited.
Ned was a few feet in advance—a credit to his fleetness, but not to his courage—and in trying to tack and veer in a new direction he slipped, fell, and rolled down the slope, staying not for stalk nor trellis, clear to the bottom.
“And Jill (or Hal) came tumbling after!”
Still Ned clung to his precious melon, which by a succession of miracles was yet unbroken!
With a thump they landed in the dry ditch that cut along the foot of the vineyard. They vaulted the board fence just beyond, noting, at the same moment, that a light was glimmering in the upper story of the Belton house. Evidently the dog’s clamor had been heard.
The house was too close for comfort, but it gave them their bearings. Only a stretch of level pasture now remained between them and the road.
“Almost there! Keep going!” urged Ned.
“Bow-wow-wow! Bow-wow! Wow-wow! Wow!” bellowed their pursuer.
They imagined that they could feel his hot breath through the holes in their trousers. Hit or miss, they scaled the final fence—this time a vicious barbed wire thing which took tribute in the shape of both cloth and flesh—and for dear life pattered down the welcome road.
Towser’s voice became subdued by distance. Looking over their shoulders they saw the flicker of a lantern upon the squire’s front porch. They slackened their pace to a rapid walk.
“Jiminy!” puffed Hal. “Didn’t we track it, though! The dog couldn’t catch us!”
“I’ve got a melon!” wheezed Ned.
“Bully for you!” praised Hal. “Let’s feel.”
“It’s awful rough—it must be a musk-melon,” he said, caressing it with eager fingers. “Smell it.”
Ned obeyed.
“Well, it doesn’t smell very musky,” he muttered, doubtfully.
“I guess perhaps it’s a watermelon,” declared Hal. “But either way it’s all right. What’s the matter with eating it now? Nobody’ll follow us this far.”
“That’s a go,” agreed Ned. “I’m dead tired,” and at once turning aside, with a grunt of relief he threw himself upon the grass by the hedge that skirted the road.
Hal lost no time in copying his example.
Mellowed by the damp night air, from the scene of the late hostilities floated to them the fitful voice of the yellow dog, as he continued to tell his family all about it. Of course he made out to them that the boys were a band of determined robbers, whom he had surprised and put to flight.
The moon, just rising, was shedding an uncertain light over the landscape.
“Slice her open,” suggested Hal—referring to the melon, not to the moon.
Already Ned was fumbling with a battered jack-knife, trying to divide the prize in a scientific fashion, so as to give each some of the heart.
It was a mighty tough rind. Could the melon be green, after all! He worked as rapidly as he could,considering the poor light, and the impatient remarks of Hal, who was getting thirstier and thirstier.
Victory! He managed to stick his fingers in a crack, and with a tug pulled the stubborn mass apart.
“Here,” he said, passing Hal a chunk.
He himself took the mate to it, and carried to his mouth a handful of the spongy, stringy stuff.
The melon had not felt precisely right—and certainly it did not taste precisely right!
“Faugh!” exclaimed Hal.
“Wa-a-a-a!” exclaimed Ned.
How they sputtered! Their melon was a squash!
Words cannot express their disgust. They had missed the melon-patch entirely. All that trouble for only a squash! And now their chances had been ruined. The squire would be on his guard.
“Come on—let’s go home,” blurted Ned; and the two stiffly stood up. Stiffly it was, indeed, for their spirits had been most effectually “squashed,” and they began to be conscious of tokens of their recent flight. They were drenched with dew. Every inch of their bodies and faces and hands smarted and ached from the briars and collisions with posts, wires, sticks and stones. Their heads throbbed. They were cold, hungry, and completely fagged. They wished they were in bed.
Speaking scarcely another syllable they dragged their heavy feet along the well-nigh endless mile of homeward journey. As they entered the alley the town clock chimed twelve.
They scrambled over the fence, shinned up the porch—so tuckered that they did not care whether or not they made any noise—and tumbled across the bed. Such a soft, soothing bed as that was! Feebly they started to undress as they lay, but they did no more than kick off their shoes, and were asleep.
They slept like logs, until awakened by the rising-bell. Quite in vain would they make themselves respectable, although they tried their level best. All their scrubbings and brushings and pinnings really seemed to improve their appearance not one whit. The raspberry bushes and the barbed wire had been too thorough. Court-plaster, rather than pins, was needed.
They were late to breakfast; and this enabled them to escape the keen eyes of Ned’s father, who, having been a boy, would know!
However, Mrs. Miller—thoughtful mother—was waiting for them.
“Goodness, boys! What have you been up to?” she cried, as they neared the table.
It might have been the scratches; it might have been the clothes; probably it was both.
“Oh, we fell down,” answered Ned, sheepishly.
His mother scanned him sharply, but made no farther remark; nevertheless, Ned suspected that the end was not yet.
Squire Belton, or his yellow dog, must have talked around town, so that certain fathers heard; and certain mothers, having patched and darned some sadly-abused garments, must have exchanged notes, as mothers will: at any rate, in a day or two the Miller family—save Ned—had watermelon for dessert, but Ned’s dessert was a huge piece of raw squash!
And Hal reported exactly the same treatment.
THUS passed the days in Beaufort; very good days they were, too, taking them all in all. But they could not go on forever; in human experience nothing—not even eleven loads of wood—lasts forever, and suddenly Ned found himself on the brink of a change greater than his other greatest one: the loss of Bob, now a year back.
For some time it had seemed to him that his father and mother were sharing a secret between them, and keeping him out in the cold. They would be talking, and when he drew near they would stop, with a glance from one to the other that said: “Look out!” If he hung around for quite a while after he had made them do this, he would be sent off on an errand; and once his father had even said, frankly: “Ned, boy, run away. Your mother and I want to talk about something.”
The idea!
It could not be about Christmas, for Christmas was eight months ahead. And it could not be about his birthday, for his birthday had just been. And it could not be about another dog, for he would not have another dog—ever! Then what was it about? He felt abused, as well as excited.
“Ned, how would you like to leave Beaufort?” asked his father, abruptly, one evening, at the supper-table.
“Leave Beaufort!” repeated Ned, astonished.
“Yes,” said his mother. “Move away, you know.”
“For good? Where to?” demanded Ned, eagerly.
“Yes, probably for good; not for bad, let us hope,” replied his father, answering his first.
“To Chicago,” replied his mother, answering his second.
“Will we take Maggie?” stammered Ned, with an eye to the pantry supplies.
“I suppose so, but that isn’t the point,” said his father—although Ned thought it a very important point, indeed. “The point is, would you like to go?”
“I’d hate to leave the river, and—and everything,” faltered Ned.
“But you’ll have Lake Michigan, instead,” spoke his mother.
“Tom and Hal and the other fellows won’t be there,” objected Ned.
“They can come to see you,” explained his mother. “And you’ll pick up lots of new friends. Why, the parks are full of boys!”
“Having fun?” asked Ned.
“Yes; baseball and all kinds of games, some that you never saw,” assured his mother.
“But there isn’t any hunting, is there?” objected Ned. “I want to hunt.”
“You can do your hunting when you come back to Beaufort to visit,” proposed his father.
“Can I take the scull-boat?” queried Ned.
“No, I believe you had better leave that here,” decided his father. “The lake has yachts, and steamers running across, you know——”
“Out of sight of land?” asked Ned, hopefully. “Do they get wrecked?”
“W-well, not often,” said his father. “But they do get out of sight of land, that’s sure.”
“When are we going to move?” demanded Ned, now all ready to pack up.
“About the middle of next month,” replied his father.
“Then I won’t have any wood to pile!” cried Ned, overjoyed.
“No,” said his father, laughing. “I guess we have enough to last us through.”
So they were really to move away from Beaufort! This was the secret. Ned found out a lot of things before supper was finished, and as soon as he could he rushed out to tell. He went up to Hal’s—and Hal was tremendously astounded. Hal and he went over to Tom’s—and Tom was astounded tremendously. And all three talked at once.
“My folks say I can have you up to visit me, right away as soon as we get settled,” announced Ned.
“I’ll come if I can,” agreed Hal.
“So will I, you bet,” agreed Tom. “I’ve never been in Chicago—at least, since I was big enough to remember.”
“You can have the whole scull-boat, now, Hal,” said Ned.
“I don’t want the whole of it. That wouldn’t be fair. You can take it with you,” proposed Hal.
“But I can’t take it—and that wouldn’t be fair, either,” declared Ned.
“I’ll tell you! You give your half to Tom!” cried Hal.
“That’s so!” exclaimed Ned. “Good idea, Hal! You can have my share, Tom. I’ll make you a present of it.”
“Oh, you’re fooling!” asserted Tom, staggered at the thought of owning part of the famous craft.
“No, I’m not,” retorted Ned. “You can have it, truly you can.”
“Sa-a-ay!” gasped Tom. “I don’t know how I can ever pay you back——”
“Oh, shucks!” scoffed Ned. “’Tisn’t anything. Besides, Hal thought of it first. He’s the fellow to thank.”
“Well,” said Tom, “anyhow, whenever you come around and want it you can have it again. I’ll just keep it for you.”
The scull-boat being settled, the boys chattered and planned about other things; and they talked as fast and as excitedly as though Ned was leaving the next day, instead of the next month. So much had to be discussed and arranged.
That night, Ned dreamed that he came down to breakfast and lo, his father told him to hurry, because they were all packed and ready to start; and there in the front yard was the scull-boat, heaped with household goods, and waiting. His mother and father and Maggie got in, and then when he followed he had scarcely any room. Off moved the scull-boat, down the street, with him trying to stick on; and into the river it glided—and just across the river, where the swimming-beach used to be, was Chicago. Faster sped the boat, and now one of his legs dangled in the water, and next both, and next he was slipping, slipping, slipping, and with one last despairing clutch he was left behind! He swam after the boat as hard as he could, but his clothes pulled him down, and nobody noticed him—until suddenly dear old Bob was there in the water beside him, and catching hold of Bob’s stiff tail he was towed, at the rate of a mile a minute, back to Commodore Jones’ fish-market.
But when he woke up, it wasn’t so!
The remaining weeks were busy ones for Ned. He had so many things to do, as farewells. Strange to say, all his friends envied him because he was going, and he envied them because they were staying! Only, he did not let on how he felt; it is rather nice to be envied, you see! Yet deep in his heart he wished that he might have a while longer in Beaufort, where he knew everybody and where there was so much fun.
At last his final trips down the river, and up the river, and across the river, and to the flats, and everywhere else, had been made. He had shaken hands with Commodore Jones—who took pipe from mouth long enough to say: “Well, good luck to you, boy!”—and had patted the scull-boat—who said nothing—good-bye for a space. At last all the chores and errands of “moving” had been done. The furniture had been stored, to be shipped later, the house was bare and empty, and it was high time they got out, for another family was waiting to get in.
The Millers slept, that night, at a neighbor’s; and in the morning they left.
Ah, how limp Ned felt, at going. Chicago could not hold a candle, he was sure, to Beaufort—even South Beaufort, where lurked Big Mike and Big Mike’s “gang.”
Hal and Tom and Zu-zu were at the station to see him off. Hal brought as a parting gift a knife with six blades (better than even the knife which had been lost among the Indian mounds), Tom a flaming red silk handkerchief (a thing of beauty), and Zu-zu six No. 8 shot (once they had been in Ned’s shoulder) set in a watch-charm!
“You’ve all got to come and see me as quick as we’re fixed; don’t you forget!” reminded Ned.
“We will—and you’ve got to come and see us, too!” they reminded, back.
Ned was hoping that something might be wrong with the engine, so that the train could not start. But alas!
“All abo-o-oard!” sang the conductor, watch in hand.
“Clang, clang! Clang, clang!” warned the bell. “Choo! Choo! Choo!” warned the exhaust. The train began to move.
“Good-bye!” called the friends—Mr. and Mrs. Miller’s friends, as well as Ned’s, were on the platform—waving.
“Good-bye!” called Ned, through the window, waving in answer. “Good-bye, Hal! Good-bye, Tom! Good-bye, Zu-zu!”
Across the bridge, over the river, rolled the train; past the breakwater, where he had rescued Tom, and above which was the swimming-beach; past the slough, where he had been shot, and over which was the trestle from which Bob had taken his amazing flight; and on and on, into the country. Beaufort and Beaufort people, Eagle Island, Deep Creek, and all, were far behind.
“Just the same, I’m coming back every chance I get!” vowed Ned, stoutly fighting to keep down the tears.
“Of course you are!” said his mother, putting her arm around him.
Whereupon Ned proceeded to make the most gorgeous plans that ever were; and the best thing about them is—that some of them came true!