FRED IN TROUBLE
Fred sat kicking his bare heels together and grinning over the fence at
the Plunkit boy and his dog.
"Get down out of that tree--you!" exclaimed the Plunkit boy.
"Who says so?" demanded Fred.
"_I_ do."
"Well, say it again," responded Master Fred, in a most tantalizing way.
"I like to hear you."
Applethwaite Plunkit was not a nice looking boy at all. He had
perfectly white hair, but he wasn't an albino, for albinoes have
pink-rimmed eyes. His eyes were very strange looking, however, for they
were not mates. One was one color, and one was another.
There are many such afflicted people in the world; usually they have one
gray eye and one brown one. But Ap Plunkit had one eye that was of a
sickly brown color, while the other was of a sickly green. That means
that the "whites" of his mismated eyes were yellowish in hue.
Perhaps, because of this misfortune, the other boys plagued him, and
that had soured his temper. He was very angry with Fred.
"Get out of that tree, you red-headed monkey!" he shouted, "or I'll set
my dog on you!"
"I won't do it, you white-headed donkey--and your dog can't get me; not
unless he can climb a tree," added Fred, grinning again.
"I'll come over there and knock you out of it," threatened Ap.
"I'd like to see you do it," responded Fred, swinging his feet again.
"I'll show you!" cried Ap, and he started for the hole in the fence.
"Come on, Rove!" he called to the dog.
The big dog followed his master. He was part Newfoundland and would
have made a fine playmate for any boy, if he had not been trained to be
ugly with all strangers. When he got through the fence and saw Bobby
standing idly by, he growled at him.
"Look out, Bob!" shouted Fred. "He'll bite you."
"I'm not doing anything," said Bobby Blake. "And you had better not set
your dog on me, Plunkit."
"You fellers are too fresh," said the farm boy. "My father says you're
not to come around here--"
"Your father doesn't own this land, and your father doesn't own this
creek," whipped in Fred, from the branch.
"You fellers came across our land to get here," declared Ap.
"How do you know _that_, Mr. Smartie?" asked Fred. He had just finished
eating an apple. He threw the core at the dog and hit him on the nose.
Rover growled and then jumped up and snapped at Master Fred's bare
heels.
"Scubbity-_yow_!" shrieked the daring Fred, kicking up his heels
excitedly. "Didn't get me that time, did you? I'm not _your_ meat."
"You stop that, Ap," ordered Bobby. "Call off your dog."
He had not been altogether idle. There was a heavy club of hard wood
lying nearby, and he seized it.
"He'd better get down out of that tree or Rove will eat him up," said
Ap, boastfully.
"Those branches overhang this land. The apples don't belong to you any
more than they do to us," said Bobby, and he thought he was quite right
in saying so.
"Yah!" scoffed Ap. "He had to climb the tree-trunk to get there, and
the tree's on _our_ side of the fence."
"Didn't neither, Mr. Smartie!" cried Fred, in delight. "I jumped up and
grabbed a limb, and pulled myself up. Have an apple?" and he aimed one
of the hard, green ones at Ap.
"Don't you do that, Fred!" called up Bobby, in haste.
"Well, then, I'll give it to the dog," said Fred, throwing the apple to
Rover.
"You come down out of that tree, and you stop pelting my dog!" commanded
Applethwaite Plunkit.
"Yes--I--will!" responded Fred, biting into another apple.
"Well! I'll lick one of you, anyway!" exclaimed Ap, who had been slily
stepping nearer.
And immediately he threw himself on Bobby. He caught the latter so
unexpectedly that he couldn't have used the club had he wished to.
"Come on, Rove!" shrieked Ap. "Bite him, boy--bite him!"
"You stop that!" shouted the red-haired boy in the tree. "Bobby hasn't
done a thing--"
The dog growled and ran around the two struggling boys. Perhaps he was
looking for a chance to bite his master's antagonist. At least, it
looked so.
Bobby Blake, although never a quarrelsome lad, was no mollycoddle.
Attacked as he had been, he struggled manfully to escape the bigger boy.
He dropped the club, but he tore off Ap's hat and flung it into the
creek.
"Go for it, sir! After it!" he screamed, and Rover heard him and saw
the hat. That was one of the dog's accomplishments. He was a
Newfoundland, and retrieving articles from the water was right in his
line.
He barked and bounded to the edge of the steep bank. He evidently
considered that, after all, his master and Bobby were only playing, and
this part of the play he approved of.
The instant Bobby heard the splash of the big dog into the water, he
twisted in Ap's grasp, tripped him, and fell on top of the larger boy.
"Oh! oh! oh!" gasped Ap. "You're hurtin' me--you're killin' me! I
can't breathe--"
"Scubbity-_yow_!" yelled Fred, giving voice to his favorite battle-cry,
and he dropped from the apple tree, running to Bobby's help.
But Bobby got up and released the bawling farm-boy at once. "Come on,
Fred," he said. "Let's get out o' here."
"Why, you got the best of him!" cried Fred, in disgust. "Let's duck
him! Let's throw him in after his old dog."
"No you don't," declared Bobby, seizing Fred's hand. "We're going to
get out while we have the chance. I only tripped him and got the dog
out of the way so you could escape."
"Huh!" exclaimed Fred. "I didn't get as many apples as I wanted."
"I don't care. You come on," said his chum.
"Whoever heard of the winning side giving way like this?" grumbled the
red-haired boy. "Anyway," he added, picking up the club Bobby had lost,
"if that dog comes after us, I'll hit him."
Bobby picked up the box containing the remainder of their luncheon, and
led the way through the bushes. The dog had come ashore, and it and Ap
Plunkit were quickly out of sight. Fred was still grumbling about
leaving the foe to claim "the best of it."
"He'll pitch on us next time, just the same," he declared. "Why didn't
you punch him when you had him down, Bob?"
"Aw, come on!" said his chum. "Always wanting to get into a fight. You
keep that up when you get to Rockledge School, and you'll be in hot
water all the time."
"Shucks!" grinned Fred. "I'd like to be in _cold_ water right now. The
swimming hole isn't far away. Let's."
"We can't go in but once--you know we can't," said Bobby.
"Why not?" demanded Fred, quickly.
"Because we promised our mothers we wouldn't go in but once a day this
vacation."
"Huh! That ain't saying but what we can take off our clothes and put on
our swimming trunks, and stay in all day long."
"That would be just as dishonest as going in two or three times, Fred,"
exclaimed Bobby. "And you wouldn't do it. Besides," he added, grinning;
"you know you tried that _last_ summer, and 'member what you got for
it?"
"You bet you!" exclaimed the red-haired one. "I got sunburned something
fierce! No. I won't do _that_ again. That's the day we built the raft
on Sanders' Pond, and oh, how I hurt! I guess I do remember, all
right."
"No," said Bobby, after a minute. "We'll go fishing first, and then
take a swim before we go home. That'll clean us up, and make us feel
fresh. There's that old stump again, Fred. I believe there's a big
trout lives under that stump. Don't you 'member! We've seen him jump."
"Ya-as," scoffed Fred. "But that old fellow won't jump for a worm.
He's had too many square meals this summer, don't you know? It'll take
a fancy fly, like those my Uncle Jim uses when he goes fishing, to coax
Mr. Trout out of the creek."
"I'm going to try," said Bobby, who could be obstinate in his opinion.
"I'll be satisfied if I catch a shiner," declared Fred. "I'll try off
that rock yonder. Come on! There's a couple of dandy fishpoles."
Like real country boys, Bobby and Fred cut poles each time they went
fishing. No need to carry them back and forth to their homes in Clinton
and it did not take five minutes to cut and rig these poles.
"What nice, fat worms," said Bobby, when Fred shook up the tomato can.
"That's what the robin said," chuckled Fred. "Know what my sister,
Betty, said yesterday morning? You know it rained the night before and
the robins were picking up worms on the lawn right early--before
breakfast.
"Bet was at the window and one fat robin picked up a worm, swallowed it,
and flew right up into a tree where he began to sing like sixty! Bet
says:
"'Oh! that robin gives me the _squirms_; how can he sing that way when
he's all full of those crawly things?'"
"Now hush!" ordered Bobby, the next moment. "I'm going to drop this nice
fellow right down beside that stump and see if I can coax Mr. Trout up."
But Mr. Trout did not appear. Bobby, with exemplary patience, tried it
again and again. He changed his bait and dropped a fresh worm into the
brown, cloudy water where he believed the trout lay.
"You're not fishing," chuckled Fred, from his station on the rock, a few
yards away. "You're just drowning worms."
"Huh!" returned Bobby. "I don't see any medals on _you_. You haven't
caught anything."
"But I'm going to!" whispered Fred, swiftly, and holding his pole with
sudden attention.
Then, with a nervous jerk, he flung up the pole. Hook and sinker came
with it, and a tiny, wriggling, silver fish, about a finger long, shot
into the air. But Fred had not been careful to select his stand, and he
drove his line and fish up among the branches of a tree.
"Now you've done it--and likely scared my trout," exclaimed Bobby.
Fred, in his usual impulsive fashion, tried to jerk back his line. The
hook and sinker were caught around a branch. The shiner dropped off the
hook and rested in a crotch of the branch. No fish ever was transformed
into a bird so quickly since fishing was begun!
And while Bobby laughed, and held his sides, Fred jerked at the
entangled line again and again until, stepping too far back, and pulling
too hard, the line chanced to give a foot or two, Master Fred fell
backwards and--_flop!_ into the deep pool below the rock he went!