THE HAZERS ARE HAZED
What Jack had in one pocket of his coat was an ammonia gun used by
wheelmen to keep off the attacks of troublesome dogs who attempt to bar
their progress on the road often at the risk of giving them an upset.
This, as most boys know, is shaped like a pistol and has a bulb at one
end.
A slight pressure upon this bulb causes a stream of ammonia, or hot
water, or whatever else one chooses to squirt in the faces of the
annoying dogs and to put them to flight.
When Jack had gone up to the dormitories, after receiving the message
which he had every reason to believe to be spurious, he had taken the
little gun from his suitcase, where he had placed it, in anticipation of
needing it in some such emergency as the present.
As the masked figures came rushing toward him from two sides, he quickly
took account of stock, as one might say, and decided which one of the
maskers was Herring.
Then he aimed his little gun at the fellow's face and gave the bulb a
good squeeze.
There was a howl and a gasp and the boy in the mask and the old clothes
suddenly sat down with more force than elegance.
Jack then turned his gun on one of the intruders from the other side of
the clump.
"Ouch, stop that!" yelled the fellow, dropping a stout stick he held in
his hand and beating a hasty retreat, half stifled by the fumes of the
ammonia.
Jack then turned his attention to the other members of the party of
hazers and discharged another gun at them, holding it in his left hand.
This was worse than the first, for it contained assafoetida instead of
ammonia.
The stench was something dreadful, and two of the hazers got full doses
of the stuff directly in their faces.
Jack was on the windward side of it or he could not have endured the
horrible smell.
The victims simply fell on the ground and began to vomit in spite of
themselves.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm poisoned!" wailed Holt, who was one of the fellows
dosed. "Oh! get me some water. Oh, dear! I shall die, I know I shall!"
"You need a good cleaning out," laughed Jack, who had no sympathy
whatever for the sneak. "You are dirty enough inside and out to make it
necessary. Turn yourself inside out. You need it."
The other victim was retching and gasping and groaning by turns and all
at once, but Jack only laughed.
If one had been in pain and needed his help, no one could have been more
sympathetic, but in this case the victim was simply getting his deserts,
and the boy wasted no sympathy upon him.
"Oh! I am poisoned, I know I am!" howled Holt. "Go send for a doctor. I
know I am going to die!"
"No danger of it, Holt," laughed Jack. "That's nothing but a cleaning
out medicine that will be good for you. Take off that mask of yours and
you will breathe better. If it had not been for that, you would have got
a bigger dose, but it will do, I guess."
Jack had easily recognized Holt, but the other hazer was unknown to him,
as he did not yet know all the boys at the Academy.
Holt retched, and coughed, and choked, and gasped, and was in a very
uncomfortable state, but there was no danger of his dying and Jack knew
it perfectly well.
"I know you, Holt," he said. "I don't know the other fellow, but he will
know me after this, I guess. I haven't got through with you fellows yet,
but first I want to see how Herring and Merritt are coming on. He is a
pickled Herring now, I warrant," and Jack laughed heartily at the
recollection of the bully's sudden retreat.
He hurried back the way he had come, and shortly found Herring bending
over a spring and trying to wash the ammonia from his face and eyes.
He had laid aside his mask and the stick he had carried, and was totally
unprepared for Jack's coming.
"What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the herring," laughed Jack as
he came up behind the bully and suddenly sent him plunging headfirst
into the spring.
Herring sputtered and gasped, and Jack gave him another ducking, and
without the slightest compunction.
"I don't believe in taking a mean advantage of a fellow, as a rule," he
laughed, "but that is the only thing that a fellow like you will
understand. This is the two-four-six degree, Herring."
Then he gave the bully another ducking and finally left him to look for
Merritt, who also deserved something more than he had received.
"I am going to give you a reward of Merritt, Ernest," he laughed, as he
finally came upon the sneak sitting on a stone at the edge of the woods,
looking very miserable.
"Get out of here, I haven't done nothing," snarled Merritt, too weak to
get up. "It wasn't me, it was Pete Herring."
"What is that mask doing on the ground, Merritt?" asked Jack. "And you
have your old clothes on also. How does that happen, if you were not in
this plot the same as Herring?"
"I was going blackberrying and wore my old clothes so's they wouldn't
get hurt. You gotter wear something over your face, too, to keep it from
getting scratched."
"Well, here's something else," laughed Jack as he plunged his hand into
a mudhole close by and brought it up fairly reeking with black ooze.
Then he gave a generous plaster of the stuff to the bully's face, and
chuckled as he went away:
"They say that mud is a sure cure for a lot of things, Merritt, and
maybe it will cure you of trying to haze a fellow unawares. Think it
over. Thinking won't hurt you, anyhow. You don't do enough to injure
you."
Herring had taken himself off by the time Jack went back to the spring,
evidently fearing that he would get another dose, which in his weak
state he had no desire for and the boy did not find him.
"Well, he has had enough to last him for a time, at any rate," he said
with a grin, "and I am not resentful enough to further add to his
troubles. I wonder how those others are doing?"
He found Holt sitting on the ground looking very wretched and said,
wiping his muddy hand on the fellow's face:
"There's a plaster for you, Holt. You don't look very pretty, but it may
do you good."
"Ouch! it stinks!" yelled Holt.
"So does your reputation," laughed Jack. "One will act as a counter
irritant to the other. And like curses like, you know. That's the new
school of medicine. Who got up this little scheme to waylay me?"
"Pete Herring," muttered Holt. "I had nothing to do with it. I was just
going to catch rabbits."
"With a mask? H'm! you are ashamed to look a rabbit in the face, are
you? Well, you are homely enough to give a young rabbit nervous
prostration, so I can't blame you for that."
"I didn't have nothing to do with it," said Holt, trying to wipe the mud
from his face and making it worse.
"How about the telephone?" asked Jack. "Where was Herring when I called
him up?"
"On the switch. How did you know it was him?"
"There are some voices that are so disagreeable that you can actually
smell them, Holt. Herring's is one. Then I did not get the station at
all? I thought not."
"No, you didn't, but if you knew it was Herring, what did you want to
come for? That was foolish."
"Oh, no, it was not. It was foolish for Herring to use the phone and try
to disguise his voice. Why didn't he get some one I did not know at all?
He was the foolish one. And then I thought I might give him a dose of
his own medicine."
"Huh! did you give him as bad as you gave me?"
"Well, it was different," and Jack laughed.
"I don't treat all alike, you see. Have a little more of the mud cure?"
Then, without waiting for an answer, Jack plastered the bully's face and
neck with the sticky mud and left him.
"This is hazing the hazers," he said. "They may not like it, but, then,
that is merely the point of view. There is no reason why I should like
it any better than they do."
The other bully was sneaking away when Jack found him and he let him go,
having really had enough fun with the bullies to last him some time, and
considering that he had punished them enough for one while.
"Four to one was pretty good odds," he laughed, "but I had the advantage
of knowing what they were about. That was stupid of Herring to get on
the wire himself. Why didn't he get some one else? Fellows like these
always make some stupid mistake which betrays them."
Jack then returned to the house, where he found Bucephalus washing the
wagon with warm water and soap.
"Give me a chance to wash my hands, Bucephalus," he said. "Honest Injun,
now, did you know anything about a plan to haze me? That telephone
message was all a hoax."
"Wha' yo' mean by dat, sah?" asked Bucephalus. "Wasn' dere no tullyphome
message? I done heard it mahse'f, sah, an' Ah done give it to yo' same
as Ah heard it m'se'f, sah."
"Then you did not know of any trick to get the best of me?"
"No, sah, 'deed Ah didn't, sah."
The man spoke so earnestly that Jack was convinced that he was telling
the truth and believed him.
When he had finished washing his hands, he went to the doctor's study,
where he found the principal himself, and asked permission to use the
telephone.
Finding the number of the station below, which was not the one given to
him, he called up Mr. Jones and asked if there was any package for him.
The agent said that there was not, and the boy then knew that the whole
affair had been a hoax and that probably Bucephalus was as innocent of
it as the station agent himself.
"They must have come in here when the doctor was out, switched the barn
line on to this one, and taken my call without Jones knowing anything
about it," he said as he hung up the receiver and went out. "It was a
pretty good plot, but one little blunder will spoil the best of plots."
He said nothing to Percival nor any of his new friends about the matter,
being satisfied to have gotten the best of his enemies without
publishing it, and feeling that he would be safe from further annoyance
for a time at least.
It was said at the supper table that Holt and Haddon were sick from
eating too much, and that Merritt had fallen into the brook and taken
cold, and Jack did not take the trouble to correct the rumors.
Herring was there, looking as well dressed and conceited as usual, and
probably he had more ways of getting over his troubles than the others
had, for he showed no effects of the hazing.
He glared at Jack in a manner that promised future trouble, but the boy
paid no attention to it, and did not mention the affair to any of his
friends, although he knew that they would have liked well enough to hear
of it.