LAURA KEEPS HER SECRET
They left the farmer threatening vengeance upon the strange young man
who had used his shot-gun to such good purpose.
"That fellow's all right, whoever he is," Lance declared. "And how
quick he was with his gun!"
"He knows how to use one," Short and Long agreed, with admiration. "I
wish I could have thanked him."
"And this dummy here!" added Lance, with a look of disgust at Purt.
"You had that old pistol in your pocket, didn't you?" he demanded of
the dude.
"Ye-es," agreed Purt.
"Then if you had kept still about it, I could have scared that farmer
into holding his dog in leash. Just as glad the brute was shot,
though. He'll be tamed for a while, I bet!"
"It is too bad the dog was trained so badly," Laura said. "It is not
his fault that he was taught to attack people."
"Well!" grunted Short and Long. "If he'd grabbed me, I reckon he'd
have eaten me up before anybody could have helped."
"You had no business on that man's land," said Laura, admonishingly.
"And you _did_ sauce him."
"Ugh! who'd have thought he was so mean?" growled Short and Long.
"Bet you have a care next time," said Lance, grinning. "But who do you
suppose that fellow with the gun was? I'd really like to meet him
again."
"Good sort, whoever he is," Short and Long agreed.
"No farmer."
"Not much! He was city-dressed all right."
Laura listened to their comments, but said nothing. She believed she
could make a good guess as to who the young man was; but she was
keeping that secret to herself.
When she and the three boys rejoined their companions down stream,
they had enough to tell about the adventure without declaring the
identity of the young man with the gun. It was exciting enough to have
had Short and Long almost "chawed up" by a savage dog, as Lance
expressed it.
"And this useless piece of goods," he added taking Purt by the
collar, "made a foozle--right off the reel! I could have scared that
big bully easily enough if Purt had kept still about his old revolver
being no good."
"I don't care," complained Purt. "The revolver would have been all
right if you hadn't taken that screw out and thrown it away."
"And you'd likely shot yourself--or somebody else--by this time."
"No I wouldn't," said Purt, gloomily.
"How do you know?" asked Chet.
"Why--I find that when I bought cartridges for that pistol I got
thirty-eights--and the pistol is a forty-five!"
The whole crowd laughed at that. Purt Sweet really _was_ too funny for
anything.
They got another good laugh on him before they went back to the
island. There was a squatter's cabin near the bank of the brook and
they trooped up there for a drink of cool milk, for the woman had two
cows and was willing to sell the milk to them, right from her log
buttery.
The woman's daughter--a girl about Lil Pendleton's age--waited on
them. She was a brown-skinned, big-eyed, healthy-looking girl--a
regular country beauty. Laura whispered:
"Isn't she a splendid creature?"
Purt had cocked an appreciative eye at her, and he murmured:
"Quite true--quite true, Miss Laura. She's as beautiful as Hebe," and
gave the name of the goddess the very best pronunciation, according to
Professor Dimp.
"Beautiful as _he_ be?" drawled Chet, in exaggeration of bucolic
twang, looking amusedly at the lank and lazy squatter himself who lay
snoring on the platform before the hut. "Huh! she's a sight purtier
than _he_ be. Why, _he's_ as humbly as a hedge-fence--an' ye can see,
Purt, that the girl takes after her mother."
"It sure is too bad how they rig you, Pretty," laughed Jess.
"Pretty's all right!" joined in Billy Long. "Only one thing wrong with
him. He starts easy, and he speeds up well, but just at the critical
moment he always skids."
"Hear the motor talk from Short and Long! Yow!" exclaimed Reddy Butts.
"And old Purt's not so slow at that!"
"Who said he was slow?" demanded Short and Long, with apparent
indignation. "Bet you can't do him, Reddy."
"Bet I can--and for half a dollar, too," declared the youth with the
radiant head of hair.
This was after the party had returned to the creek and luncheon was in
order. The other boys saw that the red-headed youth and Short and
Long had a scheme between them, and they sat back and prepared to
enjoy Purt's discomfiture.
"You can't fool Purt in a hundred years," Short and Long reiterated,
quite hotly.
"Can," returned Reddy, briefly, with his mouth full. "Got a half
dollar, Purt?"
"What if I have?" demanded the dude, suspiciously.
"You put it under that mug on the table, and I bet I can take the
money without touching the mug."
"You cawn't trick me," drawled Port. "You couldn't do that, you know,
Reddy."
"Put your half dollar under the mug and see if I can't," chuckled the
auburn-haired youth.
Thus urged, Purt did as agreed. He placed a half dollar on the table,
and carefully covered it with an inverted mug that he had been
drinking milk from.
Everybody was interested now and was watching the proceedings.
"Better put a napkin over it, Purt," advised Reddy. "For I'm going to
fool you a whole lot!"
"You cawn't fool me, deah boy!" declared the dude, with growing
conviction.
But he carefully covered the mug. Then Reddy, with a grin, reached
under the rough table they were using and soon pulled his hand back
with a half dollar in the palm.
The boys laughed, and wondered, and the girls were likewise puzzled.
Purt looked both amazed and vexed. Then they began to laugh at him.
"Mighty easy way to make half a dollar," commented Reddy, slipping it
into his pocket. "I told you I'd get it, Purt, without touching the
mug."
"But you didn't do it, doncher know!" cried Purt, growing exasperated.
"My half dollar is there."
He whipped off the napkin, lifted the mug--and Reddy, with a laugh,
grabbed the coin that lay under it.
"I told you I'd get it without lifting the mug, Purt," he said, and
the crowd burst into a chorus of laughter. Purt had been made the
victim of the joke, after all.
It was all good fun, however. Purt could well afford the half dollar,
and after a minute he, too, laughed.
They started back for Acorn Island in good season, with a nice string
of speckled trout and some two dozen white perch--the promise of a
splendid "fish-fry" that evening. On the way they passed the heavy
canoe seen several times before on the lake.
There was but one man in it now, fishing; and he sat with his
shoulders hunched up and his hat drawn down about his face.
"I wonder who that old man is?" Chet said, reflectively, as the
_Bonnie Lass_ sped by.
"Wonder where his camp is?" responded Lance, idly.
"He looks like a native," Reddy said. "If he's no handsomer than that
squatter back yonder, I wouldn't want to see him any closer to."
Laura, and Jess, and Bobby looked at each other surreptitiously. They
knew that the man in the canoe was Professor Asa Dimp, Latin teacher
at Central High!