HEAVY ODDS
Although feeling rather uneasy because of the man's rough manner, the
boys hardly saw what they could do but accept the invitation, and they
went inside. The next moment they wished they had not.
There were two other men within the hut besides the one who had opened
the door. They were seated at a bare pine table, and on the table there
was a bottle of liquor. There seemed to be no other furniture in the
miserable room, except a rusty wood stove, which was at white heat, two
or three stools and a pile of hay in the corner, which evidently served
as a bed.
The heat inside was stifling, and the room was rank with the fumes of
liquor. The unshaven faces of the men were flushed, their eyes red and
bleared, and a greasy pack of cards told of their occupation when they
had been interrupted.
"Tramps," whispered Bobby to Fred, who was nearest. "Let's get out of
this."
"You bet," returned Fred, as he made a motion toward the door.
But the man who had let them in now stood with his back against the
closed door, looking at them with an ugly grin on his face, a face which
was made still more repellant by a livid scar up near the temple.
"What do these young buckos want here?" asked one of the men at the
table, rising and coming toward them. As he did so, Bobby noticed that
he limped a trifle.
"We stopped in for a minute to ask if we were on the right road to the
station," said Bobby in a tone which he tried to render as careless as
possible.
"You did, eh?" said the man. "Well, just wait a minute and I'll tell
you."
He and his companion approached their comrade at the door, and for a few
moments there was a whispered conversation. Then the man with the scar,
who seemed to be the leader of the gang, turned to Bobby.
"You're on the right road all right," he said.
"Thank you," returned Bobby. "Then I guess we'll be getting on."
The man laughed at this.
"Guess again, young feller," said one of them.
"What's your hurry?" asked the lame man.
"We don't often have such nice young kids drop in to keep us company,"
sneered the man with the scar. "Take off your hats and stay awhile."
The boys' hearts sank. They no longer had any doubts of the evil
intentions of the men who held them virtually prisoners. They had fallen
into a den of thieves.
"We're going now," declared Bobby, in a last desperate attempt to bluff
the matter through, "and if you try to stop us it will be the worse for
you."
The men laughed uproariously.
"A fine young turkey cock he is!" croaked one of them. "We'll have to
cut his comb for him."
"You'll get your own cut first," shouted Fred, who was blazing with
anger. "Don't forget that there are policemen and jails for just such
fellows as you are."
"Shut up, Redhead," commanded the scar-faced man, adding insult to
injury.
Then his jocular manner passed and was replaced by a wicked snarl.
"Hand over what money you've got in your pockets," he commanded, "and
turn your pockets inside out. Do it quick too, or we'll skin you alive."
There was no mistaking the menace in his tone. He was in deadly earnest
and his eyes shone like those of a beast of prey.
There was nothing to do but to obey. His victims were trapped and
helpless. They were only eleven year old boys, and were no match
physically even for one such burly ruffian. Against three, resistance
would have been ridiculous.
Boiling with inward rage, they slowly and sullenly handed over the
contents of their pockets. None of them had any great amount of
money--only a few dollars for spending allowance. But taken altogether
it made quite a respectable sum, over which the robbers gloated with
evident satisfaction. Probably their chief calculation was the amount of
liquor it would buy for their spree.
But even with this the thieves were not content. Bobby's silver watch, a
scarf pin of Mouser's, Fred's seal ring and Pee Wee's gold sleeve
buttons went to swell the pile. They even carried their meanness so far
as to rob the lads of their railroad tickets. Then when they found that
there was nothing else worth the plucking, the leader opened the door.
"Now beat it," he growled, "and thank your lucky stars that we didn't
swipe your clothes."
Half blinded with wrath, the crestfallen boys climbed out of the hollow
and into the road which they had left in such high spirits a few minutes
before. They had been stripped clean. If their outer clothing had fitted
any of the rascals they would have probably lost that too. They were
utterly forlorn and downhearted.
If they had lost their possessions after a hot resistance against those
who were anyway near their age and size, there would at least have been
the exhilaration of the fight. But even that poor compensation was
denied them. The odds had been too overwhelming even to think of a
struggle.
At first they could not even speak to each other. When they attempted to
find words they were so mad that they could only splutter.
"The skunks!" Fred managed to get out at last.
"The low down brutes," growled Mouser.
"Every cent gone," groaned Pee Wee. "And those sleeve buttons were a
Christmas gift from my mother."
"And that silver watch was one my father gave me on my last birthday,"
muttered Bobby thickly.
"If they'd only left us our railroad tickets!" mourned Fred.
"That was the dirtiest trick of all," put in Mouser. "You can understand
why they took the money and jewelry. But they probably don't have any
idea in the world of using the tickets."
"Likely enough by this time they've torn them up and thrown them into
the fire," Pee Wee conjectured.
"Don't speak the word, 'fire,'" said Bobby. "If we hadn't seen the light
of it through the window, we wouldn't have gone in there at all."
"It was all my fault," moaned Fred. "What a fool stunt it was of me to
want to stop there anyway."
Bobby could easily have said, "I told you so," but that was not Bobby's
way.
"It wasn't anybody's fault," he said. "It was just our hard luck. We
might have done it a thousand times and found only decent people there
each time."
"Lucky I gave that dime to Betty this morning anyway," grunted Fred.
"That's one thing the thieves didn't get."
The remark struck the boys as so comical that they broke into laughter.
It was the one thing needed to relieve the tension. It cleared the air
and all felt better.
"Talk about looking on the bright side of things," chuckled Pee Wee.
"You're a wonder as a little cheerer-up," commented Mouser.
"That's looking at the doughnut instead of seeing only the hole in the
doughnut," laughed Bobby.
After all they were alive and unharmed. The thieves might have beaten
them up or tied them in the cabin while they made their escape.
"Things might have been a great deal worse," said Bobby cheerfully,
putting their thoughts into words. "The money didn't amount to so much
after all, and our folks will send us more. And we may be able to have
the tramps arrested and get back our other things. We'll telegraph just
as soon as we get to--"
But here he stopped short in dismay.
"We haven't even money enough to pay for the message!" he exclaimed.
"Perhaps the station man will trust us," suggested Fred.
"I think there's a way of sending messages so that the folks who get
them pay on the other end," said Pee Wee hopefully.
None of the boys were very clear on this point, but it offered a ray of
cheer.
"We won't need to send more than one message anyway," said practical
Bobby as they trudged along. "Some of our folks might be away and there
might be some delay in getting to them. But I know that my father is at
home and I'll just ask him to send on enough money for the bunch of us.
Then you fellows can square it up with me afterwards."
They had reached the outskirts of a village now and the walking had
become easier. They quickened their pace and soon came in sight of the
station.
"There it is!" cried Fred, and the boys broke into a run.