NED MAKES AN ENEMY.
A wavering look of indecision crept into Sam Hinkley’s pug-nosed
countenance. He would have liked to have the last few moments over
again. He felt that he would have acted differently. But he tried to
brazen it out.
“You strolling vagabond from goodness knows where, take that!”
It was a vicious blow, with plenty of force behind it, for Sam,
although a bully and not possessed of an overabundance of courage,
was still wiry and well muscled. But to his surprise his blow did not
land. It should have collided with Ned’s chin, but when its force was
expended, Ned was not there.
He had stepped neatly aside and allowed Sam to launch his thunderbolt
harmlessly. Sam’s friends, grouped beneath the veranda on the
sidewalk, closed into a compact little crowd. Plainly Sam was not going
to carry all before him as had been his habit hitherto. His cronies saw
this at once and some of them inwardly rejoiced.
The office of the little hotel was deserted, and nobody interfered. Sam
gathered himself together to renew the combat. His brow grew black. Ned
stood waiting. He made no attempt to defend himself. He merely eyed Sam
Hinkley with a look of contempt that maddened that pugnacious bully.
Sam eyed his opponent viciously.
“Well?” queried Ned.
“Thought you were going to fight!” roared Sam.
“As I told you before, I’m not a fighter.”
Sam rashly interpreted this as being a sign of weakness. He rushed in
once more, swinging his big fists with more vigor than science. Once
more Will-o’-the-Wisp Ned was not where he ought to have been, and Sam,
carried off his feet by the vigor of his unopposed onslaught, collided
with a chair, tripped, and fell headlong on the floor to the porch.
This time the laugh that went up was not at Ned’s expense. The boy
stood in the same quiet attitude while Sam, his face crimson with anger
and mortification, gathered himself up.
“This ain’t fighting!” he bellowed angrily.
“You can call it anything you like--an acrobatic performance if you
wish,” rejoined Ned, without raising his voice or changing his position.
Now there is nothing more irritating than to lose your temper and to
make an exhibition of yourself, while the one your rage is directed at
stands as steady and unmoved as a rock, hardly deigning to reply to
either threats or onslaughts.
Sam was almost beside himself with rage as, with blazing eyes, he made
another dash at Ned. This time Ned did not step aside. He ducked under
Sam’s terrific left, and coming up, struck the bully a blow in the ribs
that caused that worthy to emit a sound resembling:
“Oof!”
Ned took advantage of the momentary pause in hostilities to speak.
“Look here, Hinkley,” said he. “I’m not a ruffian, and I don’t like
fighting. We’ll call this off right here and now, if you say so. I’m
willing--what do you say?”
“That I’m going to give you the licking of your life!” roared out the
enraged Sam.
Again he rushed in, his arms working like twin piston rods. This time
Ned did not avoid the other’s rush. There was a rapid exchange of
blows, and then suddenly--so suddenly that nobody saw just how it had
happened, Sam Hinkley’s head was jerked back.
Whack! Ned had taken advantage of a fraction of a second when the other
was off his guard and landed a stinging blow full on Sam’s pug nose.
With a roar of anger Sam rushed in to retaliate. This time Ned was not
quite quick enough. He stepped sideways to avoid the other’s onrush,
but his foot slipped, and before he could recover his balance a heavy
blow from Sam’s ponderous fist sent him spinning across the porch.
Sam’s adherents in the crowd watching the two lads set up a shout of
delight. A broad grin overspread Sam’s face.
“Guess that finishes the lesson,” he jeered.
“On the contrary it’s only just begun,” retaliated Ned, and before Sam
knew just what had happened, two smart blows had rattled against his
ribs, the force of them making his teeth chatter as if with the cold.
But Sam speedily recovered himself, and for the next few minutes it
was give and take, with the odds rather against Ned, who was lighter
of build than the bully, and who was constantly forced back by the
latter’s rushes. Sam began to think it was all over.
“Well, Mr. Manners’ Teacher, how about you now?” he sneered tauntingly.
Ned did not reply, but he watched Sam like a cat. He saw that the bully
was beginning to wear out under the fast work of the last few minutes.
His chest was heaving and his breath came pantingly. He guessed that
Sam would have been glad to have called “quits” then and there.
But while Ned might have been willing enough not to fight at the
beginning of the battle, his blood was up now, and he was determined
to see the thing through. He despised fighting as being ruffianly
and unnecessary, but, in a case like the present, he felt that if he
allowed Sam Hinkley to walk over him, the latter would make it next to
impossible for him to remain in Nestorville.
He avoided another of Sam’s bull-like rushes with an agile step
backward. As Sam’s blow missed, Ned could hear him give a loud grunt,
a sound that told he was tiring.
“I’m wearing him down,” thought Ned, and watched carefully for an
opening that might afford him a chance of terminating the battle.
Sam “rushed” Ned again. This time he, too, appeared to be desirous of
ending the fight by a blow that would take all the fight out of his
lightly built opponent. But his blow landed on thin air.
Ned’s opportunity had come. His fist shot out like a streak of
lightning. It struck Sam under the chin, lifting him off his feet. He
toppled and fell backward, landing among the chairs with a crash that
sounded like a cook-stove falling downstairs.
“That settles him!” cried some of the crowd of boys that had gathered,
and “settle” Sam it did, in more senses than one, for, aroused by the
crash of his fall, the bully’s father issued from the hotel and
seizing his offspring by the scruff of the neck, angrily bade him get
inside.
[Illustration: “It wasn’t altogether his fault”, explained Ned.--_Page_
69]
“It wasn’t altogether his fault,” explained Ned. “I had his chair, you
see, and--”
“That’ll do, young feller,” said the elder Hinkley brusquely, “that’s
not the first time it’s happened. Sam had a licking coming to him and
he got it. I ain’t got nothing to say, ’cepting that supper’s ready
when you are.”
And in this eventful manner ended Ned’s first day in Nestorville. It
had surely been an eventful one, thought the boy, as he reviewed the
various experiences of the last twelve hours before turning into bed.
He was just about to turn out the light when his attention was
attracted to the door-sill. Something white was being shoved under the
door into the room. It was a folded bit of paper.
Ned sprang forward and picked it up. It was, as he had guessed, a note.
He opened it, and as he perused its contents, a smile of good-natured
contempt came over his face. This is what he read:
“You think you are smart, but you ain’t through with me yet. I’ll fix
you and when I do I’ll fix you good. S. Hinkley.”
“Too bad,” said Ned to himself, as he finished reading. “I’ve not
so many friends that I want to make any enemies. But after all, the
quarrel was not of my making and I don’t intend to allow Sam Hinkley’s
threats to worry me.”