TELLING BRISTLES
"Hello there, Fred, and you too, Colon; glad to see you both! Step in,
and come upstairs with me to my den, won't you?"
In this fashion did Bristles meet the two visitors at the front door, and
convinced by the warmth of the reception that they were going to be
welcome guests, Fred and the tall boy fell in behind the one who had
admitted them. Presently they found themselves comfortably seated in
such chairs as decorated the so-called "den," which was a small room on
the top story, where Bristles kept his belongings and did his studying.
"Glad to see your bad cold is a lot better, Bristles!" remarked Colon,
with a sly wink over toward Fred, who chuckled.
Bristles of course looked puzzled.
"I suppose that's, some sort of a poor joke," he ventured, cautiously,
glancing from one to the other of his visitors; "but me, I'm groping all
around in the dark, and don't seem to catch on. S'pose you open up, and
explain how it works, Colon."
The tall boy allowed his eyebrows to go up as though tremendously
surprised.
"Do you mean to tell me, Bristles Carpenter, that you didn't call up
Fred, here, a little while back, and while begging him to hurry over, as
you had something important to explain, say you'd taken such a cold you
could hardly speak plain?"
"What, me? Say, you're dreaming, Colon. I never said a word of that,
and right now I haven't got the least bit of a cold!" exclaimed the
other, indignantly. At the same time he began to show a certain amount
of curiosity, for his good sense warned him there must be a story back of
Colon's strange accusation.
"And you didn't interrupt yourself several times to say, 'Oh! excuse me,
while I cough!' and then start in whooping it up so hard Fred here had to
take the receiver down from his ear or go deaf?"
"Oh! Come off, and tell me what all this silly stuff means!" demanded
the still more mystified boy. "Has anybody been playing a rousing good
joke on Fred, and making out to be me?"
"That's about the size of it, isn't it, Fred," Colon assented, eagerly
enough. "It was a rousing enough joke, while it lasted, but the trouble
is that it turned out to be one of those back-action, kicking jokes, that
turns on the jokers, unexpected like. This one left a black eye, and a
whole lot of black and blue marks behind it---that is, we believe so, and
have a pretty good reason, too."
"All right, now tell me what it all means, please," Bristles pleaded,
seeing that the tall chum was really in earnest.
Colon explained, and as he finished, the astonished listener demanded:
"But what d'ye reckon it all means?"
"Both of us noticed that their main plan seemed to be to kick at our
shins every chance they got," explained Fred, "and Colon says they had
heavy brogans on, too. It's a hard thing to say, Bristles, but we
honestly believe they meant to lame us, so we couldn't be in shape to run
to-morrow, and perhaps at the time of the great Marathon, too."
Bristles clenched his hands, and looked savage.
"Well, what d'ye think of that now for a savage trick?" he exclaimed. "I
wouldn't believe it of those Mechanicsburg athletes, who've always seemed
a pretty decent bunch of fellows."
"Hold on," said Fred. "Go a little slow, Bristles."
"What for?" demanded the other, impetuously and fiercely.
"Because you're making the same mistake Colon here did at first," he was
told.
"About the boys up the river, you mean, Fred?"
"Yes. It isn't fair to accuse them without any proof," the other told
him.
"But the Paulding crowd---" stammered Bristles, evidently taken aback.
"Get closer home," warned Colon. "What d'ye want to go climbing all over
the country for, when you've only got to use your nose to smell a rat
right in old Riverport!"
"Jupiter Pluvius! you must mean our old friend, Buck!" ejaculated
Bristles, his elevated eyebrows indicating his astonishment. "Tell me
about that, will you? Has he actually come to life again, and been up to
his old tricks?"
"We're dead sure of it," Colon told him, nodding his head at a lively
rate.
"Then chances are you recognized one of the bunch?" suggested Bristles.
"No," said Fred, "we couldn't do that very well, because they changed
their voices, and had their faces hidden by their hats, coat collars, and
even some sort of cloth that seemed to be tied about their jaws. But
after the scrap was over, we picked up a clue that we think will give the
game away."
"What, Fred?"
"Take a look at this old hat, Bristles," continued the other, as he drew
the article in question from his pocket.
"Well, I'm looking at it," he was told.
"Ever see it before?" asked Colon, eagerly.
"Of course I wouldn't like to raise my hand, and swear to it," remarked
Bristles, slowly, "but I want to say this looks mighty like a
yellow-colored hat I've seen a certain fellow wear, time and again."
"Suppose you go a little further, then, and mention his name," proposed
Fred.
"Conrad Jimmerson!" promptly replied the other.
Colon laughed gleefully.
"Now turn the hat around, Bristles," he cried, "and look inside!"
Upon doing so the other uttered an exclamation.
"Here they are, two letters that give the thing away---C.J. as plain as
print could be!" was his cry.
"Glad that you think the same way we do," Colon told him. "And now, I
reckon you wonder what Fred's going to do about it."
"If it were myself, I'd take this hat to Cooney, and ask him if it was
his," Bristles went on to say, in his fiery fashion. "Course he'd have
to acknowledge the corn, and then I'd proceed to give him the licking he
deserves."
"We'd kind of expect that of you, Bristles," remarked Colon,
magnanimously, "but you see, Fred'n me, we made up our minds that we'd
given that bunch a pretty good layout as it was. What they need is
something to show the people of this town what a tough lot that Buck
Lemington is dragging around with him."
"But how could you do that?" the other asked.
"Fred thought of taking the hat to school, and telling the story around,
to the teachers and the pupils," Colon explained, in his accommodating
way. "When they learned how these toughs meant to injure Riverport's
chances of winning the great Marathon, just to gratify a little private
spite, the town would soon get too hot for Buck and his cronies. They'd
have to emigrate for a little while, till the storm blew over."
"That sounds good to me!" declared Bristles, changing his way of
thinking, for while a very determined boy, he could always be reached by
argument, and was open to conviction, "and I hope you carry the plan
out, Fred. I'd just like to see those boys put under the ban for a
while. Some of them by rights ought to be in the State Reformatory,
according to my notion. They're getting too fresh with what they call
their pranks, and don't even stop at endangering human life."
"Well, of course we're glad that you haven't such a terrible cold,
Bristles," remarked Fred, "but all the same Colon here is sorry for one
thing."
"What might that be?" asked the said Colon.
"You see," continued Fred, "after I told him about how you called me up,
and wanted an interview right away, because you had something important
to tell, Colon here began to get terribly excited. He kept wondering
what it was you meant to explain; and I know that after we'd run that
mob off, nearly the first thing he said was that he felt cheated out of a
sensation, because you didn't want me so bad after all."
At that Bristles laughed loud and long, at the same time looking queerly
at his guests out of the tail of his eye.
"Too bad to disappoint you, isn't it, fellows?" he went on, in a tone of
mock sympathy, "but say, maybe I might scare up some little news after
all, that'd kind of take the place of the thrilling story they hatched up
for me."
"Let it be on the strict level then, Bristles," warned Colon, severely,
as he shook his forefinger at the other; "we don't want you to invent any
old yarn just to please us."
"What I'm going to tell you," began Bristles, very solemnly, "is straight
goods, believe me. I don't know whether Fred here will think it of much
importance, but late this afternoon I chanced to run across an old
acquaintance. Guess who it was, boys."
"Huh! I bet you it was Corny Ludson!" exclaimed Colon, quick as a flash.
Bristles started, and looked keenly at the long-legged chum.
"Well, you hit mighty close to the bull's-eye, then, Colon," he remarked;
"but you forget I never saw that same Corny Ludson in my life that I know
of, and so how could he be an old acquaintance. But he's got a little
girl named Sadie, a niece, or ward, or something like that, you may
remember."
"Then you saw her?" asked Fred, eagerly enough, for he had been wondering
lately what could have become of those two children.
"Not only saw her," continued the other, "but talked with her."
"Tell us about it, Bristles," urged Colon.
"Why, it was this way," began the other, complying briskly. "She was
just coming out of the cheap grocery, and had several bundles in her
arms, as if she might have been buying bread, and some such things. I
knew her just as soon as I set eyes on her, for she wore that same old
frowsy red dress, and had a little tad of a shawl pinned over her
shoulders. The poor thing looked like a wind'd blow her away, with her
thin, pinched face, and big startled eyes."
"Oh! let all that drop, Bristles," expostulated Colon. "What we want to
know is, how did you come to speak to her, and did she remember you?"
Bristles was bound to tell his story in his own way. Without paying any
attention to this nagging on the part of the tall chum, he kept facing
Fred, and went on deliberately.
"There was a horse and buggy standing at the curb, and say, you never in
all your life saw such a dilapidated outfit. Talk to me about the famous
'one hoss shay,' it couldn't have been a circumstance beside that rig.
Everywhere the shafts were tied up to hold, the harness patched till it
looked all strings, and the animal, well, he was a walking skeleton. Any
other time I'd have laughed myself sick, but I couldn't do that then,
with that poor little thing being the one that drove such an outfit."
"What did you say to her?" asked Fred.
"Oh! I said 'howdy-do, Sadie, don't you remember me?' and she looked
scared at first, and then she actually smiled. She said she hadn't
forgotten the two boys on the river, who had been so kind to Sam and her.
I asked her where she'd been all this time, and she looked kind of
confused and said, 'Oh! around everywhere!' as if they might be a pack
of regular Gypsies, and never knew what it was to have a home of their
own."
"But you say she had some sort of a rig with her," expostulated Colon at
this point of the narrative, "and wouldn't that look as if they'd
squatted down somewhere or other, for a spell?"
"Maybe it would," replied Bristles, "but the chances are they only
borrowed the outfit for the occasion from some poor farmer, paying for
its use by fetching him home some supplies from town. But just then I
remembered about that pin we found in the cave, and I took it out of my
pocket, unwrapping the paper, and all of a sudden holding it before her."
"Did she recognize the breast pin?" Colon asked.
"You'd have thought so by the way her little face lighted up," said the
other, "and reaching out the hand that didn't carry a package, she took
bold of it. Then I made a fool move, just like my silly ways. I sprung
the trap too soon!"
"You told her where you'd found it, said you thought it might be hers,
just because you remembered her wearing something like that, didn't you?"
asked Fred.
"Sure I did, and you just ought to have seen the scared look that came
over her face," Bristles admitted. "She looked all around as if she was
afraid that Corny'd be popping up, and then shook her head again and
again, saying the pin wasn't hers. But, Fred, I know the poor little
girl was telling a fib, because she was afraid if she owned up to the old
piece of fake jewelry that she seemed to value so much, it might get
somebody in a peck of trouble; and we know who that is, don't we?"
"We certainly do!" replied Fred; and he started to tell Bristles how
Colon learned Corny Ludson had also been in Riverport that afternoon,
acting in a suspicious manner.