The day passed rapidly. The boys were the first in the dining-car when a
meal was announced, and be it said they were almost the last to leave.
They had been provided with plenty of money for "eats," as the two
Major-fathers wisely remembered that a boy is never so hungry as when
travelling. Also their section was the first one made up. They were
tired, and sleepy.
They tossed up to see which should take the upper berth, both boys
wanting it, and Frank won.
They spread their suitcases out on Bill's bed to open them, then Frank
decided to take his up with him and climbed up into his lofty berth
while Bill boosted and lifted the suitcase after him. Bill had packed
his own suitcase for the first time, and his mother had smiled as she
saw him carefully plant his pajamas on the very bottom. She said
nothing, however, as she knew that another time he would lay them on the
top where he could get them without any trouble. Frank had done the same
thing, so for a little there was silence as the boys spread everything
on the beds in a wild effort to locate the missing garments. At last
they were found, and the suitcases repacked, hair brushes and tooth
paste being salvaged as they went.
As Bill slipped into his pajama coat something pricked him. The pocket
was pinned together with a large, rusty pin. He drew it out and from the
pocket took a folded envelope.
"What in time is this?" he murmured to himself, then smiled as he
reflected that it must be a little love letter from his mother. He
winked mischievously at her picture on his wrist as he tore open the
envelope. But there was no letter from mother in the envelope. Instead
it was stuffed with perfectly new, crisp five-dollar bills. There were
twenty of them. Twenty! Bill counted them twice. Then still disbelieving
his eyes, he laid the beautiful green engravings all over his sheet and
counted them one by one with his forefinger. Twenty! He noticed a small
piece of paper in the envelope and examined it. It read briefly:
"BILL:
"i looked all over Lawton for sumething nise for you to take to
school. So please spend this on something you like. I will tell
your mother what I done so she wont kick. Anyhow I aint afraid of
her kicking ever since the day i broke her big glass dish that you
said was cut. It cut me all right, but she never said a word, and I
bet she wont now when i explane. So remember when this you see,
remember Lee. That is some poetry partly mine and partly out of a
book. If I had kept at school the way I should of, I could have
made the whole piece up myself. Rite soon to yours as ever,
"LEE."
Bill gasped. Then he gathered the precious money tight in his hand and
standing on the edge of his berth, hoisted himself up to Frank's level.
"Glue your eye to this!" he whispered loudly over the racket of the
train. "Gee, have you got the same?"
At the sound of Bill's voice, Frank, who was staring at a handful of
bills, started violently, then forced a rather shaky smile.
"Found this in my pajama coat," he said; then as Bill waved his fist,
"What! Have you the same thing?"
"Surest thing you know!" said Bill. "Never had so much money in my life.
The darned old peach!"
"I haven't counted it," said Frank. "It sort of scared me. Who do you
think gave it to us?"
"Didn't you read your letter?" asked Bill, wiggling the rest of the way
up and taking a paper like his own from Frank's envelope. He handed it
over and Frank unfolded and read it. Reluctantly, but seeing no way out
of it, he handed it over to Bill.
"Frank," said the letter, "Lawton is a dead one. Nuthing in it for
boys except rattles and guns and pink silk shirts and stick pins.
But your dad wouldnt let you have the pins and your mothers
wouldn't see you found dead in them shirts, and the pins was sort
of advansed, so I want you to spend this money on something you
like when you get to whatever it is.
"Just a present from your friend
"LEE."
"P. S. Say, Frank, lets take a fresh start me and you. I wouldnt
believe you would lie or steal even if some do do such. So you must
take it from me that a good indian is a good indian just as a good
white man is good.
"So that all we want to bother about that.
"Your true friend
"LEE."
"Well, this beats all!" said Bill, handing back the letter. "Isn't Lee
the _peach_ though? I wish I was sure Mom would let me keep this. Isn't
it great--all new fives! I suppose he thought it would be handy that way
for us to spend."
"What does he mean about not believing that I lie or steal?" said Frank,
scowling.
"Why, just what he says, you nut!" exclaimed Bill. "Can't you read? He
means he knows _you_ wouldn't do anything wrong, and so you must believe
in _him_. I bet he has overheard some of the things you have said about
him. Anyhow, it is just as he says. You must keep his present, and make
a new start. He wants to be good friends with you and wants you to like
him. And I should say he deserves it."
Frank said very little about the present but Bill didn't notice. He was
too busy voicing his own surprise and gratitude. Before he finally slid
down into his own berth he had spent the crisp new fives twenty times
over. He thought he was too excited to sleep, but after he had pinned
the present back in his coat pocket, and had carefully laid himself down
on that side, and tied all the curtains shut, and balanced his suitcase
on end at the front of the berth so a possible robber would tip it over
on him, he was asleep in two seconds. It would have worked all right at
that, only by-and-by in the middle of a dream where Bill was batter in a
baseball nine that used ice-cream cones instead of balls, the train went
around a curve and over came the suitcase. Bill was awake in a second,
and for a moment had a hand-to-hand fight with the curtains before he
realized what had happened. With a laugh he felt for his precious
pocket, and slept again.
But in the upper berth Frank Anderson had tossed Lee's friendly letter
and the packet of bills down to the end of the berth as though they were
worthless. He was only a boy and should have slept but all night long he
lay and stared at the little electric bulb burning dimly over his head.
He lay and thought; and his thoughts burned like fire.
It was very late the following night when they reached their
destination. Bill had come to the conclusion that Frank was not a very
jolly traveling companion. He was moody and inclined to be really
grouchy. And touchy.... _Whew!_ It was all Bill could do to say the
right thing. Finally he remembered that some people are always car-sick
when they travel, and on being asked, Frank admitted that he didn't feel
so very good. So Bill let him alone and things went better. Bill made a
good many friends that day and came within an ace of being kissed by a
pale little lady who found a chance to take a much needed nap because
Bill took charge of her two-year-old terror of a baby boy while she
slept. There was an old gentleman too, who asked him a million or more
questions, and enjoyed himself very much. He asked the boys to take
luncheon with him, and proved that he had not forgotten his boyhood by
ordering the _dandiest_ dinner--even a lot of things that were not on
the bill. He was a director of the road, or vice-president, or
something, the porter told Bill in a whisper, but Bill didn't pay much
attention. What the old gentleman _didn't_ tell was that he was a
trustee of the very school the boys were going to attend. Some day they
were going to meet him again, but that is another story.
Anyhow, it was very late when they arrived and they were piloted to
their room by a pale young instructor who met them at the station in an
ancient and wheezy Ford belonging to the school. They were the last
boys to arrive, he told them, and school was to begin at eight o'clock
in the morning. He warned them to be perfectly quiet as the boys were
all asleep and it was against rules to speak or have the lights on after
nine. But they were to be allowed a light to undress by, and he would
come in in fifteen minutes and put it out.
They undressed in about a tenth of the time it usually took for that
ceremony, and even Bill, who forgot to brush his teeth and had to get up
again to do it, was deep under the covers when Mr. Nealum, the
instructor, came silently in, said goodnight without a smile, turned
off the light, found the door by the aid of a big flashlight he carried
and silently disappeared.
"Undertaker!" whispered Frank.
"Shut up!" said Bill. He listened intently, then said under his breath,
"Be careful! I thought I heard him breathe!"
"He is gone," answered Frank. "I heard him walk away."
"Not much you did!" said Bill. "He pussyfooted it. Must have had rubber
soles on his shoes."
"I heard him anyhow," insisted Frank. The boys lay still, thinking over
their new situation. It was very exciting. They were not lonely. Their
narrow beds, but little wider than the quartermaster cots at Sill, were
side by side, nearly touching. Presently Bill spoke.
"What's the matter with you, Frank?"
"Nothing! What ails _you_?" retorted Frank.
"Nothing, but you _breathe_ so hard--sort of choky and gaspy."
"That's you doing _that_," said Frank. "I can't sleep with you snorting
so."
"I tell you it's you!" said Bill. "I listened to myself breathe, and you
couldn't hear me. I was breathing just like this." He gave a sample, and
you could not hear him. Then as both boys listened, things began to
happen.
Frank made a light leap from his bed and landed on top of the stunned,
scared and astonished Bill.
"Sssssh!" hissed Frank. "The money!... Robbers!... Under the bed!"
Frozen with horror, the boys listened intently. The breathing _was_
under Bill's bed. It seemed as though they lay listening for a week
before Bill made a violent motion to free himself from Frank's grasp.
"Where you going?" hissed that youth.
"To light the light and give the alarm. If he tries to get out, we will
hold him."
"Stay here!" commanded Frank.
For answer Bill wrenched himself free and bounded out on the floor. With
another bound he reached the light and turned the button. No light
responded. He stood beside the wall, uncertain what move to make next.
The sensible thing seemed to be to shout an alarm or else go out and
find Mr. Nealum. In either case what would the robber do to Frank, who
was roosting right above him? The breathing under the bed continued, now
fast, now slow, up and down. Bill had heard something like that
somewhere.
As his fright subsided, he recognized the sounds as very familiar. Bill
had not lived in the apartments at Sill for nothing. Too, too often had
he listened to the sounds that trickled clearly through the
plaster-board partitions. Those partitions were like sounding boards.
From one apartment to the next, they transferred the arguments,
discussions and all goings-on on the other side. Bill laughed
soundlessly in the dark. The lights had been turned off at some central
switch, and the darkness was intense. He was lost in the strange room.
He took a step sidewise along the wall and stubbed his toe against a
suitcase. Bending, he found that it was his own. The problem was solved.
Rummaging hastily, he found his flashlight.
"Frank!" he called in a low whisper.
"W-w-what?" quavered from the dark.
Following the direction of the low sound, Bill crossed the room until
his outstretched hand collided with Frank's eye. This mostly happens,
you know. Frank stifled a howl as Bill hissed, "Listen! We have him now!
He's asleep--snoring. Let's take a look at him and then beat it for Mr.
Nealum. He must be somewhere about."
"Don't you do it!" whispered Frank, clutching Bill. "Find Mr. Nealum
first. You go to flashing that light in his eyes and you will wake him
up. He's apt to kill us before you could get to the door."
"Think what a lark it will be if we take him prisoner all by ourselves!
We can tie him up with these sheets in no time. Now I tell you how we
will work it. As soon as we see just how he is lying, I will shove the
bed off him, and you lam him good and plenty with that dictionary. Soon
as you do that I will throw all the blankets and bedclothes and the
mattress on him and then we will sit on him and yell. Somebody ought to
come."
Frank still objected, sure from the size of the sounds that were now
easily recognizable as snores, that the robber was really in a deep
sleep.
"If he is anything like Lee," he said, "he will throw us off in a
second."
"But you are going to lam him one!" whispered Bill patiently. "You must
hit hard enough to knock him out--stun him."
"Well, have it your own way!" conceded Frank. He commenced to realize
what a wonderful introduction this would be to the boys of the school if
it went through as smoothly as Bill seemed to think it would.
"Here, take the flashlight, but don't turn it on," whispered Bill. "I
want to get the bedclothes ready."
Silently and quickly he loosened the tucked-in sheets and blankets. He
rolled up the sleeves of his pajama coat
"Now," he said, "let's take a look before we roll the bed away."
Clutching the dictionary in both hands, Frank slid to the floor where he
crouched, shivering from excitement. Bill, on his knees, folded a
handkerchief over the flashlight to dim it, then pressed the button.
Slowly he turned it under the bed. The dim light rested on a tumbled
shock of hair and a flushed face, pillowed uncomfortably on a cramped
and doubled arm.
Snores rattled furiously from the open mouth. Sleeping the sleep of the
weary, the thief lay completely at their mercy.
"Gosh!" said Bill as he looked.
"Gee-roosalem!" murmured Frank.
With a bang the big dictionary slipped from his hands and landed on the
floor.
The intruder with a violent start opened his eyes and looked at them.