CHAPTER XVIION THE TRAIL
The school chums sat up late in the dormitory that night, nursing their bruises, and by the time they had got through applying arnica and other lotions, the place smelled like a hospital.
How they could bring the trick home to those who had played it was a problem that was too much for them at the present. They felt sure that the bullies would deny it if taxed with it, and there was no way of actually proving it, no matter how sure they might feel in their own minds.
The matter could of course have been carried to the authorities of the school, and there is no doubt that they would have looked upon it very gravely because of the serious accident that might have resulted from it. But their code of schoolboy ethics was to keep the teachers out of such things and fight it out among themselves. They felt reasonably sure that sometime or other they would get even, and they bided their time.
It was a very lame and sore lot of boys who dragged themselves out of bed when the rising hell rang on the following morning.
“Scubbity-yow!” exclaimed Fred. “I feel as though I’d been in a railroad smash-up.”
“I’m one big ache all over,” groaned Pee Wee.
“Onebigache is right,” grinned Mouser. “You couldn’t be a little one if you tried.”
“My joints creak like a wooden doll’s, every time I go to move,” complained Sparrow.
“I bet I’ll go to pieces on the stairs and have to be shoveled up in bits,” prophesied Skeets.
“We’ll each keep a part to remember you by,” laughed Bobby. “Quit your groaning, you fellows, and let’s go down to the table. You’ll feel better when you get filled up.”
The filling up process was carried out with neatness and despatch, and when it was over the boys were inclined to look on life in a more cheerful way.
“We can’t do anything this morning on account of lessons,” remarked Bobby. “But as soon as they’re over this afternoon, let’s make a break for that hill and see what we can find out.”
“And see how Hicksley and his pals act in the classrooms,” suggested Skeets. “That may give us a tip to go by.”
“I don’t count much on that,” said Mouser. “They’ll be on their guard and won’t want to give themselves away.”
To a certain extent this proved true. There was no attempt on the part of the bullies to gloat over the victims of their trick. But the boys surprised furtive grins and winks that passed between the three when they thought no one was looking, and this confirmed their suspicions that now were almost certainties.
“They did it all right,” pronounced Fred. “I’m sure of it from the way I saw them grinning at each other. But they’ll laugh on the other side of their mouths before long.”
As soon as the boys were free from their duties, they went with all speed to the scene of their misadventure. And again they lamented, when they saw by daylight how thoroughly the hill was spoiled for coasting.
“There must be bushels and bushels of ashes!” exclaimed Mouser, as his eyes roamed over the lower half of the hill.
“It beats me how they managed to get it all here,” observed Skeets.
“It must have been brought a long way,” commented Sparrow. “There’s no place round here they could have got them from.”
“They couldn’t have carried all that stuff themselves,” said Bobby thoughtfully.
“It would have been an awful job,” added Howell, “and those fellows don’t like work well enough for that.”
“They might have hired a man with a horse and wagon,” suggested Skeets.
“If that’s so, there must be some tracks in the snow,” returned Bobby. “Scatter out, fellows, and see if you can find any marks of hoofs or wheels.”
They followed his directions, and in a moment there was a cry from Sparrow.
“Here’re the marks of wheels,” he called. “But I don’t see any horse tracks.”
There, indeed, were the clearly defined print of wheels leading in a roundabout way toward the town. As they looked a little more closely they could see too where a man’s feet had broken at places through the crust of snow.
“It must have been a hand cart,” said Bobby, “and you can see that it held ashes from the bits that lie along its tracks. That’s what they brought it in and you can bet on it.”
“There aren’t many hand carts in town,” observed Fred reflectively. “How many do you fellows remember seeing?”
“The laundryman has one,” replied Howell, “and the paper man has another. Those are the only ones I know of, except that shaky thing of Dago Joe’s.”
“He’s the fellow!” cried Fred excitedly. “None of the others would lend their carts for anything like that.”
“Let’s follow up the tracks and see where they lead to,” suggested Sparrow.
This was detective work to their liking and even Pee Wee made no objections to the tramp over the snow.
Their satisfaction was increased when they found that the tracks led straight to the roundhouse. Here there were great piles of ashes that had been dropped from the fire boxes of the locomotives when they were being shifted or put up for the night. It was quite clear that here was the place where the hand cart had been filled.
But their elation received a sudden check when they prepared to trace the wheel prints to the shabby shack in town where Joe lived with his numerous brood. For now they were in the outskirts of the town, where wagons were coming and going all the time, and the tracks they had been following were lost in a multitude of others.
They looked at each other a little sheepishly.
“Stung!” muttered Fred.
“Bum detectives we are,” grinned Sparrow.
“We’re up a tree now for sure,” declared Sparrow.
“All this walk for nothing,” growled Pee Wee.
“We do seem to be stumped,” admitted Bobby. “What do you say to going to Joe and asking him right up and down whether he did it or not?”
“Swell chance we’d have of getting anything out of him,” commented Mouser.
“He’d lie about it sure,” declared Sparrow.
“I suppose likely he would,” agreed Bobby. “But we might be able to tell something by the way he acts. It won’t do any harm to try anyhow.”
They found Dago Joe pottering about some work in the small yard in front of his shack. But Joe had seen them coming and his uneasy conscience had taken alarm. If he had had time, he would have slipped inside the house and had his wife or one of the children deny that he was at home. But it was too late for that, and he took refuge in the assumed ignorance that had served him many times before.
He greeted them with a genial smile that showed his mouthful of white teeth which was the only personal attraction he possessed.
“Goota day,” he said blandly.
“How are you, Joe?” said Bobby, as spokesman for the party. “Been pretty busy?”
Joe’s mouth drooped.
“Not do nottin much,” he answered. “Beesness bad, ver’ bad.”
“Carry any loads of ashes lately?” Bobby went on.
Joe looked puzzled. Then a light came into his face.
“Hash?” he said delightedly. “Me likea hash. Tasta good. Bambino like it too.”
“Not hash, but ashes,” returned Bobby, joining in the laugh of the rest of the boys. “You know, ashes—what falls out of the stove, wood ashes, coal ashes.”
Joe’s face resembled that of a graven image.
“No unnerstan,” he said, shrugging his shoulders with an air of perplexity.
In the face of his determination, the boys saw that it was of no use to prolong the conversation.
“You’re a good actor, Joe,” said Bobby, half vexed, half amused, as the boys turned to go.
Joe showed his teeth again in an engaging smile that embraced all the party and waved them a cordial good-bye.
“How sweetly the old rascal smiles at us!” grinned Mouser.
“Laughs at us, you mean,” snorted Fred. “He’s tickled to death inside to think of the way he’s got the best of us.”
“I bet if we asked him if he’d like to have us give him five dollars, he’d understand, all right,” laughed Sparrow.
“He couldn’t grab the money too quick,” agreed Skeets.
“Well, we haven’t wasted our afternoon anyway,” Bobby summed up. “We’ve found out how the ashes were taken there, and we feel dead certain in our own minds that Joe did it. We know, of course, that he didn’t do it of his own accord. Somebody hired him to do it. Now if we could only find some one who saw Hicksley and Joe talking together, it would help some.”
“But that wouldn’t prove anything,” objected Sparrow. “They might be talking about the weather.”
“Or about hash,” interjected Pee Wee.
“Hash seems to stick in your crop,” grinned Skeets.
“I wish some of it were sticking there right now,” answered Pee Wee, “especially if it were like the hash that Meena makes.”
“By the way, fellows,” chimed in Fred, “it must be close to supper time this very minute. Let’s beat it.”
They started off on a run.
“The one that gets there last is a Chinaman,” Skeets flung back over his shoulder.
Pee Wee was the Chinaman.