CHAPTER XIIPUNISHMENT POSTPONED
There was a long pause, and a very significant pause it was. The boys stared at the cap in Step’s hand; then they glanced from one to another. Here and there a head nodded, as if in answer to an unspoken question; but it was left to Poke to break the silence.
“Jupiter crickets! That settles it, I guess. Well, I never have liked Tom Orkney, but I didn’t think him up to this sort of thing!”
“Or down to it!” cried Herman Boyd.
“Now you’re talking!” chimed in the Trojan. “Lowest-down trick that ever was!”
“Trick! Huh! Worse than that!” growled Poke. “Why, that rock might have killed one of us!”
The Shark appeared to be estimating the weight of the stone. “Yes; it’s heavy enough,” he said calmly. “If it had struck anybody squarely, the result might have been fatal.”
There was a wrathful gleam in Sam’s eye. “Where did you find the cap, Step?” he demanded. “Let’s get down to business.”
“It was on the ground, back of the barn—low limb of one of the apple trees must have knocked it off his head. Great luck that I stumbled upon it; and that was just what I did. Too dark to see anything, but my foot caught in something, and I stopped and picked the something up. And here it is!”
Poke was wagging his head in his peculiar fashion. “Fellows, it’s as plain as day. Orkney has been too proud to wear the cap to school, but he didn’t mind putting it on at night, when nobody would notice it. Then he came sneaking around the club-house. The Shark must have had a glimpse of him at the window. When we went out to see who was there, he lay low. As soon as we came back into the house, he let drive the boulder at the first chance, and then bolted for all he was worth. He had such a start that he got away; but he didn’t dare stop to pick up the cap. And now, I say, we have him where we want him.”
“You bet we have!”
“That’s hitting the nail on the head!”
“Gee! but it was a cowardly job!”
So spoke the Trojan, Step and Boyd. Poke warmed to his theme, after the manner of orators, encouraged by applause.
“We’ve got him where we want him, and we’ll put him through the works. I tell you, he’ll be mighty sorry before this thing is ended. Why, he ought to be arrested and sent to jail!”
“H-m-m-m!” It was a murmur tinged with disapproval, which Poke did not fail to perceive.
“Wait a minute, fellows!” he said hastily. “I know what you’re thinking, and I guess you’re right. We can take care of this case ourselves. We will, too! If the club can’t defend itself, it ought to go out of business.”
There was another murmur, all approval.
“It may have been Step’s scrap in the beginning, but it’s our scrap now,” Poke went on. “It’s a club affair. That stone was thrown at the bunch—at Sam, for instance, as much as at Step.”
The Shark grunted. “Huh! Be accurate, Poke, be accurate! It wasn’t thrown at Stepat all. He was out of range—across the room from the rest of us. He wasn’t in sight from the window.”
“Eh? What’s that?”
“It was the fact—come to think of it,” Step himself admitted. “I remember I’d left the crowd.”
“Humph! Don’t see that that makes any difference,” argued Poke.
“It doesn’t—in one way,” said the Shark. “In another, it does. It means that the person who chucked that stone wasn’t especially after Step. No doubt he took a good look into the room before he let drive. And, as I recall the position of each of us, Sam stood where he must have been the real bull’s-eye of the target.”
“But what diff——”
The Shark did not let Poke finish the query. “The difference between getting things straight or crooked,” he rapped out. “How can you solve a problem——”
“Oh, hang mathematics!” Poke interrupted, in turn. “Cut ’em out! This isn’t a recitation; it’s a row! Let’s hear what Sam has to say.”
Sam had been keeping silent, but with growing difficulty. He was, as we know, naturally impulsive, and still a beginner in the practice of the policy of Safety First. Moreover, he was not a fellow of the sort to make ready excuse for attacks which smacked of cowardice or treachery; and his patience had been sorely tried by the series of depredations about his home. While his clubmates had debated, he had been considering not only the stone-throwing but also the earlier instances of what he was now sure was somebody’s revenge. The cap apparently settled the question of identity. Likewise, the Shark’s observation regarding the target had its weight. Sam struggled to keep his temper, but it was like a case of bottling steam in a boiler and fanning the fire beneath. When you treat a boiler so, there is likely to be an explosion.
“What have I to say?” The words seemed to force themselves from his lips. “You fellows don’t dream how much I could say! This thing to-night is only a link in a chain.”
The others stared at him in amazement.
“Link—link in a chain?” Step repeated.
“Just that! A chain of meannesses! Listen!” And Sam went on to describe briefly, but forcefully, the persecution to which he believed he had been subjected. “And now we’ve had the stoning,” he added. “There is one explanation, and only one. Tom Orkney has dropped Step and taken me on. He hates me more for interfering than he hates Step for squabbling with him. And just as that’s the only explanation, there’s just one way to handle the case—and that’s for me to settle with Tom Orkney. And I will—don’t you worry!”
None of his hearers took his words lightly. All were ready to consider them very gravely. Here, indeed, was an issue for a youthful court of honor; and it behooves such courts, young or old, to pass judgment in all solemnity.
“Well, I guess you’re entitled,” said Poke slowly.
The others, with one exception, nodded assent. The Shark looked unconvinced.
“Talking about chains,” he remarked, “you mustn’t forget the old rule: the chain’s no stronger than its weakest link. And there isa link that may be weak. I don’t say it is, but I do say it may be.”
“Rats!” snapped Step.
The Shark wheeled to face him. “Rats nothing! What’s the record—the school record—for the shot put?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The record. What is it?”
“Oh, thirty or thirty-five feet for the twelve-pound shot.”
The Shark frowned. “Confound it! but can’t you chaps make anything exact? ‘Thirty or thirty-five feet’! How’s anybody to make computations with all unknown quantities?”
“What are you trying to compute?”
The Shark juggled the stone, which he still held. “Humph! This weighs more than twelve pounds, I’ll bet—may run up to fifteen,” said he. “But what am I figuring on? Why, the amount of force required to send it through the arc this stone described.”
“Twelve to fifteen pounds!” jeered Step. “Seems to me you’re furnishing some of the unknown quantities yourself.”
“I am,” said the Shark. “I admit it. I also admit that I can’t reach satisfactory results from such data. But the results I do get—subject to revision, of course—make me doubt that Tom Orkney could have done the job. When I have the stone weighed, and when I measure the distance across the room, and add a good estimate of the distance the thrower stood from the window, I believe I can plot a curve——”
A chorus of shouts interrupted him. The non-mathematical members of the club would have none of such follies. Evidence? Wasn’t the cap evidence enough to convict Orkney?
Stoutly the Shark maintained that one should not put too great faith in circumstantial evidence.
“What! You’d put more in your old curves and calculations?” cried Step.
“Every time!” vowed the Shark.
Sam cut short the discussion. “Look here, fellows!” he said sharply. “I’m going to thrash Orkney, and there’s no more to be said about it.”
“Well, thrash ahead!” growled the Shark. “I don’t object to the general proposition;but I am pointing out that you may be wrong as to your reason for thrashing him.”
“I’ll risk that!” cried Sam hotly. “And I’ll even the score at the first chance I get.”
This decision, warmly admired and praised by the club, seemed to be in a fair way for accomplishment on Monday when Sam, walking alone to school, met Orkney at a street corner.
Meditation had cooled his anger, but had not lessened his determination to have a speedy accounting. He put himself in Orkney’s path, and gave him monosyllabic greeting.
“Huh!” It must be confessed that there was a distinctly challenging note in Sam’s growl.
“Huh!” responded Orkney. In fairness it is to be stated that he betrayed no sign of anxiety; and instead of halting, stepped aside and passed the boy holding the center of the walk.
Sam turned, and overtook him in three long strides. Then they moved on together, but with a space of three or four feet between them.
Orkney gazed straight before him. The sullenness of his expression may have been a trifle more marked than usual. Sam, studying him from the corner of an eye, decided that his enemy was merely playing a waiting game.
There was a moment’s silence. Then said Sam, very grimly:
“This thing has got to stop—see?”
The tone was more impressive than the words. Orkney stopped, and inspected the other coolly.
“Has, eh? Well, what might ‘this thing’ be?” he inquired.
“You know well enough!”
“Guess again. I don’t.”
“You do.”
A dull red showed in Orkney’s cheeks. “That’s the same thing as telling me I don’t tell the truth.”
“Does sound like it.”
“Mean to call me a liar?”
“Yes—if you say you don’t know.”
Orkney’s fists clenched; but Sam, warily watching, saw that the enemy kept himself in hand.
Again there was a pause. Sam broke it:
“There’s no use in your trying to put up a bluff. It won’t go. You understand perfectly what I mean.”
“YOU’RE LOOKING FOR TROUBLE”
“YOU’RE LOOKING FOR TROUBLE”
“YOU’RE LOOKING FOR TROUBLE”
“I understand thatyou’re looking for trouble,” said Orkney slowly. “That’s nothing new with you and your crowd—you think you own the earth, and you’d like to fence in this part of it for your own stamping grounds. You had things your own way till I came along, and you’ve always been down on me because I wouldn’t tail on after your procession. You’d rather interfere with me than eat, any of you. Why, just the other day Step Jones——”
“Leave Step out of this!” Sam interposed. He had not been able to reconcile himself wholly to Step’s performance; and Orkney having found a weak spot in his armor, his tone was more belligerent than ever. “You’re dealing with me and not with Jones this time. And Step doesn’t beat dogs, and cut clothes-lines, and heave rocks through windows.”
“Well, who does?”
“You do!” roared Sam.
Orkney pulled up. He faced his accuser, and his eyes did not fall before Sam’s.
“Parker, you’re talking like a wild man,” he said.
“Wild, am I? Not much! I’ve got proof!”
Orkney shrugged his shoulders. “It’s plain enough you’re looking for a fight, and don’t care how you get it. Now, I tell you, in the first place, that all this stuff you’re hinting and insinuating is gibberish to me; and in the second place that if you want fight I’ll give you all you’re looking for and more, too.”
“Now?” demanded Sam.
“No,” said Orkney, and grinned a queer, savage grin. “What’s more, you know why I won’t fight now. It’s my day to speak for the Lester prize, and a pretty chance I’d have for it, wouldn’t I, standing up before the school with a black eye or a cut lip? You talk about bluffs! Where’s there a bigger bluff than asking a fellow to fight when you know he can’t take you on? Or maybe this is your game: You’re scheming to batter me up so that one of your gang can carry off the Lester, eh?”
“I hadn’t thought of the prize-speaking!”
“Well, I’ve been thinking of it for some time. And I don’t propose to let you ruin my chances.”
Sam fell back a pace. There was an element of reason in the other’s contention, which he could not ignore.
“Well, if I let you off now——” he began.
Orkney’s grin was sardonic. “‘Let me off’ is good, but we’ll also let that pass. I’m busy this morning, as I’ve explained, but after that—well, you can suit your own convenience in picking a time for taking a good licking.”
“This afternoon, then——” stormed Sam.
“Oh, suit yourself!” said Orkney curtly, and marched off.