CHAPTER IIITHE GYPSY CARAVAN

CHAPTER IIITHE GYPSY CARAVAN

“It’sa screamer!” exclaimed Lanky, immediately.

“What I call a peach!” ejaculated Bones Shadduck. “Say, what was I tellin’ you, Lanky; didn’t I say our Frank would get up a plan that was goin’ to beat anything you ever heard tell of? Oh! hurry up, and let’s get things started.”

“Well, suppose then you take this doubled rope, which I’ve coiled up, and see if you can land the end in the branches of Lanky’s tree.”

“And as near me as you can, Bones, remember,” advised the one most interested; “because he’s just a-listenin’ as if he knew what we were talkin’ about; and, if he gets half a chance, I reckon he’ll take that same rope and wrap it all around those gold-tipped horns of his.”

So Bones, after finding how he could stand on the top of the rail fence in a fairly steady fashion, tooka survey of the situation, and decided just what amount of effort it would require to send the end of the doubled rope into the tree.

He started to wind up by whirling the coils around his head, after the fashion of a cowboy about to make a cast. Then, as Lanky, becoming impatient, begged him to make haste, Bones let fly.

His first attempt proved a failure, for the rope fell short. The bull seemed so curious about all these actions that he came over to look at the rope, which Bones was now dragging back in haste.

“Keep off there, you!” he called to the animal; “just go back and mind your own business, which I take it right now is to watch Lanky yonder,” and, as though understanding what was said, sure enough, the heavy-set animal turned immediately, trotting back under the tree, and looking up longingly at the imprisoned boy, while emitting a low bellow.

“Is that the best you can do, Bones?” demanded Lanky, wishing to spur the other on; “if it is, better let Frank take a turn, because I know he can make a longer throw than that was.”

“You wait,” answered the aroused Bones; “I can do better than that. Just thought I ought to make a try throw first. This time I’ll put a little more steam in it, and you get ready to grab, Lanky.”

“Right here, Bones, put her in my mitt!” called the other, holding out his hands as though he mightbe a catcher behind the rubber, calling to his slabmate how to toss them in.

Frank steadied Bones from below, so that he could feel on firmer footing. And this time the rope, flying far out, and uncoiling as it went, struck in among the lower branches of the tree.

“Catch hold, Lanky, quick!” cried the thrower of the lasso.

Lanky almost tumbled out of the tree in his eagerness to reach the rope; but fortunately it had caught on a branch, and he was able to get his hands on it.

“Now climb up, and pass it along,” called Frank.

“Yes,” added Bones, “there’s a hunky-dory place up yonder to tie it to, after you’ve doubled it like Frank said. That’s it, Lanky; put the rope around there, you know.”

Lanky understood and fastened the knotted end of the line to the upper branch of the tree—an especially strong one it was, too.

Afterwards Frank climbed the second tree beyond the rail fence; and as Lanky had tied his end of the doubled clothesline to an upper limb, Frank did the same.

There now stretched a taut doubled line, with a downward slant, from the tree under which the bull waited patiently for his prey to drop.

“Looks good to me!” announced Bones, as hechanged his position on the fence so as to get a better view of the coming “stunt” of the thin chum.

“Course it does,” grumbled Lanky, as he prepared to trust himself to the slender line. “Think I’m a featherweight, do you, just because I’m thin; but bones weigh a heap, just you remember. What if she breaks, Frank?”

“It will hold you, all right, Lanky,” replied the other, confidently; “I tested the single line with my weight and it stood firm. Now that we’ve made it double, honestly, I believe it would hold even Buster Billings.”

As the boy mentioned was considered the fattest scholar, without exception, in any one of the three high schools, such positive information should have gone far toward giving Lanky confidence.

“All right, here I come, then. Phew! I hope the blooming old thing doesn’t give enough to let me down so he can poke his horns into me.”

That was really the only thing that Frank feared in the least. It was with more or less concern, therefore, that he saw Lanky get in readiness to start sliding along the rope. As this had a pretty good slant from the lone tree’s upper branches, he need not do any climbing, but just work his way along, and remember to hold on with a firm grip, no matter what happened.

“Wow! there he comes!” exclaimed Bones Shadduck,as the thin boy let go his hold above, and launched himself upon his aerial passage.

It was a strange sight indeed, with Lanky moving slowly but steadily down that doubled rope, and the prancing bull keeping directly underneath him, giving vent to all sorts of queer noises as he even reared up on his short hind legs and tried to reach Lanky’s long, dangling figure with his horns.

“Thank goodness, the rope holds!” cried Bones, who had been rather doubtful of its strength all along.

“And it doesn’t seem to sag so very much,” added Frank, mentally figuring how close bull and boy might come before Lanky found shelter across the line of fence. “It’s going to be a close shave, I’m afraid, though, Lanky; can’t you pull up your legs some; he might get you when you’re near the fence?”

“Sure he can,” remarked Bones. “You know what sort of gymnast Lanky is. Watch him put his feet in his pockets now.”

Of course, the dangling boy did not go quite that far, because in the first place he had no such thing as a pocket in his running togs, and even if he had, he felt no inclination to carry out the suggestion of humorous Bones. But he did throw one leg up over the line, and this took his form just so much further away from the ugly horns below.

In this fashion then Lanky passed over the fence, and was safe. The baffled bull seemed to know that his intended prey had escaped him. Perhaps he felt that the boy on the fence must be laughing at him. At any rate he made a sudden, wicked lunge in the direction of Bones, and that worthy, being taken by surprise, might have suffered if he had not allowed himself to simply fall in a heap on the ground outside of the rails.

Bang! came the rushing bull against the fence, which quivered before the onset, and might even have given way, only that it had been stoutly built to withstand such rushes.

“Bah! don’t you wish you could?” jeered Bones, struggling to his feet, his fright a thing of the past; and he made a face at the bull, that was just two feet away, although separated by that barrier of stout rails.

“How are you, Lanky; all right?” asked Frank, as the long figure of the rescued chum appeared in sight, dropping down out of the second tree.

“Well, I seem to be all here,” replied the other, with a broad smile; “but when that old beast was trying to reach me, I began to think he’d have my shins scraped, more or less. That was a bully good thought of yours, Frank. Queerest ride I ever took in all my life. Talk to me about toboggan slides—why,they’re not in it with a rope run, and a jumpin’ bull underneath.”

“Who’ll get the rope, Frank?” asked Bones.

“You can, if you feel like it,” replied the other, with a smile.

“Excuse me, but it’d have to be something more’n an old clothesline that would tempt me to go into that field again,” Bones declared.

“Well,” Frank went on, “fortunately there’s no need of anyone going right now, because I told the farmer’s wife what I meant to do to get Lanky out of there, and she said to leave the rope where it was. Her husband would get it later on, after the bull was in the barn for the night.”

“Let me have five minutes’ rest after that little slide, Frank,” entreated Lanky, “and then I’ll be ready to join you both in another run across to the road. It must have been the strain that told on me. Right now my heart is beating like fun.”

“Sure thing,” assented Bones; “mine is, too, because I thought that black beast was going to get me when he ducked my way with a whoop. Say, ain’t he just the limit now, fellows? Old Hobson’ll get in trouble with that critter some fine day. He ought not to keep such a wicked animal around.”

“Oh! well,” Frank remarked, “you know we really had no business going through his pasture. Even if you got hurt, your father couldn’t have recovereddamages if Hobson chose to take it to the courts. When you trespass, you lose your rights up to a certain extent. How about it now, Lanky, feel like you could stand a grilling run again?”

“I’m as right as ever, Frank; and now that the whole thing’s over I’m ready to laugh at it as hard as the next one. It sure was the queerest thing that ever happened to me. A dog had me treed once—a bulldog that guarded an apple tree belonging to our next-door neighbor. Our apples were good, you know, but his seemed to be just the right kind I was lookin’ for.”

“What happened?” asked Bones.

“Why, the neighbor came along and called the dog off,” Lanky replied, with one of his customary shrugs; “me to the woodshed as soon as my dad heard about it, and—well, what’s the use saying anything more? I never like to think of that same interview, give you my word, fellows.”

They had by now started off again. Lanky seemed to show no signs of having suffered because of the strain he had just gone through. These thin, wiry boys are able to stand a tremendous lot of knocking about, without feeling any bad effects. Had it been Buster Billings, now, who was a prisoner in that tree, they could never have effected his release in the way Lanky was saved. His weight would have caused any line to sag, so that the poorfellow would have been an easy mark for the butting horns of the bull.

After leaving the farm of Mr. Hobson behind the runners found that they would have to pass over some more dubious ground. Frank realized that unless some better course was found than this it would be the height of folly for a runner to think he could save time by leaving the firm road, and taking to the cross country. And being a good, square sportsman he determined to do all he could to warn the Clifford and Bellport fellows against any such attempt. Still, they had the same privilege of examining the ground that the Columbia High boys did, and if it struck one of them that he cared to take chances that was really his own affair.

“There’s the road, fellows!” said Frank, after they had ploughed through a lot of soft ground, and were thoroughly disgusted with it all.

“Oh! happy day!” sang Lanky. “When you hear of me trying to take a short-cut on that same Marathon race, just engage a room for me at the insane asylum; won’t you?”

“But looky there, what under the sun have we got now, boys?” called out Bones, who happened just then to be a little in the lead of the runners.

“Wagons, hey?” exclaimed Lanky; “and all the colors of the rainbow at that. Jupiter whiz! did you ever see such a gay crowd? Say, Frank, thesemust be the gypsies that hang around Budd’s Corners every other summer; don’t you think so?”

“Just what they are,” came the reply; “but there’s twice as many this year as ever before.”

“And would you see the fine wagons they’ve got along?” remarked Bones, as they stood upon the lower fence rail to watch the caravan pass. “Most of ’em are fitted up, they tell me, like the cabin of a boat, with sleeping bunks and a cooking range. I’d just like to say that one of those wagons must be worth a heap of money. How do they make it all, Frank, do you think?” and he lowered his voice, for the head of the procession was now very close by, and the boy did not wholly like the looks of the swarthy men who drove those wagons along toward the first of the line.

“They do a lot of horse trading,” Frank replied; “and are mighty smart at it, too. The ordinary farmer has little chance against a gypsy in a trade; though he may think he’s some pumpkins, as they say. Those horses are a pretty good lot, let me tell you, fellows,” as the wagons began to pass by.

There must have been at least ten of them, all told, mostly new ones, with all the comforts known to modern wagon travelers. The boys watched the procession pass with considerable interest, and from the way the gypsies stared at them they excited almost as much curiosity, on account of their runningclothes, as the gypsies did in them. And it was while they stood in this way that Lanky suddenly began to show a strange excitement, turning toward his chums with a puzzled look on his face.

“Say, perhaps you fellows didn’t see that little girl trying to attract our attention in one of those vans?” he remarked, with more or less eagerness. “The old gypsy woman pulled her down in a big hurry, but, Frank—Bones, I sure believe that she was holding out her baby hands to us, like she wanted to ask us to help her!”

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