Fast Nine; or, A Challenge from Fairfield
CHAPTER I.
ON THE WAY HOME FROM THE FISHING HOLE
A party of five boys, ranging in age around fifteen or sixteen, trudged rather wearily along the bank of a small stream known as the Sunflower River. Some miles beyond this point it merged its clear waters with those of the broader Sweetwater, which river has figured before now in these stories of the Hickory Ridge boys.
As they carried several strings of pretty good-looking fish, the chances were the straggling group must have been over at the larger stream trying their luck. And as black bass have a failing for beginning to bite just when fellows ought to be starting for home this would account for evening finding them still some distance from Hickory Ridge and a jolly supper.
"Another long mile, and then we'll be there, fellows," sighed the stoutest one of the bunch, who was panting every little while, because of the warm pace set by his more agile chums.
"Hey, just listen to Landy puff, will you, boys!" laughed Chatz Maxfield, whose accent betrayed his Southern birth.
"He keeps getting fatter every day, I do believe," joked Mark Cummings, a clean-cut young chap with a clear eye and resolute bearing.
"Now, that ain't exactly fair, Mark," complained the object of this mirth, in a reproachful tone, "and you know it. Don't I take exercise every day just to reduce my flesh? Why, I'm making a regular martyr of myself, my mom says, ever since I joined the Boy Scouts, so that I can keep my own with the rest of you. She says if I keep it up I'll soon be skin and bones, that's what!"
A shout arose from the entire bunch at this. The idea of that fat boy ever reaching a point where such a term could be applied to him was simply ridiculous.
"What time is it, Chatz; since you seem to be the only one in the lot who had the good sense and also the decency to fetch a watch along?"
The Southern boy readily pulled out a little nickel timepiece, and consulted it, but the dusk was coming fast, so that he had to bend low in order to make sure of the right figures.
"Half past seven, fellows," he announced.
"Wow, won't my folks just be worried about me, though!" exclaimed a very tall boy, whose build would indicate that he was something of a sprinter; and whose name being Arthur Stansbury, his mates, after the usual perversity of boys in general, had promptly nicknamed him "Lil Artha."
"I don't think they'll be alarmed, because they know a bad penny is sure to turn up," laughed Mark, immediately dodging a friendly blow from the lengthy arm of his comrade.
"Hold on, I've lost my cap," declared the one who had dodged, but the others made no move toward stopping; supper was a mile away, and they felt hungry enough to eat a houseful.
Three minutes later Mark came running after them, still bareheaded.
"Hello!" exclaimed the lad who had asked Chatz for the time, and who seemed to bear the earmarks of a leader among them, as Elmer Chenowith really was, being at the head of the Wolf Patrol, and accredited as an assistant scout master in the Hickory Ridge Boy Scout Troop – "How about this, Mark; where's your cap?"
"Couldn't find it, that's all," laughed the other, good naturedly; "perhaps it went into the river. Anyhow, it's getting that dark I couldn't see the thing, and as you fellows were in such a raging hurry I just gave it up."
"Oh, say, that's too bad," declared Chatz; "I'll turn back with you, Mark, if you give the word."
"Oh, shucks! it isn't worth it, Chatz, though I'm just as much obliged to you as if we went. It's an old cap, anyhow, and even if it went sailing down the Sunflower it wouldn't matter much. I've got another besides my campaign hat. And if it doesn't rain in the morning I may take a run over here on my wheel. Move along, fellows; I can just imagine I smell that bully good supper that's being kept for me at our house."
"Yum, yum, that strikes me," exclaimed Landy, whose one weakness was a love for eating, despite his declaration to the effect that he was daily cutting down his rations in order to reduce his girth. "And I happen to know they're having fried eggplant to-night. If there's one thing I just like above every other dish it's fried eggplant, and plenty of it. Aw!" and he sighed to think that a whole mile still lay between himself and that beloved delicacy.
"All I can say is, that it's mighty lucky we don't have a meeting to-night, that's what," remarked Chatz; "because we'd never be able to get there after this long hike. But, honest, fellows, I think it paid. I never had more fun pulling out black bass than to-day. And whew, how they do fight up here! Why, down in the warmer waters of my state, South Carolina, we have the big-mouth bass, which the natives call green trout, and he comes in as logy as an old piece of tree stump, after about one little tussle."
"But I reckon there are heaps of game fighters up in that old pond at Munsey's mill," remarked Lil Artha.
"There may be, if those fish pirates left any," declared Mark. "You know the game and fish warden found and destroyed a lot of nets, even if he didn't get the Italian poachers. But that's too far away from home, anyway; and I think we'll have to leave the bass that live in that pond to the ghost of the haunted mill."
A general laugh followed this declaration. The scouts had recently been on a long tramp to the mill in question, an abandoned place which was shunned by all the country people for certain causes. But while they had met with sundry adventures of considerable importance while there, none of them could claim to have run across the ghost said to be in charge of the old rookery.
This had been a subject of great disappointment to Chatz Maxfield in particular, for he secretly cherished more or less of a belief in ghosts, having probably been inoculated with the weakness as a very small boy, when he had for playmates ignorant and superstitious blacks, on the South Carolina rice plantation that had been his home until recently.
"Hey! what did Matt Tubbs have to say to you, Elmer?" suddenly asked Lil Artha. "I saw him talking like a Dutch uncle when I was waiting for you to come along this noon."
The boy in question was known as a bully. He lived in the neighboring town of Fairfield, which adjoined Cramertown, so that the two might be reckoned one continuous settlement. And strangely enough, Matt's house was said to be half in one place and half in the other.
Matt Tubbs had given the boys of Hickory Ridge more or less trouble in years past. He was a natural leader, and rather a tough character as well, ruling the fellows in Fairfield and Cramertown with a rod of iron.
Frequently the Hickory Ridge boys had been influenced to engage in friendly rivalry with those of the neighboring place, but it happened that as a rule these contests broke up in a row, and more than one pitched battle had resulted.
For more than a year, now, Elmer and his chums had positively refused to have anything to do with the Fairfield boys. They had even turned down several invitations to bridge the chasm and start on a new deal, because they believed that so long as Matt Tubbs was in control, just so long would rough-house tactics be brought into play whenever the game went against the Fairfield players.
But lately Matt Tubbs had seen a new light. The organizing of the Hickory Ridge Troop of Boy Scouts had inspired him with a desire to follow suit. But while he could find plenty of material in the two towns, the great difficulty seemed to be in subscribing to the twelve cardinal principles which every candidate has to profess before he can become even a tenderfoot scout.
Matt had in secret hovered around the meeting places of the Hickory Ridge fellows. In this way he had heard things that simply amazed him, and set him to thinking deeply. Then he had chanced to have an experience with Elmer and his followers at a time when the scouts were called on to find a little boy who had been kidnapped by his step-father, an ignorant and drink-crazed rascal.
Matt Tubbs had been fascinated by the many things he had seen Elmer do in the line of woodcraft, and then and there he had declared that he was going to subscribe to the entire list of regulations as set forth in the manual of the scouts.
And Elmer had given him his hand at the time, promising to do all he could to assist him get his troop started.
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