The High School Boys' Fishing Trip Part 6

"Danny," he demanded rebukingly, "why couldn't you hold your tongue?"

"Because, when I'm working hard, I don't like to see you shirk,"

replied Dalzell with a complacent grin.

"But consider Darry," urged Reade. "Note how strong, lithe and supple he is. Boy, he is much better fitted for pushing my personal pack on the cart than I am for carrying it."

"Stick a pin in the chat, Tom," advised Darrin briefly, "and take your truck off the cart. I want to begin enjoying myself."

"I'd carry twice as much as I have to, just for the sheer joy of hearing you kick like a Texas maverick by the time you've had the cart handles for two minutes," laughed Tom, as he took his own parcels off the cart. "Now, David, little giant, let us see you buckle down to your task---like a real or imitation man!"

Darry braced himself, gave a hitch, then started forward briskly.

"Get out of the way, you loiterers!" called Dave, overtaking Tom and Greg and shoving the front end of the cart against them.

"Don't block the road!"

"That's what comes of hitching an express engine to a freight load," grunted Reade, as he made for the side of the road, brushing his clothes.

There was bound to be a lot of "kicking" over the work of handling the push cart, but d.i.c.k & Co. were in high spirits this hot July morning.

Weeks before, when first planning this trip, all had begun to "save up" toward outfits of khaki, leggings and all, and blue flannel shirts. These khaki clothes made the most serviceable of all camping costumes.

"I begin to feel like a soldier," laughed d.i.c.k contentedly.

"So do I," agreed Tom Reade. "I feel like a poor dub of a soldier who has been sent to march across a continent on the line of the equator. I believe eggs would cook in any of my pockets!"

"Cut out all the grumbling and the discomfort talk," warned Dave Darrin.

"Well, I don't know that I need to grumble, if you can feel contented behind that old cart," laughed Reade. "How does it go, Darry?"

"I haven't begun to notice, as yet," replied Dave coolly.

Tom eyed him suspiciously.

"Darry," he remarked presently, "you're talented."

"In what way?" Dave inquired.

"You're one of the most talented fibbers I ever encountered.

You've been pushing that cart all of four minutes, and you pretend that you don't notice the work."

"I expected to work when I left home," Darrin informed him. "If I hadn't felt that I could endure a little fatigue, then I'd have remained at home and looked for a job sleeping in a mattress factory's show-room."

Tom subsided after that. Dave's fifteen minutes were up presently, but he declined to accept relief at the push cart until they reached the point where their road branched off on to the rougher highway.

Now, Greg and Hazelton took the cart, Greg at the handles, Hazelton pulling ahead on the rope.

Thus they went along, for some five minutes, when d.i.c.k, who was in the lead, reached a small covered bridge over a noisy, rushing creek.

Just as d.i.c.k gained the entrance to the bridge his gaze fell upon a large white sheet of paper tacked there. The word "Notice,"

written in printing characters, stared him in the face.

d.i.c.k read, then called back quietly:

"Halt! Here's something we've got to look into at once."

The cart handlers willingly enough dropped their burden. All hands crowded forward to read what was written underneath on the sheet of paper. It ran thus:

"All pa.s.sers-by are cautioned that a mad dog, frothing at the mouth, has pa.s.sed this way, going west. Officers have gone in pursuit of the animal, but pa.s.sers-by may encounter the dog before the officers do. The dog is a huge English mastiff, without collar.

Turn back unless armed!"

"Fine and cheery!" exclaimed Tom Reade, looking rather startled despite his light comment.

"And, just as it happens, this is the only road in the country that we want to use just at present," commented d.i.c.k Prescott.

"Shall we go ahead, keeping a sharp lookout?" asked Dave.

"I don't know," d.i.c.k muttered. "We'll have to think that over a bit."

"There are six of us, and we can cut good, stout clubs before we proceed farther," suggested Greg Holmes.

"Yes, and probably, if attacked, we could finish the dog," d.i.c.k went on. "Yet, most likely, before we did kill the brute, he'd have bitten at least one of us."

"I'll go on, if the rest of you fellows want to," observed Danny Grin. "At the same time, it looks like taking a big chance, doesn't it?"

"It's taking a chance, of course," d.i.c.k admitted. "The dog may be running yet, and we might never get within ten, or even twenty, miles of him. Or, the officers may have caught and killed the brute by this time. Or, the mastiff might bound at us from the woods at any moment now."

"Whether we go back or keep on, we're fairly likely to meet the mad dog," suggested Tom. "Mr. Chairman, I rise to move, sir, that we cut clubs at once, and do the rest of our talking afterwards!"

"The motion is seconded and carried," called d.i.c.k, darting into the woods. "Come on and find the clubs."

Less than forty seconds afterwards each of the six boys was cutting a stout sapling, which he forthwith trimmed.

"I believe I could kill anything but an ox with this," observed Reade, eyeing his bludgeon.

"Look out!" called Danny Grin, as if in alarm.

In a twinkling Tom dropped his club, dashed at a young oak tree and began to climb, thinking that the dog had suddenly appeared.

"Stop that nonsense, Dan---and everyone of you!" called d.i.c.k sharply.

"Let no one knowingly give any false alarms, or we might disregard a real warning when it comes."

Tom sheepishly dropped to the ground, picked up his cudgel, then gazed at Dalzell with a look that had "daggers" in it.

"I'll owe you one for that, Danny Grin," Reade remarked, "and I'm always careful about paying my debts."

"Now that we have our clubs," suggested d.i.c.k, "let's get back to the road and discuss what we're going to do."

"Surely," hinted Dave, "we can find some other road and keep on our way."