The Unknown Wrestler Part 15

Douglas had been standing not far off listening with considerable interest to the angry conversation between master and man. But when he saw Stubbles take the wild plunge, he rushed forward and picked up the injured man. The latter was groaning and cursing, contending that he was killed, and that the teamster was to blame for the accident.

Lifting him in his arms, Douglas carried him up the steps just as Mrs.

Stubbles came from the house.

"Oh! what is the matter?" she cried. "What has happened to Simie?"

"He's had a bad fall," Douglas replied. "Hold the door open while I carry him into the house. Show me where to lay him."

Into the sitting-room he carried the wounded man, and placed him upon a large sofa near the window. Mrs. Stubbles followed, and stood over her husband, wringing her hands in despair.

"Are you much hurt, Simie?" she asked. "Shall I send for the doctor?"

"Shut up your bawling!" her husband ordered. "I'm not killed, though I thought I was at first. Get some warm water and bathe my bruises.

Confound that teamster! I'll discharge him at once. What business had he to drive in front of the house and then talk back to me as he did?

When is Ben coming back?"

"He expected to get home this morning," Mrs. Stubbles replied.

"He expected to do so, did he? H'm, he's always expecting to do things he never does. He should have been here to look after the haying.

I've got too many things on my mind already without having to bother with that."

"Don't be too hard on the dear boy, Simie. He is to bring the girls, you know. They must have delayed him."

"Yes, yes, that's just like you; always excusing Ben, the worthless scamp. If he were as interested in business as he is in running around in the car and spending so much time in the city, what a help he would be to me. But hurry up with that water, can't you? My, I'm sore!"

"You won't need me any more now, I suppose," Douglas remarked when Mrs.

Stubbles had left the room. "I might as well get to work."

"Who are you, anyway?" the injured man asked, turning his little squinting eyes upon Douglas' face. For the first time he seemed to realise that it was a stranger who had a.s.sisted him.

"I am John Handyman, Jake Jukes' help," was the reply. "I have come to give you a hand with the hay this afternoon."

"And isn't Jake coming?"

"No. He has hay of his own to get in, and so I offered to come in his stead."

"Just like Jake," Stubbles growled, "always thinking of himself. He knows very well what a fix I am in. I don't know what this place is coming to, anyway. One can't get a neighbour to do a hand's turn, and the men you hire these days are as impudent as the devil."

"Don't you worry about the hay," Douglas soothed. "We can get it in all right this afternoon."

"Do you know anything about haying?"

"I was brought up on a farm, and should know something about it."

"You look big and strong enough," and Stubbles viewed him from head to foot. "Say, are you the chap who beat Jake in a wrestling bout lately?"

"So you heard about that little encounter, did you?"

"Oh, yes, I naturally hear of such things sooner or later. But what are you doing here, anyway? You don't look like a man who has been in the habit of hiring out."

"I'm just trying to earn my daily bread, and farming suits me at the present time."

"I suppose I'll have to put up with you," Stubbles growled. "Get to work at once, and no fooling, mind."

Douglas found the teamster a pleasant working companion, who loaded the hay on the wagon.

"How is Si feelin' now?" he enquired.

"Oh, I guess he's all right. He had a nasty fall and might have been killed."

"H'm, that old cuss won't die that way. It would be too easy a death.

If he doesn't bust when he gits in one of them mad fits of his, he'll be skinned alive by somebody one of these days. I'd like to be around an' hear him squeal. It would make up fer a great deal of impudence I've stood, to say nuthin' of his confounded pride, as well as the whole darn family. But I kin put up with Si better than I kin with Ben; he's the limit."

"What's the matter with him?"

"Well, Si knows a little about farmin', but Ben knows no more about it than I do about harnessin' up a baby with pins, strings, ribbons, an'

all its other gear. Ben thinks he knows, an' that's where he makes a fool of himself. He gives orders which no one in his right mind would think of obeyin', an' then he gits as mad as blazes when ye don't do as he says."

"Is Ben the only son?" Douglas asked.

"Thank goodness, yes. One is bad enough, dear knows, but if there were more, ugh!"

"What does Ben do?"

"Do? Well, I wouldn't like to tell ye."

"Does he work at anything, I mean?"

"Not a tap. He depends upon his dad fer a livin'. See what he did this mornin'. Instead of stayin' home an' lookin' after the hayin', he went to the city. That's what he's always doin'; runnin' away when there's work to be done."

"He was home yesterday, was he not?"

"Y'bet yer life he was, especially in the evenin'. He's ginerally around about that time."

"Why?"

"Oh, he's struck on the old professor's daughter. Her father doesn't like the Stubbles crowd, an' so Ben sneaks around there after he's in bed."

"Isn't it strange that the professor's daughter would do such a thing?"

"Now ye've got me," and the teamster gave a savage thrust at a forkful of hay Douglas had just handed up. "The whole thing is a mystery.

Nell's as fine a girl as ever wore shoe-leather, an' why she meets that feller in the evenin' beats me."

Douglas made no reply to these words, but went on quietly with his work. So it was Ben Stubbles who met Nell Strong every night by the old tree! Surely she must know something about his life if what the teamster had just told him were true. He could not understand it. She did not seem like a woman who would have anything to do with such a worthless character. And yet she was meeting him regularly, and at the game time deceiving her blind old father.

The hay in the corner field had all been loaded, and the teamster was stooping for the reins, when the raucous honk of an auto caused him to pause and look toward the road.

"It's Ben an' the girls now," he exclaimed. "Ye'd better open the gate."