Fast Nine: or, A Challenge from Fairfield

"Hello!" remarked Elmer, finally, "there's Bruno wagging his tail at us; he knows me by now, and we are pretty good friends; but, all the same, I don't mean to get too close to him when his master isn't around."

"He's a fine looking dog, as sure as anything," observed Mark.

"He sure is," Elmer went on, and then added: "see him shake that old shoe he has in his mouth! Just imagine it to be some other dog that Bruno is fighting with. I'd hate to have those teeth set in my leg, wouldn't you, Mark?"

"Well, rather," came the ready reply. "But look there, do they give him old shoes and such things to play with; I can count three close by his kennel right now? Perhaps it's the right thing for a dog's teeth, to chew on old leather."

Elmer laughed out loud at the suggestion.

"That's a new one on me," he declared; "but here comes Phil Lally from the garden. Let's put it up to him. He's been with the Colonel some time, and ought to be on to some of the tricks of Bruno."

Phil Lally smiled at seeing Elmer. He had taken a great liking to the boy; and no doubt had heard some things in connection with him from his employer at the time they talked matters over.

"Glad to see yuh here this fine morning, Elmer," he remarked. "And they tell me yuh knocked the Fairfield team out yesterday, good and hard. The kunnel says it was the best game he ever saw, barring none, and he's an old hand, yuh know."

"We all thought it a dandy," laughed Elmer; "and every fellow deserved a share of the glory. I pitched my best; but where would we have been if it hadn't happened that Lil Artha drove out that homer, fetching a run in ahead of him? But Mark here was wondering if you fed Bruno on old shoes; or gave them to him to keep his teeth in good condition, because there are just three around here. We don't happen to be from Missouri, Phil, but we want to know."

The man laughed loudly.

"Well, after all, it looks that ways, Elmer," he said. "But the fact is, nobody wants to make Bruno mad by takin' away his playthings. I tried it once, and would yuh believe it, the critter made a jump for me, and growled so ugly that after that I jest vowed he could keep piling 'em up, for all of me."

"Oh, I see; then you don't toss them to him?" said Mark, while his chum smiled, as though fairly well satisfied with the way the conversation had turned.

"Who, me, give Bruno them old shoes?" ejaculated Phil Lally. "Well, I guess not. He gets 'em all hisself. It's an old trick of Bruno's. There have been times when he's had as much as seven old shoes layin' around here at one time. When I gets a chanct I sneaks 'em away an' buries the same. Got a regular cemetery fur old shoes back o' the stable."

"But where does he get them, if he's chained up here all the time?" asked Mark.

"What, him?" echoed the gardener. "Oh, nobody don't seem able to keep that slick customer chained up no great time at a stretch. Sometimes I've knowed him to slip his collar as many as four nights a week."

"You mean he gets away?" asked Elmer, helping things along; for he began to see Mark casting eyes at him suspiciously.

"Always that. Bruno, he's a wanderer. He's got the habit bad; and as soon as he gets loose it's hike for him. But I will say he always knows when to come home, and in the morning we find him in his kennel, tuckered out mebbe, but happy."

"But do you mean he brings one of those old shoes home with him every time?" demanded Mark.

"He jest wont come home without something like that in his mouth," continued the gardener. "I've seen him adoin' of the same, and had to laugh at the critter. Once it was a lady's hat. We reckoned that it must a' blew off when she was goin' past in a car at a fast clip, and they couldn't find it. But Bruno lighted on it, easy like."

"A lady's hat!" muttered Mark, and then he faced his chum, adding: "Look here now, Elmer, you didn't come back to see Bruno just by accident. You had a reason for doing it? Own up now!"

Elmer nodded his head and snickered.

"Let me take that cap of yours, Mark," he said, and the article in question was eagerly handed over to him. "Look here, Phil, this cap was found under those peach trees you've heard about, and on the morning the colonel discovered they had been raided. Luckily my chum was able to prove that he couldn't have been here; and a lot of us knew that he had lost this cap a mile away on the bank of the Sunflower, just as evening set in. But it's been a dark mystery how it got here."

Phil had turned red at mention of the peach trees. Then his glance went past Elmer to the big Siberian wolf hound.

"I reckon it must be up to Bruno, then," he remarked. "Let's see – yes, he was off that night, else I'd never dared do what I did."

"And if you examine the inside of the cap," Elmer went on, steadily, "you'll find the lining all torn, as if he had been shaking it like he did that old shoe just now. The marks look to me like teeth had torn the lining. And when the colonel handed it to me, I could feel that it seemed to be more or less wet inside."

"Proven beyond the least doubt!" cried Mark, smiling broadly. "Bruno came on my cap while he was scouring the country. He fetched it home, as he does other things that have belonged to people. And when he was going past those peach trees he got scent of the fact that some one had been there during his absence. So perhaps he laid the cap down, to nose all around, and forgot to pick it up again!"

"That's just my theory to a dot," laughed Elmer; "so on the whole, I guess, Mark, you'd better call it solved, and let the matter drop."

"I'm only too willing," replied the other, nodding. "But don't you think we owe it to the colonel to take him into the secret?"

"I sure do," replied Elmer; "because he was puzzled as much as we were. Still, you remember he was ready to own up that he couldn't believe you guilty; no matter if a dozen caps bearing your initials were found under his trees."

"That shows what it means tuh have a good reputation," remarked Phil Lally between his set teeth. "But, boys, never again for me. I've seen what a fool road I was trampin' with that habit of mine, and I've changed my course. I'm goin' tuh make good this time, or bust a b'iler tryin'."

"You'll make it, never fear, Phil, with such a good friend to help you as the gentleman you work for. I believe in you," said Elmer, thrusting out his hand; for something told him that the young fellow needed all the encouragement possible at this critical stage in his uplifting.

So they did go in to see the colonel, who was deeply interested in the theory. Elmer had to explain how his chum's cap chanced to be found that morning under the raided trees, when it was lost the evening previous away over on the bank of the little Sunflower River.

"No doubt of it, Elmer," he declared immediately. "You've proved it beyond the shadow of a doubt. If Bruno had put his visiting card inside the lining he couldn't have done more when he made these tears with his sharp teeth. Seems to me as if I can see where every tooth went in. But let's forget all about that matter now, and talk about your magnificent victory of yesterday."

"We may have beaten the Fairfield team by the narrow margin of one run, sir," remarked Elmer, "but there was one fellow against us who did a heap more than that, I give it to you straight."

"Who was that, Elmer, and what did he do that was so great? I'm sure, after seeing the game I fail to catch your meaning," remarked the gentleman.

"It was Matt Tubbs, sir; and he won a victory over himself which I take it counts for more than just a single little tally in a baseball game. If that had been the same old Matt Tubbs of old, we'd never have finished that game, for he'd have ended it in a row. As it was, he shook hands with every Hickory Ridge player, and complimented them on the fierce fight they put up. It was just fine! And they used to say Matt Tubbs was a rowdy who could never be made to see how he was wronging his family, all Fairfield, and himself worst of all, by his ugly ways. Don't tell me, anybody, that this Boy Scout movement isn't working wonders in lots of cases."

"I believe you, Elmer," replied the colonel, softly. "I have been pretty much a gruff old soldier myself, and often scorned such an idea as gaining anything worth while without a fight for it; but I'm beginning to look at things in another light, boys, another light. Peace has its victories as well as war; and they count most in the long run, I reckon. I'm going to take more interest in these boys than ever I did before, because I'm learning something in my old age."

But the great victory over Fairfield was not the only event that marked the closing days of that summer vacation, and in another volume we shall have something to say about an occurrence which the Hickory Ridge Boy Scouts were inclined to set down in their troop log-book as a matter of history never to be forgotten.

THE END