Jack Ranger's Gun Club: or, From Schoolroom to Camp and Trail

“Why, what’s up, you animated jewsharp?” asked Nat.

“I don’t know, but it’s been so quiet in the sacred precincts of our school lately that it’s about time for something to arrive. Do you know that Socrat and Garlach haven’t spoken to each other this term yet?”

“What’s the trouble now?” asked Jack, for the French and German teachers, with the characteristics of their race, were generally at swords’ points for some reason or other.

“Why, you know their classrooms are next to each other, and one day, the first week of the term, Professor Socrat, in giving the French lesson, touched on history, and gave an instance of where frog-eaters with a small army had downed the troops from der Vaterland. He spoke so loud that Professor Garlach heard him, his German blood boiled over, and since then neither has spoken to the other.”

“Well, that often happens,” remarked Nat.

“Sure,” added Bony Balmore, cracking his finger knuckles by way of practice.

“Yes,” admitted Fred, as he took out his mouth-organ, preparatory to rendering a tune, “but this time it has lasted longer than usual, and it’s about time something was done about it.”

Fred began softly to play “On the Banks of the Wabash Far Away.”

“Cheese it,” advised Nat. “Martin will hear.”

“He’s gone to the village on an errand for the doctor,” said Fred as he continued to play. Then he stopped long enough to remark: “I’d like to hear from our fellow member, Jack Ranger.”

“That’s it,” exclaimed Sam Chalmers. “I wonder Jack hasn’t suggested something before this.”

“Say!” exclaimed Jack, “have I got to do everything around this school? Why don’t some of the rest of you think up something? I haven’t any monopoly.”

“No, but you’ve got the nerve,” said Bony. “Say, Jack, can’t you think of some scheme for getting Garlach and Socrat to speak? Once they are on talking terms we can have some fun.”

Jack seemed lost in thought. Then he began to pace the room.

“Our noble leader has his thinking apparatus in working order,” announced Nat.

“Hum!” mused Jack. “You say the trouble occurred over something in history, eh?”

“Sure,” replied Fred.

“Then I guess I’ve got it!” cried Jack. “Wait a minute, now, until I work out all the details.”

He sat down to the table, took out pencil and paper, and began to write. The others watched him interestedly.

“Here we are!” Jack cried at length. “Now to carry out the scheme and bring about a German-French alliance!”

“What are you going to do?” asked Nat.

“Here are two notes,” said Jack, holding aloft two envelopes.

“We’ll take your word for it,” remarked Bob Movel.

“One is addressed to Professor Garlach,” went on Jack, “and in it he is advised that if he proceeds in the proper manner he can obtain information of a certain incident in history, not generally known, but in which is related how Frederic II, with a small squad of Germans, put a whole army of French to flight. It is even more wonderful than the incident which Professor Socrat related to his class, and if he speaks loudly enough in the classroom, Professor Socrat can’t help but hear it.”

“What are you going to do with the note?” asked Fred.

“Send it to Garlach.”

“And then?”

“Ah, yes – then,” said Jack. “Well, what will happen next will surprise some folks, I think. The information which Garlach will be sure to want to obtain can only be had by going to a certain hollow tree, on the shore of the lake, and he must go there just at midnight.”

“Well?” asked Dick Balmore as Jack paused, while the silence in the room was broken by Bony’s performance on his finger battery.

“Well,” repeated Jack, “what happens then will be continued in our next, as the novelists say. Now come on and help me fix it up,” and he motioned for his chums to draw more closely around the table, while he imparted something to them in guarded whispers.

CHAPTER VI

A SNOWSTORM

Professor Garlach received the next day a neatly-written note. It was thrust under the door of his private apartment, just as he was getting ready to go to breakfast.

“Ach! Dis is a letter,” he said, carefully looking at the envelope, as if there was some doubt of it. “I vunder who can haf sent it to me?”

He turned it over several times, but seeing no way of learning what he wished to know save by opening the epistle, he did so.

“Vot is dis?” he murmured as he read. “Ha! dot is der best news vot I haf heard in a long time. Ach! now I gets me efen mid dot wienerwurst of a Socrat! I vill vanquishes him!”

This is what the German professor read:

“I am a lover of the Fatherland, and I understand that an insult has been offered her glory by a Frenchman who is a professor in the same school where you teach. I understand that he said a small body of the despised French beat a large army of Germans. This is not true, but I am in a position to prove the contrary, namely, that in the Hanoverian or Seven Years’ War, in 1756, a small troop of Germans, under Frederic II, defeated a large army of the French. The incident is little known in history, but I have all the facts at hand, and I will give them to you.

“The information is secret, and I cannot reveal to you my name, or I might get into trouble with the German war authorities, so I will have to ask you to proceed cautiously. I will deposit the proofs of what I say in the hollow of the old oak tree that stands near the shore of the lake, not far from the school. If you will go there at midnight to-night, you may take the papers away and demonstrate to your classes that the Germans are always the superiors of the French in war. I must beg of you to say nothing about this to any one. Proceed in secret, and you will be able to refute the base charges made against our countrymen by a base Frenchman. Do not fail. Be at the old tree at midnight. For obvious reasons I sign myself only

    “Bismark.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Professor Garlach. “I vill do as you direct. T’anks, mine unknown frient! T’anks! Now vill I make to der utmost confusionability dot frog-eater of a Socrat! Ha! ve shall see. I vill be on der spot at midnight!”

All that day there might have been noticed that there was a subdued excitement hovering about Professor Garlach. Jack and his chums observing it, smiled.

“He’s taken the bait, hook and sinker,” said Jack.

When the class in history was called before him to recite, Professor Garlach remarked:

“Young gentlemens, I shall have some surprising informations to impart by you to-morrow. I am about to come into possession of some remarkable facts, but I cannot reveal dem to you now. But I vill say dot dey vill simply astonishment to you make alretty yet. You are dismissed.”

He had spoken quite loudly, and Professor Socrat, in the next room, hearing him, smiled.

“Ah,” murmured the Frenchman, “so my unknown friend, who was so kind as to write zis note, did not deceive me. Sacre! But I will bring his plans to nottingness! Ah, beware, Professor Garlach – pig-dog zat you are! I will foil you. But let me read ze note once more.”

Alone in the classroom, he took from his pocket a letter. It looked just like the one professor Garlach had received that morning.

“Ha, yes. I am not mistake! I will be at ze old oak tree on ze shore of ze lake at midnight by ze clock. And I will catch in ze act Professor Garlach when he make ze attempt to blow up zat sacred tree. Zat tree under which La Fayette once slept. Queer zat I did not know it before. Ha! I will drape ze flag of France on ze beloved branches. Ah! my beloved country!”

For this is the note which Professor Socrat received: