CHAPTER IV THE BITTER FRUITS OF DEFEAT

When the fugitives had time to take stock, the Elm Streeters decided that the personal victories of Art and Connie were so completely overshadowed by the rout of the other boys that the day was irretrievably lost. Bloody noses and torn clothing were not counted. But the destruction and loss of the prized aeroplanes was despair itself.

“They could be arrested,” suggested Colly Craighead, rubbing his injured arm and still breathing vengeance.

“I’d cut out that kind of talk,” exclaimed Alex Conyers. “Don’t be sore. Hank Milleson did his best to head you off. You got what you was tryin’ to give an’ that was enough. Be game.”

“I reckon that’s right,” broke in Art, lying flat on his back. “We outnumbered ’em an’ we did a little dirty work too. Sammy ought to get his for usin’ a rock. It kind o’ tickled me though to see the kid hand it to that big stiff. At that, it wasn’t much worse ’an Job Wilkes jumpin’ on Connie’s back.”

The Goosetowners had a flat-bottomed skiff moored just above the dam. All of these boys had jumped into the boat and were already lost to view behind the Big Willow Bend. The Elm Streeters were recovering their wind, sprawled on the high bank under the leaning walnut tree just above the dam. A look-out kept an eye on the marshal, who lingered for a time at the scene of the fight and then retired, followed by his informer, Sammy Addington. Sammy would have made an attempt to rejoin his chums but as he was just as likely to run into the enemy he discreetly withdrew under convoy of Old Chris.

“I got all the toy aeroplane business I want,” remarked Connie, ignoring Art’s comment. “It is kind o’ sissy at that.” He was gazing longingly at the dammed-up stretch of blue water before him. “Let’s go swimmin’.”

“Last one in’s a nigger baby!” yelled Wart Ware.

There was a whirlwind of flying clothes, shoes and stockings.

“Say,” exclaimed Trevor, “here!” The scurrying boys paused in various stages of disrobing. “Let’s all throw in our money an’ have a real aeroplane.”

“A real aeroplane?” came instantly from two or three.

“Two or three thousand dollars!” shouted Alex Conyers, rolling over in high glee. “Let’s make a steam engine, too.”

“Three thousand dollars nothin’,” snorted Art. “There ain’t a thing about an aeroplane except the engine us kids can’t make. You know that.”

“Except the engine,” laughed Connie anew. “Why don’t you say ‘we can—only we can’t’? You mean a glider?”

“I don’t mean anything but what I said,” came back Art resentfully. “What d’you suppose an engine costs?”

“A Curtiss costs about twelve hundred dollars,” replied Colly Craighead proudly.

“It does,” answered Art. “But a pack o’ kids don’t need to count on going for the altitude record or on crossin’ the continent. There’s a firm in Philadelphia makin’ a four-cylinder, twenty horse power, air-cooled motor that’s guaranteed to speed up to eighteen hundred revolutions a minute. An’ it only weighs a hundred pounds.”

“How much?” came in a prompt chorus.

“Only four hundred and ninety dollars,” answered Art emphasizing the “only.”

“Only!” repeated Alex Conyers raising his arms. “Only! Why don’t you say ‘only a million’? Where’d this gang ever raise four hundred and ninety dollars?”

“That ain’t fifty dollars apiece,” argued Art.

“Have you fifty dollars?” retorted Alex.

“I have—a hundred and twelve dollars—right now—in the bank.”

“An’ you couldn’t get a cent of it lessen your pa said so. I see your father lettin’ you have it—like fun.”

“How much’d the other fixin’s cost?” broke in Wart Ware. “But I ain’t got no fifty dollars. I had fifteen dollars, though, last Christmas,” he went on. “But I spent it,” he was forced to add regretfully.

“There ain’t anything else that’d cost much,” began Art anew. “Some pieces of spruce, an’ some cheap silk, an’ some varnish, an’ some piano wire, an’ turnbuckles—”

“How about a couple o’ propellers?” asked pessimistic Alex. “They don’t give ’em away I reckon and most flyin’ machines have ’em.”

“Personally,” announced Art, “I’ve always been in for a single propeller machine.”

“Well,” conceded Alex with more interest, “a single propeller would cut down the cost. It’d save on shafting an’ motor connections. Say ’at the engine cost four hundred and ninety dollars, the propeller twenty-five, an’ everything else one hundred.”

“A hundred for a little silk an’ wire an’ a few sticks?” snorted Art. “What are you thinkin’ about?”

“Well,” went on Alex, “say it did. That’s six hundred an’ fifteen dollars. Let’s hear from the treasurer. What’s in the treasury, Duke?”

Treasurer Duncan Easton, at these words, gasped, grew redder and then made a wild scramble to locate his clothing.

“Who’s got my pants?” he yelled. “It’s all in my pants.”

“All that prize money?” shouted the president of the club. “That three dollars and eighty cents?”

The naked treasurer’s only response was a lunge into a heap of garments out of which he finally extracted the valuable trousers. There was a swift search of both pockets and then a scared face told the story.

“’Tain’t gone?” came anxiously from Connie.

“I had to bring it,” whimpered Treasurer Easton. “It was for the prizes. I’ve lost it.”

“Where?” shouted his fellow club members.

“I d-d-don’t know,” faltered Easton. Breaking into tears he made a new search.

“That’s a hot way to carry money!” volunteered one boy. “Loose in your pocket!”

“It—it wasn’t loose,” explained Duke, his lips quivering. “It was in a purse.”

“Purse?” snapped another angry lad. “You ain’t got no purse.”

“It was my father’s,” explained the tearful Duke. “An’ it had ever’body’s name in it and what they paid and all the entries.”

Art and Connie were already searching the ground round about.

“Some of you kids has got it,” wailed Duke, the thought of a possible joke coming to him.

“Search me,” shouted a chorus of boys. Even the absurdity of searching a boy stripped of his clothes did not appeal to the disturbed president or the still sobbing treasurer. Connie began to laugh and then exclaimed:

“Mebbe it’s back where the scrap was.”

Instantly Art, Connie and Duke set out on a dead run for the sycamore tree. They were not halfway to it before the other boys, one at a time as they scrambled into their clothes, were trailing behind. As they reached the battlefield a familiar gang call sounded from the railroad bridge and in a few moments Sammy Addington rejoined his chums.

“Duke lost all the money,” Art explained sullenly as he made a preliminary survey.

“Cowardy-calf, cowardy-calf!” was Wart Ware’s salutation to Sammy. But Sammy had no time to resent this insult immediately. He was bubbling over with other business.

“Ole Chris got it,” he panted.

“Got my pocket book?” gasped Duke.

“Three dollars an’ eighty cents,” went on Sammy, yet out of breath. “An’,” with a sniffle, “he’s a-goin’ to turn it over to the mayor.”

“Father’ll get it for us; he’s comin’ home to-night,” began Art. But Sammy had more and worse news.

“An’ he’s got the papers an’ ever’body’s name,” went on the courier. “An’ the marshal says ’at he’s goin’ to take up ever’one ’at was in the scrap.” (“Take up” in Scottsville meant arrest and incarceration in the lockup.)

In the solemn silence that followed, even Duke’s tears ceased to flow. Not even Connie seemed to have a word suitable to the alarming situation.

“Why didn’t he take you up?” It was Wart Ware who finally asked this question.

“Me?” faltered Sammy. “Why I—I don’t know.” But there was a telltale twitch of his lips.

“Didn’t he say why?” demanded Colly Craighead. “It’s funny he’s goin’ to put ever’body else in the lockup but you.”

Sammy only eyed his questioners and tried to turn the inquiry with a question about the lost models.

“I’ll tell you why he let you off,” volunteered Connie as he approached the recent fugitive. “You lied to him.”

“Don’t you call me no liar,” exclaimed Sammy boldly. “An’ I didn’t peach. He ast me who was over here an’ I told him I was no telltale. I wouldn’t give him not a single name. Not even a Goosetowner.”

“You’d ’a’ better not,” remarked Art significantly.

“I didn’t say you peached,” went on Connie unmoved by Sammy’s speech. “I said you lied. I’ll tell you what you told Old Chris; you told him they was a lot of bad boys over here fightin’ an’ ’at you run away so’s you wouldn’t get mixed up with ’em.”

This explanation was so plausible that it did not require Sammy’s sudden panic to convict him. There was a roar of indignation and the gang massed around the accused. Driven to bay Sammy turned on his denouncer. But that was hopeless. There was one other recourse.

“I didn’t neither,” he protested. Then his voice broke. “An’ if I did,” he qualified, tears of mortification springing to his eyes, “how was I goin’ to know he was goin’ to find the pocket book?”

“Cowardy-calf,” “runaway” and “tattletale” were the verbal returns for this sudden candor and then, following Connie’s action, Sammy’s chums left the little ex-warrior blubbering alone. But boy grief does not penetrate far.

“Say, fellows,” exclaimed Sammy, wiping away his tears and trying to smile, “Ole Peg Leg Warner’s fishin’ over on the bridge and he got a bass ’at weighed four pounds or more.”

Ordinarily this would have been the signal for a stampede. But the alluring bait was ignored.

“Go away,” was Art’s command. “We’re through with you.”

But while the other boys made their way slowly toward the pile of torn and broken aeroplanes, Sammy stood his ground.

“I don’t have to go away,” he retorted. “I can stay here if I want to. You don’t own this paster.”

“Then stay here,” shouted Art. “We’re goin’. An’ don’t you come in my yard again or in our garage, Tattletale.”

“I can come and get my knife and aeroplane an’ things,” retorted Sammy in half appeal. “An’ me and my folks is goin’ away up to Lake Maxinkuchee and stay all summer an’ I’m goin’ to have a sailboat, too.”

This last appeal to his friends was Spartanly ignored as was the statement in relation to Sammy’s personal property. But the incensed club members had one last rejoinder. After a quick conference Connie delivered it.

“You’d better,” he announced. “You’re goin’ to be expelled from the club.”

“Who cares?” exclaimed Sammy. “My ma told me I got to quit anyway, ’cause I’m goin’ to go away an’ sail my new boat.” To save further embarrassment, Sammy added: “I got to go now. Peg Leg’s goin’ to lend me one of his bass lines.”

The consensus of opinion concerning the sailboat was that it was a hastily improvised figment of the imagination. The boast, however, was enough to insure Sammy’s expulsion, which was done instantly and somewhat informally. Collecting what remained of the beloved toys, the members of the club, dejected, dispirited and genuinely alarmed over the possible result of Old Chris’s promised action, took immediate council.

There was a suggestion that, it being only four o’clock, there was yet time for a swim. But this idea seemed to meet with no favor. On the other hand it was just possible that Marshal Walter might be on the look-out near the railroad bridge. Just then one of the boys, glancing toward the dam, saw three ominous looking Goosetowners who were evidently returning to their stamping grounds.

“Who’s afraid of Old Chris,” exclaimed Wart Ware promptly. “I got some errands to do at home.”

The defeated lads instantly set out at a good pace toward the bridge. They were not surprised when they failed to find Sammy Addington in Peg Leg Warner’s company, nor little more so when Peg told them that his big bass didn’t weigh over a pound and a half. At the town end of the bridge—happily Marshal Walter was not in sight—the subdued club members separated and as a precautionary measure made their way home singly.

Art Trevor saw fit to approach his own home by way of the alley. In the garage he did the best he could to make himself presentable and then he fell to his aeroplane plans. At five thirty o’clock, with assumed gayety, he rushed around to the front porch. As he expected, his mother was there.

“Arthur,” she said at once, “Marshal Walter has been here and told me what happened this afternoon. Are you hurt?”

“No, mother. I—”

“That’s enough, Arthur. This is a matter for your father. It will give him a fine home-coming. You have been a very bad boy.”