“You’re not in my company, ain’t you? You didn’t speak for me but for yourself, did you? You think you’re too fine a gentleman to be seen loafing about with such a fellow as I am, don’t you?” growled the tramp, when he and Huggins were alone on the platform. “I’ve the best notion in the world to make you pay for them words, and I will, too, if I find you hanging about here after the agent has gone to bed.” There was no doubt that the man was in earnest when he said this. The light from the agent’s window shone full upon his face and the runaway could see that there was an evil look in it.
“If you had stood by me I would have given you a good place to sleep, for I know where there is a nice warm hay-mow with plenty of blankets and buffalo robes to put over you,” continued the tramp. “I slept there last night, and I’m going[88] there now, after I see you start for Carbondale. Go on, be off with you!”
“I’m not going there,” replied Huggins, who was so badly frightened by the man’s vehemence that he was afraid to show any of the indignation he felt at being ordered about in this unceremonious way. “I shall stay right here on this platform until daylight.”
“No, you won’t. I’m not going to have you staying around here watching for a chance to follow me to my warm bed. You went back on me, and now you can look out for yourself.”
“I have no intention of following you,” said Huggins.
“I’ll believe that when I see you dig out for Carbondale. Go on, I say, or I’ll help you!”
The man took his hands out of his pockets, and Huggins believing that he was about to put his threat into execution, jumped off the platform, and started up the railroad track at a rapid pace, the tramp standing in the full glare of the light from the agent’s window, and keeping a close watch over his movements.
“That was a pretty good idea,” said he to himself, as he saw the boy’s figure growing dim in the[89] distance. “He said he was able and willing to pay liberal for somebody to take him to Carbondale, and that proves that he’s got money. I’ll just look into that matter when he gets a little farther away. I’ll take that fine cap, muffler, and them gloves of his’n, too. They’ll keep me warm while I have ’em, and I can trade ’em off or sell ’em before the police can get wind of me.”
So saying the man stepped down from the platform and moved leisurely up the track in the direction in which Huggins had disappeared, shuffling along in a supremely lazy and disjointed way, that no one ever saw imitated by anybody except a professional tramp.
“The insolent fellow!” thought Huggins, looking back now and then to make sure that the man was still standing on the platform. “What right had he to tell me to go on to Carbondale if I wanted to stay at the depot until morning? He must think I am hard up for a night’s rest if he imagines that I would be willing to sleep in a hay-mow. I’ll have a good bed while I am about it, for now that I am on the road to Carbondale, I shall keep moving until I get there. How lonely[90] and still it is out here, and how gloomy the woods look! I wish I had somebody to talk to.”
When the darkness had shut the station-house, the tank, the upright, motionless figure of the tramp and every thing else except the light in the agent’s window out from his view, Huggins broke into a run, and flew along the track at the top of his speed. He kept up the pace as long as he could stand it, and then settled down into a rapid trot which carried him easily over one of the three miles he had to cover before he could find a roof to shelter him and a bed to sleep in.
“I think I am all right now,” soliloquized the runaway, slackening his pace to a walk and unbuttoning his heavy muffler, which felt too warm about his neck. “I tell you I am glad to see the last of that tramp, for I didn’t at all like the looks of him. I believe he’d just as soon——”
The runaway’s heart seemed to stop beating. He faced quickly about, and there was the tramp whom he hoped he had seen for the last time, close behind him. He had easily kept pace with the boy, stepping so exactly in time with him that the sound of his feet upon the frosty snow had not betrayed his presence. He held some object[91] in his hand which he flourished over his head, and Huggins, believing it to be a pistol, stood trembling in his tracks and waited for him to come up. The object was not a pistol, but it was a murderous looking knife, which made the boy shudder all over as he looked at it.
“I’ve concluded to make you pay for going back on me so fair and square while you were talking to the agent,” were the tramp’s next words. “Put your hands above your head while I go through your pockets and see what you’ve got in ’em.”
“Do you want my money?” asked Huggins, who could hardly make himself understood, so frightened was he. “If you do I will give it to you, but don’t hurt me.”
He carried his money in two places. The greater portion of it was in Lester Brigham’s pocket-book; and in one of his vest pockets he had the small amount of change the conductor gave him when he paid his fare. As it was all in small bills and made a roll of respectable size, he hoped he could satisfy the robber by handing it over, but he was doomed to be disappointed. When he made a move as if he were about to unbutton his overcoat, the man raised his knife threateningly.
[92]
“None o’ that!” said he, in savage tones. “You can’t draw a barker on me while I am within reach of you, and it will be worse for you if you try it. Put your hands above your head, and be quick about it.”
Huggins was afraid to refuse or to utter a word of remonstrance. He raised his hands in the air, and the robber, after dropping the knife into his coat-pocket, so that it could be readily seized if circumstances should seem to require it, proceeded to “go through” him in the most business-like way. He turned all the boy’s pockets inside out, and when he had completed his investigations, Huggins’s money was all gone and he stood shivering in the tramp’s hat and thread-bare coat, while the tramp himself looked like another person. He had appropriated the runaway’s cap, coats, muffler and gloves, and would have taken his boots and Arctics too, if they had been big enough for him.
“Now, then,” said he, as he buttoned the muffler about his neck and drew on the gloves, “I believe I am done with you, and you can dig out.”
“But where can I go?” cried Huggins. “I have no money to pay for a night’s lodging, and I am almost a thousand miles from home.”
[93]
“You are better off than I am, for I have no home at all,” answered the tramp. “It won’t hurt you to sleep out of doors; I’ve done it many a time. Now skip, for I have wasted words enough with you. Not that way,” he added, as Huggins reluctantly turned his face toward Carbondale. “Go back to the station. Step lively now, for if you don’t, I shall be after you.”
The boy dared not wait for the command to be repeated, believing, as he did, that it would be emphasized by a prod with the knife which the robber still held in his hand. Scarcely realizing what he was doing he hurried along the track toward the station, and when he ventured to look behind him, the tramp was nowhere in sight.
“Now what am I going to do?” said Huggins to himself; and it was a question he pondered all the way to the station, and which he could not answer even when daylight came. The station-agent was just locking up as he stepped upon the platform, and he resolved to make another effort to obtain a seat by one of his fires.
“Won’t you please let me sit in the waiting-room until morning?” said the boy, in a pleading voice.
“No, no!” was the angry response. “Clear[94] out! You are the third one who has asked me that question to-night. I don’t keep a hotel. If I did, I’d have a sign out.”
“That man who followed me into your office a little while ago, has robbed me,” gasped Huggins, choking back a sob.
“Well, I should say he had!” exclaimed the agent, after he had taken a sharp look at Huggins. “I thought I knew your voice, but I didn’t recognize you in those clothes. If I had had the chance I should have told you to shake him as soon as possible. He has been hanging around here all day, and I was afraid he would be up to something before he left. Why didn’t you call for help?”
“He was armed and savage and I was afraid to say a word,” replied the runaway. “Besides it would have done no good, for I was a long distance up the track when he overtook me.”
“Did he take all your money?”
“Every red cent. He didn’t even leave me my pocket-knife or note-book.”
“Your case is a hard one, that’s a fact, and I will do what I can for you,” said the agent. “You may sit in this room to-night. That fellow[95] will probably go to Oxford, and if I can get the operator there to respond to my call, I’ll tell him to put the police on the look-out. To-morrow I will send an alarm all along the line.”
“I am much obliged to you,” said Huggins, gratefully. “I may some day be able to repay you for your kindness.”
“That’s all right. Good night.”
The agent went out, and the runaway drew one of the chairs up in front of the stove and sat down in it. He was provided for for the night, but what should he do when morning came? Should he stay there at the tank-station and look for work, or would it be better for him to start for Oxford on foot, begging his meals as he went like any other tramp? That was what he intended to do when he first made up his mind to desert the academy, and he could not see that there was any other course open to him now. While he was thinking about it, he fell asleep. He did not know when the lightning express and the fast freight went through, but he heard the whistle of the morning train, and hurried to the door to see the accommodation approaching. He saw something else, too—something that put life and energy[96] into him, and sent him around the corner of the building out of sight.
“They are after me already,” said he, as he hurried along a road that led from the station into the woods. “I saw their uniform caps sticking out of the window.”
If he had waited a few minutes longer he would have seen Captain Mack and Sergeant Gordon step upon the platform and run toward the agent’s office.
“Did you say he was a tall young fellow with a little mustache, and that he wore a dark-blue overcoat, Arctic shoes and seal-skin furs? He’s the very chap. Come with me. He was fast asleep in a chair in the waiting-room not more than half an hour ago. There is his chair,” said the agent, as he opened the door, “but he has skipped out, as sure as the world.”
“Have you any idea where he is?” asked the young captain.
“I think he must have gone to Carbondale,” replied the agent. “But see here, boys: you needn’t waste any time in looking for a fellow in a blue overcoat and seal-skin furs, for the police will take care of him. You want to keep your[97] eyes open for a chap in a patched and torn broad-cloth coat and a slouch hat without any brim to it. You see——”
Here the agent went on to tell how Huggins had been robbed and compelled to exchange clothes with the tramp. The boys listened attentively, and when the agent finished his story, they hastened back to the train to report to the professor. Captain Mack did the talking, and wound up with the request that he might be permitted to take a couple of men and go up the wagon-road toward Carbondale to see if Huggins had gone that way. To his great surprise as well as delight the request was granted, the professor adding that he and the rest of the squad would keep on with the train until he thought they had got ahead of the runaway, and then they would get off and come back on foot.
“If you seen any dings of Hukkins or de veller vot robbed him, you will gatch all two of dem and rebort to me py delegraph,” said the professor, in concluding his instructions. “I shall pe somveres along de road, and as lightning can dravel so much fasder dan shteam, you can easy gatch me.”
[98]
“Very good, sir. I wish I could take you with me, Bert,” he added, in a whisper, “for I am bound to carry off the honors of this scout; but you will have to stay and act as lackey to the professor. Gordon, you and Egan come with me.”
The boys obeyed with alacrity, smiling and kissing their hands to Hopkins and Curtis, who frowned fiercely and shook their fists at them in return. They stood upon the platform until the train moved off, and then Captain Mack said:
“Business before pleasure, boys. I move that we go somewhere and get a good, old-fashioned country breakfast. I speak for a big bowl of bread and milk.”
The others were only too glad to fall in with this proposition. Having left the academy almost as soon as they got up, they began to feel the cravings of hunger, and their appetites were sharpened by the mere mention of bread and milk. They held a short consultation with the station-agent, and then started leisurely down the wagon road in the direction of Carbondale, stopping at every house along the route with the intention of asking for a bowl of bread and milk, but always,[99] for some reason or other, coming away without doing it. They were not inclined to be fastidious. When it came to the pinch they could eat pancakes or bacon that were seasoned with nothing but ashes and cinders with as much zest as anybody; but they had become so accustomed to the strict and rigidly enforced rules regarding personal cleanliness, that any violation of these rules shocked them. To quote from Don Gordon, who generally expressed his sentiments in the plainest possible language, they had no use for children whose faces and hands were covered with molasses, nor could they see anything to admire in an unkempt woman who went about her cooking with a well-blackened clay-pipe in her mouth.
“There’s the place we are looking for,” said Egan, directing his companions’ attention to a neat little farm-house a short distance in advance of them. “If we can’t find a breakfast there, we’ll not find it this side of——”
At that instant the front door of the house was suddenly opened, and a lady appeared upon the threshold. She looked anxiously up and down the road, and, seeing the students approaching, beckoned to them with frantic eagerness, at the[100] same time calling out, “Help! help!” at the top of her voice.
“Come on, boys,” cried Captain Mack. “Her house is on fire.”
The officer and his men broke into a run, discarding their heavy overcoats as they went, but before they had made many steps they discovered that it was something besides fire that had occasioned the lady’s alarm. All on a sudden a back door was jerked violently open, and a man bounded down the steps and ran across a field toward the railroad track.
“He’s been doing something in there,” shouted Captain Mack. “Take after him, boys.”
“That’s one of the fellows we want,” observed Egan. “He’s got Huggins’s overcoat on.”
“So he has,” said the captain. “Never mind the lady, for she is safe now. Catch the tramp, and we’ll find out what he had been doing to frighten her.”
Don Gordon, who had already taken the lead of his companions, cleared the high farm gate as easily as though he had been furnished with wings, and ran up the carriage-way. He lingered at a wood-rack he found in front of the barn long[101] enough to jerk one of the stakes out of it, and having thus provided himself with a weapon, he continued the pursuit.
The tramp, who had about fifty yards the start, proved himself to be no mean runner. His wind was good, his muscles had been hardened by many a long pedestrian tour about the country, and Don afterward admitted that for a long time it looked as if the man were going to beat him; but when the latter got what school-boys are wont to call his “second wind,” he gained rapidly. Another hundred yards run brought him almost within striking distance of the fugitive, and while he was trying to make up his mind whether he ought to halt him or knock him down without ceremony to pay him for frightening the lady, the tramp suddenly stopped and faced about. Then Don saw that he carried a knife in his hand.
“Keep away from me,” said he, in savage tones, “or I’ll——”
“You’ll what?” demanded Don, leaning on his club and casting a quick glance over his shoulder to see how far his companions were behind.
“Do you see this?” said the tramp, shaking the knife threateningly.
[102]
“Yes, I see it,” answered Don, coolly. “You had better throw it away. You might hurt yourself with it.”
The tramp was astonished. Here was a boy who could not be as easily frightened as Huggins was, and he began to stand in awe of him. He was old enough to know that a cool, deliberate antagonist is much more to be feared than one who allows himself to go into a paroxysm of rage and excitement.
“drop that knife,” commanded Don, who had suddenly made up his mind that the tramp ought to be disarmed before his companions came up; and as he spoke, he raised his club over his head.
A year’s hard drill, added to faithful attention to the instructions he had received from Professor Odenheimer, had made Don Gordon very proficient in the broadsword exercise, but he had never had an opportunity to test the value of the accomplishment until this particular morning. Seeing that the man had no intention of dropping the knife he proceeded to disarm him, and he did it in a way that was as surprising to him as it was to the tramp. Bringing his club to the first position, he[103] made a feint with it as if he were going to give a No. 1 cut. If the weapon had not been arrested in its progress through the air, and the tramp had stood motionless, he would have received a sounding whack on his left cheek; but seeing the club coming he ducked his head at the very instant that Don changed from the first to the third cut, thus receiving squarely between the eyes the full force of a terrific blow that was intended for his right forearm. He fell as if he had been shot. The knife fell from his grasp, and before he could recover it, Captain Mack had run up and secured possession of it.
Without saying a word Egan proceeded to explore the tramp’s pockets, and the first thing he brought to light was Lester Brigham’s money. It was all there, too, for the tramp had had no opportunity to spend any of it. He had reasons of his own for desiring to go to Oxford, but he did not intend to start immediately. He slept in a barn that night, and intended, as soon as he had begged a breakfast, to strike back into the country and make his way to Oxford by a round-about course, avoiding the railroad and all the villages along the route. He hoped in this way to elude[104] the police who, he knew, would be on the watch for him. When he reached the farm-house from which he had taken his hurried flight, and found that the male members of the family were absent, he began to act as though he had a right there. He demanded a warm breakfast and a seat at the table; and when the lady of the house objected and tried to oppose his entrance into the kitchen, he frightened her nearly out of her senses by producing his knife and threatening to do something terrible with it if his demands were not complied with on the instant. Some of these things Captain Mack and his men learned from the tramp himself, and the rest of the story they heard from the lady, into whose presence they conducted their prisoner without loss of time. The latter came very near meeting with a warm reception. The farmer and his two stalwart sons had just come in from the wood-lot where they had spent the morning in chopping, and it was all the old gentleman, aided by his wife and Captain Mack and his men, could do to keep the boys from punching the tramp’s head.
“What are you going to do with him?” demanded the farmer, when quiet had been restored[105] and Captain Mack had told what the tramp had done to Huggins the night before.
“I am going to take him back to the station and telegraph to Professor Odenheimer for orders,” answered the captain. “Those are my instructions.”
“Haven’t had any breakfast, I reckon, have you? I thought not. Well, I haven’t either. Come in and sit down. It’s all ready.”
“Thank you,” said Mack. “A bowl of milk would be——”
“Oh, we’ve got something better than that.”
“You haven’t anything that would suit me better,” said Mack, with refreshing candor. “I am a city boy.”
“Oh, ah! Well, you shall have all the milk you can drink.”
When Captain Mack and his men had satisfied their appetites and listened to the grateful words of the farmer, who thanked them for their prompt response to his wife’s appeals for assistance, they put on their overcoats, which one of the boys had brought in from the road during their absence, and set out for the station with their prisoner. The latter’s face began to show the effect of Don’s[106] blow, but the tramp did not seem to mind it. He ate the cold bread and meat which the farmer’s wife gave him just as he was about to leave the house with his captors, and even joined in their conversation.
When the students reached the depot they were met by the agent, who laughed all over when he saw the tramp, and drew Captain Mack off on one side.
“You got him, didn’t you?” said he. “Some of you must have given him a good pounding, judging by his countenance. Now, if you are at all sharp, you can capture the other.”
“Who? Huggins?”
“Yes. He went out to the mill and got a job there at hauling wood. He was in here not ten minutes ago, and I had a long talk with him. He saw some of you looking out of the window when the accommodation came in, and that was the reason he took himself off in such a hurry. I told him that you had gone on toward Oxford. He’ll be back here with another load in less than an hour, and then you can catch him.”
“I am much obliged to you,” said Captain Mack. “Now will you see if you can ascertain[107] where the professor and the rest of the boys are?”
The agent said he would; but his efforts to find them met with no success. The operators of whom he made inquiries had all seen them, but couldn’t tell where they were.
“They haven’t left the train yet,” said he. “The accommodation will be at Munson in a quarter of an hour, and then I will try again.”
Of course the captain could not make his report until he knew where the professor was, so he and his men went into the waiting-room, accompanied by the tramp, and sat down there—all except Don Gordon, who was ordered to hold himself in readiness to capture the deserter when he came back with the next load of wood.