CHAPTER III
FRED IN TROUBLE
Fred sat kicking his bare heels together and grinning over the fence atthe Plunkit boy and his dog.
"Get down out of that tree--you!" exclaimed the Plunkit boy.
"Who says so?" demanded Fred.
"_I_ do."
"Well, say it again," responded Master Fred, in a most tantalizing way."I like to hear you."
Applethwaite Plunkit was not a nice looking boy at all. He hadperfectly white hair, but he wasn't an albino, for albinoes havepink-rimmed eyes. His eyes were very strange looking, however, for theywere not mates. One was one color, and one was another.
There are many such afflicted people in the world; usually they have onegray eye and one brown one. But Ap Plunkit had one eye that was of asickly brown color, while the other was of a sickly green. That meansthat the "whites" of his mismated eyes were yellowish in hue.
Perhaps, because of this misfortune, the other boys plagued him, andthat had soured his temper. He was very angry with Fred.
"Get out of that tree, you red-headed monkey!" he shouted, "or I'll setmy dog on you!"
"I won't do it, you white-headed donkey--and your dog can't get me; notunless he can climb a tree," added Fred, grinning again.
"I'll come over there and knock you out of it," threatened Ap.
"I'd like to see you do it," responded Fred, swinging his feet again.
"I'll show you!" cried Ap, and he started for the hole in the fence."Come on, Rove!" he called to the dog.
The big dog followed his master. He was part Newfoundland and wouldhave made a fine playmate for any boy, if he had not been trained to beugly with all strangers. When he got through the fence and saw Bobbystanding idly by, he growled at him.
"Look out, Bob!" shouted Fred. "He'll bite you."
"I'm not doing anything," said Bobby Blake. "And you had better not setyour dog on me, Plunkit."
"You fellers are too fresh," said the farm boy. "My father says you'renot to come around here--"
"Your father doesn't own this land, and your father doesn't own thiscreek," whipped in Fred, from the branch.
"You fellers came across our land to get here," declared Ap.
"How do you know _that_, Mr. Smartie?" asked Fred. He had just finishedeating an apple. He threw the core at the dog and hit him on the nose.Rover growled and then jumped up and snapped at Master Fred's bareheels.
"Scubbity-_yow_!" shrieked the daring Fred, kicking up his heelsexcitedly. "Didn't get me that time, did you? I'm not _your_ meat."
"You stop that, Ap," ordered Bobby. "Call off your dog."
He had not been altogether idle. There was a heavy club of hard woodlying nearby, and he seized it.
"He'd better get down out of that tree or Rove will eat him up," saidAp, boastfully.
"Those branches overhang this land. The apples don't belong to you anymore than they do to us," said Bobby, and he thought he was quite rightin saying so.
"Yah!" scoffed Ap. "He had to climb the tree-trunk to get there, andthe tree's on _our_ side of the fence."
"Didn't neither, Mr. Smartie!" cried Fred, in delight. "I jumped up andgrabbed a limb, and pulled myself up. Have an apple?" and he aimed oneof the hard, green ones at Ap.
"Don't you do that, Fred!" called up Bobby, in haste.
"Well, then, I'll give it to the dog," said Fred, throwing the apple toRover.
"You come down out of that tree, and you stop pelting my dog!" commandedApplethwaite Plunkit.
"Yes--I--will!" responded Fred, biting into another apple.
"Well! I'll lick one of you, anyway!" exclaimed Ap, who had been slilystepping nearer.
And immediately he threw himself on Bobby. He caught the latter sounexpectedly that he couldn't have used the club had he wished to.
"Come on, Rove!" shrieked Ap. "Bite him, boy--bite him!"
"You stop that!" shouted the red-haired boy in the tree. "Bobby hasn'tdone a thing--"
The dog growled and ran around the two struggling boys. Perhaps he waslooking for a chance to bite his master's antagonist. At least, itlooked so.
Bobby Blake, although never a quarrelsome lad, was no mollycoddle.Attacked as he had been, he struggled manfully to escape the bigger boy.He dropped the club, but he tore off Ap's hat and flung it into thecreek.
"Go for it, sir! After it!" he screamed, and Rover heard him and sawthe hat. That was one of the dog's accomplishments. He was aNewfoundland, and retrieving articles from the water was right in hisline.
He barked and bounded to the edge of the steep bank. He evidentlyconsidered that, after all, his master and Bobby were only playing, andthis part of the play he approved of.
The instant Bobby heard the splash of the big dog into the water, hetwisted in Ap's grasp, tripped him, and fell on top of the larger boy.
"Oh! oh! oh!" gasped Ap. "You're hurtin' me--you're killin' me! Ican't breathe--"
"Scubbity-_yow_!" yelled Fred, giving voice to his favorite battle-cry,and he dropped from the apple tree, running to Bobby's help.
But Bobby got up and released the bawling farm-boy at once. "Come on,Fred," he said. "Let's get out o' here."
"Why, you got the best of him!" cried Fred, in disgust. "Let's duckhim! Let's throw him in after his old dog."
"No you don't," declared Bobby, seizing Fred's hand. "We're going toget out while we have the chance. I only tripped him and got the dogout of the way so you could escape."
"Huh!" exclaimed Fred. "I didn't get as many apples as I wanted."
"I don't care. You come on," said his chum.
"Whoever heard of the winning side giving way like this?" grumbled thered-haired boy. "Anyway," he added, picking up the club Bobby had lost,"if that dog comes after us, I'll hit him."
Bobby picked up the box containing the remainder of their luncheon, andled the way through the bushes. The dog had come ashore, and it and ApPlunkit were quickly out of sight. Fred was still grumbling aboutleaving the foe to claim "the best of it."
"He'll pitch on us next time, just the same," he declared. "Why didn'tyou punch him when you had him down, Bob?"
"Aw, come on!" said his chum. "Always wanting to get into a fight. Youkeep that up when you get to Rockledge School, and you'll be in hotwater all the time."
"Shucks!" grinned Fred. "I'd like to be in _cold_ water right now. Theswimming hole isn't far away. Let's."
"We can't go in but once--you know we can't," said Bobby.
"Why not?" demanded Fred, quickly.
"Because we promised our mothers we wouldn't go in but once a day thisvacation."
"Huh! That ain't saying but what we can take off our clothes and put onour swimming trunks, and stay in all day long."
"That would be just as dishonest as going in two or three times, Fred,"exclaimed Bobby. "And you wouldn't do it. Besides," he added, grinning;"you know you tried that _last_ summer, and 'member what you got forit?"
"You bet you!" exclaimed the red-haired one. "I got sunburned somethingfierce! No. I won't do _that_ again. That's the day we built the rafton Sanders' Pond, and oh, how I hurt! I guess I do remember, allright."
"No," said Bobby, after a minute. "We'll go fishing first, and thentake a swim before we go home. That'll clean us up, and make us feelfresh. There's that old stump again, Fred. I believe there's a bigtrout lives under that stump. Don't you 'member! We've seen him jump."
"Ya-as," scoffed Fred. "But that old fellow won't jump for a worm.He's had too many square meals this summer, don't you know? It'll takea fancy fly, like those my Uncle Jim uses when he goes fishing, to coaxMr. Trout out of the creek."
"I'm going to try," said Bobby, who could be obstinate in his opinion.
"I'll be satisfied if I catch a shiner," declared Fred. "I'll try offthat rock yonder. Come on! There's a couple of dandy fishpoles."
Like real country boys, Bobby and Fred cut poles each t
ime they wentfishing. No need to carry them back and forth to their homes in Clintonand it did not take five minutes to cut and rig these poles.
"What nice, fat worms," said Bobby, when Fred shook up the tomato can.
"That's what the robin said," chuckled Fred. "Know what my sister,Betty, said yesterday morning? You know it rained the night before andthe robins were picking up worms on the lawn right early--beforebreakfast.
"Bet was at the window and one fat robin picked up a worm, swallowed it,and flew right up into a tree where he began to sing like sixty! Betsays:
"'Oh! that robin gives me the _squirms_; how can he sing that way whenhe's all full of those crawly things?'"
"Now hush!" ordered Bobby, the next moment. "I'm going to drop this nicefellow right down beside that stump and see if I can coax Mr. Trout up."
But Mr. Trout did not appear. Bobby, with exemplary patience, tried itagain and again. He changed his bait and dropped a fresh worm into thebrown, cloudy water where he believed the trout lay.
"You're not fishing," chuckled Fred, from his station on the rock, a fewyards away. "You're just drowning worms."
"Huh!" returned Bobby. "I don't see any medals on _you_. You haven'tcaught anything."
"But I'm going to!" whispered Fred, swiftly, and holding his pole withsudden attention.
Then, with a nervous jerk, he flung up the pole. Hook and sinker camewith it, and a tiny, wriggling, silver fish, about a finger long, shotinto the air. But Fred had not been careful to select his stand, and hedrove his line and fish up among the branches of a tree.
"Now you've done it--and likely scared my trout," exclaimed Bobby.
Fred, in his usual impulsive fashion, tried to jerk back his line. Thehook and sinker were caught around a branch. The shiner dropped off thehook and rested in a crotch of the branch. No fish ever was transformedinto a bird so quickly since fishing was begun!
And while Bobby laughed, and held his sides, Fred jerked at theentangled line again and again until, stepping too far back, and pullingtoo hard, the line chanced to give a foot or two, Master Fred fellbackwards and--_flop!_ into the deep pool below the rock he went!
Bobby Blake at Rockledge School; or, Winning the Medal of Honor Page 3