CHAPTER XII. AT THE STATION.

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“I knew it!”

Hugh could feel the figure of the boy partly collapse as he muttered these disconsolate words. He only tightened his clasp on Cale’s arm.

“Don’t worry a bit about it,” he said, in the other’s ear. “We’re not going to let him put a hand on you. Just try your level best to keep from looking at him; and leave the rest to us. We’ll see you through, and let him try to take you away if he dares!”

“Well, I’d like to see him try it, that’s all!” blustered Billy, swinging that nice club of his with a “swish” that sounded encouraging to him.

This sort of talk began to buoy up the spirits of Cale.

“I’ll try and hold out, fellows!” he told them. “You don’t know that man. He can make you do just what he wants. It’s simply fierce what a way he has of changing your mind for you!”

“Huh! I’d like to see him get me to change mine, that’s all!” Billy chuckled.

“Well, here he comes, and now we’ll see some fun!” declared Jack Durham, as the rapid beating of horse’s hoofs reached their ears, accompanied by a man’s angry voice.

“Stop right where you are, I tell you, boy! I want you to go back with me in this buggy! You are under contract with me, understand!”

“We might as well stop and have it out with him,” remarked Hugh.

“Yes, since we couldn’t expect to run away from a horse,” added Walter.

So they stepped to one side of the road, and as the vehicle arrived the man in the buggy stopped his sweating horse by drawing sharply on the lines.

“Here, what do you boys mean trying to kidnap my assistant?” he shouted, shaking the whip he held in a menacing manner.

Hugh stepped in front of Cale, one of his objects being to keep the boy from meeting those angry and glittering eyes of the fakir.

“I’d advise you to keep that whip to yourself, sir,” he said, meaningly. “If you have any idea of trying to use it on us you had better think twice. With the first stroke I promise that you’ll find it snatched from your hand, and used on your back without mercy.”

“Yes,” added Billy Worth, “because we’re scouts, don’t think we can’t protect ourselves if set on. The rules don’t keep us from defending ourselves from assault.”

Perhaps the man did not quite like the determined manner of those five boys in khaki; at any rate he stopped switching the whip in that menacing manner, though at the same time continuing to scowl blackly at Hugh.

“What does this mean?” he demanded. “Don’t you boys know you’re liable to arrest for trying to entice my assistant to break his contract with me in the middle of my harvest season? I’ll have the law on you, and lock you all up!”

Billy Worth laughed aloud.

“You sure make us shiver with fright, Mister Merritt, if that’s your real name,” he told the other. “Hugh, tell him to go to thunder, and that we’re not one mite afraid of his bluster. Cale’s going with us if we have to pick him up and carry him.”

Perhaps Billy had a double reason for talking in this way. He may have intended to warn the fakir that they would resist him to the utmost; but more than that it was of importance that the boy should feel they were determined to keep him from obeying the will of his employer.

“Cale!” said the man, sharply, using a peculiar tone which doubtless was inclined to affect the boy more than his natural voice.

Hugh continued to stand between.

“Don’t look at him, Cale!” he said, forcefully.

“Come right here and get in with me, I tell you!” continued the man, sternly.

Cale made a mechanical move.

“I’ve got to go!” he muttered, helplessly, whereat Billy linked his arm more tightly in his, while Walter did the same on the other side, with Ralph and Jack pushing to the front alongside Hugh.

“Not much you will,” said Billy, derisively. “Think we’ve gone to all this trouble with you to give up so easy? You’re going to stick it out with us, Cale, hear me talking? We won’t let you go worth a cent!”

“Start off toward the station with him, fellows,” said Hugh, grimly. “We’ll stand guard on this side of you. Keep fast hold of Cale all the while. Once we get there I’ll call up Chief Wallis, and get him over to settle this thing. He’s a good friend of ours, you know.”

The man in the buggy seemed hardly to know what to do next when they started along the street heading for the railroad station, now in plain sight. He must have guessed that his grip on poor Cale was broken through the persistence of these five scouts, and yet, being a most stubborn sort of man, he evidently did not mean to give up until he had exhausted every means for attaining his purposes.

He started up his horse so as to keep even with them. He began to appeal to the boy to stand by him. He used every device which in the past had acted so favorably in forcing Cale to obey his will; but the conditions, with those five guardians striding alongside the weak boy, were changed now.

Billy, not wishing Cale to hear much that the fakir said, kept up more or less of a racket. He whistled shrilly, laughed, and even started to sing snatches of some rollicking school song, such as scouts were accustomed to rolling out in concert when seated about their campfire of nights, after their bountiful suppers.

In this manner they drew nearer the station. Hugh would often look back at that last hundred yards of the journey with amusement. Billy was really making himself ridiculous in his endeavor to drown the voice of Doc Merritt, so that it might not have its intended effect on the boy whom they had taken in charge.

There were a good many people waiting for the trains, because one would draw in from either direction presently. Hugh had already learned that Cale wanted to go west from Oakvale; and this meant there was no great hurry, since that train was not due to arrive for twenty minutes after the one for the east came along.

One thing still bothered Hugh. It concerned the future actions of Doc Merritt. If the medicine fakir, for some reason or other, wanted to keep hold of Cale, he might think it worth his while to go aboard the same train as the boy for the purpose of getting hold of him when the scouts would no longer stand as a bulwark between his victim and himself.

Just how that was to be avoided was a puzzling question. Hugh was inclined to turn to Chief Wallis as a means for detaining the fakir. If they could prevent him from taking that train, by trumping up some sort of charge that would detain him in Oakvale an hour or so, all might yet be well.

“By that time the boy ought to be far on the way home,” Hugh told himself as he thought it all over. “At any rate, he will be beyond the reach of this man’s evil influence. Yes, that seems to be the best thing to do. I’ll try and get the Chief over as soon as the train for the east pulls out again.”

He said that because even then he heard a whistle down the track indicating the approach of the train from the west.

When they reached the station, the man jumped from his vehicle, and gave the rig in charge of a boy to look after. He persisted in following them as they threaded their way through the crowds that surged this way and that—for scores of people had come from up and down the road to attend the Fair, and were taking the last opportunity to get back home at a reasonable hour.

The man was still trying to get in touch with Cale, though the scouts had formed a complete circle around the boy, and he dared not use violence. Hugh began to suspect the fakir had in mind just such an idea as he himself had been considering; that is, he meant to board the same train that bore Cale off.

This scheme must have struck Walter about that time, which would account for his saying to the scout master:

“Hugh, he’s a sure-enough sticker, that man is, and he won’t see Cale go off on that train without making another try to get him, mark my words.”

“We’ll have to set up a game on him, then,” remarked Billy. “It would never do to let him be in the same car as Cale. The boy would give in as quick as anything. Hugh, how can we do it?”

“I’ve got a scheme in mind,” Hugh told him; “just wait until this train pulls out, and there’s a little more room. Then I’ll start things moving. We’ll put a peg in his game. He’ll have to anchor in Oakvale to-night, even if we get him locked up on a charge of assault.”

“Oh! I see what you mean now,” declared Billy. “We are to rattle him the best we know how till he gets peeved enough to lay that whip on one of us. Then you’ll have him arrested, and held at the station house till after the train goes. Say, that’s a great dodge, Hugh! When it comes to thinking up things, you’re in a class by yourself. Some day you’ll be one of our ambassadors abroad, I honestly believe.”

The coming of the train prevented any further exchange of opinions among the five scouts. They continued to keep Cale shut in, preventing the man from fixing that terrible gaze of his on the boy’s eye. Several times the look which the fakir gave them told that he was angry enough to almost start to using the whip which somehow he still kept in his hand; but thinking better of it he wisely refrained from active measures.

It might be the sight of Billy’s swinging stick that deterred him. Then again he may have determined to bide his time and put into operation a little scheme that had occurred to him along the very lines Hugh had considered.

These boys were in their home town, while he was a stranger there, and known as a fakir at that. He could not count on any sympathy in case of an open rupture at the station. There was even a strong possibility that he might be roughly handled in the bargain by the gathered throng.

The ringing of the engine bell as the train came into the station announced to the hurrying crowd that it was time to get aboard.

“I wish this was my train,” Hugh heard the boy say, as though he had begun to fear the long delay, with that man hovering so close, bent, too, on once more regaining control over his will.

“Never mind, it will come along inside of twenty minutes,” said the scout master. “In the meantime we’ll try to fix him so he can’t bother you. Just keep a stiff upper lip, Cale, and everything is going to come out right.”

“Oh, I hope so, I hope so!” the anxious boy was saying to himself, as he clasped and unclasped his hands.

“Better step inside here, fellows, and let those passengers go by,” suggested Jack Durham at this juncture.

A number of travelers had left the cars, and were making their way as best they could through the crowd, heading in the direction of the station building further along the platform.

The confusion was at its height, with the engine letting off surplus steam with a hissing sound that prevented conversation to a great extent. Hugh, still guarding the rescued Cale, turned to glance at the newcomers. He supposed, of course, that for the most part they would be relatives of the town people, coming to have a look at the County Fair before it closed its gates on Saturday afternoon.

A voice at his elbow startled Hugh; it was Walter crying out excitedly.

“Oh! that must be Uncle Reuben and Aunt Ruth! Why, I’d almost forgotten they were coming on this train. Hold on here! Hugh, stop him, can’t you; he’s trying to break away from us! Here, Cale, what ails you?”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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