answered.
"Get out of the way, boy," commanded the man, reaching out a hand.
Tom Halstead's right hand closed instantly. His fist shot out, landing on the fellow's neck. That persecutor fell back, missed his footing, and went sprawling to the station platform. The girl had started to dart into the car, but now she turned, watching with fearful eyes.
"Oh, don't let him hurt you!" she cried to Tom.
"Thank you," responded the young captain, dryly; "I don't believe he will."
The train was beginning to move as the man fell sprawling on the platform. Joe, who had seen the blow struck, darted in, dragging the fellow swiftly to his feet.
"You'll have to hustle, mister, if you're going to get your car forward," Joe advised him.
"This car is the one I – " began the man.
But Joe coolly swung in ahead of him, elbowing the fellow out of the way. The next moment the porter, grinning, reached over with the key and locked the door of the car, which Dawson had closed.
Looking the picture of rage, the man darted swiftly down the platform. The train was now moving too rapidly, however, for the stranger to get aboard, and the last car rolled by him as he stood, baffled, on the platform.
"I – I don't know how to thank you both," faltered the girl.
"I assure you it didn't even put us to any inconvenience," smiled Captain Tom.
"But – oh! I hope you won't meet him in San Francisco," cried the girl, in sudden alarm. "He's dangerous, ugly, vengeful!"
"We've met such men before," laughed Captain Tom, quietly. "And yet – well, we're here."
"But you don't know that man!" shuddered the girl.
"That we don't is something to brag about, I reckon," smiled Joe.
"If you ever do come face to face with him, or catch him, anywhere, watching you, beware of him!" begged the young lady, earnestly. "He never forgives anything – that wretch!"
"Are you uneasy over the remainder of your journey?" asked Tom, politely. "Will you feel safer for escort?"
"Oh, I shall be all right, now," replied the girl, with a grateful smile, though her cheeks were still pallid. "He is no longer on the train."
"Command us, if you will," begged Captain Tom Halstead, gallantly. He and Joe Dawson lifted their hats courteously, then passed on to their own section.
"One of the little dramas of life that are being enacted all around us," muttered Halstead.
"I wouldn't have minded seeing that one through," returned Joe.
Neither boy, at that moment, suspected that they would yet "see it through."
CHAPTER II
HAZING, M. B. C. K. STYLE
At the ferry slip on the San Francisco side the two motor boat boys saw the young woman again.
A big, broad-shouldered, well-dressed, wholesome looking young man of twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, came forward eagerly, hat in hand, to meet her.
"She's all right, now," declared Joe, with satisfaction. "Gracious! That husky young fellow could eat up two or three muckers like the one you punched, Tom."
"Yes; our young lady of the journey is surely all right," nodded Halstead, delighted with what he had seen. "So come along, Joe. We'll probably never see any of that party again."
Through a throng of eager cabmen the two young motor boat boys plodded sturdily. Neither had ever been in San Francisco before, but they knew that the ferry came in at the foot of Market Street, and that the Palace Hotel was but a few blocks from the water-front on the same great artery of traffic.
"Might as well walk up, and get a little bit of a look at the town," proposed Halstead.
"Which side of the street is the Palace on?" queried Joe.
"East."
"Then we'll cross over. I don't believe we can miss it."
It was a bustling crowd through which the boys steered their way. The man on the San Francisco sidewalk who is under eighty years of age is engaged in making his fortune, and has no time to lose. After he has made it, he buys an automobile, and has comparatively little need of a sidewalk.
Men from every country in Europe and the Orient passed them. There was, of course, a large sprinkling of native Americans, yet even the chance passer knew that he was moving through a throng recruited from the four quarters of the world.
To Tom the walk ended all too soon. However, they were bent on business, not pleasure, so they turned in briskly through the main entrance of the Palace Hotel as soon as a policeman had pointed it out to them.
Captain Tom Halstead stepped to the desk, picking up a pen to register. "Are Davis, Perkins, Prentiss and Randolph here ahead of us?" queried Halstead, as soon as he had written his name and his chum's.
"All of 'em," smiled the clerk, after glancing at the entry on the hotel register. "Davis, who got here first, with Perkins, engaged rooms close together for the whole party. Front! I'll have you shown right up, Captain Halstead."
The colored boy in blue uniform and brass buttons confiscated the bags and overcoats of the two young travelers, leading the way to the elevator. That bell-boy turned his head to conceal a grin that illumined his face.
"So our friends are all here ahead of us, and have everything ready?" remarked young Dawson.
The bell-boy, his head still turned away, seemed to be choking.
"I wonder if they've seen Mr. Baldwin, or heard from him?" mused Tom, aloud.
"Right dis way, sah," begged the bell-boy, stepping out of the elevator ahead of them at the third floor.
He led them down a long corridor, turned into another corridor, then halted before a door. That bell-boy gave three distinct knocks; a pause, then two more knocks.
"I reckon yo' can go right in, sah," announced the bell-boy, dropping some of his burden in order to throw the door open.
Utterly unsuspicious, Tom and Joe passed through the doorway. The instant they had done so, the bell-boy tossed their bags and coats in after them, yanked the door shut and fled, chuckling.
"Here they come! Welcome!" roared Dick Davis's deep, hearty voice.
A short hallway led from the door to the room proper. As Tom Halstead passed over the inner threshold a pair of arms reached out from either side, yanking him into the room out of Joe's sight. Dawson leaped after his chum, only to be similarly seized.
Then it snowed! At least, for a brief instant, that was what the victims thought.
Tom was neatly, ruthlessly tripped, being sent sprawling to the floor, while Ab Perkins, snatching up a bolster, which he had ripped open, shook all the fine, downy feathers over him. They sifted down the young captain's neck; they obscured his vision; some of the small feathers fell into his mouth. He fell to spitting them out with vigor, even before he tried to get up.
Nor
