the coach under the seat,” volunteered Jed. “It wasn’t in there when we started. I kin stake my life on that.”
“This explains the blow I got on the back of the neck,” commented Teddy’s uncle. “The ball must have hit one of the horses first, and then glanced off into the coach. Were you boys playing ball, when we went past?” he asked, turning to Fred.
“Yes, we were,” answered Fred. “That is, we weren’t playing a regular game. We’d got through with that and were having a little practice, batting flies.”
“Why weren’t you more careful then?” asked his uncle sharply. “Don’t you see that you came within an ace of killing one or both of us? Who was doing the batting?”
Jim and Jack loyally looked as though they were trying their hardest to remember, but could not feel quite sure.
“Yes,” broke in old Jed, “who was doin’ it? That’s what I want to know. ’Cos all I got to say is that it’ll cost somebody’s father a consid’able to make good the damages to the coach and the hosses. The pole is snapped and the sorrel is actin’ kind o’ droopy.”
A smothered laugh ran around the group of boys, whose number had by this time been considerably increased. No one in Oldtown had ever known either sorrel or gray to be anything else than “droopy.”
Jed transfixed the boys with a stony stare. He had, at least, the courage of his convictions.
“Yes, sir-ree,” he went on, “them hosses is vallyble, and I don’t kalkilate to be done out of my rights by nobody, just becos some fool boy didn’t have sense enough to keep from scarin’ ’em. Somebody’s father has got to pay, and pay good, or I’ll have the law on ’em, by ginger! Come along now. Who done it?”
“Jed is right, as far as that goes,” said Mr. Aaron Rushton. “Of course, it was an accident, but it was a mighty careless one and somebody will have to make good the damage. Now, I’m going to ask you boys, one by one – ”
Teddy stepped forward. His heart was in his boots. The game was up and he would have to face the consequences. He knew that none of the other boys would tell on him, and he would be safe enough in denying it, when the question came to him. But the thought of doing this never even occurred to him. The Rushton boys had been brought up to tell the truth.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Aaron,” he said, “but I’m the one that hit the ball.”
CHAPTER IV
FACING THE MUSIC
There was a stir of anticipation among the boys, and they crowded closer, as Teddy faced his angry relative.
“Jiminy, but he’s going to catch it!” whispered Jim.
“You bet he will. I wouldn’t like to be him,” agreed Jack, more fervently than grammatically.
His uncle looked at Teddy sourly.
“I’m not a bit surprised,” he growled. “From the minute I saw you on the bank I felt sure you were mixed up in this some way or other. You’d feel nice now, if you’d killed your uncle, wouldn’t you?”
Poor Teddy, who did not look the least like a murderer and had never longed to taste the delights of killing, stammered a feeble negative.
“Why did you do it?” went on his merciless cross-examiner. “Didn’t you see the stage coming? Why didn’t you bat the other way?”
The culprit was silent.
“Come,” said his uncle sharply, “speak up now! What’s the matter with you? Are you tongue-tied?”
“You see, it was this way,” Teddy began, and stopped.
“No,” said his uncle, “I don’t see at all.”
“Well,” Teddy broke out, desperately, goaded by the sarcasm to full confession, “I was batting flies to the fellows, and one of them said I couldn’t hit anything, and I wanted to show him that he was wrong, and just then I saw the coach coming, and I took aim at the gray horse. I didn’t think anything about his running away–I’d never seen him run hard, anyway–and–and–I guess that’s all,” he ended, miserably.
“No, it ain’t all, not by a long sight!” ejaculated Jed, who had been especially stung by the slur on his faithful gray. “Not much, it ain’t all! So, yer did it on puppose, did yer? I might have s’spicioned from the fust thet you was at the bottom of this rascality. They ain’t anything happened in this town fur a long time past thet you ain’t been mixed up in.
“I’m mortal sure,” he went on, haranguing his audience and warming up at the story of his wrongs, “thet it was this young varmint thet painted my hosses with red, white and blue stripes, last Fourth of July. I jess had time to harness up to get to the train in time, when I found it out, and I didn’t have time to get the paint off before I started. And there was the people in Main Street laffin’ fit ter kill themselves, and the loafers at the deepo askin’ me why I didn’t paint myself so as to match the hosses. It took me nigh on two days before I could get it off, and the hosses smelt of benzine fur more than a week. Ef I could a ketched the feller what done it, I’d ’a’ taken it out of his hide, but I never had no sartin proof. Howsumever, I knowed pooty well in my own mind who done it,” and he glared vindictively at Teddy.
But Teddy had already done all the confessing he cared to do for one day, and the author of Jed’s unwilling Fourth of July display was still to remain a mystery.
Far more important to Teddy than Jed’s threats was the wrath of his uncle, who stood looking at him with a severity before which Teddy’s eyes fell.
“And you mean to tell me,” said Mr. Aaron Rushton slowly, “you have the nerve to stand there and tell me that you actually aimed at that horse–that you deliberately – ”
“No, not deliberately, Uncle Aaron,” interrupted Fred, who had been trying to get in a word for his brother, and now seized this opening. “He didn’t think of what he was doing. If he had, he wouldn’t have done it. He didn’t have any idea the horses would run away. Teddy wouldn’t hurt – ”
“You keep still, Fred,” and his uncle turned on him savagely. “When I want your opinion, I’ll ask you for it. If you weren’t always making excuses for him and trying to get him out of scrapes, he wouldn’t get into so many.
“Not another word,” he went on, as Fred still tried to make things easier for Teddy. “We’ll finish this talk up at the house. I want your father and mother to hear for themselves just how near this son of theirs came to killing his uncle.”
“I’ll see if I can get a rig of some kind to carry you up,” volunteered Fred.
“Never mind that,” answered his uncle shortly. “It isn’t far, and I don’t want to wait. Bring that valise that you’ll find in the coach along with you. I want to get into some dry things as soon as possible. Lucky it isn’t a shroud, instead of regular clothes,” and he shot a glance at Teddy that made that youth shudder.
“As to the damage done to the coach and horses,” Mr. Rushton said, turning to Jed, who had been watching Teddy’s ordeal with great satisfaction and gloating over what was still coming to him when he should reach home, “you need not worry about that. Either my brother or I will see you to-morrow and fix things up all right.”
“Thank
