Chapter 3. The Peddler And The Lawyer's Half

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_ CHAPTER III. THE PEDDLER AND THE LAWYER'S HALF

Just before leaving Gridley, Greg Holmes had bought a copy of the "Blade" from a newsboy.

Three miles out, the chums enjoyed their first halt.

"Ten minutes' rest under this tree," Dick announced, for already the August morning sun was beating down upon them.

Greg drew out his copy of the newspaper, unfolding it.

"Say!" he yelled suddenly.

"Stop that," commanded Tom Reade, "or you'll make the horse run away and wreck our outfit."

"But this paper says-----"

"Stop it," ordered Tom with a scowl. "I know what you're going to do. You'll read us some exciting stuff, and get us all worked up, and then in the last paragraph you'll stumble on the fact that some well-known Tottenville man was cured of all his ailments by Brown's Blood Bitters."

"Can you hold your tongue a minute?" demanded Greg ironically.

"Not when I see you headed that way," retorted Reade. "I've been fooled by the same style of exciting item, and I know how cheap it makes a fellow feel when he comes to the name of the Bitters, the Pills or the Sarsaparilla. Holmesy, I want to save your face for you with this crowd."

"Will you keep quiet, for a moment, and let the other fellows hear, even if you have to take a walk in order to save your own ears?" demanded Greg, with sarcasm. "This piece is about Dick Prescott, and he doesn't sign patent medicine test-----"

"Dick Prescott?" demanded Darrin. "Whoop! Let's have it!"

"It isn't a roast, is it?" demanded Danny Grin solemnly.

"No; it isn't," Greg went on. "Listen, while I read the headlines."

It was a four-line heading, beginning with "Dick Prescott's Fine Nerve."

"There! I was afraid it was a roast, after all," sighed Danny Grin.

"Take that fellow away and muzzle him," ordered Greg, then proceeded to read the other sections of the headlines.

By this time Greg had a very attentive audience. Even Tom Reade had ceased to scoff.

"Oh, bosh!" gasped Dick, when Greg was about one third of the way through the column article.

"Isn't it true?" demanded Dave.

"After a fashion," Dick admitted.

"Then hold off and be good while the rest of us hear about yesterday's doings."

So Dick stood by, his face growing redder and redder as the reading proceeded.

"That's what I call a dandy story," declared Greg as he finished reading.

"Dick, why didn't you tell us something about it last night?" demanded Hazelton.

"What was the use?" asked Prescott. "And, though I've always thought the 'Blade' a fine local newspaper, I don't quite approve of Mr. Pollock's judgment of news values in this instance. I suspect that Mr. Pollock must have been away, and that Mr. Bradley, the news editor, ran this in."

"It sounds like some of Len Spencer's stuff," guessed Dave. "He's great on local events."

"If they had to print the yarn, eight or ten lines would have covered it," Dick declared. "Fellows, we've used up eighteen minutes for our halt, instead of ten. Come on!"

Greg, however, after rising, and before starting, was careful to fold the "Blade" neatly and to tuck it away in a pocket. He meant to save that news story.

All of our readers are familiar with the lives and doings of Dick Prescott and his friends up to date.

"Dick & Co.," as the boys styled their unorganized club of chums, was made up of the six boys, who had been fast friends back in their days of study at the Central Grammar School of Gridley.

They had been together in everything, and notably so in athletics and sports. All that befell them in their later days at Central Grammar School is told fully in the four volumes of the "_Grammar School Boys Series_."

Yet it was when these same boys entered Gridley High School that they came into the fullest measure of their local fame and popularity. Even as freshmen they found a chance to accomplish far more for school athletics than is usually permitted to freshmen. It was due to their efforts that athletics were put on a sound financial basis in the Gridley High School. All this and more is described in the first volume of the "_High School Boys Series_," entitled "_The High School Freshmen_."

But it was in the second volume of that series, "_The High School Pitcher_," that our readers found Dick & Co. entered fully in the training squads of one of the most famous of American high schools. As described in the third volume, "_The High School Left End_," Dick & Co. were transferred from the baseball nine to the gridiron eleven, and by this time had become the undisputed athletic leaders of Gridley High School. These honors they had not won without tremendous opposition, especially by the formation of the notorious "Sorehead Squad" to oppose their hard earned supremacy in football. Yet Dick & Co. ever went strenuously forward, in manly, clean-cut fashion, working unceasingly for the furthering of honest American sport. Between the plottings of their enemies and a host of adventures on all sides, the school life of Dick & Co. proved exciting indeed.

In the "_High School Boys' Vacation Series_" our readers have followed the summer doings of Dick & Co. as distinguished from the doings of their crowded school years. The first volume devoted to the vacations of Dick & Co., "_The High School Boys' Canoe Club_," describes the adventures of our lads in an Indian war canoe which even their slender financial resources enabled them to buy at an auction sale of the effects of a stranded Wild West Show. In the second volume of this series, "_The High School Boys In Summer Camp_," our readers came upon an even more exciting narrative of keenly enjoyed summer doings, replete with lively adventures. In that volume the activities of Tag Mosher, a strangely odd character, kept Dick & Co. continually on the alert. In the third volume of the vacation series, entitled "_The High School Boys' Fishing Trip_," were chronicled the things that befell Dick & Co. while away on a fishing expedition that became famous in the annals of Gridley school days. This third volume was full to the brim with the sort of adventures that boys most love. Some old enemies of Dick & Co. appeared; how they were put to rout is well known to all our readers. How Dick & Co. played a huge joke, and several smaller ones upon their enemies, is described in that volume.

In this present volume will be recounted all that befell Dick & Co. in August after completing their junior year in Gridley High School, just as the preceding or third volume dealt with the happenings of July of that same summer.

After that first halt Dick & Co. plodded on for another hour. But Prescott, noting that Hazelton was still on the driver's seat of the camp wagon, blandly inquired:

"Harry, if you sit up there, lazily holding the reins, how do you expect to get your share of the training work of this hike?"

"Perhaps I'd rather have the comfort than the training work," laughed Hazelton.

"That will never do!" smiled Dick. "Suppose you climb down and let Danny Grin take your place at the reins until the next halt. I suspect that Danny boy already has a few pebbles in his shoes, and that he'll be glad enough to look over the world from the driver's seat."

"I'm willing to sacrifice myself for the good of the expedition, anyway," sighed Dalzell, as Harry drew rein. "Come down with you, Hazy, and begin to share the delights of this walking match!"

The change of drivers made, Dick & Co. plodded on again.

"It seems to me that we ought to put on more speed," suggested Dave Darrin.

"Are you in a hurry to get somewhere, Darry?" drawled Tom Reade.

"No," Dave replied, "but, if we're out for training, it seems to me that we had better do brisker walking than we're doing now, even if the horse can't keep up with us."

"We're making about three miles and a half an hour," Dick responded.

"But will that be work enough to make us as hard as nails?" persisted Darry.

"We're getting over the ground as fast as the troops of the regular army usually travel," Prescott rejoined. "I believe our regulars are generally regarded as rather perfect specimens in the walking line. We might move along at a speed of six miles, and might keep it up for an hour. Then we'd be footsore, and all in. If the first hour didn't do it, the second hour would. But if we plug along in this deliberate fashion, and get over fifteen, eighteen or twenty miles a day, and keep it up, I don't believe any one of you fellows will complain, September first, that he isn't as hard and solid as he wants to be---even for bucking the football lines, of other high schools."

"I know that I can be satisfied with this gait," murmured Reade.

"If Darry wants to move faster," suggested Hazelton, "why not tell him where to wait for us, and let him gallop ahead?"

"I'll stay with the rest of you," Darry retorted. "All I want to make sure of is that we're going to get the most out of our training work this summer."

"I'll tell you what you might do, Dave, by way of extra exercise and hardening," offered Tom.

"What?" asked Dave suspiciously.

"I believe we're going to halt every hour for a brief rest"

"Yes."

"While the five of us are resting under the trees, Darry, you might climb the trees, swinging from limb to limb and leaping from tree to tree. Of course you'll select trees that are not directly over our heads."

"Humph!" retorted Dave.

"Try it, anyway," urged Tom, "it's fine exercise, even if you give it up after a while."

"I'll try it as often as you do," Darrin agreed with a grin.

Their second halt found the high school boys more than six miles from their starting point.

On this trip they were not heading in the direction they had followed on their fishing trip. Instead, they were traveling in the opposite direction from Gridley, through a fairly populous farming region.

At a quarter-past ten o'clock Dick called for another halt. The road map that the boys had brought along showed them that they were now eleven miles from Gridley.

"Pretty fair work," muttered Tom, "considering that these roads were built by men who had never seen any better kind."

"We can more than double the distance," suggested Dave, "before we go into camp for the night."

"If we hike a couple more miles this morning, then halt, get the noon meal and rest until two o'clock," replied young Prescott, "I think we shall do better."

"If we've gone only eleven miles," protested Darrin, "then I'm certainly good for twenty-five miles in all to-day, and I believe the rest of you are, too."

"Wait until we've done eighteen or twenty miles," Prescott proposed. "Then we can take a vote about making it twenty-five."

"For one thing," Darry objected, "none of us actually walks twenty-five miles when we cover that distance. We take turns riding on the wagon, and, as there are six of us, that means that each fellow rides something like four miles of the distance covered."

"What Darry is driving at," proposed Danny Grin, "is that he wants to devote himself wholly to walking hereafter. He doesn't care about driving the horse."

"I'm big enough and cranky enough to do my own talking, when there is any reason for my entering into the conversation," smiled Dave.

At a little after eleven that morning, when thirteen and a half miles had been covered, all hands were willing enough to halt and rest, prepare luncheon and rest again.

"But I still hope we shall cover the twenty-five miles to-day," Darry insisted.

"No difficulty about that, either," declared Harry Hazelton. "Darry, while we are swapping stories over the campfire this evening you can take a lantern and do an extra five miles by way of an evening walk. Then you'll be tired enough to sleep."

"I'll see about it," Darrin laughed.

"And that's the last we'll hear about it," Tom predicted dryly.

"It is the experience of every military commander, so I've read," Dick went on, "that a long march the first day of a big hike is no especially good sign of how the soldiers will hold out to the end. On the contrary, military men have found that it's better to march a shorter distance on the first day and to work up gradually to a good standard of performance."

"All right," agreed Hazelton. "For one, I'm willing to take a rest after eating, and then take the afternoon for getting acquainted with this pretty grove."

"We won't quite do that, either, if I have my way," Prescott laughed. "We ought to do a few miles this afternoon, but not set out to do any record-breaking or back-breaking stunt."

"There goes hazy's dream up in the air," laughed Greg. "I just knew that Hazy was planning how to spend the afternoon napping."

"I'll volunteer to drive all the way, this afternoon," Harry offered. "That will give all of you fellows a chance to harden yourselves more on the first day."

"If you want to know a good definition of 'generosity,' then ask Hazy," snorted Dalzell.

"Come on!" cried Dick good-humoredly. "Scatter. Some for wood, some for water. Tom and I will get the kitchen kit ready for a meal. But we must have the wood and water before we can prepare luncheon."

At that suggestion of something to eat there was a general rush to get things in readiness. As soon as a fire was going in the stove in the wagon, Dick put on a frying pan. Into this he dropped several slices of bacon. Tom, over a fire built on the ground, set the coffee-pot going. In a pot on the stove Dick put potatoes to cook.

Now Dave rattled out the dishes, as soon as Greg and Hazy had set up the folding table. Dan placed the chairs.

"Get ready!" called Dick, as soon as he had fried two platters full of bacon and eggs. Tom, will you try the potatoes?"

"Done," responded Reade, after prodding the potatoes with a fork.

"What shall we do with the food that's left over?" asked Danny Grin, as he began to eat.

"There isn't going to be any food left over," Dick laughed. "You fellows will be lucky, indeed, if you get as much as you want."

Everyone was satisfied, however, by the time that the meal was finished.

"Greg and Harry may have the pleasure of washing the dishes," Dick suggested.

"Oh, dear!" grunted Hazy, but he went at his task without further remarks.

Before one o'clock everything was in readiness for going forward again, save for putting the horse between the shafts of the wagon. Prescott, however, put a proposition to rest until two o'clock before his chums. It was unanimously carried.

Despite his desire for a walking record that day, Darry proved quite willing to lie off at full length in the shade of the trees and doze as much as the flies would permit.

Dick and Tom strolled slowly down toward the road, halting by a couple of trees.

"There's something you don't often see, nowadays," spoke up Tom after a while.

He nodded back up the road. Coming in the same direction that the boys themselves had traveled was a faded, queer-looking old red wagon, much decorated on the outside by a lot of hanging, swinging tin and agate ware.

"That's the old-fashioned tin-peddler that I've heard a good deal about as being a common enough character some forty years ago," said Prescott. "Our grandmothers used to save up meat-bones, rags and bottles and trade them off to the peddler, receiving tinware in return."

"The man on that wagon was doing business forty years ago," remarked Tom. "In fact, judging by his appearance, he must have been quite a veteran at the business even forty years ago."

A bent, little old man it was who was perched upon the seat of the red wagon. Once upon a time his hair had been tawny. Now it was streaked liberally with gray. He was smoking a black little wooden pipe and paying small attention to the sad-eyed, bony horse between the shafts. There was a far-away, rather dull look in the old peddler's eyes.

Just before he reached the boys, whom he had not seen, he took a piece of paper from his pocket, pulled his spectacles down from his forehead and read the paper.

"I don't understand it," muttered the peddler, aloud. "I can't understand it. I wish I had someone to give me the right of it."

"Could we be of any service, sir?" Reade inquired.

Hearing a human voice so close at hand the peddler started for an instant. Then he pulled in the horse.

"I dunno whether you can be of much use to me," answered the peddler slowly. "You don't look old enough to know much about business."

"Still, I know more than anyone would think, from just looking at me," volunteered Reade, reddening a bit as he saw the laughter in Dick Prescott's eyes.

"Maybe you can explain this riddle," went on the peddler, extending the sheet of white paper. "It can't do any harm to give you a chance. You see, I had a bill of twenty dollars against Bill Peterson. The bill had been running three years, and I couldn't get anything out of Bill but promises without any exact dates tied to 'em. I needed the money as bad as Bill did, so at last I went to Lawyer Stark to see what could be done about it. Lawyer Stark said he'd tackle the job if I'd give him half. I agreed to that, for half a loaf is better'n nothing at all, as you may have heard. Then weeks went by, and I heard nothing from Squire Stark. So the other night I writ a letter, asking him how the collection of the bill was coming on. This is the answer he sends me."

So Tom read aloud, from the typewritten sheet, the following remarkably brief communication:

"Dear Sir: Answering your letter of yesterday's date, I have to advise you that I have collected my half of the Peterson bill. Your half I regard as extremely doubtful."

This was signed with the name of Lawyer Stark.

Tom Reade glanced through the note again, then gave vent to a shout of laughter.

"Eh?" asked the peddler looking puzzled.

"I beg your pardon, sir," replied Reade instantly. "I shouldn't have laughed, but this struck me, at first, as one of the funniest letters I ever saw. So the lawyer has collected his half of the twenty and regards the collection of your half as exceedingly doubtful!"

"Shouldn't Lawyer Stark give me half of the ten he got from Bill Peterson?" asked the peddler anxiously.

"Undoubtedly he should," Tom assented, "and just as undoubtedly he hasn't any idea of doing so."

"What do you say, young man?" inquired the peddler, turning to young Prescott.

"Why, sir, if you are asking about your legal chance of getting half of that ten dollars from the lawyer," Dick answered, "then I'm afraid you stand a poor show. If the lawyer won't pay you the money, then you would have to sue him. Even if you won the suit, the fight would cost you a good deal more than the amount you would recover. And the lawyer might beat you, even if you sued him."

"Then---what's the answer?" demanded the peddler slowly.

"I know the answer," said Tom confidently, "but it would be a shame to tell you, sir."

"Just the same, I wish you would," replied the peddler coaxingly.

"The answer," replied Reade, "is that you have been cheated."

"But it looks to me like a mean trick," Dick went on.

"What am I going to do about it?" asked the peddler wonderingly.

"I don't believe you can do anything about it, sir," Prescott answered, "unless you are willing to sue the lawyer, or can make him agree to fair play. But I certainly would drop in to see him and tell him that you expect just half of what he has so far collected."

"I believe I'll do that," replied Peddler Hinman, judging from the address on the letter, that was his name. "I don't like to be made a fool of by any man---especially when I need money as badly as any other man on my route."

Dick took a sweeping glance at the peddler's shabby attire. While, of course, the size of a man's bank account cannot be judged from his wardrobe, Mr. Hinman had the appearance of needing money as much as he declared. The horse, too, looked as though a generous feed of oats would do him good.

"And to think of all the things I know about Squire Stark, too," murmured Mr. Hinman, apparently speaking to himself and not realizing that his words carried to the boys' ears. "If he had a little more judgment, Silas Stark would treat me with more fairness."

"I'm very sorry if I seemed too much amused," Tom apologized earnestly, "but that letter, apart from its meaning to you, really is funny."

"I---I suppose so," assented Reuben Hinman sighing, and the far-away look returning to his eyes. "But I---I need the money!"

"And both of us hope that you will get it, sir, the whole of your half," said Dick Prescott heartily.

"Anyway, I'm much obliged to both of you boys," said the peddler. "Giddap, Prince!"

Somehow, both boys thought that Reuben Hinman drooped more on the seat of his wagon than before. He drove off slowly, evidently doing a lot of hard thinking.

"Poor old man!" muttered Tom sympathetically.

"He looks a bit slow-witted," Prescott suggested. "I'm afraid he has always been going through life wondering at the doings of others, and especially at the success of unprincipled men he has had to deal with."

"Do you know," remarked Reade, gazing after the bent, huddled little figure, "I've a notion that there has been a lot in that poor fellow's life that has been downright tragic."

Tragic? Without doubt! Moreover, though Dick could not guess it, he and his friends were soon to be mixed up in the tragic side of Peddler Hinman's life. _

Read next: Chapter 4. Peddler Hinman's Next Appearance

Read previous: Chapter 2. The Deed Of A Hero

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