Chapter 2. Dick & Co. Find Cause For Glee

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_ CHAPTER II. DICK & CO. FIND CAUSE FOR GLEE

Lawyer Ripley was one of the important men of the little city of Gridley. His law practice, which he did not now follow on account of the need of an income, put him in touch with all the wealthier people of the place.

In manner the lawyer was rather severe and austere. He was a good deal of an aristocrat. While he did not seek to repel people, he had little of the knack of drawing people to him in democratic fashion.

"Come in!" he called, in answer to the knock that Dick gave on the door.

As the boys entered they saw the lawyer pausing beside his coat rack.

"I am afraid we have gotten along a little too late, sir," apologized Dick Prescott.

"I can spare you two or three minutes," said the lawyer, turning and going back to his desk.

"Your son said you wished to see us," Prescott continued.

"Yes," said the lawyer, pulling a drawer in his desk open and glancing inside. "Late yesterday afternoon I received a letter from my client, Mrs. Dexter, who directed me to hand you each a new ten-dollar bill, with her best wishes for a Merry Christmas added."

"I am afraid that Mrs. Dexter intends that as a reward for what we were able to do for her last fall," cried Dick, flushing. "We tried to tell her, at the time, that we didn't want any reward and that we wouldn't feel comfortable in taking one."

"Nothing was said in Mrs. Dexter's letter about a reward," replied the lawyer dryly. "She directed me to hand you the banknotes in place of Christmas cards. I suppose you young gentlemen have no objection to receiving Christmas cards?"

Lawyer Ripley took out several banknotes. One of these he now held out to Prescott.

Dick flushed again, looked embarrassed, then reached out his hand slowly and took the money.

"Will you send Mrs. Dexter our thanks, sir, and tell her that we enjoyed the cards very much?"

"Especially the pictures on them," added Dan Dalzell, as he received his banknote.

"I will send all your messages," nodded the lawyer, as he continued the distribution.

"Say--whoop!" suddenly exploded Greg Holmes.

"What's the matter--yours counterfeit?" laughed Dan.

"Say, fellows," Greg went on, "we were wishing we had the funds to build some sort of a camp. We can do it, now, can't we?"

"What kind of camp?" inquired Lawyer Ripley, looking mildly interested. "And for what would you use a camp?"

"Why, for camping, I suppose," confessed Greg.

"You wouldn't live in a tent, at this time of the year, would you?"

"If we had to," assented young Holmes. "What we were talking about was building some kind of a shack in the woods somewhere."

"Rather a bad time of the year for building operations," smiled Lawyer Ripley dryly.

"But this wouldn't be so very much of an operation, sir," urged Greg. "Now that we've sixty dollars between us, we ought to be able to buy enough lumber to put up quite a shanty."

"Yes; and probably have enough money left to pay for the teaming of the lumber a few miles," agreed the man of law. "But there wouldn't be enough to pay the carpenters."

"We might be able to build a small shack ourselves," proposed Tom Reade.

"Why, so you might," admitted the lawyer, half smiling. "However, any task that is worth doing is much better done by one used to that kind of work. When do you want to go camping?"

"Why, right after to-morrow, Christmas," replied Dick. "We could stay in the woods, if our parents let us go, until about the end of the present vacation."

"It would take you at least that length of time to build the shack, I should think," suggested the lawyer. "Until you had it built you might have to wrap up in the snow at night for your sleep. And, then, when you had it all built, you would discover that the shack didn't belong to you, but to the owner of the land on which you built it. He could order you away from the shack if he were so disposed."

"I hadn't thought of that," admitted Greg, looking crestfallen.

"I'm afraid we won't camp," spoke up Harry Hazelton.

"The greatest difficulty," suggested the lawyer, "would be getting the consent of your parents to any such madcap scheme as going off into the woods to camp, day after day, in mid-winter."

"There might be some difficulty about that, sir," replied Prescott. "But now it looks as though the one really big problem would be to get a camp on the money that we now have, and to be ready to go into it in season during this school vacation."

"That would really be but a very slight difficulty," rejoined the lawyer.

"I wish I could see how you make that out, sir."

"Why, as it happens, in the property that Mrs. Dexter's grandfather left her there's the strip called Hobson's woods, you know. The forest is a pretty big affair. In fact, it's what's generally called wild country. But there are a thousand acres of the woods, worth about four dollars an acre, that now belong to Mrs. Dexter. She authorized me to find a buyer for that bit of the forest, but it seems to be out of the question. Now, on Mrs. Dexter's land, in about the middle of it, and less than two hundred feet off the main trail, is one of the few real old log cabins left in this part of the United States. The cabin is in pretty good repair, too, I fancy, for Mrs. Dexter's grandfather used to do logging out that way. Later in his life, when he had amassed money, the old gentleman used to go out to that cabin to live for a while, two or three times in every year. The place was in excellent repair when he died. It is still, I imagine."

There was a breathless silence as the lawyer ceased speaking. How the thought of that log cabin, out in the deep forest, appealed to the imaginations of such Grammar School boys as these!

"Well, sir?" asked Greg breathlessly, at last.

"Young men, if your parents should consent to your going on such a wild, madcap picnic in mid-winter, I would let you have the use of that cabin. But you may have the use of the cabin at any other time, as long as the cabin remains in Mrs. Dexter's name, so I would suggest your going in the spring or summer."

"Oh, pshaw!" leaped to Greg Holmes's lips, but he choked back the exclamation. What use would boys have for a log cabin in summer, when there was a chance to use it in mid-winter? Besides, the summer seemed a long way off.

"Is there any water near the cabin, Mr. Ripley?" asked Tom Reade, who possessed a practical head in such matters.

"Yes; a spring, within perhaps twenty or thirty feet of the doorway," nodded the lawyer. "Inside the cabin is one of the big, old-fashioned fire-places----"

"O-o-oh! A-a-ah!" gasped the youngsters in chorus.

"There are also eight bunks in the place, each with a straw or dry-leaf mattress," continued Mr. Ripley. "There are table and chairs, hand made and of the crudest kind, and some few tools."

"Say, wouldn't that make an ideal camp?" demanded Dick Prescott, turning to his chums, his eyes glowing.

All their faces were flushed with the excitement of the thing. Now that it was so close, and practical, all the boys of Dick & Co. felt a wild desire to be up and away for camp at once.

"And you say we may have the cabin, sir, and the right to cut some firewood in the forest?" Dick asked.

"I said you could, if you had your parents' full and free permission to go," replied Lawyer Ripley. "That, I fancy, is a very different thing."

"But if we get that permission, sir," urged Dick, "and come back and tell you so, then you will let us----"

"If you get home permission, you won't need to come back to me at all," replied Lawyer Ripley, smiling, as he rose. "Just go and help yourselves to the cabin and what few improvements it contains. But I am afraid, boys, you are going to be very much disappointed if you expect that your parents will consent. I think it very unlikely that you'll get any such permission. I will send your thanks to Mrs. Dexter, and will also tell her what I have told you about the use of the camp. As to-morrow will be Christmas, I shall not be back here to-day. If you go camping, boys--which I don't believe you will--don't burn the old cabin down unless you find it necessary in order to keep warm enough."

As Lawyer Ripley now made it plain that he was about to leave, the boys hastily repeated their thanks and left the office.

Not until they got down into the street did any of them feel like speaking.

"Say, fellows, if that isn't the grandest----" suddenly blazed forth Greg.

"It's all right," nodded Tom.

"I'm going camping, if I can get any of you fellows to go with me," announced Dave Darrin.

"If your folks will let you, you mean," interrupted Hazelton.

"They will," Dave contended. "And so will yours, Dick."

"I--I hope so," sighed Dick, his eyes dancing. "I never before in my life wanted to do anything as much as I now want to go camping."

"With the still woods, all snow-covered!" cried Dan enthusiastically.

"And the cold nights, with the great fire roaring up the chimney!" supplied Greg.

"And some hunting!"

"And the jolly fun of cooking our own food!"

These youngsters, as they hurried along the street, were in grave danger of being lost in the depths of their own excitement.

"Say, I wonder if there'd be any fishing out there--through the ice?" demanded Harry Hazelton.

"There'd be some rabbit hunting, anyway," supplied Dan.

"If we can only get leave to go!" groaned Greg anxiously.

"See here, fellows," muttered Dick, halting suddenly. "We've simply got to get that leave from our parents!"

"But how?" challenged Dan.

"That's what we've got to think out right now. And, by hookey! I believe I have an idea. Fellows, we have ten dollars apiece."

"My mother will say that I must put that in bank," grunted Dan.

"Wait! Of course, with ten dollars apiece, we've got to consult our parents as to how the money is to be spent," Dick went on. "Now, that is a matter that will call for a little diplomacy. Some of what our principal, Old Dut, calls 'finish'--no, '_finesse_.'"

"What's that?" Dan wanted to know.

"Oh, it's a Latin or a Greek word, or something of the sort, meaning to put a fine edge on a piece of business," Dick explained tranquilly. "What I mean is this, fellows: Each one of us will go home and show the money to his father--his father only. Then each one of us will ask permission to spend five dollars of the money on a present for his mother, to be given to her to-morrow morning as a surprise. Then we'll ask our dads for leave to use the other five dollars towards provisioning our camp. Fellows, if you go about it the right way, I'm sure you can each get leave for the camping expedition! I feel just about sure on my own account."

"But how about our mothers?" inquired Dan dubiously.

"Don't you think the present will smooth the way with the mothers?" laughed Dave Darrin.

"It ought to," smiled Tom Reade.

"Don't you think we could get our mothers something pretty nice with two dollars apiece?" asked Harry Hazelton speculatively.

"I couldn't get anything nice enough for my mother with two dollars, when I have more money," Dick replied promptly.

Hazelton's money-saving plan was promptly voted down.

"So now," proposed Dick, "all we have to do is to hurry home and hustle! Beat your way to it, fellows!"

"Hurrah!" Greg gasped.

Hurrying along Main Street, through the crowds of Christmas shoppers, the Grammar School boys were on the point of parting, to go their several ways homeward, when they came upon a scene that halted them.

More than two dozen people, mostly women, had gathered around a shabby-looking man who was clutching wildly at a lamp post, and yet seemed in momentary danger of falling. His lips were thickly covered with foam, his eyes glaring, and the fellow was talking wildly, in low tones, as though to himself.

"Come away and leave him. He's intoxicated," announced one woman shrilly.

"He's not intoxicated," responded another matron indignantly. "There is no odor of liquor about the poor man. And drunken men don't froth at the mouth. This poor fellow is ill--very ill. It must be a fit--maybe epilepsy. Some of you women who have a little more brains and heart than others help me to take this poor fellow to the drug store."

There were willing hands enough, now, among the women. Three or four tried to take hold of the sufferer at once. That victim of an unknown malady clutched and gripped at the good Samaritans as they tried to steer him along the street toward the drug store. To hold him up was all four women could do together, so progress along the street was slow indeed.

"Here comes Dr. Bentley in his auto. Stop him, some one!"

The doctor quickly ran his car in toward the curb and leaped out. A fine man and a busy physician, Dr. Bentley was never too much occupied to stop and help an unfortunate man.

Dr. Bentley's big frame and broad shoulders loomed up in the crowd.

"Let me have the man on one side," urged the doctor. "One of you ladies might help hold him on the other side."

"What's the matter with the man, doctor?" cried several.

"Really, ladies, I can't tell until I've had a chance to examine the man. It may be a fit of some sort. I think likely it is. But we will get him to the drug store first, and into the back room. Then I can examine the poor chap comfortably."

Though seemingly "out of his head," the sufferer succeeded in throwing his arms about a great deal.

Then, suddenly, Dick, who had been following and watching with wide-open eyes, called out lustily:

"Dr. Bentley, your overcoat is open, your chain is hanging with no watch on it, and your scarf pin is gone!"

That announcement electrified the situation. Dr. Bentley glanced down swiftly, then threw one hand up to his necktie.

"My purse is gone from my chatelaine!" cried one of the women who had been helping.

"My purse is gone, too!"

It was amazing to see how quickly the sufferer from the fit galvanized into action. He straightened up suddenly, gave himself a violent wrench and shook himself free of those who had sought to aid him.

With a bound the fellow was off and away. As he sprang he spat from his mouth the piece of soap that had supplied the foam to his lips.

"Catch him, fellows!" yelled Dick.

But only Tom and young Prescott were near enough to the path of flight. Tom Reade leaped valiantly in, but was shoved off and sent spinning by one of the burly fists of the rough.

It was up to Dick to make the catch.

Dick had his skates, strapped together, swinging from his right wrist. He swung the skates back to strike at the fugitive. Ere he could do it the man drove a big, hammer-like fist straight between Dick Prescott's eyes in a way that sent that boy down like a log.

The impact of that blow was heard by all. _

Read next: Chapter 3. The Campaign To Coax Parents

Read previous: Chapter 1. Really A Great Plan, But----

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