Chapter 8. Worming The Truth From A Whiner

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_ CHAPTER VIII. WORMING THE TRUTH FROM A WHINER

"Let me in--quick!" demanded a voice.

"Move on!" ordered Dave.

"Whoever they are, they can break in through the windows, at any rate," muttered Harry Hazelton, in a voice that was just a trifle unsteady.

"We have legal right to occupy this cabin," called Dick through the door. "No one else has any right to be here."

"I know that," answered the voice, "but let me in before I freeze!"

To the amazement of some of the others, Dick Prescott raised the bar and swung the door open.

In came a figure--that of a boy. His cap was pulled down over his ears, and a big tippet obscured most of his face. But Dick grasped him by the shoulder as the youngster started to enter, followed by a heavy swirl of snow.

"What in the world are you doing here, Hen Dutcher?" Dick demanded.

"Yes! What are you doing here?" chorused the rest.

"Lemme get near the fire?" begged Hen, in a choking, sobbing voice. "I'm nearly frozen."

"Don't shut that door yet," called Dan, moving forward. "We didn't know it was snowing. I want to see if it's a big snow."

"You bet it is," chattered Hen. "It's a blizzard, and I don't care how soon that door is shut."

"You're not giving orders here, remember," retorted Dan crisply, as he went to the open doorway. The others, too, crowded to the doorway. It certainly was a big snow. The flakes were of the largest size, and coming down thickly to the tune of a moaning wind.

"It wasn't snowing at dark, and now there are at least four inches," cried Greg.

"Five inches," hazarded Dave.

"How many, Dick?"

"Say, are you fellows going to freeze me to death?" called Hen Dutcher, his teeth chattering. He was facing the fire, roasting in front, but with chills running down his spine.

"Close the door, fellows. We can't see much to-night at any rate, and we'll see the whole storm in the morning," proposed Dick. "We don't want to see Hen freeze to death."

"Nobody invited him here!"

Dick turned, wondering who had made that remark, but he could not make up his mind.

"Take off your coat, Hen, and have some hot coffee. We have some left, and it will warm you," Dick went on, after the door had been closed and barred.

"I'll have supper and the whole thing," declared Hen promptly. "Don't you fellows expect to feed your visitors?"

"We'll feed you," Dick agreed, "though we had made no plans for visitors and didn't expect any."

Hen had some difficulty in getting off his coat.

"Are you as stiff as that?" asked Prescott, going to the other fellow's assistance.

"I tell you, I'm just about frozen to death," moaned Hen. "My, how cold it came on, just after dark! The wind began to howl, and I could feel the ice forming on my chin every time I breathed. I thought sure I was going to freeze to death in the woods. I'd about given up when I saw your lights."

"How long has it been snowing?" Dave asked.

"Don't you fellows know?" Hen demanded.

"No; we were in here, getting supper and then eating it. We didn't know that it had even started to snow."

"It wasn't snowing at dark, but it began some time after," replied Hen, as he took the chair Dick offered and sank into it before the warming glow.

"Don't get too close to the fire until you thaw out a bit," advised Dick. "If you do you'll feel it more."

"I feel it now," groaned Hen, beginning to moan. "My hands are frozen stiff."

They weren't really frozen, though the hands had been badly nipped. It was twenty minutes before Hen Dutcher cared to move over to the table. Even then he complained severely of the "stinging" in his hands, feet and chin.

"I'm going out," proposed Dave, reaching for his cap and coat. "I'm going to see for myself just how cold it is."

No one offered to accompany Darrin. He paused, outside, to tap on one of the window panes. Two minutes after that he was back, pounding for admittance.

"Br-r-r-r!" Dave greeted his comrades, as he stepped inside. "Say, I don't want any more of being out to-night. I'll bet it's away down below zero. And how the wind howls and cuts!"

It took Hen Dutcher, after he got started, considerable time to eat his fill. In the meantime the others, restrained by a sense of what was due from hosts, held back their curiosity.

"There, I don't believe I could eat another mouthful," declared Dutcher, at last, pushing back from the table.

"Now, Hen," invited Dick, "come over to the fire and tell us how you came to be here."

"Why, I just naturally was hereabouts," declared Hen evasively.

"That won't quite do," replied Dick, shaking his head. "What brought you into these woods to-night? Did you expect that we'd invite you in to join us?"

"Nope. Not quite," Hen replied, a crafty look in his eyes.

"Then out with the truth, Hen Dutcher!" broke in Dave.

"I don't have to tell you fellows, do I?"

"Yes, if you want to stay here to-night!" blurted Tom Reade.

"You fellows wouldn't put me out in the cold again!" dared Hen.

"Wouldn't we?" retorted Greg Holmes.

"I just wanted a tramp, and took one," replied Hen sulkily.

"That's too thin!" snapped Dan Dalzell.

"Then you fellows can invent your own story," offered Hen.

"Out with him, fellows!" called Harry Hazelton, making a dive for Hen.

"Don't you dare!" blustered Dutcher tremulously.

"Out with Hen, if he doesn't tell the truth, and the whole of it," advised Tom Reade.

"Dick, you ain't going to let these fellows do anything of the sort, are you?" quavered Hen. "Why, I'd die if I had to be put out into the storm again."

"Why can't you tell us the truth, Hen?" asked Dick quietly, fixing a searching gaze on Dutcher. Then, with a sudden flash of inspiration, Dick added, "Who was out this way with you?"

"No one," Hen replied.

"Don't tell us that," warned young Prescott. "Who were the other fellows in the crowd?"

"I tell you I came alone," Hen insisted, with rising color, as he shifted under Dick's steady gaze. "Fred and----"

"Fred--who?" cross-examined Dick.

"Nobody," Dutcher answered, his eyes on the floor.

Dick thought a moment before a great light dawned on him.

"So, Hen Dutcher, Fred Ripley and some of his crowd knew we were coming out here, and so they came along, too, and you with 'em, eh?"

"I tell you I wasn't with 'em," protested Dutcher.

"You walked all the way?"

"Most of the way."

"And how did Fred Ripley and his crowd come?"

"On a wagon, and----"

Here Hen Dutcher paused suddenly.

"I came alone," he bellowed wrathfully. "There weren't any other fellows."

"Don't you call Ripley a fellow?" pressed Dick. "You said that he and his crowd came on a wagon. So they're going to play pranks on us, are they?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," protested Hen hoarsely.

Dave, Tom and Greg fastened on Dutcher, dragging him out of his chair. This time Dick did not feel called upon to interfere.

"Now, you tell us all about this queer game!" commanded Dave Darrin, his eyes flashing warningly. "If you don't, we'll shake it out of you; or we'll roll you in the snow until we soak the truth out of you! What do Fred Ripley and his crowd mean to do out here to-night?"

"I--I don't know," gasped Hen.

"Yes, you do," warned Dave Darrin crisply.

"No, I don't!"

"Hen Dutcher," Dick interrupted firmly, "we are out here to enjoy ourselves, and we don't propose to be interfered with. We have a right to be here, and no one else has. We've wormed it out of you that Fred Ripley and some other fellows have come out here to torment us. Fred Ripley has no right to come here and play mean tricks on us."

"Who gave you the right to be here?" demanded Hen sullenly. "Wasn't it Fred Ripley's father?"

"Yes; but that gives Fred no right to be mean in the matter, and Lawyer Ripley would be the first to say so, if I went and told him."

"And then you'd be 'Sneak Prescott,'" taunted Hen.

"I didn't say I was going to tell Fred's father," Dick answered, his color rising, "and I haven't any thought of it, either. Any fellow of anywhere near my own size who calls me a sneak can have his answer--two of them," Dick went on, displaying his fists. "You know that well enough, Hen Dutcher. You're one of our own crowd--that is, you go to the Central Grammar with us, and yet you've joined in with some High School boys to bother us and spoil our fun. Who's the sneak, Hen? Who will the fellows at the Central Grammar call the sneak when they hear about this?"

Hen began to look decidedly uneasy. He was well aware what the Grammar School boys in Gridley did to one of their own number who was voted a sneak.

"I--I didn't mean any harm," muttered Hen, almost whimpering.

"See here," demanded Dick, another idea coming to him, "how much did Fred Ripley pay you to help work against us."

"He didn't pay me nothing," young Dutcher protested ungrammatically.

"How much did he agree to pay you, then? Come--out with it!" insisted Dick.

Hen saw the other chums pressing about him threateningly, so he almost blubbered:

"Said he'd give me a dollar if I did the trick right."

"So there was a trick?" cried Dick quickly; then added ironically: "Hen, you ought never to tell lies. You don't do it skilfully. You let out the truth, despite yourself. You've admitted that you've been hired to work against us--to help spoil our peace and comfort. Now, you've got to tell us all the rest of it, or you'll have to take the consequences!"

"Say, don't be mean with a feller!" pleaded Dutcher, ready to snivel.

"We're not mean with you," Dick insisted. "We've a right to protect ourselves, and we're going to do it. Besides, you joined us, and now you've got to be one of us and tell us the whole scheme against us."

"I didn't join you!"

"Do you belong to Fred Ripley's crowd, then? If so, you'd better join that choice gang! Grab hold of him, fellows!"

Dave Darrin and Tom Reade gripped Hen, on either side, with great heartiness. Dan Dalzell ran to unbar the door, after accomplishing which he turned to view what might follow.

"Are you going to tell us, Hen, what Ripley and his crew are plotting against us?" Dick insisted once more.

"They were going to come down here to-night," confessed Hen.

"What were they going to do here?"

"Scare you fellers."

"How?"

"Oh, they've got a lot of sheets, and a frame to rig up on Bert Dodge's shoulders. With the frame above him, and covered with sheets, Bert will make a 'ghost' about ten feet high."

"What else?" pressed Dick.

"Well, they've got a queer kind of whistle they can blow on, and it makes a long, loud moan, or a wail," explained Hen. "Whee! It gave me the creepy shivers the first time I heard it."

"Has Ripley's ghost party got anything else to make the night merry with?" questioned Dick.

"Some kinder colored fire, that they were going to light at quite a distance from here, to give an 'unearthly' glow through the woods."

"What else?"

"Oh, some other things," confessed Hen vaguely. "I can't tell you all that crowd has, for I didn't see it and they wouldn't tell me about it."

"And you turned on Central Grammar boys to help a lot of High School fellows out?" asked Dick in fine scorn.

"Well, I was crazy to have a day or two out here in the woods, and you fellows didn't ask me," protested Hen. "The other crowd did."

"Yes; because they wanted to use you for a tool against us. They wanted to make you their catspaw, Hen Dutcher. Oh, you must feel fine! And the other Central Grammar fellows back in Gridley will be so proud of you!"

"You don't have to tell 'em," urged Hen Dutcher pleadingly.

"No; we don't have to," confirmed Tom Reade. "But we can. And most likely we will. We want to separate the wheat from the chaff at the old Central Gram."

"But, please don't tell 'em," whined Hen.

"We'll see about that," said Dick Prescott. "We won't make a solitary promise. It may depend on how you act, Hen. Now, is there anything more you ought to tell us about what Fred Ripley's crowd intends to do?"

"No-o-o. I don't believe so."

"Who's with Fred Ripley?"

"Bert Dodge."

"Who else?"

Hen named five other young fellows, two of whom were rather worthless High School sophomores.

"And their plan," added Hen, unburdening himself, "was to swoop down here this evening, lay the lines for a first class ghost scare and then see you fellows start running and never stop till you reached Gridley. They've brought some provisions along with them, and they were going to move in here and camp, and laugh, and have a great joke about how the Grammar School kids got cold feet, and----"

"Where are they now?" Dick queried.

"They were going to my Uncle Joel's for a few hours, have supper there and then slip down here. But Uncle Joel's place must be four miles from here, and even he didn't know just where this camp was. So the fellows made me get the best idea I could from my uncle, and then sent me down here to find the place. They'll be mad 'cause I ain't back."

"More likely they'll come, without waiting for you, Hen," observed Dave Darrin grimly.

At this moment the latch-string moved; there was a click of wood against wood as the latch was raised.

"Fellows, it's our ghost party!" whispered Dick, hoarsely. "Stand close by me and sail in when I give the word. We'll do our best to make it hot for the ghost!"

There were varying degrees of bravery shown in that instant. Not one of the Grammar School boys dreamed that they could best Fred Ripley's crew in a rough-and-tumble, but Dick & Co. were all determined to be as "game" as possible.

It was different with Hen Dutcher. He turned pale and shook like a leaf. _

Read next: Chapter 9. The Intruder Who Tried To Be "Boss"

Read previous: Chapter 7. The Prowler Of The Night

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