The Grammar School Boys of Gridley Part 24

"Didn't you holler?" asked Dan, his mouth wide open.

"Yes. While the cloth was being tied tight I thought it was time to start in to yell. At the first sound a pair of hands gripped me around the throat. Whee! I thought I was being hanged, certainly! I must have been black in the face when that scoundrel let up on choking me. Well, I took the choking as a hint that I wasn't expected to make any noise.

After that I was thrown on my back, but I couldn't see anything. One man, who had rather soft hands----"

"Dexter," guessed d.i.c.k.

"Most likely. Well, he sat with one hand across my throat, and I didn't think it was my time to yell, so I lay quiet. After a while I heard a wagon coming along. Then I was lifted into the wagon and a lot of old sacking was thrown over the whole length of my body. I guess it was the same sacking that you found me lying on in the cave. Then the wagon started and I had a long ride. At last we branched off into what I guess was a sort of bridle path. Not so very long after the wagon stopped and I was lifted down to my feet. I walked a little way, guided by one of the men, and then they lifted me up and carried me. Then I felt them poking me through that tunnel. After that I saw some kind of a light, dimly, through the cloths over my head, and then I was thrown down where you found me. The light was out then, and the cloths were taken off my head. Then that sickening gag was jammed into my mouth."

"Didn't you offer any kick?" inquired Dan.

"Where was the use?" sighed Greg. "I knew that men who had gone to all that trouble to bother me wouldn't waste any time listening to what I might have to say."

"Then you don't know," inquired d.i.c.k, "if Dexter and Driggs were the men?"

"They didn't speak once, from the time they grabbed me up to the time when they left me in the cave," Greg answered. "Hours after that I must have fallen asleep. I woke up to hear their voices a little way off.

They were talking in whispers. I couldn't hear all that was said, but I'm certain in my own mind that the two were Dexter and Driggs."

"Did you make out anything that they were talking about?" pressed d.i.c.k.

"Here and there I caught some of it. I heard one man scolding the other about throwing bricks and shying a stone; and so that must have been what happened to you, d.i.c.k, and to you, Dave. I'm pretty sure it was Dexter who was doing the scolding. Later I heard him say it was foolish, and this carrying me off was much more to the purpose--that a thing like my being carried away would do a heap more to 'scare that woman' and make her understand that she had some one she couldn't afford to fool with. Next the other man broke in and said that lugging me away was foolish, and only a cause of trouble. But the other man broke in, with a laugh, and said he'd make 'that woman' pay handsomely to have me set free. He said she had always been a tender-hearted woman, and would spend plenty of money to save the life of a boy who had helped her. Then the two men, I judged from the sounds, left the cave. Any way, I haven't heard any sound of them since then. I----"

Here Greg stopped suddenly, clutching at a tree that he was pa.s.sing.

"Fellows, I feel about all in," he remarked brokenly. "I'm awfully dizzy, too."

"You're played out, starved and all used up--that's what ails you,"

exclaimed d.i.c.k sympathetically. "We'll halt here and give you a chance to rest."

In five minutes Greg declared himself fit to go on again. Dave and d.i.c.k walked on either side of him, half supporting him.

"There's a house ahead, and a telephone wire running into it," said young Prescott. "We'll try to get that far, and then we'll telephone into Gridley."

That much of the trip was made, with a couple of short halts for rest.

d.i.c.k went up to the front door of the farmhouse and knocked loudly. It was the farmer himself who came to the door.

"We've found the boy that all the searching parties were out looking for," d.i.c.k announced. "May we use your telephone to send the word into Gridley?"

"You sure can," rejoined the farmer. "Come this way." Then, with a side glance at young Holmes, "I guess you're him."

"Yes," nodded Greg.

"And you hain't had a bite to eat for a day or two?"

"No."

"Mother," called the farmer, leading the way into the living room, "here's that missing youngster that there's been all the fuss over. He's hungry. You know what treatment that calls for."

d.i.c.k, in the meantime, had espied the telephone and was engaged in ringing up. He called for the police station and sent the news to the chief.

"And say that I'm hitching up a team and am going to bring you all in,"

added the farmer. So Prescott added that item of information.

"Hark! Hear that?" broke in d.i.c.k a minute later, while nearly all the others were talking at once. Despite the distance there came to their ears the sound of Gridley's fire alarm whistle, sounding the recall for all searching parties.

"Now, goodness knows I'd like to offer you a lot more to eat, young man," said the farmer's gray-haired wife, patting Greg's head. "But, after fasting so long you don't want to eat too much at first. What you've had ought to be enough until you've had your drive and are at home with your own folks."

"I feel fine, ma'am," responded young Holmes gratefully. "I don't know how to thank you. And I'm glad you stopped my eating too much for my own good. I'll be all right now, when I get home."

The farmer drove up to the door and called out. All of Greg's friends wanted to help him outdoors, but he insisted that he could walk all by himself. Into the farm wagon piled the Grammar School boys, after having thanked the woman of the house most heartily.

"This is a lot better'n walking, after all," murmured Greg gratefully.

Even with his late start the boys were ahead of the searchers under Captain Hall, who had heard the signal and were now returning.

"Turn down one of the side streets, will you, please?" begged Greg, as the party neared the outskirts of Gridley. "I don't feel exactly like meeting a whole crowd."

For, even at a distance, it could be seen that Gridley was swarming with thousands of people who had not joined the searching parties.

Thus Greg was delivered at his own home, and the other members of d.i.c.k & Co. were up on Main Street before the news had spread of young Holmes's return.

All sensational events are dead as soon as they have been discussed for a few hours. The police authorities visited Greg at his home and questioned him, then reluctantly decided that there was not enough evidence for issuing a warrant for Abner Dexter and his man Driggs. But the news came over, from Driggs's own town, that the fellow had been dropped from the police force there.

On Tuesday morning school went on as usual, and in the afternoon the boys of the Central Grammar went at their football practice as though nothing had happened.

Before the practice game d.i.c.k called a meeting in the field, at which he and Dave Darrin were authorized to challenge the North and South Grammar Schools to a series of games.

Within the next three days both schools had been heard from, and there seemed every prospect of keen rivalry between the boys of the three schools.

Many days went along ere d.i.c.k & Co. heard again from Dexter or the latter's henchman. Yet events were shaping that were destined to mark important pages in the history of Gridley.

Except for football, in fact, things were now so quiet that d.i.c.k Prescott had not an inkling of the startling events that were ahead of him.

CHAPTER XIII

A GREAT FOOTBALL POW-WOW

"I have important news to communicate," began Old Dut dryly, after tapping the bell for the beginning of the afternoon session.

d.i.c.k and some of his friends looked up rather placidly, for they knew what the news was to be.

"All lovers of football in the Central Grammar School," continued the princ.i.p.al, "are requested to meet in the usual field immediately after the close of school. The purpose is to form a league and to arrange for games between the three Grammar Schools of Gridley. I will add that I am glad that so much interest in athletics is being displayed by our young men. To show my pleasure, I will add that if any of the young men in this school are so unfortunate as to incur checks this afternoon that would keep them in after school they may serve out the checks to-morrow instead. First cla.s.s in geography! For the next twenty minutes the boys of this cla.s.s are requested to remember that football is not geography!"

Excited as many of the youngsters were, and great as was the temptation to whisper, it happened that not a boy in the eighth grade received a check or a demerit, as it is usually called, for any form of bad conduct that afternoon. Immediately at the close of school the almost solid legion of boys of the seventh and eighth grades started on a run for the big field in which they had been practising of late.

"Now, we'll have to wait a few minutes for the fellows from the other schools," announced d.i.c.k when he had marshaled his forces in the field.