Jeff landed on the bottom, but like an eel he squirmed to the top before the other had time to get set. The champion's patrician head was thumped down into the mud and a knobby little fist played a painful tattoo on hismouth and cheek.
"Take him off! Take him off!" Merrill shrieked after he had tried in vain to roll away the incubus clamped like a vise to his body.
His henchmen ran forward to obey. An unexpected intervention stopped them. A one-armed little man who had drifted down the street in time to see part of the fracas pushed forward.
"I reckon not just yet. Goliath's had a turn. Now David gets his." "Lemme up," sobbed Goliath furiously.
"Say you're whopped." Jeff's fist emphasized the suggestion. "Doggone you!"This kind of one-sided warfare did not suit Jeff. He made as if to get up, but his backer stopped him.
"Hold on, son. You're not through yet. When you do a job do it thorough." To the former champion he spoke. "Had plenty yet?""I--I'll have him skinned," came from the tearful champion with a burst of profanity.
"That ain't the point. Have you had enough so you'll be good? Or do you need some more?""I'm goin' to tell Webber."
"Needs just a leetle more, son," the one-armed man told Jeff, dragging at his goatee.
But young Farnum had made up his mind. With a little twist of his body he got to his feet.
Merrill rose, tearful and sullen. "I--I'll fix you for this," he gulped, and went sobbing toward the schoolhouse.
"Better duck," James whispered to his cousin. Jeff shook his head.
The little man looked at the boy sharply. The eyes under his shaggy brows were like gimlets.
"Come up to the school with me. I'll see your teacher, son."Jeff walked beside him. He knew by the sound of the voice that his rescuer was a Southerner and his heart warmed to him. He wanted greatly to ask a question. Presently it plumped out.
"Was it in the war, sir?"
"I reckon I don't catch your meaning."
"That you lost your arm?" The boy added quickly, "My father was a soldier under General Early."The steel-gray eyes shot at him again. "I was under Early myself." "My father was a captain--Captain Farnum," the young warriorannounced proudly. "Not Phil Farnum!"
"Yes, sir. Did you know him?" Jeff trembled with eagerness. His dead soldier-father was the idol of his heart.
"Did I?" He swung Jeff round and looked at him. "You're like him, in a way, and, by Gad! you fight like him. What's your name?""Jefferson Davis Farnum."
"Shake hands, Jefferson Davis Farnum, you dashed little rebel. My name is Lucius Chunn. I was a lieutenant in your father's company before I was promoted to one of my own."Jeff forgot his troubles instantly. "I wish I'd been alive to go with father to the war," he cried.
Captain Chunn was delighted. "You doggoned little rebel!" "I didn't know we used that word in the South' sir."Chunn tugged at his goatee and laughed. "We're not in the South, David."The former Confederate asked questions to piece out his patchwork information. He knew that Philip Farnum had come out of the war with a constitution weakened by the hardships of the service. Rumors had drifted to him that the taste for liquor acquired in camp as an antidote for sickness had grown upon his comrade and finally overcome him. From Jeff he learned that after his father's death the widow had sold her mortgaged place and moved to the Pacific Coast. She had invested the few hundreds left her in some river-bottom lots at Verden and had later discovered that an unscrupulous real estate dealer had unloaded upon her worthless property. The patched and threadbare clothes of the boy told him that from a worldly point of view the affairs of the Farnums were at ebb tide.
"Did . . . did you know father very well?" Jeff asked tremulously. Chunn looked down at the thin dark face of the boy walking besidehim and was moved to lay a hand on his shoulder. He understood the ache in that little heart to hear about the father who was a hero to him. Jeff was of no importance in the alien world about him. The Captain guessed from the little scene he had witnessed that the lad trod a friendless, stormy path. He divined, too, that the hungry soul was fed from within by dreams and memories.
So Lucius Chunn talked. He told about the slender, soldierly officer in gray who had given himself so freely to serve his men, of the time he had caught pneumonia by lending his blanket to a sick boy, of the day he had led the charge at Battle Creek and received the wound which pained him so greatly to the hour of his death. And Jeff drank his words in like a charmed thing. He visualized it all, the bitter nights in camp, the long wet marches, the trumpet call to battle. It was this last that his imagination seized upon most eagerly. He saw the silent massing of troops, the stealthy advance through the woods; and he heard the blood-curdling rebel yell as the line swept forward from cover like a tidal wave, with his father at its head.
Captain Chunn was puzzled at the coldness with which Mr. Webber listened to his explanation of what had taken place. The school principal fell back doggedly upon one fact. It would not have happened if Jeff had not been playing truant. Therefore he was to blame for what had occurred.
Nothing would be done, of course, without a thorough investigation.
The Captain was not satisfied, but he did not quite see what more he could do.
"The boy is a son of an old comrade of mine. We were in the war together. So of course I have to stand by Jeff," he pleaded with a smile.
"You were in the rebel army?" The words slipped out before the schoolmaster could stop them.
"In the Confederate army," Chunn corrected quietly. Webber flushed at the rebuke. "That is what I meant to say.""I leave to-morrow for Alaska. It would be pleasant to know before I go that Jeff is out of his trouble.""I'm afraid Jeff always will be in trouble. He is a most insubordinate boy," the principal answered coldly.
"Are you sure you quite understand him?"
