NOT GUILTY
“Whew! but he looks even madder than Mr. Brush did!” exclaimed Billy Button, when he saw the advancing man snap his whip furiously, as though to warn them what to expect on his arrival.
Every scout was now on his feet and watching.
“There’s his wagon over on the road,” said Carl; “he must have been passing and have seen us here. I wonder if we’ve trespassed on his private property now. Mr. Witherspoon, you’d better get ready to hypnotize another mad farmer.”
“He’s got his eye on our chickens, let me tell you!” urged Josh, as he moved over a few paces, as though meaning to defend the anticipated treat desperately if need be.
The man was a big brawny fellow, and very angry at that. Mr. Witherspoon faced him without a sign of alarm, even smiling, because conscious of having given no reasonable cause for an assault.
“That cracking of his whip isn’t going to scare us a bit,” muttered the pugnacious Josh; “he’d better not lay it on me for one, or any of my chums, that’s what!”
The man could hardly speak at first, from the effect of his anger, together with his hasty rush from the road up to the camp. Then holding his threatening whip in one hand he pointed a quivering finger straight toward the fowls that they were expecting to have for their supper, and which could no longer be concealed by Josh.
“So,” bellowed the man, “now I know where the chickens that were stolen from my coop last night went. Raidin’ the farms up this way, are you? I want to tell you it’s going to be a bad job for every one of ye. I’ll have the law on ye if I have to go to Lenox and look every boy in town over. And I’ll know ye all again, if its a month from now.”
He snapped the whip viciously as he stopped talking; but Mr. Witherspoon did not seem to shrink back an inch. Looking the excited farmer squarely in the eye the scout master started to speak.
“I judge from what you say, sir, that you have had the misfortune to lose some of your poultry lately? I’m sorry to hear of it, but when you come and accuse us of being the guilty parties you are making a serious mistake, sir.”
“Oh, am I?” demanded the other, still as furious as ever, though the boys noticed that he made no effort to use the dreadful whip he carried. “I lost some fowls, and you’re expecting to have some chickens for dinner. Anybody with hoss sense could put them facts together, couldn’t they? I ain’t to be blarnied so easy, let me tell you.”
“You seem to talk as though no one owned chickens up this Bear Mountain way but yourself, sir,” said Mr. Witherspoon, calmly. “These lads are Boy Scouts. They are a part of the Lenox Troop, and I can vouch for every one of them as being honest, and incapable of stealing any man’s fowls.”
“You don’t say, mister?” sneered the man; “but tell me, who’s a-goin’ to vouch for you, now?”
“My name is Robert Witherspoon,” replied the scout master, showing wonderful self-control the boys thought, considering the insulting manner of the angry farmer. “I am a civil engineer and surveyor. I love boys every way I find them; and it is a pleasure to me to act as their scout master, accompanying them on their hikes when possible, and seeing that they behave themselves in every way. You can find out about my standing from Judge Jerome, Doctor Lawson or Pastor Hotchkiss in Lenox.”
The man still looked in Mr. Witherspoon’s calm eyes. What he saw there seemed to have an influence upon his aroused feelings, for while he still shook his head skeptically there was not so much of menace in his manner now.
“Boys will be boys, no matter whether they have scout uniforms on or overalls,” he said sullenly. “I’ve suffered mor’n once from raids on my orchards and chicken coops, and found it was some town boys, off on what they called a lark, that made other people suffer.”
“But I assure you there is not the slightest possibility of any boy here having taken your chickens, sir,” continued the scout master.
“We’ve been on the move all day long,” added Tom, “and only arrived here half an hour back. Last night we were several miles away in camp.”
“But—you got chickens, and I was robbed last night,” faltered the farmer, as though that fact impressed him as evidence that no argument could keep down.
“If we could prove to you,” continued Mr. Witherspoon, “that we came by these four fowls honestly, I hope you will be frank enough to apologize to my boys for unjustly suspecting them of being hen thieves?”
“Go on then and do it, mister; but I warn you I’m sot in my ways, and hard to convince. It’s got to be a mighty likely yarn that’ll fotch me over.”
“You’ve lived around here some time, I take it?” asked Mr. Witherspoon.
“Man and boy forty-seven years,” came the reply.
“Then you must know Ezra Brush, for he was born in the farm house he occupies to this day?” suggested the scout master.
“I know Ezra like a book. Him and me have always been good friends, except for that boundary dispute which took us to court; but I reckon Ezra don’t hold no grudge agin me ’cause I won out.
“We had Mr. Brush sitting beside our campfire for two hours last night, while I told him all about the things Boy Scouts are taught. He means to have his three boys join the troop at the next meeting; for he knows now that if his little Jim and some of his companions had been scouts, the boy’s life in all probability would have been saved last summer.”
“It might have been,” admitted the farmer, “if them other lads had knowed what to do, but before a man got there it was too late. And Ezra certainly sot some store by that bright-faced little Jim; everybody keered for him, he was so winnin’ in his ways.”
“Well,” continued Mr. Witherspoon with a smile, for he was certain of his ground by this time, and the whip hung listlessly alongside the farmer’s leg; “we made so good an impression on Mr. Brush that early this morning his man Bill came over with a basket, and also this note. Please read it, sir.”
He placed the paper in the other’s hand; and leaning down so that the waning light of the setting sun might fall on the writing the farmer seemed to take in the contents of the note.
When he looked up he no longer scowled, but let his eyes rove around at the faces of the scouts, all filled with eager anticipation.
“Well, I was wrong to say what I did, I owns up,” he commenced, making a wry face, as though it was rather an unusual thing for him to admit being anything but right; “and since I promised to apologize to ye, boys I’m ready to do it. Chickens all looks alike after they’ve been plucked and the heads cut off; but ’cordin’ to what that note reads these here are Brush fowls and not from the Perkins coop.”
Mr. Witherspoon nodded his head, and his eyes twinkled.
“Are you satisfied to accept Mr. Perkins’ apology, boys, in the same spirit in which it is given?” he asked, looking at his charges.
Of course there was an immediate response, and in the affirmative too. Boys are not apt to harbor any deep resentment, once the accusation is withdrawn.
“There, you see these boys are not the ones to hold it against you, Mr. Perkins,” the scout master continued.
“Did you see the thieves who were in your hen house last night, Mr. Perkins?” asked Tom, as though he had some object in making the inquiry.
“Wall, no, though I heard the racket when my chickens got to squawkin’, and run to the coop with a gun; but the pesky rascals had cleared out with half a dozen of my best young fowls. I reckoned to larn where they was, and I’m on my way to town right now with a load of stuff, meanin’ to make a few inquiries in the mornin’.”
He grinned as he fumbled at the pocket of his coat.
“What have you got there, Mr. Perkins?” asked Tom.
“It’s a boy’s cap as was left in my coop last night,” declared the farmer; “and a queer lookin’ one at that. Guess they might tell me who it fits in Lenox.”
Every eye was focused on the cap which he held up. It was indeed of an odd color, and very likely the only one of the kind in that section.
Josh Kingsley laughed out loud.
“Guess we ought to know that cap, fellows!” he exclaimed. “The last time I saw the same it was perked on the red head of Tony Pollock.”