“Hold on!” called the reporter, hurrying after him. “Judge Brough says I can take you back to the show in his car. It’s a couple of miles from here. Jump in.”
Gladden had been sent to the dogshow, by his paper, The Clarion, in quest of human interest items that might brighten up the technical account of the exhibition. He was not minded to let slip this chance of getting more material for the most worthwhile human interest item the day thus far had produced. Wherefore, he stuck to the excited oldster.
During the drive to the armory, he fired adroit questions at the taciturn and worried Fenno; most of which the old man did not trouble to answer. But, from a word or two forced from Joel’s overburdened soul, the lad gathered something of Fenno’s dread lest harm had befallen Treve through Colt’s ill-will.
“You can go to sleep over that, brother!” Gladden reassured him. “You and Treve, between you, managed to make Friend Colt one hundred per cent eligible for first aid treatment. Before I left, he had been helped across to the hotel and a doctor had been sent for. By the time Doc gets through stitching and bandaging him, Colt will be glad enough to stay in bed for the rest of the day and probably to-morrow, too. He’s in no shape to carry on a canine vendetta, just now. Sleep easy!”
Joel sighed in deep relief and turned upon his companion a look that, in a less forbidding old face, would have been classified as one of gratitude.
“You been mighty decent to me, young feller,” he muttered, grudgingly, as though the effort at graciousness were physically painful. “An’—I’m thankin’ you. Let it go at that.—Say! Can’t this chuffer make his car move a wee peckle faster?”
“Not unless we want to go back to court again for wearing holes in the speed limit,” said Gladden.
Joel sighed, rustily. Speaking to himself rather than to the reporter, he grumbled:
“I’d counted a hull heap on Treve’s winnin’ all them ribbon-gewgaws an’ sich. Most likely the judgin’s been goin’ on while I was to the hoosgow. Luck couldn’t ever hand me out a hundred p’cent parcel but there’d be sure to be a hole punched into it somewheres. I s’pose me an’ Treve has got to lay away them grand hopes of our’n, like they was the pants of some dear dead friend; as the feller said. But if he could ’a’ won just a single ribbon or a—”