“I only wish we could talk back to them,” said Bob. “I’m keen for the time when we can send messages, as well as listen in on them. But that will be possible, too, before the end of the summer. I’m studying up hard on the code and I know you are too, and we ought to be able to pass our examinations soon and get the right to have a sending station. But look who’s going down the street, Joe!” he exclaimed, interrupting himself suddenly.
Joe followed the direction of his glance and gave a grunt of disgust.
“Buck Looker and his bunch,” he remarked contemptuously. “Carl Lutz and Terry Mooney always trailing along with him! I wonder what low-down thing they’re cooking up now.”
“No knowing,” replied Bob carelessly. “They’ve steered pretty clear of us since we got back that set of Jimmy’s that they took. I have to laugh whenever I think of them rolling over and over in the dark and fighting each other when they thought they were fighting us.”
Joe laughed too at the recollection.
“We put one over on them then all right,” he agreed. “And I have to laugh, too, when I think how he crawled yesterday when you called him down in the school yard while he was bullying little Sam Ashton.”
“I didn’t want to soil my hands with him,” returned Bob. “I’d made up my mind never to speak to him again. But it made my blood boil when I saw the way he was tormenting a boy half his size and I had to interfere.”
“It did me good to see how he backed down,” chuckled Joe. “I really hoped he wouldn’t, for I wanted to see him get a good trimming. But Buck’s memory is good, and I guess he remembered the thrashing you handed him the night he was trying to wreck your aerial.”
“Perhaps,” laughed Bob. “I sure was sore at him that night and I guess I gave him good and plenty.”
“The pity of it was,” said Joe, “that nobody was around to see you do it. Ten to one he told his cronies afterward that it was he who licked you. But there was no mistake yesterday. Lutz and Mooney were standing close by and saw him take water. He turned fairly green with fright when he saw you double up your fists. You want to keep your eyes open, Bob, for he’ll try to get even by doing you a dirty trick whenever he thinks he can get away with it safely.”