Bob himself had said nothing to the rest of his schoolmates about the fight that he had had with Buck. It was enough that he had given the latter the punishment he deserved. He had no liking for the Indian practice of scalping the dead.
Lutz and Mooney were on hand as usual, but they gave the Radio Boys a wide berth, contenting themselves with an occasional malignant glance when chance brought them in their vicinity. But later in the day Jimmy heard Lutz telling one of the schoolboys who had asked him about Buck that the latter had decided to take a little vacation and was going up into the woods for a while. The exact location of the woods was not specified, but the fact that he had gone away at all was so gratifying to Jimmy that he lost no time in carrying the welcome news to his companions.
Joe at first was inclined to be incredulous.
“Too good to be true,” he declared. “To have Buck licked one day and go away the next! Luck doesn’t come that way, like bananas—in bunches.”
“‘Though lost to sight to memory dear,’” quoted Herb.
“It will be a mighty good thing for Clintonia if he goes away and stays away,” affirmed Bob. “He’s been the worst element in the town—a pest that everybody dislikes except a few of his own kind. There doesn’t seem to be a single decent streak in his whole make-up.”
“It would be a good thing if he had taken Lutz and Mooney along with him,” remarked Jimmy.
“Oh, they don’t count,” replied Bob. “They’ll wriggle around as a snake does when its head is cut off, but that’s about all. It was Buck who thought up the low-down tricks and then relied on them to help him carry them out.”
“Well,” said Joe, “if he’s really gone we’ll mark this day with a white stone. And let’s hope that he’ll be gone for a good long while.”
And this was the general verdict of the school, especially of the younger boys whose lives Buck had made a torment by his bullying.