“Then, colonel, I’m going to tell you what started the racket. If you think Jode acted like a true sportsman, I’ll have nothing more to say. I want you to remember, though, that I was brought up to hate a lie, and that what you hear from me is the truth.”
“Go on,” said the colonel.
“Clancy and I set out for your camp to arrange for a series of competitions,” went on Frank. “We wanted to do everything possible to cause a better feeling between the two clubs, and stirring up trouble was the last thing in our minds. Before we got to the camp, though, we saw Jode and three of his friends blazing away at a coyote dog with a revolver.”
“That coyote dog was a camp robber,” put in the colonel. “It was perfectly right for the boys to shoot him.”
“Why, yes, if it was plain shooting they were going to do; but what right had they to torture the brute?”
“There was nothing in the way of torture whatever,” declared the colonel.
“Is tying a dynamite cartridge to a dog’s tail and lighting the fuse torture?” demanded Frank.
“Nothing of that sort was done.”
Frank gasped. How was he to make any headway against all this misinformation which the colonel had received from Jode? And it was misinformation which the colonel accepted in every detail.
“Colonel,” continued Frank earnestly, “I was there and I know what took place. Clancy and I didn’t interfere, until Jode had ordered one of the boys to light the fuse and another one to cut the dog loose. It was a brutal business. Clancy and I stopped it; and, if we had it to do over, we would stop it again.”