“Oh! what are you drivin’ at? We don’t know nothin’ about no shot. You make me tired!”
“That kind of bluff will not go. One of you fired a shot from behind these reeds a few minutes ago. Who did it?”
The man regarded the boys with the utmost contempt, seemingly quite indifferent, but Welch grew red with anger.
“Say!” he cried; “you’re too fresh, Mr. Frank Merriwell! I know you! Because you are a college chap and have had your name printed in the papers, you think you can come down here into Maine and run over the countrymen you find here. Well, you will find out the countrymen won’t be run over. I don’t believe you are such a much, anyway. What you really need is a good thumping, and I’d like the job to give it to you. I’d done it yesterday if it hadn’t been for that big lummuxing chum of yours who meddled in. I’ll do it yet when I get the chance! I promise you that I will thump you, and Jim Welch always keeps his promises. Now, you chaps had better git!”
Frank laughed outright.
“You are very amusing, Mr. Jim Welch,” he declared. “It is evident that you think yourself a dangerous sort of individual, but you are dangerous only when you have a shotgun in your hands and are hidden behind some reeds. It would be just like you to try to shoot somebody in the back. Your face shows that.”
“I didn’t shoot at all, and you don’t want to say I did.”
“Then your friend did!” cried Hodge, who was fairly quivering for trouble. “His face shows he wouldn’t hesitate to——”
“Look here, confound you!” growled the man, scowling at Hodge; “you want to go slow! Neither of us did any shooting, for we ain’t got anything to shoot with.”
“No guns?”