Farmer Bluff's dog Blazer

by Florence E. Burch

"All right," grinned Dick, accepting the challenge. "Look out for a ducking, pockets and all. It was a goosing last time."

This last fling was more than Bill could stand.

"Come on!" roared he, maddened beyond control. And rushing for Dick with both fists doubled, he went at him with all his might.

Dick was a pretty tough boy, and had done his share of fights at school; but Bill was tougher, and Dick soon found that he was in for such a mauling as he had never had in all his previous experience. For full five minutes, they tugged and tussled, and pounded and hammered at all available portions of each other's frames, until Dick began to wish that he had never provoked the combat. He was almost at the end of his strength, when a most unlooked-for accident delivered him out of Bill's hands.

Forgetting the narrowness of the footway in the heat of the fight, the boys had got crosswise, instead of lengthwise of it, when Dick, suddenly growing furious, to find that he was being worsted, drew off an instant, to gather up all his strength for a final onset; but, inadvertently stepping too far back, his heel struck over the treacherous grass of the shelving bank, and, with a slip and a yell, he went splashing backwards into the water.

Bill's first impulse was a shout of triumph; his second, that when a boy goes head over heels out of his depth, there is no telling how he will come up. Bill knew the look of a drowned dog, and had no wish to be taxed with making Dick look that way. Quick as thought, he turned to fly.

But though a scamp, Bill was not altogether bad. In the midst of all his fears, it struck him that people always rose to the surface before they drowned. If Dick rose, he might reach him. In an instant, he was back again. The exact spot was easy to find by the heel-mark on the bank and the brown swirl in the water, where the mud had been disturbed. Some distance out, too, beyond the ripples where the water had closed over Dick, was his cap, floating merrily down stream; but not a sign of Dick himself.

Bill went hot all over. Once having turned back, he seemed rooted to the spot by a strange fascination that forced him to watch for Dick's rising.

"It was his own fault," said he, mopping his forehead with one jacket cuff: "He should ha' let me by! I guess though, if he ain't comin' up, I'd better be off, afore I'm caught here! Golly!" exclaimed Bill, giving vent to his favourite expression, as a sudden thought flashed upon him. "Better rob a goose's nest and break her breast-bone than drownd a boy." And off he started at a run.

But as he ran away down the stream, following the cap, a dark brown object caught his eye. It was the drenched hair of Dick's head. The current there below the bend was very strong, and had washed him out into mid-stream, and was carrying him rapidly along towards the weir.