“You go to the fellow whose boots you’ve been licking and tell him what you got from the ‘mucker.’ And when you do it, you may tell him from me that he can have the same, or a little better, any time he’s man enough to ask for it. And one other thing, Crawford. You stay out from under my feet from this time on. If you don’t, you’ll get it again.”
One of the problems that has never been satisfactorily solved, and perhaps never will be, is how the news of a thing done in privacy gets wings of the wind to scatter it abroad. Larry thought that the brief and brittle mix-up, staged in the growing dusk in Farmer Holdsworth’s wheat field, had been wholly without witnesses. But that same evening, after supper, Dickie Maxwell leered knowingly at him across the study table.
“So you chased up my little hint and whaled the daylights out of Snitty Crawford, did you?” he laughed.
Larry glanced up frowning.
“Who told you anything about that?” he demanded.
“Gee! everybody knows,” Dick crowed. “I don’t know who started the little news item on its rounds. But you ought to have the thanks of every decent fellow in Sheddon. Crumb-catchers like Snitty make me sick.”
Larry nodded soberly.
“Yes, Crawford got his; but, after all, he was only a poor tool in Underhill’s hands. It runs in my mind, Dick, that I’m still in debt—to Underhill and the whole money-rotten gang that he runs with. After the foot-ball game I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to draw any more rich-and-poor lines, or let them be drawn against me; that I’d stand for Old Sheddon as a whole. But if these gambling, betting, money-spenders want a fight, they can have it. It’s the old battle, and I guess it’s got to be fought out—here and everywhere else.”
For a little while Dick was silent. When he spoke again it was to say: “I suppose my father is what you’d call a rich man. Does that mean that you’re against us all, Larry?”