“Oh! do I? Chance for what?” demanded Lanky, derisively, for he seemed to feel that the other was only having sport with him.
“To catch the bull off his guard, when you might drop plump on his back. But if you do, Lanky,” Bones went on hurriedly, and with much apparent concern, “be sure you get a good hold, because he’s apt to jump and kick like a bucking bronco, and if he knocks you off it’s good-bye for yours. You’ll be a back number.”
Even Lanky was seen to grin at this wild proposition.
“Well, you are the punk thing, Bones, when it comes to helping a chum out of a hole,” he called out. “Frank, I know I can depend on you to hatch up some smart little trick to shake off this old buffalo that’s got me up a tree.”
“I’ve tried my best to coax him away, Lanky,” said Frank, starting to walk off; “but he won’t budge an inch, and it’s no use.”
“Hold on, Frank; sure now, you wouldn’t be for leaving me here in this fix, would you, and me that’s stood by you through thick and thin many a time? If I had to perch up here long my bones’d be too sore for me to enter any race for a month of Sundays. Where are you going, Frank?”
“To hunt up the farmhouse, and see if I can’t get Mr. Hobson to come to the rescue. I’ll be back before a great while,” was what Frank called out.
“Bless you for a true chum, Frank, I knew you wouldn’t leave me in the lurch; and here’s hoping that you find the farmer at home all right, or his man. Oh! laugh all you want to, Bones, but it isn’t so funny when you’re the frog that gets hit by the stones. Just you try it once and see.”
Time passed slowly to the beleaguered runner. He even complained of feeling a little cold, and talked to Bones about supper as though he began to fear that, after all, he would have to camp there in that tree the whole night.
“If you have to stay there, and it comes to the worst,” Bones had assured him; “mebbe now I might be able to throw a package of grub to you from the top of the fence here. I’m the boss thrower, you know, Lanky. Many a time I’ve got a runner at the home plate by lifting a fly I caught away out when I was playing left field for Ben Allison.”