“They will? Like nothin’!” exclaimed Colly Craighead. “I reckon we can raise as many guys as they can.”
“Anyway,” broke in Art—but thoughtfully—“we’ll have to go ahead now. We can’t back water, can we, kids?”
Two more of the young aviators were present, Frank or “Wart” Ware as he was known, and Alexander Conyers, usually known as Connie.
“Not on your life,” shouted Wart.
But Connie was not quite so sure. Connie, next to Art in age, was perhaps the strongest of all the Elm Street crowd, and somewhat strangely, usually the slowest to get into trouble.
“That’s a tough mob over there,” he ventured at last. “Kid to kid I think they’ve got us outclassed. We’ll save a lot of trouble by goin’ some other place.”
“But it’s the best open ground around town,” argued Art. “Those fellows don’t own it.”
“But they think they do,” went on Connie. “And I don’t know whether we’d be able to show ’em they don’t.”
“Maybe we’d better think this thing over,” answered Art after some thought. “That is, we’d better decide just how we’re to tackle these fellows. But we’ll pull off our show and it’ll be just where we said it would be, if I’m the only exhibitor and I get the lickin’ of my life.”
Instantly all the others protested allegiance—Sammy Addington most vociferously. But it could be seen that a shadow had fallen on the brilliant program announced for Saturday.