The Young Wild-Fowlers

by Harry Castlemon

With one accord the crowd, which by this time numbered full sixty men and boys, started through the depot and crossed the street in the direction of the hotel. A wink and a nod from Blake were enough to tell his companions what he desired them to do. By fast walking they gradually drew ahead of the crowd, and reaching the hotel first, they rushed into the doorway and purposely stuck fast there, blocking it up so effectually that the angry firemen and musicians behind them could not get in. Blake kept on to the door of the dining-room, and there he found Mr. Taylor and his assistants, who were just closing the windows, after making a vain effort to capture Enoch Williams and those of his party who were in the room when the whistle sounded. Fortunately the boys had been too quick to be caught. They were now safe out of harm’s way, and Blake was glad of it. So was Mr. Taylor, when he saw the flushed faces and angry scowls of the men, who finally succeeded in forcing their way into the room.

“I know who you three fellows are,” said Mr. Taylor, nodding to Blake and his committee. “You are the boys who ordered the dinner. You need not waste time in explaining the situation, for I understand it perfectly. I wondered why I did not see you among the students; but I thought it very likely that you had been breaking some of the rules and been kept in.”

“The members of the first class are never gated on occasions like this,” said Forester.

“Well, I didn’t know that,” replied Mr. Taylor. “The whole thing was done so openly and aboveboard, that any living man would have been fooled. I wonder if Colson was taken in.”

“Yes, he was,” answered Blake; and he thought Mr. Taylor looked as though he was glad to hear it. “Boys, some of you take our colors down from the wall, and the rest pitch in and help pack up the dinner. Forester, you and I will hunt up the landlord, and ask him what his bill is. Lester and his friends will find themselves short of pocket-money during the rest of the term, for the court-martial will compel them to pay roundly for all the trouble they have occasioned.”

“Then they’ll pay me a good sum, I tell you,” said Mr. Taylor. “They have put me to a heap of bother, and the dinner won’t look half as nice after a forty-eight mile ride over a rough railroad as it would if I could have taken it from my restaurant directly to the hall.”

Blake and Forester found that the landlord was inclined to be as angry as the firemen and musicians were. He didn’t like to have anybody make a fool of his house, he said, and he had a good notion to have ’em all took up.

“That young Endicott has been guilty of a misdemeanor!” he almost shouted. “He came here last night and engaged my dining-room for this evening, and now he has run away without paying his bill. That’s agin the law. The others were knowing to it, and for two cents I’d have the last one of ’em arrested.”

It was not without considerable difficulty that Blake succeeded in pacifying him; but with all his urging, he could not induce him to deduct one cent from the enormous bill he made out to be handed to the superintendent of the academy. He wanted full pay for the dining-room, just as much, in fact, as if it had been used all night, as he thought it was going to be, and nothing short of that would satisfy him. It was equally hard to quiet the musicians and some of the firemen, whose rage, when they discovered that the conspirators had slipped through their fingers like so many eels, was almost unbounded. Even the jolly, good-natured foreman, who had been home to tell his wife and daughter to get ready for a grand time during the evening, declared with some earnestness that he didn’t approve of the way he had been treated. His men would be laughed at and “guyed” for months to come, because they had turned out to do honor to those who were not entitled to receive it; and what should the young fellows in the company say to the girls they had engaged for the dance? It was a mean trick, that was the long and short of it; and if that bogus captain knew when he was well off, he would steer clear of Bordentown in future.

At the end of half an hour the dinner had been carefully repacked and placed aboard one of the flats, the boys and the band crowded upon the other, and the engineer “opened out” for a rapid homeward run, Blake and his committee riding in the cab. They were so delighted over their success that they could scarcely restrain themselves. They had gone to work without any threats or bluster, but they had saved their class from disgrace, the dinner would go off just as they had planned it, and their guests need not know what a time they had had with it.