“There he goes!” cried Teddy, very much excited. “There he goes! He upset me! Gosh! What do you know about that! I’ve got to catch that deer now!”
Teddy darted toward the edge of the garden. There was no fence around it. He started to race after the deer. But the animal was so swift it had vanished in the woods before Teddy was half way across the field that adjoined Mason’s meadow.
“That deer sure can travel!” exclaimed Teddy admiringly as he slowed up. “But why did he upset me—and how?”
Teddy squirmed around far enough to look at the back of his slacks. He saw a small hole that had not been there before and he understood what had happened.
The deer had sneaked up so quietly behind Teddy that the boy had never heard a sound. He was intent on his weeding and so had been taken off guard.
“And I was sort of figuring,” Teddy said afterward, when he met his chums and told them the story, “how much I might make by selling my tomatoes. Then, all of a sudden, I was upset. I thought sure one of you fellows had done it.”
“Are you sure it was the deer?” asked Joe.
“Sure! Who else could it be? There was no one else in sight. And I saw the deer running away. He just sneaked up behind me, hooked a prong of his horns into my slacks and turned me over.”
“Did he hurt you?” asked Dick.
“No. Didn’t even scratch me. But he put a hole in my slacks.”