All of them felt their hearts beating faster than usual, as the big sportsman advanced along the aisle, his eyes fastened on them.
“Does that heavy bag that fell on my dog belong to any one of you kids?” he asked thickly, in a threatening tone.
Some time before a little accident had happened. The dog, in prowling around as far as his tether would admit, had managed to knock over a pack, and that it caused him a certain amount of pain his yelps had testified. At the time the owner had been in another car, but, seeing the dog licking his hurts, he must have forced one of his companions to tell him what had happened.
Frank hastened to explain, not in an apologetic way, but simply telling the facts, that it was really the animal’s fault he had upset the pack on himself.
“It was the only place the thing could be set, and the brakeman himself put it there,” he declared. “The dog was nosing around, and got his rope caught in the bag, so that he pulled it over on his back. I’ve fixed it so the accident can’t possibly happen again, sir.”
The man was in a very ugly mood. He looked Frank over with a dangerous scowl, but so far as could be seen the boy did not quail.
Then Nackerson began to berate them for having such an unwieldy pack, and leaving it at an end of the car he wanted for the use of his prize dog.
“What d’ye mean, setting a trap like that?” he demanded. “I believe you did it just to see how you could catch my dog. That sort of thing belongs in the baggage car—and it’s time you took it there, d’ye hear me?”
“I hear you all right, sir,” replied Frank, pale, perhaps, and yet meeting the ugly look of the other steadily. “But you must understand that we have a perfect right to carry any hand-baggage in the car with us. If your dog had been where he belonged, in that same baggage car, possibly he wouldn’t have been hurt. And it doesn’t amount to much, I figure, sir.”
His bold words infuriated the hunter. But for his two friends, who seized hold of his arms, he might have attacked Frank, and then, as Bluff said afterward, “there would have been the dickens to pay.”