“Oh, a minstrel show, or an Indian one. We fellows could do the acting. We could have it in my barn, I guess, and charge a nickel admission, and ten cents for reserve seats. I was in a show with some other fellows once, and we made five dollars.”
“Say, it would be great if we could do that!” exclaimed Tommy. “We could get the rest of the suits then.”
It was a few days after this, and Tommy was thinking hard on the subject of giving a show, when his mother asked him to take a message for her, late one afternoon, to a lady who lived a short distance out of town, on a country road. It was something about a meeting of a new society of women, which Mrs. Tiptop had joined.
Tommy completed his errand, and he was trudging along toward home, munching a piece of cake the lady had given him, when, from behind him, he heard a shout of terror.
Looking back, he saw a horse running along the road, dragging something after him in the dust. And it was from this something that the shouts were coming.
Tommy felt his heart beating fast. He recognized the voice as that of his enemy, Jakie Norton, who was in great danger.
“Oh, I’ve got to save him!” gasped our hero.
The horse was coming on rapidly, swaying the unfortunate lad from side to side in the dust. Tommy did not know much about stopping runaway horses, and he was too small to reach up and try to grasp the bridle, even if he had dared do such a thing. But he remembered once he had seen a man stand in front of a runaway team, and, by holding out his arms, turn them aside into a light wooden fence, where they came to a halt.
“I’m going to try that way!” exclaimed Tommy to himself. He stood in the middle of the road. The horse was near to him now, but the boy it was dragging no longer shouted.
“Whoa! Whoa there!” yelled Tommy, waving his arms up and down.