“Huh! he wouldn’t be the first fellow who felt sorry he’d fooled with the scouts of Oakvale,” boasted Bud, with memories of previous exploits crowding his brain. “If a silly bear will monkey with a buzz-saw, he c’n expect to get hurt, that’s all.”
“Pull up!” hastily ejaculated Hugh as he saw something glisten in the road ahead of them.
They had just started around a bend, and were going at a fair pace at the time. Bud put on the brake, and the car speedily came to a stand, but, alas! just a trifle too late to avoid the breakers. There was a sudden explosion.
“Gee! a tire’s busted!” cried Blake, in dire dismay.
All of the boys jumped out, and it needed only one look to tell them the truth, for the left front tire lay flat.
“Glass!” snapped Bud, wrathfully, as he glanced around. “Just think of anybody heaving a bottle overboard like that, when there are so many stones around. Seems to me the least the rascal could have done would be to throw the same into the bushes here.”
Hugh was bending over as though deeply interested, and just then he electrified his two companions by crying out:
“It was no accident, after all, fellows, but a part of a cleverly arranged plot! These bottles were fetched along purposely. They were broken right on this rock, where you can see all the fine glass; and the pieces were put on the road so that a car couldn’t pass along without being terribly cut. See here, and here, and here!”
Bud was furious. He gritted his teeth, and growled like a “bear with a sore head,” as he himself afterwards explained it.
“Hugh! you’re right, hang the luck if you ain’t!” he went on to say, as he looked the ground over. “That miserable skunk laid the plot, and I’m sorry to say it worked like a charm. See how he chose a place just around a bend, so we mightn’t get warning in time by the sun glinting from the broken glass? Oh! he’s a corker of a schemer, that chap is; and I’d like to get my hands on him! Say, what I wouldn’t do to him would be hardly worth mentioning.”