“None of the boys hurt, I hope?” quickly inquired Hugh, for the one thing he had been dreading was an open rupture between the rival forces in town, with stones flying and a near-riot in the process of forming.
“Well, not yet, Hugh, but if things keep on there’s going to be the dickens to pay,” panted Ralph, leaning against the fence as he spoke. “Fact is, those gamblers and law breakers have got desperate, and they’ve schemed to put us scouts in a bad hole, so the mayor will have to discharge us and start the whole uplift game tumbling in the soup; that’s what makes me look so scared like, Hugh!”
CHAPTER VIII.
ONE USE FOR WOODCRAFT KNOWLEDGE.
“What do you mean by putting us scouts in a bad hole, Ralph?” asked Hugh, quickly, for what the other boy had said startled him.
Ralph glanced hurriedly about, as though to make absolutely certain that no eavesdroppers were near by to overhear what he said. Then he drew closer to Hugh and assumed a most mysterious manner that could not help having an effect upon the surprised scout chief.
“Oh! they’re as mad as hops, let me tell you, Hugh,” Ralph commenced.
“Of course you mean, Ralph, those fellows who were hurt when we put the lid tight on Oakvale, and stopped their sneaky business, whatever it may have been?”
“Yes, and they’ve got together and mean to fight back, that’s how it stands now, Hugh,” he was told.
“We knew they had employed lawyers and were meaning to do everything they could to get the mayor’s acts called unconstitutional,” Hugh remarked.
“Oh! they’ve made up their minds, I guess,” Ralph continued hastily, “that when it comes to a show-down of law they haven’t got a chance to win out. Hugh, let me tell you again some of that bunch are the most desperate men going. Why, nobody would ever have believed we had such monsters here in little old Oakvale.”