THE shrewd eyes of Colonel Carson sparkled with a sly twinkle. He sat before his deep-throated fireplace, in his home in Carsonville. Into the room he had called his son Bully, to receive from him a full account of the recent startling happenings, and the result of the investigation which had followed.
Bully had come in prepared to put his part in the affair in the best light possible. Yet he would speak to his father with more openness than he would to any one else, for it was known that the elder Carson had sown, in his youth, a pretty big crop of wild oats himself.
With that sly, humorous twinkle, Carson turned on his hopeful son. In a way he was proud of Bully, though he raged at him daily.
“I hear ye got out of it, Bully, but it took some hard work and tall lyin’. I’ve jest got home, but I’ve been hearin’ about it; I’d been down to that investigation myself if I’d been here. Prob’ly some o’ the things I’ve heard ain’t so. So ye can jest straighten me out about it.”
This was so much better than Bully had anticipated that the sour expression passed from his coarse red face. Feeling more comfortable, he stood up, with his broad back to the fire, and, taking out a cigar, bit off the end of it and scratched a match.
“Well, ’twas the funniest and sing’larest thing that ever came down the pike, dad, and for a while it looked ’s if they had me in bad. It was Clancy and Kess that went gunnin’ for me, and come nigh bringin’ me down. But I’ll git even with ’em for that, see!”
He lighted his cigar, and stood smoking.
“And me and Chip Merriwell are due to have some interestin’ times, too. They’re all in together, and he has hit at me more than once.”
“Young Merriwell was in a box or trunk in the baggage car, unconscious and about dead, when they put it off here, and you was charged with havin’ that trunk or box put on the car. Of course you didn’t, and know nothin’ about it. You’re a mighty big fool at times, Bully, but you’re not so big a one as that; and there’d have been no sense in it.”
Bully’s face glowed to a dull and angry crimson, as he recalled the grilling he had been put through by the police officers because of that accusation.