CHAPTER II
FRANK IS THREATENED
As the boys scrambled out of the ravine they again heard the screams of the girls, one of them a decidedly louder scream than was made by the others.
Over a small ridge the five lithe, active young fellows went, and, in full view there now unfolded to them the panorama of a frightful scene!
On a ledge forming a step in a steep incline of a hill stood Minnie Cuthbert, Frank’s best girl friend. She was frantically trying to grasp the limb extending downward from a tree in an effort to swing out on it. Further along the ledge stood two other girls, one of them Helen Allen, Frank’s sister, the other Dora Baxter.
Rushing toward Minnie, and now only a few yards from where she stood on the lower part of the ledge, its mouth issuing foam and its head covered with it, flecks of foam flying over its back, came a beautiful dog—evidently mad!
There could be no question as to the intent of the animal.
Crack! A rifle shot rang through the woods.
Without more than a passing aim, relying on that sense of direction which had brought Frank several target practice triumphs, he had raised his repeating rifle to his shoulder and brought the dog to the ground in the midst of a leap which would have carried it to the feet of the screaming, struggling girl.
As the dog, shot full in its final leap, struck at her feet, Minnie made a final jump high in the air, and landed back of the rolling animal which passed the spot where she had been standing, rolled over several times on the ledge, ending against the perpendicular wall of the hillside.
“Minnie! Minnie! Wait a minute!” Frank yelled to the frantic girl as, not being in the grip of the dog, she rushed headlong down the incline to the glen below.
Minnie stopped, turned, and saw the dog lying on the ledge above her, saw the other girls walking, though excitedly, toward her.
By this time Frank had dashed across the intervening space and had reached her side.
“You’re safe now! Where did that dog come from?” he asked her. “What were you doing here?”
But Minnie’s tongue was not ready to function just yet. She was breathing hard. Her breast was heaving sharply, her face was of a grayish pallor, her wide eyes glassy, her lips trembling, her body aquiver.
Frank took her hand and held it for a moment, thinking she might faint, but as the other boys approached and the girls, too, the color came back to her cheeks, her eyes became normal, and she was able to stammer:
“We were nutting, and all of a sudden this dog came rushing toward us. It ran around in a big ring, and I saw the foam flying. I realized that it was mad!”
“It was mad!” exclaimed Helen Allen. “It ran around in a big ring and we thought it was going to go back to the road, but we started running away from it, anyhow. Then it ran again at us, and we screamed and ran back.”
Frank turned the dog over, after a quick glance had told him it was breathing no more, and all of them saw the red spot where the bullet had reached its mark—squarely in the side of the head.
“This hunting dog was dead when it struck at Minnie’s feet,” observed Ralph West.
“I’ll claim to the world that’s some shooting,” said Lanky. “Good thing you had some target practice—especially following my good lessons.” And there was a merry smile on the lean fellow’s face as he permitted a laughing remark to fit into the situation.
The boys and girls marveled at the shot that Frank Allen had made at a time when only a good shot would answer the requirements.
“I wonder who it belongs to,” murmured Frank, taking a very careful look at the dog again. “I don’t remember seeing one like him around here lately.”
None of the party remembered a dog of its kind.
“Did it come from the road?” asked Frank, turning to Helen.
The girls replied in chorus that it did.
“It has every resemblance of a mad dog,” said Frank, “but I thought dogs went mad in the middle of the summer. This is nutting time, autumn, and no time for a dog to go mad.”
“Frank,” spoke up Lanky slowly, deliberately, “do you know something—this is a good dog—it belongs to some one who values it—and I believe we ought to have a veterinarian come out here and see it.”
The idea struck Frank at once as being an important one, whereupon, after a moment’s thought, he said:
“I believe you’re right, Lanky. We’ll get Doc Whittaker to look at it and hear what he has to say. And we’ll have his support in case our guess is right. We have killed this dog—that is, I have—and I’ll have to pay for it, and pay well, too, unless I’m able to prove that it was mad.”
“But it was rushing at me to bite me!” cried Minnie. “You could tell the man who owns it just that. That’s certainly good enough reason!”
“He—ah, Bill! He—ah, Bill!” came a voice followed by several shrill whistles. Some one from the road was calling a dog.
“The owner—now!” said Paul Bird excitedly.
The entire crowd was quiet for several seconds, until the same call and the same whistled signal came again, this time much closer.
“Here you are, mister! Come down this way!” Frank made a trumpet of his hands and called back to the man.
A moment later a burly man, dressed in a heavy brown suit, a rather lengthy, drooping mustache partially covering an ugly looking mouth, broke through a small bunch of brush and came out at the top of the hillock next to them.
“I think that is your dog over here,” said Frank, speaking directly to the man.
“He—ah, Bill! Come here!” called the man, but no dog answered.
“It can’t come, mister, it’s dead.”
Frank spoke to the man very plainly, and in a tone of voice that was quiet, each word enunciated distinctly.
“Dead!” Whereupon the man rushed down the little dale or glen that separated them, and came up to the hillock where the boys and girls were huddled together. Two other men came over the farther hillock behind him, attracted by the conversation.
The large man gave one look at the dog lying on the ledge, a bloody spot showing very conclusively what had happened, each of the boys carrying rifles as further mute evidence.
“Who killed that dog? Who killed it?” he demanded threateningly, drawing himself to his full height and glaring at the boys menacingly.
For a tense moment all were silent.
“I killed the dog,” said Frank, then.
“What’s that? You killed my dog?” and the man made as if to leap on Frank to throttle him.
“Hold off, there,” Frank’s voice was piercing in its deadly quiet. “Don’t come too close to me. Listen to what I’ve got to say.”
“Well, what’ve you got to say, you——”
“And don’t say that, either,” said Frank. “Just keep cool a minute. Some one else in the world can be just as right as you are. That dog was shot just as it was making a wild leap at one of these girls. See the foam all over its head? The dog was mad, and I killed it before it could hurt one of these girls.”
By this time the other two men had come up to where the crowd was standing, one of them being close to Frank.
Frank saw this and stepped farther away, thus putting the distance, several yards, between himself and anyone else.
“That dog was not mad—that dog was worth two hundred dollars, and you’ve got to pay for it!” yelled the man, anger breaking out in every tone, every movement.
“I beg your pardon, mister——”
“Jeek, that’s my name. Fordham Jeek, from Bellport, young fellow, and you’re going to pay me for that dog.”
The name of this man was familiar to all the boys. They had heard of him on several occasions when down at Bellport, and had also heard of him from a certain element around Columbia.
He was a race-track follower, not of the higher type, but one of those about whom there is usually some question, some whispered rumor that will not quite stand the scrutiny of daylight or repeating aloud—a reputation which cannot be called savory.
Those who have followed Frank Allen from the time of the story, “Frank Allen’s Schooldays,” the first volume of the series, down to the volume just previous to this story, which was “Frank Allen and His Motor Boat,” know that Frank Allen was an upstanding boy who could think straight and always fairly, one who did his utmost in anything at which he went, a boy who was popular among his schoolmates and also among the older people, primarily because he was not given to conceit nor bombast, but was always just a wholesome, healthy, American boy who loved the out-of-doors, who was honest and square in all his dealings, and who, though a leader in athletics, was also a leader in his studies at school.
For a long minute Frank thought over the attitude of this man Jeek, of the situation with his two cronies present, and he noticed they were a rough looking pair.
“Mr. Jeek,—” Frank spoke in a low tone of voice, though not a tone of quaver nor of weakening in it—“I haven’t the slightest idea of paying for that dog. I am sorry, yes. I am, truly, because I love dogs as much as you do.”
“Love dogs, me eye!” yelped Jeek. “What did you kill a two hundred dollar dog for—you—you——”
“I killed that dog, as I told you, because it was mad and because it was making a wild leap to bite one of these girls. It had run around them in a wide circle, foaming at the mouth, and would have done serious injury. It was actually leaping straight for one of the girls when I shot.” Frank calmly recited the general incident.
“Your name is Allen, isn’t it? I’ll make your father pay for this dog, young fellow.”
“No, you won’t do that,” quietly replied the boy. “And you’ll not make me pay, either. That dog was mad.”
“It was not mad! You’re lying, just lying to get out of it. I’ll make you pay or I’ll make your father pay, or I’ll make you pay in a way you’ll never forget!” wildly yelled Jeek, as he turned to leave. “Just put this in your pipe, young smart aleck—you’ll pay in a way you’ll never forget!”
With that the three men departed. As they reached the next hillock on their way to the road, Jeek turned:
“Two hundred dollars by to-morrow or you’ll regret the day you ever saw me!” he yelled, shaking his fist.
A minute later the boys and girls heard the poorly timed explosions of a cheap automobile on the road.