Chapter 1. Really A Great Plan, But----

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_ CHAPTER I. REALLY A GREAT PLAN, BUT----

As Hen Dutcher came up to a group of boys on the ice, and slowed down his speed, he stuck the point of his right skate in the ice to bring himself to a full stop.

"Huh! You fellows think you're some smart on fancy skating, don't you?" he demanded rather scornfully.

"No," replied Dave Darrin shortly.

"You been showing off a lot, then."

"Hen," grimaced Dave, "I'm afraid you're going to miss your calling in life."

"Didn't know I had any," grunted Hen.

"Yes, you have; one of your own choosing, too."

"What is it?" asked Hen curiously.

"You're a walking anvil chorus."

"An anvil chorus?" repeated Hen Dutcher, the puzzled expression deepening in his face.

"Yes; wherever you go the fellows are sure to hear the sounds of 'hammering' and 'knocking.'"

A score of boys grinned, a dozen laughed outright. But Hen wasn't bright enough to see the point.

"What's an anvil got to do with it all?" demanded Hen in a puzzled tone. "An anvil belongs in a blacksmith shop."

"And that's where you ought to go, to do all your 'hammering' and 'knocking,'" explained Dave, as he skated slowly away.

"Huh! You think you're smart!" growled Hen, who still couldn't see why the other fellows had laughed.

"Hen," remarked Dick Prescott, "I'm afraid you're not up to concert pitch."

"Concert pitch?" repeated the dense one. "No, I know I'm not. Did I ever make any claim to being musical?"

"You see," hinted Greg Holmes, "the trouble with the Dutcher kid is that he's all ivory, from his collar-button up."

Another laugh greeted this assertion, but Hen only glared stupidly.

"Ivory is all white, anyway," Hen muttered. "So am I."

He swelled out his chest, did one or two fancy little things on skates, and tried to look important. But none of the other fellows in the group on the ice seemed inclined to take young Dutcher at his own valuation.

Hen Dutcher was a peculiar chap, at any rate. His worst fault, probably--but one that led to other faults--was his egotism. He was always thinking about himself and his own puny little interests. For the life of him, Hen couldn't understand why he wasn't popular with other fellows. He sometimes realized that he wasn't, but charged the fact up to the other fellows being "too stuck on themselves, or on those 'boobs,' Dick Prescott and Dave Darrin."

"Let's run Hen ashore and rub his face in the snow!" proposed one boy gleefully.

"You dassent!" flared up Hen. But half a dozen boys uttered a whoop and skated toward him. Hen wobbled on his skates an instant, then turned, intent on escape.

"Oh, say, fellows," called Dick, "don't be all the time picking on poor old Hen."

"We'll just wash his face," shouted back one of the pursuers.

Hen knew they meant it, and he was traveling down the ice, now, under full steam.

"Come on, fellows," called Dick, to Greg and to Tom Reade. "We don't want to see Hen abused."

"Why does he get so fresh, then?" demanded Greg, but he started, as did Tom. Dick & Co. were all fleet skaters. They surged to the front of the pursuers, who took it for granted that Dick and his friends were going to aid them, and therefore set up a shout of joy.

Hen Dutcher was traveling with so much effort that he panted hard as he skated.

"Get him, Dick!" sang out Ben Alvord, as Prescott shot ahead of the others.

Hen, looking back, saw Dick gaining on him swiftly, while Greg and Tom were just behind.

"They're mean as all-git-out!" sputtered panting Hen. "Why can't they let a fellow alone? Don't they think I've got as much right to talk as the rest of 'em? Well, I'll show 'em that I have!"

At this moment Dick overtook the fugitive, linking arms with him.

"You let me alone!" snarled Hen. "You're meaner'n poison!"

"Am I?" smiled Dick. "See here, Hen, face about and don't let the fellows bluff you out of a week's growth. Just turn on them. They won't do anything to you."

"If they try it on, I'll fix 'em, no matter what desperate thing I have to do to get square," snarled Hen.

"Oh, cut out all the war talk," Dick advised him gently. "Now, wheel about."

"You lemme alone! I know where I'm going," snapped Hen, making a big effort to break loose from Dick's hold. The effort proved a disastrous one, for Hen tripped himself, slid along for a few feet and then sat down with a jarring bump on the ice. Dick Prescott all but shared the same fate.

"Now, we've got him!" chuckled Ben Alvord, racing in and reaching out for the luckless Dutcher.

The unexpected happened. Hen swung around, as on a pivot, extending a foot in such a way as to trip Ben and send him down on his own face.

In the gasp of astonishment that followed Hen got upon his feet, gave a swift push with his left skate and was away.

"After him, fellows!" roared Toby Ross. "We'll hold him and let Ben do the face-washing."

Dick, Tom and Greg had shot past the scene. Now they circled and came back, their faces aglow with the fast sport and the keen air.

Hen tried to make for the shore, but got in where the surface of the ice was rough and choppy. Ned Allen and Toby reached out to grasp Hen as they neared him. Young Dutcher made a switching-away movement, and the next instant he had fallen flat on his face. He let out a howl.

"We've got him!" declared Toby, as he and Allen pounced on the prostrate one.

"Yes, but let him alone, fellows," urged Dick, reaching the scene and halting. "Hen may have his faults, but it's time we chose another fellow to pick on for a while."

"We're going to wash his face," insisted Ben Alvord, skating up and looking belligerent. "Don't you interfere, Dick Prescott!"

Hen, making no effort to do more than sit up, was blubbering softly.

"Lemme alone, fellows," he pleaded. "Can't you see I'm hurt?"

Hen had his right mitten off, and was gingerly applying that hand to the narrow stretch of upper lip. There was blood there. Hen, catching only an imperfect view as he gazed down past the end of his nose, was sure that he had been badly injured by his fall.

Some of the other boys set up a yell of laughter.

"Why, you big baby!" blurted Toby. "You've only scratched your lip on the ice."

"A handful of snow will heal it!" asserted Ben Alvord. "Come, get up, bone-head! Come on to your dousing."

"You lemme alone, I tell you!" screamed Dutcher, blubbering. "I've got to go home and get myself attended to."

"Come on, booby!" jeered Alvord, forcing a hand under one of Hen's shoulders and trying to lift him.

"Lemme alone. Can't you see I'm badly hurt?"

"Let Hen alone," broke in Dick quietly.

"He's got to come ashore and have his face washed in the snow," insisted Alvord. "Come, fellows, help me take him there."

"You'd better step back and let him alone, Ben!" spoke Dick, more quietly than before, but there was a sound of command in his voice as he moved over between Hen and Alvord.

"Get out of the way," growled Ben. "This ivory-top has got to have his face washed in the snow."

"And I say you're not going to do it," warned Dick.

"He's too fresh, Hen is."

"No committee of citizens has asked you to reform any one, Ben," Dick went on good-humoredly. "You've got a few faults of your own that you might remedy, and I guess we all have."

"Come on, fellows, and rush Dutcher," called Ben Alvord. Ross, Allen and others moved as though to help, but Dick was flanked by Tom and Greg. In the distance Dave Darrin could be seen skating back.

"All right, if you fellows insist on it," partly agreed Dick. "But if trouble starts Hen is going to have some backing on his side, too."

"I guess that's right," nodded Tom Reade.

"Now, who's fresh?" challenged Ben Alvord hotly. "You, Dick Prescott."

"Well, if I am," sighed Dick, "I'm ready to take my punishment for it. At all events, I'll look after myself."

"Yah, you will!" growled Ben angrily. "I notice that, just as soon as anything starts, your gang always jump in on the scene!"

"Dick will fight you, all alone, I know, Ben, if you want him to," proposed Dave Darrin, coming slowly into the circle. "But perhaps you don't want to fight Dick. You tried it once before, and got most beautifully pounded."

"Yah!" snarled Ben.

"Well, didn't you?" demanded Dave.

"Yah!" sneered Ben. "See here, Darrin, Prescott may be fresh, but he ain't as bad as you are!"

"So it's I you want to fight with, is it?" laughed Dave. "Come right on to the shore, then, and don't try any bluffing."

But Ben Alvord didn't care about putting up his guard before either of these spirited youngsters of the Central Grammar School. After sputtering a little Ben skated away by himself. Hen got up, after dabbing his upper lip with his handkerchief and finding that the scratch amounted to nothing. No further effort was made to molest Hen.

"Now, when you talk, say something pleasant. Don't talk so disagreeably all the time," advised Prescott in a low tone. "At least, not unless you're really hunting trouble."

"This is the meanest crowd I ever saw," declared Hen Dutcher stiffly. "And you started it all, Dave Darrin, by nicknaming me 'Anvil Chorus!'"

"You're at it again, Hen," sighed Dick. "Why can't you stop saying disagreeable things?"

Toby Ross, who had skated close enough to hear this last, now skated away again to join a crowd of boys a little way off. Toby spoke to them laughingly. Then, over the ice, came a mocking chorus:

"Oh, you Anvil!"

"There, you see," muttered Dutcher angrily, "you've gone and fastened the nickname on me!"

"Anvil! Anvil!" yelled other tormentors.

"You're all of you about the meanest crowd of fellows I ever saw," grunted Hen, as he started slowly to skate away.

"And that's all the thanks you get, Dick, for trying to use him a bit decently," jeered Greg Holmes.

"Oh, well, I'm sorry for the fellow," muttered Prescott. "Hen is one of those fellows who are never popular with any crowd and can never understand why."

Harry Hazelton and Dan Dalzell now skated up from town and joined their chums. Dick & Co. were at last united.

"Let's try a two-mile swift skate up river, fellows," urged Dick. "Ready? Go!"

Away went the six, moving along over the ice like young human whirlwinds. Dick & Co. were known to be the best skaters of all the Grammar School boys in town.

Dick & Co. will need no introduction to the readers of the first volume in this series, entitled "THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL BOYS OF GRIDLEY." Our readers have met all six of the young men, namely, Dick Prescott, Dave Darrin, Greg Holmes, Dan Dalzell, Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton. It would be hard to find six manlier boys of thirteen--now all of them close to their fourteenth birthdays.

Readers of the previous volume know on what grounds it can be claimed that these six were real leaders of the little Grammar School world of Gridley. Dick & Co. were ardent lovers of all forms of outdoor sports. All were keen for baseball. As runners these six youngsters were just beginning to develop as a result of self-training. The September before Dick Prescott had organized, at the Central Grammar School, a football squad. Things were moving well in this line until delegations came over from the North and South Grammars, to see about organizing a Grammar School football league. The delegates from the two other schools, however, displayed lack of harmony, and the football idea fell through.

Now, however, winter was on in earnest, and Dick & Co. were in their element, for, of all sports, they loved those that went with winter. All six were fearless coasters; no hill was too steep, too long or too dangerous. On the ice Dick & Co. felt all the bounding pulse of life.

This day was the twenty-fourth of December. School had closed in order to give the Gridley youngsters a free hand on the last day before Christmas.

The river had been frozen in fine condition for more than a week. Not more than four inches of snow had fallen, but all the boys knew that the season gave promise of more snow ere long.

As Dick & Co. skated along the number of other skaters became fewer. At last they reached a part of the river where they had the ice all to themselves.

"There's Payson's orchard, Greg," sang out Dave Darrin. "The place where you got grabbed last fall, by Dexter and Driggs, and carried off to be shut up in that cave."

"Say, we ought to hunt up that cave, fellows," called Greg. "Whee! It might make a bully place for a winter camp. Now, that we've got the two weeks and more of holiday vacation, wouldn't it be fine to slip off and camp a few days in that cave?"

"Nothing doing," retorted Tom Reade.

"Why not?" Dan asked.

"You remember that I went off, yesterday after school, on a sleigh ride with Jim Foley?"

"Yes."

"Well, we went by that cave," Tom continued. "Nothing would do but that we stop. Jim had a lantern on the sleigh. We lit the lantern and got into the cave. Whew! We nearly got drowned. I meant to tell you fellows about it, but forgot it."

"How did you come near getting drowned in a cave?" Greg demanded.

"Why, the outlandish place isn't weather-tight," responded Tom. "You know, the flooring slopes slightly upward from the entrance. There are a lot of cracks that rain and snow-water leak through. It was all little rivulets inside the place. Camp? Huh! It'd make a better extra reservoir for the town water-works, that place would!"

"Too bad!" muttered Greg. "I have had a notion that it would be huge fun to camp out in such a place."

"I've got another idea about that," spoke up Dan.

"Fire away!" begged Reade.

"A cousin of mine who visited me last summer told me about the kind of camp he and some of his chums had. It was a sort of manufactured cave. The fellows dug an oblong hole in the ground. Just like a cellar in shape, you know. It was eight feet wide and twelve feet long. When they had it all dug out the fellows laid boards over the hole for a roof. Then they piled dirt back on top of the boards, and on top of the dirt they laid the sods that they first dug up. At a corner in one end the fellows left a square hole in the roof, to use for an entrance. For a door they made a square board cover to fit over the entrance hole. At the upper end of the cave they dug into the dirt wall and made a stove. They dug another hole down from above to connect with it, and that made a dandy stove and chimney. My cousin and his chums used to do a lot of cooking there. Then they laid down more old boards to make a floor, and boarded most of the wall space, too. Last of all, they took up an old table and old chairs, and they had just a dandy camp! Say, fellows, why couldn't we have a camp like that?"

"It would do all right for springtime," declared Tom Reade, "but we couldn't work it in winter."

"Why not?" challenged Dan.

"Not unless, Danny, you want to be the strong man who's going to dig down into the ground through two or three feet of frost."

Dan looked a bit crestfallen.

"Besides," declared Dick thoughtfully, "every time there was a thaw or a big rain the cave you're talking about making would be nothing but a big cistern, half-full of water. But we could dig and fit up such a cave somewhere in the woods in springtime, fellows."

"Only we don't have much vacation in the spring," broke in Greg disappointedly, "and it certainly would be grand to go into camp right after Christmas Day, if we could be warm enough and have enough to eat."

"It would be great sport," nodded Dick.

"Then let's do it," glowed Greg.

"I suppose you have the camping place all picked out, and permission to use it," smiled Prescott.

"Well, no," admitted Greg. "But why can't we fix up some sort of place?"

"How?" Dave Darrin wanted to know. "If we try going into camp at this time of the year we want, first of all, some place above ground, with enough daylight and sunlight. We want a weather-tight place that we can keep properly warm."

"All of that," agreed Dick.

"Why can't we build a place, out in the woods somewhere?" Greg insisted.

"For one thing," objected Tom Reade quizzically, "there are no leaves at this time of the year."

"What do we want leaves for?" queried Greg.

"To lay on the roof, like shingles."

"Bosh!" snapped Holmes. "We'd build our camp of wood."

"Well, where'll we get the wood?" came from Dave.

"We can carry it from home," proposed Greg.

"No lumber pile in our yard. Is there in yours?" Dave insisted.

"We can use the boards from old boxes and things," went on Greg desperately.

"Oh, excuse me!" mimicked Tom Reade. "I am not camping out in any grocery boxes at this cold time of the year."

"You might go home nights, then," hinted Greg disdainfully.

"The whole camping idea is a great one, if we could only put it through," declared Dick.

"Then let's put it through," pressed Greg Holmes. "Where there's a will there's a way, you know."

"The trouble is that we need a pocketbook more than a will," returned Prescott doubtfully. "It would take lumber to build a winter camp, even if we could prove ourselves good enough carpenters."

"How much money would it take?"

"Well, I don't believe a hundred dollars would go far," declared Reade.

"Make it a thousand, then," laughed Darrin. "We fellows couldn't raise either sum in a year."

"It's too bad," sighed Harry Hazelton. "A good camp, at this time of the year, would be huge fun!"

"Yes; it would," agreed Dick. "I don't see the way now, but we may find it. We can keep on hoping."

"Hey, you boobs!" called a disagreeable voice across the ice.

All of the six Grammar School boys slowed down and turned around. They found themselves looking at a solitary skater who had slowed down. He was Fred Ripley, son of Lawyer Ripley, one of the wealthy men of the town. Fred was never over polite to those whom he considered as his "inferiors." Besides, young Ripley was now in his freshman year at the Gridley High School. As such, he naturally looked down on mere Grammar School boys, none of whom, perhaps, would ever reach the dignity of "attending High."

"What do you want, Ripley?" called Dick. "Planning to give us a lesson in the art of polite speech?"

"Cut the funny talk," grumbled Fred. "Prescott, did you get a letter from my guv'nor this morning?"

"Why, no; I didn't know your father was in the habit of writing me letters. Anyway, I left home before the mail carrier was due."

"Guv'nor said that was likely to happen," continued Fred. "So he told me, if I saw you fellows on the ice, to say that he wanted to see you."

"All of us?" Dave wanted to know.

"I reckon so. And the guv'nor said it was important, too. You boobs had better crank up your skates and make fast time. Guv'nor won't be at his office late to-day."

"What----" began Dick.

"The guv'nor gave me a message to you fellows, and I've delivered it," cut in Fred airily, as he started to skate away. "That's all I've got to do in the matter. I don't care to stand here all day. Somebody that knew me might come along and catch me talking with you."

"The snob!" muttered Dave indignantly.

"What on earth can the lawyer want of us?" pondered Greg.

"Generally, when a lawyer sends for you, it means trouble," guessed Dalzell.

"Or else some relative has died and left you a lot of money," added Harry Hazelton.

"Well, in any case," replied Dick, "we six fellows haven't the same relative, anywhere, and Fred said his father wanted to see all of us."

"We haven't been doing anything--nothing wrong, anyway," declared Dan virtuously.

"We won't know the answer until we've seen Mr. Ripley," declared Dick. "We'll have to go around there after dinner to-day."

"Why not go now?" proposed Tom Reade. "We haven't anything special to do with our time."

"You fellows haven't much imagination, have you?" laughed Dave, his eyes twinkling mysteriously.

"Have you guessed?" demanded Dick Prescott.

"Well, it's only a guess, of course, and it may be a wild one."

"Out with it!" ordered Tom Reade sharply.

"You know, fellows," Dave continued, "that we did some service for Mrs. Dexter last fall, and that she tried to reward us. Now that she's gone away to parts unknown, perhaps you also know that Lawyer Ripley is managing her money affairs these days."

"Then----" gasped Greg.

"Why, fellows, now that Mrs. Dexter is away, and we can't stop her, and as to-morrow will be Christmas, why, perhaps----"

Not one single member of Dick & Co. was at all lacking in imagination now!

"Why, do you think----"

"I wonder if----"

"Fellows," hinted Dick Prescott dryly, and in a tone that hid the excitement going on within him, "it won't take us long to skate back to Gridley!" _

Read next: Chapter 2. Dick & Co. Find Cause For Glee


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