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CHAPTER I.
A RED-HOT STOVE AND DESTINY
"Isn't it a dandy picture – the real thing – just as I've always imagined it. Herc!"
Ned Strong wheeled from the gaudily colored lithograph he had been admiring, and turned to a red-headed youth of about his own age – almost eighteen – who stood beside him in the postoffice and general store at Lambs' Corners, a remote village in the Catskill mountains.
"It's purty as a yearling colt," responded the lad addressed, examining once more, with an important air of criticism, the poster in question. The lithograph had been tacked up only the day before, but by this time half the boys in the neighboring country had examined it.
The poster represented a stalwart, barefooted jackie, in Uncle Sam's natty uniform, standing on the flying-bridge of a battleship and "wig-wagging" the commanding officer's messages. The bright-red signal flag, with its white center, which he wielded, made a vivid splash of color. In the background a graphically depicted sea, flecked with "whitecaps," was pictured. As a whole, the design was one well calculated to catch the attention of all wholesome, adventurous lads, particularly two, who, like our new acquaintances, had never seen any water but the Hudson River. Indeed, as that majestic stream lay twenty miles from their home, they had only set eyes on that at long intervals.
"Look how that ship seems to ride that sea – as if those racing waves didn't bother her a bit," went on Ned, dwelling on the details of the poster, which was issued to every postoffice in the land by the Bureau of Navigation.
"And look at the sailor," urged Herc Taylor, Ned's cousin. Herc had been christened Hercules by his parents, who, like Ned's, had died in his infancy, but Herc he had always been and was likely to remain.
"What's he waving at – sea-cows?"
"See here, Herc Taylor, this is serious. Wouldn't working for Uncle Sam in a uniform like that on a first-class fighting-ship suit you better than doing chores? How would a life on the ocean wave appeal to you, eh?" inquired Ned, with rather a mischievous twinkle in his blue eyes.
"First-rate," rejoined Herc. "It makes me think of those sea stories – those you are so fond of reading, Ned, 'Frank on a Gunboat,' and the rest."
"I guess a modern Dreadnought is a whole lot different to the vessels on board which Frank fought," smiled Ned; "but I must admit that that picture has put some queer notions into my head, too."
"For instance, what?" demanded Herc, in whose eyes there was a glimmer which would have said plain as a pike-staff to those who knew him that the red-headed lad had come to some sort of determination.
"For instance, that I'd like to be a sailor for Uncle Sam, and work my way up, like some of those admirals and naval heroes we've read about!" exclaimed Ned, with considerable animation.
"Shake!" cried Herc; "that's what I've been thinking of ever since I saw that picture – "
"Which was ten minutes ago," put in Ned.
"Never mind; you haven't been looking at it any longer, and I can see that you are as hard hit by the idea of joining the navy as I am," briskly interrupted Herc.
"I don't know but what you are right, Herc," rejoined Ned thoughtfully. "I've been thinking that if we go on as we are, we will be doing the same old round of duties on grandpa's farm ten years from now, just as we are doing to-day. Things don't change much in the country, as you know, while in the navy – "
Ned stopped, but his glowing face and sparkling eyes finished the speech for him.
"While in the navy, bing! bang! – Promotion. – Fire the guns! – Target! – Good shot! – First mate! – Medal! – Introduction to the president. – Up in the fighting-top. – Down in a submarine. – Bottom of the sea. – Top of the mast – whoop!" exploded Herc, in a way that he had when he was excited. It was for all the world like listening to the detonations of an exploding package of firecrackers.
"Well, the poster here does say that there are a lot of good chances for promotion," soberly put in Ned, who had been examining the text below the lithograph with some attention, while Herc had been exploding. "I've a good mind to try it, Herc," he concluded suddenly.
"Count me in on that, too," heartily rejoined his cousin, giving a few impromptu steps of what he declared was a sailor's hornpipe; "and when we're both admirals we'll come back here and astonish the natives – including Hank Harkins."
"Who said Hank Harkins?" growled a harsh voice from the rear of the store, for the postoffice was tucked away in one corner of the Lambs' Corners Emporium, in which, it was the boast of its proprietor, you could buy anything from a needle to a gang-plow.
As the words reached the boys' ears, a tall, hulking youth, of about their own age – shouldered his way through the knot of loungers gathered about the stove – for it was December, and cold.
"I'll thank you two to keep my name out of your conversation," growled the newcomer, as he lurched up to the cousins.
"Oh, we'd not use it unless we had to," rejoined Herc, facing round, his red hair seeming to bristle like the hackles on the back of an angry dog. "Since you were mean enough to persuade your father to post his land against us so that we could not take the short cut to the store, we are not likely to want to discuss your points, – good or otherwise – promiscuous."
"See here, Herc Taylor," glowered Hank, who had considerable reputation in the village as a bully, and had sustained his renown as a hard fighter and wrestler in many a tough contest, "I don't know what you mean by promiscuous – "
"No, I didn't think you would," grinned Herc cheerfully.
"But I want to tell you here and now, that if I have any more of your impudence, I'm going to lick you, and lick you good," concluded the bully; his enmity to the two boys, who lived on an adjoining farm to his father's, not at all allayed by Herc's aggressive tone and evident contempt.
"And I want to tell you that we don't want anything to do with you," retorted Herc; "we're mighty particular about our company."
"You young whelp, I'll have to teach you some manners," grated Hank angrily, edging up threateningly toward the red-headed youth, who, for his part, did not budge the fraction of an inch.
"You'll be a teacher who never studied then," retorted Herc hotly, as he turned away to join Ned, who had been regarding the disputants with narrowed eyes, but had said nothing so far. He knew Hank Harkins for a bully, and believed him to be a coward at heart, but he had no wish to get into a fistic argument with him in a public place like Goggins' store and postoffice.
But by this time a number of the loungers about the stove had become attracted by the raised tones of Hank and Herc and crowded around the two; and Hank, nothing loth to having an audience, proceeded to give Herc what he elegantly termed a "tongue-lashing."
"So far as posting our farm went," he sputtered vindictively, "you know why that was done, to keep you two from pot-hunting over it. Killing every rabbit you could and pulling down walls to get them out. Why," exclaimed Hank, turning to the auditors who stood with gaping mouths in various interested postures, "those two fellows made a hole in our south wall that let our whole herd of milch cows through, and – "
He stopped short at a sudden interruption.
"That's a lie." The words came from Ned Strong.
"Yes, you know it is. You pulled down that wall yourself and then to escape getting in trouble with your father you blamed us for it," snapped Herc.
The bully's face twitched. He grew pale with anger and his rage was none the less because he knew Herc's charges to be true.
"Call me a liar, will you?" he gritted out, springing at Ned with considerable agility, considering his hulking frame and general appearance of clumsy strength.
"Take that!"
Smack!
The bully's big hand landed fair on Ned's cheek, bruising it and raising an angry crimson mark.
Unwilling as Ned was to fight in such a place, the insult was too maddening to be allowed to go unnoticed by any one but an arrant coward; and Ned was far from being that.
Before Hank had gathered himself together from the force of his unexpected blow, the quiet Ned was transformed from his usual docile self, into a formidable antagonist. His eyes blazed with anger as he crouched into a boxing posture for a breath, and then lunged full at Hank Harkins, who met the lighter lad's onslaught with a defiant sneer.
So quickly had it all happened that no one had had time to say a word, much less to interfere. Paul Stevens, the owner of the store, was out in the granary at the back helping a farmer get a load of oats onto his wagon.
The loungers, nothing averse to having the monotony of their unceasing discussions of the crops and politics interrupted in such dramatic fashion, fell back to give the battlers room. Not one of them, however, dreamed of but one issue to the battle and that was that Ned Strong was in for a terrible thrashing; but, as the seconds slipped by, and several blows had been exchanged between the two, it began to appear that Ned was not going to prove such an easy prey as had at first seemed manifest.
Hank Harkins himself, who had been surprised at any resistance from Herc's cousin, began to look uneasy as Ned, instead of going down before the perfect hail of blows the bully delivered, skillfully avoided most of the lunges and contented himself with ducking and dodging; only changing his tactics now and then to deliver a blow when he saw a favorable opportunity.
"Good boy, Ned," breathed Herc, as he saw his companion wading into Hank Harkins in such surprising style.
Even the loyal Herc had not hitherto dreamed that beneath Ned's quiet personality had been hidden such ability to take care of himself.
Hank, after the first few minutes, was breathing heavily, and the sweat began to pour off his face. A pampered, only son, he never did much hard work about the farm, whereas Ned's muscles were trained fine as nickel-steel by hay-pitching, wood-sawing and other strenuous tasks. His training stood him in good stead now.
Overmatched by Hank, he undoubtedly was, but his hard frame was the more enduring. Hank's punches, terrific enough at first, began gradually to grow weaker, more particularly as most of them had been wasted on empty space.
Finally Hank, perceiving that he was reaching the end of his rope, clenched his teeth and, with set face and narrowed eyes, made up his mind to end the fight in one supreme effort.
He hurled himself on his lighter antagonist like a thunderbolt, but Ned, with a skillful duck, avoided the full fury of the onslaught, and rising just as the bully launched his blows into thin air, caught his lumbering opponent full under the chin.
Swinging his arms, like a scarecrow in a windstorm, the bully plunged backward under the effective blow.
"Hurray for Ned Strong!" shouted Herc ecstatically, as the bully's big frame reeled staggeringly backward.
The next minute, however, his delight changed to a groan of dismay as Hank, unable to control himself, crashed, full tilt, into the stove. With a deafening clatter, like that of a mad bull careening round a tinware shop, the heater and its long pipe, came toppling in a sooty confusion to the ground. Red-hot coals shot out in every direction.
In the midst of the wreckage sprawled the unlucky bully, his features bedaubed with black. Through this mask his look of puzzled rage at his defeat came so comically that Ned and Herc could not restrain themselves, but, even in the face of the disaster to the store stove, burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter. In the meantime some one hurled a bucket of water on the coals, and the bully was drenched.
The onlookers, their risibilities also tickled by the downfall of the bully, and the noisy demolition of the stove, joined in the merriment and the laden shelves of the store were echoing to a perfect tempest of laughter when suddenly the rear door opened and Paul Stevens entered. A look of dismay appeared on his lean features as his eyes lighted on the wreckage.
With him was another figure whose unexpected appearance caused the boys' faces to assume almost as dismayed a look as the countenance of the storekeeper.
"Grandfather!" gasped Ned, as his eyes encountered the angry glare of the newcomer's pale orbs.
"Yes, – grandfather," snapped the other, whose weather-beaten face was adorned with a tuft of gray hair on the chin, in the style popularly known as "the goatee."
"What have you got to say in explanation of this?"
As he rasped out this query in a harsh, rusty voice like the creaking of a long disused hinge, old Zack Strong pointed to the wreckage. From the midst of it was rising the bully, plentifully besmeared with soot, but doing his best to maintain a look of injured innocence.
CHAPTER II.
"WE'RE GOING TO JOIN THE NAVY."
Old Zack Strong was not one of those men who can distinguish between boyish high spirits and what he would have termed "downright pesky cussedness." In this latter quality, indeed, he believed both his grandsons – Ned, and his dead second son's offspring, Herc, – to be plentifully endowed. Not naturally bad-hearted, however, the old man had assumed the care of the cousins on the death of their parents, but even with his act of adoption there came the thought to his frugal mind: "They'll be a great help 'round the farm."
In his hopes in this direction the old man had not been disappointed. Both boys had entered into the work with painstaking thoroughness; but it must be admitted that to adventurous lads, the monotonous grind of a remote farm in the hills is somewhat dampening. Ever since Ned and Herc had left the district school and become, in a more thorough sense than ever, "helps" to their grandfather, the old man had chafed at their hunting expeditions and proclivities toward baseball and other games. He could not see that pitching hay, milking, and doing chores, was not the full-rounded end of existence for any lads.
So, when, on this bitter December afternoon, he entered the store unexpectedly on his way back from delivering a wagon-load of grist at the water-driven mill at Westerlo, a nearby village, his chagrin may be imagined when he discovered his two young charges occupying the centre of the scene depicted in the last chapter.
In Zack Strong's hard creed there was only one sin worse than playing – or "fooling," as he called it – and that was fighting.
And it was only too evident that in the latter of these heinous offences one at least of the boys had been indulging.
Worse still, in the wrecked stove the old farmer foresaw a demand for damages on the storekeeper's part, and there was only one thing harder to wring from Zack than a smile, and that article was money. If the average farmer is what may be described as "close-fisted," old Zack was "cement-fisted."
With this side-light on their grandfather's character in view, the consternation of the boys may be understood when they met his amazed and indignant gaze resting accusingly on them.
"Mean?" stammered Hank, wiping as best he could some of the soot off his mottled countenance and echoing the old man's last words. "It means that your two boys here have made a brutal and unprovoked attack on me and that – "
"And that my stove is busted to Kingdom Come!" disgustedly sputtered Paul Stevens, whose cadaverous features had been busily scanning the wreckage in the brief interval of time that had elapsed between the entrance of himself and Zack Strong and the seemingly righteously indignant outburst of the bully.
"Never mind your stove now," grated out the hard-featured old farmer, wishing devoutly that the stove could be "never-minded" altogether, "what I want to find out is what these boys here have been up to. What kind of deviltry they have been at."
"We haven't been at any deviltry, as you please to call it, grandpa," burst out Ned, striving to keep cool, though he was burning inwardly with indignation and humiliation.
"Eh-eh-eh?" grunted the old man incredulously, "that's fine talking, but what's all this I see? How did that young man come to be all mixed up in the stove?"
"Through no wish of his own you may be sure," chuckled the irrepressible Herc. "Say, Hank, you look like a skunk – all black and white, you know – "
"Silence, sir," roared his grandfather, with as near an approach to a stern bass as his wheezy voice would allow. "Who started this?"
Ned remained silent. It was not his wish to tell tales, and he had no desire to act as an informer.
"Why, Hank Harkins here started it," spoke up Si Ingalls, a young farmer who had formed one of the group about the demolished stove, "he slapped Ned in the jaw and Ned – rightly, too – came back at him. Am I correct?" he asked, turning to the others.
"Hank's face looks it," grinned Luke Bates, the village wit, regarding Hank, who was quivering with fury, in an amused way, "never mix it up with a stove, Hank," he went on, "it'll get the best of you every time."
"Is this right?" demanded old Zack, turning to his grandson as soon as the laugh at Hank's expense subsided.
"Oh, yes, that's about the way it happened, I guess," said Ned in a low voice.
"What I want to know is who's going to settle for my stove," wailed Paul Stevens. "Here's a cracked draught-piece, a busted door, two lengths of stove-pipe flattened out like pancakes and soot all over a fine piece of dress goods."
"Name your price," groaned old Zack, wincing as if a twinge of rheumatism had passed through him, "but don't make it too steep," he added, cautiously, "or I won't pay it. How much, now?"
The storekeeper made a rapid mental calculation, in which his fingers and various grimaces played an important part.
"There's the stove door, say seventy-five cents; and the pipe, two lengths, a dollar; and the draught-piece – I'll have to send to New York for another, sixty cents; and the spoiled dress goods – "
"You'll only have to cut the outside edge off them," objected old Zack, his lips twitching nervously as the rising tide of expenses swamped his cautious senses.
"Wall, that'll be a yard, anyhow," announced the storekeeper, "that is twenty-five cents, we'll say. Two dollars thirty-five for the whole shebang."
"Two dollars thirty-five. It's rank robbery," objected the old farmer, almost giving utterance to a groan.
"Of course I may be able to straighten out the stove pipe," admitted Paul Stevens, reluctantly, "and you are an old customer. I'll make it two dollars and ten cents to you."
Reluctantly old Zack drew out a battered wallet and drew from it two one-dollar bills, being careful not to display the rest of its contents. Then, after much fumbling in the recesses of his clothing, he produced a small leather purse from which he drew a ten cent piece. These he tendered with an agonized expression to the storekeeper.
"Canadian," sniffed the storekeeper, regarding the bit of silver.
"It's good," objected old Zack.
"Not to me. Come, I let you off light on the stove and the other damage them boys have done; give me a good dime."
Reluctantly old Zack took back the rejected coin and substituted for it a piece of United States silver.
"There you are," he grumbled, "those pesky boys will bankrupt me yet."
All this time the boys, standing aloof from the crowd of loungers, had regarded the scene with very different expressions. Herc's lips trembled with suppressed laughter as he witnessed the painful operation of separating old Zack from his beloved money, while Ned's face bore a thoughtful look, as if he were revolving some serious project in his mind. Hank Harkins had taken advantage of the temporary diversion from himself as a centre of interest to shuffle off, and was by this time well on his way home, considering, as he went, the best way in which he could explain his soot-smeared face and rapidly swelling eye.
A short time afterwards the boys accompanied their elder to his spring-wagon and, as they had walked down to the store, prepared to accompany him home.
"Look out for squalls," Herc whispered to Ned, as the two lads unhitched the team. His warning was not ill-judged. The vials of old Zack's wrath burst with the fury of a midsummer storm above the boys' heads as soon as the wagon had clattered out of the village and was climbing the steep ascent to Zack Strong's farm.
"Of all the useless, idle scamps that I ever had on the farm, you are the worst," began the querulous old man, "and then, to cap it all, you go to fighting and brawling in public and cost me two dollars and an American dime to settle it. I don't see why Paul Stevens couldn't have taken that Canadian one. They're as good as any others, in some places," he went on, his mind reverting to his other grievance, "but that's the way in this world, nothing but ingratitude everywhere you turn. I've nourished a pair of sar-pints, that's what I've done. You're rattle-brains, both on yer."
He turned a sour enough countenance on the two lads as he spoke.
"Sort of rattlesnakes, eh?" cheerfully remarked the irrepressible Herc. "It's no use being angry, gran'pa," he went on, "we'd finished splitting the last of that tough hickory before we came down to the village and, as there was nothing else to do till chore-time – "
"You spent it in disgracing yourselves, eh?" grimly rejoined old Zack. "I'm tired of it, I tell you," he railed on, "and – "
"And so are we," quietly broke in Ned, whose face still wore the same thoughtful look that had come over it just before they left the store.
"What?" quavered the old man, as if he thought he had not heard aright.
"I mean 'so are we tired of it,'" repeated Ned, slowly, but in a firm voice, "we work for you early and late, grandpa, and nothing ever comes of it but scolding and fault-finding."
"Didn't I pay two dollars ten cents for that busted stove, Ned?" complained old Zack, "and I'll swear the damage wasn't more'n one ninety-eight, and – "
"That's not the question, now," went on Ned, in the same quiet, determined voice, "as it was partly my fault that the stove was overturned I'll pay you back that out of my own pocket."
"What, – you ain't got no money!" exclaimed old Zack incredulously and in somewhat alarmed tones. There was a note in Ned's voice he had never heard there before and he saw his authority melting away like snow in the spring, "and besides, maybe I was a bit hasty, Ned. Come, we'll call it square and you do your work right in future and we'll say no more about it."
"I shall do only a little more work for you, gran'pa," was Ned's amazing reply, which almost caused the old man to drop his lines and fall backward off his seat.
"What's that?" he cried, and his voice fairly squeaked under the stress of his great astonishment.
"I said," calmly repeated Ned, "that I shall not do much more work for you, grandpa, and neither will Herc here, I guess. We are going away."
It was Herc's turn to look astonished. Accustomed as he was to accept Ned's opinion in most things, this latest resolve seemed somewhat drastic even to the impetuous red-headed youth.
"Why, you ain't got no money?" stammered old Zack, not being able to think of anything else to say in his great amazement.
"Oh, yes, I have," quietly rejoined Ned. "I have fifty dollars saved up that I got for skins last winter and Herc has about the same sum. That will carry us a little way, I guess."
"Why, Ned, boy! Land o' Goshen, what have yer set yer mind on doin'?" gasped the farmer.
"We're going to enter the navy," announced Ned, in these same quiet, determined tones; which unmistakably meant to anyone who knew him that his mind was made up beyond the possibility of change.
"What, out on the water?" gasped old Zack, his mind in a whirl at this sudden kicking over the traces of authority.
"I believe they usually sail the vessels of Uncle Sam's navy on the water," chirped the irrepressible Herc, who, his first astonishment over, had quite resolved to follow his cousin's footsteps wherever they might lead.
The sarcasm was lost on old Zack, however. He even forgot to emit his customary minute interval cry of "Geddap!" to his old team which, in consequence, came to a dead standstill in the middle of the road.