Fast Nine Part 7

"Nixy, never, not me!" declared the tall boy, as he came scrambling down from his elevated perch. "The ground's good enough for this chicken. If I ever dropped from this height, whatever would happen to my bones, tell me that? Now, let's see if you can climb down, Toby."

Toby proved to be all right again, now that he had regained an upright position, and the blood ceased to gather in his head. He made a decent job of it, dropping down the tree. Lil Artha kept close beside him, to guard against any accident, for, as he said, he "didn't want to have his work all for nothing, and let Toby get a broken leg after he had once been safely rescued."

They all arrived on the ground under the tree about the same time.

Toby's first thought seemed to be in connection with his beloved parachute, and, of course, he started for the spot where the broken umbrella-like apparatus lay, upside down; as Lil Artha declared, "for all the world like a duck that, being shot in the air, had fallen on its back."

Hardly had the unfortunate Toby taken half a dozen steps away than Lil Artha suddenly burst out into shrieks of laughter that caused the other to whirl around in his tracks and look at him in astonishment.

"What ails you, now, I'd just like to know, Lil Artha?" he demanded.

"You sure act like you'd gone bug-house. Say, Elmer, is he crazy, or can it be the reaction set in after his daring feat in grabbing me?"

"Turn around!" yelled Lil Artha. "Let Elmer see the air hole he made.

Oh, my! Oh, me! but don't you feel cold? Ain't you afraid of a draught, Toby?"

Toby apparently suddenly began to understand, and as his hand went back of him a grin broke over his face.

"Oh, murder!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "he cut out the whole seat, and these are my newest trousers, too! Won't I get it, though, when mom sees what's happened? And I don't dare tell her how it was done, because she wouldn't let me keep on studying about aeroplanes and such. Whatever am I going to do now!"

"I'd advise you to get an awning before you show yourself in town,"

jeered Lil Artha. "If any of the scouts see you, Toby, they'll sure think you're flying a flag of truce. But don't you blame Elmer for your troubles, hear? He did the only thing there was open to him. And if he hadn't happened to have that sharp knife along, you might be hanging up there yet and for some time to come; get that?"

"Sure, and I'm making no kick," replied Toby, with a grimace. "Reckon I pulled out of a bad sc.r.a.pe lucky enough. Wow! Thought at one time my goose was cooked! But it's all right now, it's all right, boys!"

"Yes," sang Lil Artha, "everything is lovely, and the goose hangs high, or he did up to the time his chums happened along and yanked him down.

But it was a good thing for you, Toby, Elmer here happened to be sent over to Mr. Bailey's house, and concluded to take the short cut through the woods."

"Well," remarked Toby, philosophically, and boy fas.h.i.+on, "I always heard it was better to be born lucky than rich, and now I believe it."

"Come along, Lil Artha," said Elmer; "we've got business on hand, you remember, and can't waste any more time here. But I hope Toby won't think of trying to drop down from the top of Echo Cliff again."

"Not if he knows it," returned the other, whose face was scratched in several places from contact with twigs during his crash into the tree.

"Next time I try out any of my inventions I'll make sure to pick a place where there ain't any plagued trees. Perhaps I might try a jump from the old church tower some fine day. That would make the people of sleepy old Hickory Ridge stare some, hey?"

"I sure think it would," returned Lil Artha, as he stepped off after Elmer; "and your folks in particular. I see you're in for a heap of trouble, Toby, with these fool notions of yours. It'll be a good thing if you get cured before you're killed."

"That's a fact," called out Toby, with one of his grins; "because it wouldn't be much use after that same thing happened, hey?"

Elmer was chuckling as he walked along.

"Never will forget how Toby looked as he kicked, and pawed, and tried to get hold of something," he remarked to his companion.

"Same here, Elmer," replied the other, shaking with merriment.

"But all the same it was a ticklish thing for Toby, and what you might call a close shave," declared Elmer, thoughtfully.

"Whew, I wouldn't like to take the chances of a thirty-foot drop like that, if the branch broke or his trousers tore!" Lil Artha remarked.

"And after all Toby ought to be thankful that they were new goods and not rotten stuff."

"Think of his nerve in jumping off that high cliff," said Elmer, shaking his head, as though the idea appalled him. "That fellow is getting too daring. I wouldn't be much surprised if he did try to drop down from the church tower some fine day if this thing isn't nipped in the bud."

"Then perhaps we ought to tell, Elmer?" suggested Lil Artha.

"You mean, let his folks know about the narrow call he had here to-day?"

"Yep. Seems to me it's kind of our duty to inform his dad. Another time, perhaps, Toby won't be just so lucky. And Elmer, if he got smashed or had his legs broken, you and me would feel like we was guilty, ain't that so?"

"I'll think it over, Lil Artha," replied the other. "I hate to tell on a chum, but this is something out of the ordinary. It may mean Toby's life, for all we can tell. And on the whole I think his folks ought to know."

"He won't blab on himself, that's dead sure," remarked the tall scout.

"Sounded like he didn't mean to, for a fact," Elmer continued.

"Tell you what, I'd have given a heap to have been around just then, Elmer."

"You mean when he took the jump? It must have been a bit thrilling for a fellow to deliberately drop off such a high place. But Toby's got the nerve, only sometimes it seems to me he's reckless. And that's a bad thing in anyone who wants to sail around through the air regions."

They went on exchanging opinions, and in due time arrived at the Bailey house, where Elmer delivered his charge to the owner of the big woods.

On the way back they neither saw nor heard anything of Toby, though they could easily imagine him hard at work trying to get his broken parachute in shape, so that it might be transported back to town, and fixed up for another exploit.

It would not be in boy nature to keep such a remarkable story secret, and before night it had likely traveled from one end of Hickory Ridge to the other in about a dozen different shapes. Some even had it that Toby had flown a mile before being caught in a tree, while others had him a wreck, with all the doctors in town trying to patch him up. But Elmer went straight to Mr. Jones, and gave him the true version, so that he might not be alarmed at anything he heard.

CHAPTER VII.

MORE WORK ON THE DIAMOND.

WHEN Lil Artha showed up on the field that afternoon, clad in his old baseball suit that showed the wear and tear of many a battle, he had his camera slung over his shoulder with a strap.

"Want to take the nine in action?" asked Elmer, as he noted this fact, and paused in his delivery of the ball to the catcher, Mark c.u.mmings.

"Oh, I might, if the signs were right, and they showed that they deserved all that sort of attention," replied the tall scout, "but I've made up my mind about one thing, Elmer."

"What might that be?" asked the other, smiling at his friend's seriousness.

"I'm going to carry this little box around with me day and night, that's what. Just the time you want it most you haven't got it along," declared Lil Artha, with a look of sheer disgust.

"Well, I always heard that a fellow could see all sorts of game when he didn't happen to have a gun," laughed Elmer; "and I suppose the same thing goes with a camera. But I can guess what's ailing you now, my boy."

"Of course you can," grinned the other. "Say, just think what it would mean to you and me if we only had a picture of Toby Jones kicking the air up in that old tree, and learning to swim! Wow, no chance of us ever getting the blues while we had that to look at! It would have been the funniest ever. And to think it's all lost to us, just because I was silly enough to leave my box at home. Shucks!"

"Don't suppose Toby would pose it over again, do you?" suggested Larry Billings, who was pa.s.sing a ball with Matty Eggleston, the leader of the Beaver Patrol, and one of the reliables in the nine.

"Well, hardly," Lil Artha replied. "I reckon Toby got enough of hanging that time to last him right along. Is he here this afternoon?"