"And it"s the first change I have seen for a week," declared Harry Rattleton. "I"m waiting to hear from the governor."
"Howld on," said the driver. "Oi want to see the mon thot hired me."
He threatened to pull up, but Frank caught the whip and cracked it over the horses.
"What do you want?" asked Merriwell.
"Oi want me pay."
Now, Frank knew well enough that the driver had received his pay in advance, but he was beginning to suspect that the party that hired him had come to grief, and so he was for exacting an extra payment from the victors.
"Look here, driver," said Frank, sternly, "I want your number."
"Pwhat fer?"
"In case it may appear later on that you have received money at two separate and distinct times for doing the same piece of work."
"Get oop!" yelled the driver. "It"s ownly foolin" Oi wur."
So the hack rolled on its way, with the happy freshmen smoking and singing, while the captive sophs ground their teeth and railed at the bitter luck.
Inside the hack Dismal Jones, most hideously bedaubed, was smoking a cigarette and brandishing a wooden tomahawk at the same time, while he sat astride of Bruce Browning, who was on the floor.
"This is a sad and solemn occasion, paleface," croaked Dismal. "You have driven the n.o.ble red man from his ancestral halls, which were the dim aisles of the mighty forests; you have pushed him across the plains, and you have tried to crowd him off the earth into the Pacific Ocean. Ugh!
You have pursued him with deadly firearms and still more deadly fire water. You have been relentless in your hatred and your greed. You have even been so unreasonable that whenever a poor red man has secured a few paleface scalps as trophies to hang in his wigwam you have taken your trusty rifles and gone forth with great fury and shot the poor Indian full of hard bullets. You have done heap many things that you would not have done if you had not done so. But now, poor, shivering dog of a paleface, the injured red man has arisen at last in his might. If we are to perish, we are to perish; but before we perish, we will enjoy the gentle pleasure of roasting a few white men at the stake. Ugh! We have held a council of war, we have excavated the hatchet, we have smashed the pipe of peace to flinders, or something of the sort, and have struck out upon the war trail."
"You act as if you had struck out," growled one of the captives.
"That"s because he has had a few b.a.l.l.s," gurgled Browning. "Talk about being burned at the stake! That"s not torture after being obliged to inhale his breath. My kingdom for some chloroform! Will somebody please hit me on the head with a trip hammer and put me out of my misery?"
"Whither art thou bearing us, great chief?" asked one of the captives.
"We will bare you out yonder," answered Dismal. "At the stake you shall stand arrayed in the garments nature provided for you."
"I don"t care for tea," murmured Browning--"not even for repartee."
"This is worse than being roasted at the stake!" muttered a soph in a corner. "It is severe punishment."
"Help!" cried Dismal. "Somebody take me out! I can"t get ahead of these miserable palefaces."
"You"ll get a head if I ever find a good chance to give it to you,"
declared the voice of Puss Parker from the darkness.
Outside the painted savages were roaring:
"Farewell! farewell! farewell, my fairy fay!
Oh, I"m off to Louisiana For to see my Susy Anna, Singing "Polly-wolly-woodle" all the day."
And thus the captured soph.o.m.ores were borne in triumph out to East Rock, and as they were the ones who engaged the hack, they paid for their own conveyance.
Never before had anything like it happened at Yale. It was an event that was bound to go down in history as the most audacious and daring piece of work ever successfully carried through by freshmen in that college.
And Frank Merriwell was to receive the credit of being the originator of the scheme and the general who carried it out successfully.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE "ROAST" AT EAST ROCK.
A strange and remarkable scene was being enacted in the peaceable and civilized State of Connecticut--a scene which must have startled an accidental observer and caused him to fancy for a moment the hand of time had turned back two centuries.
Near a bright fire that was burning on the ground squatted a band of hideously-painted fellows who seemed to be redskins, while close at hand, bound and helpless, were a number of palefaces, plainly the captives of the savages.
That a council of war was taking place seemed apparent. And still the savages seemed waiting for something.
At length, out of the darkness advanced a tall, well-built warrior, the trailing plumes of whose war bonnet reached quite to the ground. If anything, this fellow was more hideously painted than any of the others, and there was an air of distinction about him that proclaimed him a great chief.
"Ugh!" he grunted. "I am here."
The savages arose, and one of them said:
"Fellow warriors, the mighty chief Fale-in-his-Hoce--I mean Hole-in-his-Face--has arrived."
Then a wild yell of greeting went up to the twinkling stars, and every savage brandished a tomahawk, scalping knife, or some other kind of weapon.
"Brothers," said Hole-in-his-Face, "I see that I am welcome in your midst, as any up-to-date country newspaper reporter would say. You have received me with great _eclat_--excuse my French; I was educated abroad--in New Jersey."
"Go back to Princeton!" cried one of the captives.
"Fellow warriors," continued Hole-in-his-Face, without noticing the interruption, "I am heap much proud to be with you on this momentous occasion."
"Yah! yah! yah!" yelled the savages.
"And now," the chief went on, "if you will proceed to squat on your haunches I will orate a trifle."
Once more the redskins sat down on the ground, and then the late arrival struck an att.i.tude and began his oration:
"Warriors of my people, why are we a.s.sembled together to-night?"
"Because we couldn"t a.s.semble apart," murmured a voice.
"We are a.s.sembled to avenge our wrongs upon the hated paleface," the chief declared. "It was long ago that the proud and haughty paleface got the bulge on the red man, and we have not been in the game to any great extent since then. Every time we have held two pairs he has come in with one pair of sixes or a Winchester and raked the pot. He has not given us any kind of a show for our white alley. Whenever we seemed to be getting along fairly well and doing a little something, he has wrung in a cold deck on us and then shot us full of air holes, purely for the purpose of ventilation in case we objected. Warriors, we have grown tired of being soaked in the neck."
"That"s right," nodded a savage, "unless we are soaked in the neck with fire water."