EVERYBODY"S FRIEND
"Stand back there, you fellows!"
"Scatter, boys--it"s Ralph Fairbanks!"
It was two days after the landslide near Brocton. The young fireman had just left the roundhouse at Stanley Junction in a decidedly pleasant mood. His cheering thoughts were, however, rudely disturbed by a spectacle that at once appealed to his manly nature.
Ralph, making a short cut for home, had come across a farmer"s wagon standing in an alley at the side of a cheap hotel. The place was a resort for dissolute, good-for-nothing railway employes, and one of its victims was now seated, or rather propped up, on the seat of the wagon in question.
He was a big, loutish boy, and had apparently come into town with a load to deliver. The wagon was filled with bags of apples. Around the vehicle was gathered a crowd of boys. Each one of them had his pockets bulging with the fruit stolen from one of the bags in the wagon.
Standing near by, Jim Evans in their midst, was an idle crowd of railroad men, enjoying and commenting on the scene.
The farmer"s boy was seemingly asleep or unconscious. He had been set up on the seat by the mob, and one side of his face blackened up.
Apples stuck all over the harness of the horses and on every available part of the vehicle. A big board lying across the bags had chalked upon it, "Take One."
The crowd was just about to start this spectacle through the public streets of Stanley Junction when Ralph appeared. The young fireman brushed them aside quickly, removed the adornments from the horses and wagon, sprang to the vehicle, threw the sign overboard, and, lifting up the unconscious driver, placed him out of view under the wagon seat. As he did so, Ralph noticed the taint of liquor on the breath of the country lad.
"Too bad," he murmured to himself. "This doesn"t look right--more like a piece of malice or mischief. Stand back, there!"
Ralph took up the reins, and also seized the whip. Many of the crowd he had known as school chums, and most of them drew back shamefacedly as he appeared.
There were four or five regular young loafers, however, who led the mob. Among them Ralph recognized Ted Evans, a son of the fireman he had encountered at the roundhouse two days previous. With him was a fellow named Hemp Gaston, an old a.s.sociate of Mort Bemis.
"Hold on, there!" sang out Gaston, grabbing the bridles of the horses.
"What you spoiling our fun for?"
"Yes," added Ted Evans, springing to the wagon step and seizing Ralph"s arm. "Get off that wagon, or we"ll pull you off."
Ralph swung the fellow free of the vehicle with a vigorous push.
"See here, you interfere with my boy and I"ll take a hand in this affair myself," growled Jim Evans, advancing from the crowd of men.
"You"ll whip me first, if you do," answered one of them. "This is a boys" squabble, Jim Evans, and don"t you forget it."
"Humph! he struck my boy."
"Then let them fight it out."
"Yes," shouted young Evans angrily, "come down here and show that you are no coward."
"Very well," said Ralph promptly. "There"s one for you!"
Ralph Fairbanks had acted in a flash on an impulse. He had leaped from the wagon, dealt young Evans one blow and sent him half-stunned to the ground. Regaining the wagon he drove quickly into the street before his astonished enemies could act any further.
"Poor fellow," said Ralph, looking at the lad in the wagon. "Now, what am I ever going to do with him?"
Ralph reflected for a moment or two. Then he started in the direction of home. He was sleepy and tired out, and he realized that the present episode might interfere with some of his plans for the day, but he was a whole-hearted, sympathetic boy and could not resist the promptings of his generous nature.
The young fireman soon reached the pretty little cottage that was his home, so recently rescued from the sordid clutches of old Gasper Farrington. He halted the team in front of the place and entered the house at once.
"Here I am, mother," he said cheerily.
Mrs. Fairbanks greeted him with a smile of glad welcome.
"I was quite anxious about you when I heard of the wreck, Ralph," she said with solicitude. He had not been home since that happening.
"It was not a wreck, mother," corrected Ralph. Then he briefly recited the incidents of the hold-up.
"It seems as though you were destined to meet with all kinds of danger in your railroad life," said the widow. "You were delayed considerably."
"Yes," answered Ralph, "we had to remove the landslide debris. That took us six hours and threw us off our schedule, so we had to lay over at Dover all day yesterday. One pleasant thing, though."
"What is that, Ralph?"
"The master mechanic congratulated me this morning on what he called, "saving the train.""
"Which you certainly did, Ralph. Why, whose wagon is that in front of the house?" inquired Mrs. Fairbanks, observing the vehicle outside for the first time.
Ralph explained the circ.u.mstances of his rescue of the vehicle to his mother.
"What are you going to do with the farmer"s boy?" she inquired.
"I want to bring him in the house until he recovers."
"Very well, I will make up a bed on the lounge for him," said the woman. "It is too bad, poor fellow! and shameful--the mischief of those men at the hotel."
Ralph carried the farmer"s boy into the house. Then he ate his breakfast. After the meal was finished, he glanced at his watch.
"I shall have to lose a little sleep, mother," he said. "I am anxious to help the poor fellow out, and I think I see a way to do it."
The young fireman had noticed a small blank book under the cushion of the wagon seat. He now inspected it for the first time. All of its written pages were crossed out except one. This contained a list of names of storekeepers in Stanley Junction.
Ralph drove to the store first named in the list. Within two hours he had delivered all of the apples. It seemed that the storekeepers named in the account book ordered certain fruits and vegetables regularly from the owner of the team, the farmer himself coming to town to collect for the same twice each month.
When Ralph got back home he unhitched the horses, tied them up near the woodshed, and fed them from a bag of grain he found under the wagon seat.
"What is this, I wonder?" he said, discovering a small flat parcel under the wagon seat. The package resembled a store purchase of some kind, so, for safe keeping, Ralph placed it inside the shed.
His mother had gone to visit a sick neighbor. The farmer boy was sleeping heavily.
"Wake me before the boy leaves," he wrote on a card, leaving this for his mother on the kitchen table. Then, pretty well tired out, Ralph went to bed.
It was late in the afternoon when he awoke. He went down stairs and glanced into the sitting room.
"Why, mother," he exclaimed, "where is the farmer boy?"