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Fast Nine: or, A Challenge from Fairfield
Fast Nine; or, A Challenge from Fairfield
CHAPTER I.
ON THE WAY HOME FROM THE FISHING HOLE
A party of five boys, ranging in age around fifteen or sixteen, trudged rather wearily along the bank of a small stream known as the Sunflower River. Some miles beyond this point it merged its clear waters with those of the broader Sweetwater, which river has figured before now in these stories of the Hickory Ridge boys.
As they carried several strings of pretty good-looking fish, the chances were the straggling group must have been over at the larger stream trying their luck. And as black bass have a failing for beginning to bite just when fellows ought to be starting for home this would account for evening finding them still some distance from Hickory Ridge and a jolly supper.
"Another long mile, and then we'll be there, fellows," sighed the stoutest one of the bunch, who was panting every little while, because of the warm pace set by his more agile chums.
"Hey, just listen to Landy puff, will you, boys!" laughed Chatz Maxfield, whose accent betrayed his Southern birth.
"He keeps getting fatter every day, I do believe," joked Mark Cummings, a clean-cut young chap with a clear eye and resolute bearing.
"Now, that ain't exactly fair, Mark," complained the object of this mirth, in a reproachful tone, "and you know it. Don't I take exercise every day just to reduce my flesh? Why, I'm making a regular martyr of myself, my mom says, ever since I joined the Boy Scouts, so that I can keep my own with the rest of you. She says if I keep it up I'll soon be skin and bones, that's what!"
A shout arose from the entire bunch at this. The idea of that fat boy ever reaching a point where such a term could be applied to him was simply ridiculous.
"What time is it, Chatz; since you seem to be the only one in the lot who had the good sense and also the decency to fetch a watch along?"
The Southern boy readily pulled out a little nickel timepiece, and consulted it, but the dusk was coming fast, so that he had to bend low in order to make sure of the right figures.
"Half past seven, fellows," he announced.