“It’s that cub Blake,” whispered Hunt to Jack Curtiss.
“Well, what of it?” growled Jack in a low voice. “We aren’t scared of him or a dozen like him. Hurt?” he went on at the top of his voice. “No, we ain’t, but I suppose you’d like to have seen us all injured for life by that fool thing you were flopping about on. You’re a great inventor—not.”
“It isn’t my invention,” said Rob, with meaning emphasis. “It was the idea of a friend of mine—a young fellow who made something else that interested a certain man in this town so much that he tried to forge a telegram to get a chance to buy it.”
“Are you aiming at me?” demanded Freeman Hunt, coming forward, “or at my father?”
“If the cap fits, you can wear it,” retorted Rob, thoroughly angry with Hunt and his companions. He was turning contemptuously away when Jack Curtiss stepped forward.
“Hold on there a minute, young fellow,” he snarled, “you’ve got a lesson coming to you, and right here is as good a place as any to give it to you.”
“The same sort of lesson you tried to give me in the road one night, eh?” flung back Rob, scornfully; “the same sort of lesson that the fellow who fired that gun at me in the wood wanted to give me, I guess.”
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” blurted out Freeman Hunt, before his wiser cronies could stop him.
“Then my guess was right. It was you that fired it,” said Rob. “Thanks for giving me the proof of it.”
“Bother it all, he’s got a hold over us now,” muttered Jack Curtiss, turning away as Rob’s chums came up.
“Well, the smash-up happened,” said Rob to Paul. “I’m awfully sorry, Paul. I couldn’t help it, though. Something seemed to divert my attention for a second, and the next thing I knew I was head-over-heels in the snow-pile.”
“Good thing it was there,” said Merritt, who, with the others, had been examining the wreck.
“See what a big hole his head made,” cried Tubby, pointing to the hole in the soft snow where Rob had driven into it.
“I’ll make it all right with you, Paul,” Rob promised. “I’ll see that you are able to build a bigger, better flyer than this one. I believe that if we don’t break our necks trying it out, that you have a good idea there.”
“He really does,” sneered Jack Curtiss from the patch of shadow in which he and his cronies were standing.