Brick bit his lip, and his hand dropped with an angry gesture to his side; but he said nothing. Jerry Utway left the group and ran after Dirk, catching up with him and walking at a fast pace by his side.
“Hey, Van, will you show me some time how you made that knockout? I want to try it out on my brother next time we have a row. Gee, if anybody had told me you could put out Brick Ryan’s lights, I wouldn’t have believed it! Where did you learn how to fight like that?”
“My father has seen to it that I had the best boxing lessons that money could buy.” Dirk smiled grimly. “Yesterday Ryan seemed to think that having money wasn’t of much value; but I hope that now he has learned that scientific self-defense is a good thing to acquire. And because my father could pay for those boxing lessons, I don’t have to be bullied by any street-boy that comes along.”
“It sure did make Brick sit up and take notice,” chuckled Jerry. “But why didn’t you make up with him afterward?”
“It’s not so easy. He hazed me pretty badly last night, and I’m not done with him yet.”
“But Brick is a pretty good fellow when you get to know him. Why don’t you——” Jerry broke off, and cocked his ear as bugle-notes rattled down from the porch of the lodge. “Say, we better hurry—there goes Church Call.” He glanced with amusement at the battered features and wet, stained garments of the boy at his side. “Gosh, you sure are a sight! You and Brick Ryan will look like a swell pair, sitting on a bench together at church this morning!”
Dirk was quite late for church. He went to the empty tent, washed, and changed his wet clothing for garments more suitable for Sunday service; and the hour of camp worship was more than half over by the time he slipped into a log seat in the woodland chapel overlooking the lake. Brick was down at the front with the rest of the complement of Tent One, but did not turn his head. One or two boys near by looked at Dirk’s marked face curiously, and Jake Utway once caught his eye, winked, and grinned from behind a hymn-book.
During the bountiful Sunday dinner in the lodge, Dirk, sitting with his councilor on one side of him and Nig Jackson on the other, intercepted many inquiring glances directed from neighboring tables toward himself and Brick Ryan. The red-headed boy, for his part, ate with his head down, saying nothing. If Sax McNulty had heard of the fight, he gave no sign.