Chapter XV What’s Sauce for the Goose
Kingdon invited the woebegone Quibb to breakfast the next morning. The constable had passed a painful night, being scorched rather seriously on neck and arms.
“I wouldn’t have that surly old boy around for a minute,” Red Phillips growled, as he helped Rex prepare the morning meal.
“Don’t be so ha’sh, Larry,” Kingdon advised. “‘Soft words butter no parsnips,’ but they help a lot, just the same. Don’t you see, too, that it’s the part of wisdom for us to make a friend of this tin-badger. We should be as wise as serpents but harmless as doves.”
“Huh! Don’t see it! If you’d just be reasonable and let us all go over there to that other camp and wade into that bunch.”
“Would that prove anything?” chuckled Kingdon. “Even to a country constable?”
“Well!”
“Your idea of proving the case smacks of ancient times, my child. It might have worked well five or six hundred years ago,” his blond friend said lightly. “‘Trial by force of arms,’ or something like that. But it isn’t done now, Larry; it really isn’t done—not in the best circles.”
“Great snakes!” rejoined the red-haired youth. “You’re the coolest fellow, Rex, to let that Horrors take your name——”
“The black-browed villain!” chuckled Kingdon.
“And let him get away with it!”
“He hasn’t got away with anything yet,” was the quick rejoinder.
“I’d like to have you show me why he hasn’t,” returned Red. “He’s got that permit and made a monkey of this constable.”
“Well,” drawled Kingdon, “I don’t mind that, you know. Squibb is no relation of mine.”
“But why all the tenderness for Horrors? He didn’t even thank you for getting him out of his pickle last night.”
“Presume he was too full of gratitude for speech.”
“He was—like fun! He didn’t have the decency to thank you. A fellow that would steal——”
“Hush-a-by-baby!” chided Kingdon. “Old Mid and I pilfered their canoes, didn’t we?”
“That was only in fun.”
“This is going to be fun before we are through with it, my dear fellow.”
“Ah—well——”
“Let it go at that,” advised his blond friend cheerfully. “Leave it to yours truly to pull all the chestnuts out of the fire. We must not get into further trouble with the Sheriff of Nottingham. Go on, Red; call him up to breakfast.”
So the constable remained to eat with the Walcott Hall boys. If there was a good deal of quiet fun thrust at him, Enos Quibb did not know it. Aside from his high opinion of his own importance as an officer of the law, he was rather a thick-skinned individual.
He seemed to feel, however, that there was something due his hosts. He stood about after breakfast and coughed for a time, finally blurting out:
“Wal, of course, you boys understand I ain’t got nothin’ personal against you. Quite the contrary—yes, sir! Ye sartainly did me a good turn last night. And I’d like ter do you a good turn in re-turn.”
“Fly to it, old boy,” Peewee Hicks urged. “Put us down in your will for a good fat sum.”
Enos did not give heed to this chaff. He added:
“Of course, I know you boys ain’t got a mite of right on this island. That Kingdon chap showed me his permit, fair an’ square, over to t’other camp. Dunno where you got them letters and that wallet with his initials on it that ye give me a peek at,” he pursued, looking at Kingdon. “’Tis abeout as much as my job’s wuth, I guess; but I’ll try not ter see ye over here when I pass by. But I wish ye would find some other place ter camp on.”
“Nothing doing. We’re just wedded to Storm Island,” Kingdon declared.
“Wal, if anybody sees ye and tells me abeout it, course I gotter take notice then. Guess I’ll go,” finished Enos, evidently much disturbed in spirit. Descending the steep shore to his launch, he got under way this time without accident, and the motorboat chugged away.
“I’ll be hanged,” muttered Red, “if I’m not rather sorry for the old lad, after all.”
“Rex! You’ve got to send to the lumber company and get a copy of that permit,” Midkiff declared with vigor. “Show those fellows up——”
“And get them put off the island?” drawled Kingdon.
“Why not?” Cloudman asked.
“Oh—well—I’ve another use for that bunch,” said Rex. “Why use the rough stuff when guile and strategy—to say nothing of intrigue—are on tap?”
“Aw, drop that, Rex!” begged Midkiff.
“Why so, Grouch? That Horrors chap has got the laugh on us. He got it without honor, to be sure; but he didn’t use a blackjack or brass knuckles. Shall we have it said of us that a crowd like that worked something fancy on us, and we had to volley with a knock-down-and-drag-out argument? Say not so! We got away with their canoes, they filched our permit. Tit for tat. Should we cry baby? Where’s your sporting instincts?”
“Sporting instincts!” repeated Midkiff with disgust.
“Great snakes alive!” grumbled Red. “Listen to him rave.”
“Needn’t put me on the same plane as those fellows over yonder,” objected Hicks, with a comic show of virtuous importance.
“Reckon you’re too easy on ’em, Kingdon,” said the Western lad. “That affair of the canoes wasn’t serious. Stealing our permit and posing as the rightful owners of it is sure different.”
“If your morals are as weak as your reasoning,” laughed Kingdon, “I’m sorry for you chaps. What’s sauce for the goose is good gravy for the gander.”
“Oh, have it your own way; you always do, you blue-eyed mama’s darling!” cried Larry Phillips. “No use fighting you. You’d raise a row if you didn’t have the biggest apple and the reddest candy cane.”
Derision left Kingdon unruffled. Opposition in any form made no difference to him when he once had a course of action mapped out. As he intimated, he had future use for Horace Pence and his friends on Storm Island. Just what this was Kingdon had no intention of divulging at the moment.
The fellows of the other camp kept well away from the Walcott Hall boys that day, and the next. Rex and his friends on either day went up to the clearing in the center of the island for short practice only, and they saw nothing of Pence and his comrades.
Kingdon insisted upon knocking down the engine of the catboat and going over the parts carefully. Both he and Red knew a good deal about automobile engines, and this was not so much different.
“It looks to your Uncle Edison Marconi,” quoth Rex finally, “as though the main trouble with this bunch of junk is that, in a moment of hallucination, the owner mentioned it as an ‘engine.’ Old age has crept over this machine, and Father Time has left his indelible mark on certain parts of it. They must be renewed if we are to place any dependence at all in this form of motive power this summer.”
“To get down to cases,” scoffed Midkiff, “you want some new parts?”
“The engine does,” Kingdon said sweetly. “I, personally, am fairly new.”
“Quite,” agreed Red. “And fresh.”
“How’re you going to get the parts?” Cloudman asked practically.
“Go after them to Blackport. To-morrow, if ’tis fair and there’s a breeze ruffling the surface of yon sound.”
“All of us going?” questioned Midkiff. “Who’s to watch camp?”
“That’s right,” Phillips said. “I don’t trust those chaps yonder.”
“They have been keeping away from here, all right,” Peewee observed.
“That isn’t saying they wouldn’t come over and grab all our stuff if we left it unguarded,” Red said.
“Don’t you think we’ll have to risk that sometime, Red?” Kingdon asked.
“Not if you have that gang put off the island as you should,” put in Midkiff with tartness.
“Now, is that so?” mocked Rex. “They could hang around and do us plenty of damage if they were put off, I suppose? If we are going to spend our entire summer worrying about a lot of amateur pirates like them, we’ll have a fine time—I don’t think.”
“Well, they’ve robbed us once.”
“And you have embraced Quaker doctrines, Rex,” Red added, with some sharpness. “Turn the other cheek stuff, and all that.”
The blond youth’s eyes twinkled. “If they touch our lares and penates, I agree to lead you against the Philistines, and we will smite them hip and thigh—and on the nose. How’s that?”
“It’s a promise,” grunted Cloudman.
“Most sensible thing I’ve heard you say since we landed on Storm Island,” said Red Phillips.