CHAPTER XVI
WHO WAS GUILTY?
For the first third of the distance, the ice was as smooth asquicksilver, with never a lump or hummock to mar the surface. The sledsflew down the frozen surface, gaining a velocity that took the boys'breath away and almost frightened them.
Then suddenly there was a jar, a chorus of shouts, and they were thrownheadlong over the fronts of their sleds, landing in a confused heap oflimbs and bodies, while the sleds relieved of their burdens swirledaround aimlessly for a time and finally came to a stop.
A yell of consternation and alarm came from the mass, as the boys triedto struggle to their feet.
Those who had been left at the top of the hill, hearing the yells andknowing that some accident had happened, came slipping and scramblingdown to the scene of the disaster.
They helped the half stunned victims to their feet, and for a time therewas a wild hullabaloo of questions and answers as they tried to solvethe mystery.
Fortunately none of them was badly hurt, though at the rate they weregoing it might very easily have turned out to be a tragedy.
Most of the boys had rubbed pieces of skin off their arms and legs, andFred had a cut in his scalp from which the blood was flowing.
"What did it?" shouted Howell.
"I don't know," replied Bobby hesitatingly. His head was going roundlike a top.
"M-must have hit a tree trunk or something like that," stammeredSparrow.
"That isn't it," replied Howell, looking around him. "There isn'tanything of that kind in sight as far as I can see. Just wait a minutetill I get Sam Thompson's flashlight."
Luckily Sam had it with him and promptly handed it over.
Howell flashed it about him and gave a shout.
"It's ashes!" he cried. "The whole hill's littered with 'em."
"Ashes?" came a chorus of surprised questions.
"That's what it is," declared Howell emphatically. "There are heaps andheaps of 'em. I'll bet they reach clear down to the bottom of the hill."
He went down further and confirmed what he had said. He had no troublein walking, for he could not have slipped if he had wanted to. The wholelower surface of the hill was strewn with ashes that spoiled thecoasting for that night utterly, and promised to ruin it for many daysto come.
A wave of wrath and fierce indignation swept over the boys as they heardHowell's report.
"Who could have done it?" was the question that came to the lips of all.
"Could it have been the town council?" suggested Skeets. "They mighthave done it to keep the horses from slipping."
"They never did anything like that before," objected Sparrow.
"And if they were the ones, they would have made a clean job of it andgone right up to the top of the hill," said Mouser. "But you fellowswill notice that it was perfectly clear for a long part of the waydown."
"Mouser is right," declared Bobby. "Somebody did this just to spoil ourfun."
"And they wanted us to be fooled and get started down so that we'd get atumble when we came to the ashes," added Fred. "That's why they left itsmooth at the top."
"Some of us might have been killed," groaned Skeets, gingerly soothingan injured knee.
"And it's only a bit of luck that we weren't," growled Fred.
"My shins are barked for fair," moaned Pee Wee, "and that's no joke thistime either."
"Whoever did it was a low-down skunk," burst out Howell angrily.
"He might have been a murderer," added Skeets.
"I'd like to have my hands on him for a minute," declared Fred.
"Well, our fun is over for this night anyway," said Bobby sadly.
"And for a whole lot of other nights," put in Pee Wee. "Those ashes willget ground in and there's no sweeping 'em off."
"We'll have to wait for another snow storm before we can do any morecoasting," wailed Sparrow.
It was a sorely disgruntled band of boys who gathered up their sleds andlimped slowly to the top of the hill. One of the sleds was smashed andall had been more or less scratched and bruised.
Once at the top, they squatted down on their sleds and held a council ofwar.
"Now, fellows," said Bobby, "we've got to get to the bottom of thisthing somehow. The ashes didn't come there of themselves. Somebody putthem there, and whoever it was knew that we were out for a grandcoasting bee to-night. So it must have been some fellow in the school."
"I hate to think that there's any fellow at Rockledge who could do sucha dirty trick," remarked Howell. "If we can find out who it was we oughtto tell Doctor Raymond about it and have the fellow sent away fromschool."
"No," objected Bobby. "This is our affair and we oughtn't to bring theteachers into it at all."
"The question is who could have done it," put in Skeets.
"Whoever did it is mean enough to steal sheep," growled Fred.
"Or take the pennies from a dead man's eyes," added Mouser.
"I can figure out just three fellows in the school who could do a thinglike that," said Howell.
"Bill Bronson."
"Jack Jinks."
"Tom Hicksley."
The answers came from as many different lips, and the readiness withwhich they were accepted was not at all flattering to the boys who borethe names.
"It may have been one of those three or all three together," said Bobby,coming nearer to the mark than he knew.
"That reminds me," cried Fred suddenly. "Tom Hicksley was practicing onthe flying rings when we were talking this thing over in the gymnasiumthis morning."
"That's so," chimed in Mouser. "And I remember now that he seemed tostop all of a sudden and slip away. I didn't think anything about itthen, but I remember it plainly now."
"He owes some of us a grudge for what happened on the train," remarkedPee Wee.
"And he said then he'd get even with us," observed Fred.
"There's one thing we fellows have forgotten," said Skeets. "Whoever didthis would want to be hiding around and see what happened. We ought tohunt them out and pay them up."
This seemed likely enough and the boys looked eagerly about them.
"Doesn't seem to be any place up here where they could hide without ourseeing them," remarked Mouser.
"No, but there's a lot of bushes at the side of the road half way downthe hill," put in Sparrow. "Let's go down there."
They went down in a body. There was no one there, but as they got to theother side of the bushes they could faintly make out three figuresretreating in the distance.
They were too far away to be recognized and they had too long a start tomake it worth while pursuing them, but from their general size and buildthe boys had little doubt as to who they were.
"What did I tell you?" cried Fred. "I knew that they were the only oneswho could do a thing like that."
"It seems that the whole bunch of them are in it," remarked Mouser.
"I'll bet that Hicksley went straight to them and cooked this up when heleft the gym this morning," conjectured Sparrow.
"That makes something else we owe those fellows," growled Skeets.
"We owed them enough without that," said Howell. "The big bullies havetried to pester the life out of us ever since we've been at Rockledge."
"Our turn will come," replied Bobby with conviction. "But now, fellows,we might as well hustle back to the dormitory. There's no use of stayinghere any longer."
They made their way back to the school with very different feelings fromthose they had when they left it.
"A holiday spoiled," grumbled Mouser.
"And there's only two more holidays this month," observed Sparrow.
"Two!" exclaimed Bobby. "There's only one more and that's Washington'sBirthday."
"How about St. Valentine's Day?" objected Sparrow. "That's only two daysfrom now."
"Oh, that's only a fake holiday," replied Fred. "Lessons will go on justthe same."
"I don't care whether it's a fa
ke holiday or a real one," answeredSparrow. "I'm going to get a lot of fun out of it just the same."
Bobby Blake on the School Nine; Or, The Champions of the Monatook Lake League Page 16
