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Read Ebook: Fairview Boys and Their Rivals; or Bob Bouncer's Schooldays by Gordon Frederick
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Ebook has 1463 lines and 29414 words, and 30 pages
"Oh, say, you've done a big thing," panted Sammy, running up to the spot.
"I'm glad it didn't go over the bluff," said Frank.
He might well say this. As he glanced down the slant, Frank almost became frightened. Three little huts, where some fishermen and their families lived, were right in the course the auto might take. Just now some small children were playing near one of the huts.
"Where is Bob?" asked Frank.
"He's helping the fellow who tumbled out of the auto," explained Sammy.
Frank turned around, to see Bob back at the spot where the boy in the auto had taken his tumble into the mud puddle.
Bob had helped the boy out of the water and mire. Just now he was rubbing the mud from his coat with some dry grass. The victim of the accident was mopping his face with a handkerchief.
"Here comes the man who owns the automobile, I guess," said Sammy.
Frank saw a man rush down the road from the direction of the vacant house. He was in a great hurry, and excited. He shouted some words at Bob and his companion, and, passing Frank and Sammy, gasping for breath, ran to the automobile.
As he looked it over and saw that he could get it back into the roadway without risk or damage, he walked up to the boys.
"One of you stopped that machine," he said, glancing from Frank to Sammy.
"It was Frank, mister," said Sammy, pointing to his chum.
"I haven't got much with me," spoke the man, his voice trembling.
First he shook Frank's hand warmly. Then he groped in his pocket and drew out a bright new silver dollar.
"You take that till I see you again," he said.
"No, no," replied Frank. "I don't want any pay for doing the little I did."
"Little!" cried the man, pressing the coin on Frank. "That machine is worth three thousand dollars, and you saved it."
"Well, I'm glad if I did," said Frank.
"If that boy back there was my boy," spoke the man, with a look at the lad who had tumbled out of the auto, "I'd either teach him how to run the machine, or handcuff him when he was aboard."
"Oh, isn't he your boy?" inquired Sammy.
"No, I'm his father's chauffeur."
They all went up to the mud puddle. Bob was helping his companion get cleaned up in as friendly a way as if they had been chums for years.
"Why," shouted Sammy, in blank surprise, "it's the fat boy."
"So it is," replied Frank, in a wondering tone.
"Hello," spoke the boy who had tumbled out of the auto. "You fellows here, too?"
Bob's face, as were the faces of the others, was set in a broad smile. They all had good reason to remember "the fat boy."
"Yes, it's me," said the victim of the accident, rubbing some dirt out of one ear. "Is the machine all right, Buxton?"
"Yes, the machine is all right," replied the man; "but ten feet more, and it would have been all wrong. What was you trying to do with it, anyhow?"
"I thought I would turn it around. I only touched one little handle, and then the foot-plate, and the pesky auto wouldn't go straight at all. Yes, fellows," smiled the speaker at Frank and Sammy, "I'm like the bad penny, turned up again."
"I'm glad to see you in Fairview," said Frank. "How are you getting on at the academy?"
"Oh, I've quit there," said Tom Chubb, otherwise "the fat boy."
"How is that?"
"They said I wasn't far enough along to keep up with the class."
"I see."
"You know I don't know much," said the fat boy, frankly. "The fellows all made fun of me. Then they got mad. I couldn't hit back when they fought me, I was so fat. Well, all I could do was to get them in a corner and fall on them."
"Ha! ha!" laughed Sammy.
"That's pretty good," chuckled Bob.
"Father is thinking of coming to Fairview to live for the summer," went on the fat boy. "I think we'll take that vacant house Buxton was just looking at."
"Why, then, you may come to our school?" said Sammy.
"I reckon I will," replied the fat boy. "I hope so, for I like you fellows. Say," and he grinned from ear to ear, "remember how you met me in the mountains that night?"
"Of course we do," smiled Frank.
"How you told me how to get even with the students who hazed me? Well, I did it great and grand, and I'll never forget you for that."
In a few minutes the chauffeur got the automobile back into the road. The fat boy waved his hand to the boys until the machine turned out of sight.
"Well, who ever thought of meeting that fellow again!" laughed Frank.
"He's a comical one," said Bob.
"He asked if we remembered that night in the mountains," said Sammy. "Huh! as if we'd ever forget it."
Each one of the boys was busy for the moment thinking of that same night in the mountains. It had brought back some adventure that had made the long vacation a time of great delight to them.
The three boys had been allowed to make a one day's cruise on Rainbow Lake. They had, however, gotten caught in a big storm, and were marooned on Pine Island for several days.
All the time Sammy Brown's busy head was full of misers' hoards and hidden treasure. In the second book of this series, called "Fairview Boys on Eagle Mountain; Or, Sammy Brown's Treasure Hunt," Sammy induced his two loyal companions to go with him to Eagle Mountain in search of a fancied lot of treasure.
The boys had found no treasure. However, they ran across a stolen horse and got a twenty-five-dollar reward for returning it to its owner.
It was during the first night of their camping out in the mountains that they came across the fat boy, Tom Chubb.
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