_ CHAPTER IV. AB. DEXTER'S TEMPER IS SQUALLY
"You're taking a lot upon yourself!" ventured Dick Prescott angrily.
"That's all right," laughed Dexter savagely. "Come along with me and I'll show you something really funny."
With that the man caught young Prescott up, starting across the field with him. Dick fought and struggled, but a grown man was too powerful for one thirteen-year-old boy.
"Don't make any noise," warned Dexter, as he ran with his "catch," "or I'll make you wish you hadn't opened your mouth!"
If he feared that Dick would call for help, this high-handed one was reckoning without a knowledge of the kind of boy he had to deal with. For Dick, though he was just a little more than slightly alarmed, would have been ashamed to call out for help.
"You think you're having a lot of fun," sputtered young Prescott angrily, "but you'll be sorry for this before you are through!"
"Through with whom?" demanded Dexter blandly, now.
"Before you're through with me. You'll find that you can't act like this around Gridley. Justice Lee will get hold of you again, first thing you know."
"Huh! I'll talk to you about that in a few minutes!"
"See here, where are you taking me?"
"Wherever I please."
"Then I don't know about that, either, Dexter. I've about made up my mind that I won't go any further with you."
"Oh, you won't, eh, boy! Well, just help yourself, if you can."
By this time Dexter had crossed the field and had run well inside of the grove.
Dick wriggled, getting one hand free--and then he struck Dexter a stinging blow in the face.
"Confound you!" growled the other. "I see that I've got to tame you, you young hornet!"
"You put me down, or I'll sting worse than a hornet," threatened Dick angrily. "I'm not a doormat that you can wipe your feet on."
"We'll see about that!" muttered Dexter, halting suddenly and throwing Dick savagely to the ground. He followed this up by sitting on the Grammar School boy.
Whack! Whack! Dexter struck him so savagely, both blows in the face, that Prescott gasped.
"I've got a few hundred more of those in reserve if you want 'em--or need 'em," Dick's captor advised him grimly. He still sat on the boy, looking down at him in the darkness with evil satisfaction.
"It doesn't take one long to find your number, Dexter," observed the boy undauntedly. "Your specialty is frightening women and pounding boys who offend you."
"Well, a lot of you boys hammered me this noon, didn't you!"
"Yes; and I wish I had a couple of the fellows here now," retorted Dick with spirit. "We'd soon make a coward like you seem small. You'd be on your knees, begging, if I had a couple of my chums here to help me."
"Well, you haven't got 'em, and I'll do all the talking that amounts to anything. Dick Prescott, you're the worst and freshest boy in Gridley!"
"Such a statement, coming from a fellow like you, amounts to high praise, Dexter," Dick retorted doughtily.
"None of your impudence, now, Dick Prescott! I've stood all the insolence from you that I'm going to allow."
"My! How big the man talks to the small boy!" taunted Dick. "And he had to drag the boy away off here, so that there wouldn't be a chance of another boy coming along. A man of your caliber, Dexter, may be brave enough to face one boy, when he's angry enough, but you wouldn't dare say 'boo' if one of my boy friends were here to back me up."
"I'll stop that sort of impudence right now," growled Dexter, stung more deeply by the taunts than he would have been willing to let the boy guess. "I'm pretty savage in my mind against you, at any rate, and I may as well let some of it out!"
Whack! smack! thump! Dexter began savagely to vent all of his bottled-up spite against young Prescott, striking him repeatedly, and with such force that the lad was soon aching all over.
Dick fought back as best he could, but, pinned down as he was, and in the grip of one three times as strong as himself, Dick could get in an effective blow only now and then. Such blows as he did land only served to fan Dexter's wrath to greater fury--and the boy suffered accordingly.
It would have been a brutal beating, under any circumstances, that Dick received. In his helpless condition it was doubly brutal.
"Now, do you think you've got enough to hold you for a while?" Ab. Dexter demanded, as he paused, panting.
"I'm just thinking about the time when you'll get it all back with interest!" snapped young Prescott.
"Oh, then you haven't had enough--_yet_?"
"I had enough before you began."
"But you haven't learned to keep a civil tongue in your head?"
"Dexter," retorted the lad, speaking more earnestly than he was aware, "I try to keep not only a civil tongue, but a pleasant manner for every human being who tries to act decently. With you it's different. Before to-day I didn't know much about you. What little I did know wasn't to your credit. But now I know you to belong to nothing better than the scum of the earth. No human being with any self-respect could be decent with you!"
"You're getting worse than ever, are you?" sneered Dexter. "I see that my work is only half started."
With that Ab. Dexter threw himself upon the boy again, giving him an even more lively beating than before.
Dick Prescott, panting with his struggles, disdained to cry out, but saved all his strength to fight back.
At last, all but exhausted, Ab. Dexter paused.
"You got a little better lesson that time," boasted the wretch.
"And I got a small lunch while you were taking your dinner," retorted Prescott, no more daunted than before. "Your nose is bleeding and your lip is cut!"
"Yes, I know it! I'm going to take that out of you presently."
"Are you enjoying yourself, Dexter?" asked the boy tauntingly.
"Yes. And before I get through with you, I'm going to make sure that you'll never interfere in my affairs again."
"Do you mean that you expect I'll stand off the next time that I see you trying to frighten your wife into supporting a lazy loafer in style?" Dick asked dryly.
"Hang you! You haven't learned your lesson yet, have you?"
"If you're trying to make me 'respect' you, Dexter, you've acted the wrong way all through to-day. You're entitled to no more respect than an Indian would show a rattlesnake."
Ab. Dexter's face was ablaze with wrath. He had expected to make this Grammar School boy beg for mercy before things had gone half as far as they had. Dick Prescott's undaunted pluck bewildered the mean bully.
"I'll make you shut up, boy, before I'm through with you!" he warned the lad.
"There's just one way to do that, Dexter!"
"Eh?"
"You'll have to knock me out."
"I'll do that, then!"
It would be wrong to seek to give the reader an impression that young Prescott was not afraid, and did not mind his two thrashings. He was afraid that Dexter would go to great lengths, yet Dick would not give the bully satisfaction by admitting any fear.
"What you've got to do, before I get through with you," Dexter announced, "is to beg my pardon and to promise that you'll never again interfere with me."
"You'll wait a long while, then," jeered Dick, "and you'll get strong man's cramp in both arms!"
"And you've got to do more than promise that much," continued the bully. "You've got to promise, solemnly, to help me in some plans that I have for the future."
"Oh? Plans against your wife, I suppose."
"Very likely," half admitted Dexter. "Whatever the plans are, you're going to help me in them."
"You're going about in a fine way, Dexter, to get my cheerful help."
"Never mind about the cheerful part of it," snarled the man. "You're going to help me, and I'm going to tame you."
"Gracious! What a fine, large tail our cat is growing," laughed Dick, though his voice did not ring very mirthfully.
Dexter, still astride his young captive, raised his fist. Prescott did not flinch, and it suddenly struck the fellow that he was going about his business in the wrong way. Dexter had never looked for a young Grammar School boy to be so firm and undaunted.
"Now, don't be a fool, Prescott," he began, trying a new tack.
"You ought to be a fine teacher in the subject of good sense," suggested Dick mockingly.
"I think I can be."
"Fire away, then."
"Prescott, you don't have much spending money, do you?"
"Not enough to worry the bank with."
"You'd like more?"
"Of course."
"I'm going to find it for you."
"You are--or do you mean that your wife is?"
Ab. Dexter winked. He had not looked for the youngster to be so keen.
"Prescott, take it from an older man. It doesn't make so much difference, in this world, where the money comes from, if a fellow only has it."
"I guess, from your actions, that's about the way you feel about it, Dexter," rejoined the boy.
"Don't you feel the same way?"
"No; I'd like to be worth a million dollars, Dexter, but I don't believe I ever shall be."
"Why not?"
"Because the opportunities for getting a million honestly are not very plentiful, and I wouldn't have a dollar--or a million--with a stain on it!"
"You simpleton!" sneered Dexter.
"There are a few of us left in the world," Dick retorted complacently. "But you, Dexter, you wouldn't care whether it was money or slime, as long as you could spend it!"
"You're talking nonsense, boy," argued Dexter, restraining himself as best he could. "Now, see here, I'm sorry I thumped you. I've got a lot of use for a boy with as much sand and grit as you've shown. I can use you, and I can show you how to make a nice little lot of money by helping me in something that I have on hand. So come on. Get up and walk along with me while we talk it over."
Dexter rose, and Dick got to his feet as nimbly as he could. He ached, though, fortunately, he was not badly crippled by the pummeling that he had received.
"Come on, now, and let's take a little walk," urged the man persuasively.
But Dick Prescott glared back at the bully with all the contempt in the world in his look.
"Nothing doing in the way of walking together, Dexter," announced the boy.
"Why not?"
"Folks might see me with you."
"Suppose they did!"
"Then they'd imagine that I knew you. Dexter, a boy who hopes to grow up and become a useful citizen can't be too careful about the company he keeps."
"You confounded little imp! You're not tamed yet."
Dexter's foot struck against a stick lying on the ground. Snatching this weapon up and uttering a cry of rage, he sprang forward to fell the boy with the club. _