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Page 5
He soon found himself quite active in devising and assisting various
minor displays of squibs, rockets and colored lights. Then he got mixed
up in a general rush for the sheer top of the hill amid the excited
announcement that something unusual was going on there.
The crowd was met by a current of juvenile humanity.
"Run!" shouted an excited voice, "she's going off."
"No, she ain't," pronounced another scoffingly--"ain't lighted yet--no
one's got the nerve to do it."
Bart recognized the last speaker as Dale Wacker, a nephew of Lem. He had
noticed a little earlier his big brother, Ira, a loutish, overgrown
fellow who had gone around with his hands in his pockets sneering at the
innocent fun the smaller boys were indulging in, and bragging about his
own especial Fourth of July supply of fireworks which were to come from
some mysterious source not clearly defined. The Wacker brothers belonged
to a crowd Bart did not train with usually, but as Dale espied him and
seized his arm energetically, Bart did not draw away, respecting the
occasion and its courtesies.
"You're the very fellow!" declared Dale.
"You bet he is!" cried two others, crowding up and slapping Bart on the
back. "He won't crawfish. Give him the punk, Dale."
The person addressed extended a lighted piece of punk.
"Yes, take it, Stirling," he said. "Show him, boys."
"Yes, you'll have to show me," suggested Bart significantly. "What's the
mystery, anyhow?"
"No mystery at all," answered Dale, "only a surprise. See it--well, it's
loaded."
"Clean to the muzzle!" bubbled over an excited urchin.
They were all pointing to the top of the hill. Bart understood, for
clearly outlined against the light of the rising moon stood the grim old
sentinel that had done duty as a patriotic reminder of the Civil War for
many a year.
"Old Hurricane" the relic cannon had been dubbed when what was left of
Company C, Second Infantry, came marching back home in the sixties.
There was not a boy in town who had not straddled the black ungainly
relic, or tried to lift the heavy cannon balls that symmetrically
surrounded its base support.
Two years before, Colonel Harrington had erected at his own expense a
lofty flagpole at the side of the cannon and donated an elegant flag.
Every Washington's Birthday and Fourth of July since, this site had been
the center of all public patriotic festivities, and the headquarters for
celebrating for juvenile Pleasantville.
Bart was a little startled as he comprehended what was in the wind. He
thrilled a trifle; his eyes sparkled brightly.
"It's all right, Stirling," assured Dale Wacker. "We cleaned out the
barrel and we've rammed home a good solid charge, with a long fuse ready
to light. Guess it will stir up the sleepy old town for once, hey?"
Bart was in for any harmless sport, yet he fumbled the lighted piece of
punk undecidedly.
"I don't know about this, fellows"--he began.
"Oh! don't spoil the fun, Stirling," pleaded little Ned Sawyer, a rare
favorite with Bart. "We asked one-legged Dacy on the quiet. He was in
the war, and he says the gun can't burst, or anything."
The crowd kept pushing Bart forward in eager excitement.
"Why don't you light it yourself?" inquired Bart of Dale.
"I've sprained my foot--limping now," explained young Wacker. "She may
kick, you see, and soon as you light her you want to scoot."
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