Free The Well-Wishers by Edward Eager Page A

tauntingly.
    "Aw, I was not. I knew it all along," was the vain boast of Dicky.
    But the first (and worst) high school boy was smiling a mean smile. He is called Stinker, by the way, which shows what even his friends must think of him. "Well," he said, "I guess we've just about got her where we want her, haven't we?"
    "I guess we have," said the second one. He is known as Smoko. Cigarettes are his life's blood. "Now we've got her what'll we do with her?"
    "Let's see," said the one called Stinker. "She's the one hit me with that apple, too. Nobody does that to me and gets away with it."
    "We could drop red-hot pennies down," suggested Smoko.
    "Or burn up the place with her in it," said Stinker.
    "You wouldn't do that, would you?" said Dicky LeBaron, sounding scared that they might.
    Of course I knew they wouldn't. But even if they could talk about it, it showed what kind they were. And in my craven cowardice I said the wrong thing.
    "You'd better leave me alone," I said. "I've got friends, and they're on their way here right now."
    "They are?" said the one called Stinker. "That's dandy. We can wait for them and mom them when they come in the door."
    I was sorry I'd spoken. Because if James and Kip got there first, they could take care of themselves, and even Laura and Gordy are spunky. But what about Deborah?
    "Listen," I said. "You don't want to do that. One of them's just a little girl."
    "You don't say?" said Stinker. "A little girl, huh?"
    "A little
bittle
girl," said Smoko.
    "Prob'ly a rich little girl, too," said Stinker.
    "Gently nurtured," agreed Smoko.
    "Whaddaya say we kidnap her for ransom?" said Stinker.
    It was my turn to say, "You wouldn't do that, would you?" And I found an unexpected ally.
    "I don't want any part of it," Dicky LeBaron surprisingly said.
    "You don't?" said the Stinker one, sounding dangerously smooth and smiling.
    "No I don't," said Dicky. "Picking on little girls is for creeps. And I don't like Lydia Green and she may have played a dirty trick on me, but that's my business. Why don't you scram outa here and leave her alone?"
    The two high school boys came up one on each side of Dicky. Their smiles were broader and their eyes meaner than ever.
    "Listen, Dicky boy," said the one called Stinker. "We let you tag along after us. Strictly for laughs, see? But we're not taking orders from squirts like you, see?"
    "I don't care. I'm not going to let you hurt some little girl," said Dicky. "See?" he added.
    There was a silence.
    "Smoko," said Stinker, "we're going to have to do something about Dicky boy."
    "Stinker," said Smoko, "you're right. A squirt like him could gum up the works."
    Suddenly all three heads disappeared and there was the sound of a scuffle. And then I heard the Stinker one say, "If you like teacher's pets so much, stay and get to know them better."
    And he and his friend lifted Dicky LeBaron up and dropped him right down the shaft on top of me. I saw him coming in time to brace myself. And then I heard the other two start pushing the big chest over the opening in the floor, and all was blackness.
    Dicky didn't say anything for several seconds. I guess he had the wind knocked out of him. I know I had.
    "Your foot's in my eye," I told him, when I could talk.
    He moved it quickly. "Pardon
me,
I'm sure! I wouldn't touch your old eye with a ten-foot pole if I'd known!"
    I was sorry he felt like that. Goodness knows, I'd always felt the same way about
him,
up till today, but he had shown a different side, standing up to those goons.
    So I said, "Thanks for sticking up for us."
    He snorted. "Don't worry, it wasn't on your account. There're just some things I draw the line at, that's all."
    "I'm sorry I played a trick on you," I said. But he was still sulky.
    "It was a dirty trick. I thought we were friends."
    "Well, who started it? Who kept pestering us? Who threw a stone at who?" Which wasn't grammar but was the truth all the same.
    "Aw, I just wondered what you all were doing, that's all.