“Now, pass me the other,” continued Tom.  “If you don’t I’ll wring that wooden head of yours from your neck!  I’m coming, now!”

Having tossed the captured revolver in the street behind him, Reade made a sudden leap at the “bad wolf.”

“Hold on!” cried the fellow sheepishly.  “Don’t get excited.  Here it is; take it!”

Seeing how readily their companion had surrendered, the other two headed Hazelton’s demand for their weapons.

From the doorway Chief Simmons had looked on at this brief, bloodless battle like one dazed.

From up and down Main street at respectful distances, crowds of Gridleyites gazed in stupefied wonder.

“Come on out, Chief, and talk to these naughty boys!” called Tom good-humoredly.  “They didn’t mean to be troublesome, but Fourth of July had got into their blood.”

The police reserves came running up now.  First of all, the revolvers of the five wild ones were gathered up.  Then the officers turned to the prisoners that had been captured by the West Point cadets and the Young Engineers.

“These fellows are only medicine-show cowboys,” Tom explained, with a grin, to the chief of police.  “I know the real kind—–­and these sorry specimens are not it.  Probably these fellows have never been west of Ohio.”

“You’re an Indian, I’m pretty sure,” said Cadet Prescott to the painted redskin whom he now held by one arm.  “But you’re a tame Indian.  What part of Maine do you come from?”

“Yes, I’m an Indian,” grinned Dick’s captive “I own a farm on the east end of Long Island.”

“Humph!  You’ve been through the pubic schools, too?” demanded Dick.

“Yes, sir.”

Greg’s Indian was quite as docile.  The police now had the weapons of all the party, except one automatic weapon that Greg was examining.  “Yah!” grinned Holmes.  “This gun is loaded with blank cartridges.  I guess all the others were, too.”

The guess was a wholly correct one.

By this time the Main Street crowd, wholly over its fright, was crowding about the police and their captives.

“Say, this seems like old times!” called Sam Foss, laughingly.  “Dick & Co. right in the thick the excitement.”

“There hasn’t been any,” grinned Prescott.

At this instant a new actor arrived on the scene.  Wild Charlie, the Indian medicine “doctor,” immaculate in black frock suit and patent leather shoes, with a handsome sombrero spread over the glistening black hair that hung down over his shoulders, rushed up.

“Let these people go, Chief,” begged the picturesque quack doctor.  “I’ll pay for any damage they’ve done.”

Chief Simmons looked the long-haired “doctor” over with a broad grin.

“You’re Wild Charlie, are you?” demanded the chief.

“Yes, partner.”

“What part of Vermont do you come from!  Or is Germany your hailing place, Wild Charlie?”