Kitabı oku: «On Your Mark! A Story of College Life and Athletics», sayfa 4
CHAPTER VII
“THE RANCH”
It is human nature to dwell at length upon our successes and dismiss our failures with a word. The writer has given a chapter to the freshman game, but he is going to tell the story of the varsity contest, which occurred a week later, in a paragraph.
Robinson won in a clean, hard-fought game – 11 to 0. Her rival never approached a score in either half, but by the grimmest sort of defensive work she managed to keep the final figures down to half of what they might have been had she gone to pieces for an instant. Hal played a brilliant game at full-back in that contest, and proved his right to the position. Thus the football season at Erskine ended in decisive defeat. It was an honorable defeat, to be sure; but, since at Erskine, as at other colleges in this country, they play more for the sake of winning than for love of the game, there were doleful faces a-plenty, and on Sunday the college had the appearance of a place smitten with the plague.
But Monday morning came and brought recitations and lectures, just as though there was no such thing as football, and the college settled back into the usual routine. At noon the sting of defeat was forgotten. At night, fellows were cheerfully discussing the chances for the next year. If we take defeat too hard, at least we recover quickly; there is hope for us in that.
Allan, for all that he was quite as patriotic as any, felt the defeat of the varsity team less than he did the cessation of track work. The latter left him at first feeling like a fish out of water. Tommy Sweet suggested that he might rig up a treadmill in his room and run to his heart’s content, like a squirrel in a wire cage. But Tommy wouldn’t promise to feed him all the peanuts he could eat, and so Allan refused to try the scheme. Instead, he spent much of his time out-of-doors and took long walks and runs out along the river or struck off westward to Millport.
On many of these excursions he was accompanied by Peter Burley. Peter – or more properly Pete, since that was the name he declared to be the proper one – Pete couldn’t be persuaded to do any running, but he was willing to walk any distance and in any direction, seeming to care very little whether he ever got back to Centerport or didn’t. And as his long legs took him over the ground about as fast as Allan could jog, the latter never suffered for want of exercise while in Pete’s company.
The friendship between the two had grown rapidly, until now Pete’s prophecy that they were to be “partners” had come true. The more Allan saw of the older boy the more he found to like, but just what the qualities were which drew him to Pete he would have found it hard to tell. The latter’s never-failing good-nature was undoubtedly one of them, but that alone was not accountable. Perhaps Pete would have experienced quite as much difficulty had he been called upon to say why he had been attracted by Allan the first time he had seen him, or why he had perseveringly sought his friendship ever since. The two were radically dissimilar, but even that isn’t sufficient to explain why each was attracted toward the other. Come to think of it, however, I don’t believe either Allan or Pete troubled himself about the problem, and so why should we?
Pete’s sudden leap into fame consequent upon his work against Robinson in the freshman game had left him unaffected. He had become a college hero in an hour, but none could see that it ever made any difference to him. He brushed congratulation aside good-naturedly and ridiculed praise.
“Stop your fool talk!” he would say. “I didn’t rope any steers. It was that little jack-rabbit, Poor, that whooped things up and won the game. I didn’t do a thing but shove ’em round some.” And when it was hinted that the shoving around was what brought victory, “Get out!” he would growl. “Science is what does the business, and I don’t know the first thing about the game.”
And so, while Peter was worshiped by the freshman class and very generally respected by the others, he wasn’t at all the popular conception of a college hero. And there were three fellows, at least, who liked him all the better for it.
Those three were Allan, Tommy, and Hal. Since that first meeting in Allan’s room, the four had been much together. Tommy showed up at the gatherings less frequently than any one of the others, for Tommy, in his own words, “had a lot of mighty difficult stunts to do.”
Sometimes the quartet met in Allan’s room, sometimes in Hal’s, less frequently in Tommy’s – for Tommy lived up two flights of stairs in McLean Hall, and Pete had a horror of climbing stairs. The only climbing he liked, he said, was climbing into a saddle. That was why he often found fault with his own apartments.
These were on the second floor of a plain clap-boarded building at the corner of Town Lane and Center Street, with the railroad but a few hundred feet distant and the fire-house next door. Pete declared he liked the noise, and could never study so well as when the switch-engine was shunting cars to and fro at the end of the lane or the fire-bell was clanging an infrequent alarm. As few ever saw him studying, the statement sounded plausible.
The ground floor of the building was occupied by a dealer in harness and leather; the third floor consisted of an empty loft. Across the lane – and the lane wasn’t wide enough to boast of – was a livery stable. On the opposite corner was a carriage repair-shop and warehouse. A few doors below was a wheelwright’s. The upper floors of the neighboring structures were occupied by carpenters, plumbers, roofers, and masons.
Through Pete’s windows, which were invariably open, be the weather what it might, floated in a strange and penetrating aroma – a mingled bouquet of coal-smoke from the railroad, of the odor of pine-shavings from the carpenter shops, of the pungent smell of leather from below, and of the fragrance from the stable across the street. Pete said it was healthful and satisfying. None disputed the latter quality. Pete’s rooms – there were two of them – were quite as unique as his surroundings.
Picture a bare, plank-ceiled loft, some forty feet long by twenty feet broad, divided in the exact center by a partition of half-inch matched boards and lighted by five windows. Imagine the walls and ceiling painted a pea-green, mentally hang two big oil-lamps – one in the middle of each room – from the latter, and spread half a dozen skins – bear, coyote, antelope, and cougar – over the discolored floor, and you have Pete’s apartments. There was a door in the partition, but as it wouldn’t close, owing to inequalities in the casing, it was always open.
The furniture, of which there was very little, represented Centerport’s best: there was a “golden-oak” bureau, a “Flemish-oak” easy chair, a “Chippendale” card-table – I am employing the dealer’s language – an iron bedstead, a “mahogany” study table, a sprinkling of brightly upholstered, straight-backed chairs, and a few other pieces, equally highly polished and equally disturbing to the esthetic eye.
The walls were almost, but not quite, bare. Pete didn’t care for pictures, but on nails driven at haphazard hung a silver-mounted bridle, a rawhide lariat, a villainous-looking pair of Mexican wheel-spurs, a leather-banded sombrero, a cartridge-belt and holster, the latter holding a revolver, a leather quirt, and an Indian war-drum, while over the bedstead in the back room the head of a grizzly bear perpetually resented intrusion with snarling lips. The head of a mountain-sheep held a place of honor in the other apartment, and underneath it hung a Navajo Indian blanket, almost worth its weight in gold.
There were only two objects that might have been set down in an inventory as pictures: one was an advertising calendar and the other a photograph of Pete’s mother, who had died soon after Pete’s advent in the world. The photograph shared the top of the dazzling yellow bureau with Pete’s brushes and shaving utensils.
In a corner of the front room was a trunk, covered with a yellow and red saddle-blanket. Against it leaned two guns – a battered Winchester carbine and a handsome two-barreled 12-gauge shot-gun. In another corner, as though thrown there the moment before, lay a brown leather stock saddle, with big hooded stirrups. The card-table held Pete’s smoking things – two corn-cob pipes, a small sack of granulated tobacco, and an ash-tray. The tobacco usually distributed itself over the table and the ashes always blew onto the floor.
In bright weather, the sunlight streamed in through three of the five windows and crossed the rooms in golden shafts, wherein the dust atoms danced and swirled. With the sunlight came the sounds of the neighborhood – the clang of the blacksmith’s sledge against the anvil, the screech of the carpenter’s plane, the steady tap, tap, tap of the harness-maker’s hammer, the stamping of horses’ hoofs, the clamor of passing trains, and the chatter of the loiterers below the windows. Pete called the front room the “corral,” the rear room the “stable,” the whole the “Ranch.”
If I have risked tiring the reader with too long a description of Pete’s dwelling-place, it is because, in spite of their strange furnishings and hideous green walls, the rooms were far more homelike than many a smart suite in Grace Hall, and, to quote Tommy again, were “Pete through and through.” Further, while Allan’s, Hal’s, and Tommy’s rooms sometimes served as meeting-places for the four, the chambers over the harness-shop were their favorite resort. There was an undeniable charm about them; and if you could prevail upon Pete to close a few of the windows in cold weather, and if you didn’t mind sitting upon the tables and the trunk, you could be very comfy at the Ranch.
CHAPTER VIII
PETE’S CLUB TABLE
On the Monday night succeeding the Robinson game the quartet was assembled in Pete’s study. Allan had the easy chair, Hal and Tommy shared the big table, and Pete sat on the trunk. The windows were closed, for the night was cold, and the big hanging lamp diffused light, warmth, and a strong odor of kerosene through the apartment. This odor Pete was heroically striving to mitigate with the fumes of a cob pipe. Hal had tried the other pipe, but had soon given it up, avowing discontentedly that Pete ought to keep some real tobacco on hand for guests who weren’t used to chopped hay. The bell in College Hall had just struck nine, and Tommy, for the fourth time, had slid from the table, pleading press of business, and had been pulled back by Hal.
“Forget your old business, Tommy,” said Hal.
“Don’t let him sneak,” said Pete. “We’re going to open a can of corn in a minute.”
“That’s all very well,” Tommy protested, “but I’ve got things to do. You lazy chaps, who never study – ”
Dismal groans from the opposition.
“Can afford to loaf; but I want to tell you – ”
“Of course you do, Tommy,” Allan interrupted, soothingly, “but we don’t want you to. Be calm, precious youth; the Purp” (college slang for the Purple) “will come out just the same, whether you continue to adorn that desk for another ten minutes or not.”
“Why don’t you fellows let a couple of weeks go by without putting out a paper?” asked Pete. “No one would notice it, and think what a high old time you could all have being useful for once.”
“Wish we could,” sighed Tommy.
“Tommy, you’re a wicked liar!” said Hal. “You don’t wish anything of the sort. If you missed an issue of that old sheet, you’d commit suicide in some awful manner; maybe you’d come down here and die of smells.”
“If you’d only put something in it,” said Pete, “something a fellow could read and enjoy – a murder now and then, or a lynching. Couldn’t you run a story with lots of blood? It’s such a dismal paper, Tommy.”
“You fellows might jump into the river,” suggested Tommy, scathingly. “We’d print your obits.”
“Our which?” Hal asked.
“Obits – obituaries,” he explained in a superior manner.
“Would you put ’em on the fir?” asked Peter.
“On the fir? What’s the fir?”
“Fir – first page.” Pete mimicked Tommy’s tone.
“No,” said Tommy, when the laughter had stopped, “not important enough.”
“Crushed and lifeless!” murmured Allan.
“Tommy,” asked Pete, severely, “do you mean that I’m not enough of a heavy-weight to be dishonored by having my name on the front page of that old up-country weekly of yours?”
“The front page is for important news,” said Tommy, with a wicked smile.
“Such as measles in the grammar school and the election of Greaves as president of the Chess Club,” explained Hal.
“Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, Thomas,” said Pete. “I’ll bet you anything from an old hat to a quarter section of land that I can get my name and a half a column of talkee-talkee on the first page of the Erskine Purple any time I want to. Now, what say, Thomas?”
“I’ll bet you can’t,” laughed the other.
“What’ll you bet? Money talks, my son.”
“Oh, most anything. If you want your name on the front page of the Purple, you’ll have to do some tall stunts.”
“Of course, that’s what I mean: kill the Dean, or blow up College Hall, or have a fit in chapel.”
“Or subscribe for the paper,” added Allan.
“Come, Tommy, speak up. What will you bet?”
“Oh, get out, you wild Indian! I’m going home.”
He made another effort to tear himself away.
“Tommy, you’re a coyote: you’re skeered an’ afeared. You know I’d win.”
“Oh, no, I’m not,” said Tommy. “I’ll bet a dinner for the four of us at the Elm Tree that you can’t get your name on the front page while I’m on the paper – Hold on, though; I won’t bet that. I’ll bet you won’t get it there this year unless it’s merely the name, as a member of a society, or as having attended a meeting, or something like that, you know.”
“Thomas, you’re hedging,” said Pete, “but I’ll take your bet. And just my name isn’t to count; nothing less than a full paragraph to myself goes. You fellows are witnesses.”
“We are,” said Allan. “I smell that dinner already.”
“And you see Pete paying the bill,” said Tommy.
“I don’t know who pays, and I don’t care.”
“He cares not who pays for his dinner, so long as he may eat it,” said Hal. “Wise child, Allan. And, by the way, talking of eating reminds me. You know Billy Greb, Allan?”
“I’m going home,” said Tommy.
“(Shut up and sit down, Tommy!) Billy’s getting up a freshman club table and wants you and me to join. What do you say?”
“Where’s it going to be?”
“Pearson’s.”
“How much?”
“Six a week.”
“That’s pretty steep, Hal. Besides, I may go to the track-team table in the spring.”
“I’m going home, you fellows,” announced Tommy again.
“Will you please shut up?” asked Hal. “Well, you’d better join until then, Allan; sufficient to the spring is the evil thereof.”
“Well, I’ll think it over and let you know in a day or two. When does Greb want to start it?”
“First of the month. If you weren’t a foolish little sophomore, Tommy, you could come in too.”
“Huh!” answered Tommy, scathingly. “I’ve seen all I want of freshman club tables. I’m going – ”
“How about me, Hal?” asked Pete. “I’d like to join, if your friend will have me.”
Hal hesitated for an instant.
“Why – er – I’ll speak to him about it. But I think he’s got his number made up.”
“That’s all right,” answered Pete, quietly.
“But I’ll do my best,” said Hal, hurriedly and awkwardly. “Maybe – ”
“Call it off!” said Pete, with a cavernous yawn.
“If it was my table – ” continued Hal, anxious not to hurt the other’s feelings.
“I know. That’s all right. I can stand it.”
There was the sound of a gently closing door.
“Hello!” Pete exclaimed. “Where’s Tommy?”
The three glanced in surprise around the room. Then —
“I think,” said Allan, dryly, “I think I heard him say something about going home.”
The next afternoon Pete found Allan at the gymnasium, and walked back to Mrs. Purdy’s with him. He was so quiet that Allan was certain he had something on his mind. What that something was transpired when they had reached Allan’s room.
“What sort of a cayuse – meaning gentleman – is this fellow Greb?” asked Pete.
“I don’t know him very well,” Allan replied, “but I fancy he thinks himself a bit of a swell. He’s a Dunlap Hall fellow, and of course you know what that means.”
“Never heard tell of it,” said Pete. “What is it – a preparatory school?”
“Yes, it’s – Oh, it’s all right, of course, only we used to make a good deal of fun of it at Hillton. You go there when you’re nine or ten, and they give you a sort of a governess to look after you until you get old enough to make her life a burden; then they put you in another house. They’re terribly English, you know; have forms and fagging; and when you want a row with a chap, you have to notify the captain of your form, and it’s all arranged for you like a regular duel, and you go out back of one of the buildings, and somebody holds your coat for you and somebody else mops your face with a sponge, and you try and hit the other fellow in the eye. It’s like a second edition of Tom Brown. Think of getting mad with a chap in the morning and having to wait until afternoon to whack him! There’s no fun in that. You’d like as not want to beg his pardon and buy him a ‘Sunday’! But they think they’re a pretty elegant lot, just the same.”
“Think of that!” sighed Pete. “And I might have gone there, if I’d known, and had a nurse and all the scrapping I wanted. So this fellow Greb thinks he’s the whole thing, does he? Guess that’s the reason Hal was hunting a hole when I asked myself to join. I didn’t know you were so mighty choice about who you ate with. Out there we ask whoever comes along. I guess you fellows thought I was loco, didn’t you?”
“Thought you were what?”
“Why, crazy, inviting myself like that.”
“Nonsense, Pete; we all understood. There was no harm done. It’s just that Greb wants to get up a table of fellows he knows.”
“Does he know you?”
“Why – er – I’ve met him, of course.”
“And he could have met me if he’d wanted to, couldn’t he?”
“I suppose he could, but he doesn’t know about you.”
“Wouldn’t care to, I guess.”
“Oh, nonsense, Pete; you’re making a lot out of nothing.”
“Dare say he thinks I eat in my shirt-sleeves and swallow my knife,” continued Pete, gloomily. “Maybe he thinks I live on horned toads and grasshoppers.”
“But, I tell you, he doesn’t know you.”
“I guess he’s heard of me,” answered Pete. “Guess he knew you and Hal and I were traveling together.”
“Look here, Pete; if you want to join a club table – ”
“Oh, that’s all right. Moocha wano club table.”
“Oh, all right,” answered Allan, a bit puzzled.
“I’m going to join a club table on the 1st,” said Pete.
“Oh!” said Allan, again. “What – that is, whose is it?”
“Pete Burley’s.”
“What! How – how do you mean?”
“Mean I’m going to run my own grub-wagon. And I want you to join.”
“But – Look here, Pete, I don’t believe you can find a decent place to take you. Everything’s full up already.”
“Where is there a decent place?” asked Pete, calmly.
“Well, there’s Pearson’s, of course, but you couldn’t get in there. And – ”
“Why couldn’t I?”
“Because she takes training tables chiefly, and is pretty particular, anyhow.”
“Yes, that’s what she told me,” said Pete.
“Then you went there?”
Pete nodded.
“I could have told you you wouldn’t get in there. There’s a pretty good place further along – ”
“Oh, that’s all right. We start on the 1st.”
“Start where?”
“Mrs. Pearson’s.”
“Pete, you’re lying!” gasped Allan.
“No, straight talk. I engaged the front corner room on the second floor. It’s a right nice-looking place: paper on the walls, fireplace, lounge, window-seat – ”
“But – but how’d you do it?”
“Oh, that’s all right. We had a little pow-wow. It’s going to be six a week and no extras.”
“You crazy Westerner!” said Allan, in bewildered admiration. Then, “But you haven’t got any one to join, have you?”
“Not yet; but that’ll be all right. It’s going to be select, you know; eight in all. There’ll be you and me, that’s two; and Hal – ”
“I don’t believe he’ll come,” said Allan, doubtfully. “You see, Pete, he’s promised Greb.”
“I don’t guess Greb will have a table,” said Pete.
“Why not?”
“Well, where’s he going to put it?”
Allan stared. Then —
“Do you mean that you’ve got Greb’s room?” he exclaimed.
“’Twa’n’t his,” answered Pete, coolly. “He hadn’t settled the matter, and so I said I’d take it and put down a forfeit. And there isn’t another decent place for a high-toned, pedigreed chap like him to go to.”
“Pete Burley, you’re a wonder!” breathed Allan.
“Think Hal will join?” asked Pete, unmoved by the tribute. Allan nodded silently.
“That’ll make three, then. Now, of course, I know lots of fellows who would come in if I asked ’em, but, as I just said, this thing is going to be select; it’s going to be the selectest table in town. So you tell me who are the top of the bunch in our class, and I’ll go and fetch ’em in if I have to rope ’em and hog-tie ’em.” Pete took out a pencil and began to write on the back of an envelope.
“Of course, it’s all poppycock,” said Allan, “but – well, there’s What’s-his-name, the class president, and Maitland, and Poor – ”
“Whoo-ee! I’m glad you thought of Poor.”
“And Armstrong – only he lives at home, I think – and Mays, and Wolcott, and – and Cooper – Cooper of St. Eustace, I mean; the other chap’s an awful duffer – and Van Sciver – ”
“Whoa, Bill! That’s eight – eleven, counting us three; guess I can get enough out of the list. Besides, I must ask Greb; mustn’t slight Greb.”
“You’re not going to ask him?”
“Ain’t I? Just you keep your eyes peeled and you’ll see.” He got up and carefully put the list in the big yellow leather wallet he carried. “Guess I’ll see a few of ’em this afternoon. Want to come along?”
Allan shook his head vigorously.
“Not me, Pete. I don’t want to have to testify against you before the faculty. How do I know what you’ll do to those chaps to make them join?”
“Oh, say, Allan!” Pete turned at the gate. “Remember those ducks we saw on the river last week? Well, let’s go after ’em Thursday morning, will you?”
“Shooting, you mean? I haven’t a gun.”
“You take my shot-gun and I’ll use the rifle. I’ve shot ducks with a rifle before this.”
“All right, Pete, but like as not the silly ducks won’t be there Thursday.”
“Well, we’ll find something to shoot, all right, if it’s just squirrels. We’ll have nothing to do Thursday, and can stay as long as we like; make a day of it. Maybe we can find some place to have dinner and won’t have to come back here. I’m getting mighty tired of commons, Allan. Well, it’ll be considerable different when we get the table started, won’t it?”
“I suppose so,” answered Allan.
“Say, do you think Hal or Tommy would go along?”
“Ducking? Tommy might, but Hal’s going to sign off and go home over Saturday.”
“Lucky chap!” sighed Pete. “Wish I was.” He looked thoughtfully across the leaf-strewn college yard. “Suppose I could, but – guess the old man would raise Cain. Allan!”
“Yep?”
“I’d give a hundred dollars for sight of a mountain. Well, I must jog along.”
