Part 17 (2/2)

”Wait for me here!” howled big Butch Brewster, climbing the fence and starting down the road at a pace that did credit even to that fast two-miler. The Brigade, In the absence of their leader, tried to estimate the height of the gate, and Hicks, gazing at its barbed-wire top, shuddered. The St. Bernard pup, having caused T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., for once in his indolent life to exert every possible ounce of energy in his splinter-frame, groveled at his feet, and strove to express his boundless joy at their presence.

Butch Brewster, in fifteen minutes, returned, panting and perspiring, bearing a tape-measure, borrowed at the next farm-house. With all the solemnity of a sacred rite being performed, the youths waited, as Butch and Tug, holding the tape taut, carefully measured from the ground to the top of the barbed wire on the gate. Three times they did this, and then, with an expression of gladness on his honest countenance, Butch hugged the dazed T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., while Tug Cardiff howled, ”Now for the Intercollegiates and your track B, Hicks! Youdo five-ten in the meet, for Coach Brannigan said you could dear it, if only you did it .”

”Why--what do you mean, Tug?” quavered Hicks, not daring to allow himself to believe the truth. ”You--you surely don't mean--”

”I mean, that now youyou can jump that high,” boomed Tug, executing a weird dance of exultation, In which, the Brigade joined, until it resembled a herd of elephants gone insane, ”for you have done it--allowing for the sag, and everything, that gate is just five feet, ten inches high, and--!”

”Ladies and gentlemen--Hicks, of Bannister, is about to high jump! Hicks and McQuade, of Hamilton, are tied for first place at five feet eight inches! McQuade has failed three times at five-ten! Hicks' third and last trial! Height of bar--five feet ten inches!”

This time, however, it was not big Tug Cardiff, imitating a Ballyhoo Bill, and inciting the Bannister youths to hilarity at the expense of the sunny-souled T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.; it was the Official Announcer at the Annual State Intercollegiate Field and Track Champions.h.i.+ps, on Bannister Field, and his announcement aroused a tumult of excitement in the Bannister section of the stands, as well as among the Gold and Green cinder-path stars.

”Come on, Hicks, old man!” urged Butch Brewster, who, with a dozen fully as excited comrades of the cheery Hicks, surrounded that splinter-athlete.

”It's positively your last chance to win your track B, or your letter in any sport, and please your Dad! If they lower the bar, and you two jump off the tie, McQuade's endurance will bring him out the winner.”

”Youclear five-ten!” encouraged Bunch Bingham. ”You did it once, when you believed Caesar Napoleon was after you. Just summon up that much energy now, and clear that bar! Once over, the event and your letter are won! Oh, if we only had that bulldog here, to sick on you.”

Sad to chronicle, the score-board of the Intercollegiates recorded the results of the events, so far, thus:

HAMILTON ............35 BALLARD .............20 BANNISTER ...........28

It was the last event, and even did Hicks win the high-jump, McQuade's second place would easily give old Ham. the Champions.h.i.+p. Hence, knowing that victory was not booked for an appearance on the Gold and Green banners, the Bannister youths, wild for the lovable, popular Hicks to win his Bs vociferously pulled for him:

”Come on, Hicks--up and over, old man--it's !”

”Jump, you Human Gra.s.s-Hopper--you can do it!”

”Now or never, Hicks! One big jump does the work!”

”Sick Caesar Napoleon on him, Coach; he'll clear it then!”

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., casting aside that flamboyant bathrobe, for what he believed was the last athletic event of his campus career, stood gazing at the cross-bar. One superhuman effort, a great explosion of all his energy, such as he had executed when he cleared the gate, thinking Caesar Napoleon was after him, and the event was won! Hecleared that height, it was within his power. If he failed, as Butch said, the bar would be lowered, and then raised until one or the other missed once. McQuade, with his superior strength and endurance, must inevitably win, but as he had just missed on his third trial at five-ten, if Hicks cleared that height onfinal chance, the first place was his.

”And my B!” murmured Hicks, tensing his muscles. ”Oh, won't my Dad be happy? It will help him to realize some of his ambition, when I show him my track letter! It is positively my last chance, and Iclear it.”

With a vast wave of determined confidence inundating his very being, Hicks started for the bar; after those first, peculiar, creeping steps, he had just started his gallop, when he heard Tug Cardiff's , magnified by a megaphone, roared:

”All together, fellows----”

Then, just as Hicks dug his spikes into the earth, in that short, mad sprint that gives the jumper his spring, just as he reached the take-off, a perfect explosion of noise startled him, and he caught a sound that frightened him, tensed as he was:

”Woof! Woof! Bow! Wow! Woof! Woof! Woof! Look out, Hicks, Caesar Napoleon is after you!”

Psychology Is inexplicable. Ever afterward, Hicks' comrades of that cross-country run averred strenuously that their roaring through megaphones, in concert, imitating Caesar Napoleon's savage bark at the psychological moment, flung the mosquito-like youth clear of the cross-bar and won him the event and his B. Hicks, however, as fervidly denied this statement, declaring that he would have won, anyhow, because he had summoned up the determination to do it! So it can not be stated just what bearing on his jump the plot of Butch Brewster really had. In truth, that behemoth had entertained a wild idea of actually hiring old Bildad and Caesar Napoleon to appear at the moment Hicks started for his last trial, but this weird scheme was abandoned!

Fifteen minutes later, when T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had escaped from the riotous Bannister students, delirious with joy at the victory of the beloved youth, the Heavy-Weight-White-Hope Brigade, capturing the gra.s.s-hopper Senior, gave him a shock second only to that which he had experienced when first he believed Caesar Napoleon was on his trail.

”Perhaps our barking didn't make you jump it!” said Beef McNaughton, when Hicks indignantly denied that he had been scared over the cross-bar, ”but indirectly, old man, we helped you to win! If we had not put up a hoax on you--”

”A ?” queried the surprised Hicks. ”What do you mean--hoax?”

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