Part 18 (1/2)
”It was all a frame-up!” grinned Butch Brewster, triumphantly. ”We paid old Bildad five dollars to play his part, and as an actor, he has Booth and Barrymore backed off the stage! We got Coach Brannigan to send you along with us on the cross-country jog, and your absurd dread of dogs, Hicks, made it easy! Bildad, per instructions, produced Caesar Napoleon, and scared you. Then, with a telescope, he watched us, and when I gave the signal, he let loose Bob, the harmless St. Bernard pup, on our trail.
”The pup, as he always does, chased after strangers, ready to play. We yelled for you to run, and you were so , you insect, you didn't wait to see the dog. Even when you looked back, in your alarm, you didn't know it was not Caesar Napoleon, for his grim visage was seared on your brain--I mean, where your brain ought to be! And even had you seen it wasn't the bulldog, you would have been frightened, all the same. But I confess, Hicks, when you sailed over that high gate, it was one on .”
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., drew a deep breath, and then a Ches.h.i.+re cat grin came to his cherubic countenance. So, after all, it had been a hoax; there had not been any peril. No wonder these behemoths had so courageously taken the cherries! But, beyond a doubt, the jokehelped him to win his B. It had shown him he could clear five feet, ten inches, for he had done it--and, in the meet, when the crucial moment came, the knowledge that hejumped that high, and, therefore, could do it, helped--where the thought that he never had cleared it would have dragged him down. He had at last won his B, a part of his beloved Dad's great ambition was realized, and--
”Oh, just leave it to Hicks!” quoth that sunny-souled, irrepressible youth, swaggering a trifle, ”It was my mighty will-power, my terrific determination, that took me over the cross-bar, and not-- your imitation of--”
”Woof! Woof! Woof!” roared the ”Heavy-Weight-White-Hope-Brigade” in thunderous chorus. ”Sick him--Caesar Napoleon--!”
CHAPTER XVII
HICKS MAKES A RASH PROPHECY
”Come on, Butch! Atta boy--some fin, old top! Say, you Beef--you're asleep at the switch. What time do you want to be called? More pep there, Monty--bust that little old bulb, Roddy! Aw, rotten! Say, Ballard, your playing will bring the Board of Health down on you--why don't you bring your first team out? Umpire? What--do you call that an umpire? Why, he's a highway robber, a bandit. Put a 'Please Help the Blind' sign on that hold-up artist!”
Big Butch Brewster, captain of the Bannister College baseball squad, navigating down the third-floor corridor of Bannister Hall, the Senior dormitory, laden with suitcases, bat-bags, and other impedimenta, as Mr.
Julius Caesar says, and vastly resembling a bell-hop in action, paused in sheer bewilderment on the threshold of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s, cozy room.
”Hicks!” stormed the bewildered Butch, wrathfully, ”what in the name of Sam Hillyou doing? Are you crazy, you absolutely insane lunatic? This is a study-hour, and even ifdon't possess an intellect, some of the fellows want to exercise their brains an hour or so! Stop that ridiculous action.”
The spectacle Butch Brewster beheld was indeed one to paralyze that pachydermic collegian, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., the sunny-souled, irrepressible Senior, danced madly about on the tiger-skin rug in midfloor, evidently laboring under the delusion that he was a lunatical Hottentot at a tribal dance; he waved his arms wildly, like a signaling brakeman, or howled through a big megaphone, and about his toothpick structure was strung his beloved banjo, on which the blithesome youth tw.a.n.ged at times an accompaniment to his jargon:
”Come on, Skeet, take a lead (!) Say, d'ye wanta marry first base--divorce yourself from that sack! (!) Oh, you bonehead--steal--you won't get arrested for it! Hi! Yi! Ouch, Butch! Oh, I'll be good--”
At this moment, the indignant Butch abruptly terminated T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.'s, noisy monologue by seizing that splinter-youth firmly by the scruff of the neck and forcibly hurling him on the davenport. Seeing his loyal cla.s.s-mate's resemblance to a Grand Central Station baggage-smasher, the irrepressible Senior forthwith imitated a hotel-clerk:
”Front!” howled the grinning Hicks, to an imaginary bellboy, ”Show this gentleman to Number 2323! Are you alone, sir, or just by yourself? I think you will like the room-it faces on the coal-chute, and has hot and cold folding-doors, and running water when the roof leaks! The bed is made once a week, regularly, and--”
”Hicks, you Infinitesimal Atom of Nothing!” growled big Butch, ominously.
”What were you doing, creating all that riot, as I came down the corridor?
What's the main idea, anyway, of--”
”Heed, friend of my campus days,” chortled the graceless Hicks, keeping a safe distance from his behemoth comrade, ”tomorrow-your baseball aggregation plays Ballard College, at that knowledge-factory, for the Champions.h.i.+p of the State. Because nature hath endowed me with the Herculean structure of a Jersey mosquito, I am developing a 56-lung-power voice, and I need practice, as I am to be the only student-rooter at the game tomorrow! Q.E.D.! And as for any Bannister student, except perhaps Theophilus Opperd.y.k.e and Thor, desiring to investigate the interiors of their lexicons tonight, I prithee, just periscope the campus.”
”I guess you are right, Hicks!” grinned Butch Brewster, as he looked from the window, down on an indescribably noisy scene. ”For once, your riotous tumult went unheard. Say, get your traveling-bag ready, and leave that pestersome banjo behind, if you want to go with the nine!”
Several members of the Gold and Green nine, embryo American and National League stars, roosted on the Senior Fence between the Gymnasium and the Administration Building, with, suitcases and bat-bags on the gra.s.s. In a few minutes old Dan Flannagan's celebrated jitney-bus would appear in the offing, coming to transport the Bannister athletes downtown to the station, for the 9 P.M. express to Philadelphia. Incited by Cheer-Leaders Skeezicks McCracken and Snake Fisher, several hundred youths encouraged the nine, since, because of approaching final exams., they were barred by Faculty order from accompanying the team to Ballard. In thunderous chorus they chanted:
”One more Job for the undertaker!
More work for the tombstone maker!
la the local ceme, they are very--very-- Busy on a brand-new grave for--Ballard!”
As the lovable Hicks expressed it, ”'Coming events cast their shadows before.' Commencement overshadows our joyous campus existence!” However, no Bannister acquaintance of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., could detect wherein the swiftly approaching final separation from his Alma Mater had affected in the least that happy-go-lucky, care-free, irrepressible youth. If anything, it seemed that Hicks strove to fight off thoughts of the end of his golden campus years, using as weapons his torturesome saengerfests, his Beefsteak Busts down at Jerry's, and various other pastimes, to the vast indignation of his good friend and cla.s.s-mate, Butch Brewster, who tried futilely to lecture him into the proper serious mood with which Seniors must sail through Commencement!
”You are a Senior, Hicks, a Senior!” Butch would explain wrathfully. ”You are popularly supposed to be dignified, and here you persist in acting like a comedian in a vaudeville show! I suppose you intend to appear on the stage, and, when handed your sheepskin, respond by tw.a.n.ging your banjo and roaring a silly ballad.”
Yet, the cheery Hicks had been very busy, since that memorable day when, thanks to Caesar Napoleon and the hoax of the Heavy-Weight-White-Hope- Brigade of the track squad, he had cleared the cross-bar at five-ten, and won the event and his white B! Mr. T. Haviland Hicks, Sr., overjoyed at his son's achievement, had sent him a generous check, which the youth much needed, and had promised to be present at the annual Athletic a.s.sociation Meeting, at Commencement, when the B's were awarded deserving athletes, which caused Hicks as much joy as the pink slip.
With his final study sprint for the Senior Finals, his duties as team- manager of the baseball nine, his preparations for Commencement, his social duties at the Junior Prom., and multifarious other details coincident to graduation, the heedless Hicks had not found time to be sorrowful at the knowledge that it soon would end, forever, that he must say ”Farewell, Alma Mater,” and leave the campus and corridors of old Bannister; yet soon even Hicks' ebullient spirits must fail, for Commencement was a trifle over a week off.