Apparently Punky did, for he muttered, "Aw right," and flecked the ash from his cigar. He puffed quickly twice and then said:
"Giddings, do you s"pose Morrison"s next?"
"Naw," Giddings replied contemptuously. "I sent out a feeler--sorter touched him up on a "sell-out" to see how he"d take it and he got red-headed. Said if it wasn"t to be a fair race and the best man win, he"d pull out. I gave him the "ha-ha" and pa.s.sed him a con. about just seein" how he felt because _I_ wanted it square and then worked the "honor-talk" strong. He calmed right down and got interested. _He"s_ all right; you needn"t worry about _him_. It"s this _Bunny_; you"ve got to have a peek at him before Sat.u.r.day, then let your judgment do the rest."
"Aw yes!" Punky exploded--"Aw yes---- Judgment be blowed! If this Bunny"s square, O. K.; if he"s square and slow, O. K.; if he"s square and too fast for your "wonder," why----" He hesitated.
"What?" his friend inquired calmly.
"Oh well; you leave it to me," was the significant reply.
Giddings laughed.
"You can work the game," he said, "only don"t let "em think we"re playin" together; some wise guy might have an idea and put the whole push next. You know what would happen then, don"t you?" he inquired wisely.
His companion did not reply. He went over to the one window of the room and gazed down into the lighted street. Suddenly he turned back and said: "You go to bed; I"m goin" down to the office and get next." And he vanished.
The public room of the old hotel was filled with students. The events of Sat.u.r.day formed the one topic of conversation. In the process of "getting next" Punky Williams, sporting man, (with a record not altogether immaculate) by maintaining an open ear and a closed mouth, learned that one name was on the common lips almost as frequently as that of "Bunny." It was "Morrison." Punky Williams was satisfied. He asked simple but significant questions now and again of various youths who lounged near him. He affected a pa.s.sive, a rather paternal interest in the "meet," the sprinting event in which was conceded by all to be the most important. He learned enough to satisfy him that, so far as he was concerned, but two men would run--Bunny of the U. of M. and Morrison of Western College, trainer Giddings" _protege_; the other entries were unworthy of consideration. He sought his companion in the little room up-stairs with a heart as light as thistle down and a face that glowed with pleasure.
The next morning he walked out to the fair grounds, seeking direction from time to time from the people whom he pa.s.sed.
There were perhaps a hundred students in the paddock watching the exercises. Punky Williams wriggled his way among them; his little ears receptive, his mouth close shut. Presently the crowd yelled and he craned over the enclosure rail. At the top of the course Bunny paused.
With an air of pa.s.sive interest, Punky Williams took out a stop watch, then fixed his eyes upon the figure up the course. He saw an arm thrust above his head and the sunlight glinted on the metal of the starter"s pistol. He caught the time as the report rang out. And as Bunny high-stepped across the tape he shut his watch with a click and wriggled back to the rim of the crowd, observed in the moment"s clamor by no one save a single small boy in a very grimy shirt-waist.
As the bells in the tower of the court-house opposite the hotel rang out the hour of noon, he burst in upon the loafing Giddings, who, at his friend"s most obvious excitement exclaimed:
"What th" devil"s th" matter; you look as though you"d seen a ghost?"
"Well! I have!" the breathless Punky puffed. "Giddings," he cried, "I"ve seen _him_! I held the watch on him. It wasn"t his real speed,--and he came over the tape grinning; but--_he did it in 10 1-5_!"
Giddings with an expression of complete disgust upon his smooth, thin face, sat down again.
"Punky, you give me a pain!" he exclaimed. "A pain! Great Scott, man; don"t you think there"s any difference between 10 1-5 seconds and 9 4-5?
Well, you"d better wake up. _There"s an hour, man; an hour!_"
He opened his newspaper, deliberately; found the sporting page and commenced to read.
As for Punky Williams, he lighted another cigar and flinging himself upon the bed, blew copious clouds of light blue smoke to the cracked and grimy ceiling at which, the while, he stared fixedly, thoughtfully.
IV
On Sat.u.r.day Willie Trigger swallowed his dinner in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time, and slipped from the house un.o.bserved, while his mother was in the kitchen haggling with a huckster over the Sunday vegetables.
When the good woman re-entered the dining-room she cast one glance at Willie"s half depleted plate, then rushed through the dark, cool hall and out upon the porch.
"Will-_ee_! Will-_ee_!" she called, stridently.
A rustling of the leaves as the breath of June wafted among them, was her answer. She went to the gate and gazed up and down the street. Then with a sigh she returned to the house and closed the door.
Perhaps Willie had not heard the maternal call. At the instant of its issue he was balanced on the top of the back fence across the street, hidden from the maternal eye by the intervening house. At the second call he plumped down upon a soft ash heap on the other side. If he did hear he gave no sign, but, after dusting his pantaloons with little flips and pats of his small brown hands, he ran with all the speed that he could muster, across the wide, uneven lot. Presently he became lost to sight among the gnarled and broken trees of a once prolific apple orchard, beyond. Issuing from the orchard on the farther side, he crossed another lot--first wriggling wormlike beneath a low wire fence--and came out into the dusty road that led to the old fair ground enclosure. To-day that road, as a wide, smooth street disfigured only by the tracks over which the flat-wheeled trolleys b.u.mp, marks the northern boundary of Ann Arbor"s ultra exclusiveness. Behind hedges or half hidden amid the trees, nestle snug little houses that seem to cry out against all vulgar intrusion and hug themselves in the very joy of their most obvious respectability.
Along this road, thick with dust; now obscured in a cloud of his own raising, now distinct against the background of the high board fence, Willie Trigger trudged. Arriving at the long ticket window he was dismayed to find that the hatch was shut. Bunny had told him there would be a ticket for him at the window--a ticket for him expressly, in an envelope bearing his name, else he would not have deserted his dinner to be the first on hand. Save for a solitary woman whom he saw among the trees in the wood across the way, the region about appeared deserted. It was not yet one o"clock, but Willie Trigger did not realize this.
Stoically he sat down at the edge of the long low platform below the ticket-office window and resigned himself to waiting.
After ten minutes a dog bounded from the wood into the road. Motionless, he regarded the lad curiously. As long as he remained in sight Willie amused himself by throwing stones at him.
After half an hour a carriage drew up close to the fence and stopped. He slouched over to the narrow pedestrians" gate at one side of the office.
Two young men, carrying a large, black tin box between them, alighted from the vehicle, paid the driver and entered the enclosure, fastening the gate behind them. When they had disappeared Willie pulled at the gate but suddenly desisted in his attempt to force an entrance as the heavy hatch of the ticket-office fell with a bang and the same two young men were revealed at the weather beaten counter. He watched them as they unlocked the box, on the shiny top of which the bright sun gleamed, and saw one of them take out several big bunches of blue tickets. Willie approached the window, then, hesitatingly. His chin barely touched the edge of the shelf so he stood on his toes.
"Say--my ticket here?" he asked, boldly.
The young man who was arranging the bundles on the shelf looked down.
"What do _you_ want?" he inquired, tersely.
"I want my ticket."
"Got a quarter?"
Willie Trigger"s toes gave way beneath him, but he bobbed up again almost instantly.
"He said there"d be one here--in a envelope."
"What?" snapped the young man, "_who_ said there would--what you _talking_ about anyway?"
Willie endeavored to explain. He was laughed at for his pains.
"Run along now," the officious young man commanded. "There ain"t any ticket for you here. Run along--or--or--I"ll call a policeman."
The mouth, then the nose, then the eyes, then the little gray cap of Willie Trigger descended below the window ledge and he commenced to sniffle. A large, jagged stone lay on the gra.s.s not ten feet away, and as his eyes fell upon it his sniffling ceased. He picked up the stone.
He poised it in the air an instant, then with all the strength at his command he flung it diagonally across the fence. He heard the clatter as it struck the thin boards at the end of the ticket office. He did not linger to observe any further effect of his a.s.sault, for when the officious young man who had denied to him the existence of his ticket, crawled upon the ledge and gazed off down the road, there was no little boy in sight.
Chagrined though he was, Willie did not for an instant accuse his hero of any lack of faithlessness. Indeed, as is the wont of small boyhood, he accepted the rebuff unquestioningly. He made no effort at a.n.a.lysis.
It was merely a whimsical cavort of that unreliable Fate that not infrequently plays tricks on those who walk in knickerbockers. So Willie, nothing loth, reasoned simply that as a ticket had never been necessary before, he was quite prepared to gain an entrance to the grounds without one, now. Indeed, even as the young man in the office climbed upon the ledge and gazed off down the road, Willie was examining the fence for loose boards, along the familiar stretch behind the ancient grand stand. Many times and oft, when ball games were in progress, had he, with the a.s.sistance of Jimmy Thurston, clambered over that tall board fence frequently to the complete demolishment of his shirt waist, which had a nasty habit of catching on the barbs of the wire that an ingenious care-taker had strung along the top, but, in any event, successfully, to the more important issue of an entrance to the field. To-day, however, he was alone, and getting over the fence was quite a different matter. Since Thursday he had not caught a glimpse of Jimmy, but now he was wishing that the fat, familiar figure of the lad would appear around the corner of the fence. There was not a loose board along the whole stretch, so far as he could discover. Not infrequently he had, with half a dozen st.u.r.dy jerks, succeeded in ripping off a plank sufficiently wide to permit of squeezing through; but two days before the same far seeing care-taker who, with so much ingenuity, profanity and trouble, had strung the barbed wire at the top, had gone over the entire stockade and nailed securely every board that seemed to him to be deficient in tightness. It is saddening to tell it; for it rather weakens the character of Willie Trigger, but at the end of his second futile patrol along the fence, he flung himself down at the roots of an ancient apple-tree and cried. Were all the Fates of boyhood set against him this day in June?
"Dum it--gosh dum it," he mumbled, gazing through his tears at the forbidding fence, the top of which looked so low yet was so high--too high even when he poised on tiptoe and jumped, clutching. As he stared, his eyes opened wide, the tears were magically whisked away, and he grinned.
"Gosh!" he exclaimed aloud, and got upon his feet.
A branch of the very tree beneath which he had so disconsolately flung himself, pointed out the way he sought. A single limb--not a thick, st.u.r.dy limb, but rather a weak, unstable sort of limb--hung directly above the fence at a most favorable point, immediately behind the grand stand.
Willie Trigger climbed the tree. Cautiously he crept out upon the branch, more than half hidden by the foliage. The branch bent beneath his weight, slight though it was, and once he nearly slipped. His heart leaped into his mouth, or if not his heart, at least something, but he swallowed it back and moved along another inch. He wriggled obliquely until he balanced on his stomach like a bag of meal over a pole. Little by little he slipped down, the branch giving more and more with every movement of his agile body. He clung by the crook of his elbows and wriggled his toes. They touched nothing. For a s.p.a.ce he danced upon the air. Another slip of scarce an inch, and there ensued a ripping and tear, followed by a sharp crack.
Thug!
Willie Trigger struck the soft earth in a sitting posture. The sudden contact resulted in a private pyrotechnic display of momentary brilliance. Willie gasped twice like a fish. Blinking away the stars and whirling Catherine wheels that glittered before his eyes, he looked about him. "Gosh!" he muttered below his breath, and rolling over rubbed the point of contact vigorously. Beside him lay the branch, but--goody!
He had struck inside the fence! Moreover, and what was quite as much to the purpose, he had not been observed.