"More cats!" said Dismal. "I"d as soon have the frogs of Egypt, as to have the trees showering down cats."
"How do you like cat diet, Gamp?" screeched Bink, who did not relish the way he had been laughed at.
"I"ll die-it, if one of "em hits me!" Dismal solemnly a.s.serted.
"Look out!" a student warningly yelled. "The man is coming, too!"
Everybody beneath the limb fell back out of the way, pushing against those behind, many being hurled down and trodden on. Then Donald Pike, sprawled out like one of the cats, came sailing down out of the tree.
His teeth were fairly chattering. He believed that Badger was right at his heels, with hands reached out to seize him. Fortunately, he was not injured by the desperate leap.
"Fruit!" was yelled by a dozen voices, and the throng pressed together again to lay hold on him.
But Don Pike"s terror gave him the strength of a giant. He hurled aside those who sought to detain him, and leaped through the crowd and away.
The next instant the Kansan dropped out of the tree, swinging for a moment by one of the drooping branches, to break the force of the fall, and alighting on the ground with ease and lightness.
"Fruit!"
The Westerner could not escape, for the students had closed in again, and he was literally ringed in.
"Fruit! fruit!" was yelled on all sides.
Twenty men threw themselves on the Kansan. He tried to hurl them off, and did succeed in flinging some of them aside. This enabled him to gain his feet.
"Let go!" he snarled.
"Fruit! fruit!" was being chorused.
Again the hands and arms closed on him.
"Let me go, I say! I want to overtake that fellow!"
Only a few near him understood his words. The majority thought he was merely showing a vigorous protest against the threatened loss of his shirt-tab, and they had no sympathy with anything of that kind, for they had suffered the same humiliation, and were naturally determined to inflict the same thing on every student they could lay their hands on.
"Let go!" Badger shrieked, white with wrath, lunging with his hard right fist.
It struck a student in the face and hurled him crashingly backward. But the next moment the fist and arm were caught and held.
Then began a fierce struggle for the mastery. Time and again the Westerner, whose strength was great, hurled off the men who sought to hold him down. Twice he got on his feet, merely to be tripped and thrown again. Not until he was almost beaten and choked into insensibility were his a.s.sailants able to rip open his vest.
Ordinarily, Badger wore a soft silk shirt which had no tab, but on this night he had on a white shirt, whose tab was amputated by a dexterous thrust as soon as the vest was pulled open. Then he was permitted to rise to his feet, reeling, sick, blind with rage and humiliation and a sense of baffled hate.
But his chief thought still was of Donald Pike.
"Which way did he go?" he panted, as soon as he could get his breath.
"Well, your High-Muchness, the cats scattered and the man made himself scarce!" was the scoffing answer, given by the student who had felt the terrible force of Badger"s fist. "Perhaps there is another man up in the elm who can tell you!"
Badger did not wait for further nagging, and, as no hands were now extended to oppose him, he made as hasty an exit as he could from the midst of the shouting, laughing, howling throng.
"Heavens!" he thought. "I hope that neither Inza, nor Elsie, nor any of my friends, saw that from the dormitory windows!"
Even in the midst of his rage against Pike, Badger was cut to the quick by this thought, for he was filled with a foolish pride.
"I"ll thump Pike a few extra for that!" he snarled, as he got out of the crowd. His pulse was at fever-heat, and his face as hot as flame. He did not feel the bruises and blows which had been showered on him.
"I reckon I"ll not get close to him again for a week!" he grumbled. "Why couldn"t those ruffians attend to their own affairs and let me attend to mine? I allow that it was none of their business whatever! This is my trail, and I wasn"t interfering none with their range. Confound the luck! But when I do meet him I"ll make him pay for it!"
But the Westerner was mistaken in one portion of his surmise. He met Pike, or rather ran against him, at the first building he turned.
Donald had ventured back to see what had happened to his pursuer, and was looking at the shouting tumult in the campus, and did not observe Badger, who came along the walk close to the wall. The Kansan recognized Pike first, and leaped at him with a snarl like that of an enraged panther, and as he leaped he struck a blinding blow.
It knocked Donald backward, but it did not fall fairly enough to inflict serious injury. The next moment Badger was on him, and had him by the throat.
"By heavens! I"ve a notion to kill you right here!" he hissed, his fingers closing on Pike"s throat.
"Don"t!" Pike pleaded, gasping out the appeal.
"You told Fairfax Lee that I was drunk when I went on the _Crested Foam_. You scoundrel! You ruffian! You sneaking coyote!"
His fingers tightened with every exclamation.
"Don"t kill me!" Pike begged wheezingly. "I"ll go to him and take it all back!"
"Then you did tell him? I allow I ought to kick you clean out of your hide, you onery varmint!"
There was no answer, and Donald Pike, apparently ceasing to breathe, fell back as limp as a rag.
A bit of reason began to glimmer into the brain of the Westerner. Though he had a.s.serted that he would almost kill Pike, he did not really intend to do anything of the kind. He merely meant to inflict a punishment which should be in a measure commensurate with the wrong which Pike had committed against him. But the Kansan"s great rage, combined with his humiliating experience in the campus, which had still further inflamed him, had driven him to more than ordinary recklessness. He had been fairly insane. The fire began to go out of Badger"s eyes when Pike did not stir and seemed not to breathe.
"I reckon I squeezed a bit too hard!" Badger muttered, regarding the unconscious youth with some degree of anxiety. "Well, I was wild enough to choke his heart out!"
He stooped over Pike and saw the livid finger-marks on the throat. Still Pike did not stir, and the Westerner"s anxiety correspondingly grew. He put a hand on Pike"s left breast, and failed to locate the heart-beats.
At last, after an alarming interval, Pike gasped, to Badger"s intense relief.
"I allow I"d better let it go at this," he reflected. "I don"t want to kill the skunk, though if any man whatever deserved to be murdered, he does. But I don"t want anything of that kind against me. As Merry has told me, I"ve got an awful temper when it gets started. I shall have to watch myself against that, same as against red-eye!"
Pike gasped again, and then his breathing came at increasingly frequent intervals. The students were wildly howling in and around the campus, but Badger scarcely heard them. He was thinking only of Pike.
"This may keep him in his room a few days," he muttered.
"If it does no more than that, I don"t care. He deserved that much. But he"s got to keep clear of me, or I can"t be responsible for the consequences. I"ll tell him so as soon as he comes to himself and knows what has happened."
CHAPTER XIX.
A CRUSHING BLOW.