Chapter 18

FUN IN THE CAMPUS.

Under an elm in front of Durfee some students were gathering "fruit." They began by collecting it from members of the Chickering set. Of all the men in the college, the Chickering set were the most unpopular with their fellow students. Their silliness and superciliousness were so unbounded as to be disgusting to all sensible men. From the immaculate Rupert, with his patent-leather shoes and shining tile, down to the cowardly little lisper, Lew Veazie, they were alike detested. Hence it came about that when Rupert Chickering appeared under the famous "fruit" tree wearing a more than ordinarily gorgeous shirt, the cry of "Fruit!" was immediately raised.

Rupert uttered an exclamation of dismay and turned to run. He had heard that cry before. But he only hastened what he sought to evade. A foot outstretched for the purpose tripped him, and brought him sprawling to the ground. Before he could rise, one of the laughing students was upon him.

"See here!" he exclaimed, "I'll have you know that I will not submit to any such outrage! I know you, and I shall report you to the faculty!"

He tried to fight off the youth who held him, but a dozen other men rushed to this youth's assistance. Then a wild-eyed fellow produced a shining pocket-knife and slowly and exasperatingly opened its sharpest blade.

"Help!" Rupert squawked.

The knife was flourished in the air, and the tag on the lower end of Rupert's shirt-bosom was deftly amputated.

"Fruit!" was again shouted, and a dash was made for Gene Skelding, who, as usual, wore a rainbow shirt that outshone Joseph's "coat of many colors."

"Help!" Skelding howled.

But a score of hands outstretched to grasp him, and he, too, went down, screeching lustily. Another knife flashed and another shirt-tag was neatly severed.

Lew Veazie, who had been with Rupert and Gene, started to run, deeming discretion the better part of valor. But he took only a step when he, too, went down. And again an amputating knife did its work. As soon as a shirt-tag was cut off, the amputator, flourishing it on the blade of his knife, like an Indian flaunting a scalp-lock, made a dash for the elm, where it was pinned up as a trophy.

Then it was found that a "taste" for shirt-tags had been created by this exciting bit of experience, and other men, who had been loudly laughing and cheering over the discomfiture of Chickering and his inane friends, found themselves suddenly on the ground, with wicked-looking knives flashing before their eyes, and their shirts being mutilated by the pressure of keen knife-blades.

In the midst of this "fun," Buck Badger arrived on the campus from his stolen interview with Winnie Lee. Though his face wore a perplexed expression, it had lost its gloom. There might be trouble for him in the future, but Winnie's words had for the present driven the blackest of the shadows out of his heart. The desire uppermost in his mind just then was to meet and whip Donald Pike. He had sworn to himself that he would do that the first thing, and he meant to keep the oath.

Nevertheless, reaching the elms of the campus at this exciting moment, he was willing to cease temporarily his search for Pike and view the fruit-gathering. It would be rare sport, provided, of course, that his own shirt was not forced to yield "fruit."

To prevent this, and that he might see better, he grasped a low-hanging limb and swung up into one of the elms.

"Fruit!" was being shouted everywhere, and the indications were that scores of trophies would adorn the old elm the next morning, if some stop was not put to the thing by the college authorities, which was not likely. "Society week" is expected to be noisy, and things are winked at which on ordinary occasions would bring reprimands.

Another person had invaded the branches of the elm but a minute before the ascent of the Westerner. That other person was Donald Pike, who looked down now on the man he felt instinctively to be his mortal foe with a little shiver of dread. More than once Pike had regretted making that revelation to Fairfax Lee, for the chances that discovery would come and that Badger would fiercely summon him to answer, seemed very great, when he gave himself time to reflect. And he feared Badger.

All might have gone well on this evening with Pike, however, if his fear of discovery had not made him try to climb farther up the tree. The Kansan heard the low scraping sound, in spite of the din in the campus, and glanced upward, and when he did so he saw and recognized the man he was looking for. A calcium-light was sending its rays through the higher branches, and Pike's white, scared face was as plainly revealed to Badger as if the two were facing each other in a lighted room.

The hate which Badger had been nursing swelled to the point of bursting. He forgot the search for "fruit," in which he had been interested, seeing only the enemy whom he had sworn to whip as soon as they met.

As yet they had not met; but Badger, blinded by his intense anger, decided that the meeting should come without delay, even if the place was a tree-top; and he began to climb up the trunk and boughs of the tree toward Donald. Pike looked about in a despairing way. The distance to the ground seemed dishearteningly great. His first impulse, therefore, was to climb still higher, and this he began to do.

But, recollecting the tenacity of Badger's purpose in whatever the Kansan was engaged, he felt sure that he would be pursued into the very top of the tree and shaken to the ground. Therefore, he hastily crawled out over a horizontal limb, whose drooping ends dipped toward the earth. If driven to the worst, he felt that he could drop from one of those drooping ends without serious injury.

With a howl of rage, Badger climbed on after the frightened youth, and pursued him out on the horizontal limb.

But there were to be other actors in this little overhead drama. A couple of cats, chancing to be in the campus when the students invaded it, had run up this identical elm, and had crouched in wild-eyed fear on that same bough, watching the wild orgies of the students. They had probably been there for a considerable period, not daring to descend while that howling, dancing mob held the grounds. Perhaps they even fancied that those yells and ear-splitting squeals were directed against them. They must have thought so when Don Pike crawled out on the limb toward them, followed by Buck Badger.

The cats looked about, meowing anxiously. There was no other bough near which they could gain by a leap. And as Pike, looking back and gasping with fright, crawled straight on toward them, the cat that was farthest out on the end of the limb launched itself through the air in a desperate leap for the ground.

There was no cleared space in which it could alight, and it struck Bink Stubbs on the top of the head, jamming his hat down over his eyes and hurling him backward.

"Dog my cuc-cuc-cuc-cats!" stuttered Joe Gamp, looking up in open-mouthed wonder.

"The sky is raining cats!" whooped Danny.

"Somebody amputate its tail!" yelled a student.

"Cut off its shirt-tab!" shouted another.

Bink and Danny, Gamp and all the others of Merriwell's friends who chanced to be grouped there, had already suffered the amputation of their shirt-tabs, and having no further fear on that point, were hilariously anxious that not a shirt-tab should be worn by a Yale man that night. The "fruit" on the tree at Durfee was increasing in quantity and variety at a prodigious rate.

"A dollar apiece for its ears!" some one else screeched.

But the cat was too agile for the hands that were reached out to stop its flight. It whisked under the legs of the students and was out and away like a shot.

"Been up there watching the performance!" some one sung out.

"Gug-gug-goshfry! There's a man up there!" Joe Gamp howled, as his eyes fell on Donald Pike. "It will be raining mum-mum-men, as well as cuc-cuc-cuc-cats, next thing! Ahaw! ahaw! ahaw!"

As his lips flew open to their widest extent to emit this roar, the other cat sailed downward out of the tree and struck him squarely in the mouth. He tumbled backward with a roar, which, however, was not at all hilarious, and began to dig sputteringly at his tongue and lips, which were liberally coated with cat hair.

"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 asserted.

"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 assailants 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 asserted 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."