CHAPTER XV

IN THE “CORRAL”

While the snow kept piling itself up and the Midyears were still racking fellows’ brains, the call came for candidates for the relay team to run against Robinson at the Boston indoor meeting. And simultaneously the outdoor track was shoveled free of snow and fellows whose ambitions pointed toward the winning of pewter mugs trotted out in the afternoons, when the mercury was down to zero, and sped around the track with their bare legs looking very pink and cold. Kernahan had induced Allan to enter for both the mile and the two mile, and the latter was one of the most indefatigable of those who daily risked death by freezing.

He was glad to be able to stretch his legs again, was Allan. He had begun to wonder whether the muscles hadn’t forgotten how to work. He had his first mile trial a week after the beginning of practise and a fortnight before the date of the meeting.

The result wasn’t especially satisfactory; 4:56 was not anywhere near record time for that track, while it was more than twenty seconds slower than what it must be to give him a chance at winning a place. But Kernahan seemed in nowise discouraged. Instead, he told Allan he had done well enough for a starter, and promised to give him a trial at the two miles a week later.

Meanwhile the relay candidates were tested and sifted, the candidates for the field events practised daily in the gymnasium, and athletic activity seized upon the college. The baseball cage resounded with the thump of the balls and the cries of the players, the rowing-room gave forth strange sounds of an afternoon, and the basket-ball team, undisputed lords of the gymnasium floor for two months, were hustled into a corner and given scant attention.

And yet, in spite of all these hints, Winter was strangely dense. Instead of folding up his blanket of snow and taking himself off, he showed no sign of contemplated departure, but on the contrary tightened his icy grip on the world, and almost every day sent a new snow-storm to emphasize the fact that he still reigned.

Afternoon practise on the track took place in every sort of weather. Sometimes it snowed so hard that the runners, as they swept around the far end of the track, were only indistinct blurs in the white mist. Sometimes the track was sheeted with a rough skim of ice, through which the men’s spikes broke imperfectly, and on such days the spills were numerous and the turns were things to be carefully negotiated. Sometimes the sun shone and the wind blew, straight and cold, out of the northeast; and such times were best, deluding one for a while, as they did, into thinking that winter’s sway was drawing to its end. But they were deceitful moments, and one could fancy old Winter shaking his lean sides with laughter as he drew the clouds together again and emptied a new shower of flakes upon the bleak world.

But matters progressed. The relay team of six runners was formed, the sprinters and distance men worked themselves into condition, and the hurdlers, jumpers, vaulters, and weight men limbered up their muscles.

A week before the meeting Allan was given a speed trial for the two miles. The track was in fairly good condition, and Rindgely and Thatcher made the pace. With Allan was another two-mile candidate, named Conroy. Allan took the lead at the start and held it for the first half mile. Rindgely went in then and made the pace for the next three-quarters, and then gave place to Thatcher, a half-miler. Conroy was a lap behind at the half distance, and at the finish was entirely out of it. Allan found his sprinting ability sorely tried in the last two laps when Thatcher let himself out and Allan tried to keep up with him. But he finished fairly strong, and Kernahan slipped his watch into his pocket with a nod of approval.

“Ten, one and an eighth,” he said.

But that seemed slow time to Allan, who had entertained visions of doing the distance in something like 9:50, and he said so to Billy.

“Well, that’s good enough to give you a chance of a place,” he answered. “You’ve got three months yet before the dual meet, and Robinson’s best two-miler could only do--9:46, I think it was. You’ll get some experience at the Boston meet, if you don’t bring home a mug, and experience is what you need. You’ll have to get into your pace sooner down there or you’ll get crowded off the track. You try half a dozen starts Monday and try getting your pace in the first six or eight strides. You’d better run along now, and don’t be scarey of the cold water, my boy.”

During that next week the class hockey championship was decided. The freshmen won handily from the sophomores by the score of seven goals to three in the first of the contests, and to Pete went the credit for four of the seven goals. He played magnificently.

To be sure, as has been said already, he knew little of the science of the game, but what he lacked there he made up in vigor and enthusiasm. Thrice he was put off the ice for short periods, but this only caused him to work harder when he was allowed to re-enter the game. In the second half--the first period having ended with the score three to four in favor of ’07--he was played up into the forward line, and when he secured the puck and once got away with it, it was his until he had shot at the sophomores’ goal. If Pete had been able to shoot as well as he skated and dodged the enemy, the score would have been overwhelming.

But Pete’s Waterloo came when the deciding game was contested with ’04. Pete’s playing was just as hard and fast as before, but the seniors had two or three players who, in the language of Tommy, “made rings around him.” Every time Pete tried one of his sensational rushes, some one or other of the discourteous enemy, carefully avoiding his body, stole the puck from under his nose. Pete endured it for a while untroubled, then he began to break hockeys. But the supply seemed unlimited, and the remedy wasn’t successful. Defeat fell to ’07’s share.

They tried to tease Pete on the afternoon’s performance that evening, but Pete was invulnerable to gibes. The four had congregated in the “corral” and were hugging the stove closely, Pete sitting astride the stock saddle which, for want of a chair, he had lugged from its corner.

“Must have cost you something for sticks,” Tommy suggested.

“Must have cost the other fellows something,” laughed Hal. “I saw Rindgely lose three. You were a destructive chap, Pete.”

“Rindgely was plumb crazy,” answered Pete, with a broad smile. “Every time he got a new stick, I bust it for him. I don’t just know whether that’s good hockey, but I know it worked mighty well. But Rindgely’s got it in for me, all right.”

“He seems to have it in for me too,” said Allan, thoughtfully. “The other day he didn’t want to make pace for me when I tried the two miles, and acted nasty as you like afterward in the locker house.”

“He’s a queer customer,” said Tommy. “A pretty good fellow to keep away from. I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong with him, you know, but he’s awfully uncertain. You never can tell how he’s going to take a thing. Just after recess I met him one day, and asked him if he’d taken in the St. Thomas Club Indoor Meet--he lives in Brooklyn, you know--and he nearly took my head off; said he wasn’t home Christmas, and implied that it was none of my business. I told him I didn’t care a rap where he was.”

“That’s right, Tommy; don’t you let them monkey with you,” laughed Allan.

“Well, what did he want to jump on me for?” asked Tommy, warmly. “I didn’t care whether he went to the old meet or not; I just wanted to be polite. The reason I mentioned the meet was that he’d told about going the year before while he was at home, and I just happened to remember seeing something about it before Christmas. It’s an open meeting, you know, and they have a big card--weights, team races, boxing, and all sorts of stunts.”

“What is he, a miler?” asked Hal.

Tommy nodded.

“Guess that explains his cutting up with you, Allan; you beat him in the fall, didn’t you?”

“Yes, with a good big handicap.”

“Well, he’s afraid you’re going to cut him out of a place in the dual meet.”

“There’s no good reason why he should think so. He can beat me, I’m pretty sure. Besides, if Billy Kernahan has his way, I’ll be down only for the two miles at the dual.”

“We’re going to have a dandy article on the indoor meeting this week,” said Tommy.

“Wrote it yourself, eh?” suggested Hal.

“I suppose it will be like last year’s, though,” Tommy continued, ruefully. “We had two columns, with everything figured out finely: who was going to do what, and which fellows would win places. And then it came out all wrong.”

“Say, Thomas,” said Pete, when the laughter had subsided, “I don’t want to hurry you, but I’m getting the powerful hungers.”

“Yes, Tommy, how about that dinner at the Elm Tree?” chimed in Hal.

“He’s making money to pay for it,” said Allan.

“No, I’m not,” answered Tommy, sadly. “That’s the trouble. You’ll have to wait a bit, Pete; I’m dead broke, honest Injun!”

“All right; just so long as I get that feed. Better not put it off too long, though; I’m nicely conditioned, you know, since the Midyears, and there’s no telling what may happen to me.”

“That’s so,” Allan said. “A fellow that’s been drowned, suspended, and put on probation, all in two short months, is a pretty slippery customer.”

“Say, Allan,” said Tommy, reminiscently, “do you remember the night we waited up here for that duffer to come home?”

“The night he was drowned?” asked Allan. “Never’ll forget it. The way the wind howled and cut up was a caution; made me think of graveyards and--and corpses.”

“Me, too,” said Tommy. “I went back to the room and dreamed of Pete floating in my bath-tub, with his old smelly pipe in his mouth and his face all white and horrid. Every time he puffed on the pipe he winked his eye at me, and I woke up yelling like a good one.” Tommy arose from his seat and stood gazing into the flames. “It was a beast of a dream.”

“Must have been,” Hal responded, sympathetically. Pete puffed silently at the afore-mentioned pipe and grinned heartlessly. Tommy glanced over at him and commenced an aimless ramble about the room.

“I said then,” he went on, “that if Pete-- Say, it’s getting beastly hot in here. Let’s have the door open.”

In spite of the protests, he opened the portal into the narrow hallway, and continued his rambling and his talk.

“I made up my mind then that if Pete wasn’t drowned, that if I ever saw his dear, foolish, homely face again, I’d--I’d----”

“Be a better man,” Hal suggested.

“Learn to write English,” offered Allan.

“Pay your debts,” muttered Pete over his pipe-stem.

“_I’d take a fall out of him!_” concluded Tommy, savagely. At the same instant he put a hand under Pete’s chin, tipped him heels over head backward onto the floor, smothered his outcries by banging the saddle down over his face, punched him twice in the ribs--and flew! His forethought in opening the door saved him. As he dived through he slammed it behind him in Pete’s face, and the others heard four wild leaps on the staircase. Then all was still save for Pete’s chuckles. But stay! What sound was that from beneath the window; what doleful wailings broke upon the night air? They hearkened.

“Cowardy, cowardy, cowardy cat!” shrilled Tommy. “Dare you to come down, Pete Burley!”

Pete threw up a front window. There was a sound of hasty footfalls and an exclamation as Tommy collided with an ash-barrel. Then from far up the street came a last defiant challenge: “_O Fresh!_”