Chapter 12

"'Say, coon, I done expected a bunch of th' boys to feed with me, but they hain't showed up. Me an' th' worm will tackle a pair of them red jaspers, an' you fellers put the other ten where they cain't git away till th' boys comes.'

"Then, not lettin' on to th' city chaps settin' an' grinnin' all round me that I wa'n't raised in th' same lot with lobsters, I takes my knife an' fork an' lites in to go to eatin', when I'll just be eternally hanged if I didn't nigh go crazy to find them critturs was jest nachally _all_ hoofs an' horns--nairy a place on 'em from end to end airy human's jaws could ever git to feed on.

"An' I was about to jerk my gun an' shoot one apart to find out what his insides was like, when a feller settin' next showed me how to knock th' horns off an' git at th' meat proper.

"Then me an' th' worm got busy good an' plenty, for th' meat was sweeter an' tenderer even than 'possum.

"Before we got done we shore chambered five of them animiles, an' when I paid th' bill an' sashayed out, it was with _re_grets I didn't have my war sack handy to pack off th' rest in.

"Come evenin', I moseyed up to Mr. Man's pen an' axed him what was th' finest, highest-priced show in town, an' he told me she was to a the-_a_-ter called th' Op'ra.

"So out I goes, an' ropes another kid an' gits him to steer me to her.

"Arrived to th' the-_a_-ter, I prances up to th' ticket-wagon an' says, sorta reckless:

"'Pardner, jest hand me out a dociment for th' best place to set in you got; price is no object. It's th' _best_ in your show for Stonewall,' privately allowin' to myself he might stick me up for as much as a dollar and a half.

"At that he whispers to me. 'Twenty-five dollars,' jest as easy an' nat'rel, without turnin' a hair or appearin' any more excited than Dunc. Blackburn sticking up a stage-coach.

"Twenty-fi-five plunks to git to set a hour or so to see a little ol' fool play-actin'! I'll just be horn-swiggled if that wa'n't goin' some for Stonewall! Nigh three weeks' wages to git to 'ante an' come in,' an' no tellin' what raises he'd have to stand after drawin' cards!

"However, allowin' I'd take a chance, I skinned off five fives from my little ol' bank-roll and passes 'em over to Mr. Holdup, an' then he picks up an' shuffles a deck of little cards an' deals me off six of them.

"Course I didn't know whatever his game was, makin' me a dead foul deal deliberate thataway, but knowin' she spelled trouble, I shoves one of th' cards back to him an' says:

"'Mr. Holdup, I don't know jest what liberties a gentleman is allowed to take with a deck back here, but out West whar I come from a feller caught in a pot with more'n five cards in his hand is generally buried th' next day, an' bein' as all his business in this world ain't quite settled yet, five cards will do your Uncle Stonewall.'

"Couldn't make out anyway what he give me all them dociments for, unless one o' th' coons down to th' hotel had tipped him off my bunch of lobster-eaters was liable to drop in an' want to set with me.

"Wall, then I dropped into th' stream o' folks flowin' in thro' th' door, all jammin' an' crowdin' like a bunch of wild steers, an' drifted inside.

"Was you ever to that Op'ra The-_a_-ter, ol' man? By cripes! but she was shore a honey-cooler for big! Honest, th' main corral would hold a full trail herd of three thousand head easy.

"Wall, when I gits in, a young feller in more soldier-buttons axes to see my cards, an' then he steers me down thro' a narrow chute runnin' along one side of th' big corral to a little close-pen, with a low fence in front, right down to one end of where they was play-actin', an' right atop of th' band.

"Dead opposite was a high stack of little pens like mine, all full of folks--same, I reckon, above me--an' then back further three or four big pens, one above the other, over where you come in.

"An' mebbe so them pens wa'n't packed none! Don't believe thar was a empty corner anywhere except mine. Jest packed everywhere with men and women.

"Th' men all looked alike, an' most of th' women Stonewall could a liked.

"Th' men all had on black clothes, with bald-faced shirts to match their bald heads.

"Th' women--wall, the feller that couldn't get suited in that bunch needn't wear out no leather huntin' round outside. An' thar was a lot of them honey-coolers settin' close round me that kept lookin' up my way an' laughin' so sorta friendly like that it shore got to be real sociable.

"Wall, sir, that band was playin' to beat any band _you_ ever heard--horns an' fiddles an' drums; horns that worked like a accordeon, pullin' in an' out; ol' mossback he-fiddles that must a been more'n a hundred years old to git to grow so big; drums with bellies big an' round as your mammy's soap kettle; an' th' boss music-maker on a perch in th' middle of th' bunch, shakin' a little _carajo_ pole to beat the brains out any of th' outfit that wa'n't workin' to suit him.

"Some of th' tunes was sweet an' slow enough so you could follow 'em afoot, but most of 'em was so fast a feller'd need to be runnin' 'em on his top-cutting horse to git close enough to tell if they was real music or jest a hullabaloo big noise.

"But what s'rprised me most, ol' man, was to find that that thar the-a-ter was built up round one of the roughest, rockiest, wildest pieces of country I ever saw outside th' Black Hills, it layin' in th' end whar they was play-actin'. It shore looked like a side cañon up nigh th' head-waters of Rapid Creek, big boulders, an' pines, an' cliffs, an' a fall carryin' as much water as Deadman Creek.

"An' weather! Say, that little ol' the-_a_-ter cañon could put up a worse storm than you or me ever see in the Rockies. She was thunderin' and lightenin' till I was dead sure we was all in for a water-spout, an' I reckon one must a come after I left.

"I always thought the-_a_-ters was built to be funny in, but that one was jest nachally full o' hell's own grief as long as I got to stay in her. Nothin' doin' but sufferin' an' murderin' meanness.

"Plumb alone, an' lost in th' cañon, I reckon, was a pore little gal, 'bout sixteen year old, leanin' on a stump close up to whar I was settin', an' sobbin' fit to kill herself. She had 'bout next to nothin' on, an' was that ga'nted up an' lean 'peared like she was nigh starved to death.

"An' thar she hung an' cried an' cried till it 'peared to me some o' th' women folks ought to a gone to her; but they-all never noticed none, an' went right on gassin' with their fellers.

"Finally, when she got so weak I thought she was goin' to drop, out from behind a boulder slips a great big feller--all hair an' whiskers but his laigs, for he had on nothin' but a fur huntin'-shirt comin' half-way to his knees--an' in his hand he carries a long _bilduque_ skelping-knife.

"'Fore I realized he meant trouble, he makes a jump an' grabs th' gal by th' shoulder an' shakes her scandalous, an' while he's shakin' he's sorta half-talkin' an' half-singin' to her in some kind of talk so near like Spanish I thought I could ketch some of it.

"By cripes! but that feller was hot good an' plenty over something he claimed she'd did.

"An' when, half-sobbin' an' singin', she 'peared to be tellin' him she hadn't, an' to go off an' let her alone, he shook an' abused her more'n ever, till it struck me it was about time for neighborin' men folks to hop in an' take a hand, for it was plumb plain she was a pore, sweet-faced, innercent little crittur that couldn't done no harm to a hummin' bird.

"'Bout that time, Mr. Hairyman he hops back a step or two, stands an' scowls an' grits his teeth at th' gal for a minute, an' then he raises his knife, sorta crouches for a jump, an' sings out, near as I could make it out:

"'_Maudite! Folle! Folle! Say Fini!_'

"But before he could lite on her with his knife, I hopped out of my close-pen into the cañon, jammed my .45 in his ear, an' observes:

"'Mr. Hairyman, you're a liar, an' it's Stonewall Kip, of Concho, tellin' you!'

"'Little _Maudy_ thar _ain't_ full, an' she don't have to _say_ airy a thing she don't want to; an' if you don't pull your freight sudden for th' brush, I'll shore shoot six different kinds of meanness outen your low-down murderin' carcass!'

"Th' way his whiskers skipped over boulders makin' his getaway was some active, while th' pore little gal she jest drops off in a dead faint an' lays thar till some folks comes down the gulch an' carries her off.

"Then I takes th' kink outen th' hammer of my gun, sticks her in my waist-band, an' climbs back an' gits my hat--havin' had more'n enough of such blasted Op'ra The-_a_-ters.

"An' while I was driftin' through the chute toward the main gate of th' big pen, to git out, there was th' blamedest cheerin', yellin', an' hand-clappin' you ever heard away from a stump-speakin', but whatever she was all about Stonewall didn't stop to ax."

FOOTNOTE:

[J] Reprinted by special permission from "Reminiscences of a Ranchman." Copyright, 1910, by George H. Doran Company.

XI.--The Lie[K]

_By Hermann Hagedorn_

"DID you prepare this lesson, Burton?"

Burton, big, athletic, handsome as a movie hero--hesitated a second before he answered. He was busy picking up a pad which lay under his seat.

He deposited the pad on the wide armrest and looked up inquiringly as though he had not fully comprehended the question. Mr. Beaver, the algebra teacher, was smiling his friendly and slightly irritating smile.

"I asked you, Burton," he repeated gently, "whether you had prepared. Did you?"

"Yes, sir," answered Burton.

"Thank you," said Mr. Beaver. He opened a certain terrifying little black book and made a dot in the lower left-hand corner of a certain square opposite the name of Burton. "Perhaps," he added, "you had better go over it again," and smiled the same smile, which would have been sardonic but for the mildness of his tone.

Burton sank glumly back in his seat.

Mr. Beaver regarded his little book studiously for a moment. Then he looked up. The smile was gone. The alert face, adequately adorned by a reddish beard fading into gray, was now solicitous.

"Harrington," he said.

A Fourth Former in the middle row stood up. He was slight and rather pallid, and it was evident that he should begin shaving without further delay, for there was already a shadow of fuzz on his cheeks and chin that made him look unwashed and rather weak. His mother, who was vain, had insisted that he postpone shaving. She could not bear to think that she was the mother of a son who was almost a man, she always said. It made her feel so old.

Harrington, sallow and unshorn, was not an inspiring sight. Mr. Beaver evidently thought so. His eyes were unquestionably serious.

"Harrington," he said, "it seems that you are another of our weak brethren this morning. Did you prepare your lesson?"

Again, the second's hesitation. Harrington turned a shade paler, if possible. Then, with an effort, he spoke.

"No, sir."

"I was afraid not," said Mr. Beaver making another cryptic dot. Then he smiled. Harrington writhed and the rest of the class, except Burton, laughed. "Why not?"

"I--I was ill."

Mr. Beaver was at once sympathetic, though serious. "Did you report to Dr. Stevens?"

"No, sir."

"Why not?"

"I knew he had already gone."

"You were ill after ten o'clock?"

"Yes, sir."

Again Mr. Beaver smiled. "But surely you might have done your algebra before ten o'clock?"

"I was--busy, sir."

"With other lessons?"

Harrington hesitated.

"With other lessons?" Mr. Beaver repeated.

"No, sir."

"Well?"

"I had a spread."

There was a roar from the other boys.

"Quiet!" said Mr. Beaver. "Now, Harrington, as I understand the situation," he continued mildly, "you failed to prepare your lesson because you were ill in consequence of a spread which it was against the rules to indulge in. Is that it?"

"Y--yes, sir."

"Professor is very much opposed to--illicit spreads, as you know"--("Professor" was the Headmaster)--"I am afraid this will mean about thirty demerits, therefore. You have other demerits?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many?"

"Twenty."

Mr. Beaver closed his little book and stood a moment by his desk looking quietly over at Harrington. His face was serious, but even his victim could not help feeling that there was a certain affectionate sympathy behind the quiet sternness.

"Look out, Harrington," he said at last with a return of that curious smile of his. "Broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and the milestones are always spreads--of one sort or another. You may sit down."

The boy sat down and the work of the class proceeded. Two boys, for widely divergent reasons, heard the other boys go through their paces as though it were all a bad dream of wriggling _x_'s and _y_'s like snakes darting in and out of the placid waters of Mr. Beaver's endless questioning.

The bell clanged at last, indicating the end of the period. Three or four boys went forward to confer with Mr. Beaver about certain vexing algebraic problems. Needless to say, neither Burton nor Harrington was among these. They drifted out into the cloister with the rest of the class, having certain problems of their own, not algebraic. One or two boys addressed Burton and were rebuffed with a curt word, which was unusual, as Burton was almost painstakingly friendly to everybody.

"Say!" whispered one to the other, "Burton's got a grouch on. He's sour at Beaver, I guess."

"Beaver is awfully fresh sometimes. After all, Bill Burton's captain of the football team."

"He's a good deal more important to the school than Beaver'll ever be."

"That's no joke either."

The two boys parted. Neither ventured to intrude again upon Burton's sacred resentment. For Burton was a very great man at The Towers.

No one spoke to Harrington. No one cared whether he had a grouch or not. For Harrington was a new boy who had as yet failed to "fit in." He was emphatically not an athlete. But he was not a "sissy" either. He was quite as emphatically not a student nor a literary light; but he was as quick as a jack rabbit in his physics "lab" work and not to be scorned as a guesser in reading Cæsar at sight. He was not openly religious--which kept him out of the Y. M. C. A. But, on the other hand, in a quiet way, he deeply loved the out of doors, and that love, like all love, is a kind of worship of God. Harrington was unquestionably "hard to place." The boys as well as the masters, when they spoke about him at all, agreed on that. The only pigeon-hole into which he seemed to fit was the pigeon-hole of the "Queer Dicks." His first name happened to be Richard, which helped to settle the classification.

Burton passed through the West Wing, being a Sixth Former, with a room on the top floor of the New Building, and, chewing his lips, crossed the wide level lawn--with its strip of bright green grass that showed where the hot water pipes ran--and disappeared through a door in the western end.

Harrington did not go to his room. Young men who get demerits were not privileged at The Towers to study in their own rooms. They spent periods not occupied with recitations in the school room, a long room containing some two hundred desks, with a raised platform and an organ at the southern end; the place had once been used as the school chapel and was still used for the morning song-service which enlivened the daily grind. Plaster busts of the great of all ages, from Homer to Longfellow, peered from their plaster brackets. There was a verse also on the southern walls:

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man: When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The Youth replies, I can.

Dick Harrington didn't like that verse. In fact, he thought it was rot. He disliked even more the black tablets on the opposite wall containing in gilt letters at least four inches high the names of the exemplary youths who in their time had been Heads of School. And in this place, surrounded by Models of Good Conduct, he was supposed to study four, five and sometimes six hours a day! Two hundred bent forms and Mr. Watrous, the day's jail-keeper, wandering aimlessly about, pretending not to be the spy that he was! Altogether, the schoolroom was a horror.

Harrington bent over his desk like the rest and pretended to study French. But he did not study. He did a little mathematical problem instead. Twenty demerits and thirty demerits made fifty demerits. And fifty demerits meant probation, and probation meant that he could not go to Chancellor's Hill to see the big game to-morrow afternoon. That was a tragedy. All the autumn the game with Chancellor's Hill had been held before him by the old boys as the last word in thrills; for a week there had been talk of nothing else. You would have thought that the final whistle of that game was going to bring the heavens crashing down on creation. No one seemed to be planning anything beyond that Saturday afternoon. The general notion seemed to be that if The Towers won, the rapture of that victory would make any trial thereafter bearable; and if The Towers lost--well, torture and death would, in comparison, be sweet.

And now, he, Dick Harrington, who loved thrills as much as any man, was not to see the game. For days his nerves had been at a sharp tension of anticipation. Now suddenly they relaxed, leaving him weak and despairing. Life had lost its meaning. Of course, the game would be held anyway, and there would be the excitement of getting the telegraphic reports at the end of the periods; but the real thrills would all be at Chancellor's Hill; and he would be at The Towers.

He luxuriated in misery; he reveled in despair. Just because of a bit of a spread with Sammy Oakes and Chet Burrowes, just because of one unprepared lesson! Of course there had been other spreads before this fatal one; and of course there had been one or two unprepared lessons also--therefore the original twenty demerits. But why ruin a boy's happiness forever because of a missed recitation?

Dick Harrington was exceedingly sorry for himself.

His indignation was violent while it lasted but it did not last long, for there was sharp regret of another sort hovering all the while at the rim of his consciousness. It was a regret not so pleasant to indulge as the other. He had been made the butt--the laughing stock--of the algebra class. He tingled and flushed at the memory of it. Bill Burton had also flunked his lesson; but Burton had been able to say that he had at least prepared it, and the whole proceeding had been dignified and everybody loved and admired Burton all the more because with all his greatness he was just like other boys about lessons. But he, Dick Harrington, had been disgraced. And in the presence of William Burton!

That, after all, was the hardest thing to swallow. That was worse than missing the game with Chancellor's Hill. For Dick Harrington worshiped Bill Burton, because he was physically and socially everything that Dick never could hope to be. He was the school's crack athlete, the president of the Sixth Form, the chairman of the Student Council, the president of the Y. M. C. A. He was the One Great Hero of the boys, and the Headmaster himself consulted him whenever he had a knotty problem of boy-nature to solve. Before Dick had been at school a week, he knew that he would rather find favor with "Colonel" Burton than see his name in gold letters in the schoolroom, or, for that matter, on the Common Room tablets, where the athletic records are kept. "The Colonel" was rather used to adoration, and, being human, liked it. But he was no more attentive to this particular adorer than to any one else, which intensified Dick Harrington's "case."

* * * * *

Dick did not study much French on that morning in late October. For suddenly a new, insidious question jumped into the forefront of his thoughts: Why had he blurted out everything to Mr. Beaver? _Why hadn't he just lied?_

That question thrust at the very roots of life, and Dick Harrington knew it. He went cold and hot by turns. Somehow it had never occurred to him to lie. He did not know why. It was possibly because his father was such a shining figure of truthfulness personified. He remembered something he had overheard his mother say to his father a long time ago--"I never realized until I married you that it is really awful to lie."

Was it really so awful? A lie in time certainly simplified life a lot. And as long as it did not hurt anybody else--what was really the difference? A goody-goody Sunday-school teacher had told him, when he was five, that the lightning would smite him if he told a lie. Whereupon he had told a lie deliberately during the course of the next thunderstorm to test Mr. Goody-Goody's veracity, and proved _him_ a liar, first thing.

Staring at French irregular verbs, Dick clenched his hands, trying to figure it all out. Suddenly, forgetting where he was, he pounded the desk-top with his left fist. Then he gave a yowl which rang through the schoolroom, providing exhilarating diversion to two hundred lifted heads. For in his cogitations his right hand had clutched the edge of the desk on which the top closed.

He explained the accident to Mr. Watrous, who proved skeptical, though the Spy was forced to admit that the hand looked red enough to hurt.

The schoolroom settled again into quiet. The excitement, from start to finish, had covered about ninety seconds. No one suspected that the unshaven, disheveled boy was, in that studious, quiet place, having his first great wrestle with life.

* * * * *

The football team, accompanied by the coaches, the Headmaster Brewster and his wife, a half-dozen masters, and the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Forms almost in a body, in auto-hacks and horse-hacks, on foot and by trolley, departed for the railroad station and Chancellor's Hill next morning at eight, to the sound of cheers.

Dick Harrington stood in the great Archway with the Lower School and a handful of other boys, like himself on probation (or just "broke"), cheering the school, the team, "The Colonel," the manager, the school, the team, and again and again "The Colonel," until the last boy was out of sight. The team was hopeful of victory; the school was confident of it. But "The Colonel's" face was curiously grave. He smiled and joked; now and then he tossed some gay piece of derision into the crowd of woe-begone stay-at-homes. But the gravity remained in the eyes all the while. Harrington saw it, and it occurred to him that it was natural that the Captain of The Towers football team should feel the weight of a great responsibility; he was quite sure that "Colonel" Burton had never seemed to him so heroic as to-day. There was no question about it. There was an unusual nobility in Bill Burton's eyes and in the carriage of his head. But there was also a curious impression of suffering there and about the lips. Dick saw Mrs. Brewster look at Burton with a friendly, somewhat quizzical, smile. Then in two minutes the fortunate ones were gone and The Towers became a St. Helena, where a chill wind played shrilly all day long around corners of buildings and in and out the cloisters.

Lessons that morning were a gloom and dinner in the huge, half empty dining-room offered an opportunity to satisfy the boy's hunger and--that was all. As a social function it was a flat failure. Everybody talked of the game, as wrecked sailors drifting in an open boat talked of shore. Life was unreal somehow, everything so empty, so quiet. If, as some one had once remarked, The Towers was a very furnace of flaming life and energy--some one had certainly dumped the grate.