Читать книгу Dick Merriwell's Heroic Players; Or, How the Yale Nine Won the Championship - Burt L. Standish - Страница 4

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Naturally, the Yale student body as a whole didn’t have the inside information about the Harvard team that had been obtained by Bill Brady and Dick Merriwell. Most of the undergraduates thought that Harvard would be beaten easily, for the men who had seen Princeton, Cornell, and Michigan humbled by the blue, had little idea that Harvard could be a more formidable opponent than any of the other nines Yale had defeated. Many of them had read of the feat of Briggs in shutting out Amherst without a hit or a run, but had not taken it very seriously. Yale had not used either of her first-string pitchers against a small college, but had depended upon Winston, a substitute, and even so had won very easily. So it was felt that Briggs, fine as his record against the Amherst team had been, had still to prove that he was worthy to be classed with Jim Phillips, who was already hailed by the newspapers as the best college pitcher of the year, and one, who, should he choose to do it, could make a great deal of money by turning professional and playing with some big-league team.

Gurney, a sophomore, voiced the general sentiment as he sat on the famous sophomore fence on the evening of the extra practice which Jim had planned to foil Briggs.

“They can’t touch old Jim,” he said. “I’m going to bet every cent I can raise on the game. This Briggs is all right, but he’ll have to go get a real reputation before he can scare us. Eh, fellows?”

There was only one dissenting voice in the little group that heard the little sophomore’s boast.

“Remember the story of the pitcher that went too often to the well,” said Woeful Watson, known to all Yale as the class pessimist of the sophomores. Watson, no matter how gay the company in which he found himself, always seemed impelled to cast a blanket of gloom over the occasion. “We’ve been depending too much on Jim Phillips. He has to do all the work. It isn’t fair. He’s only human, and some day he’s going to run up against some one he can’t pitch rings around. The rest of the team ought to do more than it does to back him up.”

“Shucks, Woeful!” said Jack Tempest, the sprinter, one of Jim Phillips’ best friends. “Cheer up. The team’s good enough. It isn’t a very hard-hitting team, I’ll admit, but it doesn’t need to get more than one or two runs. If they do that, Jim can attend to the rest of it by himself.”

“All right,” said Watson gloomily. “You fellows have been playing in fool’s luck all spring. Wait until after this series with Harvard is over before you do any crowing, though. You know the darky’s receipt for cooking a rabbit—first catch your rabbit.”

Although Watson could never understand the reason, it was nevertheless true that no matter how earnest his efforts were to make his classmates take a more serious and sober view of life, the effect was usually simply to make them laugh at him. They did so now, fairly exploding, and half a dozen of them formed a ring and danced around him, singing a mocking song, the words of which they seemed to make up as they went along.

Jim Phillips was an idol, almost, with his classmates. It was seldom, indeed, that any man reflected so much credit in his class as the famous pitcher. He was sure, too, to be a star on the football team in the following fall, and they were proud of him. But some of the class, although these were very much of a minority, and seldom made their opinions public, were far from proud. For one reason or another, but mostly because, having failed to win any such measure of success and popularity for themselves, they were jealous of Jim; not a few men in Yale, unworthy of the college as they thus proved themselves to be, would have secretly rejoiced had some disaster overtaken Phillips. Once or twice they had thought that their secret desire was about to be realized, but each time Jim, with the aid of the astute and resourceful Dick Merriwell, had emerged more popular than before.

“Listen to those silly goats,” said one of these disgruntled ones, Carpenter by name, as the dance about Watson continued. “I don’t see why they raise such a fuss about this chap Phillips. He gets all the praise, and fellows who are just as clever as he don’t get a fair chance. If you want to get along here at Yale, you have to be an athlete. Otherwise you can’t accomplish anything.”

Carpenter wore glasses, that made his staring eyes very prominent. He was thin, and there was certainly nothing athletic about his appearance. He usually had a book with him, and it was his boast that before he was graduated he would earn the title of the best student in his class. And he resented bitterly the fact that, so far, Jim Phillips was the principal stumblingblock in his path toward the honor he coveted.

Jim was as good a student as he was an athlete; but Carpenter, who was more concerned with bare facts and figures than with reasons why things he learned were so, had convinced himself that the reason that Jim consistently outshone him in the classroom and after examinations was that the professors displayed favoritism as a reward for Jim’s successes in athletics.

“I think you’re right, Carpenter,” said the man he had addressed, one of his own type.

In college, such men are known as grinds. For them the college life has no meaning. They devote themselves entirely to their books, doing nothing to improve themselves by association with other students, and taking no part in the athletics that would give them a healthy body—quite as important a part of college training as that of the classroom, did Carpenter and his kind only understand it.

“But I don’t see what you’re going to do about it,” added Carpenter’s friend.

“I’d like to put something over on Phillips,” said Carpenter viciously. “He needs something to take him down a bit. He thinks now he’s the biggest man in Yale. If you ask me, I think he puts on an awful lot. I know he’s a good pitcher, but he poses as a saint, too, that would never do anything wrong. I’d like to try him on that—see if he’s really as good as he’s made out to be.”

“You’re a fine pair,” said a new voice. “Loyal to a classmate—that’s real Yale spirit.”

Startled at being overheard, Carpenter and his companion, Shesgren, looked up. They were amazed and confused to see that the man who was speaking to them was Parker, a junior, and known as a big man in his class. He was an athlete, though not a baseball player, football being his sport. Indeed, there was even a chance that he might be captain of the football team the next fall. Danby, the man elected after the last season, had been forced to leave Yale for family reasons, and the election to pick his successor had not yet been held. Parker was one of three candidates. For him to have heard what they said, Carpenter and Shesgren were convinced, would mean a lot of trouble for them.

But, after looking at them contemptuously a minute, Parker smiled.

“I don’t know that I blame you much, at that,” he said. They plucked up at that, surprised as they were to hear him say it. “I must confess that I get rather tired myself sometimes when I hear them chanting the praises of this fellow Phillips. He’s done pretty well, but he’s got an awful lot to do yet before he’ll be entitled to all the honors every one here seems determined to give him. For instance, there’s this baseball captaincy. Every one says he’s sure to be elected—and that’s a bad precedent, and a dangerous one.

“We’ve done well in athletics here for years, but we’ve had the practice of electing seniors to captaincies, and, when it’s worked as well as it has, I don’t see any reason for changing around now and putting a junior in to run a team as important as the baseball nine. Steve Carter’s the man for captain. If Phillips does as well next year as he has this, there’ll be no one to oppose his election in his senior year—and he ought to wait until then.”

“After all,” said Jack Tempest, who had overheard the last few words of what Parker had said, “that’s a matter for the baseball team to decide, isn’t it, Parker? They elect their own captain, and class feeling won’t enter into it. There are only three sophomores on the team, and Jim himself, I know, will vote for Carter, if he runs. Brady and Maxwell will vote for Jim, I suppose, and so will Carter. Jackson is a junior—I don’t know what he’ll do. Gray and Taylor are seniors—so’s Sherman, and some of the others.”

Parker turned and looked at Tempest in a coldly, insolent way that brought the Virginian’s hot blood to his cheeks in a flush of anger.

“I don’t remember saying anything to you, Tempest,” said Parker. “I was talking to two friends of mine here. When we want the benefit of your advice, we’ll be able to ask you for it, you know.”

Tempest was furious. He raised his hand as if he would strike the junior who had insulted him, but his common sense prevailed. He was not afraid of Parker, although the football man, a guard, weighed fifty pounds more than did the slight young Southerner, and was one of the strongest men in Yale as well. But he knew that a brawl there on the campus would do no good, and might annoy Jim Phillips. So, without another word, he turned on his heel and walked off, although Parker’s sneering laugh, which he heard plainly as he walked away, made it almost impossible for him to resist the temptation to return, and, at any cost, have it out with the bully and coward, who had struck at him through his friend.

“These infernal sophomores are getting to think they own the college,” said Parker angrily, utterly unmindful, it seemed, of the fact that it was to two members of the class he insulted that he was speaking. But he knew his men, and that they would not dare to resent anything he might say. “Are you two fellows in earnest about Phillips? Would you like to see him shown up? If you are, come along with me. I’ve got a plan that may prove what sort of a chap he is at bottom.”

Scarcely believing in their good fortune in securing an ally as powerful as Parker, the two treacherous sophomores gladly accepted his invitation.