Читать книгу Frank Merriwell's Setback; Or, True Pluck Welcomes Defeat - Burt L. Standish - Страница 4

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In its various forms it was an old trick, and it ought not to have worked on Starbright, who had come from the famous preparatory college at Andover. But by some chance, Dick had never heard of it, and the sophomores, discovering this, prepared to “work” him with it.

It was a principle with the lordly sophomores to annoy freshmen, and the towering young giant, who had already made himself so famous at Yale, suffered as much at their hands as less noted mortals.

There is a streak in human nature which causes those who have been “through the mill” to want to put others through. This spirit accounts for “hazing,” in all its forms.

Jack Ready started it by offering to bet Dick Starbright ten dollars that he could not ride a bicycle from New Haven to Guilford and back, a round-trip of thirty-two miles, in three hours. Starbright snapped him up quicker than a wink, for though there were many things he could do better than bicycling, Dick knew that he could do this, and the trip to Guilford, along the pleasant shores for a great part of the way, was an attractive one.

The bet was made one Wednesday evening, and Dick was to do the riding the next Saturday afternoon. Starbright told his friend Dashleigh about it.

“Of course you can do it!” Bert declared.

“Dead easy! Why, I could do that trip in two hours, even if the roads are sandy. But three! I don’t know what Ready is thinking about. He must fancy that I can’t ride a wheel. Perhaps it is because I started in to take part in the relay race and Merriwell pulled me out of it and put me at other work. But that was only because you are a faster rider than I am, and my size and strength made me a promising candidate for the shot-putting and hammer-throwing.”

“And you did your part well, old man. You covered yourself with glory!”

“And I’ll show these duffers that I can ride a wheel. I’ll see how quickly I can do the trip, and I’ll make their eyes bulge out when they see me back.”

Dick did not get an opportunity to see Merriwell, but he told Browning; and Browning, who had been “let in on the ground floor,” assured Dick that he could make it “dead easy,” and that Jack Ready was a fool for offering such a bet.

“It will be a good way to open up Merriwell’s entertainments,” said Ralph Bingham, when Starbright chanced to speak to him about it. “I’d do it, if I were you.”

Bingham was a sophomore, but Dick did not think of that.

Carker, alone of the sophomores, objected, urging that he disliked to see so good a fellow as Starbright toyed with in that way.

“Well, you aren’t going to chip into the thing and spoil the fun, just because it doesn’t suit you, are you?” demanded Bingham. “We sophomores must hang together. Ready is an especial friend of yours, and he is managing the thing. Don’t you think it would be rather a scaly trick to give the snap away?”

“If Merriwell should hear of it?”

“He’ll not hear of it. He has his hands full of other matters just now. And he wouldn’t interfere, anyway, for he’s no milk-and-water kid. He had to go through the mill when he was a freshman, just as we did, and it did him good. I like Starbright. He’s a fine fellow. But he’s a freshman, and he’s in great danger of coming to think that he is ‘it’! He has boomed right up, and he’ll be wearing frills of great importance round the gray matter of his thinking machine the very first thing we know. Already he believes that he’s better than any sophomore that ever trod the campus or sat on the fence. This thing won’t hurt him. It will do him good, and tend to make a man of him.”

This sort of logic, directed to a fellow classman, was irresistible.

Ready was not at all sure that Merriwell would interfere; but, fearing that he might, for Dick was recognized as his protégé, he contrived to keep the two apart most of the time, managing to be with one or the other whenever they met, and to so skilfully direct the conversation that no opportunity presented for a discussion of Dick’s proposed ride. As for the other students of all classes, they shut up mum on the subject whenever Frank came to their midst.

There was a lowering gray sky and a hint of a change in the weather on that Saturday afternoon when Dick wheeled up in front of the New Haven House for his start. He rode a very high frame to accommodate his great height. It was a heavy roadster, not adapted to racing, but Dick had been able to crack it up for good speed on more than one occasion.

As for his attire, Dick was comfortably clothed in a woolen bicycle-suit somewhat the worse for wear, and wore a visored cap. Like most Yale men, the cut and quality of his clothing were of secondary consideration, his only demand being that it would suit his needs and be comfortable.

Jack Ready was there, to lead the cheer with which Dick’s departure was greeted, swinging his cap and yelling, after a preliminary offer to double his bet, which offer Dick would not accept. He was sure he would win Ready’s money, and for that reason he did not want the bet raised.

Dashleigh was there, too, and other freshmen. There were some juniors and seniors, also. But the larger number gathered in front of the hotel were sophomores.

Starbright liked a bicycle, though he was too large and heavy to become a crack rider. He was a good wheelman, though, and he swung away with cheerfulness through the level streets of the college city and out toward the road that leads close along the shore of the Sound, following as closely as he could the railway line.

He found the wind heavy as he began to wheel over the Sound route. The breeze was off the water and he was forced to bore into it quarteringly, which, with the character of the road, made the wheeling rather too heavy for pure pleasure.

Nevertheless, Starbright “hit it up” at a good gait, bending forward over the handle-bars and thrusting his visored cap into the wind like the sharp prow of a racing yacht.

Now and then a farmer stared curiously at him as he slipped by. This grew so frequent as he neared the first of the half-abandoned summer resorts of that part of the Sound that he dismounted from his wheel, feeling that something in his personal appearance caused these men of the hoe to inspect him in that way.

Having looked his wheel over and found it all right, Dick took off his coat and inspected that. There was no legend pinned or chalked on its back, and nothing about him which could draw so much attention.

“The fellows act as if they had never seen a bicycle!” he grumbled, as he replaced his coat and remounted for the continuance of his journey. Yet that this could not be so seemed to be proved by the proximity of the summer-resort hotels, which poured out scores of wheelmen for these roads every season, to make no mention of the bicyclists of New Haven.

On reaching the first of the summer resorts, Dick was surprised still further to find a number of men and women, chiefly composed of the class who get their living in the winter from the waters of the Sound or by taking care of the abandoned caravansaries, standing grouped on a corner as if awaiting his coming, and staring at him with undisguised curiosity as he wheeled by.

“Don’t think much o’ yer wheel!” one of them shouted. Then added: “No; I don’t think I’ll buy one of ’em next summer!”

Stopping by a spring for a drink, he leaned the wheel against a fence, and a country youth came forward to look it over. Dick would have thought nothing of this if the young fellow had not asked him if he thought he received enough pay for that kind of work.

“Not doing it for pay,” said Dick.

“Y’ain’t racin’ ag’in time, then?” was the bland question.

“Not exactly.”

“Can’t say that I want to buy the wheel!”

“I haven’t any notion of selling it.”

Then the countryman stared at him.

“You ain’t Jimmy Michael?”

“Jimmy Michael, the famous bicyclist? No. What made you think so?”

“And ain’t you advertisin’ a new kind of wheel that’s a world corker?”

“Nothing of the kind.”

The country lad flushed and moved away with explanation.

“What’s the matter with the fellow?” Starbright thought. “Jimmy Michael? Nobody could mistake me for Jimmy Michael!”

Still the farmers stared at him as he wheeled by. Sometimes, when they beheld him coming, they came close down to the road, often the whole family, and stared after him as he passed on.

Once a young woman waved a handkerchief roguishly at him from a kitchen window. Dick began to feel red and uncomfortable; and then, at the next village, he was asked by a member of the mob that was apparently gathered to see him, what the make of his wheel was, and if it was to be sold cheaper than other makes of good wheels, he inquired why the question was asked.

For answer the man pointed to a large placard on a wall:

“Richard Starbright, the world-famous giant of the wheel, will this afternoon make a race against time from New Haven to Guilford and return for the purpose of advertising our new make of record-beater roadsters. Starbright has beaten the record of Jimmy Michael, and our wheels beat the world. He has circled the globe in the interest of our wheels. Wait for him! You cannot afford to miss seeing him!”

“You look a good deal like a Yale guy, but yer size made us think mebbe you was the man,” the citizen explained.

“Yes, I am the man!” said Dick hotly flushing. “I’m a guy all right, too!”

“What’s the make o’ the wheel?” another queried, walking round as if to inspect its fine points. “Looks like you’ve rid it a lot. I should think they’d have sent you out on a shinin’ new one?”

“What countries have you ridden through?” queried a vinegary woman in spectacles. “I do hope you’ve been through Tibet. But if you have, the natives did’t treat ye as bad as they do some folks. I’ve got some real good buttermilk, and if you’d like to drop into my house a minute to rest and tell me about Tibet I’d take it kindly. I’m so interested readin’ ’bout Tibet that I can’t hardly sleep o’ night sometimes. It’s the first house on the corner as you go down—a little white house with green winder-blinds.”

Starbright was in a profuse perspiration.

“Thank you!” he said. “You’re very kind. But I must really hurry on. I’ve stopped too long now.”

Then, feeling that the only way to get away from these people was to mount his wheel, he hopped on it and fled through the village, giving a glance at the little white house with the green blinds as he swept by, and thinking that perhaps the proper thing would have been to stop there and talk Tibet to the inquisitive, spectacled lady and sip her buttermilk while he thought out some plan for outwitting his tormentors.

“This is Ready’s work!” he panted, as he wheeled down the road. “I’ll have to murder that fellow! I see there is no help for it! I shall have to take him between my two thumbs and squash his life out as I would any common bug!”

He tried to smile when the village was behind him.

“It’s a good joke, anyway, and it’s on your Uncle Richard! Of course, the whole college knows of it now, and New Haven will know it before night. Heavens! If it should get into the newspapers!”

Dick wheeled on so fast, hardly knowing now that he was speeding, that he found himself approaching the next little village almost before he thought it possible. He saw the inevitable crowd gathered on the principal corner of the street, through which he must pass unless he elected to make a wide détour and avoid the village altogether. Some boys raised a cheer as he drew near, swinging their hats with an urchin’s delight.

“I’ll not stop!” Dick grunted, shrinking from the thought of again encountering some one who would ask him about his world-wide travels. “They’ll want to know if I’ve been in China, likely, and if I’ve fought the Boxers, and how many I’ve killed!”

So he put on extra speed, lowered his visored cap, bent over the handle-bars, and went through the street like a streak of lightning. The boys yelled and whooped, and he could not help hearing one citizen remark that “Jimmy Michael ain’t in it with that feller!”

“Here comes the bikeist!” a boy was shouting to another group at the lower corner. “Come quick, Sammy, ’er ye’ll be too late!”

“Geewhiskers! ain’t he a snorter?” another boy yelled.

The group broke into a wild cheer as Dick swept past, pedaling as if he were racing for life. When he had escaped from these innocent tormentors, he began to think over the situation and to ask himself if he should go on to Guilford or stop where he was and retrace his way to New Haven by another route. To do that would be to lose his bet. Not that he cared so much for the money or for the mere winning, but that would give Ready and the sophomores a perhaps coveted opportunity to guy him for cowardice.

No, he was in it, and there seemed to be no way out but to make the ride according to plans and schedule and win out, so far as that part was concerned. So he rode on, wondering if there were no means by which he could yet defeat the sophomores.

“Yes, this is the beginning of Frank Merriwell’s entertainments!” he rather grimly thought. “I didn’t know that I would be chosen to open the show in this way, though! Merry doesn’t know anything about it, I’m sure.”

Merriwell was planning some festivities of an athletic character with which he and his friends and other students were to celebrate the many victories won by Yale that season. The college had been wonderfully fortunate and triumphant on the gridiron, not having lost a single game during the entire season. Never had a Yale team equaled the performance of the football eleven of that year under the leadership of the redoubtable senior. And not only in football, but in many other ways had Yale won honor with the victorious teams Merriwell had trained and led.

There was a grim humor in Starbright which made him appreciate the situation in which he found himself, even though he was the victim. At first he had paid no heed to anything placarded on the walls, but now, looking out for those glaring signs, he soon found one stuck against the side of a barn. It was on the side of the barn that was invisible to him as he came toward it.

So this had been Ready’s plan! These glittering advertisements of the performance of the “Giant of the Wheel,” produced, no doubt, by some New Haven printing press, had been skilfully plastered up along the roadside and in the villages in such a way that the wheelman approaching them could not see them. And the chances were small that he would look back and discover them after he had whirled by. This accounted for the fact that Dick had not for a time observed the notices which drew out the curious villagers and farmers.

In the next village, which was also of the summer-hotel variety, though there was a substantial element of people who resided there the year round, a larger crowd than ever stood in the street to await his coming.

The crowd broke into a cheer as he came in sight and wheeled up to the corner. He had resolved to ask some questions.

“When were these placards stuck up?” he inquired.

“Yisterday. Say, mister, when’s yer book comin’ out?”

“What book?”

“Why, the feller that come along yisterday stickin’ up the bills said that you was about to put out a book tellin’ about yer wonderful adventures with the Toltecs while you was coastin’ down one of them old Peruvian roads in South Ameriky.”

“What sort of looking fellow was he?”

“Well, about so high and so wide. He was a sort of stocky chap with bright eyes and red cheeks. Come to think of it, when he got off his wheel to stick up the sign, I noticed that he toed in with one foot.”

“That was Jack Ready.”

“Was it? I didn’t know! I believe he did say somethin’ ’bout bein’ always Ready.”

“Aw! that feller’s a Yale man!” a boy was heard to sneer. “He ain’t never been in South Ameriky ner nothin’. I know them fellers soon’s I see ’em.”

“Be you a Yale man?” an old man growled, not relishing the idea of being drawn out and fooled in that way by a mere college student. He had walked nearly a mile to see the “Giant of the Wheel” go by, and he wanted his money’s worth.

Dick was saved from answering this disconcerting question by a young man with a pale face and large nose, who crowded forward to inspect the wheel, saying that he intended to purchase a bicycle the coming season.

“I thought, mebbe, when I heard that feller talkin’ yesterday, that it was one of them headless wheels made in Indianapolis. D’y’ever see one of ’em? You sort of set in the handle-bars as if they was the arms of a rockin’chair. I didn’t know but I’d like to have one of ’em. I’m sure the feller said somethin’ ’bout headless!”

Dick thought it quite likely that the irrepressible Ready had referred to the rider of the wheel as “headless,” or something of like character, indicating that he was “easy.”

“Well, perhaps I am easy,” he thought, as he wheeled on, glad to be past another inquisitive village.

Branford Point, a favorite watering-place, turned out a good-sized crowd to see the “Giant of the Wheel,” but Dick concluded that he did not care to ask further questions or make the acquaintance of the curious people, so he flew through the place as rapidly as he could pedal.

He was making good time, even though the road was not of the best, in spots, and the wind blew cold from the leaden clouds in the northeast. He was warm enough, in spite of the wind, and sometimes, when he reflected too strongly on the condition in which he found himself, and of the laughing sophomores in the campus, he grew altogether too warm.

There were other groups to meet and pass, other farmers who hurried down to the road to look and wonder, other boys who whooped and yelled and told each other to “git onto de legs of de Giant,” and other things equally uncomplimentary to the bicyclist.

But Dick, having resolved to take the whole thing good-naturedly and philosophically, smiled back at them; and, whenever he dismounted, he answered the rain of questions as best he could, without revealing that he was the victim of a sophomore joke.

But when he reached Guilford, the end of his route—Guilford, celebrated as the birthplace of the poet, Fitz Greene Halleck—he met a surprise that took away his breath. In front of a conspicuous hotel was a brass band, surrounded by Yale sophomores, with Jack Ready prominent in their midst. They were waiting to give the “Giant of the Wheel” a right royal reception; and, as Dick wheeled up, almost too disconcerted to know what to do or say, the band struck into “See the Conquering Hero Comes!” and the sophomores gave a yell that shook the building and almost rattled the curbstones.

But Dick Starbright was quick-witted, and he pulled himself together, so that he was able to dismount with a smile and a bow.

“What sort of fool circus are you idiots trying to make of yourselves?” he blandly demanded, walking forward, pushing his wheel.

Ready wiggled his fingers characteristically.

“An immense one, old man, and you have been the clown of the show. We’ll take supper at your expense to-night. In the meantime, you will find refreshments in the house of this publican.”

He gave his fingers another wiggle and jerked them toward the hotel proprietor, who stood by with red face expanded in a grin.

“It’s one on me!” Starbright admitted smilingly. “But the end hasn’t come. Before Frank Merriwell’s entertainments are over you Smart Aleck sophomores will acknowledge that the freshmen know a thing or two, and are more than your masters. And we’ll not resort to deceit to win our victories or to give us a chance to ‘holler’.”