Читать книгу Frank Merriwell's Setback; Or, True Pluck Welcomes Defeat - Burt L. Standish - Страница 7

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Sunday afternoon Dade Morgan received a call from Donald Pike. The northeaster had turned to a snowstorm. Pike shook from his coat the feathery flakes as he came into Dade’s room.

“There is to be a snowball battle in the campus in the morning, before college hours, between sophomores and freshmen. I’m told that you’re to lead the freshmen.”

“That’s the plan now,” said Dade. “Have a chair.”

Pike hung up his coat as if he were at home, and seated himself. Dade closed the door, for he had a feeling that Pike desired to say something that ought not to go beyond the walls of the room.

“There’s only one thing in this whole business that I don’t like,” Pike began.

“You mean of the entertainments?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Merriwell!”

“There are others I like myself better than Merriwell.”

“That sounded funny. ‘I like myself better than Merriwell!’ Of course you do.”

“You know what I mean.”

“It seems to me that these ‘entertainments,’ as they’re called, are planned solely to cover Merriwell with glory. That’s the thing I don’t like. He proposed them, of course. Some way, he always proposes everything, and then the rest fall in like a flock of sheep following their leader. We’re not celebrating Merriwell’s victories, but the victories of Yale. Yet the fellows are already calling them ‘Frank Merriwell’s Entertainments.’”

“You’re warm!”

“I’m hot as a cake of ice!”

“I think I’ve seen you in that frame of mind before!” commented Dade, with the utmost coolness.

“Another thing I don’t like, and which I should think you wouldn’t like, is the way he has of pushing Starbright forward. He seems determined to make Starbright the king of the freshmen.”

Dade’s face darkened, and Pike saw that he had struck a vulnerable spot. Yet Dade only said coldly:

“I don’t need to be told that!”

“And you haven’t anything to say about it?”

“I’ve had a good deal to say about it, at one time and another.”

“You’re the real king of the freshmen, Morgan, and you know it. All your friends know it. It’s for the freshmen to say who shall be their leader. Yet here comes a senior to dictate who the freshman leader shall be!”

“I’d like to help it if I could. I don’t see any way to help it just now.”

Pike was silent for a moment.

“Perhaps not. Merriwell seems to have the whip-hand at present.”

He glanced toward the door.

“No need to fear that you’ll be heard outside of this room!”

“Well, about that snowball battle in the morning?”

“We’ll do up the sophomores, all right.”

“I hope so. But that wasn’t it. You ought to be able to do up Starbright, also, while you’re about it.”

There was not the encouragement in Dade’s face that he hoped to see, but he went on.

“I’ve heard of soldiers being shot accidentally by their own men! Stonewall Jackson was killed that way!”

Dade looked at him earnestly.

“You want me to do that work?”

“Well, I thought you might thank me for a suggestion. You hate Starbright. There’s your opportunity. When the fight is on, a snowball with a rock hidden in it would bring that big freshman down like a bullet if it was thrown right.”

Dade flushed, and, getting up, took a turn round the room.

“I’d do it myself if I were one of the freshmen fighters. As it is, I give you the suggestion for what it is worth.”

He began to feel that Morgan would accept and act upon the suggestion. Dade came back and sat down.

“I ought to thank you for that, Pike,” he said in a low tone. “I’m no better than I ought to be, and I presume that if you had come to me yesterday, I should have thanked you for this. But I don’t think I’ll try to do what you say.”

Donald Pike stared.

“Getting goody-goody?”

“No, it’s not that!”

“Just the same with all of them!” Pike snarled, under his breath.

“I don’t think I understand you if you meant that for me.”

“Well, you are just like all the others!” Pike asserted almost fiercely. “I don’t know why it is, for it hasn’t worked on me that way, but nearly every fellow who has started in here at Yale to down Merriwell has done one of two things: He has either become afraid of Merriwell and practically dropped out of the fight, or he has gone over to Merriwell.”

Dade’s face was again flushing.

“There was Buck Badger! I’ve told you of him before. He was the bitterest enemy Frank Merriwell had for a while, and he ended by becoming a Merriwell maniac. He thinks now that there never was another such man on earth. Why, I’ve been told that even Browning and Hodge, two fellows who can’t think unless Merriwell first gives them license, were once his enemies! You’re traveling the same road. I was Badger’s chum and saw how he went over to Frank Merriwell, and you’re struck with the same symptoms. What in thunder is the matter with all you fellows, anyway?”

“It was Starbright you wanted me to strike with a rock, I believe?” said Morgan, not pleased with this lecture.

“Yes.”

“Starbright isn’t Merriwell.”

“But he’s Merriwell’s protégé, and when you can’t strike Merriwell himself, the best way to get at him is to strike Starbright, or some other of his friends. But you needn’t do it if you don’t care to. It was merely a suggestion.”

“I’m still against Merriwell. Don’t let yourself forget that, Pike!”

“But you won’t be at the end of the year.”

“And I’m still against Dick Starbright.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ve a reason for not trying to do what you suggest. It isn’t because I’ve suddenly grown too good. Perhaps I have a little honor left, Pike, though you mightn’t think it. Not enough to boast of, I presume!”

“You haven’t heard of it, but yesterday Starbright saved me from being half-killed by a tough that I met while out wheeling. The place was a lonely one in the suburbs, and I was wheeling with Miss Thornton. I met the tough in a drinking-den a few nights ago, and struck him with a beer-glass, after we’d had some words. When he saw me yesterday he came at me for revenge, tripped me off my wheel, and then, while I was too shaken up by the jar of the fall to be able to do much, he set on me, and would have pounded and kicked me to a jelly. Starbright happened along at that moment. He took a hand in the game—and I’m here to-day, instead of being in the hospital.”

Both were silent for a moment after the completion of the story.

“He did you a good turn, and maybe you’re right. But really, I didn’t think you had any soft spots about you.”

“You thought such a thing wouldn’t make any difference?”

“Yes, honestly, that’s what I thought.”

“And you thought I had no heart at all?”

Pike was quite blunt.

“I thought you had something like a gizzard doing duty for that organ. But it’s all right, of course! I suppose I’d feel the same way if any fellow should stand up for me in such a fight.”

“It wasn’t a fight on my part. I was clean knocked out. I would have been hammered to pieces.”

“Let the thing drop, then!” Pike begged. “And say nothing about it to any one. I didn’t know you had changed in your feeling!”

The sneer stung Dade Morgan.

“I thought I should never let an opportunity go by to strike at Starbright or Merriwell. I’ll get over this in a day or two. But I can’t forget quite so quick. Starbright will do or say something soon that will make me forget his favor, and then I presume I’ll be ready to hammer him up. But to-morrow, in that battle, I’m going to play fair, so far as he’s concerned, at least.”

“Good-by!” snarled Pike, rising. “You can keep your face closed about this, anyway!”

“See here, Pike!”

The voice was so hard and commanding that Don Pike stopped.

“I’m a fool! Don’t fancy for a minute that I would mention such a matter. You’ve stood by me, even though you’re not a freshman, and I don’t forget it. Some other time I’ll be likely to strike at Dick Starbright. Just now I feel a little queer about that matter, and I can’t. That’s the truth of it.”

“I’m going!”

“Just remember that. And if you’ve any bets to lay, put them on the freshmen.”

“If they win, Starbright will get most of the glory! It doesn’t matter to me, though. I’m not trying to beat him in the race for the freshmen leadership. You are.”

Dade Morgan sat for a long time in silence after Donald Pike’s departure. Finally he roused himself.

“I wish the fellow hadn’t come to me with that!” he thought, rising. “Either that, or I wish that it hadn’t been necessary for Starbright to come to my help yesterday afternoon. I wonder what Rosalind thinks about it? I fancied she was somewhat cool to me after it. No doubt he is her hero now, and I’m nothing. Well, if he wants her again, he can have her!”