Читать книгу Dick Merriwell's Fighting Chance; Or, The Split in the Varsity - Burt L. Standish - Страница 3

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The comfortable sitting room in Durfee Hall, occupied by Dick Merriwell and his Texas chum, Brad Buckhart, was filled to overflowing. Sprawling among the cushions of the divan was Rudolph Rose, handsome, high-spirited, and rather quick-tempered, but happy in the knowledge that he had at last conquered the latter failing and thereby won a place in Merriwell’s friendship.

Close beside him was Terry Baxter, quiet, almost too serious, but with a keen sense of humor which showed in the appreciative gleam in his brown eyes and the occasional terse, pithy remarks which he uttered in a solemn manner, but which invariably sent the others into an uproar.

Eric Fitzgerald, slim, slight, and curly haired, dangled his legs from one end of the table. He was so full of vim and life and go that he reminded one of a particle of quicksilver, forever on the move; and on the rare occasions when he did settle down for a moment, he usually perched himself somewhere in a temporary manner, as if he were only pausing for an instant before making another flight.

Samp Elwell, the Hoosier, whose dry wit was a source of never-ending delight to his friends, occupied the piano stool. Across the room sat his chum, Lance Fair, who was not nearly so unsophisticated as his smooth, rosy cheeks and almost girlish manner would lead one to imagine.

Buckhart was hunched down on the back of his neck in one of the big easy-chairs near the table, while Merriwell himself was tilted back against the wall in the desk chair, his dark eyes sparkling with mirth and a smile curving the corners of his sensitive mouth.

“You fellows ought to have been in Pierson’s classroom this morning,” he remarked. “After the lecture he started in to quiz us, and happened to spy Hollister gazing dreamily out of the window. I suppose Bob was thinking out some new football stunt. Anyway, he was miles away from Roman history, and Pierson caught him.

“‘Mr. Hollister,’ he said, in that short, snappy way he has, ‘can you mention one memorable date in Roman history?’

“Bob came out of his trance with a jump and snapped back without thinking, ‘Anthony’s with Cleopatra, sir.’ It brought down the house.”

There was a shout of delighted laughter, and when it had died down Samp Elwell looked up, grinning.

“He did,” chimed in Fitzgerald from the table. “Piercy was mad as thunder. It isn’t the first time Bob’s flunked by a long shot, either. He’s been awful punky this term.”

“I’d like to have seen old Pierson’s face,” he chuckled. “I reckon Bob drew a goose egg for that.”

“Too much football, I opine,” growled the Texan. “He can’t get his mind off the game long enough to feed his face, let alone keep track of lectures. He’s plumb locoed about it. You hear me gently warble!”

“Oh, say,” Elwell spoke up suddenly; “how about that new stunt of old Bill’s. That forward——”

The Texan straightened up like a flash, and, grabbing a book from the table, shied it with swiftness and remarkable accuracy at the Hoosier’s head. Elwell ducked, and the book struck the piano, falling to the keyboard with a discordant crash.

“What in time——” began the indignant sophomore, straightening up again.

“You don’t seem to recollect what I tried to drill into that solid ivory skull of yours a brief time back,” Buckhart drawled with perfect composure. “Talking shop has got to be cut out around this bunk house. I’m plumb sick of hearing about football. For six weeks I’ve heard nothing else, and now that Tempest is back on the job I’m going to take a rest.”

“Great Scott, Brad!” Rose exclaimed aghast. “You’re not going to leave the team!”

“Thunderation, no!” the Texan retorted. “I’ll hold down my job till the cows come home; but off the field I’m going to forget it and take a whack at the books I have hardly got a squint at since the term began. So, unless you gents want to start a row promiscuous like, kindly refrain from holding forth on the subject while I’m around.”

“Say, fellows, isn’t it pretty near time we organized a little fishing party up to the lake?” asked Fitzgerald.

Trout fishing was one of his pet hobbies.

“Any trout there?” inquired Fair quickly.

“Thousands of ’em,” returned Fitz.

“Will they bite easily?” asked Lance.

“Will they?” exclaimed the slim chap. “Well, I should say they would! Why, they’re absolutely vicious. A man has to hide behind a tree to bait his hook.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Dick remarked. “We haven’t gone on a trip like that this fall. Say, Samp, why don’t you take a comfortable chair? You’ve been holding down that piano stool all evening, and you know you can’t play a note.”

The Hoosier winked significantly and cast a meaning glance at Fitzgerald, one of whose many accomplishments was the singing of popular ditties to improvised accompaniments consisting of a more or less skillful variation of two chords.

“I know that,” Elwell returned composedly, “but neither can any one else while I’m here.”

Fitz instantly took up the gantlet.

“Talk about hogs!” he exclaimed, springing from his seat on the table. “And here I am fairly bursting with a perfectly punk song I just learned this afternoon. Avaunt, creature!”

He made a dive at Elwell, and, before the stalwart Hoosier realized what was happening, the piano stool was deftly upset and he sprawled on the floor. By the time he had scrambled to his feet, the slim chap was seated calmly at the keyboard and had struck an opening chord.

“Come into the garden, Maud,” he began dramatically. He got no farther. A united yell of protest arose which effectually drowned him out.

“Oh, what a chestnut!”

“Noah sang that to the animals in the ark!”

“Give us something that’s not more than two thousand years old!”

Fitz turned slowly around, a look of pained surprise on his freckled face.

“Peace, prithee—peace!” he chided. “I assure you that the song is quite new, save the first line, which may be a little reminiscent. Kindly refrain from any more rude, vulgar interruptions.”

Before the others could recover their breath he struck the chords and began to sing again, this time rather hurriedly:

“Come into the garden, Maud”;

But Maud was much too wise.

‘Oh, no,’ said she, ‘the corn has ears

And the potatoes eyes.’

His voice, dwelling lingeringly and fondly on the last note, was drowned in a shout of laughter.

“Great!” choked Buckhart. “Maud was a wise child, all right.”

“Give us another verse, old fellow,” chuckled Elwell.

“I’m afraid I’m not in very good voice to-night,” simpered Fitz, looking coyly down at the keys. “Such a critical audience always makes me so nervous. However——”

He lifted his voice again in the same serious chant.

“The rain it falls upon the just,

And also on the unjust fellers;

But chiefly on the just, because

The unjust have the justs’ umbrellers.”

This verse was received with equal applause, and Fitz was entreated to give them another.

“Sing another song,” urged Rose. “You must know a pile of them.”

“Well, I’ll give you a very short one,” the slim chap returned with much apparent reluctance. “It’s a little old, but you mustn’t mind a thing like that.”

Striking a single chord, he began the first line.

“Mary had a little——”

He paused, and, clearing his throat, glanced around at his audience, plainly surprised that there had been no interruption. Having been caught once, however, the fellows were not going to repeat the performance, and remained expectantly silent.

Seeing that he could not get a rise out of them, Fitzgerald turned back to the piano and began the song over again.

“Mary had a little skirt

Tied tightly in a bow,

And everywhere that Mary went

She simply couldn’t go.”

“That’s all,” he announced, springing up and skipping over to the table again. “Somebody else can do parlor tricks now.”

Before any one had a chance to reply, the door was opened rather unceremoniously, and a tall, curly haired, sun-burned fellow, with an attractive face and the figure of an athlete, entered composedly, and closed the door behind him.

From the uproarious nature of the greeting he received, it was quite evident that he was a general favorite.

“Hello, Bob!”

“Come in and rest your face and hands.”

“How about Anthony’s date with Cleopatra?”

Bob Hollister grinned a little sheepishly.

“Heard about that, have you?” he inquired, as he dropped down on a chair. “I suppose that’ll be rubbed into me for the next six months. What the deuce did I know about Roman history? I was doping out a new around-the-end combination.”

“Sh! Careful!” cautioned Elwell, with upraised finger.

Hollister looked bewildered.

“What’s the matter?” he asked quickly.

“No football talk,” returned the Hoosier, with a grin. “Our esteemed, ex-temporary captain objects to it in the sacred privacy of his apartment.”

“Well, I’ll be hanged!” gasped Hollister. “Not talk about football! What in the mischief else is there to talk about?”

Dick smiled.

“You have got it bad, Bob,” he remarked. “Don’t you ever think about anything else?”

Hollister shook his head.

“Hardly ever,” he confessed. “I couldn’t keep it out of my head if I tried, with the big game so close. Why, I even wake up in the middle of the night wondering how to work certain combinations, or thinking up some new way of getting the ball through their line. I haven’t had time to open a book in weeks.”

He gave a sudden start, and, diving down into one pocket, drew out a rather crumpled envelope.

“Just look at that,” he remarked, tossing it over to Dick.

Merriwell caught it and extracted a square, printed slip, which proved to be one of the warning notices sent out from the dean’s office when a student has fallen behind the required grade in any particular study.

“A warning in Latin,” he said thoughtfully. “You must have been pretty rotten lately, Bob. Goodhue is one of the easiest profs in college.”

“I have flunked a bunch of times,” Hollister confessed. “And that isn’t all, either. Got one in German day before yesterday. I suppose Schlemmer got on his ear after the mess I made of Heine last week.”

“You want to look out, Bobby,” Fitzgerald put in lightly. “After this morning, you’re due for still another. Dear old Piercy was purple when you made that cute remark about Anthony’s date. I’ll bet he hot-footed to the dean the minute the class was over.”

“And three warnings means a general one,” supplemented Elwell. “By hocus, Bobby! You’ll have to do a little cramming, or you’ll have the whole faculty down on your neck.”

“They are now!” Hollister burst out petulantly. “I believe it’s a put-up job. Every one of them takes a special delight in getting me up every chance they can and making a monkey out of me. They ought to know I don’t have any chance to grind right in the middle of the football season. But what do they care about football! A lot of dried-up fossils! They don’t give a rap whether we’re licked or not. I don’t believe the biggest part of ’em even see one game a season.”

“You’re wrong there, Bob,” Dick put in quietly. “Some of the profs are daffy about the game. The dean wouldn’t miss one for any amount of money.”

“Yes, and old Piercy is the worst of the lot,” chimed in Fitzgerald. “You ought to have seen him Saturday—standing up on the bench, his hat off, hair rumpled, and eyes popping out of his head, waving his arms like a windmill, and yelling like a fiend. He’s a good old sport, even if he does like to catch a fellow napping in the classroom.”

The clock struck ten, and the sound had scarcely died away when Buckhart threw out his arms and yawned, loudly and ostentatiously.

“Humph!” remarked Fitzgerald tartly. “Why don’t you tell us plainly that it’s time to go home?”

“I was waiting to see if you wouldn’t wake up to the fact yourselves,” the Texan returned tranquilly.

The slim chap eyed him mischievously.

“I’ve a good mind to stay here just to spite you,” he said presently.

Buckhart yawned again.

“Stay right along, if you like, little one,” he drawled. “That wouldn’t bother me a whole lot. In about ten minutes I’m going to hit the pillow; but if you gents want to sit here for the rest of the night chinning, you’ve sure got my permission.”

Most of the other fellows were about ready to turn in themselves, and there was a general movement toward the door. Hollister got up with the rest, and then glanced hesitatingly toward Merriwell.

“Got a couple of minutes to spare, Dick?” he asked, in a low tone.

“Sure thing,” Merriwell returned quickly. “Sit down and I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Hollister dropped back onto his chair, and Dick followed the others to the door. With a chorus of good nights, they trooped out in a body and clattered downstairs. Then Merriwell came back into the room and resumed his seat, while Buckhart made tracks for the bedroom.

“You gents will have to excuse me,” he mumbled. “Can’t keep my blinkers propped open another minute. Good night.”

Without waiting for their response, he disappeared, and the next moment the sound of shoes being thrown to the floor was heard, followed with amazing swiftness by the creak of springs as the Texan crawled into bed.

“Gee! I wish I could do that,” Hollister murmured.

Dick raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

“Go to sleep the minute I hit the pillow,” Hollister explained. “I toss around for an hour or more, thinking about all kinds of things. Seems as if I could think better at night when everything’s quiet and there’s no one to disturb me.”

“Football, I suppose?” Dick questioned, looking at him thoughtfully.

Hollister nodded.

“Yes, but that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said quickly. “It’s these confounded warnings. I never got one of them before this fall.”

His tone was almost angry.

“As I remember,” Dick remarked, “you never used to have any trouble keeping up in your studies, but still had plenty of time for almost anything in the line of athletics you wanted to do.”

A frown corrugated Hollister’s forehead.

“Exactly,” he returned. “It looks to me as if the profs did the thing on purpose just to worry me when they ought to know I’ve got to give all my time to football. It’s a rotten shame!”

Dick did not answer for a moment.

“I hardly think that’s it, Bob,” he said presently. “There wouldn’t be any object in their doing that. I don’t believe they like giving a fellow’s name to the dean. I know Goodhue doesn’t, for he’s told me so. He doesn’t have a man warned until it’s absolutely necessary. No, I’m afraid the trouble is altogether with you. You don’t bone enough.”

Hollister smiled wryly.

“I don’t grind at all,” he said quickly. “Somehow, there doesn’t seem to be any time.”

Dick smiled.

“Shucks! You’ve got as much time as the rest of us. Somehow we manage to make a passable showing.”

Hollister flushed a little.

“I suppose I have got the time,” he said slowly, “but I can’t seem to make use of it. The minute I sit down with a book, my mind flies off to the field as regular as clockwork, and before I know it it’s time to turn in, and I haven’t done an earthly thing with the Latin or math, or whatever it may be; but very likely I’ve thought out some corking new formation or trick play.”

“I see,” Dick said quietly; “but what good does it all do?”

“Good!” exclaimed Hollister, in surprise. “Why, I put the idea up to Tempest or Fullerton, and often they can make use of it.”

“Of course I know that,” Dick returned. “There isn’t a fellow on the team who has a better, broader conception of the strategy of the game; but you’re not in college just to play football and let everything else go to smash. That sounds sort of priggish, I know, but it’s really the truth. What you’ve got to do is to put it out of your mind the moment you leave the field. If you don’t, Bob, you’ll be plucked as sure as fate.

“Brad has realized that, and you know there isn’t a fellow in college who thinks more of the game. But while he was taking Tempest’s place as captain, he just about dropped everything else and got frightfully behind in his work. Since Don came back last week, Brad has been doing his best not to think of football except on the field, and he’s done such a lot of hard grinding that he’s beginning to catch up.”

“That’s what I ought to do, of course,” Hollister agreed. “But I don’t see how I can, Dick. I start in, really intending to study, but somehow, I never get anywhere.”

“That’s all nonsense,” Dick said emphatically. “You can do it if you really make up your mind to. Great Scott, man! You don’t want to develop into a fellow with just one idea, do you? If you keep on this way, you won’t be able to think of another earthly thing but football. And if you don’t take a brace in your real work, you’re more than likely to be dropped. Then where would you be?”

Hollister’s face had grown very serious. He seemed to realize for the first time the gravity of the situation and the end toward which he was rapidly drifting. Somehow it had never occurred to him that there was a possibility of being dropped. If that should happen, what earthly good would his ability to play football be to him? It was not a pleasant thought.

“I expect you’re right, old man,” he said slowly, with a rather futile attempt at a smile. “Looks as if I’d have to take a big brace before something drops. It’s going to be a hard pull, though.”

“Of course, it will be hard, Bob,” Dick said earnestly, “but you’ve got to do it. Just make up your mind that you positively won’t give the game a thought off the field. Banish it entirely from your mind, and take a fresh spurt with the books. Then I think you’ll come out all right.”

Hollister arose slowly.

“That’s what I’ll do,” he said quickly; “at least, that’s what I’ll try to do.”

“Don’t say try,” Merriwell put in swiftly. “Don’t let there be a doubt in your mind of your ability to succeed, and I think you’ll make good.”

“Right you are,” Hollister smiled. “I’ll start in to-morrow morning. I’m awfully obliged, Dick, for your advice. I didn’t seem to realize before how serious a fix I was in, but I’ll pull up now, and I think things will come around in good shape.”

“Of course, they will,” Merriwell answered heartily. “See you to-morrow, old fellow. Good night.”