Читать книгу Stanford Stories: Tales of a Young University - Will Irwin - Страница 9

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One day when from the fences along the pastures exultant meadow-larks were shouting "April," trilling the "r" ecstatically, and mild-hearted people were out after golden poppies, the Encina Freshmen, dark-browed plotters every villain of them, met in Pete Halleck's room. There was trouble brewing. First, Pete counted them with an air of mystery; then he pulled down the window shades, shut the transoms, and drew from the wash-stand a tangled mass of rope, two cans of paint and a coil of wire. With these beside him on the floor, he harangued the mob.

"We have got to get a rush out of 'em, fellows," he said, keeping his voice discreetly low, "and if they won't scrap, we'll force 'em. How many of you remember how to tie a knot?"

"We've had experience enough," spoke up a roly-poly boy; "it's the Sophs who need a lesson in tying."

"And we'll give it!"

Halleck drew up and looked so melodramatically important that the meeting snickered behind their collective hands. Just then there came a knock at the door. Halleck put his fingers to his lips; the crowd sat as if petrified; the roly-poly conspirator felt his bravado oozing out in youthful perspiration. The knocking came again, more imperatively, then a voice.

"Let me in, you crazy Freshies."

Silence in the room.

"Let me in. I know about you. You're all in there, talking rush. Hang your little pink skins, let me in!"

Still no answer.

"Pete Halleck, unlock your door. It's I—it's Frank Lyman, and I've something to say to you babies. Open up!"

The composite face of the gathering fell. With Lyman against them, who could be for them?—Frank Lyman, oracle of Encina and father-confessor of Freshmen!

Pete threw the paraphernalia into his wardrobe.

"The game's up, fellows."

He opened the door, admitting the Senior, and with him, alas! Sophomore Smith, President of his class. The sight of the enemy stirred Halleck.

"Say, shall we tie up the two of them?" cried he, when he had locked the door.

"Key down, Freshie, key down," said the Senior. "You boys pain me to the limit. Aren't you satisfied with tying up the Sophomores once without scrapping the whole year through?"

"What do you know about our wanting to scrap?"

"I'm on to you, Peter: You have a ton of rope and a barrel of paint somewhere about your den, and you're going out to-morrow to tie up the Sophs at the ball game. Now you fellows have had three rushes this year; when are you going to quit and give us a rest?"

Halleck held the position that delighted his soul—center stage—and he was a respecter of neither the Faculty nor his seniors.

"We're going to quit when we get even with you for pulling twenty-five lone Freshmen out of the Hall at night and making them rush against the whole Sophomore class; then's when we're going to quit. Observe?"

Halleck's shamefully fresh manner revived the drooping spirits of his men.

"See here, we'll call it off if you will," put in the Sophomore president.

"Yes, I guess you will," drawled Halleck. The mob howled. Smith's class was notoriously weaker at fighting than their own.

"We've rushed you three times," went on Cap; "you licked us the first time we fought; then you pulled us out in the mud the night after and did it again; but we got you the next week by strategy!"

"By a sneaking trick!"

"That's right!" chimed the Freshmen, "Pete's dead right!"

"Well, say," persisted Smith, "we're willing to quit as it is. The score stands two to one for you fellows, too."

"Two to nothing!" and again the infant class shouted approval while Lyman, the Senior, looked on amused.

"I really have a chap for you children," he said. "Just because rushing happens to be your game, you run it to death. How do you suppose the Faculty are going to look at this thing? If you want rushing choked off entirely next year, just keep on."

Airily ignoring Lyman's speech, Pete Halleck put his chin out at the Sophomore.

"Then you won't rush?"

"No," answered Cap, perfectly calm, "not even if you carry canes."

Halleck's face shone.

"Ai—i, boys, that's what we'll do! We'll get out there with canes to-morrow and we'll make 'em scrap!"

"Yes, you will! I believe it," sneered Smith. "You fellows are just fresh enough to queer yourselves that way."

"We'll queer you!" cried a valiant youngster "if you don't rush to-morrow we'll tie up your baseball team and cart 'em off to Redwood."

"Yes, sir, and we'll show you how a class president looks braided with bailing-rope—we'll show you the pretty picture in a mirror, Mr. President—even if we have to haul you out of the arms of twenty Roble dames."

Pete had taken his class-mates by storm and they piped acquiescence in thin Freshman voices. Smith flushed angrily.

Here Lyman interfered.

"All right, make joshes of yourselves if you want to," he said, not so good-natured as at first. "We have given you warning. Just open that door and you may go on with your little conspiracy."

"Come again when you can't stay so long," wittily yelled Pete down the hall. "I'll meet you on the field to-morrow."

"Oh, we'll be there," called back Lyman over his shoulder. "So will the Faculty," and with this covert hint the peacemakers turned the corner.

The sun shown brightly on the red-brown earth of the diamond when the Freshmen, the Sophomores and the Faculty met, according to agreement. The enterprising student-body management had chalked the Quad in conspicuous places:

RUSH of the YEAR,

Sophomore-Freshman Game.

Don't Miss It!

and the college responded. The co-eds were there, radiant in the snowiest of duck shirts, the gayest of shirt-waists. With them were "ladies' men," in variegated golf-stockings and gorgeous hat-bands. The Freshmen, gathered near first base, contrasted disreputably with this display; they wore old clothes, ragged hats, and they carried a miscellaneous collection of canes, borrowed from Juniors or stolen from Sophomores.

These stalwarts of the latest class were loaded with horns and noise-machines. Defiance exhaled from them. It was an impressive object-lesson on the evils of Freshman victories.

A few sensible Juniors went over and tried to quell their disturbance, but the infants were beyond any control of their class fathers; they had at their head the redoubtable Pete Halleck, with his perverted sense of the proprieties, and their uproar moderated not a bit. The Juniors returned to the bleachers, shaking their heads in disgust. Professor Grind, of the Committee on Student Affairs, was observed to write in his note-book. The Sophomores who saw this rejoiced that they were not in rushing clothes. Still the racket went on.

Jack Smith, in spotless tennis flannels, sat on the bleachers. Some girls from San Francisco, and one in particular as far as Cap was concerned, had come down with Tom Ashley's mother that morning, and he brought them over to the game. Pete Halleck picked him out at once and reminded the others of their promise.

Hannah Grant Daly, who did not know him to speak to, also picked him out. To her he looked more goodly than ever this afternoon, contrasted with the uncouthness of Halleck and others of her class. She watched him covertly, laughing and talking with the town girl beside him. He had laughed and talked very much like that to her, once, but he had forgotten it. That was natural; she had forgiven it long ago. Lillian Arnold, in the brightest of Easter hats, watched him, too.

The game was not exciting. The Freshmen were badly outplayed; the Sophomores galloped around the bases, and the babies' insolence grew with their opponents' score. As the last inning dragged its tedious length, the prospect of the Freshmen forcing a rush had become the important thing with the crowd. The fighting class limbered up for action. Now their third man struck out and the catcher's mask was off.

"Ready!" Pete Halleck's voice came out of the silence of the waiting crowd.

"All set!" and the class was up and off on a trot toward the Sophomore players, who were trying not to walk away any faster than was usual. One after another the baseball men were overtaken and went down in clouds of dust and hard language.

Yet the Sophomores would not rush. Frank Lyman had exhorted them simply, while the Freshmen were attacking their nine. One or two of the hot-heads hurried to the Hall for old clothes, but the majority stood looking on, angry but quiet.

"Now for Smith!" yelled Halleck. His men turned toward the co-ed section of the bleachers.

"Shall we get out of this?" Cap asked Ashley.

"Get out nothing! Stay right here with the girls. They wouldn't have the gall."

But the lust of fight was in the Freshman heart as the dust of fight was on the Freshman skin. They lined up, a ragged mass of impertinence, as near the women as they dared, and waited for the leader of the opposition. He chatted on, explaining the college rush to the girl with him, and gave no sign of moving.

"Shall we go in and take him?" asked an excited youngster.

"I'll give him a chance to come easy," said Halleck. He squared himself, adjusted his dusty hat, and went straight up the steps.

"Excuse me, Mr. Smith," said he, "you are forgetting an engagement you made with some of your friends yesterday."

This was the freshest thing in the history of the college. The Sophomore's fingers twitched.

"I think you can wait until later, Halleck," he said slowly. Then he turned to the girl.

From the time Halleck climbed the bleachers and went toward Smith and his guests, the spectators were stiff with astonishment; nobody did anything. They saw Halleck look for one moment into Smith's angry blue eyes, go down the steps, and bring back two big fellows. Before the Sophomore could move away from the girls, the three men had dragged him down the bleachers; one heave of Halleck's broad back and Smith was under them, with his wind gone, and a Freshman was getting a rope ready.

Then just as Ashley tore down the steps in a rage, a slip of a girl darted past him and put her hands on Halleck's shoulders; a small, sandy-haired girl with blazing eyes.

"Untie him, you great brutes!"

The man with the rope stared at her irresolutely, furtively slipping the knot tighter. By this time, Halleck was on his feet again and had recovered from his surprise.

"Excuse me," he began.

The girl looked him in the eye.

"Get that rope off!"

She was just a little thing, but her gaze never wavered. The direct gaze is something that wild beasts and bullies, Freshmen or otherwise, cannot bear. Pete Halleck looked around for moral support, but his men were shame-faced and the bleachers were silent. He bent down and slipped the rope off Smith's feet.