You decided also that running was a wretched humdrum sport with no sort of fun in it and that when next spring came you would go in for baseball or cricket or .something in which there was a game. But you never forgot that day nor that race all of the next summer vacation Every time you leaped over a water hazard and took a spin of fifty yards or so over the soft turf after your golf ball you thought of your legs and the spring in them and when you were trotting up and down the beach between dips, hurdling the lifelines and behaving most childishly, you were really thinking of the last hundred yards of your next race and estimating the difference between the feel of sand and of cinders and wondering each day if you were strengthening your wind and improving your form. Still you weren't quite keen enough to go into training for the autumn games after you came back in the fall again. You played tennis and loped a bit each day afterwards, just enough to keep fit, and you went to the games as a spectator—feeling very kinky with your clerk's badge and your proper raiment and your privilege of watching the new Freshmen. You got enormously excited when the mile was run and you saw, for the first time, just how it looked from the outside, and, as they swung into the stretch and one of the new men came up out of the ruck and ate up the lead and broke the tape a winner, you ran out and clapped him on the back and you would have given anything if there had been another race right then and you could have thrown off your clothes and gone in. You had thought that you'd never race again and here you were suddenly wishing it were spring.
The Indian summer faded and the leaves began to fall. In the early mornings the elms and the ancient dormitories lay in a bluish opalescence as though they were at the bottom of a sea, a haze hung in the air by day, the crisp breath of evening made you think of hot suppers and open fires and all tho land smelled faintly of burning leaves and brush. One morning you opened your Crimson and saw a little two-line notice which said that at 4.30 o'clock that afternoon there would start from the locker-building the first hare-and-hound run of the year. You stood in your pajamas as you read this, with your toes curling away from the cold bare floor, but your heart gave a perceptible jump and a hot glow swept up within you. For days the hazy autumn had been calling you and now at last you heard the call. And you drew in a deep breath and gave your chest a thump and jumped under your icy shower with your teeth set, for your blood was up and you were aching to be up and away—away on the long hard trail and 'cross country with the hounds.
They were an odd lot, those hounds, sitting on the steps of the locker-building as you trotted across the field late that afternoon, shivering in their sweaters and waiting the word to go. There were brown-legged Mott Haven men, wearing their initials turned inside out, and pale divinity students with spectacles, whose sense of the proprieties demanded flannel shirts and heavy knickerbockers and stockings and leather shoes, and here and there some mature student of the law who had come down to the East from a far-off inland college and whose story of triumphs, now put aside and forgotten, was mutely told by the faded jersey and the tattered initials of the college he called his own. You looked your new friends over—friends they must be to have heard with you the same call—and at the hares, waiting the word to go, and the timers, muffled to their chins in ulsters, and gradually the gray sky grew darker and you hugged your bare legs as hard little flakes of snow came hurrying through the air. "All right!" nodded one of the ulsters at last, and the hares, slinging their bags of paper clippings over their shoulders, swung off on the trail. You watched them jog easily across the field and disappear round the corner of Boylston, flinging a handful of paper behind them as they passed from view. One minute—two—three—four—jiminy crickets! how cold it was—and you all got up and began circling about the timers, stamping your feet and hugging your shivering ribs, when—"Five minutes! Go!" said one of them, and you all turned about—and started away on the trail.
Two of the old Mott Haven men slipped up in the lead to set the pace. You fell in at a comfortable distance behind, and behind you, with all sorts of good and bad running, the others stretched out in single file. Over the grass, now specked with little wisps of snow you jogged, round the corner of Boylston and down through the tangle of trucks and trolley-cars of Harvard Square.The hires were bothersome and shifty. For half an hour the pack fretted along the trail through the backyards and shanties of darkest Cambridge until, at last, you emerge into the open again, pattered across the Longwood bridge and, with the cries of the coxswains coming through the distance and wherries and singles shooting past you, down stream with the tide, you stumbled into the marshy lowlands that edge the Charles.
It was real running now. Your feet caught in the tufts of wiry grass and every now and then you slumped down to your knees into a muddy pocket of ice water. The quick weariness of the first three miles—the hardest stretch of a ten-mile run—took hold and took hold hard. You caught a glimpse from across the river of a crew just lifting their dripping shell over their heads, and as the water splashed on the boathouse float you wished you could get some of it too. The sweat was coming out on your forehead as you swung at last into the road again; it was running into your eyes as the pack trailed across Soldiers' Field. The great amphitheater was silent and deserted now and nothing to break the stillness but the puffs of breath and the muffled tread of sneakers and running shoes, you filed through the open gates and across the furrowed gridiron.
After the pack had passed the field and trotted through a half mile or so of streets the town gave way to scattered houses, and the houses to open fields and scraps of woodland, and finally you found yourself in the open country. Trot-trot, trot-trot, uphill and down, scrambling over boulders and stones, pushing through thickets and brushwood, the pace kept up unceasingly. The line began to stretch out now. From the top of each rise of ground you could see the slower ones pulling up the slope behind you while ahead for a quarter of a mile the leaders were carrying a broken line of vivid crimson and white out into the hazy distance. Your blood, slowly and surely heated by the three-mile pull, now burned evenly to your very finger-tips. The heat of it made you laugh at the frosty air, smoothed out every kink in your body, melted away the weight that had pulled on your chest until your lungs worked as easily as a fish's gills and the rich fruity air sank to the very bottom of them. As you felt your arms, moving like pendulums, low and steadily, and your legs stepping light and evenly, and drank in the wine of the autumn air in great conscious breaths you began to know your strength and be sure of it, and you looked from each hilltop over the long trail yet to be traveled rejoicing, and there seemed in all the world nothing worth while but straight limbs and clean thoughts and stout hearts and the free and open country. And you understood what it means to say that the sport is bigger than the victory and that it is not just to break a tape a few inches in front of another man that one goes in to train. For what a good and glorious thing it is—the mere running! The lift and thrust of the thigh, the rhythm of untrammeled motion! The catch of the foot on the pathway, the tireless buoyant progression! When the air strikes deep in the chest, the arms lift with the leg-thrust and the muscles all sing the same rhythm! The regular strides on the level, the in-bend as one sweeps round a town, the relentless pace up a hillside, when the feet grip the ground as the fingers grip the rope in hand-over-hand climbing! The run on the beach in the summer, alone with the gold and azure! Or this long trail homeward in autumn when the frost's in the air and call answers call through the twilight! What a good and glorious thing it is—the mere running!
The gray November day grew grayer and the lights began to sparkle through the twilight. You forgot your bare legs and your flimsy running clothes, and each of the hounds became merely one of the pack hot on the trail. Now you scramble up a gravelly gully where the workmen straightened up from their shovels and stared open-mouthed; now you swung through a farmyard where the chickens scattered squawking and the girls of the house stood in the kitchen doors laughing as you passed. Now you swished through an orchard, ducking the low branches and plowing through the crackling leaves. Your foot struck something round and hard and you snatched up an apple from its wrapping of frosty grass which was like wine in your cottony mouth and tasted of the autumn and the out-of-doors as only an apple can taste which has mellowed under its own leaves and been cooled and sweetened by frost.
Over the orchard wall and to the bottom of the hill the trail led, straight down to a brook too deep to jump and without a bridge. The gang of small boys waiting there assure you earnestly that there "ain't nothin' nearer than the railroad bridge," full half a mile away. You know they are lying, but the darkness is closing in rapidly now, there's no time to waste, so into the black water the sweating pack plunges, hip-deep in the stream, just as the frosty night is beginning to weave a fringe of ice along the edges. You thought of Valley Forge and the retreat from Moscow as you scrambled up the opposite bank and the wind struck your dripping legs, but before the water has had time to freeze it had dried off from you as it would from a stove, and you were pounding down the trail again no worse for your ducking.
The late November darkness closed rapidly down around you now. The specks of the trail could scarcely be distinguished from the flakes of snow on the grass tufts and the pack felt its way along slowly, with heads bent and eyes searching the ground. Every few minutes there was a halt and plaintive wails of "Lo-o-ost Tra-a-ail! Lo-o-ost Tra-a-ail!" and then from somewhere off in the darkness came at last the clear halloo of some keen-eyed veteran, "Tally Ho! Ta-a-ally Ho-o-o!" Giving tongue to the cry the pack closed in again, and again was up and away. You stumbled out of the woods and fields at last, and as you struck an open road the leaders quietly hit up the pace. You could see the line—not so long as it was, some still toiling back there in the woods—swing under the white glare of an arc lamp and suddenly the road turned and you found yourself in one of those flinty macadam avenues that lead straight into town. The country disappeared as at the fall of a drop curtain, rows of yellow gas-lamps crossed each other in the middle distance, and down toward the glow where the town lay the arc lamps of the avenue stretched like a string of stars.
Now there was work ahead of you. All afternoon you had had chances to loaf—when the nervous pack were held at a fence or hedge-row, when the leaders were thoughtful enough to walk up-hill, or over some of the rougher places, when the trail was lost in the darkness—but there was none of that now. For a good two miles down the hard highway not a bramble or brush or lost trail or fence gave a chance for soldiering. Straight down the road you went, all in a bunch, for none dared to drop behind to come wandering into Cambridge alone that night with nothing but his running clothes to cover him. All that gruelling training for the mile came back to help you now. Every time that you had ever driven yourself under the trainer's watch through the last heartbreaking two-twenty of a time-trial, when the air was muggy as a steam laundry and the mercury was eighty-five in the shade and the cinders were swimming before your eyes, made it so much easier now to look down that long stretch with easy confidence, to hook yourself in just behind the leaders, put your arms and back a bit more into it, and laugh at the pace.One by one, as you passed each corner, the swinging arc lamps slipped by overhead, steaming breaths showing in the glare as the pack pounded across each circle of light and the shadows leaping ahead fantastically as you swept on again into the darkness. Past trolley-cars, humming out to the suburbs loaded to the fenders with office folk and pale-faced clerks, past shop-girls and workmen with dinner-pails, and lighted houses, through the windows of which you caught glimpses of tables set for dinner and blazing open fires, the pack sweeps on. How petty, cramped and absurd seems all this boxed-up world of rectangular blocks, or narrow grooves called streets, of clothes and trolley-cars! How all the dust of over-civilization is brushed away as you stride strongly on with the steam of your breath showing in the lamplight and the sweat running down your face. With what a straight-eyed chastity can you sweep by those chiffon-and-sachet women-folk who giggle at your honest bare legs and coyly avert their eyes; with what Olympian good-humor can you glimpse the lily-livered youth with a cigarette who glares at you cynically as you pass and shivers and wraps himself tighter in his foolish ulster. Maybe you will wear an ulster some day, perhaps before to-morrow you will admit the tyranny of straight-ruled streets and clothes, but now, to-night, with your eight good miles behind you and the air of the hills in your lungs and the fire of the chase in your blood, now, at last, you are sure of yourself and free.
Through the streets of Boston, dodging cars and trucks, down to the railroad station galloped the pack, clattering down through the echoing subway beneath the tracks, up and away again on the other side and along the road to Cambridge. Through the darkness to the left you could presently see the gloomy bulk of the stands on Soldiers' Field and beyond that the dull-glowing of the Brattle Square clock and farther yet in the distance the tower of Memorial. Suddenly the leaders pulled up, panting. "Here it is!" someone cries, and as you some up you see that the trail abruptly stops and that a line of paper scraps is laid clear across the road. It's the end of the trail—the "break." From here it's a run-in home, a mile almost straightaway—down past Soldiers' Field and over the bridge, up to the hill to the Square and over the gymnasium steps where the timers are. "Line up for the break!" called the master of the hounds, and he looked back over his shoulder into the darkness, panting, as he waited for the laggards to appear. As you saw them toil slowly in, saw some flop down at the roadside, and, lost to vanity, flat on their backs pant up at the stars, and saw the straight road stretching ahead relentlessly and thought of leaping off from the line as though you were starting a quarter-mile dash instead of finishing—who should come jogging up out of the darkness from the direction of the Square, out for an after-dinner bit of exercise, with a running mate in a crew sweater beside him, but your friend Jenkins.
"Hello!" says he, "What's up? Lemme pace you in!"
"Pace!" you cry. "I'll race you in!" and you take your place on the line. You've put nine miles behind you and he's fresh from his little jog down the street, but your blood is hot and your fighting edge is up and every piston-shaft and cogwheel in your carcass is working together like a well-oiled and exquisitely adjusted machine.
"A race it is!" grins Jenkins, and he pushes in beside you, toeing the break.
"Are you ready?" demands the master of the hounds, looking along the line. "Go!"
The pack broke like thoroughbreds at the flinging-up of the barrier. At least that's the way it seemed to you. Your legs, gauged to the easy 'cross-country pace, seemed tied down and weighted as you tried suddenly to lift them into the long high stride of the sprint home. Your chest, which but a moment ago drank in the cool air to its very depths, closed on each breath now before you'd scarcely caught it in your throat. The taste of the out-of-doors vanished and the air became raw and hot and rough. But again your training came back to help you. Even the long pull over the nine-mile trail rallied to help you and the dogged good-work-well-done-behind-you weariness is quite another sort of thing from that hollow-sided distress that comes when the cold blood first meets the shock and strain of the cinder-path struggle.
Jenkins, fresh as a lark and cocky with his warming, started out at a four-forty clip. You hooked your eyes to his back and lifted your heavy legs into a longer stride. He will, will he! It's more than a sprint from here to the gymnasium, and you've not learned to turn off some ten miles for nothing. He will, will he—ar-r-rh!—Up guards and at 'em, to hell with Yale, lay on Macduff, and the devil take the hindmost! You see the Soldiers' Field gate slip by and the bridge and the boathouse, and now you're pulling up the hill towards the lights of Harvard Square. On and on you go, hungrily, with your legs eating up the distance with the speed that darkness seems to give. Far behind are the most of the pack and those in front keep slipping further and further back. You overhaul them, one by one, suddenly bear on hard for a dozen strides—"Take that!" you say under your breath—and you slip past.
As you pass Mount Auburn Street there are only three ahead of you, the master of the hounds, one of the Mott Haven veterans and that nimble Jenkins. The pace and the long pull uphill from the river are telling on him now and he's not running all from his legs as he started out to do. You can see his shoulders pumping into it and—and—yes, you're right—his arms are going up and his chin is slewing round a bit. Straight through the Square you plunge rough shod, through the crowd waiting with their transfers and with half a dozen trolley-car gongs banging unheard in your ears, and then suddenly, only a furlong away, you see the lights of the gym and you know that the race is almost done. As you catch sight of them a quick exultant strength lifts through you. All the charm and mystery of the autumn, the rough-shod dash through wood and water, the thrill of the chase comes back to you in a whirl. You quite forget yourself, an amazing recklessness seizes you and you turn everything loose. "Take that—and that—and that!" you say to yourself, and you sweep across the Square, leap across the gutter to the pathway past the yard, pass the third man and are blowing your breath on Jenkins's neck. Past Massachusetts and Harvard you stride, shoulder to shoulder, and then you bear on hard again and you hear his breath behind you, and there's nobody ahead of you but the master of the hounds. Him you overhaul just as you reach the close-set posts of the gymnasium; you flip through together, but he loses his stride, and, taking it on the fly, you finish out the last dozen steps ahead and drop on the steps a winner.
You will undoubtedly become rich and famous in your day and have your moments of triumph here and there, but you'll be lucky if you ever have more fun than you have now, as you sit on the cold stone steps panting and hot and happy, and with your ten good miles behind you and your victory in your hands and watch with the crowd as the others pump in out
of the darkness, and finish one by one. , Jenkins finishes fourth. "Good work!" he gasps, slumping down on the steps beside you and dropping his damp head against your shoulder, "I'm down and out!" "You weren't warmed up enough," you laugh. "You know we'd been going it for an hour or two." "And finish like that?" he pants. "I've got all I want. I'm not in your class." And as Jenkins happens to be your room-mate and able to put it all over you any day in the sprints, you pull him to his feet and decide to forgive him after all, and the two of you go down to the baths together.
The cup was not a very big one, but it looked very well that night as it stood on your study table under the glow of the big lamp. You stretched out in your big chair, deliciously tired, with a soothing somnolent fire burning drowsily through and through you, and ran the long run over again. It was, indeed, a little cup, but it didn't remind you of seasick finishes as some of your other prizes did, and the older it got the dearer it was to you. And years afterwards when more than a path of scattered papers are needed to take you back to the old lost trail, when it's a far cry to the open country and all that you can see from your window are rows of dingy brick, and all that you hear is the roar of trucks and "L" trains and trolley-cars, you have but to look at this tarnished old mug and again you are swinging with the hounds through the frosty autumn, again you catch the smell of burning leaves and brush, and hear again through the twilight the long-drawn cry of "Tally-ho! Ta-a-ally! Ho-o-o!"