Left behind

Everybody in the house—in all the world it seemed—was sleeping, but the Vandalia Miler sat up in bed, staring with dry, wide-open eyes at the wall. The dormer room, tucked up under the roof, was stuffy and close and smelled of heat and wall-paper and rag-carpet. Through the little window, from the trees and grass outside, came the steady whirring of the tree-toads and crickets. Suddenly the stillness was broken and the campus clock tolled two. As the harsh note grated on his nerves his heart gave a thump and he threw himself back and buried his face in the hot pillow. It seemed as though he must shut out the world and forget. But he couldn't forget, and you can shut out the world with a pillow—only so long as you can hold your breath. He slipped over the edge of the bed—that ridiculous, high, hot feather-bed—and with his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees, blinked at the little windows and the patch of moonlight on the floor where the Other Man lay sleeping. And as he watched him, snoring there comfortably in his sleep, his own secret returned again and bit into him, as it had returned so many times that day and night, and all the disappointment and bitterness and despair of it. And he felt that life had tricked him, cut him off in the flower of his youth and put him on the outside, and he was an outcast with his hand raised against the world.

When they had arrived that night, with a lot of the other teams that had come down for the interscholastics, and had been assigned to that one remaining vacant room, the Other Man had told him to go ahead and take the bed, because, as he explained, a miler needed all the sleep he could get, whereas a bit of wakefulness the night before the games only served to put an edge on the sprinter's nerves. "It'll make me start quicker," said he, spreading a blanket on the floor. That was just like the luck of the Other Man—to give up something and after all to get it back again. And the Vandalia Miler blinked at him, and thought and thought, and wondered whether the Other Man would make the 'varsity in his freshman year. For the Other Man was going away to college and the Vandalia Miler couldn't go. That was his secret, which had been his for only a day, and which he was somehow too proud to tell. That was why he believed that he was an outcast, a pariah—why a shivery abyss yawned between these two old friends, though you might have thought that it was but a yard or two of rag carpet that separated him, sitting there on the edge of the bed, from the Other Man, sleeping in his blanket on the floor. They had grown up in Vandalia, in that little prairie town, from the beginning; gone swimming together and skated and rung door-bells, gone through the grammar-school and into the high-school, and then, when most of the town boys were dropping out to go to work and the ones who were going to college went away to prep, school they had decided to stick by the ship. They would stick by their town as long as they could, but when they had to leave they were going, not to one of the State universities, not to Chicago, but down into the distant and glittering East. One didn't go down East to college from the Vandalia High-School. They were about the only men left in the class after their sophomore year; the rest were girls—the girls they had grown up with and written notes to and divided their apples and candy with, back in the kid days. Once there had been a cane-rush—somebody had read about one in a book—and two legs and an arm were broken and one boy nearly killed. The girls were ordered to keep out. They jumped in, carried water, bandaged black eyes with their handkerchiefs, freshman girls untied the freshmen as fast as the sophomores tied them up—that's the sort of girls they were. And he and the Other Man were the only men in the class and going down East to college afterward. Probably you do not understand just what that meant. You may know, perhaps, some little high church prep, school, built on the top of a hill like a robber baron's castle, where there are just about enough men to make up the teams if each man plays on all of them, and the man who is captain of the eleven is generally captain of the nine and the track team and leads the banjo club. If you were chosen captain of the eleven in your freshman year, you would, of course, be a much greater man than the President. But you wouldn't have a lot of good-fellow girls to tell you so. And the Vandalia Miler had both—he and the Other Man.

They turned out the only decent eleven the school had ever had and a nine and a paper, and all the rest of it, and divided everything—just as though it was a Trust. One of them would write the editorials calling down the faculty and the other would preside at the mass meetings; he would lead the mandolin club, with about six yards of satin ribbon which one of the girls had given him tied to his mandolin to show that he was leader, and the Other Man would lead the glee club and sing all the tenor solos. And at last, in their senior year, they got up a track team. It was the last chance they had—after June the deluge. They sent to Chicago for real running clothes and spiked shoes—it had been sneakers and trousers cut off at the knees before that in Vandalia—and taught the school a brand new cheer. The merchants put up the money to send the team down to Pardeeville, and the night before they left there was a mass meeting and a dance and speeches. The Vandalia Miler, blinking at the torn mosquito-bar that covered the little window, smiled grimly as he thought of that speech—of that droll school orator of theirs, older than the rest of them, with his high forehead and Henry Clay scalp lock, and his arms outspread and his voice in his boots: "With every heart in Vandalia beating for you, every eye turned down the prairie toward the South, you go—to run for Vandalia, to win for Vandalia, and if not to win, to fight to the last ditch for the purple' V' upon your breasts!" And he and the Other Man had gone home together on air, and told each other how they were going to make the team when they got down to college and show those effete Easterners what it meant to meet a real man and—and there was a light in the library window when he got home, past midnight though it was, and his father was in there locked up with his lawyer. Something had happened. It wouldn't be announced for a day or two, but everything had gone to smash, and it meant that the Vandalia Miler must stay behind and go to work in the hardware store. He didn't sleep much that night, and he went down to the train the next day as late as he could and slipped on when nobody would see him, while the girls were singing and waving flags from the station platform and the rest of the men were leaning out of the windows and laughing and waving their hats. And here he was—where he had longed to be—sent down on the team to run for his school and his town, and it all seemed like something in a pantomime, outside of him and far away, unreal and part of a horrid dream. But he had to run. It came back just as it did every minute or two, like a quick pain. He went hot all over. Those others, who were going to fight it out with him, were all sleeping now, just like the Other Man. He must hang on to himself—get some sleep. He gritted his teeth, squeezed his fists, and told himself that after all they were kids and he was now a real man. There are a number of things—he would begin very sternly—more important than going to college, and a 'varsity initial won't help you much before a judge and jury or patch up anybody's broken bones or tell how the market's going, but—and here he slipped and raced away again—but no more will a Victoria Cross nor a rag from the captured colors. And just as long—just as long as there are men in the world with hearts under their coats and blood in their veins there'll be somebody to work the last gun and to head the forlorn hope and fling a life away for a smile or a cheer or a bit of ribbon. And it doesn't make any difference whether he's got on a cuirassier's breast-plate or football canvas, a running suit or khaki. And when the others are ready to go and the band begins to play, it isn't any fun to be left behind and —— He got sorrier and sorrier for himself, which is a very, very bad thing for a very young man to do, until at last he flung himself back on the bed, and with his head full of charging cavalry, photographs of Varsity teams, batteries galloping into action, and lonely outcasts left behind, he finally dropped asleep, just as the night was graying and the birds were beginning to chirp in the trees outside. For just a minute he forgot, and then somebody shook him and he saw the Other Man was standing over him, fresh as paint.

"Gee, man!" he laughed; "you look dead as a smelt! Don't mean you stayed awake with all that bed to range about in!" "Oh, no," said the Vandalia Miler; "I slept all right." He ran very well in spite of everything. Had he had a bit more experience in racing, he would have tried sooner to get within striking distance of the leaders. As it was, coming round the upper turn into the stretch, he sprinted past the fifth and fourth men and lost his feet and fell, completely run out, just as he was being beaten for third place about seven feet short of the tape. It was one of those races of which the spectator always may remark that if the man had had a bit more sand he would have won. The Other Man had already won his brilliant victory in the hundred when the Vandalia Miler was beaten. A lot of people were congratulating him and the trainer of one of the State universities had just promised him board and tuition if he would enter there that fall as the Miler staggered over the line. The Other Man said things to the trainer and told him that he'd mistaken his man.

"Where we're going," and he smiled at the Vandalia Miler as he helped him to the dressing-room, "they don't have professionals on the team!" The Vandalia Miler didn't say anything—you can't say much just after you've run yourself out in a mile race—but just as soon as he could, he pulled on his clothes. He was special correspondent for the Vandalia Blade. They had made him feel very proud and important a couple of days before when they had asked him to "rush in a thousand words after the games, just as soon as he could jump on a wire." So he dragged himself over to the railroad station and jumped on the wire. It was not what you would call a creative mood. But he sent the story. By biting his lip and stopping every little while he told all about it, while little black spots chased each other up the paper, and the rest who had been beaten were coming to and the Other Man was making friends with the prep-school stars and promising to look them up when he got down East.

When the story was off the wire he went back to the boarding-house and lay down on the tall feather-bed. He was still there when the Other Man came up to dress for the dance that was to be given for the visiting teams that night in the college gym. The Other Man began early because, with only a little wavy mirror and a smelly kerosene lamp, a wet hair-brush, and a straight stand-up collar about as high as a cuff, it takes one quite a while to make one's self look like a Gibson man. The Other Man spatted down his hair in the light of the little lamp and whistled between his teeth; the Vandalia Miler lay on the feather-bed staring at the whitewashed ceiling and thinking. He couldn't ask the belle of the ball down to the football game next autumn; he couldn't promise to send back a college pin for a red satin pillow with a white initial on it and bet boxes of Huyler's on sure things with all the girls who wanted to lose and make tobacco-pouches for him. He couldn't put on any dog at all. It was back to the tall grass for him.

"Better hurry up and get ready," said the Other Man, puffing over his tie.

"Don't think I'll go," said the Vandalia Miler. He mumbled something about having a headache and feeling pretty dopy. "What's the sport, anyway," he added, "meeting a lot of girls you're never going to see again?" He was, you see, in a pretty bad way. The Other Man turned round and stared. Then he laughed. Such remarks were not worth a reply.

"See you there!" he chirped presently. Then, with his trousers turned up an extra reef and his straw hat stuck on one side—all very rakish and kinky—he blew out and down the stairs, three steps at a time. The Vandalia Miler thought some more. After a while he got up, stretched, and rubbed his eyes. Then he jammed his running clothes into his suit-case—they weren't going to be much use to him any more—and started for the station. Everybody in Pardeeville was going to the dance. On the front porches in the light of the hall lamps he could see the girls slipping their light scarfs over their shoulders, and now and then far down a cross street catch the glimmer of white through the trees. The sidewalk was narrow, with a picket-fence on one side and big elms on the other, and every little while he and his suit-case would have to flatten up against the fence while a couple passed him, with low words, perhaps, that he couldn't hear, and a ripple of laughter, white dresses—whiter in the dark—and a breath of perfume in the air after they had gone. The station was deserted and silent as the tomb. The only sign of life was the lamp shining through the window and the sleepy telegraph operator nodding over his key. The Vandalia Miler chucked his suit-case against the wall and began tramping up and down, counting the number of steps from one end of the platform to the other. After a long while, he went over to the little grocery across the street, bought a box of "sweet caps" and smoked them relentlessly, one after another, inhaling the last two or three, to convince himself that he was hardened to all things and didn't care. Really, though, things were getting more and more on his nerves, and he did care. Hours, it seemed, dragged away. He sat on the baggage-truck, trying not to listen. It was clear moonlight, still, and clear as a bell. The gym where they were dancing was only a few blocks away, behind the trees, and on the other side of the track was open prairie. There wasn't a sound there on the station platform except the clicking of the telegraph key, and he could hear the faint music of the violins and the toot-toot of the cornet coming over the trees.

It was after midnight when the train thundered in. He was in his seat, with his hat pulled down over his eyes, when the rest came down the street on the run and the Other Man, panting and excited, bounced into the seat beside him. The Other Man had to tell about it, whether anyone listened or not—what she said and he said, and how she cut her dances right and left to sit 'em out with him and came down to within half a block of the station to see him off. And then there was a waltz that the Other Man wasn't ever going to forget—"the finest waltz I ever hope to hear, and that's a fact." The Vandalia Miler stood it for a long time. Once he sat up suddenly and jammed on his hat.

"For heaven's sake forget it!" he said. "Aren't you ever going to get over being a kid?" The Vandalia Miler, you see, had had to get over being a kid in twenty-four hours, and it didn't come so easy.

"Whatever's wrong with you?" laughed the Other Man. "Never saw anybody so peevish in my life!" And he began to whistle the tune harder than ever.

The train was a milk-train. It stopped at every cross-roads. It was stiflingly hot and smelly in the car, and the Other Man kept on humming, steadily as a pianola, and keeping tune by snapping his fingers, but for all that, the Vandalia Miler finally dropped asleep. He dreamed that he was down East, after all, and winning the mile, down a track about like a sublimated skating-rink, with an audience of a billion or two people, rising to him from a sort of stadium made of pure white marble and gold. He was just being heaved up in the air by the frantic populace when he woke up. And the Other Man was shaking him by the arm and telling him that they were back in Vandalia. He didn't need anyone to tell him that. It was growing light as they stepped off the train. He was just blinking his eyes open and seeing the old station and the lumber-yard and the Waldorf Café, and everything inside him seemed to be caving in, when the Other Man, still up in the air and keen as a mink, began to bray out his everlasting waltz. The Vandalia Miler jumped as though you had shot off a revolver just behind his ear. He whirled round and almost yelled:

"For heaven's sake, man, shut up!" The Other Man looked at him and laughed.

"I don't see what license you've got to be so all-fired grouchy," he said. "If you'd won—"

"Well?" cried the Vandalia Miler, stepping closer.

"It looked to me—"

"Looked to you! Are you calling me a quitter?"

You must remember that it had lasted two whole days and nights now and the ends of his nerves were all sticking out.

"Say it, will you?" He dropped his suit-case on the sidewalk and clenched his fists. "Just say it now—how did it look to you?" And then, before anyone guessed what was coming, he shot out with his fist. The Other Man's hands were down, helpless. He caught it fairly on the tip of the jaw and went down in a heap, and the Vandalia Miler stood over him, half waiting to swing again, half scared at what he had done. The others rushed in to pull them apart, but the Other Man just jumped up with a grim little laugh, as though it was all a sort of joke and the Vandalia Miler a kind of wild man with bad manners. Then he walked ahead with the rest. All in all, it was about the completest thing he could have done. It left the Vandalia Miler, you see, quite on the outside. And that was the end of Damon and Pythias—and all their plans and dreams. The next day the Other Man went down East to tutor for his entrance exams. The Vandalia Miler went to work in the hardware store, selling frying-pans and shingle nails. . . .

The Vandalia Miler left the store in charge of the repair-shop man and started home for supper. He had just sold an improved gasoline stove to a farmer's wife from Vienna Centre who had never burned anything but wood, and he was considerably excited. He swung up State Street, whistling. There was a bulletin in the Blade window with letters in blue ink splashed on it a foot high. This is what he read—what stopped his whistling short:

TRIUMPH OF VANDALIA BOY

Underneath was a dispatch with a New York date-line, telling how the Other Man had won the intercollegiate mile at Mott Haven that afternoon. He felt his face getting hot. He put his hands in his pockets and squeezed his finger-nails into his palms so that folks wouldn't see. There was a beautiful picture framed up in his mind—a picture built up of Sunday supplements, stories in magazines, and the imagination of a young man who had never seen Mott Haven, and who stood on a wooden sidewalk on the main street of a fresh-water town a thousand miles away. It was a sort of composite of Henley and a Thanksgiving game, and the Other Man stood in the foreground in the afternoon sunshine, panting easily and smiling politely at the applause. In the two years that the Other Man had been away he hadn't come back even for his vacations, and he was getting to be a we-used-to-know-him-when-he-was-young sort of a man. There had been many stories about him in the Blade. News was rather scarce out there, and they liked to hear about each other. And every time the Other Man did anything the town people felt somehow that Vandalia had done it and were glad. There was considerable local pride in Vandalia. They would do anything for anybody who did something for the town. But the Vandalia Miler hadn't learned this yet.

He got away without being obliged to talk to anybody, and hurried home. There, without knowing just why, he unearthed his old running clothes, and just as the sun was setting that evening the Vandalia Miler started jogging round the old dirt track at the fair grounds, training again for the mile.

They didn't go in very heavily for sport in those days in Vandalia, and everybody soon knew what he was doing and wondered why. The high-school boys came over late afternoons and watched him run. Then they got to pacing him, and finally they asked him to help them get up a team to lick Sugar River. Sugar River was a town about twenty miles north of Vandalia. The only difference between the two towns to an outsider was that the one had an opera-house and a six-story hotel, and the other had ten blocks of brick paving. A football game between Vandalia and Sugar River would have made the '94 Springfield game look like an international peace congress or a vegetarian breakfast. The Vandalia Miler helped them with the team. He didn't know, of course, that it was about the most important thing he'd ever done in his life and he was thinking too much of himself and the Other Man to be very much interested. But he did it as well as he knew how. Sugar River annihilated them. They lost every point. It didn't especially increase Vandalia's love for Sugar River.

The Vandalia Miler was embarrassed, but he kept up his own running, not training enough to get tired of it. Some days he took a lot of little sprints, some a jog of five miles or so, some a rest or a bit of tennis, but no smoking, and all the time plenty of sleep. Sometimes he'd try it at sun-up, before the rest of the town was awake, just to test his steam and press himself a bit; and sometimes, on moonlight nights, when he could see the track plain as day, he'd go over after dark and whirl off his mile at top speed, stripped to the buff—racing through the moonlight with the cool night smell coming up from the grass and the cool wind blowing on him all over. Those were the times when he even forgot the Other Man. It seemed as though he was tireless, eating up the distance like a ghost with a feeling all the time of I've-done-this-before-in-the-dawn-of-things-a-million-years-ago. The next day, when he was back in the hardware store, he would smile inside at ordinary folks plodding about in their foolish store-clothes. The point is, you see, he began to run for the fun of running. It was the only thing he'd had for company since the Other Man went away. By the time summer was over he was brown as an Indian and hard as nails and he could run like a broncho.

In August, in Vandalia, came the Clearwater County fair. It was the biggest fair in the State—more people, bigger pumpkins, fatter hogs, taller corn, more balloons and bands and red lemonade and noise. The fair grounds began to fill up with red thrashing-machines and candy booths and sideshow tents—not the place for a young man who preferred to be alone. On the afternoon of Wednesday, the third day of the fair, the Vandalia Miler stopped at the corner drug-store for a drink of soda-water, on his way home. He was just swallowing a glass of Arctic Mist and recalling that a preparation known as Lemo Kolo had tasted just like it a year ago, when out through the window, over the colored-water jars, he saw the Other Man, home again after his triumphs in the vast and glittering East, togged out in a set of very tricky flannels and blowing along State Street, bowing right and left, and beaming like a fresh-plucked rose for joy at getting home. You might just as well have flashed a search-light in his eyes at ten paces. He was all in. The two years that had passed rolled up like a patent window-shade when the spring slips, and he was back at the railroad station, just home from Pardeeville, watching the Other Man walk away through the melancholy dawn. He saw him pushing open the screen, and he braced himself for an instant to face it out, cold and rather haughtily. Then he flung a dime on the counter and red as fire hurried out the side door.

That night the Blade published a long program for Thursday, the big day at the fair. There was to be a special excursion from Sugar River, a free-for-all trot and a two-fifteen pace, the McHenry Zouaves, the Diving Horse, a fat ladies' potato race, Pavella the King of Tight Wire, and—"an open mile foot-race for the championship of the world." That was the way the Blade put it. They could always be trusted in such cases to do the right thing. Of course it was the Other Man's crowd who had conceived the idea of the race. He had brought some of his friends home with him from the East to show them what the West was like, and they had thought it would be good sport to make him trot out and perform for the girls and the merry villagers. "For the championship of the world," said the Blade. "That this is no mere jest is evidenced by the fact that first among the list of entries appears the name of our famous young townsman, the present intercollegiate champion. He informed a representative of the Blade this afternoon that he had kept up his training for just such a contingency as this, and that he never was in finer fettle. The scribe found him at his home, 'The Elms,' on the beautiful estate north of the city, where he is entertaining a number of wealthy young society men from Eastern bon-ton circles, and found him as modest as he was when he left his native town two years ago. He said that nothing would please him more than to run at the fair-grounds' track. 'For it was there,' said he, 'that I won my first race, you know!' "

"Oh, hell!" said the Vandalia Miler. And then he called up the superintendent's office at the fair grounds and told them to enter him for the mile. . . .

There was, in the first place, a piping hot August afternoon, the kind that they have out in the corn belt, when not a drop of rain has fallen for a couple of months and the leaves are drying up on the trees and the grass is yellow and crackly under foot, and the dust follows after the farmer's wagons like smoke. Then, inside a high board fence, was the fair ground, with big wooden halls here and there, oak-trees with locusts singing away in the branches, and packed full of people and prize cattle and pumpkins and lunch-boxes and chewing candy and noise. There were farmers in their store-clothes just in from thrashing and farmers' girls in white dresses with pink and baby-blue ribbons, and in between children with sticky popcorn and red balloons and squawkers. There was a "natural amphitheatre" with benches running along the side hill, where the hushed crowd gaped at the spell-binder waving his arms beside the ice-water pitcher. There were prize pig pens and sheep pens, the art hall with its pictures of peaches tumbling out of baskets and watermelons just opened with the knife lying beside them, and the tents where Diavolo ate grass and blew fire out of his mouth and the beautiful young lady stood out on a platform by the ticket-box, in faded pink tights, with a big wet snake wound around her throat and her spangles blinking in the sunshine. There were sample windmills and cane-ringing games, and wherever there was room a man shaking popcorn or pulling candy over a hook, or a damp little shed smelling of vanilla, where people were eating ice cream and drinking red lemonade. You get all that and lots more going at once, with the barkers yelling and the merry-go-round organs squealing away, with the sun blazing at ninety-four in the shade and everywhere the smell of hot people and clothes and stale perfume, of lemonade and popcorn and peanuts and dust and trampled grass—you take all that, draw a third-of-a-mile circle through the thick of it, push the crowd back a bit, and you have the Vandalia track that day as the engine bell in the judges' stand tolled out the warning signal and the old marshal on his white circus horse rode down the track sidewise, bellowing out the "mile foot race fer the champeenship of the world!"

As he caught the sharp command of the bell—the same bell that for years and years had called up the trotting horses from the stables—the Vandalia Miler jumped out of his blanket in the Tight-Wire Man's tent and pushed through the crowd to the mark. The farmer girls giggled as they saw his bare legs and a train of small boys followed him, gaping solemnly in the manner of those determined to see just how it was done. The Vandalia Miler was very pale. As he took his place on the starting line he was the only one there ready to run. He stared straight ahead at the people edging up closer to the little lane that was left for them to run through, licked his dry lips and rubbed nervously his bare left arm. There they were, the farmers and the townspeople, the men and the girls that he and the Other Man had grown up with and gone to school with. And he felt that if he could beat him—so slim and smiling and sure—beat him in Vandalia, there and then, with Vandalia and the county and the old crowd looking on—The engine-bell clanged again peremptorily.

"Coming! Coming!" Somebody was shouting uproariously over the heads of the crowd. A big tan buckboard drove in between the surreys and lumber-wagons, and out hopped the Other Man, all wrapped up in a great plaid ulster, his bare ankles showing underneath it. He threw off his coat and stood there laughing and shaking hands with his friends—in his 'varsity running clothes, the crimson ribbon across his chest. The Vandalia Miler saw him and gripped his fingers tight. It seemed to him that the crowd suddenly became still; the uproar of the squawkers and carousel-organ sounded vague and far away. At the same moment there was a stir in the crowd just under the stand, and a big, tow-headed chap began to pull off his overalls and shirt. "Hey, there!" he called up to the starters; "I want to get in this!" The crowd began to laugh good-naturedly, but the Vandalia Miler didn't laugh at all. He was trying to remember where he had seen this farmer's face. On the sleeveless jersey which the tow-headed man wore underneath his flannel shirt was a spot cleaner than the rest. It was where an initial had been torn away. He turned to find the Other Man in front of him, smiling and holding out his hand. He took it, scarcely knowing what he did.

"So we're going to have it out, right here and now," laughed the Other Man, looking him straight in the eyes.

"Yes," said the Vandalia Miler. His mouth was all cotton, so it came in a quick sort of whisper. "Yes," he repeated.

"I hope," began the Other Man, and then he paused and grinned a little and blushed. "It's been quite a while—I hope—" All at once some one cried—"Now, ready!" The crowd that had apparently been pushing and shoving aimlessly about the judges' stand closed into a compact mass and out came a yell—one of those old-fashioned, wild-Indian, give-'em-the-axe, and all that sort of thing yells, with Sugar River at the end. "Sugar River—Sugar River—Sugar River!" three times, like that. It was like marching into the middle of an Irish picnic with a brass band playing "Boyne Water." A hoot and a howl came back from all along the track and the crowd—all Vandalia, it seemed—began to stampede in toward the judges' stand. The Vandalia Miler grabbed a couple of handfuls of long grass from the turf at the side of the track and wadded them up in his hands for "corks." His face wasn't as pale now and a new look jumped into his eyes. He turned to the Other Man, yelling above the uproar of the crowd.

"You want to look out for him: He's a ringer, and he's running for Sugar River!" And in the thick of the noise and the pushing and the dust, the starter swung his hat downward and with the single cry of "Go!" sent the three runners away.

The Other Man cut across from the outside like a flash and took the pole. The Vandalia Miler closed in behind, tight on his heels, eyes hooked to his back, just below the shoulders. The tow-headed man trailed the two, big-boned and heavy, but striding long and strong as a horse. Into the crowd they went—a sort of curving chute, walled in by faces and clothes smelling of popcorn and dust, and a'baking sun beating down from overhead—like three machines, stride and stride alike, the Other Man leading the way like a race-horse, strong and confident, as if he were only playing with the game. Out into the open and the cooler air of the back-stretch they swung, past the red thrashers and pig pens, round the lower turn; and toward the judges' stand again. They were going like a three-horse tandem, the Vandalia Miler so close up that the dirt from the Other Man's spikes splashed his shins. He could see indistinctly the crowd still jostling and shouting under the wire, see the lobster-red face and white mustache of old Skerritt, the starter, leaning out on the rail of the judges' stand toward them and bellowing through his hands something about beating out Sugar River. He felt the mass open up and close in after them, the suffocating walled-in chute growing hotter and heavier, the pull of the second quarter beginning to-drag hard on his legs and wind, and at the time he saw plainly that the Other Man was, if anything, increasing the pace—pushing ahead like a doped race-horse, at a half-mile gait, forgetting that there was anybody behind him. The pace held—screwed up tight—stride and stride alike, round the upper turn and into the open again. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a big mullin leaf—one of his old mile-stones—slip past their feet, the beginning of the third quarter. But the shade of a let-down in the pace which he expected there and which prepares for the last quarter never came. As they struck the cooler air—it was like getting out of a cornfield into the road—the noise about the judges' stand—Sugar River and Vandalia all mixed together—came reaching across the field bigger than ever, and every time it puffed out louder the Other Man's back jumped ahead a bit. The Vandalia Miler stuck close—not pressing, not letting himself lose an inch. He was holding every ounce of steam, running every stride with his head. Round the lower turn they pounded, every dozen strides or so letting slip another link, and then, just as they were rounding into the straightaway, there suddenly puffed up from the judges' stand a great roar of "Sugar River!" At the same instant he heard a hoarse breath just behind his neck, an arm bumped his elbow, and the tow-headed man pushed by on the outside and went up after the leader. The crowd down the track was going wild. Old Skerritt was banging the engine-bell for the last lap like a fireman going to a fire. The Vandalia Miler didn't shift his eyes a hair's breadth from the Other Man's back. He was surprised at himself to see how cool he was; how he was calculating whether the Other Man was tireless or had merely lost his head, whether the Sugar River man could make good with his bluff or whether, as they heard the crowd, he was just playing to the gallery. In the next two-twenty he would know. There was more than a quarter yet to go, and he tried to feel it all as a unit and know just how much he had left. Past the stand and into the crowd again—the Sugar River man's chin slewed round a bit. He was lifting into the sprint! And a quarter yet to go! He saw the Other Man's back jump forward as he met the challenge, saw them fighting, shoulder to shoulder, knew the moment had come, that here and now the race was to be lost or won, and he squeezed his corks, shut his eyes, and bore on hard. For a dozen strides he fought, like a man under water trying to get to the surface, when suddenly, from the edge of the track ahead came a quick, triumphant cheer. He opened his eyes. The Sugar River man was ahead! He had squeezed past and was on the pole, drawing away from the Other Man. But it was not the Sugar-River yell that was echoing across the track. It was a new and different cry—nervous, compact, fierce, relentless. It forced itself through the general hullabaloo.and dominated it, and suddenly it came clear to the Vandalia Miler's ears—the old drum-beat cheer—his cheer—the one he and the Other Man had taught the school before the team went to Pardeeville. And his name was at the end. Down came a pair of arms a rod or two in front of him and out it smashed again—that wonderful yell with the sudden shift of the beat in the fifth line, like getting under a big weight, all together, and shoving after you've been pounding it. He fought on in a dizzy sort of trance, not knowing what was happening, but feeling suddenly light and confident and strong. He felt himself gaining—felt that somehow the backs of the other two men were drawing irresistibly nearer. Some one ran along beside him, waving a hat. "You've got him! You've got him! Keep it up! Keep it up!" the man cried. "Vandalia! Vandalia! Vandalia!" All at once it came to him that he had got him—got the Other Man—got the ringer—that Vandalia was going to beat Sugar River and they were calling on him to come. The cheer shot out again—a little farther ahead—as fast as the beat stopped it was caught up and carried on. Some one—it was the boys he'd trained who had done it—had strung relays all round the track. It became a regular bombardment. The crowd listened—wavered—and broke loose. They came swarming down from the seats on the side hill and over the rail. They followed along behind in a drove, yelling like Indians. It looked like a picture of the flight from Pompeii with everybody laughing—kids and men and girls stumbling along in the grass at the side of the track and scuffling up the dust behind. He could hear them laughing and screaming: "Keep it up! Keep it up!" and "Beat him! Beat him! Vandalia! Vandalia!" and steadily all the time from behind and in front came that drumbeat cheer, ripping and pounding out above the rest. The relays crossed each other and overlapped, taking it up and beating it in—swinging it, jamming it at 'em. It seemed as though that whole fair ground had jumped together in a twinkling and was calling on him to come. It all hit him in a flash—shivered up his backbone. He had stayed behind, but he was somebody, after all, and he stood for somebody and they stood for him and expected things of him. He forgot the Other Man, forgot himself. He was Vandalia now, and Vandalia must smash Sugar River. It was more than getting even, more than winning; it was fighting for his friends, for his town, for his country. His feet seemed lifted from the ground.

Maybe Vandalia was a dull place to live in, but it was everlastingly healthy. All his running and going-to-bed-with-the-chickens came back to help him now. Rounding into the stretch, he took the bit in his teeth and turned everything loose. With every stride he seemed to pull the Sugar River man's back nearer, hand over hand. His elbow bumped an arm and he heard the Other Man gasping out, "Beat him! Beat him!" as he passed by. Nothing could have stopped him then. There were fifty yards left. He shut his eyes again; his elbow bumped an arm, then the engine-bell was clanging overhead, and the tape hit his chest. The crowd closed in, there was a great uproar all round him, and he turned just in time to see the Sugar River man go down and out about six feet short of the line, and to catch the Other Man in his arms as he dove forward and fainted clean away.

He picked him up like a child, and, spent as he was, carried him into the Tight-Wire Man's tent. Outside the crowd cheered and howled, and pushed up against the canvas walls, and from the distance came the boom of the band, marching toward them across the field. He swabbed on witch-hazel desperately—panting, dizzy with excitement and happiness, and a queer happy-weepy remorse. The Other Man opened his eyes and blinked.

"Bill"— he grinned the best he could and held out his hand—"I guess we've been fools long enough." Then he got tired again. "It was a great race," he said, without opening his eyes. The Vandalia Miler swabbed on the witch-hazel the harder. "Yes!" he panted; "Yes!" He meant that he thought it had been long enough. Somehow he couldn't remember any words. Then the crowd pushed in. The Other Man raised himself on his elbow.

"Go out to them, Bill," he said; "I'm all right. You don't want to forget—you're champeen of the world!"

They grabbed him up, protesting, lifted him on their shoulders and carried him out of the tent. He felt the cooler air and he saw the faces turned toward him and heard the cheers and cries, and then they marched out to the people—his own people at last—with the band booming away at the head.

That, in a way, is about what they've been doing to him ever since, out there in Vandalia. At least that is what Starbuck said as he told us the story—we who had fun together and played together and were back from East and West to see another class day, to tell the old stories, run the old races over again, swing home again with the pack through the frosty autumn, toward the lights of the Square. Starbuck, you see, was the Other Man.

"They've just nominated him for governor out in our State," said he, "and they're telling the story of that race all the way from South River Junction to the North State line. I'm one of Bill's spell-binders; that's why I tell it so well. He's our Favorite Son now, and he's only begun." Starbuck took a couple of brisk pulls at his cigar and blew a big cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.

"Begins to look" said he, cheerfully, "as though I was the man who was left behind."