"And there you are," he said.
"It's very pretty, isn't it?"
"You forget," observed Larrabee, with a demure smile. "We may always be beaten like gentlemen."
"Yes," chirped young Hollis, lifting his shoulders slightly. "Quite so!"
"Now—now—now, Hollis, there's no need of taking it that way. The team is all right. They've got lots of sand, and they'll show up a heap better to-morrow than they do on paper."
"Yes," said young Hollis again, in the same crisp tone. "Read what's inside that envelope. That's what's the matter."
Larrabee, reading, suddenly gave a sharp "O!" as though something hurt him.
"Weatherwood!" he muttered. "No!"
"Yes—Weatherwood," cried the young captain, with something of defiance in his tone. "And if he has to drop out and we don't win the mile—I tell you, with things hanging so by threads, if we lose that mile we'll—it's all up with us, that's all!" He wrenched out a tuft of grass and began to tear it in bits and toss it away.
"But look here, Hollis! You don't stand for this, do you? You don't believe that boy's a professional?"
"Believe it? I can't believe it. But there's the protest and that man's affidavits, and it's got to go to the committee; and however it comes out it's bound to get outside and into the papers, and there'll be a lot of nasty noise and—and all that sort of thing!"
"He would run his heart out for the team!" muttered the older man. "It's these chaps who take things hard and have the backbone not to let it get on their nerves—those are the sort we want, Hollis—those are the sort that'll pull you through. Why, he's got to run, Hollis, he's got to run!"
"And here's this!" said the young captain bitterly. He jumped up and thrust the letter into his pocket. "We might as well have it out right now," he said.
Hollis went straight to Weatherwood's room away up in the top of Weld. The door was open and he walked in. Weatherwood, at his desk, lifted his head from a pile of Freshman themes which he was correcting, and peered over the top of his spectacles. He was somewhat nearsighted.
"O!" he said suddenly, rising and taking off the spectacles. Neither Hollis nor any of the others of the team had ever been in his room before. Still holding the spectacles in his left hand, he held out his right to his young captain.
"I'm glad you came," he said.
"Hello, Weatherwood," smiled Hollis, finding himself laboriously shaking hands. "Great day, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's fine." He peered out of the window. "Won't you sit down?" he said. He was not used to youths like Hollis, and it was a bit hard for him. Hollis deranged his theories. It seemed scarcely just and proper that one who could captain a team could look so graceful-careless, Narcissus-like; that such subtleties of raiment could be so lightly, lazily worn by the same limbs which could clip out a quarter-mile in forty-nine and two-fifths seconds.
"Yes," said Hollis presently, "it looks like very pretty weather for to-morrow." There was a silence, and then Hollis turned quickly.
"Weatherwood," he said, "have you got an enemy?" The older man threw back a quick look of surprise, and then he smiled. The solemn phrase somehow put him at his ease again.
"Good gracious!" he laughed. "We don't have those yet—here—I hope."
"I hope not," said Hollis, "but I'm not joking. It's a very serious matter for the team and—and for you. I mean has anybody—I don't want to know what it's about—but has anybody out there, where you used to run, got it in for you?"
Weatherwood shrugged his shoulders. He was not smiling now.
"I've never bothered much about enemies," he said slowly. "I haven't had time. Once—there was a man ran at our school. He ran in a novice race. The merchants donated prizes." Weatherwood smiled a bit sheepishly. "That was the way we used to do out there. We tried to make those games absolutely straight and clean—there had been some trouble—and anything else, just then, made a good deal of difference. That man was a liar. And I found him out—and he won the race. And I put it up to him, and I told him he was a mucker and a mug-hunter and a disgrace to the school. There was a row—he had his friends with him—and I had to knock him down." Weatherwood sniffed, and, crushing up a bit of loose paper, snapped it into the waste basket. "He stayed down, I believe, the full count."
"And he has never got back at you," murmured Hollis.
"He said," continued the older man, "that he would show me up for a mug-hunter before he got through with me, or break a leg. Those were his exact words, I think—'a mug-hunter or he'd break a leg.' He came down East, by the way, after I did."
"And I'm afraid he hasn't broken a leg," observed Hollis, with a wan smile.
"What do you mean ? You don't——"
"I mean," cried Hollis, jumping up and beginning to pace the floor of the little room, "that they've protested you. I mean that they swear you took money— that you were an athletic instructor at a summer camp—and that they paid you for it. And this man swears——"
"Who's the man ? His name isn't Ruggles?"
"The name signed to the affidavit," said Hollis, stopping short in his walk, "is Charles J. Ruggles!"
Weatherwood stiffened as though Hollis had skpped him in the face. He looked through and beyond the young captain as though he were not there.
"To go back to where a man's forgotten—to where a man didn't know——" He was like one talking in his sleep. Something like fear came into Hollis's face.
"Talk out, man—what are you saying!" he cried. "They're lying! Don't tell me that it's—that you are——"
"It is a lie," said Weatherwood, very quietly, and, as it were, coming back to himself. "I went to that camp. I went as a tutor. I coached that man. Why, I drove him through his exams. I'm as straight as—as you are, Hollis—as you are standing here." Then, with the words coming faster and faster, he told the little story of that summer in the Michigan woods."I did get pay. I got pay for pounding facts into a lot of empty skulls, and for chopping wood and cooking for 'em, and doing everything that a lot of kids wouldn't do for themselves—if that's athletics. And do you think I'm a mug-hunter, Hollis? Maybe we did run for sweaters and shaving-sets and revolvers out there—that wasn't our fault! Why, man, I ran a hundred once in tennis shoes and with winter trousers cut off at the knees! Don't you think I know I could have mighty near made the eleven last fall—didn't Longacre try to get me out for the rowing this winter—and do you think I'd have given up all that for—for this"—he dashed the pile of themes savagely to the floor—"if I was a mug-hunter—do you think I would?" He stopped short and was quite silent for a moment, and then in another voice he faltered, "You are not going to stop me now—tell me that, Hollis—you wouldn't stop me—now?"
*
"Second call for the mile!"
Weatherwood jumped as though something hot had touched him, and he flung aside his blanket. He was just about on the edge of going to pieces.
"Lie down!" snapped Larrabee. "You act like a kid!" It was not the moment for pleasantries. It was time to use the whip. For two hours they had tried to distract him—to close his ears when the yells of the crowd surged through the grated window, and shut his eyes when the beaten men, limp and ashen, dropped in a heap as soon as they got inside the door.
He did not show now that he heard what the older man said, but he began jamming his bare feet into the spiked running shoes. It was very hot and close in the dressing- room, and the air was heavy with the smell of sweaty clothes and alcohol and wintergreen oil. The ground-glass windows were down, and the blue sky only showed through the gratings of the upper sashes. The pretty day, so warm, so velvet-soft, with the sights and sounds of early summer that even the cheering seemed a sort of profanity, was forgotten. The games were no longer a garden party. And the noise, long ago broken from the regular cheers, now came in a continuous sputter—nervous, high-keyed and increasingly insistent. The last race would decide the score. They were waiting for the mile.
"Careful with those shoe-laces!" commanded Larrabee. He spoke rather louder than was necessary because at that moment there echoed through the window-grating the far-off "Whee-ee-ee-l!" of the starter's whistle. He also lit a cigarette and began to smoke with extreme care.
"Better knot 'em once, carry 'em underneath and knot 'em on top again. Knew a man lost a race once because of his rotten shoe-lace."
"What?" said Weatherwood, looking up, his eyes blinking rapidly.
"Yes!" murmured the older man, smoking noticeably. "Jostled at the first turn—ankle twisted—string broke and he threw his shoe. Finished out barefoot. Beaten—all out, of course—fifty feet on wrong side of tape. Great for the gallery—didn't help the score."
A limp figure, bare-footed and panting, stumbled into the room. It dropped on a bench and a pair of spiked shoes fell to the floor. "Let me at him again!" murmured the boy. "I didn't know he was going to sprint then—I could beat him now!" It was only little Evans, beaten out in the quarter. They hadn't expected him to win, but he had maybe, and now he rolled from side to side, cursing softly, with his head buried in his arms. Hollis followed with a blanket and sweater over his arm—a bit more haggard than he had been the day before. It isn't any fun, when the score is tied, to be a captain and out of the running. He paused on the threshold and darted a rapid glance about the room, while he ran his tongue over his dry lips and opened and shut his sweaty hands. A young and very important clerk of the course, pushing past him, shouted through the dressing-room door: "Last call for the finals in the low hurdles! All out for the low hurdles!" From far away came again the "Whee-ee-ee-l!" of the starter's whistle, like the singing of the locust in lifeless air.
"That man Ruggles—that mucker Ruggles—was over there in the crowd," Hollis whispered, passing close to Larrabee. "He said—curse him—never mind what he said—he's full, and I had him put out before he made trouble."
"What does he want?" asked the older man, in a low voice, drawing the young captain toward the window. "What's that?" He glared at a blue slip of paper in Hollis's hand.
"Telegram he sent. Didn't get it till just now. Says he's got more evidence—boxing teacher—ar-r-h!" Hollis wrenched the paper in two, tore it into bits and flung them behind him. "Liar! If I could get my hands on him!"
"Ssh!" whispered the older man. "Don't let him hear. We mustn't let him know. The sight of that man might send him clear up in the air—just—just like that!" He snapped his fingers. The next second he was clapping Weatherwood on the back and telling him not to stop until the tape hit his chest, while through the field-house echoed the call:
"Last call for the mile! All out for the mile!"
Weatherwood threw aside his blanket, and, standing erect, ran his hands down over his big chest and the crimson band that crossed it. He suddenly became the coolest of them all. They followed him out—Hollis and the rubbers and the men who had run, half dressed as they were. One or two who still were pretty pale and shaky leaned from the window with their sweaters thrown over their shoulders. The nervous air was shaking with cheers as they came out into the sunshine. The whole great bank of straw hats and muslins and parasols across the green seemed to palpitate and stir. A confused and turbulent "Yay-yay-yay-yay!" swung toward them. Larrabee squeezed Weatherwood's arm. "Hear that!" he whispered, "they're yelling for you!"
Nobody noticed the hurdlers trotting back to the field-house, except when Dutton, who had won, patted Weather- wood on the shoulder as he trotted by, and then they cried the louder.
"Whee-ee-ee-l!" screamed the starter's whistle again. A moment more and the eight runners were standing at the starting line.
"On your marks!" They crouched for the start—all but Weatherwood, who stood at the pole almost erect, his bald temples above the shoulders of the others, his long left arm outstretched and his eyes riveted on the track—strangely tall and grim and old-looking. The crowd hushed for an instant as it watched him.
"Ready!" The hot air grew tense and breathless and still, like that which hangs over a glassy lake just before a thunderstorm.
And then it was broken—broken as sharply as by a thunderclap out of the blue. From the crowd that pushed against the rope at the outer edge of the starting line leaped a long-drawn "Hiss-s-s-s!"—vicious, venomous, as the warning of a rattlesnake in the grass.
On such fields hisses are not nice. The rasp of it struck those who heard it aghast, like some foul oath bawled out in a drawing-room. The overwrought runners, crouching for the pistol shot, started as though they had been struck with a whip across the back. Weatherwood, straightening, threw a quick look over his shoulder. Then his head went up sharply and his breath caught. Not ten feet away stood the man Ruggles, grinning, and with a sort of sublimity of impudence looking him up and down with eyes that knew him and saw him through and through. At the same time the cheer leaders, scenting something awry, sprang to their stations, and the whole place dinned for Weatherwood. The man at the side of the track rolled his eyes foolishly in the direction of the noise, grinned again and suddenly threw up his arms in the position of a boxer about to lead out with his left. At the same time he roared:
"Get your guard up, Weatherwood! Look alive there! What's wrong with you, old man? Ay?"
Not half a dozen people had seen anything or heard what the man said; but Larrabee, his eyes on Weatherwood, seized Hollis's arm.
"What does it mean—what does it mean?" he whispered. Something was wrong with Weatherwood. He had gone waxy pale. The grip of things had wilted from his face. He looked as a strange dog looks when he sees you pick up a stone. Hollis saw him, saw the vague motion of his mouth as he tried to form words, and grabbing the starter's arm, he hissed: "Send 'em off! Send 'em away!"
The "Ready!"—"Set!" came as one word, the pistol snapped, there was a scratching splash of cinders and they were off! They were off, indeed, one of the second-string runners for the Blue jumping to the front to set the pace; close on his heels followed their four-twenty-five man Chapple, and his team-mate Durfree; jostling them for the pole, as they rounded the first turn were Weatherwood's own team-mates, Foote and Gray, and behind all these, behind the three other runners who were fighting for the inside position, Weatherwood trailed aimlessly, as though he scarcely knew which way to run. He had got off last of all. He would never have gone over the line if young Hollis, beside himself with nervousness, had not slapped him across the shoulders and cried "Go!" The crowd gasped its chagrin as they saw him. The Blue runner was well round the turn and setting out a clipping pace; the six other men, jostled into their places, were settling into the stride of their four-lap struggle, and Weatherwood was not yet under way. He seemed about to stop altogether when, from the tangle of heads at the starting line came the yell: "We-e-eatherwood! How—'bout tha-t-fif-tee ee-en! You ain't a mug-hunt-er-O-o-o—No!"
Weatherwood's whole frame straightened and stiffened, and he whirled about with the precise motion of a man about to knock another down. It all took only the fraction of a second. The next instant he had turned back, his arms grew firm as though he gripped something in each fist, his legs stretched into their long, sweeping stride, and swinging out into the middle of the track, he began to cut down his field. A cry went out at the sight of him. Steady as an express train, confident as the scratchman in an open handicap, he moved on up to the front. He made no try to cut in toward the pole. Squarely in the middle of the track, regardless of the extra distance, as though this were the sprint home instead of the beginning of the first quarter-mile he passed one by one the three men in the rear, Foote and Gray, then Durfree and Chapple, and then, after a stark mad sprint of a dozen yards, he shot in front of the Blue pacemaker and took the lead. The manoeuver was over so quickly and done so well that the crowd could hardly cheer for gasping. What it meant nobody knew. It was magnificent, but it wasn't racing. Then the cheers did come. At the sound Chapple and Durfree themselves swung out, passed their own pacemaker and closed in behind Weatherwood's heels as bicyclists hang to the rear wheels of a pacing auto.
That was to be their game. There are two ways for a very good man to run his race. If he is sure enough of himself, he may leap away from the tape into such a heartbreaking pace that the man he's most afraid of is run off his feet before the final sprint. The risk is terrific. The other way is to drop in just behind his heels, let him drag you on with his pace, hear the worrying beat of your breath on the back of his neck, and then, when he is fagged out with the work and the strain of setting the pace, swing wide into the stretch and sprint away from him to the tape. This isn't so pretty, but it's much more safe. There is one risk. When you are locked into another man's stride, with your eyes riveted on a spot between his shoulder blades, and the cinders from his spikes splashing your legs, it isn't perfectly easy to gauge your pace. You may be going faster than you mean to—than you can stand.
Weatherwood passed the last man just before he reached the two-twenty mark. The low trees behind the tennis court made a dark curtain at that corner of the field across which moved the white line—the leader with his chin in, his long thighs moving with the confidence and rhythm of a thoroughbred. Some one breathed a reverent "A-a-ah!" as the crowd does when a sky-rocket bursts high in the air. Hollis stood entranced.
"This is a race!" he said.
Round the lower turn they swept, impatient scattered cries reaching out toward them as they came. So close were the two runners trailing the leaders that you could scarcely see an inch of white as they bore down the straightaway toward the crowd."Sixty-two!" said a timer, looking at his stop-watch as the cinders splashed and those at the line caught the "Huh-huh! Huh-huh!" of breaths.
"Kill 'em!" whispered young Hollis. He was on his knees, leaning out over the edge of the track. He did not see the man Ruggles, who stood directly opposite him, pushing against the outer rope. He did not even notice that any one cried out just as the leader crossed the line. But Larrabee, who was standing alongside, saw Weatherwood give a start, even as he ran, and his keen eye perceived that he had suddenly increased his pace.
"Look at that stride!" cried the young captain. "Just look at that!" The older man only wheeled slowly about, following the runners with his eye as they made the turn.
"That wasn't the face for the end of the first quarter," he said,as though to himself. "He looks as though he had seen a ghost!"
Steady, rhythmic, relentless, they rounded the upper turn and wheeled into the straightaway toward the third two-twenty. The crowd had become almost silent, held by the tense beauty of it.
"One-thirty-four!" said a timer, pressing his stop-watch, as the leader passed the three-eighths stone.
"Too fast!" whispered Larrabee, in a worried voice. "That's a whole second too fast!" It was too fast. It was much too fast for a man who was setting the pace and on whom the race depended. And yet—and yet—holding it, if not bettering it, the trio rounded the lower turn. Quite out of it and running their own race, were Foote and the rest. The three leaders were running stride and stride. The men in blue, lost to everything but the steadily advancing back in front of them, were carried blindly on in the killing pace.
"Do you see," whispered young Hollis, "he's got 'em into his stride! They don't know how fast they're going."
"It's an awful chance to take!" muttered the older man. "There are only two ways it can end. Either he runs them out, or——"
A cheer broke out again as the three men whirled into the stretch again and bore down toward the finish of the second lap. As they came, steady, relentless as fate, the man Ruggles leaned out over the ropes again, and in mocking, stinging cadence spelled out the word "Fifteen!"
"F-i-f-t-e-e-n! Fifteen! We-e-eather-wood!"
Straight into the teeth of it Weatherwood came, his stony eyes riveted on a point in the cinders ever about ten paces ahead of him, his blue lips now drawing a bit away from his teeth. It wasn't a pleasant face to see, but the timers and the others at the tape were not thinking of that. They were thinking of that invincible stride, eating up the last few yards of the second quarter, sweeping right down on it as though the finish were on the other side of it, and there was to be no letting down. A record mile! A sudden thrill of expectation came over them at the quick suspicion of what they were about to see. For it is written in the laws of the track that the third quarter of a mile race must always be run slowly. It is not so much that a man consciously lowers his pace as that his wearying limbs are not yet stung by the sauve-qui-peut of the run in to the tape. A man once ran a mile in within a hair's-breadth of four minutes and twelve seconds. Others have approached that record. They did so by defying the law, proven by generations of legs and lungs, and instead of letting down their third quarter from, say sixty-five to seventy-five seconds, they took the bit in their teeth, bored ahead at the same fierce clip and finished the last two furlongs on what they had left. It is a terrible chance. Not one runner in a thousand could take it and survive. And as the three leaders passed the crowd, and, starting the third lap, came out into the open again at the upper turn, Larrabee suddenly groaned.
"Do you see what he's doing?" he cried. "Look! He's—yes, he's—he's hitting it up!" The trainer had not said a word up to now. He was chewing an unlit cigar half way through. "It's suicide—that's what that is," he said.Straight onward toward the fifth two-twenty strode Weatherwood and the two trailers. Every man who had a stopwatch riveted his eye on it. On past the field-house they went, not a muscle showing the strain of the pace they had run; on past the five-eighths stone——
"Two-forty and two-fifths!" said one of the timers. The others gripped their watches the harder and leaned forward. It was as though they were pushing the runners on. There was a whole lap and a half yet to go.
"Good heavens, what's happening?" cried Hollis, half beside himself with a sort of frightened delight. "The record for the three-quarters is three-two!" And the mad runner and the two men behind him, who were as helpless, practically speaking, to break away from his pace as though they were chained to him, were boring ahead at a three-minute-and-ten-second rate, with a whole quarter-mile yet to go.
"What's happening?" repeated Larrabee, in a low voice, but the sound of it was drowned out by the cheer that began to sweep up from all about them. For the runners were in the straightaway again now and bearing down again toward the line.
"What's happening?" All at once that cheer stopped, and the scattered cries it left died away weakly, as though the machinery had run down. A sort of half audible pitying "O-o-o!" breathed out from all the crowd. "That's what's happening!" cried Larrabee, and he pointed down the track. Weatherwood's long, firm arm had doubled up toward his chin, his tautly held chin loosened, his head went back and he broke into a jumping sort of stride as a winded schoolboy runs. Any man who had ever worn a spiked slipper knew what was coming.
They tell in the little story books how the regulars marched up to the trench at Bunker Hill, as strong and steady as though it had been a parade; and how, in a breath, the front rank crumpled and went down when the farmers saw the whites of the regulars' eyes. That's the way a good runner goes out. So far his legs and lungs will take him; so far and no farther he can run on what is known as his "nerve." Then the cord snaps. It ought to have snapped for Weatherwood; but you must remember that locked into his stride were the two men who, except for him, were bound to win that race. And so he fought on—as a groggy halfback bucks the line in the twilight of a November evening when his team is beaten and there are two minutes to play, or a stroke-oar fights to keep up the pace in the last half mile, when the beat is gone, and he's clipping his stroke, and the cockswain is splashing water in his face and the cannons from the yachts lining the course are thudding over his head. From where Ruggles stood came a cry of triumph and derision. At the sound of it Weatherwood plunged a bit more fiercely forward. As he did so Chapple, who hung so close that Weatherwood's shoe as it each time left the ground just missed his knee, slowed to one side, wavered for a couple of steps and then dropped in a heap on the cinders. All this time the five other men, running well within themselves and prettily, had been closing up the long gap between them and the third man. The latter, half hurdling, half stumbling over his fellow team-mate, was just struggling on toward Weatherwood when the field, with Foote leading, swung to the right of him and swept by. An elbow jostled his elbow, he missed his stride and then the last spark went out and, after a dozen plunges forward, he, too, toppled and fell.
Weatherwood still pumped on as though running through quicksand. He was rounding the upper turn now with the whole last lap still ahead of him. The crowd watched in silence. Eating up his lead a yard at every stride came Foote and the rest. Hollis stared as though dazed—seeing only the bitter hopelessness of the fight, thinking only that Weatherwood had blundered. He saw the spent runner try to look back over his shoulder as though calling to his team-mates to come. The break in movement snapped the last rivet in his stride. At the same instant Foote, running the race of his life, swung past. Then everything gave way. Weatherwood staggered and then dove forward, and Larrabee, who had run across the corner of the field while the rest were staring, caught him in his arms.
Hollis forgot the race and started across the field on a run. A crimson sweater was flung into the air in front of him; a straw hat skimmed past and sailed away onto the grass. Men were clapping him on the back and trying to grab his hand, but he shook them off and shouldered his way through—through the crowd that had poured down from the stands and were now all running the other way toward the lower end of the field where Foote, with the race in his hand and ten yards to the good, was just lifting into the sprint for the tape.
The beaten man was already on his feet, limp and helpless in the elder Halloway's arms, yet struggling to get away. He was white as wax, the air whistled in his teeth and his staring eyes did not seem to see.
"It wasn't fair—it wasn't fair!" he moaned, all his grip on himself gone out of him. Hollis tried to get him to lie down. "It's all right—it's all right," he buzzed soothingly. "Why, you won that race. Next year——"
"Next year!" Weatherwood straightened, recognized his captain and seized Hollis's arms in his big limp hands. "Don't you understand! There aren't any more years! I'm only an outsider!" He dropped on the grass and buried his face in his arms, crying like a child. Larrabee looked at young Hollis and away at the crowd pushing and shouting about the finish line and shook his head.
"'Forgot!'" he said in a low voice. "And how many will believe it!"
Out of the tumult and shouting across the field came the sudden thum-pum-pum of the big bass drum,and the band—that comic college band—began to bray.
"Quick!" whispered Larrabee. "We must get him away!" Weatherwood's head raised.
"Look!" he cried, shrinking, "they're coming!"
*
Over by the finish line the trainer and the timers, veterans of many fields, still wagged their heads abstractedly.
"Queer race," observed one of the timers, gazing moodily across the field where the crowd—the foolish crowd—were surging about Weatherwood and cheering, and calling for a speech. "He couldn't have run it better if he'd been trying to run himself and those other two chaps off their feet and give it to his own man." Shepard, the trainer, nodded wisely. He was a slow-thinking man unburdened by intuitions.
"That was a queer race," said he. "He had a pretty good idea of pace too. I wouldn't 'a' thought—I wouldn't 'a' thought he was the sort to lose his head that way."
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