FURIOUS FRESHMEN.
“Hey! hey!” cried Jack Ready, in astonishment. “You are overdoing this
thing! You are permitting your enthusiasm to run away with you.”
“On the contrary,” said Frank, “I am permitting my enthusiasm to run
away with you. Hello, Browning!”
“Here,” answered the big fellow.
“Take him!”
“Got him.”
The cab door was standing open. Ready was snatched from Frank’s back
and bundled into the cab in a twinkling, almost before he could raise
a protest. Frank came leaping in after him. Slam! went the door.
Crack! went the whip. Away rolled the cab.
And Ready’s friends had not even been alarmed. Now, however, the
freshman boarder, who had been knocked down when Frank bolted through
the door with his burden, and who had gathered himself up and looked
on in stupefied amazement while Ready was being bundled into the cab,
found his tongue and let out a wild cry of alarm. That cry brought a
gang of freshmen clattering and tumbling down the stairs, while it
filled Mrs. Harrington with dismay, for she had long ago learned to
recognize it as the freshman’s battle-cry when assaulted by the
dreaded “softmores.”
“What is it, Peggy?” shouted the freshmen, as they came tumbling down
stairs, ready for the sanguine struggle. “Where is Ready?”
“Gone!”
“Where?”
“Kidnaped!”
“How?”
“Scooped at the door!”
“How, you fool――how?”
They shook the bewildered witness of the kidnaping till he was more
muddled than ever. At last he managed to say:
“Fellow came tearing down-stairs with Ready on his back.”
“That was Merriwell!” cried the freshmen.
“I was just coming in. Had the door open. He rushed out with Ready.
Knocked me down.”
“Go on! go on!” was the shout.
“Sat up and saw them fling Ready into a cab.”
“Saw who?” came the question.
“Don’t know. There were five or six of ’em.”
“Did Jack fight?”
“Started to, but he didn’t have time. They slammed him into the cab
too quick.”
“Then――――”
“Some of ’em went in after him. The door slammed. Some went onto top
of cab. The whip cracked. They went down the street on the jump.
That’s all.”
A furious roar went up from the excited freshmen.
“Tricked!” they shouted. “Frank Merriwell did it! He’s taken up
Ready’s challenge!”
“What challenge?” asked one, who did not seem fully enlightened.
“Why,” explained another, “Ready said he’d like to have Merriwell the
leader of the sophs. He’s said publicly that he’d like to see
Merriwell try to haze him.”
“And now――――”
“Merriwell has started to do it!”
Mrs. Harrington’s “respectable boarding-house for students” was in a
fearful uproar. The excitement had brought every freshman who lodged
there into the lower hall and onto the stairs. They were all talking
to one another. Their faces looked wild and wrathful. They flourished
their fists in the air and uttered dire and awful threats. Their oaths
of vengeance were blood-curdling in the extreme.
In an adjoining room, Mrs. Harrington herself clasped her hands and
shuddered, while her daughter was on the verge of taking refuge
beneath the haircloth sofa. The frightful things they heard made them
stop up their ears in terror.
“The sophs are behind this!” shouted a frenzied freshman on the
stairs, his football head of fiery-red hair and his rolling eyes
making him look like an anarchist.
“We’ll get even!” shouted another man, climbing on the shoulders of
his companions and waving his clenched fist in the air. “We’ll make
the sophs shed tears of blood!”
“We’ll murder every soph we can catch!” thundered a fellow with a
hoarse voice. “We’ll decorate our rooms with their skins!”
“I’ll have a door-mat made of soph scalps!” shrieked yet another.
“Revenge! revenge! revenge!” they all howled in chorus.
No wonder Mrs. Harrington was alarmed, even though she had known
considerable of such outbreaks on former occasions.
“Where have they taken Ready?” snarled one man, shaking the fellow who
had witnessed the kidnaping.
“Why, hu-hu-how dud-dud-do I kuk-kuk-know!” chattered the one who was
being shaken.
“You saw it!”
“Yes.”
“You saw them bear him away!”
“Yes, but――――”
“Which way did they go?”
“That way.” The frightened freshman pointed.
“See here, fellows!” yelled the one who had elicited this information;
“while we’re raising all this row, they are carrying Ready off. We
must follow!”
“We will!”
“Now!”
“We are ready!”
“To the end!”
“Come on!”
Out through the door tore the leader, yelling for them to follow him,
and they came pouring after, still seething with fury, still uttering
awful threats. The cab that contained Ready and his kidnapers had
passed out of view some time before, but the leader of the freshmen
pointed down the street, crying:
“They went that way――in a cab! We must scour the city! We must alarm
every freshman and turn him out to search! Come on! Make a hustle
now!”
It did not take long to turn out a great gang of freshmen who were
frenziedly searching everywhere for the kidnapers and their victim.
But Ready had been carried away in a hurry, and it was no easy thing
to get track of him.
Jack Ready was gasping when he was flung into the cab and found
himself clutched and held fast by somebody within it.
“What――am――I――up――against?” he feebly uttered.
He made a slight effort to break away, but a mild voice said:
“Take my advice, sir, and be placid and calm. It will avail you
nothing to struggle, and you may damage your clothing.”
By the time this was said, others had come piling into the cab, the
door slammed, and the horses started up with a jump.
Ready took advantage of the sudden starting of the cab, which jerked
him over toward the man on the opposite seat. He bent down his head
and drove it with great force into that individual’s stomach, nearly
butting the fellow, out through the rear of the cab.
“Refuse me!” said Jack apologetically.
The person who had been butted gasped, coughed, and groaned, being
doubled up like a jack-knife.
“You should caution your driver to start more carefully,” observed the
freshman. “Such fellows become very careless if you do not keep them
well in hand.”
“Confound you!” gasped the one who had been butted. “You’ll have to
settle for that!”
“Just make out your bill,” said Jack, “and I’ll pay it on the spot. I
never like to have standing accounts.”
“You’re pretty flip, but you’ll get over it before morning.”
“That will be sudden――even more sudden than what has lately happened.
I do not appreciate suddenness――really I do not. As you can see, I am
quite flustered.”
“Well, you are the coolest flustered person I ever saw!”
“Can you see me?” inquired Jack. “Dear! dear! what excellent eyes you
must have! I can hardly see a thing. Now, if I wished to hit you on
the nose, it’s very likely that I might hit you somewhere else――about
there, for instance.”
Jack’s fist flew out, and, whether he could see or not, he planted it
fairly on the eye of the man opposite, who was Ben Halliday. Ben
uttered a howl, and struck back, but Ready dodged, and the person in
whose lap he was sitting at that moment was struck by Halliday.
“Dut the whickens――I mean what the dickens are you doing?” squawked
this individual.
“Refuse me,” snickered Ready. “I did not do it, I assure you. Is Mr.
Frank Merriwell present?”
“Yes,” laughed Frank, “I’m here.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
But as he said the word Frank moved suddenly to one side, and thus he
avoided the blow which Ready aimed at him. Jack’s fist struck against
something hard, and his knuckles were skinned.
“Merriwell,” he said, “you are awfully hard. I’d like to pound you
awhile with a club, just to see if I could not mellow you up a bit.”
“Refuse me!” said Merry, catching up Ready’s favorite expression. “I
am afraid I’d not enjoy it. How did you like your trip on the back of
a fiery Arab steed?”
“It was excellent――as far as it went.”
“I’m thinking you may fancy it went too far.”
“In one direction, yes. You are a very clever person, Mr. Merriwell,
but there is such a thing as being too clever.”
“Really?”
“On my word of honor. What do you think you are doing?”
“Giving you a little drive for your health.”
“My health is very good, thank you. You are exerting yourself without
cause.”
“Oh, I think not! You are such a jolly fresh freshman that I couldn’t
resist the temptation, don’t you know.”
“Jolly fresh! I like that――I don’t think! I demand, sir, to know your
reason for those words!”
“You have proved your exceeding freshness since the football-game.
Nobody ever heard of you before that game. Since then you have been
strutting about the campus like a peacock with its tail spread. You
have been crowing over yourself till it has become a trifle wearisome,
but, even at that, I should not have troubled you had you kept silent
about me.”
“Now we are getting at facts――hard, cold, stony facts,” said Jack.
“Proceed.”
“I do not in the least mind anything you may have said about the
game,” declared Frank; “but when you vauntingly declared that you’d
love to have me back in the sophomore class so that you could make it
interesting for me, I was touched.”
“Not by me,” declared Ready quickly. “I had good money staked that
Brown would not score, and I shall not need to touch anybody for
another week.”
“I was touched,” Merry repeated, “and I resolved to teach you a little
lesson free of charge. You need it. You are altogether too Ready――with
your mouth. You must learn to keep it closed. A man with his mouth
always open is liable to get bugs in his throat.”
“Your words move me to tears,” said the freshman, sniffling.
“You’ll be up against something besides words before long,” said
Halliday, as the cab tore round a corner and flung its occupants from
one side to the other.
“You’ll be highly entertained before morning,” promised Rattleton.
“Who is this other gent in the corner who keeps so persistently
silent?” inquired Ready, reaching out and poking Bart Hodge in the eye
with his forefinger, nearly gouging the optic out of Bart’s head.
Hodge shouted forth an exclamation of pain.
“Refuse me!” chuckled Ready, once more. “It is very difficult to judge
distances here in the dark. Besides that, the carriage lurches
violently when it is least expected.”
“We’ll have to chain the creature, Merriwell,” said Halliday, “or
he’ll have us all used up before we arrive at our destination.”
“What, ho!” cried Ready. “Wouldst place shackles upon me throbbing
limbs! Avaunt! base creatures, get thee gone! Attempt but to place the
weight of a finger upon me, and the fire of Jove shall strike thee
dead!”
He flung his hands about in a reckless manner, jerked one elbow
backward and nearly knocked Rattleton’s head from his shoulders.
“Whoop!” shouted Harry, pitching the lively freshman across the cab
and into Halliday’s arms. “Somebody else hold him awhile! I’m getting
tired of the job!”
“Mr. Ready,” said Frank, “I trust, for your own general welfare, that
you will not cause us to resort to extremes.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t do anything cruel when we are enjoying ourselves
like this――I know you wouldn’t! Why, this is the best time I’ve had in
a year!”
“You’ll have a better time before we are done with you!” yelled Hodge.
“How lovely!” squealed the freshman, apparently in a fit of intense
delight. “How good it is of you to be so thoughtful of me! I cannot
tell you how I appreciate it!”
“Wait awhile! wait awhile!” snorted Rattleton. “You will appreciate it
a great deal more before we are through.”
“The other gent made practically the same observation. Why not be
original in your remarks? It may cost you an effort, sir, but you’ll
cut a great deal more frost in this hot world.”
“Oh, shut up!” shouted Halliday. “You make me sick! Give your mouth a
rest, and give us a rest.”
“My dear boy, if you’ll stop for me to call a policeman, I’ll gladly
see that you get arrest,” chirped the irrepressible freshman.
Somehow, Frank’s admiration for Ready was increasing. Plainly, the
fellow had plenty of nerve, but would it last him through to the end?
Frank knew it was sure to be sorely tried before the sophomores were
through with Jack. The cab was continuing on its way at a great rate
of speed, for the kidnapers knew the freshmen would raise an alarm and
start on a hunt for Ready without much delay, and it was necessary to
get the fellow under cover in short order.
Thus far, Jack had raised no great disturbance, and it seemed that he
had decided that it was best to get what fun he could out of the
adventure, without attempting to escape. All this time, however, Ready
was simply lulling their suspicions and getting them off their guard.
He bounced about in the cab, and, whenever he could, he was feeling
for the catch to the door.
Ready had a general good opinion of himself, and he believed he could
hold the four men who were with him in that closed carriage pretty
good play in a fight. He could strike out right and left, in a
reckless manner, without the least danger of hitting anybody but foes,
but they would be liable to thump each other unmercifully if they
attempted to return his blows.
Jack took pains to locate Merriwell, toward whom he had the greatest
grudge. He felt that it was his sacred duty to thump Merry and thump
him “good and hard.” He had tried it once and injured his knuckles,
but he was determined not to make that kind of a slip a second time.
Lurch――the cab threw them over to one side, and there was a general
changing of seats as they scrambled back. Ready was still in their
midst.
“Mr. Merriwell,” he called, preparing to hit out hard and swift.
Frank was a clever ventriloquist, and he made his voice seem to come
from the opposite corner of the cab, as he asked:
“What do you want?”
“Will you ask the driver to please be a little more cautious?” asked
Ready.
“Oh, don’t get nervous,” retorted Frank, still making his voice seem
to come from the farther corner.
Now, like a flash, Ready struck into that corner, and he soaked
Halliday on the chin, shouting:
“I’ll teach you to refuse the polite request of a gentleman!”
The tussle that ensued in that cab cannot be described. The freshman
attempted to hurl Rattleton out through a window, and, although he did
not succeed, he broke the glass. After a time, they got him down and
sat on him to hold him. Then the cab drew up, the door was opened, and
Browning announced that they had reached their destination.