SAM’S FIRST RACE
One result of the Shirley-Peck duel was to check the developing
friendship of the inmates of 7 Hale. Duncan felt that Archer ought to
have been on the watch when he passed Shirley at the finish--he took
most indignantly the suggestion that Shirley was really ahead after
all. Sam, having performed his part to the best of his ability, was
disgusted with the childish obstinacy with which Duncan cherished his
sense of injury. Coldness again marked the relations of the room-mates.
Another consequence of the bloody fray was the appearance of Shirley
among the track men. Bruce got him out--no one could long resist
the spell of Bruce’s winning manner--and Collins appointed him his
proper task. They tried him at first on the longer stretches, but six
hundred yards and even three hundred were soon found to be distances
for which Shirley’s quick stride was not adapted. Then Collins set
him to sprinting, and rubbed his hands with delight over the result.
“Frenchie” took to starting and sprinting as a hound to a rabbit trail.
In a week his starts were instantaneous, and his legs twinkled along
the forty yards like the feet of a running mouse. Duncan was out too
for the three hundred, and doing well, his friends said, though with
old Chouder in the event, second place was the best he could hope for.
Mulcahy’s attitude toward Sam was changing. There had been no
outward break in their relations, but Mulcahy had become distant in
his greeting, and only showed his old cordiality when he had some
special object to attain. He was busy now with what Duncan called “a
new graft”--getting members for the Harvard Club, of which he was
secretary and treasurer. Every boy who was preparing for Harvard was
pressed to join in order to prove his loyalty. Every new member paid
one dollar for a printed shingle signed by the secretary. The club had
no meetings, except to elect officers and to be photographed. It had
no expenses except the price of the shingle plate with fifty cheap
prints, and the cost of inserting a group photograph in the school
Annual.
“Easy money!” said Duncan in disgust, when Sam reported that he had
joined. “He’s got my dollar too.”
“You don’t think he keeps the money, do you?” asked Sam, surprised at
the implied charge.
“You don’t think he gives it back, do you?” retorted Duncan.
“No, but there must be miscellaneous expenses.”
“You can call it that if you want to. The account stands something
like this: twenty-five shingles sold to new members at a dollar each,
twenty-five dollars; twenty-five shingles bought at a dime each,
two-fifty; picture in the Annual, five; miscellaneous, seventeen-fifty;
balance in treasury at the beginning of next year, nothing. Conundrum:
who got the seventeen-fifty? Your friend Mulcahy is a slick one!”
“He isn’t my friend!” declared Sam, stoutly.
“He is if he can get anything out of you; if he can’t, he’s your
enemy.”
Vexed at the slur at his simplicity implied in Duncan’s words, yet
half inclined to acknowledge that the senior was right, Sam took his
geometry and departed for the Academy. It lacked still fifteen minutes
to the time for recitation, but he hoped to find among the few steadies
who often came early either Phipps or Entstein, the sharks of the
section, and get an idea from one of them as to the last original in
the lesson. He had solved four out of the five.
No sooner was he seated at a desk than Mulcahy came in, glanced round
the room, made quick estimate of the possibilities offered, and slipped
into a seat beside Archer.
“Hello, Archer!” he exclaimed, his voice ringing with cordiality. “I
haven’t seen you for a week. How’s the pole-vault going?”
“Not very well,” responded Sam, coldly.
“If you’re doing no better than I am, you’re rotten!” went on Mulcahy,
amiably. “I can’t make nine feet any more--seem to have lost the knack.
I hear you did nine four the other day.”
“Nine three,” corrected Sam.
“I can’t touch that. I see where I come out at the bottom in the
Shield Meet. How many originals did you get to-day?”
“Four.”
“You’re a shark! What kind of figure did you have for 213?”
Sam opened his papers and showed a neatly drawn diagram with his proof
carefully indicated beneath. Mulcahy studied it silently for two full
minutes. “That’s the way I did it,” he said. “I wasn’t sure it was
right. Did you get 214?”
Sam handed over another sheet, to which his companion gave as close a
scrutiny as to the first. “I don’t understand that,” he said, pointing
to a statement. “How do you get that?”
“That’s easy,” replied Sam, proud of his achievement. “I’ll show you.”
He looked about for a loose sheet of paper.
“Use this,” offered Mulcahy, turning to the blank page at the end of
his book. “I can rub it out afterward.”
Sam took the geometry and quickly jotted down on the fly leaf the
omitted intermediate steps. “I see that,” said Mulcahy, and devoted
himself once more to the study of Sam’s diagrams. Sam turned back the
leaves of the geometry. On the margin of the page next to the last he
found the two letters D. P.
This discovery effectually occupied Sam’s mind during the few minutes
that remained before the recitation bell sounded. His papers went
unnoticed through Mulcahy’s hands. While the bell was ringing, Mulcahy
asked a last question, and Sam leaned absently toward him to follow the
questioner’s finger upon the page. At this moment, while their heads
were close together, some one called sharply from the door at their
side, “Archer!”
Sam turned and beheld Duncan Peck grinning at him in the doorway.
“What did I tell you!” Peck threw at him in a jeering undertone, and
disappeared behind the entering class.
“There’s one thing I could tell _you_,” thought Sam, grimly, as he
faced front again, “but I won’t. You can find your missing books
yourself!”
When the instructor asked how many had succeeded in proving the whole
five originals, Phipps alone put up his hand. Three, including Archer
and Mulcahy, averred that they could do four. Others professed three
and two and one, and some none at all. Mulcahy was sent to the board
and returned in triumph, sure of a good mark for the recitation. He had
made excellent use of Archer’s solution. Sam was not called on.
* * * * *
To the blasé attendant from the town, the Faculty Shield Meet of that
year would have seemed little different from a dozen other events of
the kind which he had witnessed. Collins and Bruce, testing it by
a standard of their own, called it satisfactory. The old boys who
came back from the colleges in fine attire to act as judges spoke of
it with patronizing interest as a success. For two contestants, at
least, it was the most important event that the school year had as
yet developed. Shirley, the duellist, won his trial heat in the forty
yards, though some derisive remarks were made about him as he crouched
on the starting line. These remarks ceased when he took his second
heat, an easy yard ahead of his nearest rival. In the third heat he was
again the leader. In the final he was matched against Gay, the best
hundred-yards man in school.
Sam and Taylor stood together near the finish line.
“I wish Shirley would beat that Gay, even if Gay does belong to my
class,” remarked Taylor, maliciously. “Since he won the hundred last
year at Hillbury, he wears a hat four sizes bigger. I don’t suppose
there’s any chance for Frenchie.”
“Lots of chance,” returned Archer, wisely. “Shirley strikes his stride
in the very first yard. He may get put back, of course.”
There was a false start, but it was Gay who went back a foot; another,
and Fairmount joined him. All four hung on the next set, and the pistol
cracked. While the others were still rising, Shirley was shooting
forward with his feet well under him. He was a yard ahead at the end of
ten yards; at the forty no one was within five feet of him.
“Bully for Frenchie!” cried Taylor. “That’ll take down the swelling on
Gay’s head an inch or two. What’s the time? Four and three-fifths? Why,
that’s the record!” And Taylor ran off to have a hand in the boisterous
congratulations which the lower middlers were lavishing on their
unexpected champion.
Sam was on his way to the starting line for the forty-five-yard
hurdles. He had no chance against Fairmount, he knew well, but
Fairmount was not in his heat, and he hoped to survive the first trial
at any rate. If he could only get his long legs to swinging faster!
He crouched for his start, a little white around the lips, but cool,
waited while Somers was put back, and got off reasonably well. Somers
was ahead of him at the second hurdle, but he caught him on the third,
and breasted the tape a foot ahead. In the finals, Fairmount was
outside him and Edmands and Foote inside. This time he was slower. All
three got off before him, but Foote stumbled at the first hurdle and
fell behind. Edmands he overtook as he passed the second. Together they
ran for the third, but Archer cleared with less waste of time, and was
close behind Fairmount at the finish. It was not victory, but he was
fully satisfied with second place.
After that Sam had nothing to do but sit content in his warm bathrobe
and watch the other races. Bruce, of course, took the six hundred
yards, and Weatherford the thousand, both veterans who surprised no
one. Then old Chouder’s race, the three hundred, was called. Duncan
was in the pack that chased at Chouder’s heels, gradually scattering
behind as the pace told. Duncan was not the last by any means, nor
quick-stepping Shirley, who held the pole behind the leader, and after
gaining fifteen yards on the first round, kept himself in the van
during the second. Both Peck and Richmond spurted to pass him on the
final stretch, but neither could quite reach him. Shirley fell across
the line two feet behind Chouder, with Peck a yard farther back.
“I wonder what he’ll say now!” thought Sam, gleefully. “He can’t
pretend he beat Frenchie this time!”
But alas! Sam’s complacency was soon to receive a shock. In the
indoor pole-vault, which Jones won at ten feet four amid great
applause, Archer did his expected nine feet three. Mulcahy, however,
who had pretended two days before that he could no longer reach
nine feet, vaulted nine six with ease! And when Sam taxed him
with the inconsistency of his words and his performance, he smiled
contemptuously, and “guessed he had got back his form!”
That night Sam waited a sleepy hour beyond his bedtime to catch Peck,
who spent the evening out.
“What about Shirley now?” he demanded, as soon as the door was closed
behind the truant.
“He can run,” answered Duncan, coolly.
“He licked you to-day, right and good, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did,” conceded Duncan.
“What about the day of the duel,” pursued Sam. “Didn’t he beat you
then, too?”
“Perhaps he did and perhaps he didn’t. Who can tell?”
“I wasn’t so far out, anyway,” growled Sam. And Duncan thought so too,
but not being wholly ready to acknowledge the error, he deferred his
admission to a later time.