[Illustration: “But, man, you aren’t going to pay the bills”]
THE PENNANT
BY
EVERETT T. TOMLINSON
Author of “Carl Hall of Tait,” “Captain Dan Richards,” etc.
_ILLUSTRATED_
PUBLISHERS
BARSE & HOPKINS
NEW YORK, N. Y. NEWARK, N. J.
Copyright, 1912
BY
BARSE & HOPKINS
MADE IN U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ON SIX TOWN POND 11
II. DAN’S PROJECT 20
III. GREAT SNAKES 29
IV. THE REWARD OF PATIENCE 38
V. PREPARATION 48
VI. THE GAME 57
VII. A DISPUTE 67
VIII. A RECORD 76
IX. STUDYING A BOY 86
X. MR. BORDEN DECIDES 96
XI. A REFUSAL 106
XII. DAN RECONSIDERS 116
XIII. ENTERING SCHOOL 126
XIV. NEW ACQUAINTANCES 135
XV. WALTER’S SUGGESTIONS 145
XVI. A SCRUB GAME 154
XVII. A TRY-OUT 164
XVIII. A NEW PITCHER 173
XIX. SCHOOL LIFE 181
XX. A CHANGE IN WALTER 193
XXI. DAN’S TROUBLES 202
XXII. CHANGED RELATIONS 212
XXIII. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR 222
XXIV. THE OPENING OF THE LEAGUE GAMES 232
XXV. A PLOT 237
XXVI. WALTER’S ILLNESS 252
XXVII. THE LEAGUE GAME 260
XXVIII. THE END OF THE GAME 271
XXIX. THE ANGER OF THE NINE 281
XXX. DAN’S STRUGGLE 290
XXXI. THE FINAL GAME 299
XXXII. CONCLUSION 309
THE PENNANT
CHAPTER I
ON SIX TOWN POND
“Have you tried the fishing this summer?”
“No; I’ve been too busy on the farm. This is the first day I have had
when I could get away.”
“It looks like rain. Is that the reason why you’ve dropped the shovel
and the hoe?”
“Partly. It’s more though, for the two dollars a day you’ve agreed to
pay me for rowing you over the pond. I can’t pick that up on the farm,
you know.”
“You’ll soon be a rich man if you don’t look out. Ever thought what
you’d do with all your money?”
“Yes; I’ve thought a good lot about it. Perhaps ‘thinking’ about it is
as far as I’ll ever get with it.”
“How are you going to invest it?”
“I’d like to get enough to help me go to school.”
Walter Borden sat quietly erect in the stern of the rude skiff in which
he was seated, lazily holding a rod in his hands from which a long line
was paid out in the hope that some stray pickerel in Six Town Pond
might be tempted by the bait displayed.
A half-hour before the time when the conversation recorded above had
taken place he and his companion, Dan Richards, had driven seven miles
from the home of Walter’s grandfather, for the day, which was to be
devoted to fishing in the pond, that extended three miles in length and
in places was a mile or more wide. The little body of water was well
known in the region for the fish which were said to be found in its
depths, and Walter was convinced that the reports were not exaggerated,
for in numerous summers preceding the one when this story opens he had
tested the fact with varying degrees of success.
Every summer Walter came from his home in New York to spend at least
a part of his vacation on the farm of his Grandfather Sprague. The
broad acres, the great roomy barns, the cattle and horses, the deep
brook that sped swiftly through the pasture, even the old-fashioned
farmhouse with its garret and its broad piazzas, to say nothing of the
many low rooms with their numerous windows, had every one a place dear
to Walter’s heart. From his earliest recollections, here was the place
where his summer days had been passed. So eager was he to come, that
when he was only ten years old his father and mother had yielded to
his pleadings and seen him safely entrusted to the conductor and porter
of the sleeping-car, and alone he had gone on the journey of three
hundred miles to Rodman, the little village a half-mile distant from
Grandfather Sprague’s home. It is true this is the form which Walter
took to describe the place, although an ordinary observer would have
said that the Sprague farm was half a mile from the village.
Later in the summer Mrs. Borden came to join her boy and pay her annual
visit to her father and mother. Her words of wonderment, when she
arrived, at the change in her boy’s appearance since he had left home
did not vary much from year to year. The tanned cheeks, the firmer
muscles, the keen appetite, that made Grandfather Sprague shake his
head as the cook’s johnny-cakes disappeared twice a day almost as
silently as the dew from the shaded lawn, were an annual delight to
Mrs. Borden.
“Beats all how much a boy can hold,” Grandfather Sprague daily would
say as he watched the hungry lad.
Those days were gone now, for Walter Borden was a well-grown muscular
boy of sixteen. “I haven’t a doubt that I can put you on the bed yet,”
laughed his grandfather, his eyes twinkling as he spoke.
“You’d better not try it,” laughed Walter’s mother, glancing in pride
at her boy.
“Come on, grandfather,” Walter would call out laughingly; “try it!”
“‘Try it’!” retorted Grandfather Sprague. “I’m not going to ‘try’ it;
I’m going to do it!”
“When?” laughed Walter.
“One time is as good as another.”
“Do it now! Do it now!” retorted the lad.
“You’re nothing but a little whipper-snapper. You don’t weigh more than
a hundred and fifty.”
“How much do you weigh, grandfather?”
“Two hundred and ten.”
“All right. You have the advantage in weight. I’ll not count it though,
if you’ll put me on the bed.”
“Don’t try it, pa,” spoke up Grandmother Sprague. “You might slip and
break your leg.”
“Or hurt his pride,” laughed Walter, whose love and respect for his
grandfather were almost as keen as was the old man’s love for the
stalwart lad.
“Pooh, ma,” the old gentleman retorted a trifle testily. “You don’t
suppose I’m so old I can’t take my own grandson across my lap and spank
him as he deserves, do you?”
“You might if he would lie still,” replied Mrs. Sprague dryly. “But you
and I were born on the same day and so I know just how old you are. You
are seventy-seven――――”
“And almost as spry as ever I was,” broke in her husband. “I don’t feel
a day older than when I was forty. The only thing that troubles me any
is that I stub my toe more than I used to.”
“You take my advice and don’t bother with Walter.”
“Well, to please you, ma, I’ll give him a day of grace. But I give
you fair warning,” he would add turning to the laughing boy, “that
to-morrow at ten-thirty I shall give you what you deserve.”
“To-morrow at ten-thirty,” brought a daily repetition of the scene
and conversation and not yet had Grandfather Sprague found just the
time for displaying his prowess. His deep love for Walter was a source
of joy to his grandson, who almost revered his portly, jolly, devout
grandfather. His happiest days were those spent on the farm, and next
to them were the visits of his grandfather and grandmother to the city.
According to Grandfather Sprague, all the members of the family were in
a conspiracy to “spoil the boy,” that is, all except himself. He was
for letting the boy know his proper place. But if anyone had ever heard
of Grandfather Sprague refusing a request of Walter, or failing to be
the first to herald his success in school or on the athletic field,
he had held his peace so successfully that none had ever heard his
testimony.
Every spot and creature on the farm were known to Walter. He had
tramped in the woods, fished in the brooks, ridden the horses, driven
the cows from the pasture to the barns――in fact, in former years the
only moments when he had not been busy had been those when his tired
little body was asleep. The collie and the horse which had been given
him brought Walter’s life a little more closely into touch with animate
things, but his chief interest aside from his grandfather’s place was
in Dan Richards, who lived with his widowed mother and his brother
Tom――a year and a half older than Dan――on the little farm adjoining.
Dan’s skill in making whistles of the willows, his unusual strength,
his quiet bearing had appealed strongly to Walter in other days. Even
now, when both were older and Dan’s lack of money was as marked as was
Walter’s freedom in its use and disregard of its true value, there was
a similar feeling of regard in Walter’s heart. The dark eyes, the tall
form, the quiet unassuming ways of Dan were still almost as strong in
their appeal to Walter as were the undoubted possession of physical
strength and skill which were Dan’s. The quiet manner in which Dan
had accepted his friend’s offer to pay him for rowing on the pond had
deceived Walter completely. His blue eyes, his light-brown hair, his
well-knit muscular body――“stocky” Dan called him, were not in sharper
contrast to Dan’s physical characteristics than were their differences
in mind and temper. The offer to “employ” his old friend had meant
little to Walter. How much of an effort it had been for Dan to accept
he never for a moment even suspected. Even his expression of surprise
when he looked up hastily, as Dan explained how he hoped to invest his
earnings, did not have in it one glance of understanding. Dan and the
little “Rockland Farm,” which, with the best of care, provided only a
scanty living for its owners, were almost inseparable in Walter’s mind.
That Dan had ambitions beyond the limits of his farm or even beyond the
little village of Rodman had not once occurred to Walter.
“School, Dan?” he exclaimed in surprise as he looked at his companion.
“Yes,” replied Dan quietly, without glancing at the fisherman.
“What put that into your head?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of a fellow wanting to get an education?”
“Why yes, of course,” said Walter, “but I hadn’t thought――――”
“Of me in that connection?” suggested Dan as his friend hesitated.
“I don’t know why I shouldn’t think of it,” said Walter hastily.
“But the fact is you hadn’t?”
“Yes, I suppose so. What are your plans?”
“I don’t know that I have any very definite ‘plans,’ as you call them.
Last year there was a young fellow from college that taught our school.
I guess he put it into my head. He seemed to be interested, and gave me
some lessons every night after I had finished my chores.”
“In what?”
“Oh, in algebra and Latin.”
“And you have been working on them?”
“A little. I had to be busy on the farm all day, and nights were the
only times I had free.”
“Where do you plan to go?”
“I had been thinking some of going to the Normal School at Jericho.
That’s only forty miles from here. It won’t cost very much there, you
know. If I can get a little money ahead, I’m going to try it anyhow,”
Dan said quietly.
“Going on to college?”
“I should like to. The hardest thing is to leave my mother and Tom to
run the farm. They need me and I don’t know that they really can get
along without me.”
“Don’t they want you to go?”
“Yes. Mother says she’ll sell or mortgage the farm and go with me, if
Tom will go too. She’d get a few rooms and perhaps take a few boarders
and help us that way.”
“Your mother is all right.”
“Don’t I know that?”
“You ought to, if any one does――――”
“You’ve got a strike,” broke in Dan quietly. “Better pay attention to
your fishing, that is, if you want to get any fish.”
Conversation ceased as Walter sharply yanked his rod. “The fish got
away!” he exclaimed with chagrin a minute later.
“Of course,” said Dan dryly. “What did you expect? You pulled the hook
right out of his mouth. You don’t think a pickerel will hang on with
his fins and tail, do you?”
“Show me how, Dan,” said Walter humbly. “I believe I’ve forgotten how
to do it.”
“No, you haven’t. You never knew how, so you haven’t forgotten. Hold
on! You’ve got another strike! Hand me your rod and I’ll try to show
you how to handle a strike.”