I
On a cool morning in mid-June two little boys, very dusty and wearing
very grimy waists, sat on the turfed mound of an ancient circus ring in
the old fair ground enclosure, intently watching the gaunt, half-naked
figure of a man in flapping white breeches who, high-stepping, sprinted
back and forth along the stretch of the old race track. Their elbows on
their knees, their chins in their grimy hands, they gazed fixedly at him
whom they had trudged across the lots to see. For in his day he was the
small boys' god, their best-loved hero, before whom it was their
greatest joy to bend the knee.
"D' you think he kin do it?" Jimmy Thurston finally inquired, as the
spare, ridiculous figure of the man brought up behind the tenantless
judges' stand and for an instant was lost to sight.
Willie Trigger sneered. He was very superior, was Willie.
"Sure he kin!" he exclaimed. "Sure he kin!"
"I bet he can't," Jimmy replied curtly.
"He kin too--'sides----"
"'Sides what?" the challenging Jimmy asked, contemptuously.
"My father says he kin."
"Aw----"
"He does too."
"Aw, my pa says he _can't_----"
"I d'care; he kin."
"How d'you know?"
"Well"--Willie Trigger hesitated. "Well, my father says he guesses he
kin beat a _nengine_!"
At that Jimmy Thurston burst into jeering laughter.
"He! he! he!" he cackled--"a _nengine_! He! He! Why, a nengine goes--a
nengine goes _a mile in a minnit_!"
Willie Trigger had become very red; moreover he was choking, half with
rage, half with confusion. He recognized the need of personal support.
So he blurted:--
"I know he kin, 'cause I seen him--onct!"
"Aw, yeh didn't neether," Jimmy Thurston flatly contradicted.
Willie wriggled and dug his heel into the soft earth.
"I _did_----"
"Didn't _neether_!"
Willie Trigger sprang to his feet, his fists clenched. Tears were rising
now.
With his eye Jimmy Thurston measured the distance across the field to
the white house at the gate where he knew his mother was. Leaping
forward he dashed suddenly away, and as he dodged the gurgling Willie,
cried:
"_Li_-ar! _Li_-ar! _Li_-ar!"
It took Willie Trigger three seconds to perceive the situation and to
act. Like a hound, then, he was off in the other's wake.
The straining Jimmy, his heart bursting with regret, heard his pursuer
panting at his heels.... Nearer! Nearer!
A scream suddenly rent the air, a scream that was carried on by a
willing wind to the keen appreciative ears of motherhood. As Willie
Trigger was about to close upon the plunging form of Jimmie, Mrs.
Thurston flung back the screen door and appeared upon the narrow back
porch, wiping her hands on her apron.
"Jim-_mee_! _Jim_-mee Thurston!" she screamed.
"Maw!" yelled Jimmy dolorously.
At the maternal screech, Willie Trigger brought up standing. One instant
he hesitated and then, showing his heels to the woman on the porch
whose arms were outstretched to receive her own, he scurried off in the
direction of the judges' stand, as fast as his little legs could carry
him. He heard the warning cry from the back porch:--
"Willie Trigger, if you hurt Jimmy, I'll skin you alive!"
And at the corner of the judges' stand he ran full into the long, lank
creature in the flapping "shorts"--and brought up, gaping.
"Well, well, who was after _you_?" asked the towering runner, gazing
down at the little grimy boy whose head seemed to come somewhere about
his high-set knees.
"Nobody," Willie Trigger mumbled.
"Who was that calling?"
"I dunno." Willie looked up and the runner smiled down at him.
"Where do you live?" he asked.
"On Thayer Street."
"Way down there, eh? What you doing up here, then?"
Willie Trigger again looked up into the gaunt creature's long, thin
face, then down at the ground into which he proceeded to bore with the
stubbed toe of one small shoe.
"Come to see you run," he mumbled, and grinned sheepishly.
Bunny laughed drily.
"Well, I'll"--he began and stopped. Then he said:--"You wait here,
little chap; I'll just get into some clothes and we'll go home together;
it's nearly noon. I live down your way----"
The gentleness of his voice gave Willie Trigger a new courage.
"I know it," he exclaimed proudly; "I live 'cross the street."
The runner plunged into the box-like compartment of the disused judges'
stand from which he issued in an incredibly short space of time more
properly and far more becomingly clad.
"How did you know I was going to practice out here?" he inquired with a
show of interest. He made no effort to look down--for it would have
meant an effort.
"I follered yeh," was the now prompt reply.
And into Bunny's man-heart that instant there welled a certain pride,
but it was nowise to be compared to that which swelled the boy-heart of
Willie Trigger, hero-worshipper.
And so, down Washtenaw Avenue they walked together, through College
Street and on into the campus and across; Willie Trigger the while
attempting vainly to keep step with his ill-matched companion.
At a corner they separated.
"You're going out to Field Day on Saturday, aren't you?" Bunny asked.
Willie Trigger grinned, and nodded.
"Don't buy a ticket," the giant said, "I'll give you one; you remind me;
will you?"
The small but agile heart of Willie Trigger leaped into his throat. All
he could say was "Whoop!" And saying that he ran, in the very excess,
the richness and the wealth, of the joy that was his. A ticket! A ticket
whereby he might enter through the gate with the crowd--a part of it--a
proud part of it! And all this to be granted him by Bunny himself--Bunny
who was to run in the hundred yards for the Western Intercollegiate
championship; he, William Watts Trigger whose father was a mere night
watchman, and who for a week had been examining the fair ground fence
for vulnerable points! Willie Trigger found himself, of a sudden,
voiceless, too full, by far, for utterance.
Surely, one day--some day--there would come an opportunity of repaying
in kind the beneficence of Bunny, Willie Trigger considered. But the
beneficence was very great. Little did he realize that soon, and by the
very beneficence itself was he to be put in the way of paying back his
benefactor by casting light upon an unforeseen occurrence of great
import, that but for him, must forever remain obscure.
As it was, Bunny had made a friend, a champion, though he knew it not.