On Saturday Willie Trigger swallowed his dinner in an incredibly short
space of time, and slipped from the house unobserved, while his mother
was in the kitchen haggling with a huckster over the Sunday vegetables.
When the good woman re-entered the dining-room she cast one glance at
Willie's half depleted plate, then rushed through the dark, cool hall
and out upon the porch.
"Will-_ee_! Will-_ee_!" she called, stridently.
A rustling of the leaves as the breath of June wafted among them, was
her answer. She went to the gate and gazed up and down the street. Then
with a sigh she returned to the house and closed the door.
Perhaps Willie had not heard the maternal call. At the instant of its
issue he was balanced on the top of the back fence across the street,
hidden from the maternal eye by the intervening house. At the second
call he plumped down upon a soft ash heap on the other side. If he did
hear he gave no sign, but, after dusting his pantaloons with little
flips and pats of his small brown hands, he ran with all the speed that
he could muster, across the wide, uneven lot. Presently he became lost
to sight among the gnarled and broken trees of a once prolific apple
orchard, beyond. Issuing from the orchard on the farther side, he
crossed another lot--first wriggling wormlike beneath a low wire
fence--and came out into the dusty road that led to the old fair ground
enclosure. To-day that road, as a wide, smooth street disfigured only by
the tracks over which the flat-wheeled trolleys bump, marks the northern
boundary of Ann Arbor's ultra exclusiveness. Behind hedges or half
hidden amid the trees, nestle snug little houses that seem to cry out
against all vulgar intrusion and hug themselves in the very joy of their
most obvious respectability.
Along this road, thick with dust; now obscured in a cloud of his own
raising, now distinct against the background of the high board fence,
Willie Trigger trudged. Arriving at the long ticket window he was
dismayed to find that the hatch was shut. Bunny had told him there would
be a ticket for him at the window--a ticket for him expressly, in an
envelope bearing his name, else he would not have deserted his dinner to
be the first on hand. Save for a solitary woman whom he saw among the
trees in the wood across the way, the region about appeared deserted. It
was not yet one o'clock, but Willie Trigger did not realize this.
Stoically he sat down at the edge of the long low platform below the
ticket-office window and resigned himself to waiting.
After ten minutes a dog bounded from the wood into the road. Motionless,
he regarded the lad curiously. As long as he remained in sight Willie
amused himself by throwing stones at him.
After half an hour a carriage drew up close to the fence and stopped. He
slouched over to the narrow pedestrians' gate at one side of the office.
Two young men, carrying a large, black tin box between them, alighted
from the vehicle, paid the driver and entered the enclosure, fastening
the gate behind them. When they had disappeared Willie pulled at the
gate but suddenly desisted in his attempt to force an entrance as the
heavy hatch of the ticket-office fell with a bang and the same two young
men were revealed at the weather beaten counter. He watched them as
they unlocked the box, on the shiny top of which the bright sun gleamed,
and saw one of them take out several big bunches of blue tickets. Willie
approached the window, then, hesitatingly. His chin barely touched the
edge of the shelf so he stood on his toes.
"Say--my ticket here?" he asked, boldly.
The young man who was arranging the bundles on the shelf looked down.
"What do _you_ want?" he inquired, tersely.
"I want my ticket."
"Got a quarter?"
Willie Trigger's toes gave way beneath him, but he bobbed up again
almost instantly.
"He said there'd be one here--in a envelope."
"What?" snapped the young man, "_who_ said there would--what you
_talking_ about anyway?"
Willie endeavored to explain. He was laughed at for his pains.
"Run along now," the officious young man commanded. "There ain't any
ticket for you here. Run along--or--or--I'll call a policeman."
The mouth, then the nose, then the eyes, then the little gray cap of
Willie Trigger descended below the window ledge and he commenced to
sniffle. A large, jagged stone lay on the grass not ten feet away, and
as his eyes fell upon it his sniffling ceased. He picked up the stone.
He poised it in the air an instant, then with all the strength at his
command he flung it diagonally across the fence. He heard the clatter as
it struck the thin boards at the end of the ticket office. He did not
linger to observe any further effect of his assault, for when the
officious young man who had denied to him the existence of his ticket,
crawled upon the ledge and gazed off down the road, there was no little
boy in sight.
Chagrined though he was, Willie did not for an instant accuse his hero
of any lack of faithlessness. Indeed, as is the wont of small boyhood,
he accepted the rebuff unquestioningly. He made no effort at analysis.
It was merely a whimsical cavort of that unreliable Fate that not
infrequently plays tricks on those who walk in knickerbockers. So
Willie, nothing loth, reasoned simply that as a ticket had never been
necessary before, he was quite prepared to gain an entrance to the
grounds without one, now. Indeed, even as the young man in the office
climbed upon the ledge and gazed off down the road, Willie was examining
the fence for loose boards, along the familiar stretch behind the
ancient grand stand. Many times and oft, when ball games were in
progress, had he, with the assistance of Jimmy Thurston, clambered over
that tall board fence frequently to the complete demolishment of his
shirt waist, which had a nasty habit of catching on the barbs of the
wire that an ingenious care-taker had strung along the top, but, in any
event, successfully, to the more important issue of an entrance to the
field. To-day, however, he was alone, and getting over the fence was
quite a different matter. Since Thursday he had not caught a glimpse of
Jimmy, but now he was wishing that the fat, familiar figure of the lad
would appear around the corner of the fence. There was not a loose board
along the whole stretch, so far as he could discover. Not infrequently
he had, with half a dozen sturdy jerks, succeeded in ripping off a plank
sufficiently wide to permit of squeezing through; but two days before
the same far seeing care-taker who, with so much ingenuity, profanity
and trouble, had strung the barbed wire at the top, had gone over the
entire stockade and nailed securely every board that seemed to him to be
deficient in tightness. It is saddening to tell it; for it rather
weakens the character of Willie Trigger, but at the end of his second
futile patrol along the fence, he flung himself down at the roots of an
ancient apple-tree and cried. Were all the Fates of boyhood set against
him this day in June?
"Dum it--gosh dum it," he mumbled, gazing through his tears at the
forbidding fence, the top of which looked so low yet was so high--too
high even when he poised on tiptoe and jumped, clutching. As he stared,
his eyes opened wide, the tears were magically whisked away, and he
grinned.
"Gosh!" he exclaimed aloud, and got upon his feet.
A branch of the very tree beneath which he had so disconsolately flung
himself, pointed out the way he sought. A single limb--not a thick,
sturdy limb, but rather a weak, unstable sort of limb--hung directly
above the fence at a most favorable point, immediately behind the grand
stand.
Willie Trigger climbed the tree. Cautiously he crept out upon the
branch, more than half hidden by the foliage. The branch bent beneath
his weight, slight though it was, and once he nearly slipped. His heart
leaped into his mouth, or if not his heart, at least something, but he
swallowed it back and moved along another inch. He wriggled obliquely
until he balanced on his stomach like a bag of meal over a pole. Little
by little he slipped down, the branch giving more and more with every
movement of his agile body. He clung by the crook of his elbows and
wriggled his toes. They touched nothing. For a space he danced upon the
air. Another slip of scarce an inch, and there ensued a ripping and
tear, followed by a sharp crack.
Thug!
Willie Trigger struck the soft earth in a sitting posture. The sudden
contact resulted in a private pyrotechnic display of momentary
brilliance. Willie gasped twice like a fish. Blinking away the stars and
whirling Catherine wheels that glittered before his eyes, he looked
about him. "Gosh!" he muttered below his breath, and rolling over rubbed
the point of contact vigorously. Beside him lay the branch, but--goody!
He had struck inside the fence! Moreover, and what was quite as much to
the purpose, he had not been observed.
Sidling along the rear wall of the grand stand, he reached the corner
and thrust out his head. The big gate was open--the gate through which
he had hoped to pass big with pride, a man among his fellows. A steady
current of humanity in summer garb was streaming through. There were
carriages by the score, the horses driven by young men, many of whom
Willie, from his peculiar point of vantage, recognized. On the seats
beside them were girls--"their girls," he speculated mentally with an
unvoiced sneer. But mostly the crowd was on foot, scrambling, pushing,
jostling. Every individual in the throng seemed bent upon being the
first to reach the grand stand and it was a fine sight to the small
boy, peering around the corner, to see them run. Two men detached
themselves from the crowd and seemed to him to be making directly for
where he stood. Willie Trigger wasted no time in idle speculation as to
their purpose. Turning heel he ran. He plunged around the upper end of
the stand. The door there was open. He disappeared into the long room
directly beneath the seats. He was familiar with the floor plan. He knew
that the partition on his left was false and that the various little
doors on the right opened into tiny dressing rooms. He knew that the one
door on the left offered access, if unfastened, to the cramped and
crowded space beneath the lower tiers of seats,--a dark hole used these
many years as a catch-all for the _débris_ of the grounds, old cans,
broken bottles, worn out shoes, and ancient hoop-skirts. He tried the
door; it opened and he pulled it shut after him, just as the door at the
end was flung back and the two men entered.
"Where's his room?" he heard asked, in an undertone; then the heavy
footfalls on the loose boards of the floor.
His eyes became adjusted to the darkness and through the many chinks of
the partition he perceived the men. He recognized them as those who had
haggled with the hackman at the Cook House two days before. He held his
breath, and, as there really was nothing else for him to do, became an
eavesdropper.
"Punky, we got t' separate," Giddings said. "They'll be next if you
don't; it'll be all right for you to drop in here while they're dressin'
but don't be wise. And for heaven's sake, don't get gay; it's a long
chance you're takin' and you'll take it I know, with five hundred
dollars in the balance."
"Don't you worry," Punky replied significantly. "I'm takin' no chances;
that's why I got the dope. You couldn't buy this Bunny for a million;
and you say Morrison's as bad. You just leave it to me. I'll be hangin'
around, you bet. When you're dishin' up the soft stuff, you just call me
and say, 'Here, take this in there.' I'll take it--in she goes--and if
it don't mean Morrison'll win this here Intercollegiate, I'm a lobster,
good and plenty. They'd never git next in the world."
"Well, for heaven's sake don't put in too much," Giddings muttered.
"Leave it to me,"--was the terse reply and then they went into one of
the dressing-rooms and their voices came only in muffled tone to Willie
in his hiding-place.
He was not quite certain of the meaning of what he had heard. He was
only certain of the name--"Bunny." Who these men were he did not dream.
Besides, it was none of his affairs. There was one thing however that he
_did_ know, and that definitely; he could not hope to see the sports
from where he crouched. Noiselessly he opened the door. It did not
creak. He tiptoed down the long room. As he neared the end, the door
there was opened suddenly from without and a score of men pressed in.
Willie Trigger whistled as loud as he could and walked on. The whistle,
born of boyhood's genius, saved him. Ordinarily the presence of a small
boy in the dressing-room would perhaps have occasioned surprise, but on
this particular occasion the small boy whistled so shrilly and walked so
independently with his hands deep in the pockets of his knickerbockers
that no one spoke to him; no one seemed even to notice him. He strode
out of the building bravely, crept under the fence at the side of the
track and strolled into the paddock, scuffing the grass and still
whistling.
V
Wilma Morey, exquisitely dainty in a wealth of fluffy muslin flounces
and little bows of ribbon as pink as her pretty cheeks, found a
particularly excellent seat in the first tier, close to the rail. From
where she sat she could sweep with her dancing eyes the entire course,
the crowded paddock, and the stretch of open on beyond. The wire was
immediately below her and directly opposite was the judges' stand.
Perceiving these manifold advantages of her position, she settled
herself comfortably and patted, with most apparent content, her wealth
of flounces. She was very glad that no acquaintance had slipped into the
seat next hers, now occupied by a little fat man in checks. She wished
to enjoy the events of the day in her own way and as privately as she
might surrounded for the greater part by people with whom she had at
least a nodding acquaintance.
She studied her program diligently, noted the order of events from the
old fashioned "throwing of the baseball" to the "standing broad jump" in
neither of which she was interested. She did not know a man among the
broad jumpers and but one name in the list of baseball throwers was
familiar--Schmidt, a little German, with a blonde head and blue eyes
whom she had met at a sophomore dance in the beginning of the year. So,
when the sleeveless-shirted contestants ran up the track and the clean
white ball was taken from its red box and tossed among them she reverted
to her program nor lifted her eyes again until the loud-voiced person in
the judges' stand opposite bellowed through a bright tin megaphone that
the event had been won by "Schmidt, distance ----" She did not catch the
distance.
"Next event!" she heard roar from the mouth of the megaphone, "the first
of three heats in the hundred yards. Entries: Bunette, Michigan;
Morrison, Western College; Lacy, Ohio Wesleyan; Cady, Northwestern"--and
so on down the list that she followed on her program with her nimble
eyes. The megaphone man was still bellowing when the atmosphere was rent
by a series of yells from the paddock that would have put a horde of
Comanche braves to the copper-tinted blush. The cheering was taken up by
the grand stand, and canes were waved, and hats were flung into the air
and lungs were split. All this because a dozen gaunt creatures in
flapping "shorts" were prancing up the track in the wake of their
jogging trainers. The crowd behind bore down upon the girl and she only
saved herself from falling headlong over the rail by encircling a stout
roof support with one arm and clinging tight.
Up the course the line formed.
"That's Morrison; he's got the post," she heard a full-lunged youngster
cry.
"There's Bunny on the end!" another shouted.
"Bunny! Bunny! Bunny!" yelled the crowd and Wilma Morey's face flushed
crimson. Her eyes lighted and her lips quivered with the excitement of
the moment. Behind her the pressure of the crowd had given away somewhat
and she leaned over the rail, eagerly, her fingers curled in the palms
of her hands, every muscle tense. She saw an arm suddenly lifted above
the runners' heads and caught the glint of the sunlight on the barrel of
the pistol.
The report sounded a long way off, or as though her ears were muffled.
Down the course they came, all heads low save Bunny's; he had a way of
tilting his back, and breathing hard through his nose. In an instant, as
she watched, they passed the further end of the grand stand and in
another the foremost had crossed the line. Pandemonium broke loose. The
crowd in the paddock tore down the fence and rushed into the track
surrounding these modern Mercuries. Wrapped in the robes their coaches
had held out to them they were led away and the megaphone man in the
judges' stand was compelled to clang the deep-throated bell quite three
minutes before he was able to convince the throng that he had something
very particular to say.
"First heat," he shouted. "Morrison, ten and one fifth; Bunette, ten and
two-fifths; Cady, ten and a half." The stand, the crowd in the track,
even the ancient circus rings in the distance swam before Wilma Morey's
eyes. She lifted her handkerchief to her burning cheek. It was cruel. He
had lost; lost after all his patience, all his hope, all his effort.
Conscious as she was that the first heat did not mean _all_, she yet
realized that it might mean much. If she might only catch his eye, she
thought, and let him know that she among all the others believed in him.
What was she thinking, she asked herself, suddenly. Then she smiled. In
the buzz of conversation all about, and amid the cries from the track
below she caught varying words that seemed to her, in her state of
supreme suspense, to offer a modicum of hope. Still--still---- She
confessed to herself her disappointment. She wished that she had not
come out at all.
The next event was "throwing the hammer"; and then the hurdles would be
run. Should she stay? she asked herself. Involuntarily she moved toward
the end of the stand where the stairs were.
"What in thunder's the matter; you going?" she heard a voice ask, then
felt a strong hand on her arm. She turned and looked up into the face of
her brother.
She clutched his wrist. "Oh, Nibsey," she cried, "he was beaten; wasn't
he?"
He stared at her quizzically. Then he laughed and led her over to the
rail. He glanced back at the crowd that pressed upon them from behind.
Bending toward her he whispered: "He's just playing 'em. Great Scott!
you didn't think _that_ was his speed, did you? Morrison was doing his
best; Bunny was walking; that's all, just walking. You wait; you'll see
the fastest hundred yards that was ever run on this old track. You hold
your horses. Why, Morrison's trainer knows it's all off. The others--the
'also-rans'--are just waiting for the end. Morrison's trainer's running
around down below like a chicken with its head off. You wait if you want
to see a record smashed." And he pressed her arm reassuringly, and
vanished.
At the bottom of the stairs he collided with a small boy in a soiled and
torn shirt waist.
"Cancha see where yer goin'?" the small boy piped after him, then
mounted the stairs whistling. He pushed his way through the crowd to the
rail, and wriggled to a post. Despite the yells of "Down in front," that
were flung at him from the lower tiers, he clung to his position
resolutely.
"There's Bunny!" he cried as the runners pranced up the track a second
time. Wilma heard the lad's shrill pipe and glancing down caught his eye
and smiled. He grinned. He sidled nearer to her and pressed close to the
rail.
Willie Trigger decided then and there that he had never before seen
such a pretty girl. She was ever so much prettier, he calculated, than
the new hired girl in the house next door,--at home. He had fallen
desperately in love with _her_ at first sight. Then Wilma spoke to him
and his boy heart bounded.
"Do you know him, little man?" she asked, softly.
He wished she had not called him "little man" particularly with so many
about, but her voice was so gentle and her eyes were so beautiful that
he forgave her in his heart straightway and answered, looking down, "Uh
huh; he lives 'cross th' street from our house."
Her eyes took on a greater brilliance then and a smile played about the
corners of her pretty mouth.
"So you are Willie Trigger, are you?" she asked so low that he alone
might hear. "Oh, I know all about _you_; he told me."
Willie Trigger never knew what joy it was to live until that instant. To
think that _He_, the great Bunny, had told _Her_ all about _Him_! It
rendered him for the moment speechless. Yet he gave no sign of the
swelling of his heart unless a sudden kick at the post to which he
clung, and a low, foolish laugh might be taken as a sign. He felt her
hand upon his shoulder as the line of entries formed and was
superlatively happy.
The pistol cracked. Again the runners came on, swift, straight as
arrows. There had been an instant's hush at the start, but now it was
forgotten in the uproar. Could it be possible, Wilma wondered, as she
leaned far over the rail, hearing above all other sounds the shrill,
piercing screech of Willie Trigger, that the great lank figure there at
the fore of all the rest, his long legs high lifting, his head thrown
back, was the same Bunny who not half an hour before had lagged the
second in the race? And yet, as the creature crossed the wire below her
and the air became filled with waving canes and hats and handkerchiefs,
she knew that such it must have been. Her fingers tightened on the arm
of the screaming lad and she drew him close beside her.
"Was that Bunny?" she asked eagerly. "They came so fast I couldn't see.
Tell me, was it?"
He looked up at her, joyful that she had called upon him in her
distress, but what he said was only: "Sure; who'd yeh _think_ it was?"
She squeezed his arm and he grinned. Something of her great delight was
his to know that instant, though he was only a little boy in a soiled
and torn shirt waist and she a beautiful girl gay in ribbons and fluffy
muslin flounces that made her look for all the world like the fairy in a
certain Christmas pantomime, that was one of his fondest memories.
"And now let's see when the last will be," she said, glancing down at
her program.
"They's two 'vents 'fore they run," he explained, for he had learned the
order by heart long since. "They's th' pole vault and th' drop kick.
Then they'll run th' last time."
She looked at him and smiled and he smiled back quite familiarly.
"I guess I'll go down now," he said suddenly, and before she could
restrain him, for she had found much amusement in his straightforward
boyish admiration for one whom she, as well, admired, he had wriggled
away and out of sight.
She leaned over the rail and saw him on the grass below making swiftly
along the front of the stand.
For a space he hovered about the edge of the crowd at the door of the
dressing-rooms. His chance of entering at last was offered and gliding
between divers pairs of legs he sneaked into the long, low room. All was
confusion here. Half-clad men ran this way and that, calling for drinks,
bath-robes and towels, and among them bustled officiously the man with
the big mustache whom he had seen and heard while hidden in the dark
hole on the other side of the thin partition. He glimpsed, as well, the
other man; his trousers turned up, his coat and waistcoat off, his
sleeves rolled to his shoulders. He was busy squeezing lemons into a
pail. Presently he poured the contents of another pail into the first,
then dumped a bag of sugar into the mixture which he stirred vigorously.
"Here, Morrison; don't drink that rotten water; drink this," he shouted
and filled a glass from the pail. Morrison, a curly-headed man with
knots of muscle on his legs that looked like coils of rope, gulped
greedily.
"Here, gimme some of that; this man in here's thirsty," the familiar
black mustached man called out. He took up the glass and moved toward
the half-open door of one of the little dressing-rooms. Willie Trigger
was by some instinctive force, seemingly, moved to sudden action. He was
about to slip past the black mustached man and enter the little room
when he was perceived. A kick was aimed at him and he was adjured to
"make himself scarce or git his block knocked off." Thoroughly
frightened, he slouched away and ran into the open where people were too
interested in other things to knock the blocks off little boys and where
it didn't smell so stuffy and unpleasant.
He sped across the track where the uprights had been erected for the
pole vaulting, and later he became one of the group that formed a
crescent behind the football kickers. He watched, with admiration
unconcealed, the unerring pedal movements of the heavily shod young men
who sent the ball so beautifully skyward.
Meanwhile, Wilma awaited impatiently at the grand stand rail the last
heat in the sprint event. She saw the drop-kickers leave the paddock and
heard indistinctly the record that was called across from the tower-like
judges' stand; but these things were not to her liking. Her eyes upon
the track below, she saw a young man in sweater and knee breeches vault
the fence beside the stretch and rush across. He shouted a word to the
megaphone man who at once lifted the glistening instrument to his lips
and shouted:
"Is there a doctor on the grand stand? He's wanted down below. A man has
been taken suddenly sick."
The pink fled from her cheeks. Then she smiled. She realized the
absurdity of the little spasm of fear that had seized her. She glanced
down at her card again.
The runners were jogging up the stretch. She counted them. There was one
missing. Another look of fright came into her eyes. She felt some one
tugging at her dress. She turned impatiently and gazed down into the now
pale face of Willie Trigger.
"It's Bunny!" he muttered almost incoherently, "oh, it's Bunny! A man
gave him something to make him sick."
She seized him by the shoulder and held her face close to his.
"What did you say--_gave_ him something!" she exclaimed.
"Yes; come quick," and she felt that the child was drawing her through
the thick of the crowd at the rail, to the stairs at the further end.
Afterward she could not tell how it was managed or what she did. But she
followed the lad around the stand, at the back, to the dressing-room
door and then, of a sudden, as though due to the shock induced by the
picture she there beheld, her senses returned to her with a rush. The
crescent at the door parted and she saw Bunny, his face pale and drawn,
stagger forward and lean heavily against the jamb. A man whom she did
not recognize clung to one of his arms and beseeched him to lie down.
"No," he mumbled thickly. "Run--run, I tell you--lemme go!" He jerked
his arm from the other's clutch.
He passed the back of one hand heavily across his staring eyes and
broke away. At the fence he staggered again and fell against it. Wilma
came up to him, there.
"Bunny, they've drugged you, you're sick! The little boy told me!"
He turned to her his drawn face. For a tiny instant a look of
intelligence came back into his eyes.
"You!" he muttered. "Drug!" And with a plaintive little cry he sank to
his knees. Some one brushed by her and seized him. Things, for the
second time that afternoon, swam before her eyes and she moved away
unsteadily. When next she looked she saw him alone, running up the track
and swerving from side to side like a drunken man.
The crowd seemed to understand that a tragedy was being acted there upon
the course. There was no cheering. It was as though the throng held its
breath--waiting. Wilma steadied herself at the fence. She saw the gaunt
figure crouch in the line of the runners. She saw the pistol raised and
heard the sharp report. The tension under which the crowd had
momentarily lived, was relieved by that and a cry was raised that rang
in her ears for hours. She saw the line coming; advancing toward her,
swiftly, surely, but more clearly than she saw the others, she saw the
tall figure of Bunny at the end. His face, uplifted, was like a demon's
face. His lips were tight drawn and showed his teeth and--_his eyes were
shut!_ On he came in advance of all the rest, plunging, swerving. Five
more strides! She closed her eyes, and when she opened them it was to
see him throw up his arms and fall headlong across the line.
He lay there motionless. The other runners passed him, and the crowd
broke into the track and she saw no more.
In the judges' stand the megaphone man waited.
How she got there, whether she was carried, walked naturally, or flew,
she could never tell, but of a sudden, as it seemed, Wilma discovered
that she was in the grand stand again, clinging to a post at the top of
the stairs, while beside her hovered Willie Trigger. She heard the
bellow of the megaphone man:
"Last heat, one hundred yards! Winning time nine and four-fifths
seconds, breaking the Intercollegiate record! Winner----" The crowd knew
the winner and did not wait.
Her fingers relaxed in the palms of her hands. A tremor passed over her.
She looked down, breathing hard.
"Oh, you darling!" she cried, and Willie Trigger, who had not really
understood at all, hung his head in mute embarrassment.