THE DEADLY RATTLER
The days flew by as though on wings. Reddy brought his men along by easy
stages. He was far too wise to be impatient. He believed in the old
motto of "hastening slowly." But every day saw its quota of work mapped
out and performed, and before long his persistent effort began to tell.
The little group of athletes under his control rounded into form, and it
became certain that the Blue colors would be carried to victory in more
than one event when it came to the final test.
Upon Bert, however, he banked more heavily than on any other. He felt
that here he had an ideal combination of brain and brawn. Nature had
given him the material to work with and it depended entirely on the
training to turn him out in the "pink of condition" for the decisive
race.
Not once, however, did he let him run the full Marathon distance of
twenty-six miles. In his expressive phrase it would "take too much out
of him." From fifteen miles he gradually increased the distance, until
on one occasion he let him run twenty-two, and then he stopped him,
although Bert protested that he was easily good for the remaining four.
"No, you don't," said Reddy. "I'm only asking your legs and lungs to
make the twenty-two. The last few miles will be run on your nerve
anyway, and I want you to save up every bit of that until the day of the
race. You'll need every ounce of it when the time comes."
For Bert it was a time of stern self denial. As he neither smoked or
drank, it was no sacrifice to be forbidden these indulgences. But the
carefully restricted diet, the cutting out of the many things his
appetite craved and had been accustomed to, the hard and unending work
required to perfect his wind and develop his muscles called on all his
courage and determination to see the thing through.
"Gee," said Tom one day, when after an especially severe practice they
were walking toward their rooms, "I don't see how you stand it, Bert. A
slave in the cotton fields before the war had nothing on you in the
matter of work."
"Work certainly does seem to be my middle name, just now," laughed Bert,
"but the pay comes later on. I'll forget all this slavery, as you call
it, if I can only flash past the line a winner. And even if I don't have
that luck, I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that I have done my
best and gone down fighting."
"You'll end up fighting, sure enough," said Tom emphatically, "but you
won't go down unless you sprain an ankle or break a leg. The only
question with the boys here is not whether you will win--they're dead
sure of that--but whether you'll hang up a new record."
"There really isn't any such thing as a record for the Marathon," said
Bert. "The conditions are so different in each race that no one can
fairly be compared with another. If it were simply a matter of padding
around on a flat track, you could get at the time easily. But the roads,
the hills, the wind and the weather all come into the account, and
they're never just alike. The fastest time so far is two hours and
thirty-six minutes."
"The day you ran twenty-two miles, Reddy said that you were going at the
rate of two hours and twenty-five minutes for the whole distance," said
Tom. "That's some speed, all right."
"Yes," replied Bert, "and as far as feeling went, I could have kept it
up to the end. Those last four miles though would have been the hardest
and probably the slowest. But I never cared much about records anyhow.
It's men that I have to beat. Time is a thing you don't see or hear and
you can't work up much enthusiasm over it. But when another fellow is
showing you the way or pushing you hard, then's the time you really
wake up. The old never-give-up feeling comes over you and you tell
yourself you'll win or drop dead trying."
Just at this moment Dick ran up, waving a telegram.
"Hello, old scout," called out Bert, "what's up? You look as though
you'd got money from home."
"Better even than that," answered Dick. "I've just had a wire from Mr.
Hollis that he's on his way in the Red Scout and is going to drop in on
us."
"Good," cried Bert, and "Bully," echoed Tom. "When's he going to get
here?"
"Some time to-morrow if nothing happens. Say we won't be glad to see
him, eh, fellows?"
There was no need of the enthusiastic whoop that followed. Their former
Camp Master had always held a warm place in their hearts. A gentleman
of means and culture, he had been identified with their plans and
experiences for several years past. Under his wise and genial leadership,
they had passed some of the happiest hours of their lives in the summer
camp of which he was the ruling spirit. His help and advice had always
been so sound and kind that they had come to look upon him almost as an
older brother. While never indulging in the "familiarity that breeds
contempt," and firm almost to sternness when that quality was needed,
they felt that he was always looking for their best interests and making
their cause his own. And now that they were in college he had still kept
in touch with them through letters and occasional reunions of the old
summer campers at his home.
A host of recollections came up before them as they talked of his
coming. They saw him as he faced the scowling mob of gipsies who had
stolen Dick's watch and forced them to give up their plunder. They
recalled the glorious outing that his thoughtfulness had planned for the
orphaned youngsters of the county town. They heard again the crack of
his pistol as he started that memorable race between the Red Scout and
the Gray Ghost, and the delight in his face as the good old Scout with
Bert at the wheel had shown the way to its rival over the finish line.
So that when they heard the familiar "honk-honk" of his car the next day
and saw the Red Scout slipping swiftly up the drive under the elms, Mr.
Hollis had a royal and uproarious welcome that "warmed the cockles of
his heart."
"Say, boys, remember that my hand is flesh and blood and not Bessemer
steel," he laughed, as they bore him off to their rooms.
After the first greetings were over, he came straight to the purpose of
his visit.
"I ran out here to kidnap you fellows," he explained. "None of you look
weak and wasted"--and he smiled as he looked at their bronzed faces,
glowing with health and vitality--"and I don't have any idea that
you're killing yourself with over work. Still, a few days change is a
good thing for all of us at times. I'm going up to my lodge in the
Adirondacks to get it ready for my family who expect to stay there this
summer. I shan't be gone more than a week, and as your mid-term vacation
starts to-morrow it won't interfere with your studies. It's a wild
place there--no neighbors, no telephones, no anything that looks like
civilization. The nearest town is fourteen miles away and I plan to
leave the Red Scout there while we go the rest of the way on foot. We'll
have to rough it a little, but it's a glorious bit of 'God's outdoors,'
and I'll guarantee that you'll eat like wolves and sleep like babies and
come back kicking up your heels like thoroughbreds. Will you go?"
Would they go! Could anything keep them from going? But after the first
wild shout of assent, Bert's face fell.
"I don't know just how Reddy will look at it," he said slowly. "You know
how strict he is about training. He may kick like the mischief at my
going out of his sight just now. I'll have to put it up to him."
So put it up to him he did, and that autocrat promptly put his foot down
hard.
"Not for a minute," he snapped. "I wonder at your asking me."
But as he saw Bert's disappointment, he hesitated.
"Wait a bit," he said, "till I think." And he fell into a brown study.
At length he looked up. "I tell you straight, Wilson," he said slowly,
"if it were any other fellow on the track team, I wouldn't do it. But
you've never shirked or broken training and I'm going to let you go.
You're drawn pretty fine, just now and perhaps a few days up in the pine
woods won't hurt you any. I've been thinking of letting up on you a bit
so that you wouldn't go stale. Just at present you're right on edge and
fit to run for a man's life. Go easy on the eats and do just enough
training each day to keep in condition. I don't mind if you take on five
pounds or thereabouts, so that I'll have that much to work off when you
get back. And turn up here in a week from to-day as fit as a fiddle. If
you don't, may heaven forgive you for I won't. Now go quick," he ended
up with a twinkle in his eye, "before I take it back."
Bert needed no urging and rushed back to his rooms with the good news
that made his friends jubilant.
"Hustle's the word from now on," cried Tom. "Let's get our things
together in a hurry."
And they hustled to such good purpose that within an hour their traps
and outing togs were thrown into the capacious tonneau of the Red Scout
and they piled in ready for the start.
Bert's fingers thrilled as he grasped the wheel and threw in the clutch.
The noble car almost seemed to recognize its driver and flew along like
a thing alive. The roofs and towers of the college buildings faded away
behind them and their journey to the Adirondacks was begun.
The roads were fine and the weather superb, and they figured that if
these conditions held out they would reach their destination the
afternoon of the following day. An ordinary car with a mediocre driver
could not have made it. But the Red Scout had long before demonstrated
its speed, and under Bert's skilful handling it fairly ate up the miles
that intervened between them and their journey's end. Of course they had
to slow up a little when they passed through towns, but when the road
stretched far ahead like a white ribbon with no other vehicle in sight,
Bert let her out to the limit. If the speed laws weren't exactly broken,
they were at least in Tom's phrase "slightly bent." Occasionally Tom and
Dick relieved him while he leaned back in the tonneau and talked with
Mr. Hollis.
At railroad crossings they were perhaps unduly careful, for all
remembered that awful moment when they had been caught on the tracks and
only Bert's lightning calculation had saved them from a frightful
disaster.
"Will you ever forget," asked Tom, "how the old Scout bumped over the
ties at the rate of a mile a minute while the express train came roaring
up behind us?"
"Never," replied Dick. "More than once I've dreamed of it and lived it
all over again until I woke in a cold perspiration. Once it actually
seemed to strike and throw me up in the air, and when I landed I almost
jumped out of bed. It gives me the creeps just to think of it, and I
don't want anything more of that kind in mine."
"It sure was a case of touch and go," chimed in Bert. "I could feel the
heat from the engine on my neck as I bent over the wheel. Of course we
knew that the engineer was working desperately to stop, but the question
was whether he could do it in time. If anything had given way in the
Scout, it would have been all up with us."
"But she pulled us through all right," said Dick, patting the side of
the car, "like that famous horse on his way to the battlefield:
'As though it knew the terrible need,
It stretched away at its utmost speed.'
But we can't gamble that way with death more than once and hope to 'put
it over,' and after this I don't need to have any railroad sign tell me
to 'Stop. Look. Listen.' I'll do all three."
With chat and song and laughter the hours sped by. They were young, life
ran warm in their veins, the world lay before them full of promise and
of hope, glowing with all the colors of the rainbow. A happier, more
carefree group it would have been hard to find in all the broad spaces
between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Had any one told them of the awful
hazard, the haunting fear, the straining horror that they were soon to
undergo they would have laughed at him as a false prophet of evil. The
present at least was theirs and they found it good.
At about two o'clock in the afternoon they reached the county town, and
here they reluctantly said good-bye for the present to the Red Scout.
The one road through the wilderness up to Mr. Hollis' house was a rough
path to be trodden only on foot or, at need, in one of the mountain
buckboards that could bump its way along over spots and around stumps
that might have wrecked a machine. So after arranging for the care of
the auto, they shouldered their few bundles and set out on foot. It was
an ideal day for walking. The sun scarcely made itself felt as it
filtered through the trees, and the balsam of the woods was like a
tonic. Long before dusk they reached the lodge where a good supper
awaited them, prepared by the caretaker whom Mr. Hollis had notified of
his coming.
The night came on clear and almost cold in that high mountain altitude
and it was hard to realize that men were sweltering in cities not far
away.
"We'll sleep under blankets to-night," said Mr. Hollis, "and in the
meantime what do you say to building a roaring camp fire right out here
in the open? It'll be a reminder of the old days in camp when Dave
Ferris used to spin his famous ghost and tiger yarns."
The boys hailed the suggestion with enthusiasm. They speedily gathered a
supply of dry branches, enough to replenish the fire the whole evening.
Then while the flames crackled and mounted high in the air they threw
themselves around it in all sorts of careless attitudes and gave
themselves up to unrestrained enjoyment of the time and place. At last
slumber beckoned and they turned in.
They slept that night the dreamless sleep of health and youth and woke
refreshed the next morning ready, as Tom put it, "for anything from
pitch and toss to manslaughter." A plunge in a nearby stream whetted
their appetites for the hearty breakfast that followed, and then
they went out for a stroll, while Mr. Hollis remained in the lodge,
discussing with the caretaker the approaching visit of his family.
It was a glorious morning. The dew still sparkled on the grass, birds
sang in the trees, and the newly risen sun flooded the landscape with
beauty. A mountain brook rippled over the stones. Partridges drummed in
the tangled thickets, chipmunks flitted like shadows across the mountain
paths, squirrels chattered noisily in the branches. Everywhere was life
and movement, but all the artificial noises of the town were conspicuous
by their absence. To the boys, so long used to city life, the change was
delightful beyond words.
By the side of the path, about a quarter of a mile from the lodge, was a
great dogwood tree snowy with its fragrant blooms. Tom reached up to
break off a branch, but just as he snapped the stem it slipped through
his fingers and fell in the bushes beneath. He stooped over to pick it
up. There was a whirring sound, a rattle that struck terror to their
hearts and Tom jumped back with a great, gray, writhing thing hanging to
his sleeve. He shook it off and staggered backward, while the rattler
instantly coiled to strike again.