“OUT FOR GRAFTON!”
“Do you really mean that you’re coming to Grafton?” demanded Dud when
they had reached the station platform.
“If they’ll have me,” replied Crail, looking about him curiously. “What
do we do now? Take another train?”
“Yes, that one there. But――but――――”
“Shut up, Dud,” said Jimmy. “If he wants to, what’s the difference?
He isn’t bound to go to Mount Morris if he doesn’t want to, is he? He
isn’t entered there, you idiot. Come on, Crail. Talk about your brands
snatched from the burning! Say, Dud, maybe they’ll give us a commission
on him! Hello, Pete! I didn’t see you on the train. Who’s with you? All
by your lonesome? You know Dud Baker, don’t you? And this is Mr. Crail.
Crail, shake hands with Mr. Gowen. Crail has just been rescued from a
horrible fate, Pete.”
Gowen, a big, good-natured chap, who played guard on the football team,
smiled. “What was that, Jimmy?” he asked, as they climbed into the
single coach of the branch line and found seats.
“Why, he was on his way to Mount Morris, and we spoke so eloquently of
Grafton that he saw the error of his way, and decided to turn back into
the path of righteousness.”
“I suppose Jimmy’s stringing me, Crail,” said Pete Gowen, “but I’m glad
you’re coming our way. Football man?”
“Not much. I’m going to have a try, though. Say, I’d ought to get me a
ticket, eh?”
“Never mind it. Pay the conductor,” said Dud. “It’s really a fact,
Gowen. Crail was on his way to Greenbank and changed his mind, and
decided to come with us.”
“It was our personal charm that did the business,” said Jimmy. “What do
you think of him for a lineman, Pete?”
“If Dave Bonner sees him,” laughed Pete, “he will be eating dirt no
later than tomorrow P. M.”
“Eating dirt, eh? Sounds fine, but what does it mean?” asked Crail.
“Tackling the dummy,” explained Pete. “We have very tasty loam in our
pits. You’re sure to like it.”
“I’m willing. Only thing is, you fellows, I may get the gate when I run
up against the examination. Think they’ll let me by, eh?” He appealed a
bit anxiously to Pete, and Pete smiled.
“If Bonner and Bert Winslow were on the committee you wouldn’t have
much trouble,” he replied, “but I don’t know how hard those entrance
exams are. Hope you pass, though, Crail. We need a few fellows of about
your build this fall. How did you happen to change your mind about
Mount Morris?”
A Montfort Crail smiled. “Well, I’d made up my mind to go somewhere.
You see, I’ve never had much schooling. I’m a good deal of a dunce,
I suspect. I saw this Mount Morris Academy advertised in a magazine
I picked up one day, and wrote to them and got a sort of a circular.
That was last month. So I asked them could I get in if I came, and they
said I could if I ‘met the requirements.’ I didn’t know just what those
were, but I thought I’d take a chance. Then I ran across Harold and his
friend――――”
“Who?” asked Pete.
“I mean Logan and Baker here,” corrected Monty with an apologetic grin
at Jimmy. “They told me about this place, and I thought ‘What’s the
good of going to Mount Morris when Grafton’s an hour nearer?’ You see,
I’ve had two days on the cars, and I’m sort of tired of them.”
“That’s one reason for coming,” laughed Pete. Then he added, more
seriously, “I’d advise you to be prepared for a disappointment, Crail.
I’ve an idea they’re pretty well filled up, and you may find that they
can’t take you. In that case you could go on to Mount Morris, though.”
“Sure.” Monty nodded carelessly. “I guess there are plenty of schools
in this part of the country, eh?”
“What ought he to do?” asked Jimmy. “Go to Pounder, and tell him he
wants to enter, or――or what?”
“If it was me,” replied Pete, “I’d see Charley and tell him just what
had happened. I have an idea Charley would think it was a kind of a
joke on Mount Morris, and so he might stretch a point, and make it all
right for your friend. Pounder might just say that they were filled up
and all that, you know.”
“Think Charley would see him?” asked Jimmy doubtfully.
“Why not? Go to his house if he isn’t at the office. If there’s
anything I can do, Crail, look me up. I’m in Trow; Number 16. Jimmy’ll
show you.”
Monty thanked him, and the talk wandered to other subjects; such as who
was coming back, and who wasn’t, the rumored changes in the faculty,
the prospects for the football team, and what progress had been made by
the squad that, following a custom of several years’ duration, had been
practising at Grafton for the last week. Pete explained his absence
from the preliminary session. He had spent the summer in the Southwest
with a surveying party, and had only finished his work five days
before. Evidently, the hardships, some of which he jokingly alluded
to, had agreed with him, for the big fellow looked as hard as nails,
and wore the complexion of a Comanche Indian. Monty Crail listened
politely, and in silence for the most part, dividing his attention
between his companions and the landscape moving leisurely past the
window. Needham Junction is only four miles from Grafton, but the train
doesn’t hurry, and somehow usually manages to consume the better part
of twenty minutes on the journey, making five stops at cross-roads
stations, and lingering socially at each. There were few other Grafton
students amongst the passengers sprinkled through the car, for the
train that Jimmy and Dud had selected was not a favorite with the
fellows. The real influx would occur later in the afternoon when the
two expresses came in. Dud and Jimmy had chosen to arrive early for the
reason that they were to have a new room this fall, and there would be
some work to be accomplished before they would be fairly settled.
Monty viewed the country with favor. It was all very different from
both Indiana and Wyoming. There was a softness and a peacefulness that
were attractive, and which, in spite of novelty, seemed to the boy
very homelike. Only once before had he been in the east, and that had
been when he was nine years of age, and his father had taken him on a
hurried trip to Washington and New York. Monty couldn’t remember many
of the details of that visit nor much of the places he had seen. As he
recalled it now, much of the time had been spent by him awaiting his
father in hotel rooms. From the train window his gaze fell on restful,
still, green meadows, outlined by stone walls, on patches of woodland,
on squatty white farmhouses that seemed rather to have grown than been
built, on distant hills, hazy blue in the afternoon light, on fields of
corn and blue-green cabbages, and potatoes and golden pumpkins.
Everything was very different, even the trees and the fences, and the
faces he glimpsed at the little stations, but there was no feeling of
loneliness in Monty. He was used to strange scenes, used to being by
himself and looking after himself. Even before his father had died――he
remembered nothing at all of his mother――he had been left a good deal
to his own devices, and since then he had fended entirely for himself,
for Mr. Holman, his guardian, attempted to exercise but slight control
over the boy. Monty was practically incapable of ever being homesick,
for the simple reason that for five years he had had no real home,
spending his summers as it pleased him, usually at Windlass City,
sometimes on a ranch, and his winters in or around Terre Haute. What
had bothered him most the winter before, at Dunning Academy, had
been the “staying put,” as he called it. Accustomed to moving about
as, and when he pleased, being tied to a few acres had proved a new
and unpleasant experience. Just now he was wondering whether he could
accustom himself to similar conditions this winter. He meant to try
hard, for here he was sixteen years old and with less “book-learning”
than most fellows two years younger, and he realized that if he was
to get an education he must buckle down to it, and restrain those
restless feet of his. He didn’t want to grow up an ignoramus. And
then, too, Dunning had given him a taste for the companionship of
persons of his own age, something he had enjoyed but little. Until
he had gone to the military school his friends and acquaintances had
been, with few exceptions, men; Joe Coolidge, the mine superintendent;
“Snub” Thompson, “Tejon” Burns, Garry Waters, who ranched on Little
Horse Creek, “Soapy” Baker, of the Meeteetse outfit, and a few more
commonplace and less picturesque gentlemen in Terre Haute. Monty had
begun to feel the need of boy friends and boy interests, and perhaps
it was as much that need as a desire for knowledge that had led him to
fall in so readily with his guardian’s suggestion. So far as making his
way in the world was concerned, Monty might have gone along with no
more knowledge of Ancient and Modern Languages, higher mathematics, and
the rest of the curriculum, than he possessed, for Mr. Crail had left
a good-sized fortune in trust for the boy, and the Gros Ventre Coal
Company, under present management, was doing better than ever, and that
Monty would ever have to work for a living if he didn’t want to was
inconceivable.
When he had said that he had decided to go to Grafton instead of Mount
Morris, because it was nearer he had spoken only part of the truth.
The chief reason had been that he had found in Jimmy and Dud a hint of
the companionship he craved. An uneventful journey east and a night
spent alone in a New York hotel had left him ready to make friends
with almost anyone of his kind on slight provocation. He was always
able to amuse himself very satisfactorily for awhile, as witness his
efforts with the news vendor, the information bureau man and the
conductor, but that sort of fooling palled eventually, and having made
the acquaintance of Jimmy and Dud he felt it the part of wisdom to
continue it. He might, he told himself, speaking from experience gained
at Dunning, remain at Mount Morris a month before he would get on such
friendly footing with anyone. And already he had increased his circle
of acquaintances by one more, he thought, glancing appreciatively at
Pete Gowen’s homely and kindly face, and that was doing pretty well.
He had come east prepared for hard sledding in the matter of making
friends, for he had heard all his life of the Easterner’s aloofness,
but here, with scarcely an effort, he was already in possession of
three――well, if not friends, at least friendly acquaintances! If,
he said to himself as the engine announced the end of its leisurely
journey by a shrill whistle, the rest of the Grafton fellows were as
human and likeable as the three he had so far encountered he was going
to like the place fine!
A minute or two later they were out on the platform, bags in hand. And
a minute later still they were, all four, together with nine other
lads, settled in the queer vehicle that Jimmy called a “barge.” The
barge was long and open all around, and had seats running lengthwise,
seats upholstered in faded crimson plush. There was a crosswise seat
in front for the aged driver, and the vehicle was drawn by a pair of
likely-looking gray horses. Although the two long seats were designed
to accommodate some two dozen passengers, thirteen boys and thirteen
bags, with a sprinkling of golf-bags, tennis rackets, cameras and
overcoats, used about all the space. The road did not enter the town of
Grafton, but skirted it, and almost before Monty had begun to entertain
any curiosity as to the school itself the barge swung around a corner
into River Street, and the buildings and the campus were before him.
Dud, sitting beside him with his suitcase on his knees that Monty
might have room for his kit-bag on the floor, pointed out the
buildings. “That’s Lothrop, the one ahead there, nearest the street.
Jimmy and I room there this year. It’s the best of the lot. Trow’s
behind it. The next is School Hall, and Manning’s the last in the row.
The gymnasium is back of Manning, but you can’t see it yet. The frame
house at the other side of the campus, behind the trees, is Doctor
Duncan’s. He’s the principal, you know.”
Monty listened and looked with interest. As the barge rolled down the
freshly sprinkled macadamized street, through alternating patches of
sunlight and shadow, he looked under the branches of the bordering
maples and saw a wide expanse of turf across which marched a row of
brick buildings, the newer ones graced with limestone trimming, the
older one, School Hall this, saved from monotony only by the ivy that
clothed its lower story. Gravel paths, shaded by tall elm trees, led
across the turf, and a wide walk of red brick ran from one side of
the campus to the other in front of the buildings. A fence of roughly
squared granite posts connected by timbers enclosed the grounds.
Further away, in the direction of the river whose existence Dud dwelt
on, a second smoothly paved street proceeded at right angles with the
one they were on, and beyond that was a second and narrower stretch of
turf――“the Green,” Dud called it――with two comfortable, immaculately
white dwellings nestling on the nearer corner of it. “Morris and Fuller
Houses,” said Dud, waving a hand toward them. “They’re dormitories,
too. Small ones. Some fellows like them, but I never thought I should.
The Field’s on the other side. You can see the grandstand if you look
quick.”
But Monty failed, for just then the barge turned in at the carriage
gate, and the trees closed in on his view.
“Who’s for Lothrop?” asked the driver over his shoulder as he pulled up
at the corner of the newest dormitory.
“We are,” announced Jimmy rather importantly, as it seemed to Monty.
“Come on, Crail. We’ll leave the bags, and then go over to School.”
Pete Gowen and two other boys followed them out, and then the barge
rolled on to repeat the process at Trow, and, finally, Manning.
Monty gave a sigh of satisfaction as he stood on the edge of the turf
and felt the grateful coolness of the shadow cast by the big dormitory.
They had been cutting the grass that day, and the languorous warmth
of the air was scented with the wonderful fragrance of it. In a
near-by tree a locust rasped shrilly, and Monty gazed curiously in its
direction. He would have asked what it was, but Jimmy was leading the
way toward the nearer entrance, and so Monty took up his bag again and
followed.
It was a wonderful building that, Monty thought. He glimpsed a wide
carpeted hallway from which opened comfortably, even luxuriously
furnished apartments, while, at the far end of the corridor, a
bewilderingly long way off, wide-open doors afforded a view of
white-draped tables with peaked napkins like tiny Indian teepees
dotting them and the shimmer of polished silverware.
“Snakes,” murmured Monty, “this isn’t much like Dunning!”
But the others didn’t hear him, for they were chattering busily as they
climbed the slate stairway to the floor above. A corridor slightly
narrower than the one below ran the length of the building, and on
either side numbered doors, some open, some closed, marched away.
“Here it is,” announced Jimmy, in the lead, and pushed open one of
the portals. “Say, Dud, this is perfectly corking! And we’ve got a
fireplace! And look at the view, will you? Maybe this doesn’t beat
Trow, what?”