FUN IN THE CAMPUS.
Under an elm in front of Durfee some students were gathering "fruit."
They began by collecting it from members of the Chickering set. Of all
the men in the college, the Chickering set were the most unpopular with
their fellow students. Their silliness and superciliousness were so
unbounded as to be disgusting to all sensible men. From the immaculate
Rupert, with his patent-leather shoes and shining tile, down to the
cowardly little lisper, Lew Veazie, they were alike detested. Hence it
came about that when Rupert Chickering appeared under the famous "fruit"
tree wearing a more than ordinarily gorgeous shirt, the cry of "Fruit!"
was immediately raised.
Rupert uttered an exclamation of dismay and turned to run. He had heard
that cry before. But he only hastened what he sought to evade. A foot
outstretched for the purpose tripped him, and brought him sprawling to
the ground. Before he could rise, one of the laughing students was upon
him.
"See here!" he exclaimed, "I'll have you know that I will not submit to
any such outrage! I know you, and I shall report you to the faculty!"
He tried to fight off the youth who held him, but a dozen other men
rushed to this youth's assistance. Then a wild-eyed fellow produced a
shining pocket-knife and slowly and exasperatingly opened its sharpest
blade.
"Help!" Rupert squawked.
The knife was flourished in the air, and the tag on the lower end of
Rupert's shirt-bosom was deftly amputated.
"Fruit!" was again shouted, and a dash was made for Gene Skelding, who,
as usual, wore a rainbow shirt that outshone Joseph's "coat of many
colors."
"Help!" Skelding howled.
But a score of hands outstretched to grasp him, and he, too, went down,
screeching lustily. Another knife flashed and another shirt-tag was
neatly severed.
Lew Veazie, who had been with Rupert and Gene, started to run, deeming
discretion the better part of valor. But he took only a step when he,
too, went down. And again an amputating knife did its work. As soon as a
shirt-tag was cut off, the amputator, flourishing it on the blade of his
knife, like an Indian flaunting a scalp-lock, made a dash for the elm,
where it was pinned up as a trophy.
Then it was found that a "taste" for shirt-tags had been created by this
exciting bit of experience, and other men, who had been loudly laughing
and cheering over the discomfiture of Chickering and his inane friends,
found themselves suddenly on the ground, with wicked-looking knives
flashing before their eyes, and their shirts being mutilated by the
pressure of keen knife-blades.
In the midst of this "fun," Buck Badger arrived on the campus from his
stolen interview with Winnie Lee. Though his face wore a perplexed
expression, it had lost its gloom. There might be trouble for him in the
future, but Winnie's words had for the present driven the blackest of
the shadows out of his heart. The desire uppermost in his mind just then
was to meet and whip Donald Pike. He had sworn to himself that he would
do that the first thing, and he meant to keep the oath.
Nevertheless, reaching the elms of the campus at this exciting moment,
he was willing to cease temporarily his search for Pike and view the
fruit-gathering. It would be rare sport, provided, of course, that his
own shirt was not forced to yield "fruit."
To prevent this, and that he might see better, he grasped a low-hanging
limb and swung up into one of the elms.
"Fruit!" was being shouted everywhere, and the indications were that
scores of trophies would adorn the old elm the next morning, if some
stop was not put to the thing by the college authorities, which was not
likely. "Society week" is expected to be noisy, and things are winked at
which on ordinary occasions would bring reprimands.
Another person had invaded the branches of the elm but a minute before
the ascent of the Westerner. That other person was Donald Pike, who
looked down now on the man he felt instinctively to be his mortal foe
with a little shiver of dread. More than once Pike had regretted making
that revelation to Fairfax Lee, for the chances that discovery would
come and that Badger would fiercely summon him to answer, seemed very
great, when he gave himself time to reflect. And he feared Badger.
All might have gone well on this evening with Pike, however, if his fear
of discovery had not made him try to climb farther up the tree. The
Kansan heard the low scraping sound, in spite of the din in the campus,
and glanced upward, and when he did so he saw and recognized the man he
was looking for. A calcium-light was sending its rays through the higher
branches, and Pike's white, scared face was as plainly revealed to
Badger as if the two were facing each other in a lighted room.
The hate which Badger had been nursing swelled to the point of bursting.
He forgot the search for "fruit," in which he had been interested,
seeing only the enemy whom he had sworn to whip as soon as they met.
As yet they had not met; but Badger, blinded by his intense anger,
decided that the meeting should come without delay, even if the place
was a tree-top; and he began to climb up the trunk and boughs of the
tree toward Donald. Pike looked about in a despairing way. The distance
to the ground seemed dishearteningly great. His first impulse,
therefore, was to climb still higher, and this he began to do.
But, recollecting the tenacity of Badger's purpose in whatever the
Kansan was engaged, he felt sure that he would be pursued into the very
top of the tree and shaken to the ground. Therefore, he hastily crawled
out over a horizontal limb, whose drooping ends dipped toward the earth.
If driven to the worst, he felt that he could drop from one of those
drooping ends without serious injury.
With a howl of rage, Badger climbed on after the frightened youth, and
pursued him out on the horizontal limb.
But there were to be other actors in this little overhead drama. A
couple of cats, chancing to be in the campus when the students invaded
it, had run up this identical elm, and had crouched in wild-eyed fear on
that same bough, watching the wild orgies of the students. They had
probably been there for a considerable period, not daring to descend
while that howling, dancing mob held the grounds. Perhaps they even
fancied that those yells and ear-splitting squeals were directed against
them. They must have thought so when Don Pike crawled out on the limb
toward them, followed by Buck Badger.
The cats looked about, meowing anxiously. There was no other bough near
which they could gain by a leap. And as Pike, looking back and gasping
with fright, crawled straight on toward them, the cat that was farthest
out on the end of the limb launched itself through the air in a
desperate leap for the ground.
There was no cleared space in which it could alight, and it struck Bink
Stubbs on the top of the head, jamming his hat down over his eyes and
hurling him backward.
"Dog my cuc-cuc-cuc-cats!" stuttered Joe Gamp, looking up in
open-mouthed wonder.
"The sky is raining cats!" whooped Danny.
"Somebody amputate its tail!" yelled a student.
"Cut off its shirt-tab!" shouted another.
Bink and Danny, Gamp and all the others of Merriwell's friends who
chanced to be grouped there, had already suffered the amputation of
their shirt-tabs, and having no further fear on that point, were
hilariously anxious that not a shirt-tab should be worn by a Yale man
that night. The "fruit" on the tree at Durfee was increasing in quantity
and variety at a prodigious rate.
"A dollar apiece for its ears!" some one else screeched.
But the cat was too agile for the hands that were reached out to stop
its flight. It whisked under the legs of the students and was out and
away like a shot.
"Been up there watching the performance!" some one sung out.
"Gug-gug-goshfry! There's a man up there!" Joe Gamp howled, as his eyes
fell on Donald Pike. "It will be raining mum-mum-men, as well as
cuc-cuc-cuc-cats, next thing! Ahaw! ahaw! ahaw!"
As his lips flew open to their widest extent to emit this roar, the
other cat sailed downward out of the tree and struck him squarely in the
mouth. He tumbled backward with a roar, which, however, was not at all
hilarious, and began to dig sputteringly at his tongue and lips, which
were liberally coated with cat hair.
"More cats!" said Dismal. "I'd as soon have the frogs of Egypt, as to
have the trees showering down cats."
"How do you like cat diet, Gamp?" screeched Bink, who did not relish the
way he had been laughed at.
"I'll die-it, if one of 'em hits me!" Dismal solemnly asserted.
"Look out!" a student warningly yelled. "The man is coming, too!"
Everybody beneath the limb fell back out of the way, pushing against
those behind, many being hurled down and trodden on. Then Donald Pike,
sprawled out like one of the cats, came sailing down out of the tree.
His teeth were fairly chattering. He believed that Badger was right at
his heels, with hands reached out to seize him. Fortunately, he was not
injured by the desperate leap.
"Fruit!" was yelled by a dozen voices, and the throng pressed together
again to lay hold on him.
But Don Pike's terror gave him the strength of a giant. He hurled aside
those who sought to detain him, and leaped through the crowd and away.
The next instant the Kansan dropped out of the tree, swinging for a
moment by one of the drooping branches, to break the force of the fall,
and alighting on the ground with ease and lightness.
"Fruit!"
The Westerner could not escape, for the students had closed in again,
and he was literally ringed in.
"Fruit! fruit!" was yelled on all sides.
Twenty men threw themselves on the Kansan. He tried to hurl them off,
and did succeed in flinging some of them aside. This enabled him to gain
his feet.
"Let go!" he snarled.
"Fruit! fruit!" was being chorused.
Again the hands and arms closed on him.
"Let me go, I say! I want to overtake that fellow!"
Only a few near him understood his words. The majority thought he was
merely showing a vigorous protest against the threatened loss of his
shirt-tab, and they had no sympathy with anything of that kind, for they
had suffered the same humiliation, and were naturally determined to
inflict the same thing on every student they could lay their hands on.
"Let go!" Badger shrieked, white with wrath, lunging with his hard right
fist.
It struck a student in the face and hurled him crashingly backward. But
the next moment the fist and arm were caught and held.
Then began a fierce struggle for the mastery. Time and again the
Westerner, whose strength was great, hurled off the men who sought to
hold him down. Twice he got on his feet, merely to be tripped and thrown
again. Not until he was almost beaten and choked into insensibility were
his assailants able to rip open his vest.
Ordinarily, Badger wore a soft silk shirt which had no tab, but on this
night he had on a white shirt, whose tab was amputated by a dexterous
thrust as soon as the vest was pulled open. Then he was permitted to
rise to his feet, reeling, sick, blind with rage and humiliation and a
sense of baffled hate.
But his chief thought still was of Donald Pike.
"Which way did he go?" he panted, as soon as he could get his breath.
"Well, your High-Muchness, the cats scattered and the man made himself
scarce!" was the scoffing answer, given by the student who had felt the
terrible force of Badger's fist. "Perhaps there is another man up in the
elm who can tell you!"
Badger did not wait for further nagging, and, as no hands were now
extended to oppose him, he made as hasty an exit as he could from the
midst of the shouting, laughing, howling throng.
"Heavens!" he thought. "I hope that neither Inza, nor Elsie, nor any of
my friends, saw that from the dormitory windows!"
Even in the midst of his rage against Pike, Badger was cut to the quick
by this thought, for he was filled with a foolish pride.
"I'll thump Pike a few extra for that!" he snarled, as he got out of the
crowd. His pulse was at fever-heat, and his face as hot as flame. He did
not feel the bruises and blows which had been showered on him.
"I reckon I'll not get close to him again for a week!" he grumbled. "Why
couldn't those ruffians attend to their own affairs and let me attend to
mine? I allow that it was none of their business whatever! This is my
trail, and I wasn't interfering none with their range. Confound the
luck! But when I do meet him I'll make him pay for it!"
But the Westerner was mistaken in one portion of his surmise. He met
Pike, or rather ran against him, at the first building he turned.
Donald had ventured back to see what had happened to his pursuer, and
was looking at the shouting tumult in the campus, and did not observe
Badger, who came along the walk close to the wall. The Kansan recognized
Pike first, and leaped at him with a snarl like that of an enraged
panther, and as he leaped he struck a blinding blow.
It knocked Donald backward, but it did not fall fairly enough to inflict
serious injury. The next moment Badger was on him, and had him by the
throat.
"By heavens! I've a notion to kill you right here!" he hissed, his
fingers closing on Pike's throat.
"Don't!" Pike pleaded, gasping out the appeal.
"You told Fairfax Lee that I was drunk when I went on the _Crested
Foam_. You scoundrel! You ruffian! You sneaking coyote!"
His fingers tightened with every exclamation.
"Don't kill me!" Pike begged wheezingly. "I'll go to him and take it all
back!"
"Then you did tell him? I allow I ought to kick you clean out of your
hide, you onery varmint!"
There was no answer, and Donald Pike, apparently ceasing to breathe,
fell back as limp as a rag.
A bit of reason began to glimmer into the brain of the Westerner. Though
he had asserted that he would almost kill Pike, he did not really intend
to do anything of the kind. He merely meant to inflict a punishment
which should be in a measure commensurate with the wrong which Pike had
committed against him. But the Kansan's great rage, combined with his
humiliating experience in the campus, which had still further inflamed
him, had driven him to more than ordinary recklessness. He had been
fairly insane. The fire began to go out of Badger's eyes when Pike did
not stir and seemed not to breathe.
"I reckon I squeezed a bit too hard!" Badger muttered, regarding the
unconscious youth with some degree of anxiety. "Well, I was wild enough
to choke his heart out!"
He stooped over Pike and saw the livid finger-marks on the throat. Still
Pike did not stir, and the Westerner's anxiety correspondingly grew. He
put a hand on Pike's left breast, and failed to locate the heart-beats.
At last, after an alarming interval, Pike gasped, to Badger's intense
relief.
"I allow I'd better let it go at this," he reflected. "I don't want to
kill the skunk, though if any man whatever deserved to be murdered, he
does. But I don't want anything of that kind against me. As Merry has
told me, I've got an awful temper when it gets started. I shall have to
watch myself against that, same as against red-eye!"
Pike gasped again, and then his breathing came at increasingly frequent
intervals. The students were wildly howling in and around the campus,
but Badger scarcely heard them. He was thinking only of Pike.
"This may keep him in his room a few days," he muttered.
"If it does no more than that, I don't care. He deserved that much. But
he's got to keep clear of me, or I can't be responsible for the
consequences. I'll tell him so as soon as he comes to himself and knows
what has happened."