T. Haviland Hicks Senior Part 17

"No, no--don't, Butch!" chattered Hicks, whose dread of dogs amounted to an obsession. "He can still see us, and if you leave the lane, he will send Caesar Napoleon after us! Oh, don't--"

But Butch Brewster, evidently wrathful at being balked, strode from the path, or lane, of virtue, toward a cherry-tree, whose red fruit hung temptingly low, and his example was followed by every one of the Brigade, leaving the terrified Hicks to wait in the lane, where, because of his alarm, he had no time to wonder at the bravado of his behemoth comrades.

However, finding that Bildad had disappeared, and believing he had taken Caesar Napoleon into the house, the sunny Hicks, who was far from a coward otherwise, but who had an unreasonable dread of dogs, little or big, was about to wax courageous, and join his team-mates, when a wild shout burst from Pudge Langdon:

"Run, fellows--run! Bildad's put the bulldog on us! Here comes--Caesar Napoleon--!"

With a blood-chilling "Woof! Woof!" steadily sounding louder, nearer, a streak of color shot across the orchard, from the house, toward the affrighted Brigade, while old Bildad's hoa.r.s.e growl shattered the echoes with "Take 'em out o' here, Nap--chaw 'em up, boy!" For a startled second, the youths stared at the on-rus.h.i.+ng body, shooting toward them through the orchard-gra.s.s at terrific speed, and then:

"Run!" howled T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., terror providing him with wings, as per proverb. Down the lane, at a pace that would have done credit to Barney Oldfield in his Blitzen Benz, the mosquito-like youth sprinted madly, and ever, closer, closer on his trail, sounded that awful "Woof! Woof!" from Caesar Napoleon, who, as Hicks well knew, was acting with full authority from Bildad! He heard, as he fled frantically, the excited shouts of his comrades.

"Beat it, Hicks--he's right after you--run! Run!"

"Jump the fence--he can't get you then--jump!"

"He's right on your trail, Hicks--sprint, old man!"

"Make the fence, old man--jump it--and you're safe!"

The terrible truth dawned on the frightened youth, as he desperately sprinted: the innocent bystander always gets hurt. He had protested against the theft of Bildad's cherries, and naturally, the bulldog had kept after him! But it was too late to stop, for the old adage was extremely appropriate, "He who hesitates is lost." He must make that road-gate, and tumble over it, in some fas.h.i.+on, or be torn to shreds by Caesar Napoleon, the savage dog that the cruel Bildad had sent after the youths.

Nearer loomed the road-gate, appallingly high. Closer sounded the panting breath of the ferocious Caesar Napoleon, and his incessant "Woof-woof!"

became louder. It seemed to the desperate Hicks that the bulldog was at his heels, and every instant he expected to feel those sharp teeth take hold of his anatomy! Once, the despairing youth imitated Lot's wife and turned his head. He saw a body streaking after him, gaining at every jump, also he lost speed; so thereafter, he conscientiously devoted his every energy to the task in hand, that of making the gate, and getting over it, before Caesar Napoleon caught his quarry!

At last, the road-gate, at least ten feet high, to Hicks' fevered imagination, came so close that a quick decision was necessary, for Caesar Napoleon, also, was in the same zone, and in a few seconds he would overhaul the fugitive. T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., realizing that a second lost, perhaps, might prove fatal to his peace of mind, desperately resolved to dash at the gate, and jump; if he succeeded even in striking somewhere near the top, and falling over, he would not care, for the bulldog would not follow him off Bildad's land. From his comrades, far in the rear, came the chorus:

"Jump, Hicks! He's right on your heels!"

Like the immortal Light Brigade, Hicks had no time to reason about anything. His but to jump or be bitten summed up the situation. So, with a last desperate sprint, a quick dash, he left the ground--luckily, the earth was hard, giving him a solid take-off, and he got a splendid spring.

As he arose In air, al! the training and practicing for form stayed with him, and instinctively he turned, writhed, and kicked--

For a fleeting second, he saw the top of the gate beneath his body, and he felt a thrill as he beheld twisted strands of barbed wire, cruel and jagged, across it; then, with a great sensation of joy, he knew that he had cleared the top, and a second later, he landed on the ground, in the country road, in a heap.

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., that sunny-souled, happy-go-lucky, indolent youth, for once in his care-free campus career aroused to strenuous action, scrambled wildly to his feet, and forcibly realized the truth of Longfellow's, "And things are not-what they seem!" Instead of the ferocious, bloodthirsty bulldog, Caesar Napoleon, a huge, half-grown St. Bernard pup gamboled inside the gate, frisking about gleefully, and exhibiting, even so that Hicks, with all his innate dread of dogs, could understand it, a vast friendliness. In fact, he seemed trying to say, "That's fun. Come on and play with me some more!"

"Hey, fellows," shrieked the relieved Hicks, "that ain't Caesar Napoleon!

Why, he just wanted to play."

Bewildered, the members of the Heavy-Weight-White-Hope-Brigade of the Bannister College track squad rushed on the scene. To their surprise, they found not a savage bulldog, but a clumsy, good-natured St. Bernard puppy, who frisked wildly about them, groveled at their feet, and put his huge paws on them, with the playfulness of a juvenile elephant.

"Why, it isn't Nappie, for a fact!" gasped Butch. "Oh, I am so glad that old Bildad wasn't mean enough to put the bulldog after us, for he is dangerous. He scared us, though, and put this pup on our trail. He wanted to play, and he thought it all a game, when Hicks fled. Oho! What a joke on Hicks."

"I don't care!" grinned Hicks, thus siding with the famous Eva Tanguay.

"You fellows were fooled, too! You were too scared to run, and if it had been Caesar Napoleon, I'd have saved your worthless lives by getting him after me! I'll bet Bildad is snickering now, the old reprobate! Why, Tug, are you crazy?"

Tug Cardiff, indeed, gave indications of lunacy. He marched up to the road-gate, and stood close to it, so that the barbed wire top was even with his hair; then he backed off, and gazed first at the gate, then at the bewildered Hicks, while he grinned at the dazed squad in a Ches.h.i.+re cat style.

"Measure it, someone!" he shouted. "I am nearly six feet tall, and it comes even with the top of my dome! Can't you see, you brainless imbeciles, Hicks cleared it."

"Wait for me here!" howled big Butch Brewster, climbing the fence and starting down the road at a pace that did credit even to that fast two-miler. The Brigade, In the absence of their leader, tried to estimate the height of the gate, and Hicks, gazing at its barbed-wire top, shuddered. The St. Bernard pup, having caused T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., for once in his indolent life to exert every possible ounce of energy in his splinter-frame, groveled at his feet, and strove to express his boundless joy at their presence.

Butch Brewster, in fifteen minutes, returned, panting and perspiring, bearing a tape-measure, borrowed at the next farm-house. With all the solemnity of a sacred rite being performed, the youths waited, as Butch and Tug, holding the tape taut, carefully measured from the ground to the top of the barbed wire on the gate. Three times they did this, and then, with an expression of gladness on his honest countenance, Butch hugged the dazed T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., while Tug Cardiff howled, "Now for the Intercollegiates and your track B, Hicks! You can do five-ten in the meet, for Coach Brannigan said you could dear it, if only you did it once."

"Why--what do you mean, Tug?" quavered Hicks, not daring to allow himself to believe the truth. "You--you surely don't mean--"

"I mean, that now you know you can jump that high," boomed Tug, executing a weird dance of exultation, In which, the Brigade joined, until it resembled a herd of elephants gone insane, "for you have done it--allowing for the sag, and everything, that gate is just five feet, ten inches high, and--you cleared it!"

"Ladies and gentlemen--Hicks, of Bannister, is about to high jump! Hicks and McQuade, of Hamilton, are tied for first place at five feet eight inches! McQuade has failed three times at five-ten! Hicks' third and last trial! Height of bar--five feet ten inches!"

This time, however, it was not big Tug Cardiff, imitating a Ballyhoo Bill, and inciting the Bannister youths to hilarity at the expense of the sunny-souled T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.; it was the Official Announcer at the Annual State Intercollegiate Field and Track Champions.h.i.+ps, on Bannister Field, and his announcement aroused a tumult of excitement in the Bannister section of the stands, as well as among the Gold and Green cinder-path stars.

"Come on, Hicks, old man!" urged Butch Brewster, who, with a dozen fully as excited comrades of the cheery Hicks, surrounded that splinter-athlete.

"It's positively your last chance to win your track B, or your letter in any sport, and please your Dad! If they lower the bar, and you two jump off the tie, McQuade's endurance will bring him out the winner."

"You can clear five-ten!" encouraged Bunch Bingham. "You did it once, when you believed Caesar Napoleon was after you. Just summon up that much energy now, and clear that bar! Once over, the event and your letter are won! Oh, if we only had that bulldog here, to sick on you."

Sad to chronicle, the score-board of the Intercollegiates recorded the results of the events, so far, thus:

HAMILTON ............35 BALLARD .............20 BANNISTER ...........28

It was the last event, and even did Hicks win the high-jump, McQuade's second place would easily give old Ham. the Champions.h.i.+p. Hence, knowing that victory was not booked for an appearance on the Gold and Green banners, the Bannister youths, wild for the lovable, popular Hicks to win his Bs vociferously pulled for him:

"Come on, Hicks--up and over, old man--it's easy!"

"Jump, you Human Gra.s.s-Hopper--you can do it!"

"Now or never, Hicks! One big jump does the work!"

"Sick Caesar Napoleon on him, Coach; he'll clear it then!"

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., casting aside that flamboyant bathrobe, for what he believed was the last athletic event of his campus career, stood gazing at the cross-bar. One superhuman effort, a great explosion of all his energy, such as he had executed when he cleared the gate, thinking Caesar Napoleon was after him, and the event was won! He had cleared that height, it was within his power. If he failed, as Butch said, the bar would be lowered, and then raised until one or the other missed once. McQuade, with his superior strength and endurance, must inevitably win, but as he had just missed on his third trial at five-ten, if Hicks cleared that height on his final chance, the first place was his.

"And my B!" murmured Hicks, tensing his muscles. "Oh, won't my Dad be happy? It will help him to realize some of his ambition, when I show him my track letter! It is positively my last chance, and I must clear it."

With a vast wave of determined confidence inundating his very being, Hicks started for the bar; after those first, peculiar, creeping steps, he had just started his gallop, when he heard Tug Cardiff's ba.s.so, magnified by a megaphone, roared:

"All together, fellows--let 'er go--"

Then, just as Hicks dug his spikes into the earth, in that short, mad sprint that gives the jumper his spring, just as he reached the take-off, a perfect explosion of noise startled him, and he caught a sound that frightened him, tensed as he was:

"Woof! Woof! Bow! Wow! Woof! Woof! Woof! Look out, Hicks, Caesar Napoleon is after you!"

Psychology Is inexplicable. Ever afterward, Hicks' comrades of that cross-country run averred strenuously that their roaring through megaphones, in concert, imitating Caesar Napoleon's savage bark at the psychological moment, flung the mosquito-like youth clear of the cross-bar and won him the event and his B. Hicks, however, as fervidly denied this statement, declaring that he would have won, anyhow, because he had summoned up the determination to do it! So it can not be stated just what bearing on his jump the plot of Butch Brewster really had. In truth, that behemoth had entertained a wild idea of actually hiring old Bildad and Caesar Napoleon to appear at the moment Hicks started for his last trial, but this weird scheme was abandoned!

Fifteen minutes later, when T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had escaped from the riotous Bannister students, delirious with joy at the victory of the beloved youth, the Heavy-Weight-White-Hope Brigade, capturing the gra.s.s-hopper Senior, gave him a shock second only to that which he had experienced when first he believed Caesar Napoleon was on his trail.

"Perhaps our barking didn't make you jump it!" said Beef McNaughton, when Hicks indignantly denied that he had been scared over the cross-bar, "but indirectly, old man, we helped you to win! If we had not put up a hoax on you--"

"A hoax?" queried the surprised Hicks. "What do you mean--hoax?"