Tramping on Life Part 74

"Don't be a fool ... hold Gregory ... he's got the stave!"

"He'll kill Jim!"

"Or Jim'll kill him!"...

Then came a shout from nearby.

"I'll heve the law on ye, I will! destroyin' a man's cornfield like a lot o' heathens!"

Yelling and menacing, the farmer and his big, raw-boned son were upon us. They evidently thought that we were all in such a drunken condition that they could kick us about as they choose. They had just driven home from market-day in Laurel.

Everything was mixed up in my head ... but one thing out-stood: I must do my duty by my barrel stave ... as the farmer leaped into the circle he did not notice me staggering on the outskirts. I rushed up and let him have the barrel stave full across the head.

At the same time Black Jim had turned his attention to the rangy boy, felling him at a blow. The boy leaped to his feet and ran away to a safe distance.

"Paw!" he called out, 'I'll run back to th' house an' 'phone th'

p'lice."

"Come on, boys, we'd better dig out!"

We straggled along in silent, rolling cl.u.s.ters, like bees smoked out, down the road ... we heard the rumble of a waggon ... when we recognised that it was our teetotaler coming back for us....

"G.o.d, if my old man hears of this I'm done for at Laurel."

"So'm I!"

"If we only lay low and don't go spouting off about it, things will be all O.K."

"We'll send Travers back with a little collection, to fix it up with the farmer, and blarney him out of taking any action."

In the morning I had a roaring headache ... as long as I lay quiet there was only the slow, deep regular pulse of pain driving through my head, but when I made an effort to get up, my eyeb.a.l.l.s throbbed with such torment that they seemed to be starting out of my head....

I fell asleep in the broad day again, waking to find Jack Travers standing by my bed, pale and cynical, dusting off the ashes from the end of his eternal cigarette.

"How are you feeling this morning?"

"Rotten," I answered. I sat up and triphammers of pain renewed their pounding inside my racked head.

--"thought you would, so's soon as I got up, I came down to see you."

--"lot of good that'll do."

He whipped a flask out of his hip pocket. "Take a nip of this and it will set you right in a jiffy."

"No, I'll never drink another drop."

"Don't be a fool. Just a swallow and you'll be on your feet again."

I took a big swallow and it braced me up instantly.

"Now, come on with me, Johnnie, I'm taking you in tow for to-day! A fellow who's not used to getting drunk always mopes around after a good time like we had.... I'm seeing you through _the day after_ ... you're going to lunch with me at the frat-house and this afternoon there's a sacred concert on in Aeolian Hall that I have two tickets for."

"I'll never drink another drop as long as I live."

"That's what they all say."

At the Sig Kappas I met Black Jim, the first one, at the door. He shook hands shyly, laughingly.

"You sure fetched that rube a wallop ... he let one croak out of him and flopped flat ... it would have made a good comic picture."

"Lunch is ready, boys!"

I was made into a sort of hero--"a real, honest-to-G.o.d guy."

"You'll have to come to some of our frat jamborees ... Jack'll bring you up."

"We and the Sigma Deltas are Southern fraternities ... we have a h.e.l.l of a sight more fun than the others ... there's the Sigma Pis--though they have some live birds, they're mostly dead ... and the Phi Nus put on too much side ... the Beta Omicrons are right there with the goods, though."

"I see."

A little freshman made an off-colour remark.

"You'd better go and see Jennie!" advised a genial young senior, who, for all his youth, was entirely bald.

"Jennie, who's Jennie?" I asked, curious.

"Our frat woman!" answered Travers casually.

"Frat woman?" I was groping for further information, puzzled.

"Yes, often a fraternity keeps a woman for the use of its members ...

when a kid comes to us so innocent he's annoying, we turn him over to Jennie to be made a man of."

"This innocence-stuff is over-rated. It's better to send a kid to a nice, clean girl that we club in together and keep, and let him learn what life is, once and for all, than to have him going off somewhere and getting something, or, even worse, horning around and jeopardizing decent girls, as he's bound to otherwise."

There were signs of failure at the Farmers' Restaurant. The curious farmer-family that ran it were giving it up and moving back into the country again. I was soon to have no place to board, where I could obtain credit.

But it was summer by now, and I didn't care. I meditated working in the wheat harvest.