At Good Old Siwash Part 3

We tied his hands behind him with several feet of good stout rope and hobbled him about the ankles with a dog chain. Then we blindfolded him and put a pillowslip over his head for good measure. Things began to look brighter. Even a demon fullback has to have one or two limbs working in order to accomplish anything. When all was fast Bangs gave Ole a preliminary kick. "Now, brethren," he roared, "bring on the Macedonian guards and give them the neophyte!"

Now I'm not revealing any real initiation secrets, mind you, and maybe what I'm telling you didn't exactly happen. But you can be perfectly sure that something just as bad did happen every time. For an hour we abused that two hundred and twenty pounds of gristle and hide. It was as much fun as roughhousing a two-ton safe. We rolled him downstairs. He broke out sixty dollars' worth of bal.u.s.trade on the way and he didn't seem to mind it at all. We tried to toss him in a blanket. Ever have a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man land on you coming down from the ceiling? We got tired of that. We made him play automobile. Ever play automobile? They tie roller skates and an automobile horn on you and push you around into the furniture, just the way a real automobile runs into things. We broke a table, five chairs, a French window, a one-hundred-dollar vase and seven shins. We didn't even interest Ole.

When a man has plowed through leather-covered football players for three years his head gets used to hitting things. Also his heels will fly out no matter how careful you are. We took him into the bas.e.m.e.nt and performed our famous trick of boiling the candidate in oil. Of course we wanted to scare him. He accommodated us. He broke away and hopped stiff-legged all over the room. That wasn't so bad, but, confound it, he hopped on us most of the time! How would you like to initiate a bronze statue that got scared and hopped on you?

We got desperate. We threw aside the formality of explaining the deep significance of each action and just a.s.saulted Ole with everything in the house. We prodded him with furnace tools and thumped him with cordwood and rolling-pins and barrel-staves and shovels. We walked over him, a dozen at a time. And all the time we were getting it worse than he was. He didn't exactly fight, but whenever his elbows twitched some fellow's face would happen to be in the way, and he couldn't move his knee without getting it tangled in some one's ribs. You could hear the thunders of the a.s.sault and the shrieks of the wounded for a block.

At the end of an hour we were positively all in. There weren't three of us unwounded. The house was a wreck. Wilbur had a broken nose. "Chick"

Struthers' kneecap hurt. "Lima" Bean's ribs were telescoped, and there wasn't a good shin in the house. We quit in disgust and sat around looking at Ole. He was sitting around, too. He happened to be sitting on Bangs, who was yelling for help. But we didn't feel like starting any relief expedition.

Ole was some rumpled, and his clothes looked as if they had been fed into a separator. But he was intact, as far as we could see. He was still tied and blindfolded, and I hope to be buried alive in a branch-line town if he wasn't getting bored.

"Vat fur yu qvit?" he asked. "It ent fun setting around har."

Then Petey Simmons, who had been taking a minor part in the a.s.sault in order to give his wheels full play, rose and beckoned the crowd outside.

We left Ole and cl.u.s.tered around him.

"Now, this won't do at all," he said. "Are we going to let Eta Bita Pie be made the laughing-stock of the college? If we can't initiate that human quartz mill by force let's do it by strategy. I've got a plan. You just let me have Ole and one man for an hour and I'll make him so glad to get back to the house that he'll eat out of our hands."

We were dead ready to turn the job over to Petey, though we hated to see him put his head in the lion's mouth, so to speak. I hated it worse than any of the others because he picked me for his a.s.sistant. We went in and found Ole dozing in the corner. Petey prodded him. "Get up!" he said.

Ole got up cheerfully. Petey took the dog chain off of his legs. Then he threw his sub-cellar voice into gear.

"Skja.r.s.en," he rumbled, "you have pa.s.sed right well the first test of our n.o.ble order. You have faced the hideous dangers which were in reality but shams to prove your faith, and you have borne your sufferings patiently, thus proving your meekness."

I let a couple of grins escape into my sweater-sleeve. Oh, yes, Ole had been meek all right.

"It remains for you to prove your desire," said Petey in curdled tones.

"Listen!" He gave the Eta Bita Pie whistle. We had the best whistle in college. It was six notes--a sort of insidious, inviting thing that you could slide across two blocks, past all manner of barbarians, and into a frat brother's ear without disturbing any one at all. Petey gave it several times. "Now, Skja.r.s.en," he said, "you are to follow that whistle. Let no obstacle discourage you. Let no barrier stop you. If you can prove your loyalty by following that whistle through the outside world and back to the altar of Eta Bita Pie we will ask no more of you.

Come on!"

We tiptoed out of the cellar and whistled. Ole followed us up the steps.

That is, he did on the second attempt. On the first he fell down with melodious thumps. We hugged each other, slipped behind a tree and whistled again.

Ole charged across the yard and into the tree. The line held. I heard him say something in Norwegian that sounded secular. By that time we were across the street. There was a low railing around the parking, and when we whistled again Ole walked right into the railing. The line held again.

Oh, I'll tell you that Petey boy was a wonder at getting up ideas. Think of it! Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Christopher Columbus, old Bill Archimedes and all the rest of the wise guys had overlooked this simple little discovery of how to make a neophyte initiate himself. It was too good to be true. We held a war dance of pure delight, and we whistled some more. We got behind stone walls, and whistled. We climbed embankments, and whistled. We slid behind blackberry bushes and ash piles and across ditches and over hedge fences, and whistled. We were so happy we could hardly pucker. Think of it! There was Ole Skja.r.s.en, the most uncontrollable force in Nature, following us like a yellow pup with his dinner three days overdue. It was as fascinating as guiding a battleship by wireless.

We slipped across a footbridge over Cedar Creek, and whistled. Ole missed the bridge by nine yards. There isn't much water in Cedar Creek, but what there is is strong. It took Ole fifteen minutes to climb the other bank, owing to a beautiful collection of old barrel-hoops, corsets, crockery and empty tomato cans which decorated the spot. Did you ever see a blindfolded man, with his hands tied behind his back, trying to climb over a city dump? No? Of course not, any more than you have seen a green elephant. But it's a fine sight, I a.s.sure you. When Ole got out of the creek we whistled him dexterously into a barnyard and right into the maw of a brindle bull-pup with a capacity of one small man in two bites--we being safe on the other side of the fence, beyond the reach of the chain. Maybe that was mean, but Eta Bita Pie is not to be trifled with when she is aroused. Anyway, the bull got the worst of it. He only got one bite. Ole kicked in the barn door on the first try, and demolished a corn-sh.e.l.ler on the second; but on the third he hit the pup squarely abeam and dropped a beautiful goal with him. We went around to see the dog the next day. He looked quite natural. You would almost think he was alive.

It was here that we began to smell trouble. I had my suspicions when we whistled again. There was a pretty substantial fence around that barnyard, but Ole didn't wait to find the gate.

He came through the fence not very far from us. He was conversing under that mangled pillowslip, and we heard fragments sounding like this:

"Purty soon Aye gat yu--yu spindle-shank, vite-face, skagaroot-smokin'

dudes! Ugh--ump!"--here he caromed off a tree. "Ven Aye gat das blindfold off, Aye gat yu--yu Baked-Pie galoots!--Ugh!

Wow!"--barbed-wire fence. "Vistle sum more, yu vide-trousered polekats.

Aye make yu vistle, Aye bet yu, rite avay! Up--pllp--pllp!" That's the kind of noise a man makes when he walks into a horse-trough at full speed.

"Gee!" said Petey nervously. "I guess we've given him enough. He's getting sort of peevish. I don't believe in being too cruel. Let's take him back now. You don't suppose he can get his hands loose, do you?"

I didn't know. I wished I did. Of course, when you watch a lion trying to get at you from behind a fairly strong cage you feel perfectly safe, but you feel safer when you are somewhere else, just the same. We got out on the pavement and gave a gentle whistle.

"Aye har yu!" roared Ole, coming through a chicken yard. "Aye har yu, you leetle Baked Pies! Aye gat yu purty soon. Yust vait."

We didn't wait. We put on a little more gasoline and started for the frat house. We didn't have to whistle any more. Ole was right behind us.

We could hear him thundering on the pavement and pleading with us in that rich, nutty dialect of his to stop and have our heads pounded on the bricks.

I shudder yet when I think of all the things he promised to do to us. We went down that street like a couple of Roman gladiators pacing a hungry bear, and, by tangling Ole up in the parkings again, managed to get home a few yards ahead.

There was an atmosphere of arnica and dejection in the house when we got there. Ill-health seemed to be rampant. "Did you lose him?" asked Bangs hopefully from behind a big bandage.

"Lose him?" says I with a snort. "Oh, yes, we lost him all right. He loses just like a foxhound. That's him, falling over the front steps now. You can stay and entertain him; I'm going upstairs."

Everybody came along. We piled chairs on the stairs and listened while Ole felt his way over the porch. In about a minute he found the door.

Then he came right in. I had locked the door, but I had neglected to reenforce it with concrete and boiler iron. Ole wore part of the frame in with him.

"Come on, yu Baked Pies!" he shouted.

"You're in the wrong house," squeaked that little fool, Jimmy Skelton.

"Yu kent fule me!" said Ole, crashing around the loafing-room. "Aye yust can tal das haus by har skagaroot smell. Come on, yu leetle fallers! Aye bet Aye inittyate yu some, tu!"

By this time he had found the stairs and was plowing through the furniture. We retired to the third floor. When twenty-seven fellows go up a three-foot stairway at once it necessarily makes some noise. Ole heard us and kept right on coming.

We grabbed a bureau and a bed and barricaded the staircase. There was a ladder to the attic. I was the last man up and my heart was giving my ribs all kinds of ma.s.sage treatment before I got up. We hauled up the ladder just as Ole kicked the bureau downstairs, and then we watched him charge over our beautiful third-floor dormitory, leaving ruin in his wake.

Maybe he would have been satisfied with breaking the furniture. But, of course, a few of us had to sneeze. Ole hunted those sneezes all over the third floor. He couldn't reach them, but he sat down on the wreck underneath them.

"Aye ent know vere yu fallers ban," he said, "but Aye kin vait. Aye har yu, yu Baked Pies! Aye gat yu yet, by yimminy! Yust come on down ven yu ban ready."

Oh, yes, we were ready--I don't think. It was a perfectly lovely predicament. Here was the Damma Yappa chapter of Eta Bita Pie penned up in a deucedly-cold attic with one lone initiate guarding the trapdoor.

Nice story for the college to tell when the police rescued us! Nice end of our reputation as the best neophyte jugglers in the school! Makes me shiver now to think of it.

We sat around in that garret and listened to the clock strike in the library tower across the campus. At eleven o'clock Ole promised to kill the first man who came down. That bait caught no fish. At twelve he begged for the privilege of kicking us out of our own house, one by one.

At one o'clock he remarked that, while it was pretty cold, it was much colder in Norway, where he came from, and that, as we would freeze first, we might as well come down.

At two o'clock we were all stiff. At three we were kicking the plaster off of the joists, trying to keep from freezing to death. At four a bunch of Soph.o.m.ores were all for throwing Petey Simmons down as a sacrifice. Petey talked them out of it. Petey could talk a stone dog into wagging its tail.

We sat in that garret from ten P. M. until the year after the great pyramid wore down to the ground. At least that was the length of time that seemed to pa.s.s. It must have been about five o'clock when Petey stopped kicking his feet on the chimney and said:

"Well, fellows, I have an idea. It may work or it may not, but--"

"Shut up, you mental desert!" some one growled. "Another of your fine ideas will wreck this frat."

"As I was saying," continued Petey cheerfully, "it may not succeed, but it will not hurt any one but me if it doesn't. I'm going to be the Daniel in this den. But first I want the officers of the chapter to come up around the scuttle-hole with me."

Five of us crept over to the hole and looked down. "Aye har yu, yu leetle Baked Pies!" said Ole, waking in an instant. "Yust come on down.

Aye ban vaiting long enough to smash yu!"