Going Some Part 25

"My dear fellow, the simplest way out of the difficulty is for me to injure myself--"

"Here!" Gla.s.s hopped to his feet and dove through the blankets.

"None of that! Have a little regard for me. If you go lame it's my curtain."

All that day the trainer stayed close to his charge, never allowing him out of his sight, and when, late in the afternoon, Speed rebelled at the espionage, Gla.s.s merely shrugged his fat shoulders. "But I want to be alone--with _her_. Can't you see?"

"I can, but I won't. Go as far as you like. I'll close my eyes."

"Or _I'll_ close them for you!" The lad scowled; his companion laughed mirthlessly.

"Don't start nothin' like that--I'd ruin you. Gals is bad for a man in trainin' anyhow."

"I suppose I'm not to see her--"

"You can _see_ her, but I want to hear what you say to her.

No emotion till after this race, Wally."

"You're an idiot! This whole affair is preposterous--ridiculous."

"And yet it don't make us laugh, does it?" Gla.s.s mocked.

"If these cowboys make me run that race, they'll be sorry--mark my words, they'll be sorry."

Speed lighted a cigarette and inhaled deeply, but only once. The other lunged at him with a cry and s.n.a.t.c.hed it. "Give me that cigarette!"

"I've had enough of this foolishness," Wally stormed. "You are discharged!"

"I wish I was."

"You are!"

"_Not!_"

"I say you are fired!" Gla.s.s stared at him. "Oh, I mean it! I won't be bullied."

"Very well." Gla.s.s rose ponderously. "I'll wise up that queen of yours, Mr. Speed."

"You aren't going to talk to Miss Blake? Wait!" Speed wilted miserably. "She mustn't know. I--I hire you over again."

"Suit yourself."

"You see, don't you? My love for Helen is the only serious thing I ever experienced," said the boy. "I--can't lose her. You've got to help me out."

And so it was agreed.

That evening, when the clock struck nine, J. Wallingford Speed was ready and willing to drag himself off to bed, in spite of the knowledge that Fresno was waiting to take his place in the hammock. He was racked by a thousand pains, his muscles were sore, his back lame. He was consumed by a thirst which Gla.s.s stoutly refused to let him quench, and possessed by a fearful longing for a smoke. When he dozed off, regardless of the snores from the bunk-house adjoining, Berkeley Fresno's musical tenor was sounding in his ears. And Helen Blake was vaguely surprised.

For the first time in their acquaintance Mr. Speed had yawned openly in her presence, and she wondered if he were tiring of her.

It seemed to Speed that he had barely closed his eyes when he felt a rough hand shaking him, and heard his trainer's voice calling, in a half-whisper: "Come on, Cull! Get up!"

When he turned over it was only to be shaken into complete wakefulness.

"Hurry up, it's daylight!"

"Where?"

"Come, now, you got to run five miles before breakfast!"

Speed sat up with a groan. "If I run five miles," he said, "I won't want any breakfast," and laid himself down again gratefully--he was very sore--whereat his companion fairly dragged him out of bed. As yet the room was black, although the windows were grayed by the first faint streaks of dawn. From the adjoining room came a chorus of distress: snores of every size, volume, and degree of intensity, from the last harrowing gasp of strangulation to the bold trumpetings of a bull moose. There were long drawn sighs, groans of torture, rumbling blasts. Speed shuddered.

"They sound like a troop of trained sea-lions," said he.

"Don't wake 'em up. Here!" Gla.s.s yawned widely, and tossed a bundle of sweaters at his companion.

"Ugh! These clothes are all wet and cold, and--it feels like blood!"

"Nothin' but the mornin' dew."

"It's perspiration."

"Well, a little sweat won't hurt you."

"Nasty word." Speed yawned in turn. "Perspiration! I can't wear wet clothes," and would have crept back into his bed.

This time Gla.s.s deposited him upon a stool beside the table, and then lighted a candle, by the sickly glare of which he selected a pair of running-shoes.

"Why didn't you leave me alone?" grumbled the younger man. "The only pleasure I get is in sleep--I forget things then."

"Yes," retorted the former, sarcastically, "and you also seem to forget that these are our last days among the living. Sat.u.r.day the big thing comes off."

"Forget! I dreamed about it!" The boy sighed heavily. It was the hour in which hope reaches its lowest ebb and vitality is weakest. He was very cold and very miserable.

"You ain't got no edge on me," the other acknowledged, mournfully. "I'm too young to die, and that's a bet."

Suddenly the pandemonium in the bunk-house was pierced by the brazen jangle of an alarm-clock, whereat a sleepy voice cried:

"Cloudy, kill that d.a.m.n clock!"

The Indian uttered some indistinguishable epithet, and the next instant there came a crash as the offending timepiece was hurled violently against the wall. In silence Gla.s.s shoved his unsteady victim ahead of him out into the dawn. In the east the sun was rising amid a riotous splendor. At any other time, under any other conditions, Speed could not have restrained his admiration, for the whole world was a glorious sparkling panoply of color.

The tumbled ma.s.ses of the hills were blazing at their crests, the valleys dark and cool. In the east the limb of the sun was just rearing itself, the air was heady with the scent of growing things, and so clear that the distances were magically shortened; a certain wild, intoxicating exuberance surcharged the out-of- doors. But to the stiff and wearied Eastern lad it was all cruelly mocking. When he halted listlessly to view its beauties he was goaded forward, ever forward, faster and faster, until finally, amid protests and sighs and complaining joints, he broke into a heavy, flat-footed jog-trot that jolted the artistic sense entirely out of him.

CHAPTER XII

It was usually a procedure not alone of difficulty but of diplomacy as well, to rout out the ranch-hands of the Flying Heart without engendering hostile relations that might bear fruit during the day. This morning Still Bill Stover had more than his customary share of trouble, for they seemed pessimistic.

Carara, for instance, breathed a Spanish oath as he combed his hair, and when the foreman inquired the reason, replied: