The Dozen from Lakerim Part 16

The next thing they all knew, they were in half-frozen mud up to their knees. The bright patch they had supposed to be a brook was a frost-covered sidewalk!

And they had carefully jumped over the sidewalk into the mire beyond!

Tug was disgusted but not disheartened, and he had his crew under way again instantly. He kept up his system of short cuts even now that they were in town. He led them over back fences, through orchards and kitchen-gardens, scattering a noisy flock of low-roosting hens in one place, and stirring up a half-dozen more dogs in another.

The true home stretch was a long downhill run straight to the goal.

By the time they reached this MacMa.n.u.s was once more in bad shape, and going very unsteadily.

As they cleared the brow of the hill, Tug's anxious heart was pierced with the fear that he had lost the long, racking race, after all; for, just crossing the stake at the finish, he caught a sight of Orton.

The rest of the team saw the same disheartening spectacle. And MacMa.n.u.s, eager for any excuse to stop running, gasped:

"They've beaten us. There's no use running any farther."

But Tug, having Lakerim ideals in mind, would never say die. He squandered just breath enough to exclaim:

"We're not beaten till the last man crosses the line!" And he added: "Stage, run for your life."

And Stage ran. Oh, but it was fine to see that lad run! He fled forward like a stag with the hounds in full cry after him. He wasted not an ounce of energy, but ran cleanly and straightly and splendidly.

He had the high-stepping knee-action of a thoroughbred trotter, and his running was as beautiful as it was swift.

"Run, all of you, for your lives!" cried Tug; and at that the weary little band sprang forward with a new lease on strength and determination. Tug had no ambition, like Orton, to leave his men to find their own way. Rather, he herded them up and urged them on, as a Scotch collie drives home the sheep at a canter.

Orton's runners were "tailed out" for more than half a mile behind him. He himself was easily the first man home; but Stage beat his second man in, and Bloss was a good third. Orton ran back frantically, now, to coax his last three men. He hurried in his third runner at a fairly good gait, but before he could get him to the line, Tug had brought forward his last three men, Sawed-Off well up, MacMa.n.u.s going doggedly and leaning mentally, if not physically, on Tug, who ran at his side.

By thus hurling in three men at once, Tug made an enormous inroad upon the score of the single-man Brownsvillers. Besides, though Orton got his next-to-the-last man in soon after Tug, the last Brownsviller did not come along for a minute afterward. He had been left to make his way along unaided and unguided, and he hardly deserved the laughter that greeted him as he came over the line.

Thus Orton, too ambitious, had brought his team in with this score: 1, 3, 8, 9, 10--total, 31; while Tug's men, well bunched at the finish, came in with this score: 2,4, 5, 6, 7-total, 24.

Tug richly deserved the cheers and enthusiasm that greeted his management; for, in spite of a team of individual inferiority to the crack Brownsvillers; he had won by strict discipline and clever generalship.

XXIV

The victorious outcome of the cross-country run, as well as many other victories and defeats, had pretty well instilled it in the Lakerim minds that team-play is an all-important factor of success. But the time came when there was no opportunity to use the hard-learned, easily forgot lesson of team-work, and it was each man for himself, and all for Lakerim and Kingston.

When the ground was soggy and mushy with the first footsteps of spring, and it was not yet possible to practise to any extent out of doors, the Kingston Athletic a.s.sociation received from the athletic a.s.sociation of the Troy Latin School a letter that was a curious combination of blood-warming hospitality and blood-curdling challenge.

The Latin School, in other words, opened its heart and its gymnasium, and warmly invited the Kingston athletes to come over and be eaten up in a grand indoor carnival. Troy was not so far away that only a small delegation could go. Almost every one from Kingston, particularly those athletically inclined, took the train to Troy.

Most surprising of all it was to see the diminutive and bespectacled History proudly joining the ranks of the strong ones. He was going to Troy to display his microscopical muscles in that most wearing and violent of all exercises--chess.

The Tri-State Interscholastic League, which encouraged the practice of all imaginable digressions from school-books, had arranged for a series of chess games between teams selected from the different academies. The winners of these preliminary heats, if one can use so calm a word for so exciting a game, were to meet at Troy and play for the championship of the League.

If I should describe the hair-raising excitement of that chess tournament, I am afraid that this book would be put down as entirely too lively for young readers. So I will simply say once for all that, owing to History's ability to look wiser than any one could possibly be, and to spend so much time thinking of each move that his deliberation affected his opponents' nerves, and owing to the fact that he could so thoroughly map out future moves on the inside of his large skull, and that there was something awe-inspiring about his general look of being a wizard in boys' clothes, he won the tournament--almost more by his looks than by his skill as a tactician.

The whole Academy, and especially the Lakerimmers, overwhelmed this second Paul Morphy with congratulations, and felt proud of him; but when he attempted to explain how he had won his magnificent battle, and started off with such words as these: "You will observe that I used the Zukertort opening"; and when he began to tell of his moves from VX to QZ, or some such place, even his best friends took to tall timber.

The Kingston visitors found that the Troy Latin School was in possession of a finer and much larger gymnasium than their own. But, much as they envied their luckier neighbors, they determined that they would prove that fine feathers do not make fine birds, nor a fine gymnasium fine athletes. A large crowd had gathered, and was put in a good humor with a beautiful exhibition of team-work by the Troy men on the triple and horizontal bars and the double trapeze. The Trojans also gave a kaleidoscopic exhibition of tumbling and pyramid-building, none of which sports had been practised much by the Kingstonians.

After this the regular athletic contests of the evening began.

In almost every event at least one of the Lakerim men represented Kingston. Some of the Dozen made a poor showing; but the majority, owing to their long devotion to the theory and the practice of athletics, stood out strongly, and were recognized by the strange audience, in their Lakerim sweaters, as distinguished heroes of the occasion.

The first event was a contest in horse-vaulting, in which no Lakerim men were entered. Kingston suffered a defeat.

"Ill begun is half done up," sighed Jumbo.

But in the next event the old reliable Tug was entered, among others; and in the Rope-Climb he ran up the cord like a monkey on a stick, and touched the tambourine that hung twenty-five feet in the air before any of his rivals reached their goal, and in better form than any of them.

The third event was the Standing High Jump; and B.J. and the other Kingstonians were badly outcla.s.sed here. Their efforts to clear the bar compared with that of the Trojans as the soaring of an elephant compares with the flight of a b.u.t.terfly.

Punk was the only Lakerimmer on the team that attempted to win glory on the flying-rings, but he and his brother Kingstonians suffered a like humiliation with the standing high-jumpers.

The clerk of the course and the referees were now seen to be running hither and yon in great excitement. A long delay and much putting of heads together ensued, to the great mystification of the audience. At length, just as a number of small boys in the gallery had begun to stamp their feet in military time and whistle their indignation, the official announcer officially announced that there had been a slight hitch in the proceedings.

"I have to explain," he yelled in his gentlest manner, "that two of the boxers have failed to turn up. Both have excellent excuses and doctors' certificates to account for their absence, but we have unfortunately to confess that the Kingston heavy-weight and the Troy feather-weight are incapacitated for the present. The feather-weight from Kingston, however, is a good enough sport to express a willingness to box, for points, with the heavy-weight from Troy. While this match will look a little unusual owing to the difference in size of the two opponents, it will be scientific enough, we have no doubt, to make it interesting as well as picturesque."

As usual, the audience, not knowing what else to say, applauded very cordially.

And now the heavy-weight from Troy, one Jaynes, appeared upon the scene with his second. There was no roped-off s.p.a.ce, but only an imaginary "ring," which was, as usual, a square--of about twenty-four feet each way.

Jaynes was just barely qualified as a heavy-weight, being only a trifle over one hundred and fifty-eight pounds. But he overshadowed little Bobbles as the giants overshadowed Jack the Giant-killer.

Bobbles, while he was diminutive compared with Jaynes, was yet rather tall and wiry for his light weight, and had an unusually long reach for one of his size. He regretted now the great pains he had taken to train down to feather-weight weight. For when he had stepped on the scales in the gymnasium, the day before he had started for Troy, he found that he was three pounds over the necessary hundred and fifteen.

So he had put on three sweaters, two pairs of trousers, and his football knickers, and run around the track for fully four miles, until he was in doubt as to whether he was a liquid or a solid body.

Then he had fallen into a hot bath, and jumped from that into a cold shower, and had then been rubbed down by some of his faithful Lakerim friends with a pail of rock-salt to harden his muscles. At Troy, too, he had continued these tactics, and found, to his delight, when he weighed in, that he just tipped the scales at one hundred and fifteen.

And now he was matched to fight with a heavy-weight, and every pound he had sweat off would have been an advantage to him! Yet, at any rate, it was not a fight to a finish, but only for points, and he counted upon his agility to save him from the rushes and the major tactics of the larger man.

In order to make the scoring of points more vivid and visible to the audience, it was decided, after some hesitation, that the gloves should be coated with shoe-blacking.

Bobbles realized that his salvation lay in quick attack and the seizure of every possible opportunity, as well as in his ability to escape the onslaughts of the heavy-weight. He did not purpose turning it into a sprinting-match, but he felt that he was justified in making as much use of the art of evasion as possible.

He began the series by what was almost sharp practice, but was justified by the rules.

The referee sang out:

"Gentlemen, shake hands."

Then the long and the short of it quickly clasped boxing-gloves in the middle of the ring.

"Time!" cried the referee.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOXING MATCH.]

Immediately on the break-away, before Jaynes had got his hands into position, Bobbles had landed on him with a fine left upper cut that put a black mark on Jaynes' jaw. Jaynes looked surprised, and the audience laughed. Bobbles also laughed, for he knew he would have few chances to place black spots on the upper works of the tall Jaynes, and that he must make his scores mainly upon the zone just above Jaynes' belt.

Jaynes was as much angered as surprised at receiving the first blow, and sailed in with a vengeance to pepper Bobbles; but he began to think that he was boxing with a gra.s.shopper before long, for, wherever he struck, there Bobbles was not. In fact, most of his straight-arm blows were not only dodged by Bobbles with the smallest necessary effort, but were effectively countered.