The High School Boys' Training Hike Part 11

"Humph! A fine Indian you'd make, Tom!" jibed Dave. "An Indian is trained in being hungry. It's a part of the work that he has to undergo before he is allowed to be one of the men of the tribe."

"That's just the trouble with me," Tom admitted. "I've never been trained to be an Indian, and I am inclined to think that it requires training, and a lot of it."

Outwardly Tom didn't "grump" any, but he made a resolve that, hereafter, his voice would be strong for halting right on the bank of a swimming place.

"Can't we hit up the pace a bit?" asked Tom.

"Yes," nodded d.i.c.k. "All who want to travel fast can hike right ahead. Just keep on the main road."

Tom, Greg and Dan immediately forged ahead, taking long, rapid steps.

"But don't go in the water until we come up," d.i.c.k called after them. "Remember, the morning is hot, and you'll be too overheated to go in at once."

"Eh?" muttered Tom, with a sidelong look at his two fast-time companions. "Humph!"

Then they fell back with the wagon again.

"There doesn't seem to be any way to beat the clock to breakfast,"

observed Dan, after he had walked several rods down the road.

"I've talked with old soldiers," d.i.c.k went on, "who have told me all sorts of tales of war time, about the commissary train not catching up with the fighting line for four days at a stretch.

Yet here you fellows feel almost ill if you have to put off breakfast half an hour. What kind of men would you boys make if it came to the stern part of life?"

"If going without breakfast is part of the making of a man," said Danny Grin solemnly, "then I'd rather be a child some more."

"You always will be a child," Dave observed dryly. "Birthdays won't make any great difference in your real age, Danny boy."

"After that kind of a roast," grinned Reade, "I believe I'll take a reef in a few of the bitter things I was about to say."

d.i.c.k laughed pleasantly. Somehow, with the walk, all soon began to feel better. That first fainting, yearning desire for food was beginning to pa.s.s.

"Do you know what the greatest trouble is with the American people?"

asked d.i.c.k, after they had covered a mile.

"I don't," Tom admitted. "Do you, d.i.c.k?"

"I've been forming an idea," Prescott went on. "Our fault, if I can gather it rightly from what I've been reading, is that we Americans are inclined to be too babyish."

"Tell that to the countries we've been at war with in the past,"

jeered Tom Reade.

"Oh, I guess it's a different breed of Americans that we send to the front in war time," Prescott continued. "But, take you fellows; some of you have been almost kicking because breakfast is put off a bit. Most Americans are like that. Yet, it isn't because we have such healthy stomachs, either, for foreigners know us as a race of dyspeptics. Take a bit of cold weather in winter---really cold, biting weather and just notice how Americans kick and worry about it. Take any time when we have a succession of rainy days, and notice how Americans growl over the continued wet. Whatever happens that is in the least disagreeable, see what a row we Americans raise about it."

"I imagine it's a nervous vent for the race," advanced Dave Darrin.

"But why must Americans have a nervous vent?" d.i.c.k inquired.

"In other words, what business have we with diseased nerves!

Don't you imagine that all our kicking, many times every day of our lives, makes the need of nervous vent more and more p.r.o.nounced?"

"Oh, I don't know about that," argued Tom. "I hate to hear any fellow talk disparagingly about his own country or its people.

It doesn't sound just right. In war time, or during any great national disaster or calamity, the Americans who do things always seem to rise to the occasion. We're a truly great people, all right. But I don't make that claim because I consider myself ever likely to be one of the great ones."

"Why are we a great people?" pursued Prescott.

"We are the richest nation in the world," argued Reade. "That must show that we are people capable of making great successes."

"Is our greatness due to ourselves, or to the fact that the United States embraces the greatest natural resources in the world?"

demanded d.i.c.k Prescott.

"It's partly due to the people, and partly due to the resources of the country," Dave contended.

d.i.c.k kept them arguing. Harry Hazelton, as driver, remained silent, but the others argued against d.i.c.k, trying to overthrow all his disparaging utterances against the American people.

Finally Reade grew warm, indeed.

"Cut it out, d.i.c.k---do!" he urged. "This doesn't really sound like you. I hate to hear a fellow go on running down his own countrymen. I tell you, it isn't patriotic."

"But just stop to consider this point," Prescott urged, and started on a new, cynical line of argument.

"I still contend that we're the greatest people on earth," Reade insisted almost angrily. "We ought to be, anyway, for Americans don't come of any one line of stock. We're descended from pioneers---the pick and cream of all the peoples of Europe."

But d.i.c.k kept up his line of discussion until they came to the river for which he had headed them. They followed the winding stream into the woods where the trees partially hid them from the observation of pa.s.sers-by on the road, From this point they could easily keep a watch on the wagon while in the water.

"Now, let's sit down and cool off for five minutes," proposed d.i.c.k, as he filled the feed bag for the horse. "After that we'll be ready for a swim."

"But, with regard to what you were saying about frayed American nerves, poor stomachs and all-around babyishness-----" Tom began all over again.

"Stop it!" laughed d.i.c.k. "We don't need that line of talk any longer."

"Then why did you start it?" asked Dave.

"We've covered the two miles that you all thought such a hardship,"

chuckled Prescott.

"Then you-----" began Reade, opening his eyes wider as a dawning light came into them. "Come on, Dave! Catch him! The water's handy!"

But d.i.c.k, with a light laugh, bounded away, shinned up a tree, and, sitting in a crotch, swung his feet toward the faces of Tom, Dave and Harry as they tried to get him and drag him down.

"You've got a strategic position, just now," growled Reade. "But just you wait until we catch you down on the ground again!"

"You fellows must feel pretty well sold," Greg taunted them.

"I kept out of the row, for I saw, at the outset, that d.i.c.k was going to start something for the sole purpose of keeping us arguing until we forgot all about our breakfasts."

"That's just like d.i.c.k Prescott!" uttered Tom ruefully. "We never get to know him so well that he can't start us all on a new tack and have more fun with us."

"Well, you forgot your supposed starvation, didn't you?" chuckled d.i.c.k from his tree.

Two or three minutes later he swung down from the tree to the ground, rapidly removing his clothing and donning swimming trunks.