The High School Boys' Training Hike Part 32

"No, sir," replied the tramp. "It just comes natural."

"I've been looking for a man to work for me," continued Dr. Hewitt, regarding the tramp with calculating eyes. "I believe that you've got in you the making of a real man if you'd only stop being a tramp. How would you like to try it out?"

"I dunno," replied the boss tramp, looking a bit staggered.

"If you go to work for me, I don't want you to take it up as a casual experiment," went on the man of medicine. "I haven't any time for experiments. But, if you'll declare positively that you're going to make a useful man of yourself, and that you'll live up to what I expect of you, I'll take you on. I won't have an idler about my place, and I won't tolerate any use of alcohol.

If you shirk or drink---even once out you go. But I'll start you at ten dollars a month and board, and raise you---if I keep you---two dollars a month until you're getting thirty dollars a month and board as a steady thing. Are you man enough to take me up, and to make it worth my while to take you on?"

"Yes," replied the boss tramp huskily, after a struggle with himself.

"All right, then, we'll see how much a man you are. By the way, what's your name?"

"Jim Joggers," replied the tramp.

Dr. Hewitt eyed the fellow keenly for a few seconds, before he replied, with a slight smile:

"All right; we'll let it go at Joggers until you've put yourself far enough forward so that you'll be willing to use your own name."

Honk! honk! The car was under way.

When d.i.c.k and his three friends turned back to the tent they found all three of the remaining tramps in there, smoking vile pipes and playing with a greasy, battered pack of cards. "The weather's fine again," announced d.i.c.k, "and you'll find us the most hospitable fellows you ever met. My friends, we take pleasure in offering you the whole outside world in which to play!"

"Talk United States!" growled one of the tramps, without looking up from the game.

"Tom," laughed Prescott, turning to Reade, "strange dialects are your specialty. Kindly translate, into 'United States,' what I have just said to these men."

"I will," agreed Tom. "Attention, hoboes! Look right at me!

That's right. Now---git!"

"You might let us stay on a bit longer," grumbled one of the tramps.

"We ain't bothering you folks any."

"Only eating us out of house and home," snapped Dave.

"And delaying the time when we must wash up the tent after you,"

added Danny Grin.

But the tramps played on, smoked on.

"Did you fellows ever hear of that famous man, Mr. A. Quick Expediter?"

Tom asked the tramps.

"No," growled one of them.

"Expediter was a truly great man," Tom continued. "He had a motto.

It was a short one. One word, and that word was---'git'!"

"We are famed for our courtesy," remarked Darry. "We'd hate to lose even a shred of our reputation in that line. But in these present years of our young lives we are football players by training, and high school boys merely for pleasure. We know some of the dandiest tackles you ever saw. Shall we show you a few of them?

If you object to observing our tackles---and sharing in the effects---then signify your wishes by placing yourselves at a safe distance from such enthusiastic football wranglers as we are."

Greg, Danny Grin and Harry were already crouching as though for a spring. Dave took his place in an imaginary football line-up, leaning slightly forward. Tom Reade sighed, then advanced to the line. All were waiting for the battle signal from d.i.c.k Prescott.

By this time the most talkative of the three tramps noted the signs of a gathering squall.

"Come on, mates," he urged, with a sulky growl, "let's get out of here. These young fellows want their place all to themselves.

They're just like all of the capitalistic cla.s.s that are ruining the country to-day! Things in this country are coming to a pa.s.s where there's nothing for the fellow who-----"

"Who won't work hard enough to get the place in the world that he wants," Tom Reade finished for the tramp, as he ushered the three of them through the doorway.

CHAPTER XVIII

d.i.c.k PRESCOTT, KNIGHT ERRANT

That day of enforced tie-up was followed by three days of hard hiking. The Gridley High School boys showed the fine effects of their two vigorous, strenuous outings. Each had taken on weight slightly, though there was no superfluous flesh on any of the six. They were bronzed, comparatively lean-looking, trim and hard. Their muscles were at the finest degree of excellence.

"We set out to get ourselves as hard as nails," remarked Dave, as the boys bathed in a secluded bit of woodland through which a creek flowed. It was, the morning of their fourth day of renewed hiking. After the swim and breakfast that was to follow, there were twenty miles of rural roads to be covered before the evening camp was pitched.

"I guess we've won all we set out to get, haven't we?" inquired Reade, squaring his broad shoulders with an air of pride. "I feel equal to anything that a fellow of my size and years could do."

"I think, without boasting, we may consider ourselves the six most valuable candidates for Gridley High School football this year," Prescott declared. "We ought to be the best men for the team; we've worked hard to get ourselves in the pink of physical condition."

"I wouldn't care to be any stronger than I am," laughed Danny Grin. "If I were any stronger folks would be saying that I ought to go to work."

"You will have to go to work within another year," d.i.c.k laughed, "whatever that work may be. But you must work with your brain, Danny boy, if you're to get any real place in life. Your muscles are intended only as a sign that your body is going to be equal to all the demands that your brain may make on that body."

"If my mental ability were equal to my physical strength I wouldn't have to work at all," grinned Dalzell.

Splash! His dive carried him under the surface of the water.

Presently he came up, blowing, then swimming with strong strokes.

"Danny boy seems to have the same idea so many people have," laughed Prescott. "They think that a man who does all his real work with his brain isn't working at all, just because he doesn't get into a perspiration and wilt his collar."

Splash! splash! Reade and Darrin were in the water racing upstream.

"I don't know when I've ever found so much happiness in a summer,"

a.s.serted Greg, as he poised himself for a dive into the water.

"I wonder if Timmy Hinman ever had the nerve to stick to his father's wagon long enough to get it back to Fenton," said Dave, as he swam beside Reade.

"If he ever took that wagon home, I'll wager that he drove the last few miles late at night, so that his 'society' friends wouldn't have the shock of seeing him drive the peddling outfit that sustains him," Reade replied.

"I'll never forget the younger Hinman's disgusted look when he tried to drive the outfit from our camp, the other morning, with his saddle mount tied behind and balking on the halter," grinned Darry.

"I wonder why such fellows as Timothy Hinman were ever created,"

Tom went on. "Every time I think about the gentlemanly Timmy I feel as though I wanted to kick something."