The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
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the Kid knew he had deserved it. He did not try to fool himself there. He deserved to have them despise him. He had acted like a boob all along, thinking the Happy Family had changed or ever would change! He ought to have had more brains.
What he wanted to do—or what for a time he thought he wanted to do—was to take his horses and disappear with a baffling suddenness which would always remain an impenetrable mystery to all who knew him. He wanted to go so far not one of them would ever hear of him again. He thought longingly of South America or South Africa and wished there was some way of getting out of the stadium unseen; getting out with the horses, that is. Impossible, of course, but he might leave a note, giving a horse to each one of the boys; Stardust to Walt—he could go on and finish the relay race, maybe—
A childish mood, perhaps. At any rate it passed and left him listlessly aware of his responsibility to his team, his obligation to his own manhood. Quit now, because the Native Son had slapped his jaw? The Kid involuntarily drew up one knee and kicked his leg straight again, physically repelling the thought. No, he'd go on. He couldn't betray his team—nor himself, for that matter. He couldn't let the Happy Family nod and say they knew all along he was a quitter.
The Kid sat up, staring gloomily at the gray wall beside him. Something began to nag at him; something he had said and forgotten when he plunged into the abyss. He was going to prove to them all that he wasn't a failure, a false alarm. It would mean going out there and facing that laughing, jeering multitude day after day—the Kid winced at the thought—but he'd have to do it. He would if he had any guts.
Walt and Billy and Beck, coming to find him and get him on his fighting feet again, looked at one another shakenly when they saw the gray hardness of his face. Then Billy—who had been yell leader last year—jerked his head in a signal prepared five minutes before.
"Kid—Bennett! Rah! Rah! Rah! Ki-id—Ben-nett! R-r-rah!"
To be sure, the rooters were only three, but they had good lungs and they burred the last rah beautifully, and not without effect.
"Ah, dry up!" growled the Kid. But he got up and brushed the hay off his breeches, and the light began to come back into his eyes. "Who said I was out?"
"Yes, we are collegiate!" bawled a raucous voice derisively, somewhere among the horses. "Do your crowin' now, you roosters—there won't be nothin' left but feathers when the finals are called!"
"Yah—now I'll tell one!" the Kid made spirited retort. "And listen, funny-lookin', I'll tell it at the finals. Try and be there—it'll be good!"
"Attaboy!" Walt grinned. "We're just gettin' started, and there's nothin' on earth can stop us. Eh, Kid?"
"Say, you'll bust the buttons off them blue shirts if yuh pooch yourselves out any more," yelled the unseen humorist. "Mail order champeens! Six-bits per dozen! Comes in blue—and yella!"
"Yes, they told us the yellow was out of stock—they said a bunch of you guys had the yellow, and were saving it for the finals," said the Kid, peering here and there to see who the fellow was.
The reply to that was chiefly prophetic of dire failure for all college men, but there was so great a percentage of conventional and uninteresting profanity in the remarks that the Kid merely shrugged his shoulders and yielded to Walt's importunities that they go and eat.
A lunch wagon parked beside the south gate where the Kid had first entered the place lured them with its white immaculateness. They lunched satisfyingly on bread and milk with the cream showing thick and yellow in the top of the bottles when they were set before them. The Kid's mood swung back to normal. He could discuss plans again with the boys, add his hopeful guess to their optimistic estimates of the money they would win that day. He could even forget for moments at a time the humiliations of the morning and his dread of being stared at by strangers. They must wear their blue shirts, regardless of the attention they would attract. He saw that now. Walt was right; they couldn't afford to let any one turn them off the trail they had chosen to travel. They were the first small beginning of a pioneer contest team. If they weakened in one detail they might as well throw up the whole thing and quit.
So they returned to quarters and dressed in their blaring best, with freshly shaven faces, freshly brushed hats, freshly polished riding boots. Because they caught disparaging phrases as they passed lounging groups of riders, they walked with a slight swagger as if to say to this small, tense world that they knew they were good—they admitted it.
It was the kind of influence the Kid needed to stiffen his pride and his determination to win in spite of everything, but when he went to saddle Blazes for the grand entry he found a twist of paper tucked under the halter buckle where he could not fail to discover it. His fingers fumbled a little with eagerness to see what it was, and if he told you he didn't feel his heart jump in his chest he would not be telling the truth, that's all. He turned his back upon possible spying and unwound the rumpled twist. And this is what was written:
Don't let them get your goat—go on and show them you've got the stuff.
It was a girl's writing, of course. No man would go that way about it. A man could walk up and clap him on the shoulder and say it. The Kid studied the pencilled scribble, his lip between his teeth. Who was it? Joella Germain? She seemed to like him quite a lot. Some one of the other cowgirls who flung him a smile or a word as they went hurrying here and there on errands of vast importance? But most of them were married and bore themselves circumspectly as young matrons should, whether they were in chaps or silks.
If it had been some dirty dig—a slap of sarcasm, he thought, he'd know it was that darn Dulcie Harlan. The writing looked about like her. But she'd never go out of her way to cheer a fellow up; not so you could notice it! Must be Joella. Nice little thing—Joella.
But the Kid did not thrill to the thought. He came near tearing the note up and scattering it amongst the bedding, but he folded it into as small a compass as he could and buttoned it into his shirt pocket instead. Joella, of course. Nice kid, Joella. But somehow he still didn't thrill to the thought of her friendliness.
He ought to find her and thank her; let her know he had got the note all right and was grateful for her good-fellowship. He could hunt her up before the grand entry got under way. That much was due her as a matter of courtesy. But he didn't make any attempt to find her, and when he did see her riding out to take her place in the parade he did not hurry to overtake her. After all, maybe she didn't write it. Maybe—The Kid did not attempt to finish the conjecture.
Chapter XX. Scraps of Paper Help
That day, by sheer dogged determination, the Kid ran first again in the relay race; first, because his horses behaved perfectly in station; first, because they never failed to turn in and stop abruptly in one or two stiff-legged jumps; first, because the Kid timed his saddle change and remounting to the fraction of a second and, with such horses, never varied. But it was a close shave, at that. The fellow with the black and the pinto came in second, his horses a shade faster than the Kid's but nervous in station and not so accurate in turning in. They ran by a little. They tried to lunge away when the saddle was flung on their backs. Not much—better than most of the others, but enough. Beck, with nothing to do during the relay but watch and pray, told the boys in detail exactly how each string performed.
"It's clockwork, the way you ride, Kid," he said. "Folks are beginning to talk about it. Boobs that don't know anything about riding. They can see how slick you handle it. Don't you let that clock run down, what I mean. One bobble, and that Oklahoma boy has got you stopped."
"Barring accidents—some horse bumping me, maybe—there isn't going to be any bobble," said the Kid. "I know what I'm up against."
"No, you don't," Beck contradicted. "You keep your eye peeled for Slim Adley; fellow with the gray and the sorrel. He's not in the money, so far; just running on a gamble some of you'll have bad luck. He's a dirty rider, Kid. Crowds 'em when he doesn't need to. And he's thick