On Your Mark! A Story of College Life and Athletics Read online

  CHAPTER VII

  "THE RANCH"

  It is human nature to dwell at length upon our successes and dismissour failures with a word. The writer has given a chapter to thefreshman game, but he is going to tell the story of the varsitycontest, which occurred a week later, in a paragraph.

  Robinson won in a clean, hard-fought game--11 to 0. Her rival neverapproached a score in either half, but by the grimmest sort ofdefensive work she managed to keep the final figures down to half ofwhat they might have been had she gone to pieces for an instant. Halplayed a brilliant game at full-back in that contest, and proved hisright to the position. Thus the football season at Erskine ended indecisive defeat. It was an honorable defeat, to be sure; but, since atErskine, as at other colleges in this country, they play more for thesake of winning than for love of the game, there were doleful facesa-plenty, and on Sunday the college had the appearance of a placesmitten with the plague.

  But Monday morning came and brought recitations and lectures, just asthough there was no such thing as football, and the college settledback into the usual routine. At noon the sting of defeat was forgotten.At night, fellows were cheerfully discussing the chances for the nextyear. If we take defeat too hard, at least we recover quickly; there ishope for us in that.

  Allan, for all that he was quite as patriotic as any, felt the defeatof the varsity team less than he did the cessation of track work. Thelatter left him at first feeling like a fish out of water. Tommy Sweetsuggested that he might rig up a treadmill in his room and run to hisheart's content, like a squirrel in a wire cage. But Tommy wouldn'tpromise to feed him all the peanuts he could eat, and so Allan refusedto try the scheme. Instead, he spent much of his time out-of-doors andtook long walks and runs out along the river or struck off westward toMillport.

  On many of these excursions he was accompanied by Peter Burley.Peter--or more properly Pete, since that was the name he declared tobe the proper one--Pete couldn't be persuaded to do any running, buthe was willing to walk any distance and in any direction, seeming tocare very little whether he ever got back to Centerport or didn't. Andas his long legs took him over the ground about as fast as Allan couldjog, the latter never suffered for want of exercise while in Pete'scompany.

  The friendship between the two had grown rapidly, until now Pete'sprophecy that they were to be "partners" had come true. The moreAllan saw of the older boy the more he found to like, but just whatthe qualities were which drew him to Pete he would have found it hardto tell. The latter's never-failing good-nature was undoubtedly oneof them, but that alone was not accountable. Perhaps Pete would haveexperienced quite as much difficulty had he been called upon to say whyhe had been attracted by Allan the first time he had seen him, or whyhe had perseveringly sought his friendship ever since. The two wereradically dissimilar, but even that isn't sufficient to explain whyeach was attracted toward the other. Come to think of it, however, Idon't believe either Allan or Pete troubled himself about the problem,and so why should we?

  Pete's sudden leap into fame consequent upon his work against Robinsonin the freshman game had left him unaffected. He had become a collegehero in an hour, but none could see that it ever made any differenceto him. He brushed congratulation aside good-naturedly and ridiculedpraise.

  "Stop your fool talk!" he would say. "I didn't rope any steers. It wasthat little jack-rabbit, Poor, that whooped things up and won thegame. I didn't do a thing but shove 'em round some." And when it washinted that the shoving around was what brought victory, "Get out!" hewould growl. "Science is what does the business, and I don't know thefirst thing about the game."

  And so, while Peter was worshiped by the freshman class and verygenerally respected by the others, he wasn't at all the popularconception of a college hero. And there were three fellows, at least,who liked him all the better for it.

  Those three were Allan, Tommy, and Hal. Since that first meeting inAllan's room, the four had been much together. Tommy showed up at thegatherings less frequently than any one of the others, for Tommy, inhis own words, "had a lot of mighty difficult stunts to do."

  Sometimes the quartet met in Allan's room, sometimes in Hal's, lessfrequently in Tommy's--for Tommy lived up two flights of stairs inMcLean Hall, and Pete had a horror of climbing stairs. The onlyclimbing he liked, he said, was climbing into a saddle. That was why heoften found fault with his own apartments.

  These were on the second floor of a plain clap-boarded building atthe corner of Town Lane and Center Street, with the railroad but afew hundred feet distant and the fire-house next door. Pete declaredhe liked the noise, and could never study so well as when theswitch-engine was shunting cars to and fro at the end of the lane orthe fire-bell was clanging an infrequent alarm. As few ever saw himstudying, the statement sounded plausible.

  The ground floor of the building was occupied by a dealer in harnessand leather; the third floor consisted of an empty loft. Across thelane--and the lane wasn't wide enough to boast of--was a livery stable.On the opposite corner was a carriage repair-shop and warehouse. A fewdoors below was a wheelwright's. The upper floors of the neighboringstructures were occupied by carpenters, plumbers, roofers, and masons.

  Through Pete's windows, which were invariably open, be the weather whatit might, floated in a strange and penetrating aroma--a mingled bouquetof coal-smoke from the railroad, of the odor of pine-shavings from thecarpenter shops, of the pungent smell of leather from below, and of thefragrance from the stable across the street. Pete said it was healthfuland satisfying. None disputed the latter quality. Pete's rooms--therewere two of them--were quite as unique as his surroundings.

  Picture a bare, plank-ceiled loft, some forty feet long by twenty feetbroad, divided in the exact center by a partition of half-inch matchedboards and lighted by five windows. Imagine the walls and ceilingpainted a pea-green, mentally hang two big oil-lamps--one in the middleof each room--from the latter, and spread half a dozen skins--bear,coyote, antelope, and cougar--over the discolored floor, and youhave Pete's apartments. There was a door in the partition, but as itwouldn't close, owing to inequalities in the casing, it was always open.

  The furniture, of which there was very little, represented Centerport'sbest: there was a "golden-oak" bureau, a "Flemish-oak" easy chair, a"Chippendale" card-table--I am employing the dealer's language--aniron bedstead, a "mahogany" study table, a sprinkling of brightlyupholstered, straight-backed chairs, and a few other pieces, equallyhighly polished and equally disturbing to the esthetic eye.

  The walls were almost, but not quite, bare. Pete didn't care forpictures, but on nails driven at haphazard hung a silver-mountedbridle, a rawhide lariat, a villainous-looking pair of Mexicanwheel-spurs, a leather-banded sombrero, a cartridge-belt and holster,the latter holding a revolver, a leather quirt, and an Indian war-drum,while over the bedstead in the back room the head of a grizzly bearperpetually resented intrusion with snarling lips. The head of amountain-sheep held a place of honor in the other apartment, andunderneath it hung a Navajo Indian blanket, almost worth its weight ingold.

  There were only two objects that might have been set down in aninventory as pictures: one was an advertising calendar and the other aphotograph of Pete's mother, who had died soon after Pete's advent inthe world. The photograph shared the top of the dazzling yellow bureauwith Pete's brushes and shaving utensils.

  In a corner of the front room was a trunk, covered with a yellow andred saddle-blanket. Against it leaned two guns--a battered Winchestercarbine and a handsome two-barreled 12-gauge shot-gun. In anothercorner, as though thrown there the moment before, lay a brown leatherstock saddle, with big hooded stirrups. The card-table held Pete'ssmoking things--two corn-cob pipes, a small sack of granulated tobacco,and an ash-tray. The tobacco usually distributed itself over the tableand the ashes always blew onto the floor.

  In bright weather, the sunlight streamed in through three of the fivewindows and crossed the rooms in golden shafts, wherein the dustatoms danced and swirled. With the sunlight came t
he sounds of theneighborhood--the clang of the blacksmith's sledge against the anvil,the screech of the carpenter's plane, the steady _tap_, _tap_, _tap_ ofthe harness-maker's hammer, the stamping of horses' hoofs, the clamorof passing trains, and the chatter of the loiterers below the windows.Pete called the front room the "corral," the rear room the "stable,"the whole the "Ranch."

  If I have risked tiring the reader with too long a description ofPete's dwelling-place, it is because, in spite of their strangefurnishings and hideous green walls, the rooms were far more homelikethan many a smart suite in Grace Hall, and, to quote Tommy again,were "Pete through and through." Further, while Allan's, Hal's, andTommy's rooms sometimes served as meeting-places for the four, thechambers over the harness-shop were their favorite resort. There wasan undeniable charm about them; and if you could prevail upon Pete toclose a few of the windows in cold weather, and if you didn't mindsitting upon the tables and the trunk, you could be very comfy at theRanch.