Ann Arbor (Mich.) -- Fiction; Short stories, American
"Here, gimme some of that; this man in here's thirsty," the familiar
black mustached man called out. He took up the glass and moved toward
the half-open door of one of the little dressing-rooms. Willie Trigger
was by some instinctive force, seemingly, moved to sudden action. He was
about to slip past the black mustached man and enter the little room
when he was perceived. A kick was aimed at him and he was adjured to
"make himself scarce or git his block knocked off." Thoroughly
frightened, he slouched away and ran into the open where people were too
interested in other things to knock the blocks off little boys and where
it didn't smell so stuffy and unpleasant.
He sped across the track where the uprights had been erected for the
pole vaulting, and later he became one of the group that formed a
crescent behind the football kickers. He watched, with admiration
unconcealed, the unerring pedal movements of the heavily shod young men
who sent the ball so beautifully skyward.
Meanwhile, Wilma awaited impatiently at the grand stand rail the last
heat in the sprint event. She saw the drop-kickers leave the paddock and
heard indistinctly the record that was called across from the tower-like
judges' stand; but these things were not to her liking. Her eyes upon
the track below, she saw a young man in sweater and knee breeches vault
the fence beside the stretch and rush across. He shouted a word to the
megaphone man who at once lifted the glistening instrument to his lips
and shouted:
"Is there a doctor on the grand stand? He's wanted down below. A man has
been taken suddenly sick."
The pink fled from her cheeks. Then she smiled. She realized the
absurdity of the little spasm of fear that had seized her. She glanced
down at her card again.
The runners were jogging up the stretch. She counted them. There was one
missing. Another look of fright came into her eyes. She felt some one
tugging at her dress. She turned impatiently and gazed down into the now
pale face of Willie Trigger.
"It's Bunny!" he muttered almost incoherently, "oh, it's Bunny! A man
gave him something to make him sick."
She seized him by the shoulder and held her face close to his.
"What did you say--_gave_ him something!" she exclaimed.
"Yes; come quick," and she felt that the child was drawing her through
the thick of the crowd at the rail, to the stairs at the further end.
Afterward she could not tell how it was managed or what she did. But she
followed the lad around the stand, at the back, to the dressing-room
door and then, of a sudden, as though due to the shock induced by the
picture she there beheld, her senses returned to her with a rush. The
crescent at the door parted and she saw Bunny, his face pale and drawn,
stagger forward and lean heavily against the jamb. A man whom she did
not recognize clung to one of his arms and beseeched him to lie down.
"No," he mumbled thickly. "Run--run, I tell you--lemme go!" He jerked
his arm from the other's clutch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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