College freshmen -- Juvenile fiction; College stories; Male friendship -- Juvenile fiction
“Dirty ones. You remember when the Underhill Contracting Company had a
job on the Short Line a couple of years ago? Underhill was out there a
while that summer, stopping at the hotel in Brewster most of the time,
I guess, and he claims that he found out a lot about me and my people.
Shubrick had his mother and sister down here last week on a visit, and
Underhill told Shuby he’d better not introduce me; that I wasn’t the
kind of fellow he’d want his folks to meet.”
Dick got up, and his eyes were blazing out of a face that was as white
as a sheet of paper.
“There’s a limit to all things, Larry!” he broke out furiously. “Do you
suppose I could break into Prexy’s house at this time of night?”
“Of course you couldn’t,” said Larry calmly. “Why should you want to?”
“You know good and well why I want to. Underhill’s smashed every rule
and every tradition of Old Sheddon ever since he first hit the campus
last fall. He’s not only a boozer and a gambler――he’s a cheat. I stood
in for him and his crowd that time when the police caught us, and
mighty nearly got canned for it. But now I’m going to tell everything I
know!”
“You’re not going to do anything you say you will,” Larry put in,
decisively. “As I told you a minute or so ago, I can fight my own
battles.”
“Not with that kind of carrion, you can’t,” Dick denied; “you’re too
open and aboveboard. He’ll do you up if you don’t let me kill him off.”
Any further talk about the Underhill come-back had to stop just here,
because Welborn came in, wishful to know at what place in the book the
English assignment for the next day paused; and shortly afterward Dick
took his leave.
Like a regular fellow, Larry tried to forget the Underhill-Shubrick
incident; tried, also, to keep from watching his team-mates to see if
the lies had spread to the extent of making any difference, so far
as he could determine, but he was wise enough to understand that a
practice field would be exactly the place in which a bunch of fellows
wouldn’t draw any hard-and-fast social lines.
But the dirt-throwing bobbed up again early in May on a Saturday when
the newly organized ’Varsity was to put on a practice game with the
Sophomores, and this was the way of it.
As everybody knows, visitors are not usually invited to witness the
spring training games, but on this particular day there were two
outsiders, a middle-aged gentleman and a girl, in the grand stand,
guests of a Senior named MacClay, and at sight of the girl Larry was
carried swiftly back to a day in the year-before summer; to a mountain
canyon scarred and shattered in spots by the ripping of dynamite
blasts, and to the foot-board of a big locomotive gingerly towing two
Pullmans up the heavy grade.
“Remember ’em?” asked Dick, who was by this time far enough along in
his make-up work to take an occasional Saturday afternoon off on the
field.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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