Sidling along the rear wall of the grand stand, he reached the corner and thrust out his head. The big gate was open--the gate through which he had hoped to pa.s.s big with pride, a man among his fellows. A steady current of humanity in summer garb was streaming through. There were carriages by the score, the horses driven by young men, many of whom Willie, from his peculiar point of vantage, recognized. On the seats beside them were girls--"their girls," he speculated mentally with an unvoiced sneer. But mostly the crowd was on foot, scrambling, pushing, jostling. Every individual in the throng seemed bent upon being the first to reach the grand stand and it was a fine sight to the small boy, peering around the corner, to see them run. Two men detached themselves from the crowd and seemed to him to be making directly for where he stood. Willie Trigger wasted no time in idle speculation as to their purpose. Turning heel he ran. He plunged around the upper end of the stand. The door there was open. He disappeared into the long room directly beneath the seats. He was familiar with the floor plan. He knew that the part.i.tion on his left was false and that the various little doors on the right opened into tiny dressing rooms. He knew that the one door on the left offered access, if unfastened, to the cramped and crowded s.p.a.ce beneath the lower tiers of seats,--a dark hole used these many years as a catch-all for the _debris_ of the grounds, old cans, broken bottles, worn out shoes, and ancient hoop-skirts. He tried the door; it opened and he pulled it shut after him, just as the door at the end was flung back and the two men entered.

"Where's his room?" he heard asked, in an undertone; then the heavy footfalls on the loose boards of the floor.

His eyes became adjusted to the darkness and through the many c.h.i.n.ks of the part.i.tion he perceived the men. He recognized them as those who had haggled with the hackman at the Cook House two days before. He held his breath, and, as there really was nothing else for him to do, became an eavesdropper.

"Punky, we got t' separate," Giddings said. "They'll be next if you don't; it'll be all right for you to drop in here while they're dressin'

but don't be wise. And for heaven's sake, don't get gay; it's a long chance you're takin' and you'll take it I know, with five hundred dollars in the balance."

"Don't you worry," Punky replied significantly. "I'm takin' no chances; that's why I got the dope. You couldn't buy this Bunny for a million; and you say Morrison's as bad. You just leave it to me. I'll be hangin'

around, you bet. When you're dishin' up the soft stuff, you just call me and say, 'Here, take this in there.' I'll take it--in she goes--and if it don't mean Morrison'll win this here Intercollegiate, I'm a lobster, good and plenty. They'd never git next in the world."

"Well, for heaven's sake don't put in too much," Giddings muttered.

"Leave it to me,"--was the terse reply and then they went into one of the dressing-rooms and their voices came only in m.u.f.fled tone to Willie in his hiding-place.

He was not quite certain of the meaning of what he had heard. He was only certain of the name--"Bunny." Who these men were he did not dream.

Besides, it was none of his affairs. There was one thing however that he _did_ know, and that definitely; he could not hope to see the sports from where he crouched. Noiselessly he opened the door. It did not creak. He tiptoed down the long room. As he neared the end, the door there was opened suddenly from without and a score of men pressed in.

Willie Trigger whistled as loud as he could and walked on. The whistle, born of boyhood's genius, saved him. Ordinarily the presence of a small boy in the dressing-room would perhaps have occasioned surprise, but on this particular occasion the small boy whistled so shrilly and walked so independently with his hands deep in the pockets of his knickerbockers that no one spoke to him; no one seemed even to notice him. He strode out of the building bravely, crept under the fence at the side of the track and strolled into the paddock, scuffing the gra.s.s and still whistling.

V

Wilma Morey, exquisitely dainty in a wealth of fluffy muslin flounces and little bows of ribbon as pink as her pretty cheeks, found a particularly excellent seat in the first tier, close to the rail. From where she sat she could sweep with her dancing eyes the entire course, the crowded paddock, and the stretch of open on beyond. The wire was immediately below her and directly opposite was the judges' stand.

Perceiving these manifold advantages of her position, she settled herself comfortably and patted, with most apparent content, her wealth of flounces. She was very glad that no acquaintance had slipped into the seat next hers, now occupied by a little fat man in checks. She wished to enjoy the events of the day in her own way and as privately as she might surrounded for the greater part by people with whom she had at least a nodding acquaintance.

She studied her program diligently, noted the order of events from the old fashioned "throwing of the baseball" to the "standing broad jump" in neither of which she was interested. She did not know a man among the broad jumpers and but one name in the list of baseball throwers was familiar--Schmidt, a little German, with a blonde head and blue eyes whom she had met at a soph.o.m.ore dance in the beginning of the year. So, when the sleeveless-shirted contestants ran up the track and the clean white ball was taken from its red box and tossed among them she reverted to her program nor lifted her eyes again until the loud-voiced person in the judges' stand opposite bellowed through a bright tin megaphone that the event had been won by "Schmidt, distance ----" She did not catch the distance.

"Next event!" she heard roar from the mouth of the megaphone, "the first of three heats in the hundred yards. Entries: Bunette, Michigan; Morrison, Western College; Lacy, Ohio Wesleyan; Cady, Northwestern"--and so on down the list that she followed on her program with her nimble eyes. The megaphone man was still bellowing when the atmosphere was rent by a series of yells from the paddock that would have put a horde of Comanche braves to the copper-tinted blush. The cheering was taken up by the grand stand, and canes were waved, and hats were flung into the air and lungs were split. All this because a dozen gaunt creatures in flapping "shorts" were prancing up the track in the wake of their jogging trainers. The crowd behind bore down upon the girl and she only saved herself from falling headlong over the rail by encircling a stout roof support with one arm and clinging tight.

Up the course the line formed.

"That's Morrison; he's got the post," she heard a full-lunged youngster cry.

"There's Bunny on the end!" another shouted.

"Bunny! Bunny! Bunny!" yelled the crowd and Wilma Morey's face flushed crimson. Her eyes lighted and her lips quivered with the excitement of the moment. Behind her the pressure of the crowd had given away somewhat and she leaned over the rail, eagerly, her fingers curled in the palms of her hands, every muscle tense. She saw an arm suddenly lifted above the runners' heads and caught the glint of the sunlight on the barrel of the pistol.

The report sounded a long way off, or as though her ears were m.u.f.fled.

Down the course they came, all heads low save Bunny's; he had a way of tilting his back, and breathing hard through his nose. In an instant, as she watched, they pa.s.sed the further end of the grand stand and in another the foremost had crossed the line. Pandemonium broke loose. The crowd in the paddock tore down the fence and rushed into the track surrounding these modern Mercuries. Wrapped in the robes their coaches had held out to them they were led away and the megaphone man in the judges' stand was compelled to clang the deep-throated bell quite three minutes before he was able to convince the throng that he had something very particular to say.

"First heat," he shouted. "Morrison, ten and one fifth; Bunette, ten and two-fifths; Cady, ten and a half." The stand, the crowd in the track, even the ancient circus rings in the distance swam before Wilma Morey's eyes. She lifted her handkerchief to her burning cheek. It was cruel. He had lost; lost after all his patience, all his hope, all his effort.

Conscious as she was that the first heat did not mean _all_, she yet realized that it might mean much. If she might only catch his eye, she thought, and let him know that she among all the others believed in him.

What was she thinking, she asked herself, suddenly. Then she smiled. In the buzz of conversation all about, and amid the cries from the track below she caught varying words that seemed to her, in her state of supreme suspense, to offer a modic.u.m of hope. Still--still---- She confessed to herself her disappointment. She wished that she had not come out at all.

The next event was "throwing the hammer"; and then the hurdles would be run. Should she stay? she asked herself. Involuntarily she moved toward the end of the stand where the stairs were.

"What in thunder's the matter; you going?" she heard a voice ask, then felt a strong hand on her arm. She turned and looked up into the face of her brother.

She clutched his wrist. "Oh, Nibsey," she cried, "he was beaten; wasn't he?"

He stared at her quizzically. Then he laughed and led her over to the rail. He glanced back at the crowd that pressed upon them from behind.

Bending toward her he whispered: "He's just playing 'em. Great Scott!

you didn't think _that_ was his speed, did you? Morrison was doing his best; Bunny was walking; that's all, just walking. You wait; you'll see the fastest hundred yards that was ever run on this old track. You hold your horses. Why, Morrison's trainer knows it's all off. The others--the 'also-rans'--are just waiting for the end. Morrison's trainer's running around down below like a chicken with its head off. You wait if you want to see a record smashed." And he pressed her arm rea.s.suringly, and vanished.

At the bottom of the stairs he collided with a small boy in a soiled and torn shirt waist.

"Cancha see where yer goin'?" the small boy piped after him, then mounted the stairs whistling. He pushed his way through the crowd to the rail, and wriggled to a post. Despite the yells of "Down in front," that were flung at him from the lower tiers, he clung to his position resolutely.

"There's Bunny!" he cried as the runners pranced up the track a second time. Wilma heard the lad's shrill pipe and glancing down caught his eye and smiled. He grinned. He sidled nearer to her and pressed close to the rail.

Willie Trigger decided then and there that he had never before seen such a pretty girl. She was ever so much prettier, he calculated, than the new hired girl in the house next door,--at home. He had fallen desperately in love with _her_ at first sight. Then Wilma spoke to him and his boy heart bounded.

"Do you know him, little man?" she asked, softly.

He wished she had not called him "little man" particularly with so many about, but her voice was so gentle and her eyes were so beautiful that he forgave her in his heart straightway and answered, looking down, "Uh huh; he lives 'cross th' street from our house."

Her eyes took on a greater brilliance then and a smile played about the corners of her pretty mouth.

"So you are Willie Trigger, are you?" she asked so low that he alone might hear. "Oh, I know all about _you_; he told me."

Willie Trigger never knew what joy it was to live until that instant. To think that _He_, the great Bunny, had told _Her_ all about _Him_! It rendered him for the moment speechless. Yet he gave no sign of the swelling of his heart unless a sudden kick at the post to which he clung, and a low, foolish laugh might be taken as a sign. He felt her hand upon his shoulder as the line of entries formed and was superlatively happy.

The pistol cracked. Again the runners came on, swift, straight as arrows. There had been an instant's hush at the start, but now it was forgotten in the uproar. Could it be possible, Wilma wondered, as she leaned far over the rail, hearing above all other sounds the shrill, piercing screech of Willie Trigger, that the great lank figure there at the fore of all the rest, his long legs high lifting, his head thrown back, was the same Bunny who not half an hour before had lagged the second in the race? And yet, as the creature crossed the wire below her and the air became filled with waving canes and hats and handkerchiefs, she knew that such it must have been. Her fingers tightened on the arm of the screaming lad and she drew him close beside her.

"Was that Bunny?" she asked eagerly. "They came so fast I couldn't see.

Tell me, was it?"

He looked up at her, joyful that she had called upon him in her distress, but what he said was only: "Sure; who'd yeh _think_ it was?"

She squeezed his arm and he grinned. Something of her great delight was his to know that instant, though he was only a little boy in a soiled and torn shirt waist and she a beautiful girl gay in ribbons and fluffy muslin flounces that made her look for all the world like the fairy in a certain Christmas pantomime, that was one of his fondest memories.

"And now let's see when the last will be," she said, glancing down at her program.

"They's two 'vents 'fore they run," he explained, for he had learned the order by heart long since. "They's th' pole vault and th' drop kick.

Then they'll run th' last time."

She looked at him and smiled and he smiled back quite familiarly.

"I guess I'll go down now," he said suddenly, and before she could restrain him, for she had found much amus.e.m.e.nt in his straightforward boyish admiration for one whom she, as well, admired, he had wriggled away and out of sight.

She leaned over the rail and saw him on the gra.s.s below making swiftly along the front of the stand.

For a s.p.a.ce he hovered about the edge of the crowd at the door of the dressing-rooms. His chance of entering at last was offered and gliding between divers pairs of legs he sneaked into the long, low room. All was confusion here. Half-clad men ran this way and that, calling for drinks, bath-robes and towels, and among them bustled officiously the man with the big mustache whom he had seen and heard while hidden in the dark hole on the other side of the thin part.i.tion. He glimpsed, as well, the other man; his trousers turned up, his coat and waistcoat off, his sleeves rolled to his shoulders. He was busy squeezing lemons into a pail. Presently he poured the contents of another pail into the first, then dumped a bag of sugar into the mixture which he stirred vigorously.

"Here, Morrison; don't drink that rotten water; drink this," he shouted and filled a gla.s.s from the pail. Morrison, a curly-headed man with knots of muscle on his legs that looked like coils of rope, gulped greedily.

"Here, gimme some of that; this man in here's thirsty," the familiar black mustached man called out. He took up the gla.s.s 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.