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.

He pa.s.sed the back of one hand heavily across his staring eyes and broke away. At the fence he staggered again and fell against it. Wilma came up to him, there.

"Bunny, they've drugged you, you're sick! The little boy told me!"

He turned to her his drawn face. For a tiny instant a look of intelligence came back into his eyes.

"You!" he muttered. "Drug!" And with a plaintive little cry he sank to his knees. Some one brushed by her and seized him. Things, for the second time that afternoon, swam before her eyes and she moved away unsteadily. When next she looked she saw him alone, running up the track and swerving from side to side like a drunken man.

The crowd seemed to understand that a tragedy was being acted there upon the course. There was no cheering. It was as though the throng held its breath--waiting. Wilma steadied herself at the fence. She saw the gaunt figure crouch in the line of the runners. She saw the pistol raised and heard the sharp report. The tension under which the crowd had momentarily lived, was relieved by that and a cry was raised that rang in her ears for hours. She saw the line coming; advancing toward her, swiftly, surely, but more clearly than she saw the others, she saw the tall figure of Bunny at the end. His face, uplifted, was like a demon's face. His lips were tight drawn and showed his teeth and--_his eyes were shut!_ On he came in advance of all the rest, plunging, swerving. Five more strides! She closed her eyes, and when she opened them it was to see him throw up his arms and fall headlong across the line.

He lay there motionless. The other runners pa.s.sed him, and the crowd broke into the track and she saw no more.

In the judges' stand the megaphone man waited.

How she got there, whether she was carried, walked naturally, or flew, she could never tell, but of a sudden, as it seemed, Wilma discovered that she was in the grand stand again, clinging to a post at the top of the stairs, while beside her hovered Willie Trigger. She heard the bellow of the megaphone man:

"Last heat, one hundred yards! Winning time nine and four-fifths seconds, breaking the Intercollegiate record! Winner----" The crowd knew the winner and did not wait.

Her fingers relaxed in the palms of her hands. A tremor pa.s.sed over her.

She looked down, breathing hard.

"Oh, you darling!" she cried, and Willie Trigger, who had not really understood at all, hung his head in mute embarra.s.sment.

VI

That night, on a low stone horse-block in front of his mother's house sat Willie Trigger gazing at a lighted window in the second story of the house opposite, across the drawn shade of which figures pa.s.sed and pa.s.sed again. In that room he knew his hero lay sick. He wondered how sick; perhaps, he speculated, as sick as he once had been after eating many green apples. He would watch and wait. Some one surely would come out of the house before his bedtime. He had followed the hack from the grounds, had seen the long, slim body carried into the house. No one paid the least attention to him so he crossed the street and seated himself on the horse-block. It was not for him to witness the little drama that was being played behind the window shade....

Before he opened his eyes Bunny heard, like high running surf, a low and rythmic rumble. It was very soothing.

"What's the matter?" he exclaimed, suddenly, staring at Nibsey Morey who stood, like a wooden Indian, at the foot of the bed.

Then he felt something very cool against his forehead and closed his eyes again. It was no matter, he thought.

Nibsey withdrew with a nod.

"He seems to be going to sleep," Wilma said.

He heard the voice and opened his eyes again with a start.

"You here!" he muttered.

And he knew it was she by the touch of her hand upon his cheek.

She told him then what had happened. He smiled feebly, patiently, as though he realized she was only trying to comfort him.

She slipped down upon her knees beside the bed.

"Don't you understand," she whispered, and her voice sounded far away to him, "you ran so fast the others were away behind, and you broke the record, and--oh--oh--Bunny."

She hid her face on the pillow beside his.

Then it all became clear to him, her love, and the depth and meaning of it. He forgave her for what he was pleased to call, in his mind, the white lie of her comfort.

"Dearest," he murmured, dreamily, "it's all right; it's all right." He stroked her hair, feebly. Then, after a moment, he muttered, quite to himself: "What happened, anyway; why was it they wouldn't let me run?"

THE DAY OF THE GAME

_Who he was and what, we knew not; he came among us as a stranger and we took him in._

I

For an instant a hush that was more than that enveloped the grand stand, the crowded veranda of the Athletic Club, and the bleachers opposite.

And then, as though by silent signal, the immense throng got upon its feet, and with ragged cheers, broke through or leaped the boundary ropes, and bore down the field, a tidal wave of shrieking youth that police could not control.

The girls on the veranda, inspired by the ecstasy of their companions, cried shrilly and wildly waved their handkerchiefs and the little flags they carried. Many were left standing there to cheer alone, while their escorts joined the surging mob that swept upon the dirty-gray, padded and masked Olympians at the further goal.

No one seemed to pay the least attention to the Cornell giants as laggingly they came up the field close to the ropes, and slipped silently into the dressing-room, disconsolate in their defeat, their chins upon their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, their eyes upon the ground.

And, as the girls left on the veranda to care for themselves, watched, they saw eleven stuffed figures lifted in the air to ready shoulders which bent beneath their weight and thus the strange procession of triumph and of noise came up the field.

Above the heads of the moving ma.s.s of young humanity canes were waved stiffly. Hats, torn and broken, were flung about the field. In the riot of joy each man sought to shout louder, wave higher and leap further than his brother, so great was the delight the triumph of the team occasioned among them all. The little boys clinging in the trees and cl.u.s.tered on the electric towers outside the fence, cheered with the mob in the field and were glad likewise. The men in blue, waiting beside their cars in the street, just beyond the gate, grinned at one another intelligently, as roar after roar ascended to the turquois sky that domed the gridiron.

On came the throng, running, bending, stumbling, while the cheers of the flushed girls on the club house veranda rose shrilly above the deeper-throated masculine yells. The victors, dirty beyond measure, plastered with the brown, clinging mud in which they had so valiantly wallowed for a good two hours--a splendid contest for the honor of the colors on their stockings--rode their fellows' shoulders uncomfortably, as the cavalcade, shapeless, soulless, inchoate but voiceful, seethed and surged across the field. One of them, to save himself from falling, clutched wildly at the long hair of the bareheaded youth beneath him; another planted a heavy heel unwittingly in a second bearer's mouth, and the youth wrenched free and ran up the field sopping his b.l.o.o.d.y lips, but turning each tenth step to wave his reddened handkerchief and yell.

It was such a scene as might have been witnessed by Grecian maidens in the Stadium of old, when other young giants--the distant ancestors of these borne now in triumph--were themselves carried, as loftily, as triumphantly, down the course.