T. Haviland Hicks Senior.

by J. Raymond Elderdice.

CHAPTER I

HICKS--WILD WEST BAD MAN

"Oh, a bold, bad man was Chuckwalla Bill-- An' he lived in a shanty on Tom-cat Hill; Ten notches on the six-gun he toted on his hip-- For he'd sent ten buckos on the One-way Trip!"

Big Butch Brewster, captain and full-back of the Bannister College football squad, his behemoth bulk swathed in heavy blankets and crowded into a narrow bunk, shifted his vast tonnage restlessly. He was dreaming of the wild and woolly West, and like a six-reel Western drama thrown on the screen in a moving-picture show, he visioned in his slumbers a vivid and spectacular panorama.

The first lurid scene was the Deserted Limited held up at a tank station in the great Mojave Desert by a lone, masked bandit who winged the dreaming Butch in the shoulder, the latter being an express guard who resisted.

After the desperado, Two-Gun Steve, had forced the engineer to run the train back to a siding, he had ordered Butch to vamoose. Quite naturally, then, the collegian next found himself staggering across the arid expanse, until at last, half dead from a burning thirst, seeking vainly for a water-hole, the vast stretch of sandy, sagebrush-studded wastes shimmered into a gorgeous ocean of sparkling blue waters. Then, as he collapsed on the scorching-hot sand, helpless, the cool water so near, suddenly the scene shifted.

In quick and vivid succession, Butch Brewster beheld a burning stockade besieged by howling Indians, and a frontier town shot up by recklessly riding cowboys on a jamboree. Then he became a tenderfoot, badgered by yelling, shooting roisterers, and later a sheriff, bravely leading his posse to a sensational battle with that same Two-Gun Steve and his gang, entrenched in a rock-bound mountain defile.

Finally, he stood with hands above his head in company with other pa.s.sengers of the Sagebrush Stagecoach, while a huge, red-shirted Westerner with a fierce black mustache and a six-shooter in each hand belching bullets at Butch's dancing feet, roared out huskily: "Oh--I'm a ring-tailed roarer (bang-bang)! I'm a rip-snortin', high-falutin', loop-the-loopin'

bad man (bang-bang)! I'm wild an' woolly, an' full o' fleas, an' hard to curry below the knees--I'm a roarin' wild-cat, an' it's my night to howl (bang-bang)! Yip-yip-yip-yeee!"

Big Butch, opening his eyes and starting up, gazed about him in sheer surprise; for an instant, in that state of bewilderment that comes with sudden awakening, he almost believed himself in a Western ranch bunkhouse, and that some happy cowboy outside roared a grotesque ballad. He gazed at the interior of a rough shack built of pine boards, with bunks constructed in tiers on both sides. There were figures in them--Western cowboys, perhaps. Then it seemed, somehow, that the voice drifting from the outside was strangely familiar. Back at Bannister College, where he remembered he had gone in the dim and dusty past, he had often heard that same fog-horn voice, roaring songs of a less blood-curdling character, and accompanied by that same banjo tw.a.n.ging, which tortured the campus, and bothered would-be studious youths!

"I'm not in a moving-picture show," Butch informed himself, as he donned khaki trousers, football sweater, and heavy shoes. "I'm not on a Western ranch, either. I'm in the sleep-shack of Camp Bannister, the football training-camp of the Bannister College squad! Those fellows in the bunks are not cowboys, Indians, and bandits--they are my teammates! I did dream stuff that would shame a Wild West scenario, but I understand it all now--my dreams were influenced by T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.!"

At that dramatic moment, to substantiate his statement, the raucous voice, accompanied by resounding chords strummed on a banjo, sounded again. The vocal and instrumental chaos was frequently punctured by revolver reports, as the torturesome Caruso outside roared:

"Oh, Chuckwalla Bill thought life was sweet-- Till he met up with Sure-shot Pete; A hotter shootin' match Last Chance never saw-- But Sure-shot Pete was some quicker on the draw!"

The pachydermic Butch, fully dressed--and awake, raging in his wrath like an active volcano, glanced at his watch, and discovered that it was exactly five A.M.! Intensely pacified by this knowledge, he lumbered toward the bunkhouse door and flung it open, determined to crush the pestersome youth who thus unfeelingly disturbed the quietude of Camp Bannister at such an unearthly hour! However, his grim purpose was temporarily thwarted--before him spread a beautiful panorama, a vast canvas painted in rich hues and colors, that indescribably charming masterpiece of nature, ent.i.tled dawn.

Butch, gazing from the bunkhouse doorway toward the pebbly sh.o.r.e of the placid lake stretching out for two miles before him, beheld Old Sol, blood-red, peeping above the wooded hills on the far-off, opposite strand of Lake Conowingo; the luminous...o...b..laid a flaming pathway across the shimmering waters, and golden bars of light, like gleaming fingers outstretched, fell athwart the tall pines that towered on the high bluff back of the camp. The glorious sunshine, succeeding a flood of rosy color, inundated the scene; it bathed in a gorgeous radiance the early autumn woods, it illumined the bunkhouse, and another rude shanty known to the squad as the grub-shack, it poured down on old Hinky-d.i.n.k, the ancient negro cookee, setting the breakfast tables just outside the canvas cook-tent.

"Deed, cross mah heart, Mistah Butch," grinned old Hinky-d.i.n.k, seeing, as a motion picture director would express it, "Wrath registered on the countenance" of Butch Brewster, "Ah done tole dat young Hicks dat a bird what cain't sing an' will sing mus' be made not to sing! Ah done info'med him dat yo'-all was layin' fo' him, cause he done bus' up yo' sleep!"

A jay bird, a flashing bit of vivid blue, shot from a tall pine, jeering shrilly at Butch; out on the lake, a trout leaped above the water for an infinitesimal second, its shining scales gleaming in the sunshine. From the cook-tent, where old Hinky-d.i.n.k grumbled at the frying pan, the appetizing odor of frying fish a.s.sailed the football captain, softening his wrath.

High above the shanties, on a tall flagpole made from a straight young pine, floated a big gold and green banner, its bright colors gleaming in the sunshine; it bore the words:

CAMP BANNISTER TRAINING CAMP THE FOOTBALL SQUAD BANNISTER COLLEGE

Head Coach Corridan, smashing the precedent that had made former Gold and Green squads have their training camp at Bannister College, had brought the Varsity and second-string stars to this camp on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Conowingo, in the Pennsylvania mountains. For two weeks, one of which had pa.s.sed, they were to train at Camp Bannister, until college officially opened; swimming, hunting, cross-country runs, and a healthful outdoor existence would give the athletes superb condition, and daily scrimmages on the level field back of the bluff rounded out an eleven that promised to be the strongest in Bannister history.

As big, good-natured Butch Brewster stood in the bunkhouse doorway, his wrath at the pestiferous Hicks forgotten, in his rapture at the glorious dawn, he saw something that showed why his dreams had been of the wild West! The expression of indignation, however, yielded to one of humorous affection, as he gazed toward the sh.o.r.e.

"I can't be angry with Hicks!" breathed Butch, beholding a spectacle more impressive than dawn. "So, the irrepressible wretch has Coach Corridan's revolvers, used in starting our training sprints, and a lot of blank cartridges! He is giving an imitation of a Western bad man. No wonder I dreamed of Indians, cowboys, and hold-ups; I'll have revenge on the heartless villain, routing me out at five!"

He saw a ma.s.sive rock, rising thirty feet in air, its sheer walls scaled only by a rope-ladder the collegians had rigged up on one side. Atop of "Lookout There!" as the campers humorously designated the rock, roosted a youth who possessed the colossal structure of a splinter, and whose cherubic countenance was decorated with a Cheshire cat grin. Quite unaware that his riotous efforts had brought out the wrathful Butch Brewster, the youthful narrator of Chuckwalla Bill's stormy career continued his excessively noisy seance.

His costume was strictly in character with his song. He wore a sombrero, picked up on his Exposition trip the past vacation, a lurid red outing-shirt, and he had wrapped a blanket around each locomotive limb to imitate a cowboy's chaps. Two revolvers suspended from a loosened belt, a la wild West, and as Butch stared, the embryo Western bad man tw.a.n.ged a banjo noisily, and roared the concluding stanza of his desperado hero's history:

"Said Chuckwalla Bill, 'Oh, boys, plant me With my boots on--on the wide prair-eee'-- Where the coyotes howl, they planted Bill-- An' so far as I know, he's sleepin' there still!"

"Here they come," grinned Butch, hearing a tumult in the bunkhouse, and a confused Babel of voices. "Hicks has awakened the camp. Now watch the fellows wreak summary vengeance on his toothpick frame!"

From the sleep-shack, aroused at that weird hour by the clamor of the irrepressible youth, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., tumbled others of the squad, in varying stages of deshabille; big Beef McNaughton, right half-back, Roddy Perkins, the t.i.tian-haired right-end, Pudge Langdon, a ponderous tackle, and Monty Merriweather, a clean-cut, aggressive candidate for left end. From within, other wrathy youths howled vociferous protests at their tormentor:

"Stop that noise; put your muzzle on again, Hicks!"--"Where's the fire?

Say, Hicks, m.u.f.fle your exhaust!"--"Say, Coach, must we endure this day and night?"

The bunkhouse fairly erupted angry collegians, boiling out like bees swarming from a disturbed hive; Hefty Hollingsworth, the Herculean center-rush. Biff Pemberton, left half-back, Bunch Bingham, Tug Cardiff, and Buster Brown, three huge last-year subst.i.tutes; second-string players, Don Carterson, Cherub Challoner, Skeet Wigglesworth, and Scoop Sawyer. A dozen others, from sheer laziness, hugged their bunks devotedly, despite the terrific turmoil outside.

"It's a disgrace, a howling shame!" exploded Beef, his elephantine frame swathed in blankets to conceal a lack of vest.i.ture, "Last night, until midnight, that graceless wretch roosted on 'Lookout There' and because the glorious moonlight made him sentimental and slushy, he tw.a.n.ged his banjo and warbled such mushy stuff as 'My Love is young and fair. My Love has golden hair!' When does he expect us to sleep?"

"He doesn't!" explained Monty Merriweather, with succinct lucidity, grinning at his comrades. "Say, fellows, you know how Hicks dreads a cold shower-bath; well, some of you rage at him from the other side of the rock, while I climb up the rope-ladder and close with him! Then some of you prehistoric pachyderms ascend, and we'll chuck that pestersome insect into the cold, cold lake--"

"Done!" chuckled Butch Brewster, delightedly. So, while he, Beef McNaughton, Hefty Hollingsworth, and others beguiled the jeering Hicks, expressing in dynamic, red-hot sentences their exact opinions of his perfidy, the athletic Monty imitated a mountain-scaling Italian soldier.

He climbed stealthily up the swaying rope-ladder; nearer and nearer to the unsuspecting youth he crept, while the cherubic Hicks, to tantalize the group below, again burst forth:

"Whoop-eee! I'm a bold, bad man (bang-bang)! I got ten notches on my ole six-gun--I'm a killer. I wings a man before breakfast every day! I got a private burying-ground, where I plants my victims (bang-bang)!

Yip-yip-yip-yee! Oh, I'm a--Ouch, Monty--leggo me--Oh, I'll be good--why didn't I pull that rope-ladder up here? Don't bust my banjo --don't let Butch get me--"

Monty Merriweather, reaching the flat top of the rock, had courageously flung himself, without regard for the Bad Man's desperate record, on the startled Hicks, whose first thought was for his beloved banjo. While he held the blithesome tormentor helpless, Butch, Beef, and Roddy Perkins climbed the rope-ladder, and the grinning youth was soon in their clutches, while the collegians below, like a Roman, mob aroused by the oratory of Mr.

Mark Antony, howled for revenge:

"Bust the old banjo over his head, Butch!"--"Sing to him, Beef--that's an awful revenge on Hicks!"--"Tie him to the rock--make him miss his breakfast!"

"Hicks," growled Butch, eyeing his sunny comrade ominously, "you ought to be tarred and feathered, and shot at sunrise! When Bannister opens, you will be a Senior, and you'll disgrace '19's dignity! This is a sample of what we have endured at college for three years, and the worst is yet to come! You have committed the awful atrocity of awakening Camp Bannister at five A. M. with your ridiculous imitation, of a Western desperado. To dampen your ardor, we will chuck you into the cold lake--just as you are!"

"Help! a.s.sistance! Aid! Succor!" shouted the happy-go-lucky Hicks, as the behemoth Butch and Beef seized him, swinging him aloft with ludicrous ease, "Police! Fire! Murder! Take care of my banjo, Monty. Tell all the fellows at old Bannister I died game, and plant Hair-Trigger Bill with his boots on! Oooo, Beef, Butch, have a heart, that water is cold!"

T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., relieved of banjo and revolvers, but his shadow-like structure still clad in shoes, trousers, with imitation "chaps"

and flamboyant red shirt, with his cla.s.sic head still adorned by the sombrero, was swung back and forth by the two bulky football stars--once--twice--

"Three--Let him go!" shouted Butch Brewster, and like a falling meteor, the splinter-like youth, who had already fallen from grace, shot from the rock, head-first, disappearing with a spectacular splash in the icy waters of Lake Conowingo. Knowing Hicks to be as much at home in the water as a fish in an aquarium, the hilarious squad on sh.o.r.e prepared to jeer his reappearance above the water; however, their program was interrupted by old Hinky-d.i.n.k, who stood in the cook-tent doorway, belaboring a dishpan l.u.s.tily with a soup-ladle, and shouting:

"Breakfus' am served; fus' an' las' call fo' breakfus; all dem what am late don't git no breakfus!"

"Breakfast!" exclaimed Monty Merriweather, who, with Roddy, Butch, and Beef, remained on the rock, despite the summons of the Cookee. "Hurry up, Hicks, I'm ravenous. Say, Butch, suppose all that Western regalia makes him water-logged; he's a terribly long while down there! Didn't he look like the hero in a moving-picture feature? We've given him the water-cure, but he will do that same stunt over again. That sunny-souled Hicks is simply Incorrigible!"

A second later, the grinning, cheery countenance of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., shot above the water, and simultaneously with his appearance, just as though he had been chanting below the surface, for the entertainment of the finny denizens of Lake Conowingo, the irrepressible youth roared:

"A hotter shootin' match Last Chance never saw-- But Sure-Shot Pete was some quicker on the draw!"