CHAPTER II

THE MILE RUN

Ar last the day of the games dawned, as days have had a habit of doing for several years back. The whole school gathered at the station to go with their team to the college town where the games were to be held. There was Mike, wearing a wonderful new Panama, ostentatiously cheerful and full of good stories and funny jokes, as always before a competition. Mr. Sanford was there in white flannels, and Pop Smith, the pop-corn man, a little old man with a long white beard who looked like a gnome and who claimed to be the official mascot of the Cornwall team. Besides these there were several thousand rooters—at least, they sounded like several thousand. Probably, if counted by numbers and not by noise, they would total fifty. Just as the train was about to start, there was a volley of toots, and down the road whirled a red racer, out of which tumbled old Jim Donegan and Jud Adams.

"I'm here to see fair play," rumbled the lumber-king.

"Yep," piped up old Jud, to Mike, "I'm comin' too, in case any of them kids give out and you need a real runner."

Every seat in the vast grand stand which surrounded the college athletic field was filled with rooters from the different schools belonging to the association. As Cornwall High marched on down to their seats, there was a tumult of shouts and laughter from thousands of boys and girls wearing other school colors. "Now we can start," howled one cheer-leader through a megaphone. "The Backwoodsmen are here!"

"Three cheers for the Also-Rans!" yelled another.

"Rah! Rah! Rah! for the Tail-Enders!" came from across the field.

"You just wait a bit, you fellows over there!" bellowed Jim Donegan, with his face redder than his tie, which was saying a good deal. "We'll show you some surprises to-day." "Don't talk back to them," suggested the principal; you 'll only make them worse."

"They can't be any worse!" howled old Jim. "I like to talk back to 'em."

In the stillness of the dressing-rooms the Cornwall team missed all this. The air was heavy with the smell of raw alcohol, with which brawny rubbers massaged the muscles on which so much depended that day. Worried trainers and troubled captains passed back and forth whispering last words of advice and warning. Here and there could be caught glimpses of boy athletes, all looking a little white and drawn. Some chewed gum, others wore a fixed smile. Some yawned continually, and some shivered as if with a chill as the strain of the weary waiting affected each one of them.

Old Mike wasted very little time in making speeches.

"Lie down, you fellows; keep off your feet and take things easy," he counseled. "You all feel nervous and scared and uncomfortable and as if you can't run worth a cent. That's the way you ought to feel before a race. I handled Owen the day he first ran under even time in the hundred. Just before the final heat he could n't talk, his teeth chattered so; but he went out and beat the pick of the world. Charlie Kilpatrick could n't eat for two days before the international games

between Great Britain and the United States at Manhattan Field in 1895. I had to threaten to lick him to keep him from starvin' to death; yet he went out and beat the other side all to death and broke the world's record in the halfmile. You chaps ain't anything to look at, a homelier bunch I never saw," went on the old man, “but—you 're fit to run for your lives and you 're going to clean up these city fellows to-day."

So he went on, beguiling the time with many an athletic story, jollying, joking, encouraging, until his team were as comfortable as could be expected. Suddenly a shrill whistle blew outside. Then a leather-voiced announcer bellowed through a megaphone at the door of the training-house. "All out for the first heat of the hundred!"

Boots Lockwood was the only sprinter in the school who had shown enough speed to be entered in the dashes. He was a long, gawky, awkward boy with a comical freckled face and always joking. Only Mike, that judge of boys and men, knew what fire and force were hidden in that awkward body.

"Don't hurry," he said craftily. "It'll be five minutes at least before they 're ready for this heat. Let the rest of 'em worry out on the track awhile."

Then Sid, the rubber, slapped a big handful of raw alcohol on Boots's sinewy back and suppled up his lithe muscles with a final rubdown. Thrilling all over with the cold tingle of the alcohol, Boots laced on his spiked shoes, and, gripping his new corks, trotted out to join the rest of the entries on the long straightaway, where the dash was to be run. The rest of the waiting team shouted encouragement to him.

"Go to it, old scout!" yelled Captain Bright, from his corner.

than usual as his face whitened under the strain. He trotted back and forth a few times to limber up, and a moment later found himself lined up in the first heat. There was such a crowded entry that the clerk announced that first place alone would qualify in the finals. This meant hard going for Boots, for. of the other three men, one was Dole, the winner of the year before, while Black, the champion of the Hill School, the largest in the State, had broken the interscholastic record at his school spring games.

"Now-boys-I 'll-tell-you-to-get-set -and-then-fire-you-off. Any-man

breaking-off-his-mark-before-the-pis

tol,-goes-back-a-yard," clattered the starter, jumbling the words together according to the time-honored custom of starters.

Boots drew the outside place. There the going was a little soft, but he did not have a man on each side of him. The champion had the inside position, while next to Boots was the record-breaker from Hill. For a moment the whole place throbbed with the cheers of the different schools, while Boots unconcernedly dug his marks in the cinders with his spiked shoes.

"On your marks!" shouted the starter, and Boots fitted his feet into the little holes which he had dug..

"Get set!" came next.

Remembering the advice of the crafty Mike, who had been one of the greatest of professional sprinters in his day, Boots bent over as slowly as possible, knowing that the starter would not shoot the pistol until every competitor was in place. As he finally put his hands on the ground, fully half a second after the others, he straightened out his arms and leaped forward from both feet just as the pistol went off. It was a perfect start, and only

"Show me how to do it," urged Ted Bacon, who was in the next event-the quarter-mile. Quite different were the remarks that greeted him on the track, where the contestants were waiting for the clerk of the course to finish his roll-call.

"Cornwall 's here; let 's go!" one shouted. "Don't make him run; give him the heat!" yelled another; while even the badged officials found time to smile at the gawky, frecklefaced country boy. None of this made any impression on Boots. He grinned cheerfully. it spectators, officials, and competitors alike, although his freckles stood out a little brighter

enough to hold back. Like a flash he broke away a good yard ahead of the others. The unexpectedness of being beaten off their marks by an unknown runner flagged the spirits of the others for the tiniest fraction of a second, and sprinting is made up of fractions. At the fifty, Boots was fully six feet ahead of his field. Then the record-holder, who was a wonderful finisher, began steadily to overhaul him, with the other two hard on his shoulder. Holding his breath and running as he had never run before, Boots sped down his lane on the long smooth track, while closer and closer he could hear the pat-pat of the speeding feet behind. Ten yards from the finish, the other

room, everybody pounded him on the back. The four-forty, as the quarter-mile is termed in cinder-path parlance, came next. It was to be run in one heat, and Billy Darby sallied forth to do or die. Following Mike's directions, he leaped into the lead at the crack of the pistol, and ran his first hundred yards at sprinting speed, forging far ahead of the field. Unfortunately, he let the excitement of the race run away with his judgment. With a

the announcer bellowed to the world at large: "Lockwood, Cornwall High, wins first heat of the hundred! Time, ten flat!"

Boots jogged back to find that the world had changed. There were scattering cheers instead of jeers everywhere, while from the faraway section that had been assigned to the Cornwall High School came a storm of shouts and yells, which always ended with "Boots Lockwood!" Old Mike met him at the start and slapped him joyfully on the back.

"You 're a corker, me boy!" he shouted. "I knew you could do it. You 've killed off the worst in the first heat. The final 's a pipe for you."

When Boots came back to the dressing

long lead and going strong, it seemed an easy matter to cover the rest of the distance at top speed; but no human legs and lungs have yet been constructed which will allow man or boy to sprint a quarter-mile without slowing up somewhere. Poor Billy turned into the stretch well ahead of the bunch, but here his legs began to wabble, and a red-haired youngster from the Hopkins Grammar School flashed by him, and, almost at the tape, an entry from the Haverford school crowded past him into second place. At any rate he had scored, for first place counted five points, second, two, and third, one.

In the meantime, Buck Whittlesey and Ted Bacon, the biggest and strongest boys at the

Cornwall school, had been giving the field a taste of country muscle in the twelve-pound shot. Although neither of them had been able to master the tricky drive of the arm and the snappy reverse of body and legs which enables a shot-putter to get everything possible into his put, yet by main strength they managed to score three points for the school with a second and third respectively. By this time the final of the hundred had been called, and Boots fulfilled Mike's prophecy and romped away from his field, winning the event by a full yard and scoring five points with a first for Cornwall again in even time. In the twotwenty, the experience and finishing powers of Black of Hill were a little too much for him, and Boots had to be content with second place.

When the pistol cracked for the start of the half-mile, there did not seem to be a chance for Johnnie Morgan, Cornwall's entry to score a place; but after a game race, he staggered in an unexpected second, adding two more points to Cornwall's mounting score.

The hurdles hurt Cornwall more than any other event. Try as he would, Mike had not been able to teach any of the boys in a single season the hurdle step, which looks so easy and is really so difficult. Hill fattened her score by eleven points in those two events, and went well into the lead. The high jump was another event which helped Hill and hindered Cornwall. Not a point did her entries score. In the broad jump, Dick Johnstone hit the take-off only once in three tries, but that once carried him over twenty feet and gave Cornwall another second.

It was evident that the fight lay between Hill and Cornwall, and that, in order to win, it would be necessary for Cornwall to score firsts in all of the three remaining events. As the audience realized that the fight was between the largest and the smallest of the entries, a wave of sympathy went out toward Cornwall. Flags flared and fluttered through the different sections everywhere, and there was a storm of cheers and shouts, all ending with "Cornwall!" Above them all, however, could still be heard the shattering "Brek-ekek-kek!" cheer of the great Hill School, which had sent over a thousand rooters to the games that day. Old Mike, who had been coaching Dick at the jumping-pit, came hurrying in.

"Everybody's yellin' for Cornwall!" he said. "Everybody wants us to down Hill. We can do it! Now, fellows, a long cheer for Captain Bright, who 's goin' to win the polevault; for Joe Couteau, who 's got the five

mile in his pocket; and for good old Freddic Perkins, who 's goin' to end up by takin' first place in the mile! Now altogether!"

The little team stood up and gathere around Mike, who was standing on the rubbing-table. Some were covered with the grime and sweat of their races, others were still sick and faint from their efforts. Some had won and others had lost, but all alike joined in the long cheer of the Cornwall High School with the names of the last three competitors at the end. The echoes had hardly died away when the door burst open and in rushed old Jim Donegan, his hat off and his ristiing gray hair standing up like the quills of a porcupine. He rushed to the rubbing-table, and, catching up the twelve-pound shot which lay there, banged the long-suffering table for attention.

"Boys," he yelled, "I 'm an old man and I have knocked all around the world and I 've seen many a grand scrap in my time, but never have I seen such a set of young tigers as you fellows are! I'm proud of every one of you! We 've got these Hill School chaps licked to a frazzle. All we got to do is to win these last three events, an' I 'll tell the world -we're goin' to do it! There ain't nobody can down old Bill Bright or beat out Joc Couteau. They licked a gang of moonshiners, and they'll just eat up that Hill team. Moreover, I 've got a hunch right now that Freddie Perkins gobbles up the mile. Them 's my sentiments!" and the old man banged the twelve-pound shot down on the table and rushed out again, to yell for Cornwall.

While they were finishing the finals in the high and low hurdles, in neither of which Cornwall had won a place, Will Bright had been vaulting surely and steadily through the preliminary stages of that long-drawn-out event, the pole-vault. At eleven feet, all the competitors had dropped out except Will and an entry from Hopkins and Hill respectively. Once, twice, and three times each of the others essayed the bar, only to fail.

On his first try, Will soared up like a bird, with a perfect take-off. Then, just as he started the arching swing which was to carry him over, there was a splintering crack and the ash pole broke at some hidden flaw about five feet from the end. There was a shout of warning and horror from the spectators as Will's body plunged down headlong toward the jagged point. The boy's quick eye, however, saw his danger even as he fell. With a writhing twist in mid air, he swung his body out toward the landing-pit, just grazing the

sharp fragment, which ripped through his jersey, tearing the skin of his left side. Instantly the whole front of his running-shirt was stained with bright red. Half a dozen men rushed to pick him up, but Mike was there first of all.

"Some one get a doctor!" shouted a badged official, bustling up.

"I'm going on," panted Will, recovering his breath, which had been knocked out of him by the fall, "if I can get a pole."

"Say, Cornwall, you 're a good sport!" said the defeated Hill entry. "Take my pole. I'd rather be beaten by you than anybody I know."

"That's the talk," said old Mike, heartily, as Will shook hands with his late opponent. "There 's good sporting blood in both of you."

The Hill pole was a built-up bamboo, with the strength and snap of a steel spring. With a good run, Will made a beautiful take-off. Up and up he rose in the air until he was level with the bar. Suddenly he slid his left hand up to his right with a quick snap, and his body arched up and over the bar. His progress back to the dressing-house was a triumph. Halfway back, they met Jim Donegan tearing along toward them, wearing the flowing and resplendent badge of an inspector of the course, which he had inveigled out of the management. His duties, as he understood them, were to run around the field and root early and often for Cornwall, in spite of every attempt on the part of other officials to stop him.

"Five more points!" he chanted ecstatically, patting Will gently on his moist back. "We 've got 'em beat!"

Just as they reached the dressing-house, the five-mile event was announced.

"Go to it, boy!" yelled old Jim to Joe Couteau, Cornwall's only entry for that event. "Remember how you used to run down jackrabbits in the Northwest. Hustle out and tear off five more points for Cornwall."

Joe grinned cheerfully around the circle as he laced on the pair of moccasins which, like that other great Indian distance-runner, Deerfoot, he wore in place of spiked shoes. These moccasins and his dark face made a great sensation.

"Hi! hi!" bellowed the Hill School contingent. "Get on to the Injun, Big Chief, Woo-woo! Whoo-00-00-00-00!" and striking their mouths with their hands, they achieved what they fondly believed to be an Indian war-whoop. Although there were twelve entries, yet the crowd believed that there was only one man in the race. That was Lowell

of Haverford, the record-holder who for two years had won the event easily. The only son of an old Boston family, he was much shocked that he should be expected to run against an Indian. At the end of the first mile he led the bunch by fully fifty yards.

Joe as he passed the starting-post for the fourth time began to increase his speed. One by one he cut down the men ahead of him, and by the time that the fifth quarter was finished he was abreast of the little bunch of five runners who were toiling along nearest the far-away leader. Then without an effort and with a swinging, easy gait he began to go through the field. One or two tried to fight him off, but the steady, even gait which ate up the ground like fire wore them down until he was running second to Lowell, who was now nearly a hundred yards in the lead. At the end of the third mile, Joe had cut this down to thirty yards. As he swung past the starting-post at the beginning of the fifth and last mile, it was as if a mask had suddenly dropped from his impassive face, so keen and eager and confident it showed. The long tireless lope quickened and quickened until Lowell heard the rapid, even pat-pat of moccasined feet coming nearer and nearer. Throwing a glance over his shoulder, he caught sight of the dark face of the Indian surging up beside him. Stung by the sight, he put on a burst of speed and for a hundred yards or so drew away well ahead of his opponent. Joe kept on unconcernedly with the same swinging, even gait. Without looking at his opponent, he seemed far more interested in the shouting, cheering crowds in the grand stand.

Soon the approaching beat of the moccasins stung Lowell to a new effort, which for a moment carried him out of ear-shot. Yet even as slackened his speed, the sound of the flying feet behind him came relentlessly nearer and nearer, until the Indian's even breathing was at his shoulder. Again he spurted, but it was a last effort, and in a few moments Joe was once more and for the last time abreast of him. As they ran neck and neck, the two were in strange contrast. Lowell's face was wrinkled and drawn as he strained every nerve and muscle to hold his place, while the Indian, with his effortless gait, seemed to regard his exhausted rival with an amused curiosity. At the end of another lap the Indian quickened his even stride and took the lead, drawing away from his opponent with every beat of his moccasined feet. Again and again Lowell