Dick Randall, the Young Athlete

by Ellery H. Clark

CHAPTER V

[DUNCAN MCDONALD]

On a Saturday afternoon, a fortnight after the shooting trip to the lake, Dick Randall and Jim Putnam, on their way across the yard, came face to face with Harry Allen and Ned Brewster, sauntering leisurely over toward the gym. The day, although the month was December, was warm and clear; the ground lay bare of snow; altogether it was an afternoon when out of doors seemed far more attractive than in.

Allen, halting them, struck an attitude, raised one arm, and started to declaim. "Whither away, whither away--" he began, and then, as Brewster planted a well-aimed blow in the small of his back, he came abruptly to a stop. "Confound you, Ned," he said, "that hurt. Can't you appreciate good poetry? I never saw such a fellow. Well, if I've got to descend to vulgar prose, where do you chaps think you're going, anyway?"

Randall laughed, and in a tone of exaggerated deference, answered, "With your kind permission, Mr. Poet, we are 'whithering away' to the rustic cottage of Mr. McDonald, leader of strike-breakers, who has now recovered, and has been out of the hospital for some days. Mr. McDonald has won his fight; the 'passel o' furriners,' as my friend at the livery stable calls them, has been put to rout, and Mr. McDonald wishes to have an opportunity to thank his gallant rescuers in person. Isn't that what we are, Jim? Gallant rescuers? Of course we are."

Putnam nodded. "Sure," he answered, "of course. At least you are. I don't know whether I can qualify or not. I was driving the mare, you know. But still, on the whole, I believe that took more courage than fighting strikers. Oh, yes, we're heroes, all right, and we're going down to be properly thanked."

Brewster groaned. "My, but you're a chesty pair," he scoffed. "I don't suppose you'd let two ordinary mortals come along and breathe the same air with heroes, would you, now? Harry and I were just saying that the gym doesn't seem to offer much attraction on a day like this."

Randall bowed low. "My dear young men," he said, "if my co-hero, Mr. Putnam, the gentleman on my left, has no objection, we will permit you to go. I think that the sight of virtue rewarded would be a most useful lesson to you both. Perhaps Mr. Tennyson here might immortalize the whole thing in what he thinks is verse."

Brewster mournfully shook his head. "Oh, this is awful," he said, "we'll have to go with them, Harry. I wouldn't trust them alone, now. They're so puffed up that one good gust of wind would blow them clear away, and then we'd be minus our best high jumper, and our star quarter miler. So come on and we'll look after them. It's hard on us, I know, but it's our duty to the school."

They left the yard, walked down past the track, and then struck out straight across the fields on their long tramp. As they left the school boundaries behind them Allen turned quickly to Dick. "Well, all jokes aside," he exclaimed, "your friend's recovered, hasn't he?"

"Yes," Randall answered, "he's all right again now. They hit him a pretty good crack on the arm--broke a bone in his wrist, I believe--and he had a nasty cut in the shoulder, and lost quite a lot of blood. But they fixed him up at the hospital. It wasn't really anything serious."

"How did the boy come into it?" asked Brewster.

"Why," returned Randall, "it was quite a story. The boy was a French Canadian. His mother's dead and he was living alone with his father, up north of the village. The father was one of the strikers, but I guess he was rather a chicken-hearted kind of individual, for when the strike-breakers arrived and things began to look squally he got out of town, and left the little boy up there in the shanty, all alone. McDonald was the head man among the strike-breakers, and in the course of the evening he happened to hear about it and he said right away that he was going up to get the boy. His friends told him he was a fool to do it, but he said no one was going to bother him, anyway, and if they did he guessed he could look out for himself. Well, the strikers got wind of it and three of them laid for him when he was coming back with the boy. He said it was the neatest ambush you could imagine. He was on the watch for them, he thought, and he had a revolver in his pocket, and yet he walked right into them before he knew it. And I imagine he was having about all he wanted when we blew along and pulled off the great rescue scene. So that's all there was to that."

It was a good hour later when they finally came in sight of the cottage, standing by itself, far to the southward of the town. Everything about the place looked neat and clean. There was no sign of McDonald, but a little wisp of smoke curled upward from the chimney, seeming to hang motionless against the still, clear air. Putnam turned to Randall. "Think we've struck the right place, Dick?" he asked.

Dick nodded. "Seems to answer the description," he replied, and then, as they started to climb the fence surrounding the field which lay between them and the cottage he gave a little exclamation of surprise. "Why, for Heaven's sake," he cried, "talk about your track sports. What do you think of that, now?"

The others paused to follow the direction of his gaze. Sure enough, in the center of the field, between them and the cottage, were a set of high-jump standards, a take-off board for the broad jump, a shot ring, and three or four circles for throwing the hammer. They walked hastily forward, and then stopped, wondering, for, allowing for the necessary roughness of the field, everything was arranged in excellent style. Dick examined the ground in front of the standards with a critical eye, then voiced his approval. "The fellow who fixed up this place," he said, "knew his business. I believe, on a dry day like this, I could jump as high here as I could on the field at home. Who on earth do you suppose is interested in athletics around here? Couldn't be McDonald, could it, Jim?"

Putnam shook his head. "No, of course not," he answered. "A man who works in a paper mill all day isn't going to bother to build a place to practise jumping and throwing weights. Some of the boys from the village, most likely, I suppose."

They walked on across the field and knocked at the door of the cottage. Immediately they heard footsteps within, and a moment later McDonald himself appeared on the threshold. He was a tall, active-looking man, splendidly proportioned, with a keen and intelligent face. A slight pallor, and a little stiffness in the way he held his left shoulder, were the only signs which he showed of his recent encounter.

"Come in, come in," he cried, "the whole of you. I'm glad to see you, boys. I had considerable courage to ask you to come way over here, but the doctor wouldn't let me walk to the school, and I wanted to see you before I started back to work, to get a chance to thank you, fair and square, for that night. I guess, if you hadn't happened along, I wouldn't be here now. There isn't much I can do, I'm afraid, in return, only to tell you that I shan't forget it, if I ever have a chance to pay you back for what you did. And I thought--" He rose, took from the mantel two small leather cases, oblong in shape, and held them out to Randall and Putnam, one in either hand. "I thought maybe you'd like to have these for a kind of souvenir--most young fellows nowadays are interested in such things--perhaps, though, you boys aren't--"

The boys took the cases from his hand, pressed the spring which opened them, and the next moment were gazing with delighted surprise at the heavy gold medals within. At the same instant they read the inscriptions upon them, and then, both at once, gave a gasp of surprise, for the name, traced in tiny letters on the gold, below the word "Championship," was that of the man who had been known, a dozen years before, through the length and breadth of the country, as the foremost athlete of his day. Both boys cried out in chorus. "Oh, golly!" from Putnam; and from Dick, "Duncan McDonald! Why, for Heaven's sake! We never guessed--"

There was a moment's silence; McDonald flushing a little under the gaze of frank hero-worship which the four boys bent on him. And then, to break the pause, "Yes, I'm Duncan McDonald," he said, "or what's left of him. Not quite so spry, I guess, as when I won those, but I still answer to the same name."

There was another pause, until Brewster suddenly exclaimed, "Then that's your athletic field out there. We were wondering whose it could be."

McDonald smiled. "Athletic field is rather a big name for it," he answered. "It's a little place I fixed up so that I could go out once in a while, on a Saturday afternoon, and throw weights, and jump, just for the sake of old times. Why, do you boys care for that sort of thing?"

"Do we?" cried Brewster. "Well, I should say we did! You see--" and for ten minutes he talked steadily, telling the story of the cup, the Pentathlon, and everything else concerning the rivalries of the schools. As he finished McDonald nodded. "I see, I see," he said. "Well, that's a nice sporting situation, isn't it? Perhaps I could help you boys out a little, after all. When the weather gets better, along toward spring, if you would send your all-around man--Ellis, did you say his name is--over here, I might be able to show him something about his events. I'd be glad to try, anyway."

"Oh, that would be great," cried Brewster, "that would help a lot, I know. And we've another Pentathlon man right here. We think he'll be almost as good as Ellis by spring. Stand up, Dick, and be counted."

Randall laughed. "Don't talk about Pentathlon men," he said, "in present company. I don't believe Mr. McDonald would see much hope for me."

McDonald eyed him critically. "Well, I 'don't know about that," he said at length. "You've a good build for an all-around man. We all have to make a start. No one gets to be a champion all at once. By and by, if you like, we'll walk over to the field; I'll lend you a pair of spikes and we'll see what you can do. How would you like that?"

Dick's face was sufficient answer. "That would be fine," he replied. "You're mighty kind to offer to do it."

"Yes, indeed," chimed in Brewster, "it might make a big difference to our chances. We'd like nothing better;" and then, suddenly changing the subject, "Mr. McDonald," he asked, "if it isn't an impertinent question, why did you give up athletics? You're not old yet; you must be as good as you ever were. And I should think working in a mill would seem awfully slow, after all the fun you've had."

McDonald smiled. "Well, now, I know how it seems to you boys," he answered. "I can remember just how it looked to me when I was your age. But I'll tell you the honest truth. Athletics are a thing you want to go into for fun, and not for money. If I had my life over again, as the saying is, I'd stop right short where I turned professional, and take up some good trade instead. But of course I couldn't see it then. I was crazy about the game, and I had no money to speak of, so it seemed to be a choice between quitting athletics, or turning 'pro.' And I turned. But I've regretted it ever since. It isn't a sensible profession, you see. It's a job where you're best when you're young, and with every year that's added to your age, there's so much of your capital gone. No, professional athletics don't pay."

The boys looked only half convinced. "But think," said Allen, "of all you've done; and all the places you've seen. If I'd won championships in half a dozen different countries I don't believe I'd swap with any one."

McDonald smiled again. "Oh, I did have a good time, when I was an amateur," he replied, "but all the enjoyment that a fellow gets from looking back on pleasant memories stops right there. After you've turned pro, and are out for the stuff, the good sporting spirit is knocked right out of the thing. You think every man who's competing against you is a robber who's trying to take away your bread and butter, and that spoils most of the fun, to start with. And then a man can hardly make a living if he stays right on the square. There's always a cheap crowd of betting men who keep after a fellow, trying to get him to come in on some game that isn't quite on the level. They've pulled off some funny things, too, first and last.

"I remember one chap I knew who was a corking good shot-putter. He joined forces with a couple of betting men and they certainly rigged up a good plant. It was at a big fair in Canada. The two betting men dressed as farmers, and then they fixed this fellow up in a blue smock, and had him drive a cow into the fair. Oh, they staged the thing fine; and when the shot-putting came off this fellow makes a lot of talk about what he can do, and picks up the shot, and puts it around thirty-three or four feet. Then the two betting men make a holler, and work off a lot of farmer talk about 'that there feller with the caow'--oh, they do it slick, all right--and that begins to make fun, and pretty soon there's an argument started, and the two farmers get excited and fumble around in their pockets and pull out some old, dirty bills; and finally, there are so many wise guys in the crowd looking to make an easy dollar, the money's all put up and covered.

"The farmers breathe much easier after that--the rest of it is just a slaughter. The shot man plays the part, though, just to amuse himself. He gets into the finals--they're putting around thirty-seven feet or so--and then he makes a great holler about spiked shoes, 'them shoes with nails in the bottoms of 'em' he says, and at last he pretends to borrow a pair--which are really his own, that he has given to another of the gang to keep for him--and he stamps around in those, and spits on his hands, and goes though a lot of foolishness, and then steps into the circle and drives her out. Forty-four, ten! And then there's an awful silence in the crowd among the fellows who've bet their money against the man with the cow, and they sneak away kind of quietly, and here and there you'll hear one of them murmur to himself, 'Stung!' And that's professional athletics for you."

The boys had listened breathlessly. "Well," cried Allen, "that was a pretty dirty trick, all right, and yet," he added with a chuckle, "there's something funny about it, too. It isn't like taking in innocent people. The other fellows were out to do the crowd they thought were farmers, and they got about what was coming to them."

McDonald nodded. "Oh, yes, it's diamond cut diamond," he said. "If you bet on anything in this world, it's a good idea to get used to being surprised. But the trouble comes in mixing up a nice, clean game like athletics with such dirty business as that." He hesitated a moment, and then went on, "But it's mighty little right I've got to preach. I've done some things that I regret, and that I'd give a good deal to have undone, if I could. Because when you're right square up against it for your next dollar, or maybe your next dime, it beats all how a man will juggle with his conscience to make a scheme seem right. I'll tell you what I did once, away out west, if you care to hear."

The boys' faces, without their eager assent, would have been enough to tell him that he was speaking to listeners who could talk athletics by the hour, with never a sign of weariness. And presently he began. "This happened a good long time ago. It was in the fall of the year. I was quite a ways from home, and I was discouraged. I'd made application for a training job for the winter in three different colleges, and I'd been turned down, for one reason or another, in all three. It was early in September, just the time for the big fairs, and though the weather was beautiful, there was a kind of frostiness about the mornings that made me think of a cold winter coming back home, and reminded me that I had just two hundred dollars in my clothes, and not another cent in the whole wide world. It certainly seemed to be up to me to make some sort of a play, and to make it quick, while I had the chance.

"There were three or four pretty good men around at these games, and a lot of others not so good, but I wasn't particularly afraid of any of them. I didn't have any great reputation then, to speak of; I'd only turned pro a little while before; and I'd grown a mustache, and no one knew me by sight or name. But I had been training all summer, and I was right at the stage where any athlete, amateur or pro, has the chance of his life to make a killing; when he knows just how good he is, and nobody else in the world except himself does know. Well, I worked things about as well as I could. I went into two good-sized meets, under the name of Alan Stewart, and never won so much as a third place. I managed to finish just short of the money in every event I entered, and then, afterward, I mixed with the betting crowd, and took pains to do a lot of cheap talking. I told them that when I was really in form I was the greatest athlete who ever wore a shoe, and that as soon as I got some money from home I was willing to back up what I said.

"Well, I contrived to make the crowd pretty tired. One of the leading gamblers, a shrewd, wiry little chap, called me down one day in front of the whole bunch. 'Young man,' he said, 'you talk a good deal, and it wearies me. Don't you think, if you kept that mouth of yours shut until you'd earned a dollar to bet on yourself, it would be a good thing for every one, and make the town a pleasanter place to live in?' That pleased the boys, but I pretended to get mad over it, and shook my fist in his face. 'You think,' I said, 'that you can insult me, because you've got money and I haven't; but you just wait; I've wired home to San Francisco for some cash and I'll have it for the Atlasville meet, and then my money'll talk as good as anybody else's.' That didn't rattle him a mite. 'Well,' he came back, 'if it talks half as loud as you do they'll know you're betting, away over in China,' and that pleased the crowd more than ever. So, altogether, I had no trouble in making a reputation as a conceited young fool--I've thought sometimes, since then, that wasn't such a strange thing, after all--and I kept under cover, and lay low for Atlasville.

"It was a nice affair all right. There was a local weight man, a fellow named Brown, who was really good; and Harry King, the high jumper, who was making a regular circuit of the western meets, so altogether it was a pretty classy field, and I had every chance in the world to back my good opinion of myself. It was an old game, of course, but I worked it for all it was worth. As I say, when it's win out or bust, a man's wits are apt to move quicker than they do other times. Among my different bluffs, I struck up a great friendship with a fellow whom I knew to be hand and glove with the betting crowd. I was sure he'd keep them posted on everything that happened, so I made him my confidential friend--had him come out to watch me practice, and told him what a wonder I was, and how I was going to get square with the betting gang for giving me the laugh, and all that sort of thing. Only everything that he saw me do, and everything I told him I could do, was on sort of a mark-down scale. I told him, for instance, that I was going to put the shot forty feet, and high jump five feet, eight, and do the other events in proportion, and that I knew the rest of the men couldn't come near those marks; and all the time I could see how he was jollying me along, and laughing at me up his sleeve, for he knew, of course, just what the other chaps could do, on a pinch, and it was bully fun for him to hear me go on about wiring for money and betting on myself, and cleaning out the crowd, and such talk as that, when he supposed, all the time, that separating me from my roll was just like taking candy from a child.

"So the time went by. Presently my money arrived, or I pretended to have it arrive--as a matter of fact, I fished it out of my inside pocket; and then I went out on a hunt for my gambling friends. I couldn't get quite the odds I wanted--I still had to make a bluff at being awfully confident of myself--but I did pretty well, on the whole, for there were so many of them anxious to get a chance at me that it wasn't a hard job, after all. I put the bulk of the money on the shot and the high jump--I happened to be right at my best in both of those events just then--but I had five or ten dollars on about everything, and some of it at mighty long odds. Well, the day came. I shall never forget it, one of those perfect autumn days, warm without being hot, cool without being cold, if that doesn't sound like a fool way of trying to describe it, and the whole county was at the games. Oh, what wouldn't I have given for a thousand dollars, to keep company with my two hundred, but I didn't know a soul in the place, and I wasn't looking for any free advertising, either. So I let it go at the two hundred.

"I've had days before and since when I've felt good, but that day--well, I was fit to compete for my life. I began the fun with the hammer and broad jump; I kept it up with the pole vault, the caber and the fifty-six; and I finished it with the high jump and the shot-put. I'll never forget the look on my gambler's face when I got down to work on my first try in the shot, and the man at the other end of the tape called out, 'Forty-five eight and a half.' It was a study. And the high jump. They couldn't believe, out that way, that there was a man on earth who could trim Harry King. And he was jumping good, too. We kept together up to six feet, but at six, one and a half, he failed and I got over, on my second try.

"Well, I raked in my prize money, and my bets--I'd cleaned up between seven and eight hundred dollars, all told--and the next day I started east. I was feeling pretty good till I'd got about ten miles from town, and then I took the local paper out of my pocket and started to read the sporting news. Right there was where my good opinion of myself experienced a shock. For what should I find but a very nice write-up on Mr. Alan Stewart, describing him as the most promising young athlete yet seen in the West, and going on to say that as a matter of local pride, it would be an interesting thing to see Mr. Stewart matched for a series of events with Mr. Duncan McDonald, the eastern champion. Just at first I laughed, and then I stopped and began to think. And the more I thought, the less I seemed to fancy myself. I never did a thing like that again, and I can tell you, boys, once more, the pro game in athletics is no good."

His audience had sat listening with the keenest interest. There was a little pause and then Allen spoke. "Well," he said, "it was the same principle, of course, as the man with the cow. But, somehow, I don't think that was such a terrible thing to do. You weren't deceiving innocent people. You were up against a crowd of gamblers who wouldn't have had any scruples about doing you out of your money, and you relieved them of theirs, instead. And I think," he added, "that the part about matching you against McDonald was great. I call that really humorous."

McDonald nodded assent. "It did have kind of a funny side," he admitted. "And I don't mean I felt ashamed of myself because I considered it really a wicked thing to do, because I didn't. But look here--well, it's hard to express--those two medals I gave you boys to-day were won when I was an amateur, good and straight. There's no taint to them. I was in the game then for the fun of it. And I certainly liked athletics. I don't believe any man who ever lived liked them better than I did. And so, to get mixed up in the pro game, well, I felt the way I did once about a man I knew--a big, fine-looking chap, brave as a lion--who served in the British army. He got into trouble, no matter how, and disappeared, and I never heard of him again for years, until a friend of mine ran across him down in South America--a soldier of fortune, waiting for some little tuppenny rebellion to come along, to put a job in his way. Well, you know, that seemed bad to me--I didn't like to hear it--and so, about myself, I felt as if getting into this betting game, and all that, I was kind of disgracing my colors--you know what I mean--"

The boys nodded in quick sympathy. McDonald rose. "Well, I'm getting to be a regular old woman," he said apologetically. "My tongue's running away with me. Let's step over to the field and try a little athletics, for a change. Here's my outfit, in here."

He threw open a closet door, disclosing upon the floor three or four shots, two hammers, a fifty-six pound weight, several pairs of spiked shoes--clear evidence that he still retained, as he had said, his native love of the game. "Now, then," he said, "if one of you will take a shot, I'll take the light hammer, and Randall here can pick out a pair of shoes; then we'll be all right to start. Hullo, here's Joe."

As he spoke, the door opened, and a little boy of nine or ten, dark and swarthy, with big, wide-open, black eyes, peered into the room; then, seeing the visitors, promptly dodged out again. McDonald laughed. "That's the little fellow you heard yelling for help that night," he explained. "No one seemed to want him, and his father hasn't been heard from since, so I've kind of adopted him, for the present. He's a good little chap, and smart as a steel-trap. But shy as a squirrel when he sees strangers around."

Once arrived at the field, McDonald proceeded to put Dick through his paces. He watched him high-jump with great approval. "Good, man, good!" he cried. "You've got an elegant spring, and a very nice style, besides. I'll have you jumping fine, by next May." But over Dick's shot-putting he was not so enthusiastic, and at the hammer-throwing he shook his head. "No, no," he cried, "you haven't got the first principles. You stand wrong. Your weight is wrong. You swing wrong. You do everything wrong. Here, let me show you. I wish I dared throw, myself, but I suppose I'd rip my shoulder open. Now look--"

For ten minutes he explained, illustrated, had Dick throw, again and again. And finally he good-humoredly gave it up. "I can show you," he said. "But you've thrown the wrong way so long that it's going to be a job. Let the hammer go, for the next month or two, and when spring comes we'll go at it. I'll have you so you'll be throwing a hundred and seventy feet. No reason in the world why you shouldn't. It's like all the other things. It's knack--knack--knack--that counts. You've got weight and size enough to throw it, and when I get the double turn drilled into you we'll surprise some of these boys from the other schools. You see if we don't."

The afternoon shadows were lengthening across the fields as the boys started on their homeward way. And all through the tramp their tongues wagged ceaselessly of their new friend, his accomplishments, his interest, the medals he had given his rescuers, and most of all, how much his knowledge might mean to them, and to their chances in carrying off in triumph the coveted cup. Truly, it had been an eventful day.