On the Saturday after the Faculty Shield day, Sam ran in the forty-five-yard hurdles again, in the handicap meet which regularly follows the scratch contests. The handicapper thought one yard about the right allowance for the long-legged upper middler; Somers got two and Foote three. Fairmount ran from scratch. It was a hot race, with every contestant hoping to cross the line first, the man in front driving himself that his advantage might not be wrested from him, the pursuers confident of superiority and struggling to secure the positions which belonged to them. Sam felt the presence of Somers and Foote ahead pulling him forward as the magnet attracts steel; his legs followed each other faster than they had ever gone before; the three hurdles were but three exhilarating bounds in his course. Forgetting Fairmount, who was behind, he ran down Somers, pressed on after Foote, and passed him by a convulsive straining effort at the finish. Never before had he felt what it was to fight his way in a race; to mark his adversary and beat him, as one throws his opponent in a wrestling bout, or as the tackier downs his man, surely and hard, on the football field. In his struggle to pass Foote he had kept ahead of Fairmount, who finished two feet behind him.
Collins was pleased, as much with the new spirit of the hurdler as with his success in the event. “He’s slow,” he remarked to Bruce, “but he’ll come in time.”
“This year?” questioned Bruce, closely. It was “this year,” the year of his captaincy, that interested Bruce.
“I can’t say,” answered Collins, thoughtfully. “It may take a long while. He’s a good, steady boy; he’ll come all right sometime.”
Duncan Peck, too, seemed to be influenced by Sam’s modest success in the handicap meeting. He confessed one day in a burst of confidence, after Sam had led him through the maze of a foolish algebra problem about two men who rowed past each other up and down stream—each, apparently, with a stop watch and a log line—that his duel joke with Shirley had proved a boomerang. In return Sam told him of the initials—D. P.—in the back of Mulcahy’s book.
“It’s mine all right,” remarked Duncan, “but I’ve got another now, and it isn’t worth while to make a row about it. I can’t prove anything against him. He’d say he bought it at Moran’s or of one of those fellows who were fired last week. It shows you what he is, though.”
“I know what he is,” said Sam, blushing. “I don’t need any more lessons.”
Another person with whom Sam hoped that he might gain some influence by the prestige of his improvement in the hurdles was his second cousin, Wally Sedgwick. Wally was a lower middler, active-minded and ambitious. Athletics would have given a natural scope to his energy, but he was too small and immature to have any chance in Seaton sports. He had fallen in with a set of idle boys of not the highest standards, who appealed to Wally’s imagination as gay young bloods; they knew things and were up to date. None of these was in the class of John Fish, a reprobate, and callous to the opinion of his associates; nor in that of Mulcahy, whose ambition led him to conceal his wrong-doing, but could not prevent his determined selfishness from pushing to the surface. The wickedness of Wally’s friends lay mainly in talk and swagger, but they had already suggested to him that the code of morals taught in his home was goody-goody, and that the proper way to show his spirit was to do “what everybody did.” Wally was popular with many of the older boys because he was the brother of Margaret Sedgwick. They bestowed attentions on him in the hope of “making themselves solid” with Miss Margaret, caring little whether these attentions were good for the boy or not.
The track team were going to Boston to compete in the schoolboy games of the Boston Athletic Association. For the first time in his school career Sam was to be a member of a Seaton team in contest with other schools. He was to wear the significant red letters on his shirt, was to see his name on the big official programme as a representative of Seaton, was to be trusted to do a part in gaining public honors for the school. He thought of it by day, dreamed of it by night, and longed, as only an inexperienced tyro can long, to do credit to those who trusted him. Mr. Archer, who sympathized with his son in all innocent interests, that he might wield the stronger influence when great questions of conduct came up for settlement, ordered a ticket and promised to be present at the contests. Sam wrote the usual disclaimer of any expectation of getting a place, but his secret hopes ran high. Why shouldn’t Fairmount win first and he second, as they had done at Seaton?
Then came the trip in pleasant but orderly company, the lunch in town, the dressing in confused, cramped quarters, the facing of tier on tier of partisans encircling the huge room, the disorderly jumble about the starting lines, the hurried calling of contestants, the uproar of rival cheers—and at last the all-important summons. Few looked upon that particular heat of the forty-five-yard hurdles with special interest. Occasional friends of runners scattered through the benches, Mr. Archer straining his eyes at the long, lank figure crouching in the outside course, Collins ever calmly observant of his protégés, the little batch of eager Seatonians watching the red letters, a noisy squad cheering the wearer of a big W—these were the real audience.