The day of the tournament at Santa Barbara arrived and brought with it large crowds of visitors from various parts of the State. There was a great swarm of strangers in the beautiful little town that lies between the blue Santa Yenz Mountains and the dreaming sea.
The field for the sports and contests lay outside the town, and there the crowd gathered at an early hour.
It had been arranged that such contests as putting the shot, throwing the hammer, jumping, vaulting, wrestling, and so forth, should come before the races.
Browning had been induced to enter the hammer-throwing and shot-putting contests, while Barney was anxious to show what he could do at the high jump and the long jump. Diamond had decided to take part in the pole vaulting.
The boys’ bicycles had arrived by express the day before, having been forwarded from San Francisco, and Rattleton entered for the two-mile bicycle race, after vainly trying to induce Frank to go into it.
“I’ll have quite all I want to do in the hundred yards’ dash and the two-hundred-and-twenty yards’ hurdle,” smiled Frank. “I am not going to break myself all up at the very beginning of our new tour.”
“That’s right,” said Hodge, significantly; “and you will find Wallace Random a sharp rival in both of those contests. It won’t surprise me, Frank, if you are unable to defeat him.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Merry, lifting his eyebrows and regarding Bart coolly. “There was a time when you thought no person could defeat me.”
Bart flushed and moved uneasily.
“You’re a dandy, old fellow,” he said; “but Random has a record. He is the amateur champion of this State.”