The room was filled to overflowing, the pushing, laughing crowd seemingly the more jolly because the night without was windy and inclement.
“Makes me think of the plains,” chirped Higgins, as, in a lull of the noise, he heard the singing of the wind round the building. “A feller that’s lived with the wind as I have sort o’ likes to hear its mournful whistle. I’ve heerd it sing that way, wrapped in my blanket, with the stars shinin’ brighter’n diamonds; and oncet I remember it had thet wail when me and some other fellers was lying in a sod house, with the Pawnees creepin’ onto us through the grass.”
It was amusing to notice how the Chickering set and all the enemies of Merriwell invariably became champions of whoever they thought was opposed to him and his friends.
When Bludsoe pulled the tin cup from the post in two throws and Higgins took three throws for the same feat, the Chickering crowd clapped their hands and stamped the floor in their glee.
“Say, I will have to go over to the freshmen side if this keeps up!” Ready moaned in Merriwell’s ear. “It plants an ache in my heart and a desire in my foot to kick somebody. Yet I seem doomed by fate to howl with the Chickering set. Don’t jot it down against me in your book of remembrance!”
The next attempt of the ropers was to catch and hold the corner of a swinging trapeze-bar, and as Higgins turned to get his rope, which he had dropped on a seat while talking with some friends, he roared with rage.
His new rope, in which he took such pride, had been split and ripped and cut in a dozen places by a keen knife. Higgins reddened under his tan as he surveyed the work of the unknown hand.
“If I kin lay my paws on the skunk ’t done that, I’ll try to see if they’s enough of the rope left to hang him with!” he exploded.
He turned slowly round, with blazing eyes, and looked over the sea of excited faces.
“Gents, is this hyer Yale? A man mean enough to be a hoss-thief wouldn’t do that on the ranges! All I asks is fer the scalawag that done it to step up to the counter and let me look at him oncet.”