And so the matter was left as far as the Campbells were concerned, though it was said that Mrs. Campbell called Doctor Wells on the telephone and in her shrill voice denied vigorously that her son had acted in any manner unbecoming to "the son of a gentleman" and that for her part she thought that the school was a poor one and that she wished they wouldn't have such games as football "which work the boys up to excitement and get them into a dangerous state of mind." No one took the pains to ascertain whether Tracey Campbell was actually expelled from the school or had merely been withdrawn. At any rate Ridgley School would see him no more and as the days went on, it seemed less and less worth while to investigate the circumstances which preceded the Jefferson game by calling upon Tracey Campbell to confess further details.
The visit of Bassett Senior to the school—Blow-Hard Bassett as he was known in certain sections of the West—was sadder and more pathetic. He was a big man who dressed gaudily; even the tragedy had not served to remove wholly from his appearance the garish quality that proclaimed his type. To Mr. Stevens and Doctor Wells his visit was a startling exemplification of that old saying: "Like father, like son." When they talked to him it was as if they were talking to Whirlwind Bassett grown into a man of fifty. His visit was an unpleasant incident,—he showed so plainly that he had made a failure of his duties as a father and he groped so helplessly in his grief for the reason why his boy, whose body he would carry back to the West, had by his own acts brought an unhappy termination to his career.
"I never understood him," he said to Doctor Wells, "and I suppose I haven't been just the right kind of father for him. He didn't have any mother after he was four years old, and even when he was a little feller I never seemed to have much luck in making him mind me. He was always doing something to cause a commotion of some sort, like running away or getting into mix-ups—nothing very bad, you know, just such things as young fellers are apt to do. Sometimes I talked to him but it never made much impression."
As Blow-Hard Bassett looked out of Doctor Wells' shaded windows there was a hint of moisture in his eyes. "He was a determined little feller," he remarked after a moment, "and when he'd get a notion in his head it seemed like nothing would shake it out. I remember one time when a mongrel dog that they had out on a ranch where we were staying bit him on the wrist and the little chap—I guess he was only eight years old—came bawling to me and says, 'He bit me, Pa; you've got to kill him!'
"I said, 'Don't you see, it was your fault; the dog wouldn't of bit you if you hadn't been teasin' him,' but he kept on begging me to kill the mongrel and when I wouldn't do it, he decided to take matters into his own hands—and what do you suppose he done? He got a six-shooter out of a holster that one of the cowboys had left lyin' around an' come up behind that dog while he was sunnin' himself beside the ranch house and blowed out his brains! You see, he just made up his mind to settle with that dog, and nothing that any of us could say made a bit of difference. I always thought he was going to be a smart man, but I never could get close to him, so to speak. It was just as if he belonged to some other man, and now, of course, I can't help wishing that I had somehow got to understand him better."
There was not much that Doctor Wells could say after that except to extend his sympathy and to express the wish that it had been possible for others as well as the father to understand and help the youth who had come to his untimely end.
November, with each day crisper than the last, slipped into December and one morning the school awoke to find a thin sifting of snow over the brown grass of the campus and the bare branches of the maple trees. The Christmas vacation suddenly became the subject of conversation, and to Teeny-bits it seemed that every one had a plan that promised pleasure and recreation. He felt a little lonely at the thought of seeing all these friends of his depart for the holidays and leave him to spend the vacation alone in the quiet little village of Hamilton; and then one evening after the last mail, Neil Durant came into his room with two opened letters in his hand.
"A couple of invitations," he said. "It's all fixed up, Teeny-bits. You're going home for Christmas with me and we're going up to Norris' place in the mountains for some winter sports. You remember he spoke about getting together, after the game. I thought then that I'd like to renew old times and now he writes that he wants us to come up to his place, which is a wonder, way back in the hills where there's great skiing and snowshoeing."
To Teeny-bits it seemed suddenly as if he had been dreaming and hoping for a long time that this very thing would happen. It was a wonderful chance for a good time—but it was to prove more than that for the new captain of the Ridgley football team.