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."