“You’re not going to do anything you say you will,” Larry put in, decisively. “As I told you a minute or so ago, I can fight my own battles.”
“Not with that kind of carrion, you can’t,” Dick denied; “you’re too open and aboveboard. He’ll do you up if you don’t let me kill him off.”
Any further talk about the Underhill come-back had to stop just here, because Welborn came in, wishful to know at what place in the book the English assignment for the next day paused; and shortly afterward Dick took his leave.
Like a regular fellow, Larry tried to forget the Underhill-Shubrick incident; tried, also, to keep from watching his team-mates to see if the lies had spread to the extent of making any difference, so far as he could determine, but he was wise enough to understand that a practice field would be exactly the place in which a bunch of fellows wouldn’t draw any hard-and-fast social lines.
But the dirt-throwing bobbed up again early in May on a Saturday when the newly organized ’Varsity was to put on a practice game with the Sophomores, and this was the way of it.
As everybody knows, visitors are not usually invited to witness the spring training games, but on this particular day there were two outsiders, a middle-aged gentleman and a girl, in the grand stand, guests of a Senior named MacClay, and at sight of the girl Larry was carried swiftly back to a day in the year-before summer; to a mountain canyon scarred and shattered in spots by the ripping of dynamite blasts, and to the foot-board of a big locomotive gingerly towing two Pullmans up the heavy grade.
“Remember ’em?” asked Dick, who was by this time far enough along in his make-up work to take an occasional Saturday afternoon off on the field.
“Sure,” Larry nodded. “Vice-president Holcombe of our line and his daughter—the girl who wanted to know if my last name wasn’t German.”
Dick grinned.
“You’ve got a long memory—for little pin-pricks,” he laughed. “Mr. Holcombe is MacClay’s uncle. He and Bess were passing through in the V-P’s private car, and Mac got ’em to stop over. You haven’t met ’em yet, I take it?”