A Desperate Struggle
Tom mended fast, though not in time to go back with Bert and Dick, and Mr. Hollis insisted that he should stay a week or ten days longer at the lodge until he had fully recovered.
The precious week of vacation passed only too quickly, and promptly on the day that college resumed, Bert, faithful to his promise, was back at work. He had carefully kept up his practice, and this, combined with the invigorating mountain air, had put him in splendid shape. As he confided to Dick, “if he’d felt any better he’d have been afraid of himself.” So that when he reported to Reddy and submitted to his inspection, even that austere critic could find no fault with the sinewy athlete who smilingly extended his hand.
“By the powers,” he said, as he looked him up and down approvingly, “I did a good thing to let you go. You’re fine as silk and trained to the hour. If looks count for anything you could go in now and break the record. Get out on the cinder path and let me time you for a five-mile spin.”
With the eye of a lynx, he noted Bert’s action as he circled the track. Nothing escaped him. The erect carriage, the arms held close to his sides, the hip and knee movement, the feet scarcely lifted from the ground, the long, easy stride that fairly ate up space, the dilated nostrils through which he breathed while keeping the mouth firmly closed, the broad chest that rose and fell with no sign of strain or labor—above all, the sense of reserve power that told of resources held back until the supreme moment called for them—all these marks of the born runner the trainer noted with keen satisfaction; and he was chuckling to himself when he snapped shut his split-second watch and thrust it in his pocket.
“He’ll have to break a leg to lose,” he gloated. “That lad is in a class by himself. I’m none too sure of the other events, but we sure have this one cinched. We’ll win in a walk.”
But while he thus communed with himself, he carefully abstained from saying as much to Bert. He had seen too many promising athletes ruined by overconfidence. Besides, while he felt sure that Bert could take the measure of any one now known to him as a runner, he couldn’t tell but what some “dark horse” would be uncovered at the general meet who would bring all his hopes tumbling about his head like a house of cards. Too many “good things” had gone wrong in his experience not to make him cautious. So it was with well-simulated indifference that he held up his hand at the end of the fifth mile.
“That’s enough for to-day,” he commanded. “To-morrow we’ll start in with the real work. We only have a scant two weeks left before the New York meet and we’ll need every minute of it.”
And Bert bent himself to his task with such earnestness and good will that when at last the great day of the final meet arrived he was at the top of his form. Neither he nor Reddy would have any excuses to offer or anything to reproach themselves with, if he failed to show his heels to the field.