"Don't you worry," Punky replied significantly. "I'm takin' no chances; that's why I got the dope. You couldn't buy this Bunny for a million; and you say Morrison's as bad. You just leave it to me. I'll be hangin' around, you bet. When you're dishin' up the soft stuff, you just call me and say, 'Here, take this in there.' I'll take it—in she goes—and if it don't mean Morrison'll win this here Intercollegiate, I'm a lobster, good and plenty. They'd never git next in the world."
"Well, for heaven's sake don't put in too much," Giddings muttered.
"Leave it to me,"—was the terse reply and then they went into one of the dressing-rooms and their voices came only in muffled tone to Willie in his hiding-place.
He was not quite certain of the meaning of what he had heard. He was only certain of the name—"Bunny." Who these men were he did not dream. Besides, it was none of his affairs. There was one thing however that he did know, and that definitely; he could not hope to see the sports from where he crouched. Noiselessly he opened the door. It did not creak. He tiptoed down the long room. As he neared the end, the door there was opened suddenly from without and a score of men pressed in. Willie Trigger whistled as loud as he could and walked on. The whistle, born of boyhood's genius, saved him. Ordinarily the presence of a small boy in the dressing-room would perhaps have occasioned surprise, but on this particular occasion the small boy whistled so shrilly and walked so independently with his hands deep in the pockets of his knickerbockers that no one spoke to him; no one seemed even to notice him. He strode out of the building bravely, crept under the fence at the side of the track and strolled into the paddock, scuffing the grass and still whistling.
V
Wilma Morey, exquisitely dainty in a wealth of fluffy muslin flounces and little bows of ribbon as pink as her pretty cheeks, found a particularly excellent seat in the first tier, close to the rail. From where she sat she could sweep with her dancing eyes the entire course, the crowded paddock, and the stretch of open on beyond. The wire was immediately below her and directly opposite was the judges' stand. Perceiving these manifold advantages of her position, she settled herself comfortably and patted, with most apparent content, her wealth of flounces. She was very glad that no acquaintance had slipped into the seat next hers, now occupied by a little fat man in checks. She wished to enjoy the events of the day in her own way and as privately as she might surrounded for the greater part by people with whom she had at least a nodding acquaintance.
She studied her program diligently, noted the order of events from the old fashioned "throwing of the baseball" to the "standing broad jump" in neither of which she was interested. She did not know a man among the broad jumpers and but one name in the list of baseball throwers was familiar—Schmidt, a little German, with a blonde head and blue eyes whom she had met at a sophomore dance in the beginning of the year. So, when the sleeveless-shirted contestants ran up the track and the clean white ball was taken from its red box and tossed among them she reverted to her program nor lifted her eyes again until the loud-voiced person in the judges' stand opposite bellowed through a bright tin megaphone that the event had been won by "Schmidt, distance ——" She did not catch the distance.
"Next event!" she heard roar from the mouth of the megaphone, "the first of three heats in the hundred yards. Entries: Bunette, Michigan; Morrison, Western College; Lacy, Ohio Wesleyan; Cady, Northwestern"—and so on down the list that she followed on her program with her nimble eyes. The megaphone man was still bellowing when the atmosphere was rent by a series of yells from the paddock that would have put a horde of Comanche braves to the copper-tinted blush. The cheering was taken up by the grand stand, and canes were waved, and hats were flung into the air and lungs were split. All this because a dozen gaunt creatures in flapping "shorts" were prancing up the track in the wake of their jogging trainers. The crowd behind bore down upon the girl and she only saved herself from falling headlong over the rail by encircling a stout roof support with one arm and clinging tight.
Up the course the line formed.
"That's Morrison; he's got the post," she heard a full-lunged youngster cry.