When Pete approached the field he saw that the varsity and freshman baseball teams were both at practise, that the lacrosse candidates—whose antics always amused him—were racing madly about at the far corner of the enclosure, and that the track men were on hand in force. The scene was full of life and color and sound. Pete broke into song:
Sam Bass was born in Indiana, it was his native home,
And at the age of seventeen young Sam began to roam;
He hit the trail for Texas a cowboy for to be,
And a kinder-hearted feller you’d never hope to see.
Pete’s voice was untrained but hearty. Had the tune been more melodious the effect would possibly have been more pleasing. As it was, the adventures of Sam Bass were chanted—as they always have been where Pete came from—in a melancholy reiteration of some half-dozen notes that threatened in the course of time to become terribly monotonous.
Sam used to own a thoroughbred known as the Denton mare;
He matched her in scrub races and took her to the fair.
He always coined the money and spent——
The song died away to a low rumble as Pete stooped and picked up a battered sphere of lead which lay on the sod before him. It was surprisingly heavy and he wondered what it was. Then his gaze fell on a lime-marked circle a few yards away, and it dawned upon him that the thing he held was a sixteen-pound shot, such as he had seen the fellows throw. Near-by the sod was dented and torn where the weight had struck. Pete hefted the thing in one hand and then the other. Then he raised it head-high and threw it toward the circle. It narrowly missed smashing the stop-board. Pete took up his song once more:
He started for the Collins ranch, it was the month of May,
With a herd of Texas cattle, the Black Hills for to see.
He picked up the shot again and looked about him. There was nobody near, and of those at a distance none was paying him any attention. So he laid his pipe on the ground, balanced the shot in his right hand, stepped to the front of the circle and sent it through the air. It described a good deal of an arc and came down about eight paces away. Pete was sure he could beat that, so he strolled over and recovered the weight, and, humming lugubriously the while, strolled back and tried it over again. This time it went a few feet farther and Pete was encouraged. He took off his coat and rolled his sleeves up, spat on his hands and seized that lump of lead with determination.
Up near the finish of the mile, by the side of the track, Allan was in conversation with Kernahan. Suddenly he stopped, smiled, and pointed down the field.
“For goodness’ sake,” he exclaimed, “look at Pete Burley trying to put the shot!”