“Sorry. Don’t see what business it is of yours, though. If you must witness something, Crocker, I’ll sign my name on my cuff for you. Well, I must be getting on. By the way, you might try Emerson. Maybe he’ll sell to you. Seems to me he ought to be glad to get into partnership with a fine, straightforward man like your father!”
Stick left them staring at him, looking, as he said to Russell, like two sick cat-fish! And that ended that affair for the time and Russell heaved a big sigh of relief. Fortunately he didn’t know then that Billy Crocker was quite as averse as was Stick Patterson to having anything put over on him, and that, unlike Stick, he didn’t forgive readily.
Thursday saw the end of the season for the second team, as has been told, and Thursday night witnessed the second team’s annual banquet in Ford’s Restaurant, in the town. Twenty-two battle-scarred but very contented youths ate their fill and sang and cheered and listened to speeches, of which that delivered by Coach Steve Gaston, while the briefest was the best. Steve told them a lot of nice things about their playing and their devotion to the School, and he told them, and with convincing emphasis, that what he had planned and hoped for had come true, that he was standing at that moment in the presence of the finest second team in the annals of Alton football! At which the roof of the building must have raised an inch before the cheering ceased!
They sang their last song at a quarter past ten and tumbled noisily and hilariously down the stairs to the street and out into the frosty sharpness of a starlit night and swung unhurriedly back to the Academy, very happy and very proud and, now that the excitement was over, deliciously tired. Near the end of the walk Russell found himself beside Steve Gaston. Steve had taken his season’s task seriously and, in a way, he had taken the celebration seriously. But now he had relapsed into a smiling and rather silent content, and it was not until they were crossing the Green that he made any lengthy remark. Then:
“Emerson, you certainly worked hard for me—well, for us, for the School. It’s hard to be impersonal always. And, for my part, I thank you. I needed you like the very dickens when I dug you out that time, and by making good the way you did you just about saved me. You’ve got another year, haven’t you? I thought so. Well, let me tell you something. You may know it already, but I don’t believe you do. Next fall you walk out on the field and tell the coach that you’re going to play right end. You’ll get it!”
Russell pondered that on his way upstairs. Of course Steve Gaston ought to know, but it did seem to him that the coach had let his judgment slip for once! Further cogitation on the subject was denied him just then, for as soon as he had stepped into Number 27 he knew that something startling had happened. Stick’s face was enough. Stick had thrown the door open at the sound of Russell’s steps in the corridor and now he was asking excitedly:
“Have you heard about it, Rus?”
“No! What?”
“Some one broke into the store to-night and beat up Mr. Pulsifer! They got him, too. That is, one of him; there were two. I’ve just come back from there. The police won’t tell who the fellow is, but every one says it’s Billy Crocker!”