The Purple Pennant

by Ralph Henry Barbour

Over at Springdale great things were said of the local Track Team, and the Springdale paper even now predicted victory. Guy Felker and the others studied that paper every day and compared what they learned of the Blue team’s performances with what they knew of their own, sometimes with satisfaction and more often with alarm. There was no disguising the fact that Springdale would send a team more than ordinarily strong in the quarter, half and mile events and in the jumps. The Blue was likely to prove weak in the sprints and hurdles and at present seemed about on a par with the Purple in the hammer-throw and shot-put. Springdale’s best performer with the shot was credited with thirty-nine feet and two inches, but Skeet declared himself skeptical about that. Arthur Beaton spent hours at a time drawing up predictions of the outcome of the dual meet which proved, to his satisfaction at least, that the Purple would win by a good fifteen points. But Beaton was notably an optimist.

The plan of holding a School meet was abandoned owing to the small number of members, but, on the twenty-first of the month the entrants in each event were allowed to compete against each other and the results were posted. Skeet did not, however, publish times or distances, although they were made known to the contestants. In the dashes Lanny finished first with ease, Kirke getting second place in the hundred-yards and third in the two-twenty. Perry tied with Soper for third place in the short distance and finished fourth in the two-twenty. Since, however, a blanket would have covered all the sprinters but Lanny at the finish of that race, fourth place was not vastly different from second. The time was disappointing, but the track was soft after an all-night rain and Skeet didn’t seem troubled when he snapped Lanny ten and two-fifths for the hundred and twenty-four and three-fifths for the longer sprint. The high hurdles went to Lanny and Beaton finished only three yards behind him. Peyton fell at the second hurdle and was a poor third. In the low hurdles Lanny was swept off his feet by Peyton and had to work hard to beat out Beaton for the next honors. The jumps developed poor performances, but in the pole-vault Guy Felker surprised himself and everyone else by doing ten feet and one inch, bettering the school and the dual record by two and a half inches. That and Partridge’s shot-put of thirty-seven feet and two inches were the only notable performances that afternoon.

The mile run proved a good deal of a fizzle. Smith, considered the only dependable entrant for that event, had cramps and dropped out on the third lap, and Toll and Tupper fought it out together, Toll finishing well in the lead in the slow time of six minutes and twenty seconds. Evidently the result of the mile was a foregone conclusion since it was well known that Springdale’s best miler had a record of five minutes and five seconds. The half-mile was a good race—Todd, Lasker and Train finishing in that order, the winner’s time being two minutes and fourteen and one-fifth seconds. The quarter-mile saw Todd, Sears and Cranston running bunched until the final fifty yards, when Sears forged ahead and finished with his head up in the fair time of fifty-four and four-fifths seconds. In the hammer event, which wasn’t finished until after six o’clock, Partridge won handily with a best throw of one hundred and twenty-six feet and seven inches. Falkland was second with a hundred and twenty-one feet and three inches and Fudge was third at a hundred and eighteen feet and six inches. Thad Brimmer was in poor form and was several feet behind Fudge.

The contests brought out many faults not displayed previously, and to that extent were useful. Possibly, too, they served to accustom new members of the team to the conditions of competition. At any rate, the fellows enjoyed them, and the audience did too. There was one member of the audience who, seated in the grandstand, watched events with a deal of interest. This was Mr. Addicks. As it was Saturday and work was for the time slack, he had treated himself to an afternoon off. No one paid any attention to him; few, indeed, observed him; certainly neither Perry nor Fudge. He would have liked to have gone down on the field and mingled with the throngs along the track and about the pits, but since he was not a High School fellow he thought he might be trespassing. There was no ball game to-day to divide attention, for the Nine had gone off to play against, and, incidentally, get drubbed by Templeton College. Mr. Addicks watched the sprints and hurdle events critically and found no fault with Lanny White’s work. Lanny, he concluded, was a born sprinter and hurdler and only needed better training to become a master of those arts. With the rest, though, he was far less satisfied. Indeed, he frowned a good deal over the running of the other three competitors. He didn’t remain until the end, but left the field after the quarter-mile run. He had wanted to see Fudge’s performance with the hammer, for Fudge had talked rather importantly of it of late, but he couldn’t see that event taking place anywhere and didn’t think to look outside the field. On the way back to town he stopped in the telegraph office and made use of a telegram blank to write a brief note. This he dropped through the letter-slot in Dr. Hull’s front door, and Perry found it awaiting him when he got home. It read:

Alkali Ike: Come and see me this evening if you can. If not, in the morning. Death to traitors!

Deadwood Dick.

Ever since he had learned of the boys’ suspicions regarding him, Mr. Addicks had humorously insisted on applying such picturesque aliases to them and himself. Fudge was “Four-Fingered Pete,” usually, although sometimes he was addressed as “Willie Rufus, the Boy Detective.” Perry was variously “Alkali Ike,” “Doctor Watson” or “The Apache Kid.” Perry smiled as he read the missive, got Fudge on the telephone and announced his purpose of calling on Mr. Addicks after supper and instructed Fudge to join him there, and then descended hungrily on the contents of the table. He was very full of the afternoon’s proceedings and, although he didn’t suspect it, I fancy his father and mother were relieved when the meal was over and he grabbed his cap and disappeared.

He found Mr. Addicks working at a drawing-table in the new room into which he had moved a few days before, but his host laid aside pen and ruler, square and compass, and took him into the old apartment, now a trifle more comfortable by reason of the acquisition of a second-hand easy-chair. Into this he forced Perry and took his own position as usual on a corner of the table.

“I saw you run to-day,” he announced, “and I want to talk to you about it.”

“Were you there?” asked Perry. “I didn’t see you. Why didn’t you let me know?”