Their visit in the runabout to Brent’s Addition that afternoon proved unsatisfactory. The steam roller, looking as innocent as you like, was back where they had found it and there was nothing to tell what had happened subsequent to their hurried departure. It was not until Monday morning that they had their curiosity satisfied, and then it was the Reporter that did it. The Reporter had chosen to treat the story with humor, heading it
ROAD ROLLER RUNS AMUCK!
It told how Officer Suggs, while patrolling his lonely beat on the outskirts of our fair city, had had his attention attracted by mysterious sounds on Aspen Avenue. The intrepid guardian of the law had thereupon concealed himself in ambush just in time to behold, coming toward him, one of the Street Department’s steam rollers. Ordered to stop and give an account of itself, the roller had promptly attacked the officer. The latter, with rare presence of mind, leaped to a place of safety and the roller, emitting a roar of rage and disappointment, tried to escape. Then followed a vivid account of the pursuit, the disorderly conduct of the roller, the wanton attack on the lamp-post and the final subjugation and arrest of the marauder, an arrest not consummated until several members of the police force and employees of the Street Department had been hurried to the scene. It made a good story and at least five of the Reporter’s readers enjoyed it vastly. To their relief the paper ended with the encouraging statement that “so far the police are unable to offer any satisfactory explanation of the affair. Superintendent Burns, of the Street Department, hints that some person or persons unknown had a hand in the matter, but to the Reporter it looks like a remarkable case of inanimate depravity.”
And that ended the matter, save that eventually the true story leaked out, as such things will, and became generally known throughout the school. Whether it ever reached the ears of Superintendent Burns is not known. If it did he took no action.
Brent Field profited in any case. That Monday afternoon the improvement in the condition of the ground was so noticeable that many fellows remarked on it. Fortunately, though, they were quite satisfied with the casual explanation that it had been “fixed up a bit,” and for some reason the marks left by the passage of the roller, plainly visible, failed to connect themselves with the story in that morning’s paper. Perhaps the principal reason for this was that very few of the fellows read anything in the Reporter outside of the sporting page. The infield, and especially the base paths, was more level and smoother than it had ever been, and during practice that afternoon there were far fewer errors that could be laid to inequalities of the surface. To be sure, when Harry Bryan let a ball bound through his hands he promptly picked up a pebble and disgustedly tossed it away, but the excuse didn’t carry the usual conviction.
Practice went well that afternoon. Fielding was cleaner and it really looked to Dick as though his charges were at last finding their batting eyes. Bryan, Cotner and Merrick all hit the ball hard in the four-inning contest with the practice team, the former getting two two-baggers in two turns at bat and Cotner connecting with one of Tom Nostrand’s offerings for a three-base hit. The First Team had no trouble in winning the decision, the score being 5 to 1. Meanwhile, on the cinders the Track Team candidates were busy, and over on the Main Street side of the field, where the pits were located, the jumpers and weight-throwers were trying themselves out as extensively as the ever-watchful “Skeet” would allow. Fudge Shaw, looking heroic—and slightly rotund—in a brand-new white shirt, trunks and spiked shoes, was taking his turn with the shot. So far only three other youths had chosen to contest with him for the mastery in this event, but unfortunately for Fudge two of the three were older fellows with experience and brawn. One, Harry Partridge, a senior and a tackle on the football team, was in command of the shot-putters. Partridge was a good sort usually, Fudge considered, but to-day he was certainly impatient and censorious, not to mention sarcastic!
“Look here, Fudge,” he asked after the tyro had let the shot roll off the side of his hand and dribble away for a scant twelve feet in a direction perilously close to a passing broad-jumper, “who ever told you you could put the shot, anyway? You don’t know the first thing about it! Now come back here and let me tell you for the fiftieth time that the shot leaves your hand over the tips of your fingers and doesn’t roll off the side. I’m not saying anything just now about your spring or your shoulder work. All I’m trying to do is to get it into that ivory knob of yours that the shot rests here and that it leaves your hand so! Now cut out all the movements and let me see you hold it right and get it away right. Thank you, that’s very rotten! Go ahead, Thad. Try not to foul this time. You start too far forward. That’s better! Did you see—look here, Shaw, if you’re out here to put the shot you watch what’s going on and never mind the jumpers! If you don’t watch how these other fellows do it you never will learn! All right, Falkland!”
“Maybe,” said Fudge when he and Perry were walking home, “maybe I’d rather be a broad-jumper, anyway. This shot-putting’s a silly stunt!”