Feeling in the school was intense. For the first time in its history there was an attempt to unite the student body under one head, thus depriving the class presidents of some of their power. The project was led by some of the best spirits, in the hope of gaining a better name for the school, and many of the teachers were, without precedent, taking a quiet part.
As Billy neared, he could hear above other angry voices the raucous, high-pitched tones of the cultus[[1]] Kid, otherwise Jim Barney. He was a stickler for the “Jim.” “Just plain Jim; no handles to my name,” he would say if offered the courtesy of “Mr. Barney.” He had been for years the bully of his class, and now he aspired to be the boss of the school. He was entreating and menacing by turns, a master of the baser sort of eloquence.
[1]. Cultus is a Chinook word, signifying of little worth, bad.
“You cheap skates! Call yourselves men, do you? There’s not one of you with enough backbone to bolster a twine string! Why, you chew gum because you dass’n’t touch tobacco; and one soda pop ’ll make the whole bunch of you dippy!”
“Oh, cut it out!” mildly objected one of his own crowd.
“Yes. And trot out your grouch, whatever it is,” another demanded.
“It’s our grouch! I put it up to you,” the speaker shouted above the noise. “Has a bunch of teachers, or even the principal or superintendent, a right to meddle with us, to say who we shall have for presidents of our classes or of the whole student body, if this thing of having a school president goes?”
“Yes! Yes!” “They have!” “They ought to!” came from different quarters.
“I’d like to know why,” the Kid blustered.
“When students of this school, your own candidate even, follows girls and women on stilts—” “Sis” Jones began.