"Protégé of yours, major?" inquired the governor, striking a match.
"Not much, Jack," answered the major. "I don't believe in protégés, favorites, or any other brand of humbug that leads to the door marked 'pull.' Give me a young fellow that stands on his own feet—the kind that does his own climbing, Jack, without wasting valuable time looking around for some one to give him a boost. That's the sort of a chap Matt King is. Just keep your eye on him."
Below the judges' stand, in front of which ran the tape, a crowd of forty or fifty persons had assembled. Fully half the crowd was made up of members of the club, young, middle-aged, and a few with gray in their hair—all devotees of clean, wholesome American sport. The other half of the crowd consisted mostly of high-school boys who were furnishing the majority of candidates for the try-out.
Matt, to whom the major had called the governor's attention, had leaped lightly over the fence that guarded the farther side of the track. Lined up just back of the fence were Susie McReady, Chub and Welcome Perkins. They had come to see the try-out, hoping against hope that something would happen to make Matt change his mind and become a candidate in the bike event. Leaning against the top rail of the fence, Matt stood watching the busy officers of the club and listening to the incessant clamor of the high-school boys.
"'Rah! 'rah! 'rah! Do or die!
Phœnix! Phœnix! Phœnix High!"
The athletic clubs of both Phœnix and Prescott were for the encouragement of amateurs. Professionals were barred. The clubs could pick up material for their rival contests wherever they chose so long as they did not enlist any one who had ever competed for a money prize.
There was an odd expression on Matt King's open, handsome face as he looked and listened—a touch of wistfulness, it might be, softening the almost steelly resolution of his gray eyes.
"What do you know about him, major?" asked the governor, staring across the track through the cigar-smoke and feeling an instinctive admiration for the trim, boyish figure in cap, sweater and knickerbockers.
"Our acquaintance lasted less than an hour, and was mighty informal," chuckled the major. "I was returning from the Indian School in my motor-car, about a week ago, when along comes that boy on his wheel. He tried to go by, and—well, when I'm out for a spin in that six-thousand-dollar car I'm not letting anything on hoofs or wheels throw sand in my face. I tells the driver to speed her up, and by and by we have the boy's legs working like piston-rods. He was still abreast of us when some confounded thing or other slips a cog under the bonnet; then we begin to sputter and buckjump, and finally stop dead. The boy gives us the laugh and goes on.
"Mike, my driver, gets out to locate the injury. But it's too many for Mike. He was just telling me he'd have to go to the nearest farmhouse and telephone the garage, when the boy on the wheel comes trundling back. He asks me as nice as you please if there's anything the matter, and if he can't help us out. I was just about to tell him that he had another guess coming if he thought he could make good where Mike had fallen down, when he slips out of his saddle, makes a couple of passes at the machinery, closes the bonnet and begins to crank up. Mike got back in his seat and laughed like he thought it was a good joke; then he pretty near threw a fit when the machine jogged off as well as ever. The boy gave us the laugh again, this time from the rear. And that's how he happened to make a hit with me. I've heard that he knows more about motors than——"