"What of it?" repeated Chub. "Oh, gee-whiskers! Can't you see what it means to have a real Injun in war-paint, like Clip, camped on your trail? Take it from me, Matt, it means trouble for you between now and the day of the race."
"All right," said Matt cheerfully, "I've had trouble before."
"Not the sort Clip, with Perry and that cross-country team back of him, will hand out to you. Seems like I'm always making a mess of things," Chub snorted. "That's the way Johnny Hardluck spars up to me. I get in a few whole-arm jabs and then, just as everything looks rosy, there's an error, and fate gets past my guard. This day's a sample. I begin with powder and sulfuric acid, hit Clip below the belt with a reference to his Injun blood, and then land on him with a corker of a rock intended for Perry. It wouldn't be so bad, Matt, if you didn't come in for the consequences."
"Never mind me," laughed Matt. "I'm big for my size and old for my age, and I've always been able to take precious good care of number one. I'm sorry for Clip. His mixed blood worries him, and Perry knows how to keep him all worked up. But nobody knows just what happened at the try-out, so don't do any wild guessing, Chub, and, above all, keep your guesses to yourself."
"I know what happened at the try-out," asserted Chub, "and there's no guess about it, either. Clip is superstitious. Remember that rabbit's foot, mounted on a silver band, he always carries as a luck-bringer?"
Everybody in the school knew about Clip's rabbit's foot. He had carried it the year before when he had beaten Vance Latham, the Prescott champion, in the mile race.
"What about that?" asked Matt, wondering what the luck-bringer had to do with the affair at the track.
"You know how the grand stand is built, out at the park," pursued Chub. "Any one can get under it and look out onto the track between the board seats. If any one wanted to, he could climb the timbers, rest the barrel of a revolver on a board and make a good shot at any one on the track. That notion struck me before I left the park this afternoon, and I stole away to do a little investigating. I'm beginning to think Sherlock Holmes is a back number compared to me. Look here what little Reddy Hawkshaw found under the stand and close to the lower end!"
Chub jerked his right hand out of his pocket and flung an object at Matt. The latter caught it deftly. It was a silver-mounted rabbit's foot, attached to a piece of fine steel chain.