As the two boys named went forward to the desk, Step whispered to Sam: “What shall we do? Cast blanks? We’re licked, anyway.”
Sam shook his head. “No; we’ll see how many friends we have left. If it had been a standing vote, we might have let it go by default, but now I want to find out what the line-up is.”
With Sam, Orkney, Step, Poke, Herman and the Shark, the club could count upon six votes for the Trojan. The tally gave him five more—eleven in all. Scrub Payne had forty-one.
The meeting was over, and the club had fared badly. Sam and his friends were close together when they left the room; and it is to be related that nobody tried to force his company upon them. Just then the line was very sharply drawn between the two factions into which the class had divided. In fact, as if to emphasize the division, while the club kept on the right side of the street, the great body of the other party chose the left in leaving the school grounds. Step, in a fine rage, was vowing vengeance on Zorn and the rest, Herman and Poke occasionally adding suggestions of ways and means. Orkney and the Shark trudged along in silence, which in the case of the former had a touch of doggedness. The Shark appeared to be merely indifferent. Sam began to lag a little. There were perhaps a dozen stragglers, who could not be said to have attached themselves to either of the rival groups, and among these, no doubt, were the five outsiders who had voted with the club. Sam tried to puzzle out which had been his allies. The meeting had made it evident that the feud which had developed in the class was serious enough to indicate a long struggle; and he was anxious to know whom he could depend upon.
As a matter of fact, his observations brought him little light. Some fellows whom he had deemed his very good friends were openly with Zorn; two or three others—among them Jack Hagle—with whom he had not been on especially good terms, were among the stragglers. So busy was he with his problem that he failed to notice that he had fallen quite a distance behind his club-mates, and had been passed by one or two of the strays. He did observe, however, that Hagle was beginning to sidle toward him.
Wondering what might be in the wind, Sam slackened his pace. Hagle drew nearer. What Sam sometimes had called his “hang-dog” manner was peculiarly in evidence. For a moment or two the pair walked side by side. Then Hagle spoke, nervously, propitiatingly:
“Say, Parker! I—I voted for Walker.”
Sam turned and stared at him. “You? You——”
“Yes, I did!”
“Well, why in thunder shouldn’t you?” Sam demanded with sudden heat. “You’d got him into the mess by nominating him, hadn’t you?”