Hike and the aeroplane

Hike got off the train at Santa Benicia, weary now and looking a little worn. It seemed strange to alight at this familiar dowdy wooden station, after the brilliant desert nights and the terrible grandeur of battle.

He walked slowly toward the Academy, and around a corner swung Bluggy Blodgett and two classmates, on a walk. “Hello, Hike,” they cried excitedly. “Back?”

That same excited question as to whether he was back was asked by at least fifty before Hike reached Captain McDever’s room, where he found McDever and the coach, talking over the coming afternoon’s practise. They both rose from the window-seat, and, running him by the shoulders into a better light, by the windows, looked him over sharply. The coach shook his head. “You’re pretty well done up. What you been doing?”

“Aeroplaning,” was all Hike would say.

“Well, that may be all very well,” said the coach severely, “but it doesn’t put you into very good trim for football, strikes me. Now you beat it to your room, and I’ll see that you get a good diet and rest, and there may still be a chance to put you in for the San Dinero game. But you can’t play day after to-morrow—Saturday—Fresno game, at Fresno.”

A week before the Thanksgiving game—a week during which he was treated as a baby. Hike protested, but he was overruled by a council of the coach, Bill McDever, and Poodle. He would have had the Lieutenant persuade them that he never did such good work as when he was tired. He thought of his ride to Anarcon and the battle, coming after a sleepless night of siege. But the Lieutenant had gone back to Mexico for a short time.

Hike had to submit to going to bed at eight-thirty, and to eating nothing more exciting than beefsteak and oatmeal. He had to avoid all “nervousness”—by which the coach meant hard practise, horseback riding, fierce boxing, and everything else that was interesting. In their place, he had foolish bendings and twistings, nice easy exercises which bored him excessively.

Though Hike was fairly obedient, the coach’s gloom did not get less. Hike had, one evening, the sudden terrible thought that he really and truly might not be allowed to play.

There was another danger, as well. Hike’s Latin was the poorest of his studies, and on the Monday before the game (which came on Thursday), “Old Grouch,” the Latin and Greek teacher, was going to have an important test for the Sophomores. A flunk in it would disqualify from playing.

Poodle took him in charge, in Latin—at which the cheerful poet was a shark. Every evening, just when Hike was planning a new sort of elevating plane or rotary valve, spoiling perfectly good pieces of paper with criss-cross lines, Poodle would slam the table three times, to get attention, open a grammar of Latin, or the travels of Julius Cæsar (who was so good at Latin that he wrote in it), and then make poor Hike listen to rules, which he pronounced idiotic, or battles of Cæsar, which Hike called, “prett’ slow fighting.”

“Well, maybe you think I like doing this better’n you do,” Poodle would protest, whereupon Hike would get very sorry and fairly good and have some more Latin poured into him.

As a result, he passed the test. But, at the last moment, would the coach think that he was “rested up” enough to be in condition to play?

Though the coach had been a good player himself, he was something of a crank. He seemed to believe that the best way to make a bunch of eleven men feel like Sandows was to find out what each of them most wanted to do, and then prevent each from doing it.

Hike was willing to cut out the pie, though he had a sneaking fondness for it. He was willing—that is, nearly willing—to go to bed at eight-thirty. But when it came to having to “rest” all the time, he felt like going on a strike, by himself, and throwing bricks at Captain McDever and the coach. The less they let him plunge into hard practise, the less fit he felt.

Tuesday, two days before the game, was a horrible day. He felt so depressed that he scarcely cheered up at a telegram from General Thorne, announcing that P. J. Jolls and his thugs had been sentenced to long terms in the Federal Penitentiary.

On the Wednesday evening before the game, Hike finally decided he had “rested” so much that he simply wouldn’t be able to play.

“You really might be better if you snook out and took a ride, or something,” Poodle mused, as they sulked, in their room.

“Poodle, you’re a genius. No wonder the school mag. took both your poems! Sure—that’s what I need—and that’s what I’ll get! Jump into your puttees and riding-breeches, and come on!”

“But Hike—” protested Poodle.

Hike drove him to the closet, and began stripping off both their clothes, all at once, laughing and singing, “We stung ’em, see!”

Though most of what the livery stable keeper called “the young gentlemen from the Academy” wanted nice, easy-going horses, these two demanded the two fierce, half-broken bronchos that the stableman called “Fiend” and “Demon.”

By now, once they had thus broken the coach’s rules, Poodle was as interested as Hike, and he hummed blithely as they flung a leg over the rearing bronchos, and rode out into the rain.

Rain? Rather! California was making up for her usual dry summers by laying in a supply of the wettest water in the clouds. It poured till they could scarcely see the street lamps, and the mud splashed over them at every plunging step the bronchos took.

At first, Hike was a little uncomfortable, after his lazy week; but as they raced down the hill, with the wet wind full in his face, the mud spurting about him in the darkness, he stood in his stirrups and whooped, and kicked “Fiend” into a crazy lope about equal to an express train’s. His cheeks glowed, his legs felt strong enough for anything as his thighs gripped the horse’s sides.

They took five miles, at a good pace. Then Hike regretfully drew up and shouted back to Poodle (who had been jarred almost to death): “Well, I suppose we can’t go much farther.”

“Yes-s-s-s,” shivered Poodle, horribly aware that there was a large river down the back of his neck. “I think this is enough exercise. ’Course I’d like to take back all the mud there is on my pants, but I’m afraid I’d get smothered, and Bluggy owes me thirty cents and I want to live and make him pay it.”

“Right O!” said Hike. “But just one more spurt,” and he set “Fiend” off at the lope again; swinging around a curve, leaning far out from the saddle and swinging his hat gayly, glad to feel the cold rain on his bare head.

Then he rode back to Poodle and shouted, “I feel great, now. This’s something like training! Watch me play to-morrow. I’ll eat the San Dinero gentlemen.”

Poodle was cold and gloomy and pessimistic, by this time.

“I hope you do,” he said, as though he didn’t believe it.

“So do I, Pood’. Look here. I s’pose I’m a fool but—if San Dinero licks us—I’ll wish I’d never seen an aeroplane, or Mexico. Gee, I wish the game were on, right now.”

They were a little quiet as they loped back to the stable.