Brett Halliday - Mike Shayne's Torrid Twelve

By the time school ended, Rick’s ultimatum had spread all over the school. When he met Pat in the front corridor after the last period, she was upset.

“Why did you talk to Max that way, Rick?” she inquired breathlessly. “Didn’t I explain how important it is to get in the club?”

“That’s stuff for twelve-year-olds,” Rick told her coldly. “Who wants to belong to a club that childish?”

“You mean you’re not going to apologize?” she asked, wide-eyed. “Rick, fellows beg to get in the Prospectors.”

“I don’t,” Rick said shortly.

Turning his back, he stalked off to the locker room to change into football clothes.

Max and several of the other squad members were there ahead of him. Silence fell when Rick entered, and everyone looked at him. Rick began to change into his suit. Max presently said, “Rick, do you want to be a Prospector?”

“No,” Rick said. “And I’m not going to change my mind.”

Max studied him for a time. Finally he said, “Nobody we ever asked turned down the chance, Rick.”

Rick said, “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

Max glanced around at the other boys. There was a general shrugging of shoulders. No one said anything further to him, either in the locker room or later on the field. He was simply ignored. The coach ordered scrimmage today. He picked out two teams and placed Rick at fullback on the offensive team.

On the first play, with one of the halfbacks carrying the ball, Rick was blocked by three opposing players, an unnecessary amount of attention for a backfield man who wasn’t carrying the ball. An elbow grazed his jaw and a knee caught him in the groin, knocking the wind from him. There was a five-minute time-out for Rick to recover.

On the next play he was clipped from behind by Max, who was playing left tackle on Rick’s own side. Rick limped back into position with a thoughtful expression on his face.

On the third play Rick carried the ball. He ended up on the bottom of a pileup, where the coach couldn’t see the chopping right that caught him alongside the jaw. It was Max who swung the right. He buried his nose in his arms to avoid a cleated foot swinging toward his face and caught it on top of the helmet. When the tangle of players finally rose and let him climb to his feet, he was half-dazed.

He was also angry. Shaking the cobwebs from his brain, he got set for the next play, a quarterback sneak.

The instant the ball was snapped, Rick moved into action. He made no attempt to take out any of the opposition. Taking a running leap, he landed on his knees in the middle of Max’s back before the tackle could start his charge into the opposing line.

The air whooshed out of Max as he hit the ground belly-down with Rick’s full weight on him. Rick was instantly up again and rushing forward in a crouch. His right elbow crashed into the jaw of an opposing lineman and knocked him flat. His foot caught another in the crotch. The coach’s whistle was blowing furiously when he dropped the next nearest man who happened to be his own center, with a right to the jaw.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing, Henderson?” the coach screamed at him.

“Quitting,” Rick said bitterly, and walked off the field toward the showers.

Junior Carr came over to see Rick that night, but they didn’t go out anywhere. Junior seemed a little nervous about even being inside with Rick.

“You’d better straighten things up with Max, Rick,” Junior pleaded. “You don’t want the Prospectors down on you.”

“The devil with them,” Rick said.

“Look, Rick, I’m going to join.”

“It’s a free country,” Rick said shortly.

“But we’re friends. We’ve always been in everything together.”

“We can still be friends,” Rick told him. “I’m just not joining that bunch of squares.”

When Junior left, discouraged, Rick walked over to see Pat. He found her on the verge of tears.

“Rick, why do you have to be so stubborn?” she asked. “Look, even after what happened at football practice today, Max would accept an apology. I talked to his girl on the phone. He likes you, Rick.”

“Don’t go intervening for me,” Rick said. “I’ve made up my mind, and it’s final.”

Pat dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. “Don’t I mean anything to you?”

“Of course,” he said. “You’re my girl, aren’t you?”

“Not if you turn down the Prospectors,” she said tearfully. “I couldn’t be.”

“Why not?” he demanded.

“You don’t know what it will be like,” Pat said in a plaintive voice. “Nobody will even talk to you. If I went with you, I’d get the same treatment. They might even hurt me.”

“Hurt you?” he asked without belief.

“Hasn’t it occurred to you that you might get beat up, Rick? Don’t you see it’s the whole club you’ll be up against? Maybe they’ll only ignore you and make everybody else ignore you too. They wouldn’t jump you without Max giving the word, and probably he won’t because he likes you. But he might, and then you could get really hurt. You can’t fight a hundred and fifty boys.”

“One at a time, I could.”

“It wouldn’t be one at a time,” she said wearily. “People the club’s down on don’t get a fair fight.”

Rick contemplated this thought without enthusiasm. He remembered the knife Max had taken from Artie, and his stomach lurched again.

“I don’t want to get you in a jam,” he said stiffly. “I guess this is good-by, huh?”

“Unless you change your mind.”

“Then it’s good-by,” Rick said.

Rick’s ordeal didn’t really start until Monday, because over the weekend he simply stayed home. In answer to his parents’ questions as to why he was mooning around the house, he said he had studying to do. But most of the time he watched television.

He didn’t hear from Junior.

On Monday he got his first taste of what it meant to offend the Prospectors. First, Junior didn’t appear as usual to walk to school with him. At school he was greeted by blank stares from everyone, including nonmembers of the club. Apparently the word had gone out that he was taboo, and even non-members were afraid to violate the taboo.

Every time Rick encountered Junior Carr, his friend turned fiery red and hurried off in another direction. When he ran into Pat, she looked as though she were going to cry and averted her eyes.

On Tuesday he sat alone in the cafeteria during the lunch period, his back to a table containing Max, Junior and a number of other Prospectors. From the overheard conversation he gathered that Junior had performed the stink-bomb mission alone, and it had been a huge success. There was a good deal of hilarity over the discomfiture of the Purple Pelicans.

By the end of the week Rick had stopped listening in classrooms, had stopped studying and spent his evenings dully staring at the television screen without seeing it. His parents discussed calling a doctor.

Saturday night he got a phone call from Junior Carr.

“Listen, Rick,” Junior said. “I’m taking a chance phoning you like this, but we were always friends, and I wanted to tip you off.”

“Yeah?” Rick said without much interest.

Junior spoke with a tremor.

“You know I didn’t want to give you the treatment, Rick. I had to.”

“Sure,” Rick said. “I’m not blaming you.”

Junior’s tone turned a trifle relieved. “I’m really sorry about the way things happened, Rick.”

“It’s not your fault,” Rick said.

“What I’m calling about is that the word is out to clobber you, Rick. Artie’s been talking it up, and Max finally gave in. Rick, you got to be careful.”