Ralph Barbour - Quarter-Back Bates

Stanley chuckled. “Dick, you’ve been sort of spoiled, haven’t you?” he said.

“Spoiled? What do you mean? Just because I asked you – ”

“You’re one of those fellows who expect others to do things for ’em, and get away with it. Wish I knew the secret. But it isn’t good for you, Dick. You must learn to run your own errands, and whitewash your own fences. Any time you break a leg, I’ll fetch and carry for you, but while you’re able to get about – nothing doing! In fact, seeing that I’m an older resident of this place, I’m not certain you shouldn’t be fagging for me!”

“Oh, go to the dickens,” muttered Dick. “You make me tired.” Then, after a moment, he added: “Maybe that was cheeky, Stan. I’m sorry. Guess I’ve had it too easy.”

“That’s all right, son. It’s just as well to know where we stand, though. Any other little thing I can do for you?”

“Yes, you can close your silly mouth,” was the answer.

By Saturday Dick felt almost like an old boy. His courses promised to be only mildly difficult, and the instructors seemed a very decent lot, notably “Old Addicks” who knew so much of ancient languages that he looked like an elderly, benignant Greek philosopher, and Mr. McCreedy, who taught mathematics. Through Stanley he met a great many of the fellows, and he picked up a few acquaintances himself. Of these latter, one was “Rusty” Crozier. He was a Fourth Class fellow who preferred to live in the town, and occupied two comfortable rooms in a house on Maple Street, just below the school. He was a jolly, light-hearted chap with a perpetual smile and hair of that peculiar shade of red that we associate with rusted iron: hence his nick-name. Dick met him in classroom. “Rusty” borrowed Dick’s fountain pen for a minute. After class they came together in the corridor and walked a little way along The Front. That began it. When Dick asked Stanley if he knew Crozier, Stanley nodded.

“Everyone knows Rusty,” he said. “But if you want to tread the straight and narrow, Dick, keep away from him.”

“What do you mean? Isn’t he – all right?”

“Oh, yes, Rusty’s all right. That is, there’s nothing vicious about him. In fact, he’s a very decent, very clean fellow. But he’s gifted with a talent for discovering trouble. And a talent for squirming out of it! If he wasn’t he’d have left Parkinson long ago. I’d say that Rusty’s trouble was an over-developed sense of humor.”

“I rather liked him,” mused Dick.

“You would. So do I. Everyone likes Rusty. But wise guys say him nay when he suggests one of his innocent amusements. It was Rusty who closed traffic on Main Street in the middle of a busy Saturday one day last year, only faculty doesn’t know it.”

“Did what?” asked Dick.

“He borrowed two carpenter’s horses and a sign and placed ’em across the middle of Main Street, near School, about one o’clock one day last spring. He found the sign somewhere, I don’t know where. It said ‘Street Closed by Order of Selectmen.’ Then he went over and stood in Wiley’s drug store and watched the fun. It was almost an hour before they discovered that it was a hoax. The paper was full of it, and the selectmen made an awful rumpus, but everyone else thought it was a pretty good joke.”

“And he wasn’t found out!”

“No. At least a score of people must have seen him set the barrier up, but no two of them agreed as to what he looked like. Some said he was a labourer in blue overalls, and others said he was a tall man with whiskers, and so on. That’s just one of Rusty’s innocent ways of amusing himself.”

“But doesn’t he ever get caught?” asked Dick incredulously.

“Oh, yes, heaps of times, but he always manages somehow to show that he was actuated by good intentions or that circumstances worked against him. Like the time he dropped the parlour match heads all over the floor in Room G and every time anyone put his foot down, one of the things went pop ! He showed Jud the hole in his pocket where the things had fallen out. If it hadn’t been for the hole, he claimed, it wouldn’t have happened. He got off with a month’s probation, I think.”

Dick laughed. “He must be a cut-up! Well, I’ll keep away from him when he feels frolicsome.”

“Trouble is,” said Stanley, “you never can tell when Rusty is going to spring something.” He smiled and then chuckled. “Three or four of us walked over to Princeville two years ago to the circus. It was one of those little one-ring affairs, you know, with a mangey camel, and a moth-eaten lion and a troop of trained dogs. It was rather fun. Rusty was one of us, and he was as quiet as a mouse until near the end. Then he began flicking peanuts at the ring master. We tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t quit. Every time the ring master turned his back, Rusty would land a peanut on him, and the crowd got to laughing and gave it away. So they hustled us all out, and we didn’t see the performing dogs. Has he asked you over to his room at Spooner’s?”

“Yes,” said Dick, suspiciously. “Is there any trick in that?”

“Oh, no,” answered Stanley, smilingly. “He has very jolly quarters. If you like we’ll go over together some evening.”

“All right. Only I don’t like that catfish grin of yours. I suppose he has a trick staircase that folds up and lets you down in a heap or something?”

“No. Rusty’s fun is pretty harmless. We’ll wander over there tonight if you like.”

“Well, but I’m going to keep my eyes open just the same,” Dick laughed “You’re too anxious to go along, Stan!”

That afternoon Dick found a letter in the rack downstairs. It bore the Warne postmark, and was addressed to him in a very dashing hand: “Richard C. Bates, Esq., Sohmer Hall, Parkinson School, Town.” Wondering, Dick opened the envelope. Within was an oblong of pasteboard punched with three holes of varying sizes. In one of the holes was an ancient looking cent so badly corroded that it was hard to read the lettering. Dick’s thoughts naturally fell on Rusty Crozier, although what the joke meant, he couldn’t make out. But he smiled and dropped the coin in a waistcoat pocket, and presently forgot about it. Returning from football practice at five, however, he found another missive awaiting him. The envelope was different and the writing different, but there was just such another coin-card within and in the card was a second penny. This one was bright enough, but it had been badly bent. Dick, puzzled, added the second coin to the first, resolved to find out the meaning of the prank that evening.

He and Stanley went across the campus and down Maple Street about eight. Spooner’s was a large, square house standing almost flush with the sidewalk. Like many of the residences thereabouts, its upper floors were tenanted by students unable or disinclined to secure rooms on the campus. Stanley pulled open a squeaky screen door and entered. At the foot of the staircase, he paused and lifted his voice.

“Oh, Rusty!” he shouted. “Rusty-y-y!”

Somewhere above a door opened and a voice answered.

“A-a-ay! Come up!”

Stanley led the way again up two flights, and then to a door at the front of the house. Oddly enough, it was closed tightly, which fact, since it had been opened a moment before, struck Dick as peculiar. Stanley knocked and a voice called “Come in!” Somehow Stanley managed to get behind Dick, and it was Dick who turned the knob and pressed the door inward. The next instant he was precipitated into a glare of light. The knob had jerked itself out of his hand, and something – he supposed at the moment the something to have been Stanley – had banged against his heels and pushed him violently into the room. He stopped to find himself asprawl over an armchair with a placard bearing the word WELCOME a few inches from his nose.