THIRD BASE THATCHER

THE BASEBALL BOOKS

• PITCHER POLLOCK
• CATCHER CRAIG
• FIRST BASE FAULKNER
• SECOND BASE SLOAN
• THIRD BASE THATCHER

[He leaned on the very first ball pitched]

THIRD BASE
THATCHER

BY

EVERETT (Deacon) SCOTT

SHORT STOP OF THE YANKEE BASEBALL TEAM
1922 CHAMPIONS OF THE AMERICAN LEAGUE

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

LESLIE CRUMP

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1923

Copyright, 1923,
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
The Quinn & Boden Company

BOOK MANUFACTURERS
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

THIRD BASE THATCHER

CHAPTER I
FOUL!

It was the last minute of play. The score stood 14 to 14. The teams of ’25 and ’26, the Freshman and Sophomore classes of Pennington Institute, were in a mad scramble on the gym. floor. It was the last game of the interclass basketball tournament and on the victory hung the school championship. Both teams had severely trounced the older teams of the Junior and Senior classes in a series of three games each, and likewise they had humbled each other, each class being credited with a game. This one told the tale, and it had been madly fought from the first whistle, as the score, chalked on the blackboard above the heads of the madly cheering crowd of students who lined the gallery running track, attested.

Suddenly, out of the mêlée of flying arms and legs, panting and perspiring bodies and tense, almost grim, fighting faces on the gym. floor, shot Thatcher, a Freshman forward, a clean-limbed, black-haired boy of rather more than average height. As if by signal from somewhere in the crowd of milling players the ball shot upward and forward and thumped into his hands. Just a step behind him was Gould, the Sophomore guard, slightly shorter, but stockier and as fast as an antelope. His face was set with an unpleasant expression of anger; there was that about him that suggested a determination to win whether by fair means or foul.

Thatcher dribbled the ball once, then poised momentarily and lifted it for an overhead shot at the basket for the winning two points. Gould, in desperation, hurled himself forward, tried to stop the shot, and, failing, fell to the floor with a crash. The ball was describing a graceful arc toward the back board from which it caromed into the basket.

“Foul! He tripped me!” cried Gould as he rolled over on the floor.

The referee’s whistle shrilled just as the ball slipped through the basket, the cords playing a crisp tattoo on its bulging leather sides.

“Foul!” announced the referee. “Basket void. Free shot for the Sophs.”

Thatcher, astonished at the sudden turn of the incident, stood still under the basket for a moment while Hoffman, the Sophomore captain, swept down and gathered in the ball to take it to the other end of the court for the free shot to which the foul entitled him. Suddenly the Freshman forward snapped into angry action.

“Here! Wait! It’s a fake, Mr. Thomas. I didn’t trip him. He fell purposely to make it look like a foul. It was a trick, I tell you. I didn’t touch him.”

“He did. He lies. He tripped me!” yelled Gould, getting to his feet.

Thatcher looked at him coldly, and with the utmost self possession spoke to him.

“You have the effrontery to stand there and say that, Gould, when you know it isn’t true! I’m surprised at your sportsmanship.”

Gould’s face grew livid under the sting of the reproach.

“You lie,” he snorted, “you know you tripped me. Didn’t he, Mr. Thomas?”

The referee, surprised himself at the turn of events, confessed:

“He fell, Thatcher, and it looked to me like an ugly foul. That’s my decision.”

“I can’t blame you, Mr. Thomas, for he did make it look real. He’s a good fakir. If I—”

Gould, enraged now, stepped in front of the Freshman forward, and shaking his clenched fist under Thatcher’s nose, roared:

“I’ll smash your face if—”

“Stop! Enough of that. Get off the floor, both of you. You’re ruled out of the game. Hoffman, shoot the basket,” snapped the referee, realizing suddenly that he had already permitted matters to go too far.

Hoffman toed the foul line, coolly lifted the ball, took careful and accurate aim and shot it upward and forward. The sphere went whirling prettily through the air, thumped against the back board and dropped neatly through the basket. The referee’s whistle sounded. He reached for the ball to carry it to the center again when the timekeeper sounded his whistle and the game was over. The score was 15 to 14 and the Sophomores had won. Pandemonium reigned in the running track gallery where crowds of second year men cheered and stamped and whistled to the consternation of a big group of chagrined Freshmen.

Thatcher, who had lingered on the side line of the court long enough to see Hoffman shoot the basket and win the game, was joined by the four other freshman players and two substitutes and together they made their way to the spiral stairway that led to the locker room in the basement. No one spoke a word for some time until Buck Hart, the captain and center, a second year man but taking some Freshman work in class and thus eligible for the “fresh” team, crossed over to the bench on which Thatcher was sitting and slipping an arm across his shoulder affectionately, said:

“It’s a doggone shame, Jeff, but don’t you take it too hard. You were playing to win, that’s all.”

“Yes, I was playing to win, but I wasn’t playing dirty, Buck. And the worst of it is I believe Mr. Thomas still thinks I tripped him, the dirty fakir that he is.”

“Well—er—ah—he sure fell hard, Jeff. Didn’t you have something to do with it?” asked Buck.

“What! Why, Buck, you wouldn’t think that of me, would you?” exclaimed Thatcher, a look of pained surprise on his face.

“Well—ah—it looked sort of rough to me. I saw him go down and he was right in front of you. Looked bad to me and I was surprised to think you of any of us should foul so deliberately.”

“But, hang it, Buck, I didn’t. Oh, please believe me, I had nothing to do with it. I never have played dirty in my life and believe me I’m not beginning now. It was he who played dirty. It was a rotten trick. When he saw he couldn’t stop the shot he threw himself down on the floor—fell purposely and then howled that I had tripped him. It was quick thinking on his part all right, but dirty work. He saw that if he could get away with it he would spoil my basket and give his side a chance for a free shot to win the game. And, thanks to his cleverness, it worked out just the way he doped it.”

“Gee whizz, the dirty skate,” exclaimed Cas Gorham, a sub, who had gathered around Jeff, with the rest of the members of the team.

“Gould is a hard loser, I’ve found out. They tell me last year in baseball he pulled some shady trick and—say—gee whizz—I forgot—this isn’t the last you’ll have to do with Gould. He played third base on the scrub team last year and he’s got it doped out that he is naturally going to inherit that position on the big team this year since Squires graduated. And, by jingoes, that’s the job you are going to try for.” It was Brownie Davis who was speaking, one of the fellows who had been instrumental in getting Thatcher to come to Pennington.

“That’s my regular job. The position I played best on the Y. M. C. A. team last year, you know,” said Thatcher with a smile.

“Sure, we know. Don’t we all remember that was one of the best amateur teams in the state?” said Rabbit Warren, slapping Thatcher on the back.

“Well, that will be your chance to square accounts with him if you don’t get a chance before that,” said Buck Hart. Then he added, “But look out for him, Jeff. If he pulls that sort of stuff he’s as crooked as a cruller. Keep your eye on him. Coach Rice told me to-day he was going to post notices for baseball candidates to report in the gym. for cage practice in two or three weeks. We’ll be rooting for you, Jeff.”

“Well, maybe I can keep him on the bench or on the scrub team this year. I’ll try mighty hard you bet. But even if I do win the job away from him that won’t take the sting out of this defeat. Honestly, fellows, I’m as sorry as the dickens that I should be the cause of losing the game and the school championship, even though I didn’t play dirty myself.”

“Tut-tut, little one, don’t take it so hard,” said Buck Hart sliding into his trousers. But it was evident to Jeff that he was not the only one of the team who took the defeat bitterly. All of the fellows had played hard and clean to win and for Thatcher to know that he had had the foul called on him, even though it was not his fault, made him feel deeply chagrined. Indeed, it made him bitter toward Gould, who had played so unsportsmanlike, and it made him so disconsolate and discouraged that he had very little more to say in the locker room, hurrying through the ceremony of a cold shower, and dressing as swiftly as he could and seeking his own room in Carter Hall, where he flung himself into a chair and gave over to bitter reflection.

CHAPTER II
THE FIGHT IN THE DARK

The mood lasted. Jeff Thatcher said very little as he went to the coat-room adjoining the dining hall and discarded his street clothes for the white coat of a waiter, for Thatcher earned a good portion of his tuition expenses by waiting on one of the scores of tables in the big student dining hall.

Usually he found a great deal of fun in his work at the tables, for there was always a lot of good-natured badinage and joking passed among the fellows. But somehow this evening, as the students filed into the big hall, he felt quite different than ever before. It seemed to him that most of them, and especially the Freshmen, looked at him reproachfully, and about all of them there seemed to be a suggestion of strained quietness as he approached.

At first Thatcher could not account for it. But suddenly he realized, with a sense of shock, that they too believed that he had played unfairly, that he had fouled Gould and that he had lost the game for his team by trying unsportsmanlike tactics and being caught at it. He was loath to think that this was true. He could not believe it at first. But when in the lull between serving students and clearing off the tables he stopped to realize that even Buck Hart, the captain of the team, and the other players as well had thought that he was guilty of the offense, he understood the rest of the fellows, some present as spectators and hearing the referee’s decision, and others getting the news by hearsay, could be of the same opinion.

This hurt Thatcher more than he believed was possible. Always he had taken great pride in the fact that no one could question his sportsmanship. He had played fair in the most desperate situations, and he had preferred to lose rather than resort to fouling, cheating or disobeying the rules of the game. And now to have the fellows believe that he had committed this offense hurt him to the quick. How could they believe it? he asked himself, how could they think that he would do such a thing when they knew his record for clean sportsmanship?

Jeff Thatcher, like a tortoise, literally crawled into his shell; at least his sunny disposition did. It vanished into the depths of his soul and he became morose, almost sulky, which was far from his normal attitude. Silently he served his table to the end of the meal. Then, instead of joining the rest of the squad of waiters at their special tables which were set in the dining hall after the rest of the students had departed, he hurried away to the coat room and took off his white coat.

Attired once more in his street clothes, he hurried to his room in Carter Hall and put on his overcoat, determined to take a walk, he knew not where, or do something to be alone with his unpleasant thoughts.

Brooding over his misfortunes, he left Carter Hall and started across the hard, frozen ground of the campus. There was a suggestion of snow in the air—a cold March snow, for the backbone of winter had not been broken and for weeks bitter weather had lingered with them. Snow was in the air now and no doubt of it. Indeed, as Jeff passed under an arc light at the bend in the road that led behind the gymnasium building, he noticed vagrant flakes floating down the shafts of light. But he gave them small heed, and like a grumpy old turtle, which he felt he resembled very much, he turned up the collar of his coat and tramped on into the shadow of the gymnasium building.

Suddenly, out of the blackness, two figures loomed up. Thatcher, because he was thinking and thinking hard, saw them only when he almost collided with them. Not recognizing them he tried to avoid them by going around them, but one, the bigger of the two, stepped in front of him again and growled in an ugly voice:

“You tried to make a liar out of me this afternoon, didn’t you?”

Thatcher noted then that it was Gould, with a Sophomore companion known as Birdie Pell. He knew too from the odor on the breath of Gould where they had been and why. Both had been “out of bounds” to steal an after dinner cigarette, a serious offense at Pennington and a particularly serious offense in the case of Gould who was a basketball and baseball man.

Thatcher stopped in his tracks and looked Gould squarely in the eyes. His wrath was rising steadily but he knew that he had it well within control.

“Gould, I don’t have to try to make a liar out of you. You are naturally one of that breed. As for dirty playing, there isn’t anything dirtier ever put on a basketball suit that has come to my notice.”

Stung by this retort, and angry at being ridiculed in front of Pell, Gould lost his temper completely.

“What’s that? You eat those words, Kid, or I’ll jam ’em down your throat.”

He stepped forward pugnaciously and shook his clenched fist under Thatcher’s nose.

Still surprisingly calm, Thatcher maintained his position and calmly pushing Gould’s hand aside, said coldly:

“Don’t wave that dirty thing in front of me that way. Put it where it belongs. As for making me eat anything, you aren’t big enough or man enough to do it.”

“Why, you—you rotten Freshman. That means fight,” said Gould, now losing himself completely. He started to take off his overcoat.

Somehow Jeff Thatcher found great satisfaction in the turn of events. The word fight had a ring to it that brought joy to his soul. Although he had not realized it, his mental condition was such that nothing short of physical combat could present a safety valve of sufficient capacity to give vent to his feeling. Almost eagerly he threw off his overcoat and dropped it to the graveled drive.

It was a terrific fight while it lasted. All the wrath and ugliness of Gould, the tricky one, the conceited one, was pitted against the anger and resentment of Jeff Thatcher, and from the moment they squared off in front of each other it was evident to frightened little Birdie Pell, the sole witness to the historic affair, that it would be give and take to the bitter end with no weakening of spirit and no quarter given.

Both boys were athletes in the best of condition, though Jeff Thatcher, slightly younger than his antagonist, had taken better care of himself. Both knew more than the rudiments of boxing, as was evident from the start. Alert, eager, yet cautiously watchful, they stepped stealthily around each other there in the darkness. Gould was the first to lead, stepping in and flashing a vicious straight left to Thatcher’s face. But Jeff countered with such amazing speed that Gould’s blow was made harmless by a jolting left that he received full in the face.

It stung him like a whiplash, for with a grunt, half of pain and half of anger, he stepped in again with both hands driving piston-like into Thatcher’s face. The attack was so vicious and so strong that Jeff could only stagger back, block and stall as best he could, watching for an opening to cut in with a smashing blow that would break up the attack. He found it. Gould, in his haste and rage, stumbled slightly and with his loss of balance dropped his hands ever so little. Jeff, alert and waiting for this, started an upper-cut from the hip that had all the strength of his powerful back and arm in it. Like a striking snake it darted in between Gould’s hands and landed with a sickening smack on the point of Gould’s chin. His head snapped back and his body sagged forward for the slightest fraction of a second, and Birdie Pell, with a cry of alarm, stepped toward him, for the younger boy thought that Gould had been knocked out.

The Sophomore went down to one knee, stayed there for a moment and brushed his arm across his eyes as if to clear his whirling head. Then suddenly with a roar of anger [he] leaped to his feet and [rushed into another furious attack]. But he was in a towering rage now and his efforts were far from the well-timed blows he had used before. Thatcher saw this with a degree of satisfaction and it was with less difficulty that he side-stepped and blocked each blow and shot home crashing lefts and rights, each time an opening presented itself. He was hammering Gould badly now and the Sophomore’s anger was mounting higher and higher and his blows were becoming wilder and wilder with each passing second.

[He rushed into another furious attack]

Then suddenly a strange and astonishing thing happened. The darkness in which they had been fighting was suddenly shattered and illuminated by a flood of white light from two glaring searchlights, as a car, approaching unheard by the three boys, swung swiftly around the corner of the gymnasium building, and with squeaking brakes came suddenly to a stop.

The two antagonists and Birdie Pell stood silhouetted against the white glare, staring stupidly at each other and into the blinding lights. Then Gould, coming to his senses, suddenly exclaimed: “Dr. Livingston—beat it,” and rushing for his coat, which Birdie Pell held in his arms, he and the smaller boy ran out of the shafts of light and into the blackness of the night.

As for Jeff Thatcher, he realized with a sickening sensation that it was Dr. Livingston’s car. He realized too that the Headmaster had caught them in the act of fighting, a thing that was forbidden on the school grounds—an offense that merited serious punishment.

With sinking heart he saw the big, overcoated figure of Dr. Livingston step out of the car and come toward him.

“Well, Thatcher, what does this mean?”

Jeff could not think of an appropriate answer but evidently Dr. Livingston did not expect any.

“Fighting, eh? This is serious. I’m sorry, Thatcher. Were the others Gould and Pell?”

Jeff’s lips closed in a straight line. It was a question he could not in honor answer.

“Never mind. I saw them and recognized them both. Go to your room, Thatcher, and report to me at ten o’clock to-morrow morning. This, as you know, warrants serious discipline.”

And Jeff, with the unpleasant feeling of a culprit caught in the act, turned toward Carter Hall.

CHAPTER III
FORCED OUT

“This warrants serious discipline.”

Dr. Livingston’s words, with their uncomfortable portent kept racing through Jeff Thatcher’s mind as he sat in his room in Carter Hall. He knew all that this would mean to him. Not that, ordinarily, he was afraid to face whatever punishment was due him, but in this case he realized it would be far more serious to him than it would to almost any other boy in school. And the unpleasant part of it was that although Gould would receive the same disciplining, he would not suffer half as much as Thatcher would. Disciplining to the Sophomore, and to Pell for that matter, for he would unquestionably be implicated, would mean nothing more than so much punishment to be endured until they had paid the penalty, then they would be free to go on in their usual happy routine at school.

But for Thatcher it meant a great deal more. It meant disaster. It meant the sacrificing of an opportunity to play baseball on the best school team in the state; it meant that he would have to forego the happiness of school life, and most of all, it meant sacrificing his opportunities for an education. Thatcher realized that all this was in the balance and there is little wonder that he regretted his rash actions in getting into a fight with Gould on the school ground. It would have been far better if he had passed on, or if it had to be a fight, he should have refused to fight except out of bounds where school laws did not reach; across the bridge over Wading River, or on the other side of the town.

“What a fool I was,” he muttered as he sat on the edge of his bed, his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands.

Footsteps sounded in the hall outside his door, and presently it was pushed open, then shut with a bang.

Thatcher raised his head just long enough to see that it was Wade Grenville, his roommate, who had entered.

“Hello, Wade,” he mumbled, scarcely rousing himself from his disconsolate attitude.

“’Lo, Jeff. For the love of Pete, what’s the matter with you? Still feeling sore over Gould’s dirty trick? Cut it, Jeff, cut it. Don’t take it so blamed hard. The rest of the fellows have forgotten it already; passed it up as a mucker’s trick and figure to get square on Gould and the Sophs some other time. That’s the way you want to take it. Buck up,” and he flung his cap on his own bed across the room and went over and clapped his hands affectionately on Jeff’s shoulder.

Jeff looked up and smiled ruefully.

“I’m square, I guess, or nearly so, but—”

“What? Say, Jeff, what’s that cut on your cheek? and—and—say, by jingoes, you’ve been fighting. Jiminy, was it with Gould? Did you lick him? Good stuff, old Kid, only why didn’t you tip a fellow off. I’d like to have seen you clout him one just for luck and the rest of the fellows would have enjoyed it too. Where did you pull it off?”

“Why—why—it wasn’t prearranged. It just happened. We ran into each other out back of the gym. and had it out and—and—well, we got caught.”

“Great cats, you don’t say!”

“Yes. It’s true. Wish it wasn’t.”

“Jiminy. Who caught you?” Wade looked at Jeff admiringly as he asked the question.

“The old man himself, of course. Who should it be but Dr. Livingston,” Jeff replied bitterly.

“Jingoes, that’s rough, Jeff.”

“Worse than that.”

“Aw, never mind. You’ll be out of trouble by baseball time, though. Buck up.”

“Out of trouble by baseball time? Yes, I guess I will. And out of Pennington, too.”

“Aw, he won’t fire you out. He’s not a stickler like that. He’d only take away your special privileges and—Jiminy, you’ll lose your table job, won’t you?” Wade began to look concerned.

“Yes, and my newspaper and magazine privilege, and my laundry business and that will be the finish.”

“Finish?”

“Yes, finish.”

“Why, what do you mean, Jeff?”

“Hang it, man, don’t you see, if I lose all my special privileges I won’t be able to stay in school. Those jobs pay my way here. I haven’t a cent otherwise and if they are taken away from me I’ll have to quit school and go to work. I haven’t a cent coming in from home—haven’t any home, really. I lived with my uncle, you know, and he can’t contribute anything. I’ve been hustling for my own living ever since Dad died, and that’s three years ago. So you see, if I lose my jobs here, I’m a goner. I’ll have to leave school and go to work to support myself.”

“Jingoes, that’s tough, Jeff. But maybe Dr. Livingston will take all those things into consideration and—and—”

“’Fraid not, Wade. You know what a stickler he is for rules and obedience. Fighting on the school grounds is a serious offense, as he said, and the penalty is only one thing,—all special privileges are withdrawn and the unfortunate chap has to spend two weeks in bounds. Of course it doesn’t make a bit of difference with Gould or Pell, they both have rich fathers to foot their bills—Gould has, at least—and they have been too lazy to work up jobs the way I’ve had to. The only special privileges that will be taken away from them will be the privilege of leaving the school grounds, going to the basketball games and attending whatever ‘spreads’ and ‘hops’ that might take place in the next couple of weeks. The worst privation they’ll suffer is that of going without their cigarettes; they won’t be able to go across the bridge to steal a smoke. At that they’ll probably take a chance and sneak their smokes in their rooms. Wish that was all I’d have to suffer, believe me, smokes don’t mean a single thing to me, but leaving Pennington means the whole world, right now. Gee, it’s going to be tough.” And Jeff slumped back into the attitude of dejection that Wade had seen him in when he entered the room.

Wade sat down on his bed, too, and was glumly silent for a long time. He knew that Jeff had spoken the truth. There was small hope that Dr. Livingston would waive rules even in the case of Jeff Thatcher, and Wade thought of all that Jeff’s going would mean to him. They had been roommates and pals for months now; since the beginning of the school term in September. It was going to be a hard ordeal to part with Jeff,—life at Pennington was not going to be the same for him; at least that was how he felt at the moment.

“Jiminy, it’s going to be rough on the both of us, Jeff,” he said finally, “but it’s going to be especially tough for you.”

“Well,” said Jeff with a forced smile, “the worst is yet to come. Come on to bed. I don’t much feel like trying to digest Cæsar and his Gaelic Wars to-night, and anyhow I guess it won’t make much difference whether I’m prepared in Latin to-morrow or not. Come on, turn in.”

CHAPTER IV
ON HIS OWN

Both Jeff and Wade spent a restless night. Jeff lay awake until long after the clock in the Congregational church tower across the river in New City boomed the hour of midnight, so overwrought were his nerves over the day’s occurrences and the interview with Dr. Livingston and what it would bring forth on the morrow. And as he lay there tossing between the blankets he realized more and more how hopeless his case was and how cheerless the outlook for his own future was.

What was he to do? Where was he to turn? He could not go back to live with his uncle without finding employment for himself, and where would he turn to find this? Where—

A thought occurred to him that kept him awake for nearly an hour longer. One of the privileges that would be taken away from him as a result of his disobedience to the school rules was the privilege of acting as school correspondent for the New City Daily Freeman. He had secured the position by bearding “Boss” Russell, the city editor of the Freeman, in his office and making application for the job almost before his predecessor, Harold Hall, was graduated from Pennington. And ever since he had been contributing paragraphs of school news to the paper, stories of the football and basketball games, and various other “write ups” for which he had been paid space rates, and had in that way earned a neat sum each week which managed to keep him in clothes and buy some of his books. His work had been acceptable to the paper, he knew, and he wondered, now that he was going to be thrown out on his own, why it wouldn’t be possible for him to join the staff of the Freeman as a cub reporter. It was a great idea. He would try.

And then, thinking of the romance of being a reporter, some time between midnight and daylight he fell asleep and dreamed that he had suddenly become a newspaper man, indeed the only employee his particular dream newspaper had. He was reporter, city editor, typesetter, printer and pressman all in one, and he had a wild nightmare of a career that ended when he got into an altercation with a big printing press and the iron monster stood up on its hind legs and began clawing the air, finally grabbing him in its teeth and, like some prehistoric monster, it shook him back and forth until he woke up with a yell to find Wade Grenville standing over his bed and pulling him out from between the blankets by the slack of his pajamas.

“For the love of Pete, turn out. It’s seven-thirty. You haven’t a dickens of a lot of time to get cleaned and report for chapel. Come on, Jeff, shake a leg. You’ve got a tough day ahead of you, you poor kid.”

“Aw, don’t remind me of it, Wade. I hate to face the Old Man and hear sentence pronounced.”

“Well, you’ve got to face the music. I hope he gives it to Gould and Pell as stiff as he can. Blast ’em! If it hadn’t been for that dirty trick Gould pulled you wouldn’t be in this peck of trouble. Go ahead. Wash up.”

Jeff made little ceremony of his morning toilet. He turned on the water in the wash basin until it gushed out with such a splash that it spattered the walls and slopped over onto the floor. Then, in his undershirt and trousers, he plunged his head and arms into the basin and wallowed around like a seal, puffing and snorting and blowing and adding a great deal more to the water that was already on the floor, until presently there seemed to be more there than there was in the bowl. Then he came up for air, and with eyes squeezed tight shut and his face distorted, he began feeling around for a towel, which Wade obligingly wadded up into a ball and threw at him, shouting at the same time:

“There, you blamed hippopotamus; there’s your towel. Why in the dickens do you have to have the floor knee deep in water before you feel you are properly washed. Now I’ve got to put on my rubber boots or my bathing suit before I can cross the room to get my necktie. Every time you take a wash this room looks like that painting of Washington crossing the Delaware, only more so.”

“Aw, let me alone. You’ll be sorry when I’m not around to muss up your old floor. You wait and see.”

“Jingoes, you’re right I will, Jeff. I— Great guns, there goes the first bell. Grab your things and get ’em on. Come on quick.”

A mad scramble followed and both fellows only just squeezed into the last of their clothing as the final bell rang and they dashed for the hall and the chapel door.

But Jeff’s thoughts were far from being on the services and the announcements. Indeed, when he was thrown back among the boys again he realized once more with an aching heart how hard it was going to be to leave all this behind, and the prospects of a position on the Freeman did not seem half as alluring as it had the night before.

Somehow news of the fight had got through the school and Jeff found himself the object of admiring glances from the Freshmen and glowering looks from the Sophomores, and when the boys filed out from chapel Buck Hart, Rabbit Warren, Cas Gorham and Brownie Davis, got him aside and congratulated him.

“Great stuff, old fellow. Wish you’d have given him a black eye for me. That’s a fine lump he has on his cheek and his nose will never be the same,” said Buck.

“He sure looked cut up this morning. I had a good look at him,” said Rabbit Warren, slapping Jeff on the shoulder.

To all this Jeff smiled ruefully. It was on his tongue to tell them too that in reality he had got the worst of it, but he glanced up in time to see Dr. Livingston coming down the hall. The principal caught his eye and motioned to him to follow, and Jeff broke away from his admirers and hurried to the Doctor’s office.

Gould and Pell were already there, and Jeff was surprised to see how many scars of battle the former bore. His nose was in an unpleasant state of redness and abnormally swollen and there was just the suggestion of blackness about his right eye. There was a slight cut on his right cheek, too.

Dr. Livingston sat down in his chair and swung around to look at all three. They were silent for several minutes while he looked at them frowningly. Finally he spoke in a sharp, crisp voice.

“You three boys know the rules of the school as well as I do. I am very much put out with you. Gould, you and Pell stay in bounds for a month. No privileges whatever, and report to Professor Battel for an extra hour’s Latin every day during the period. And mind you, if there is one complaint against you from any quarter out you go, dismissed from the school. I’ll not have boys of your stamp around here. You are both on probation, so mind your conduct. Go to your class. Thatcher, I want to see you alone a moment.”

Jeff’s heart seemed to drop into his shoes as Gould and Pell departed. “Why does he want to see me alone?” he asked himself.

Dr. Livingston looked at him in silence for some time after the two boys had gone. Finally he spoke, and to Jeff it seemed as if his tone was a little more fatherly than it had been to Gould or Pell.

“Thatcher,” he said, “this is the most unpleasant task I have had in all my career with boys. I have laid awake most of the night thinking of just what this was going to mean to you but I can see no way out. Rules are rules, and you know it as well as I do. That holds not only in school but in life generally, and the quicker you find it out the better off you’ll be. Rules are rules, laws are laws, and when you break either of them you must be punished. I have come to the conclusion that I cannot make an exception even of you, and I realize in making this decision just how disastrous it is going to be for you. My only hope is that somehow you will find a way out of the difficulty. I will have to suspend all your privileges for the rest of the term, and you will have to remain in bounds for two weeks at least. That is the minimum penalty, as you know. I’m very, very sorry.”

In spite of his best efforts at self-control tears welled up in Jeff Thatcher’s eyes and a great lump gathered in his throat as Dr. Livingston talked. It was several seconds before he could speak without breaking down completely.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he finally gulped, “but I guess it means the end of my career at Pennington. I can’t stay if my privileges are taken away. I—I—” Jeff gulped and turned away, starting tear-blind for the door.

“I’m sorry too, son. I only hope you’ll find a way out of the difficulty. I’d help you if I could but there is no way I can grant you special privileges under the circumstances. Go to your class now and see if there isn’t some way you can work the situation out.”

But to Jeff there was no way out. He puzzled over it all day in his classes and all evening in the privacy of his room, for Wade had gone to a concert in town with several other fellows and Jeff was left alone with his unpleasant problem. He pondered over every phase of it until he became so discouraged and unhappy that he realized in desperation that he would have to quit Pennington forthwith, leave while yet he had a few dollars in his pockets with which to take care of himself while trying to find a position.

He listened. The big clock over in New City was booming the hour. He counted the strokes. It was nine o’clock. Why not leave now? Leave while Wade and the rest of the fellows were away. He knew that he did not have the courage to stay and bid them all good-by. He realized he would break down and probably make a chump of himself. Now was the time to go. And besides, he realized, now was the time when he could best get at Boss Russell, the city editor of the Daily Freeman, and perhaps secure the position he so much needed. He would go.

Hastily, almost eagerly, he packed up his few belongings and put them in his suitcase. Several little personal things he purposely overlooked, for he wanted to leave them for Wade to remember him by. In twenty minutes he had completed his task. Then he sat down at his desk in the corner and hastily scribbled Wade a note telling him of his plans. He read this over once, tucked it into an envelope, and dropped it on Wade’s bed. Then he picked up his suitcase, snapped out the light and stepped out into the broad hall and tiptoed his way to the big side door of the building, fearful lest he should disturb Dr. Hornby, the professor in charge of the house.

Out on the campus, he paused a moment in the shadow of the building and looked about. It was a hard pull to leave. It made his throat and eyes fill up once more, and it was only with the utmost self-control that he kept from breaking down as he finally stepped out among the tall elms on the campus and hurried toward the big gate and the street where a trolley to New City stood waiting at the end of the line.

CHAPTER V
THE CUB REPORTER

Fortune and Boss Russell favored Jeff Thatcher. When he appeared at half past ten that night in the Freeman office the city editor was in a quandary over the illness of two members of his staff and the resignation of a third, and when he peered over his glasses at Jeff Thatcher as he stood in front of his desk, he realized that here was part of the solution to the unpleasant situation of finding himself short-handed.

“You are young,” he told Jeff, “but your school stuff has been mighty good for a beginner, and I’ll take you on as a cub, if you want to take Mulvaney’s place. I’ve moved Mull up as special assignment man and you can run his obits and cover the hospitals for accident cases.” And so Jeff became a member of the Freeman staff with surprising quickness. Indeed, he started out forthwith to make what was to be his nightly rounds of undertaking establishments and hospitals even at that late hour, and at first he took a keen delight in the work.

There was no such thing as an assignment book in the office of the New City Daily Freeman. That method was far too slow for city editor, Boss Russell. He preferred to give out assignments over the city desk just as fast as they developed. He would hand them over with a few penciled notes, or a newspaper clipping or so, and some terse, snappy instructions that usually were enough to inspire any one of his staff of reporters to write the best story of his career. If he did not he stood a good chance of being fired. Boss Russell wanted the best that was in a man all the time. And he usually got it.

Jeff Thatcher watched this nightly distribution of assignments for two weeks. He watched it at first eagerly, hopefully speculating on what his would be. But as nights went on he watched it none the less eagerly, but far from hopeful. He soon grew to know what his assignments would be. Boss Russell had a method all his own of breaking in cub reporters. Jeff began to realize that it was a method that treated said cub as if he were a machine. He had already begun to feel like the cogs in a watch or the gears in an automobile. Life became a constant succession of visits to certain undertaking establishments for obituaries of the people who had died that day, a nightly trip to police headquarters to copy the unimportant police slips of accidents, a visit to the Memorial Hospital, after which he would return to the Freeman office, there to sit down in front of a typewriter and laboriously grind out paragraph after paragraph of names, dates and ages of people who had been injured and who had died during the past twenty-four hours. Jeff began to feel like a dead one himself.

Night after night he watched the line of reporters file by Boss Russell’s desk to get their assignment and fare forth on some interesting news quest, but always when he, usually last, arrived at the desk, the city editor would wearily pass over to him a cryptic note “undertakers, headquarters, Memorial Hospital, Jones wedding,” or perhaps the last would be varied with such notations as “see Dr. Bisbee on Brinkerhoff accident,” or “Look in at Æolian Hall, Plumber’s Association dance.” It was always the same. Jeff had come to the conclusion that he never would get a real news story to write. He wondered why cleaning streets or delivering milk would not be just as interesting and perhaps a lot more remunerative.

The night of March 15 was no different than all the rest. As on a succession of nights previous, he got the same terse notation. With very little enthusiasm he ran his eyes over the slip of paper. “Undertakers, Memorial Hospital and drop in at Erie Railroad Yards and find Tim Crowley. He had a three-legged calf born on his farm yesterday.” Jeff looked at the last notation twice and smiled grimly.

“Three-legged calf. Huh, it’s a little different than a hod carrier’s dance, but I won’t set the town on fire with the story I might write about that,” and, with a grunt of dissatisfaction, Jeff buttoned up his overcoat and turned up his collar and fared forth into a near zero night, and started on his monotonous rounds of undertaking establishments, meanwhile wondering vaguely what the fellows were doing over in Pennington, and wishing mightily that he might be sent out on a story across the river to Montvale, where the old school was located.

Goodness knows the town was full of good news stories; why couldn’t Boss Russell trust him with one of them. There was the prolonged street car strike in Montvale. Why couldn’t he get an assignment to go over there and write a story of one of their frequent riots. Then he would have a chance to look in at Pennington, anyhow, and tell some of the fellows what he was doing. Why couldn’t he get sent out on a good fire story such as the warehouse fire on the east side two nights ago. That would have been a story worth writing. Spectacular stuff about bursting gasoline barrels, heroic firemen and all that. There was a murder mystery in town, too. That Italian banker who had been found dead in his own doorway with the Mafia death sign on his forehead. Why didn’t Boss Russell turn him loose on that story, and see if he had ingenuity enough to find Joe Gattiano, the suspected murderer who had mysteriously disappeared from town. Other reporters had tried and failed and the story was old now. Why not let him try his hand? Goodness knows he couldn’t spoil the story or fare any worse than the other Freeman reporters had. Even the moth-eaten and written out Third National Bank theft would be a relief. Perhaps he could find some clew of the absconding paying teller, Roderick Hammond, who nearly a month ago had disappeared from the bank at the same time that a hundred thousand dollars worth of Liberty Bonds were discovered to be missing. Nothing had been heard of Hammond or the bonds since, and now after columns of speculative stories had been printed the case was dropped and forgotten. Jeff wished that Boss Russell would give him a chance to revive even that case again. But no, it was “undertakers, Memorial Hospital and—and—plumbers’ dances, or three-legged calves or—or—beans.” Jeff snorted the last in disgust as he turned into the first mortuary chapel on his list.

Jeff Thatcher was a cub reporter. But he was not the cubbiest cub reporter that had ever tried to break in on the Freeman. He was a born newspaper man. He loved the work. Ever since he had shed knee trousers he had been enthusiastic about journalism, and about the next best thing to finishing out his course at Pennington, in Jeff’s estimation, was serving as a reporter under Boss Russell. The Freeman was a morning paper. It came onto the news stands and street corners in the dark hours before dawn so that newsboys could deliver it in time to have it read over breakfast tables or in the street cars while New City’s business men were on their way to office, store or shop. And to get a newspaper out at that time of day meant that reporters, typesetters and pressmen must work all night. Jeff came into the editorial rooms at six o’clock at night just when other young business men were going home to their evening meal and rest. And Jeff, with others of the staff, worked on through the night until two or three o’clock in the morning gathering news of the day’s happenings and writing stories that were read by Boss Russell and his trained copy readers and sent upstairs to the composing room to be set in type to be printed in the morning editions.

It was a hard life, for Jeff had to reverse his whole method of living, working nights and tumbling into bed at four or five o’clock in the morning to sleep until noontime or later. But if it was hard it was also fascinating and Jeff realized that it could be made more fascinating if he could only get a chance to work on some of the really big news stories of the day instead of plugging along writing obituaries and paragraphs of but little consequence.

Grumbling inwardly and feeling more or less discouraged, Jeff left the Memorial Hospital, where he had looked over the book of the day’s arrival and departure of patients, and talked with the intern. He turned in the direction of the big Erie Railroad yards located west of the city, where he hoped to find Tim Crowley, and learn the details of this bovine prodigy that had been born out on Tim’s little farm a mile or so from New City.

The railroad’s yards covered several acres of ground and included a big station, a dispatcher’s office, roundhouse, freight yard, and machine shop, and myriads of switch towers, semaphores and block signals, the red and green lights of which blinked and winked at him in the cold winter night as Jeff picked his way across the network of tracks to the building in which the dispatcher’s office was located. It was mighty cold and growing colder. Wind whipped the steam and smoke from the roundhouse gustily across the yard, icicles of huge proportions hung from the dripping spouts of the crane-like nozzles of the water tanks, and the few switch engines that sputtered about the yards, shunting cars here and there,—coughed hoarsely as if the cold had somehow gotten into their iron chests and made them a bit asthmatic.

Jeff pushed open the door of the dispatcher’s office, to be greeted with a rattling fusillade from a score of clicking telegraph instruments that were spattering the air full of, to Jeff, unintelligible dots and dashes. It was warm and cheerful in there and he made for a bulky steam radiator that was hissing comfortably, as he pulled off his gloves and breathed on the tips of his fingers.

Tom Kelly, the big, good-natured chief dispatcher, in shirt sleeves and vest, got up from his desk and came over to greet him.

“Hello, Jeff. Ain’t seen you in a week. What gust of wind blew you over in this direction?” said Kelly.

“Came over to see Tim Crowley. Where is he and what is there to the story about his—”

“Oh, that three-legged calf. Funny blamed thing, isn’t it? But it’s facts. Some of the fellows saw it. Tim’s the wrecking boss. You’ll find him on the wrecking train over on track sixteen. It’s warm and cheerful over there and the whole wrecking crew are probably playing cards in the ‘hack.’ If you get over you might be just in time to have a midnight snack with them. They eat about this time,” said Kelly, looking at his watch.

“Thanks. So long. See you again some time,” said Jeff, buttoning up his coat once more and going out into the night.

CHAPTER VI
WITH THE WRECKERS

Jeff knew where track sixteen was and it did not take him long to find the wrecking train. There it was on a siding with a clear way to the main track. It was a train of caboose and six flat cars, two of which were equipped with tremendously powerful, but squatty and flat-looking derricks. The others were loaded with boxes of tools, and all sorts of emergency equipment. The train reminded Jeff of an engine or hook and ladder truck of the city fire department ready to get away at a moment’s notice.

A warm glow of light came from the cupola and the more or less smudged windows of the “hack,” as Kelly had called the caboose, and Jeff knew that the wrecking crew, who lived in the train, in shifts day and night, week in and week out the whole year through, were inside card playing or reading or amusing themselves as husky railroad men do while awaiting word of trouble or a wreck that calls them out to clear the line.

Jeff stamped his way up the steps of the hack, shoved open the door and stepped inside. Gathered around a table in the yellow glare of a big electric light, that hurt Jeff’s eyes momentarily, were the wreckers, big broad-chested, broad-shouldered, experienced railroad men who seemed to Jeff the impersonation of courage, resourcefulness and reliability. They were the men who were responsible for keeping the line open so that trains could run uninterruptedly no matter how grave the catastrophe or how serious the damages. And they were good-natured and hearty men, as was evident from the greeting that the boss of them all, big Tim Crowley, gave him, when he introduced himself and began to ask questions about the three-legged calf.

But Jeff had scarcely got well started on his catechizing when the door of the caboose was flung open and banged closed again and a man from the dispatcher’s office, still in his shirt sleeves despite the cold and with his green eye shade on his forehead, burst in upon them. In his hand he held a piece of flimsy yellow paper, a dispatcher’s telegraph blank, on which was typed a brief but evidently important message.

“Tim, No. 89, fast freight out of New City is piled up at Granville cross-over. Ten cars off the track and some of them smashed to pieces. Both tracks are blocked. Tracy, the conductor, says it’s a bad mess. Engine 1107 with Ed Dixon is backing down to pick you up. Cold night for a wreck, ain’t it? Wish you luck,” and passing the yellow slip to Tim he slammed his way out and raced back to the dispatcher’s office.

For a moment Jeff did not realize what was happening. But as he heard the hoarse blasts of an engine not far off and felt the jarring clank as it backed against the wrecking train and coupled up he understood it all.

“You best beat it if you don’t want to take a lively ride,” said Tim with a smile, as the men put their cards away and got up from the table.

“Beat it! What? With a wreck on the line and me on board the wrecking train ready to roll. Not on your life; that is, of course, if you will let me go along,” said Jeff, looking eagerly at Tim.

“As a reporter there ain’t no rules against it, I guess,” said Tim, sliding into his heavy coat. “Go along if you want to. Tumble out, men.”

It took a remarkably short time for the crew, swarming over the train of flat cars, to get everything ready for the run, and by the time the engine was coupled on everything was “ship shape,” to quote the wrecking boss, and the men were back in the hack.

With several deep-toned, almost arrogant blasts big, panting 1107 got under way and began clanking over frogs and switches, making toward the tracks of the main line. Jeff crawled up into the cupola of the hack where Tim and three other husky wreckers sat, looking out above the flat cars toward the engine ahead.

“You’ll have a ride this night,” said Tim to Jeff, smiling as he spoke. “Ol’ eleven-o-seven is a speed boy, an’ with Ed Dixon in the cab we’ll be yanked along somethin’ fierce. Sixty mile an hour won’t be a patch to what we’ll make. The dispatchers have cleared the track from here to the wreck. They always do for the wrecking train. Ain’t only one train that can have the right o’ way over us and that would be a hospital train with nurses and doctors aboard which they’d send out if this was a passenger wreck. But t’ track’s clear to-night with everything in sidings, so ol’ Ed Dixon will burn up the rails.”

CHAPTER VII
THE WRECK

Jeff noticed that “Ol’ Ed” was proceeding to fulfill Tim’s predictions with a will. The wrecking train was gathering speed with every passing second. The clank of rail joints as the wheels passed over them developed from a measured beat to a steady hum. Jeff had never moved so fast in all his life. Up and down grades they roared, around curves they snapped with a vengeance that threatened to send the caboose off the tracks and whizzing through the air like the snapper of a whip. “Ol’ Eleven-o-seven’s” whistle seemed never to stop shrieking for grade crossings, and Jeff wondered what would happen to a luckless automobile or team of horses that might get caught on one of the crossings as the wrecking train plunged down upon them.

Mile after mile was clicked off with measured regularity and in twenty-two minutes by Jeff’s watch the thirty-five miles to the wreck were covered and the monster engine began to slow down as grinding, spark-flinging brake shoes were applied.

Jeff and big Tim and the rest knew that they were approaching the wreck long before the train began to come to its crunching stop, for far ahead on the tracks, far beyond the stabbing white ray of the engine’s searching headlight, they could make out a pink glow in the sky and a blotch of lurid red behind some trees.

“There it is and it’s caught fire, too,” said Tim, letting himself down from the cupola and slipping off his heavy coat again. “Come on, men. Tumble out. We got a job to do. The line must be open before the commutation trains start to come down to-morrow morning. Lively now. Snap to it.”

And snap to it they did. Jeff marveled at the enthusiasm with which they prepared to go out into the near zero weather and do battle with a stubborn wreck that was on fire in the bargain.

By the time the train had come to a halt and the wreckers had tumbled out, Jeff could see by the rays of the searching headlight, in all its stark unpleasantness, a huge mass of twisted iron and steel, up-ended cars, overturned trucks and splintered ties and débris through which licked red-tongued flames. Here was the wreck that was blocking the line, the wreck that these men must clear away before daylight. It was a sight almost horrible to behold. Part way down the embankment and turned on its side was the locomotive, steam and smoke still curling about it. It looked like some prehistoric giant wounded and dying. A smoke pall hung over the entire scene, into which the wreckers, armed with axes and crowbars plunged, looking more like gnomes than human beings in that weird setting.

Keyed up with the excitement of it all, Jeff, also armed with an ax that he had hastily seized from an open tool box on one of the flat cars, followed them, and soon he found himself in the thick of things. Piled up across the right of way and down the embankment on either side were what an hour ago had been ten big red and yellow freight cars. Now they were junk; just a mass of terribly twisted, splintered and crushed wood and iron, all mixed up with railroad ties and corkscrew-looking rails that had been torn from the roadbed by the force of the catastrophe.

Tim, the boss wrecker, stopped a moment and looked the mess over. In particular he looked at the fire that was raging at the other end of the wreck.

“Looks like that fire was going to help us some in getting this thing clear. But we can’t wait for that. Hello, Tracy,” the last was said to a railroad man who came out of the smoke, followed by two others. He was the conductor of the luckless freight.

“Hello, Tim. Rotten mess, ain’t it?”

“You said it. Any one hurt? How’s the engineer and fireman?”

“Both back in our hack. Pretty well shaken up but outside of a slight burn that Norton got they are both all right. They’ll be out to lend a hand as soon as they get some of the cinders picked out o’ their hides.”

“Fine. All right, men. We clear the eastbound track first. You, Casey, take your men and get that No. 1 derrick up here. You, Saunders, start to cut away and move that stuff so we can get the derrick up to the first car. Come on, men, snap to it. Casey, tell that biscuit-shooter of ours to get that hot coffee and sandwiches on the job in a hurry. We want a snack before the cold gets into us. Shake a leg. Shake both of ’em.”

The wreckers went into action. The engine’s big headlight illuminated the scene and made the night as light as day. Men with crowbars and axes fell to clearing the wreckage that might obstruct the movement of the derrick. Another crew attended to the laying of temporary tracks by means of which the engine could be shunted from the front to the rear of the wrecking train so that the first of the big derricks could be moved slowly up into place close to the wreck.

All this was accomplished in a remarkably short time considering the work involved, and while Jeff worked and sweated with the rest of the men and gulped down innumerable cups of steaming coffee and ate all the sandwiches he could consume as they were brought up by the grinning negro cook of the wrecking train, the first big derrick was moved up into place and like a giant elephant began to slowly nose its way into the wreck.

Then didn’t the men work! With this giant helper the task of clearing one track seemed to simplify. The men burrowed into the wreckage like so many field mice, carrying the chains of the derrick with them. These they snapped around heavy trucks, backed away and gave the signal, and the derrick would slowly lift the obstruction out of the way and swing it around onto one of the flat cars or off onto the embankment where it was deposited for the time being. Whole sections of freight cars were lifted by this mastodontic machine, as slowly it crept further and further into the heart of the wreckage foot by foot, clearing one track so that the line would be partially opened as soon as possible.

Jeff left off toiling when this big thing came into action, for it was the first time that he had ever seen one of the machines at work and he could not do other than stand and marvel at its power. But the wreckers kept right on working. They had all stripped themselves of their heavy coats and now worked in sweaters, and many of them even in shirt sleeves, despite the zero weather. And Jeff could see that most of them were sweating with the terrific exertion that the work called for. Indeed he could hardly believe that human beings could keep right on laboring the way they did and not drop from exhaustion. Already he was so tired that he could scarcely swing the ax he had been wielding and yet he realized that he had not done one-tenth part of the work any one of the wreckers had. The realization made him feel almost ashamed of himself, and gritting his teeth, he spat on his hands and prepared once more to wade into the wreckage with the rest of them.

But before he bent to his task, Big Tim Crowley, who had been climbing over the wreckage, jumped down from the slanting roof of a partly crushed car almost alongside of him. Jeff noticed that there was a strange look on the face of the big boss, as he spoke to Tracy, the conductor, who was prying at a stubborn mass with a crowbar.

“Tracy, you sure none o’ your crew was caught in this?”

“Yep, they’re all accounted for. Why?”

“Well, there’s some poor devil pinned down in under that mass toward the other end and the fire’s movin’ up on him fast. I heard him groaning and I located him. He’s pinned down under an up-ended truck with almost a whole freight car piled on top of him. And t’ fire’s creepin’ in there, too. T’ worst of it is he’s too far into the wreck for us to reach him with t’ derrick, before t’ fire gets to him, and if we go digging for him we’ll bring a whole pile of wreckage down on top of him.”

“Great Scott, you don’t say so,” said Tracy, standing up and looking troubled. “I know he ain’t one of my train crew but he might be a hobo. Kahalan said he thought there was a ’bo tryin’ t’ hop aboard when we left t’ yard at New City, but he said it was too danged cold to go out and drive him off t’ bumpers if he did get aboard. Poor devil. I’ll bet that’s who it is an’ he got nipped.”

Others, including Jeff, had stopped working now and were listening. Jeff looked off toward the other end of the wreck where the fire, undiminished in its fury, was eating into the mass of splintered woodwork that had been perfectly good freight cars a few hours since, and shuddered as he realized the horrible position the man was in; as he realized the horrible death that he was facing, pinned in there waiting for the flames to reach him.

“Well, hobo or not, we got to get him out if we can,” snapped Tim. “But t’ worst of it is he’s in about the nastiest place in t’ whole wreck. We can’t cut our way down to him because there’s a truck and twisted brake beams and like of that in the way, an’ if we go pryin’ around tryin’ to clear things out to get at him we’re liable to bring the whole mass slidin’ down on top o’ him and crush him to death. Anyhow, come on, fellows, we’ll see what we can do.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE VICTIM

A half dozen men swarmed over the wreck in the wake of the burly boss and Jeff went along with them. It was rough going over the mass of débris, and the tangle of iron and wood seemed to grow thicker as they approached the point where the fire was raging.

So close to the flames that their faces felt scorched, Tim Crowley stopped and got down on his hands and knees, and with his face to an opening between some timber that seemed to reach down into the heart of the mass of wreckage, he shouted:

“Hello, down there!”

Jeff heard a groan, and then a far-off voice call:

“For God’s sake, get me out of here or I’ll be burned alive.”

“How are you caught?”

“I’m lying flat. Just pinned in by wreckage but my legs are both broken, I think.”

“Legs both broke,” repeated Tim looking up at the rest. “How are we goin’ t’ get him out o’ here? We got to do it in twenty minutes or the fire will drive us away and roast him alive. Come on, some o’ you men, cut this opening larger if you can, but be blamed careful because it’s like a lot of kindling wood an’ if you get too rough the whole thing will slide down on top o’ him and crush him. See how that car door wabbles there an’ that hunk o’ timber is just held in by the end. It will crush him flat if it all goes down.”

Two men started to cut away at the opening and Jeff watched them for a moment. Presently one stopped as his ax clanked on metal and sent out sparks.

“Ain’t no use here, Boss. There’s an iron bumper underneath wedged in so tight that there ain’t but a foot or so of room between it and that truck that’s standing on end. And if we try to move the bumper the truck will fall right down the hole through the wood and smash everything under it.”

Tim looked at the situation and shook his head.

“That’s right. We don’t dare disturb that or the whole thing will go to pieces. An’ that hole ain’t large enough for a man t’ git down into unless—” he paused and looked at Jeff. And Jeff at the same moment got the same idea. He stepped closer and looked at the hole.

“I’m smaller than the rest of you. Perhaps—perhaps—maybe I could get down and work my way into where he is if—if the whole thing don’t cave in on me before I get there.”

“Bully for you. That’s nerve all right,” said Tim, beaming with almost fatherly pride on Jeff, “on’y you got to make it in a hurry and git out again before the fire gets much closer.”

Jeff paused a moment to consider.

“Suppose he’s a big man. Then what’ll I do? Can’t get him through that hole if he’s as big as you fellows are,” he said.

“Well, let’s hope he ain’t. Anyhow if you can get him up near that hole and climb out yourself, we’ll grab hold of him and try and pry that truck and bumper apart long enough to yank him through. Then the whole thing can go to pot after that. It’s a chance all the way ’round but it’s better than letting t’ poor chap be burned to death down in there, which he will be in a mighty few minutes.”

That thought moved Jeff to action. He took off his heavy coat and his lighter one underneath. Thus stripped for action he stepped down into the narrow opening between the up-ended truck and the heavy steel bumper, and slowly, cautiously let himself down until presently he found himself standing on something solid directly underneath the almost tottering truck. In the semi-darkness of the wreckage he took a survey of the situation, then shouted:

“Hello, down there! where are you! I’m coming down to get you.”

A groan and a feeble attempt at a call sounded beneath him and to his right.

Slowly, cautiously, Jeff began to feel his way downward through the débris, half crawling, half climbing, but always feeling first for a secure footing for he knew that to step on anything insecure might cause him to fall and his weight precipitated violently against the wreckage on either side might cause the pile to collapse and send the teetering truck and the heavy bumper down on top of him and the poor victim of the wreck below.

It was almost painful progress, he moved so slowly, and it was a journey made hideous by the perils that were imminent. Already smoke curls were being drawn through the wreckage by the draughts down here, and the semi-darkness now became shadowy with sinister flickering light that showed between the jagged pieces of timber. Jeff knew that the fast moving fire was not so very far off. It would be terrible to be pinned in down there himself and burned to death along with the man he hoped to rescue. The very thought made cold chills creep down his back and perspiration stand out on his forehead. And added to this was the terrible horror of being crushed to death under some piece of timber or steel work that a slip of his foot might dislodge. Jeff had to exert all the will power he possessed to keep himself from any hurried action or any suggestion of panic, for he knew that the slightest error in judgment on his part might prove fatal to himself and the helpless man somewhere down there below him.

Foot by foot he climbed downward. Twice he paused to shout and each time the groan and feeble voice that answered him was nearer. A third time he paused and called. Then he waited. But no answer came. Again and again he called, and then with a shock it was borne in upon him that the man he was after had either become unconscious or had passed out while he was trying to get to him. Jeff came nearer panic then than ever before. He looked frantically about him and groped with outstretched hands hoping to come in contact with the man.

Suddenly from above a flood of light filled the wreckage. Jeff looked up hastily to discover that the wreckers had brought an electric battery lamp and were shining the rays down through the hole through which he had come. Eagerly Jeff looked about him, searching, hoping. Then with a start he discovered a hand protruding from beneath a board just below him. Beyond the board he could make out the outlines of a painfully twisted body, inert and apparently lifeless.

With a shout to the men up above, Jeff began to climb down again and presently he crouched beside the man. Hastily, eagerly he felt inside a flannel shirt. He was still alive but breathing heavily. As carefully as the limited space would permit Jeff picked up the limp form and gathered it in his arms. Then he started to climb once more.

CHAPTER IX
TO THE RESCUE

But if the journey downward called for caution, the climb back made care even more imperative. Jeff had to hope that each timber he stepped upon would bear double his own weight. He had literally to feel every step of the way.

And to add to the terrors of the situation, smoke was drawing through the wreckage now in veritable gusts, and Jeff could hear the roaring crackle of the fire close at hand. Indeed the atmosphere down there between the timbers was hot and choking with gas and smoke. He was tired, too. Almost exhausted. Every step upward was an effort. His head bothered him. It seemed too heavy for his shoulders, and there was a strange buzzing sound inside. He wondered vaguely whether he was going to collapse himself. He realized with a sense of horror that if he did he would be burned to death in ten minutes. That thought seemed to clear his head for a moment, and he climbed more hastily and with less caution, trusting entirely to good fortune that he did not dislodge any of the wreckage. Upward he struggled. Presently he found himself once more directly underneath the tottering truck with its heavy iron wheels. The opening was just above him. He saw eager hands reaching downward through it. He wondered vaguely, whether the man he carried was too big to get through the opening. He hoped not.

Somehow he stood upright and lifted the limp form toward the hands that grasped through the hole. Then his burden was lifted out of his arms and he saw the apparently lifeless body with its grotesquely dangling legs moved slowly upward through the hole and disappear from view. The hands reached downward again and he reached up to meet them. A moment he stood there, and tried to master himself. His head was spinning, his eyes hurt and his lungs seemed bursting for the want of fresh air. He tried to think that the ordeal was nearly over; that in just a minute he would be out into the cool night once more where he could gulp down great lungfuls of pure air. He exerted every bit of will power he had to master himself, for somehow he knew he was slipping, that he was fainting, that he was on the verge of collapse down there underneath the heavy up-ended railroad truck. And he knew that if he did collapse no help could save him from a certain and horrible death.

In a frantic effort he reached still higher toward the opening. Cold hands touched his, slipped off, then touched again. One clamped heavily about his wrist, another reached downward and fastened onto his sleeve. He felt himself lifted upward. Then he knew no more.

Jeff Thatcher came to with the feeling that there was something urgent he wanted to do, something he must do before he could rest quietly. He opened his eyes and looked about and after a moment he realized that he was lying on one of the bunks in the wrecking train caboose.

Hastily he sat up and looked about. Across the car in another bunk he saw another man lying under blankets, his white face turned toward him and heavy eyes watching him. There was something hauntingly familiar about the face.

The stranger spoke.

“You all right now? Feeling better?”

“I’m all right, thank you. And you?”

“I’m done for, I guess. It’s too bad you went to the trouble and risk of saving me. I’m going to pass out anyway. Something wrong inside my chest. But I’d rather die here than be burned to death down there. It was a heroic thing you did, boy. They told me all about it.”

“It was nothing. I mean I—I—just had to do it. It was my job. Say, haven’t I seen you before? Haven’t I—say, I know who you are. You’re Roderick Hammond, the—the—cashier of the First National.”

“Know me, ’eh, in spite of my week’s growth of whiskers and my attempt to look like a hobo. Well, you’re right, old boy. I’m the absconding bank cashier, and the bonds are right here inside the lining of my coat. You better take them and return them to the bank for me, will you? And if there’s any reward you take it. I played in good luck up until to-night. I’ve been hiding right under the nose of the police and newspaper reporters in New City for a month. Why I chose to-night to try and get away I don’t know, and why I decided to ride the bumpers of that particular fast freight I can’t guess. I suppose it’s one of Fate’s little jokers. Let me go just so far and then—bing, and it’s all off. I won’t be alive in twenty-four hours from now, boy. I think a rib or two has punctured my lungs, so I want you to have all the glory of returning the bonds and telling the story. I—”

Jeff jumped down from the bunk with a start. Now he knew what the urgent thing was he had to do. Find a telephone and call up Boss Russell.

“Wait a while. I’ll be back. Got to find a ’phone and get this all in to the Freeman,” he said to Hammond. Then, finding his overcoat which had been thrown over him as he lay in the bunk, he slipped into it and hurried out of the deserted caboose.

The first person he met was Tracy, the conductor of the wrecked freight.

“There’s a signal tower about a mile down the track. That’s where I telephoned about the wreck from,” he answered to Jeff’s query and Jeff, fatigue forgotten, started on a run down the track toward the blinking red and green light which he knew was the tower.

“Where in time have you been? It’s three o’clock and the first edition is on the press,” roared Boss Russell when he recognized Jeff’s voice over the telephone.

“I—I—why—” and then Jeff told him everything in a wild burst of language.

“Great guns! You don’t mean it. Wait—wait till I stop the presses. Here, you give that dope to Sullivan, the rewrite man. He’ll put it in type. What?”

“Why—why—Aw say, Boss, can’t I write the story?” asked Jeff.

“Write the story! Why, boy, that story will be in type and on the street before you get started back from the wreck. You write the yarn about the three-legged calf if you have time, but stick on the job at the wreck there and come home with the crew. And to-morrow night I’ll give you the choice of any assignment you want. That’s a good kid. Good-night.”

CHAPTER X
ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS

It was long after daylight when Jeff, heavy eyed and weary to the point of exhaustion, staggered out of the Erie terminal at New City and stumbled toward a trolley car that would take him home. He was happy though, in spite of his exhaustion. He had covered his first big story. He had gathered all the details and turned them into the office by means of the telephone, in such shape that Sullivan, the rewrite man had been able to grind out three columns of story. Indeed, as Jeff glanced at the headlines of the copy of the morning Freeman he had bought from the terminal news stand he realized that he had really covered two stories, for Sullivan in addition to writing the story of the wreck had written a second story on the rescue of the absconding Third National Bank paying teller, his subsequent death and the recovery of the one hundred thousand dollars in stolen bonds, which Jeff had turned in for safe keeping at the Treasurer’s office of the railroad and asked that they be put in the company’s safe until word of their return was passed on to Mr. Davidson, the president of the Third National, who would doubtless send a messenger to bring them safely back to the bank.

Jeff had only ambition enough to just glance at the first page of the Freeman as the trolley car carried him jerkily toward home and the bed he so much yearned for, and as a result it was not until hours later that he discovered how Sullivan, at the instigation of Boss Russell, had told all the details of the daring rescue of the dying Roderick Hammond; how a cub reporter of the Freeman staff, with the wreckers, had the courage to climb down into the perils of the mass of débris and carry out the unconscious man; how he identified him, and recovered the bonds, and how in spite of these achievements he had stayed on at the wreck all night long, sending in reports every half hour until all the editions had gone to press.

In truth, when Jeff woke up, considerably refreshed at three o’clock that afternoon, and then for the first time read the front page of the Freeman closely he was surprised and embarrassed to discover how much of a hero Sullivan had made him. His name seemed to appear in almost every paragraph of the story and before he had read half way through it he paused to mention to no one in particular that

“The blamed story seems to be more about me and my fool stunt than it does about Hammond and the bonds.”

But the real surprise of the whole situation occurred when Jeff read the last paragraph of the story. It seemed to hit him a little harder than all the rest and burn into his memory. It ran something like this:

“—and the dying man in almost his last breath told Thatcher that the ten $10,000 bonds were sewed in the lining of his coat, and that he wanted Thatcher to return them to the Third National Bank from which he had stolen them and claim whatever reward was due him.

“Enoch Davidson, president of the Third National, when informed by telephone from the Freeman office of the recovery of the bonds at an early hour this morning, announced that a reward of two thousand dollars had been offered for the return of the securities and this would go to the heroic young reporter of the Freeman staff just as soon as the bonds were back in the bank’s vault.”

“Gee whizz. I plumb forgot about that. Poor Hammond did say that there was a reward for the return of the bonds and that he wanted me to get it, but I guess I forgot about it right away in my hurry to get the story over. Jiminy, I wonder if that can be true. Two thousand dollars. Oh, my goodness. Never heard of so much money except in a bank statement. It can’t be true. I—I—can’t take it. It belongs to the wrecking crew more than it does to me. I just happened to be handy, that’s all. Anyhow, I can’t return the bonds in person and get the reward. Left them with the treasurer’s chief clerk in the railroad office and asked them to get in touch with the bank. Gee, maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Maybe I should have hung onto them. But I was so doggone tired that I couldn’t take the responsibility for them any longer, so I did the best thing I could. I wonder if they got back to the bank or—or—gosh, I wonder.”

It suddenly occurred to Jeff that perhaps he had not finished all of last night’s work after all. Perhaps he should not have been so eager to get to bed. Perhaps he should have gone right up to Mr. Davidson’s house and given the bonds to him, and then gone home and to bed. He was not thinking of the reward as these thoughts teemed through his mind. He was thinking rather of responsibilities that had been his and that he had not seen through to the end as he should have done.

“I’m a poor dub—I am,” he muttered as he jumped out of bed and began to crawl into his clothes. “Of course, everything is probably all right about the bloomin’ old securities, but just the same it was my job to see that they got back into the proper hands instead of leaving them to some one else to take care of while I drifted off home and went blissfully to bed. I am a fool. One hundred thousand dollars and I treat it as if it were a lead half dollar. Oh, my, what a dub. Now what shall I do?”

Jeff sat down on the edge of the bed and thought the situation over. Obviously the only thing for him to do was to call up the bank and find out whether the securities did get back to them. His telephone was at the head of his bed. He picked it up and called the bank number. The girl at the switchboard of the bank wanted to know who was calling Mr. Davidson, but when Jeff said “Thatcher of the Freeman,” she exclaimed, “Oh, all right. Hold the line. He wants to speak to you.”

“Wants to speak to me,” said Jeff to himself as he held the wire. “I’ll bet he does. Probably wants to know where I’ve been with those fool bonds and what I did with ’em. Oh, my gosh. Why didn’t I take them up to his house instead of leaving some one else to take care of them,” and Jeff experienced a sickly sensation in the vicinity of his stomach as he stood there nervously waiting for the bank president to come onto the telephone.

“Hello,” boomed a voice at the other end.

Jeff jumped, moistened his lips and tried to speak. The words came with an effort.

“Mr.—Mmmm—er—Davidson, this is Thatcher, Freeman—you know. Say, did—did—are the—have you got those bonds? I left them in the—huh—what—you have? Oh, great. Gosh, I’ve spent a terrible ten minutes. I just woke up to the fact that I had not done my whole job last night, but I was so doggone tired that I guess my brain wasn’t working full time. You see, Hammond gave me the bonds before he died,—had me cut the lining out of his coat and take out the ten bonds all in a neat little package. Say, I never knew before that one hundred thousand dollars could be in so small a bundle. Well, I slipped them into my inside pocket, and I am afraid I was so busy after that that I didn’t pay as much attention to them as I should have, but on my way back on the wrecking train (poor Hammond was dead by that time I guess. A doctor from Granville took him to the Fieldborough Hospital about four o’clock this morning but he said he wouldn’t live an hour) I thought of the bonds again. I realized that it was a heap of money for me to be carrying around in my inside coat pocket, so I spoke to Kelly, the chief dispatcher, about them when I got into the terminal, and he took me over to the treasurer’s office and introduced me to the chief clerk who was reporting for work. He said he would put them in the safe and notify you, and I thought that would be all right because I was so dog tired I was afraid I might fall asleep in the trolley and have my pockets picked. If I’d have been a little brighter I would have thought of taking a taxi up to your house and giving them to you. But I guess my nut was a little fogged for sleep.”

“Fine. That’s all right, my boy. You did a good job. I think you acted wisely. The Treasurer of the railroad, Mr. Anson, called me up himself about nine o’clock this morning and we got the bonds all right. Of course, you know there is a reward waiting for you down here amounting to $2,000. Come down and get it.”