CHAPTER XXV.A NEW CANDIDATE.
When the Fardale eleven and the scrub came out for practise the Monday following the great game with Viewland, not a few were surprised to see Hal Darrell show up on the field in football-togs.
"What’s this?" cried Teddy Smart, as he stared at Hal in his comical way. "Art about to attend a wedding, or an afternoon tea? I see you are elaborately attired for a society event of some sort."
Teddy couldn’t help being familiar if he tried, and his manner permitted him to say things that must have caused resentment from any other plebe at the academy.
Don Kent, like Darrell, was a yearling, and so might address him on terms of equality.
"What are you going to do, Hal?" asked dark-eyed Don, coming up. "You don’t mean to say that you’ve got the fever, and think of getting into the game?"
"I’m going to try to get a chance to practise," said Hal. "Perhaps I won’t be permitted to do that."
"Permitted!" exclaimed Captain Steve Nunn. "Why, Darrell, you know I begged you to come out at the very beginning of the practise this year, andyou would not do it. I told you that I believed you could make the team then."
"I know you did," admitted Hal; "but I did not want to try it then."
"It’s different now."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, circumstances are different. I’m not sure you can make the team."
"Oh, I see!" exclaimed Hal, with a touch of scorn. "You mean that you’ll not be permitted to use your own judgment now about taking on another good man if one shows up."
"That was not what I meant. I’ve never been permitted to use my own judgment without consulting others in regard to players. You know that, Darrell."
"Oh, I think there was a time that what you said went. You were really captain of the team at first."
Steve flushed.
"Do you mean by your words that I am not really captain of the team now?" he asked, touched.
"Well, I don’t want to say anything unpleasant, but you should hear some of the talk here at the academy. You know football is being run differently here this year than ever before."
"Differently and better!" exclaimed Steve stiffly. "Fardale has cut a little ice in baseball before this, but we’ve never done much at football, and all theseother teams thought they were as good or better than Fardale. This is the first year Fardale ever started off a winner and kept it up. We owe this to the coaching we have received."
Darrell laughed.
"Why don’t you confess that you owe it to that remarkable left half-back, who is robbing you of the honors?" he asked.
"You mean Merriwell—Dick Merriwell?"
"Of course. How could I mean any one else?"
"Who says he is robbing me of honors?"
"Oh—everybody, except a few particular friends of his."
"Well, it isn’t true, and no one has a right to say so. He plays the game to win, as anybody should, and if it happens that he gets a few more chances than other fellows——"
"Why, it’s all luck. That’s what I’ve said before now, but I find any amount of fellows who rise up and howl at me and declare him a marvel. I confess that he’s fairly good. I wouldn’t try to rob him of any credit due him; but there are others, and it’s tiresome to hear the rabble howling for him continually."
"Good gracious!" said Smart. "How utterly lacking in envy and jealousy you are! It’s astonishing! Permit me to congratulate you! You deserve a reward of merit in this great, envious, selfish world. I’d like to give it to you—if I were big enough."
Jabez Lynch had been standing near, and now, with a sneer on his unprepossessing face, he observed:
"You’re wasting your breath, Darrell. They’ll continue to howl for Merriwell just the same."
Hal frowned at Jabez, turning his back on the fellow.
"I’m going to get into practise to-day, Captain Nunn," he said, "if I am permitted to do so."
"It’s too late," declared Steve, who had been nettled by the words of the other. "I wanted you out at first. Now the team is made up and you can’t get a chance."
"Who ever heard of such a thing?" demanded Hal warmly. "No college team is made up so a fellow can’t get a chance if he can play better than some other man and he proves it. Why should this team be made up to the exclusion of better outsiders? Why, when you say that, it’s the same as telling the scrub that no man on it has any show of making the eleven. That’s encouraging to the scrub! That will be likely to make the scrub turn out and be battered up in practise—I hardly think! Wait a minute, Captain Nunn. I’m pretty sure you don’t mean to say that there is no show for me to make the eleven now in case I show that I am superior in a certain position to some man now playing with the regular team, and in case there is no other candidate who is superior to me? You don’t mean that, do you?"
"Of course not," said Steve; "but——"
"That’s all. I thought you didn’t mean it. It’s all I want to know. I am satisfied."
"I’m glad you’re satisfied," said Steve, walking away in anything but a pleasant temper.
Immediately Jabez Lynch approached Hal.
"It’s silly of you to waste your time in the attempt," said the fellow, with curling lip.
Hal surveyed him from his head to his feet, without speaking.
"Oh, you ought to know it’s silly!" said Jabez. "If you can play fast football, so much the worse. Merriwell doesn’t like you. I happen to know why, and——"
"You know too much!" said Hal meaningly. "It would be better if you did not take such an interest in other persons’ affairs."
"Don’t throw it into me like that!" snapped Lynch. "I’m your friend."
"Not if I know it!"
"You may need me some time."
"I hope I’ll never come to that."
"Oh, you do? What’s the matter with you, anyhow? I thought something must be the matter with you, else you’d never try to make the team with Dick Merriwell playing on it. He hates you, and a word from him will keep you off the team. His brother runs the eleven, and all Dick has to do is to speak theword—he gets things just as he wants them. Do you fancy he’s going to give you a chance to play with him? You must have bats in your belfry!"
Darrell turned sharply on Lynch.
"I don’t like you or your style of talk!" he exclaimed. "Go away! I don’t want any one to see you talking to me. They might think I’d come to being friendly with you, and that’s enough to queer anybody at this school."
Lynch literally turned purple with rage.
"Oh, you’re very high and lofty now!" he said. "There was a time when you were willing to be friends."
"That was before you had advertised yourself to be a thoroughbred rascal."
"You even had some ideas about going in with me to down Merriwell."
"But not in a sneaking way."
Jabez came close to Darrell.
"You’ll need my aid again some time!" he hissed. "You’re a tame sort of chap at best, and Merriwell will make sport of you—he’ll kick you and laugh in your face. It’ll be good enough for you, too! I shall enjoy seeing him do it!"
Then Darrell knocked Jabez down.
Now, Jabez Lynch was something of a fighter, and he was ready to pitch into Hal Darrell then and there when he quickly arose; but, knowing that a fight inthat place meant a stay in the guard-house for both of them, several cadets sprang between them at once.
"Let me at him!" snarled Lynch, his ugly face contorted with rage.
"Let him come!" flared Darrell, ready enough for the encounter.
"Don’t be fools, both of you!" growled big Bob Singleton. "This is no place for a scrap. Fight it out away from the academy grounds. If Lieutenant Swift saw you he’d take satisfaction in going for you."
"That’s right," said others. "There’s plenty of time to fight, but don’t do it here."
"Anywhere he likes," said Darrell.
"Chadwick’s pasture," suggested Lynch.
"Agreed," said Hal.
"To-night."
"Yes."
"If you’re not there——"
"Don’t worry."
"There’s no moon," said somebody.
"Somebody bring a few bicycle lamps," suggested Darrell. "We’ll manage to get along."
Then he turned and walked away.
Uric Scudder had been a witness, and he improved the first opportunity to whisper in the ear of the panting, anger-shaken Jabez:
"Well, you are getting it in the neck! Lost all your own money and all you could borrow betting againstFardale last week, and now nobody wants anything to do with you. You turned up your nose at me, did you? Well, I’m thought just about as much of around here now as you are."
"Get away from me—get away!" grated Lynch. "I’m in an ugly temper now."
"He! he! he!" snickered Uric, rubbing his chin with satisfaction. "I don’t wonder. I’d as lief be called Chickens and Hen Fruit as to be in your shoes. You went back on me, and now you’re getting paid for it. Why, even the fellows who do not like Dick Merriwell won’t have anything to do with you."
"Will you get away from me!"
"Oh, yes! I don’t want to fight with you. Hal Darrell will attend to your case. Bet you anything you like he does you up inside of fifteen minutes."
It seemed that Lynch would hit the taunting plebe, but Scudder, laughing in a most provoking manner, edged away.
Jabez was beginning to feel himself truly something of an outcast, and, in an unreasoning way, he blamed it all on Dick Merriwell. A year before, during the football season, he had been popular as one of the Fardale team; but now Merriwell was playing in his old position, and he, having refused to take any other, was off the team entirely. And all his efforts to injure Dick had miscarried wofully, to hisunspeakable disgust. Besides that, not even when Dick was unable to fill his place on the team had Jabez been asked to come back and play there for a single game, which had made him unspeakably angry and revengeful.
Lynch had not fancied that Darrell, a yearling, would rebuff him, a first-class man, for usually yearlings looked up in reverence and awe to the first class. Besides that, Jabez had imagined that Hal’s openly expressed dislike for young Merriwell would form a bond of sympathy between them, and he had counted much on this in his advances toward the other.
But Darrell was a peculiar fellow. Although he hated Dick, he was not ready to join hands with any one like Lynch, for all the way through he was loyal to Fardale, and he knew Lynch was not. Originally he had sympathized with Jabez, thinking him misused; but the course the fellow had taken had thoroughly disgusted Hal, and his satisfaction was great when he learned that Jabez had lost heavily betting against Fardale.
Jabez was incapable of understanding a fellow like Darrell, just as he was incapable of understanding Dick Merriwell. With him it was anything in order to obtain revenge on an enemy, and, to accomplish his vengeful ends, he would have willingly sacrificed the Fardale football-team and rejoiced to see it go down in defeat before its antagonists.
Both Lynch and Darrell were selfish and egotistical, but there the likeness between them ended, for the former was unscrupulous and without honor, while the latter intended to be square, and honorable, and just, although he sometimes failed.
But both Jabez and Hal fully believed that Dick Merriwell would not hesitate to resort to anything to prevent them from getting on, and it is probable that Darrell hated Dick as intensely as did Lynch. But Hal had another reason for disliking Dick. He was truly smitten by the charms of Doris Templeton, and, until the appearance of young Merriwell, he had seemed to have a clear field. Knowing that it was the wish of their parents, he had fancied that some day Doris would become his wife, although, of course, that day was regarded as quite remote.
Then Dick Merriwell had appeared on the scene, and it did not take Hal long to discover that Doris was smitten by more than a mere fancy for the dark-eyed youth whom she had first seen standing silent as a statue and looking straight at her in Farmer Snodd’s picnic grove. He could not forget that, on that very day, Doris had suspected him of treacherously striking Dick down in the grove, an act of which Lynch, not he, was guilty.
That had hurt him, and he often thought how her blue eyes had flashed as she pointed at him, crying: "You did it, Hal Darrell!" He could not forget thatdramatic scene, and it made him hate Dick all the more.
For a time he had fancied that Dick was getting the best of him in relation to Doris; but of late something very strange had happened. Young Merriwell had seemed to shun the blue-eyed girl in a singular manner.
Doris had observed this, and she felt it keenly. She did not know the cause, for Zona Desmond had not revealed to her that she had made Dick acquainted with the fact that Hal had a claim on Doris, young though they both were.
So the fair-haired girl was forced to believe that Dick Merriwell was fickle and a flirt, for, truly, he had looked into her face in a manner that seemed to betray untold admiration, and he had hinted at great and sudden regard for her.
Hard as it was, she tried to seal her lips and not let even her best friend know how Dick’s conduct troubled her. But what girl of her age could keep such a secret? One day, in a confidential mood, she told Zona everything.
"I like him awfully much, Zona," she said. "And I thought at first that he liked me—a little. But now he takes pains to avoid me, and I never see anything of him any more. Why is it? What have I done?"
Zona caught her in her arms, crying:
"Doris, you’re just the sweetest girl in the wholeworld, and Dick Merriwell is a—a—a chump—there!—not to see it! I couldn’t help the slang."
"If he had cared more for you," said Doris, "I might understand it. I mean if he had tried to see you sometimes. For I know you are far handsomer and more fascinating than I. But it doesn’t seem to be that."
Zona winced a little. She was in the habit of bringing fellows to her feet in a queenly way, and she dismissed them in the same queenly fashion after getting them there; but somehow all her arts had failed on Dick Merriwell, and it had angered her, although she kept the fact concealed.
She knew well enough why it was that Dick had suddenly cooled toward Doris, for she had taken special pains to show him that he was breaking in between Doris and Hal when he had no right to do so; but she did not know and could not understand why she had failed to win his regard to herself.
"Don’t talk like that, dear!" she exclaimed. "I’m not handsomer and more fascinating than you. You only think so. You’re so modest, Doris!"
Then she kissed her friend, but neither of them was happy. Zona felt that somehow she was guilty of doing something underhand, although she tried to justify the act by saying it was better for Dick to understand at the very start before he really came to care a great deal for Doris.
This day the girls had come out to witness the football practise. As Hal Darrell walked away from the vicinity of Lynch he saw them standing at the far side of the field, near the seats, and he started across to them.