CHAPTER IITHE SAFETY FIRST CLUB
The Safety First Club, to which Zorn had alluded so cynically, bore its name for what its members regarded as good and sufficient reasons.
The club had come into existence in the most natural fashion imaginable. That is, a little group of boys who liked one another had gathered about Sam Parker, had reached a simple but effective organization, and had been permitted to take possession of an unused stable on the premises of Step Jones’s father. This they had fitted up as headquarters, furnishing the place as best they might. Then had happened a series of incidents, of adventures and misadventures, which had served to impress upon the chums the penalties life exacts for heedlessness and carelessness. They had woefully misjudged Tom Orkney, for example—Tom, it may be explained, was not of the original band—and before they came to understandingof the sterling qualities which eventually won him an election to the club, they had undergone experiences well calculated to drive home the lesson of the danger in overhasty thought or action.
Now, it is not to be understood that old heads had been put upon young shoulders. The boys still conducted themselves as healthy, active, well meaning but fallible lads of seventeen or thereabouts, and not as world-worn philosophers of seventy-one. They made mistakes—lots of mistakes. They formed their judgments not on great knowledge but on such knowledge as they had—and when a blunder was made, they tried not to repeat it. And they strove to play the game fairly. Doubtless you know a dozen boys like these, and fancy them not the less because you find them very human.
Sam Parker had put into effect the guiding rule of the club in averting hostilities between Orkney and Edward Zorn, but he had by no means avoided the complications growing out of the affair of Trojan Walker’s Cicero.
The Trojan himself was in serious trouble. Sentence had not yet been passed in his case,but apparently he stood convicted of violating the rule against taking text-books into rooms where examinations were held, and of committing the still graver offense of “trying to lie out of it,” as the school phrase ran.
Sam seemed to be likely to fall heir to the unhappy reputation of being the chief witness against his friend. The story spread rapidly. He could observe its effects when he went to school the next morning. A group of girls fell to whispering as he approached them, and drew aside as he passed; some of the boys nodded stiffly. There was a loud controversy in a corner of the yard, which quieted of a sudden, when he came near. Step, very red of face, said something in a low tone to the youth with whom he had been disputing, and joined Sam, slipping an arm through his and drawing him away.
“Confound a chump, anyway!” he growled. “But I say, Sam! Got anything on for this afternoon? Let’s take a hike somewhere.”
Sam suffered himself to be led out of earshot of the others. Then he spoke crisply:
“What’s the row? Talking about me, are they?”
Step tried to avoid the question.
“There are a lot of idiots in this school. They run away with any fool yarn, or let it run away with them, and——”
“And the yarn this time is about me—about Trojan and me, that is?”
“Why—why, Sam——”
“Yes or no, Step?”
“Well, yes; if you must have it. But I tell you, I put a flea in that fellow’s ear.”
Sam shook his head doubtfully. He was reminded, quaintly, that a flea was a creature of remarkable agility, and he could not but suspect that this flea supplied by the impulsive Step might hop about very busily in the next few days.
“I guess it would be better not to do much talking for a while,” he said soberly.
“What! You’d let all the yapping go on, and say nothing?”
“I’d say as little as I could.”
Step stared at Sam. “Great Scott! If we don’t deny it, everybody will believe it’s all so!”
“Well, deny it, then, and stop there.”
Step whistled softly. “Whe-e-e! Sam, Ireckon you don’t know all the trimmings the story is getting. It’s an awful thing for you and for the whole club.”
“I see that,” said Sam. “What hits any one of a crowd like ours hits the whole bunch. That’s the worst of it.”
“But can’t we do anything?” Step demanded impatiently.
Sam’s eyes flashed. There were several things he would have been very glad to do—violent things, some of them. But in the last few months he had learned steadying lessons in the value of self-control. Perhaps it was because he had learned these lessons more thoroughly than had any of his mates that he remained the guiding spirit of the club.
“The first thing to do is to keep our heads. The next is to wait to see just what happens.... Hold on there, Step! Don’t think I’m for lying down and letting everybody trample on us! I’ll fight, and try to fight as hard as any of the rest of you—when the time comes. But I think it hasn’t come yet.”
Step shrugged his shoulders. “Well, if that’s your notion, all right. I don’t believethere’s another fellow in Plainfield who could put it through, but maybe you can.”
“Wait and see,” said Sam very gravely.
The morning session gave plenty of evidence of the spread of the story through the Junior class, and, indeed, through the school. Sam was perfectly conscious of a cooling in the regard in which he was held. At recess the club rallied about him, but other classmates shunned him. It was at recess, too, that the Trojan heard his fate. He came out of the principal’s office, after a five-minute conference, looking as dejected as a boy in physical health could look.
“I get zero on the Latin paper—a clean flunk—to begin with,” he reported. “That’s on a charge of taking a book into the examination. Then I’m laid off, as far as Cicero goes, for the rest of the term. That is on the charge that I tried to squirrel out of the fix and lied about the book.”
“But that’s a half suspension!”
“How’ll you keep up?”
“Where does it leave your standing now?”
“Wouldn’t they give you a chance to defend yourself?”
There was a medley of exclamations and questions. The Trojan made answer in general:
“I don’t know just how it will work out. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“But you can’t drop out!” cried Step hotly.
The Trojan smiled, but the smile had no mirth in it.
“You can’t tell what you can do, Step, till you try,” he said.
“But it would break up the crowd—the club! We’ve been together, and we’ve stuck together since I don’t remember when. And we’ve been in the same class, and we’ve all kept traveling along together through school and——”
“I know all that,” the Trojan interrupted.
The Shark was moved to speech. “Look here, Trojan! Tell me something. They say they found your Cicero where it had no business to be—who found it?”
“One of the Freshmen, I think.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know.”
The Shark snorted. “Huh! Find out!”
“What difference does it make?” asked the Trojan dully.
“All the difference!” snapped the Shark. “Problem, isn’t it? Course it is! How you going to solve it till you have facts to work on?”
“I meant that so long as the book was found in a desk in the examination room, it didn’t matter who found it. The Freshman, whoever it was, gave it to the teacher in charge there.”
“Kid trick!” Step put in.
“Oh, a yearling wouldn’t know any better,” said Herman Boyd. “He wouldn’t intend any harm.”
“Well, now, you can’t be too sure——” Poke began; but the Shark brought the talk back to the main question.
“How do you know, Trojan, it was found in the desk you used that day?”
“How? Why—why, I suppose it must have been.”
“Suppose!” groaned the Shark. “Can’t you fellows ever learn to be exact?”
A little color came into the Trojan’s cheeks at the thrust. “Be reasonable, Shark! If abrick fell from a chimney and hit you, would you—er—er—would you find out, first thing, how tall the chimney was? This—this whole business—well, it just took me off my feet.”
“Huh! Guess it did. But I’ve got my feet under me, and I’d like to get things straight. Now, tell me! What’s the last—the last thing you’re absolutely sure about—about the book, I mean?”
“I left it in the corridor. Sam had borrowed it for a minute, but he gave it back. I had just time to look up a passage before the bell rang. Then I left the Cicero with two or three other books I had—stacked ’em against the wall, just as all the other fellows did with theirs. When we came out, after the examination, everybody was in a rush to get away. I grabbed up my books. I didn’t stop to count ’em. I took it for granted all of them were there. And as we’ve had no Latin recitation since then, it didn’t occur to me to look up my Cicero.”
“Same case here—same to a dot!” testified Poke.
“Nothing to do with the case,” objected theShark. “We’re figuring on the Trojan’s row. And where did you sit, Trojan?”
“In the back row.”
“Sure of that?”
“Yes.”
“I remember he was there,” Sam corroborated. “I was two rows in front of him.”
“Which desk did you have, Trojan?” the Shark persisted.
“Which? Why—why, one near the middle of the row.”
“Able to point it out surely?”
The Trojan hesitated. “I—I guess so. Only I didn’t notice especially.”
“Umph! Remember your neighbors?”
The Trojan wrinkled his brow. “Let’s see! None of our crowd was very near me.”
“Was Zorn?” Sam queried.
“I think he was over to the left—two or three desks away.”
“And Jack Hagle?”
“Yes, he was near me.”
“How near?” the Shark demanded.
The Trojan shook his head. “I can’t tell you that. Confound it! you fellows seem to forget that I was trying to pass a Latin paper andnot mapping the room. I remember Hagle was somewhere around, and Zorn was not very far off. Yes, and Sam was a couple of rows in front of me. But that is all I can recall of what didn’t impress me especially at the time.”
“Umph!” said the Shark, and made no further inquiry.
Here the big gong clanged, and the pupils streamed back into the schoolhouse, the Safety First Club members going with the others. Sam felt a certain relief as he saw the Trojan taking his place in line: he had had disquieting doubts about the course Walker might follow. A fellow smarting under a sense of injustice—Sam’s confidence in the Trojan’s honesty was unshaken—might do something in haste which would lead to deep repentance at leisure. But the Trojan went back to the classroom, and joined in the recitation almost in his usual manner. As it happened, the Latin hour had passed, so that the partial suspension did not interfere with the work he had to do after recess.
Being far from blind, and, in fact, being especially keenly observant that day, Sam gathered more evidence of the spread of thestory of the Trojan’s trouble and his own share in bringing it about. Now and then he met glances which were frankly unfriendly: when the divisions changed rooms between periods he made note that some of the girls, passing him in the corridors, took pains to keep as far from him as possible. It was not a pleasant experience for the boy; but for the present, at least, there was nothing he could do but grit his teeth and keep his temper.
Sam’s lessons in self-discipline stood him in good stead. They helped him study his problem, while he resisted temptation to rage against his fate.
Ed Zorn must have been extremely busy in circulating his version of what had occurred in the hall.
That was, to Sam’s mind, a big, outstanding fact. Only Zorn had been near enough to overhear his testimony. The principal and the sub-master would not have spread the story; therefore, Zorn’s responsibility was hardly matter for argument.
Why, though, should he have displayed such zeal in making the affair public property?
Sam shook his head over this question. Zornwas no friend of the Safety First Club; but something more than mere lack of liking was needed fully to explain his conduct. It was still a puzzle to Sam, when the session came to an end, and school was dismissed for the day.
When the Trojan came down the steps, Sam was waiting for him. They walked away together, both keeping silence until they had left the yard. Then, as they turned into a quiet side street, Sam spoke.
“Trojan, there’s just one thing I want you to understand. If I’d dreamed I was getting you into this fix, they couldn’t have pried a word out of me.”
“I know that, Sam,” said the other, evenly.
“But I did get you into it. Somehow, the way things happened, I couldn’t have done more harm if I’d schemed a week! That part of it’s up to me, all right!”
The Trojan kept his eyes straight before him. “Oh, I’m not blaming you,” he said. “What’d be the use? What’s the use now of—of anything?”
“Here, drop that talk!” Sam counseled. “Keep a stiff upper lip! See you don’t get rattled!”
The Trojan stopped short. He turned to his comrade.
“Rattled!” he cried. “Sam, you know what they’ve done to me? It is practically throwing me out of the class! My term marks in Latin are smashed. Pretty chance I’d have to keep up the work outside, even if they’d let me take the final examination! And a clean flunk in Latin would put me down and out. I’d better quit altogether. I’ve been thinking it over. I don’t see anything else to do.”
“It’s the one thing you can’t do—you shan’t do!” Sam protested.
The Trojan’s manner changed; he spoke dully but with a sort of determination.
“I’ve thought it out, I say. You know my case—the case at home, I mean.”
Sam nodded. Trojan’s father, a traveling salesman, was away on a long trip through the West; his mother was a semi-invalid, quite incapable of coming to her son’s assistance in an emergency like this.
“Dropping out’d be the simplest and the best,” Walker went on. “I guess there are other schools—if there aren’t any to take me, I can go to work somewhere.”
“Nonsense! You stay here!”
“I won’t. This is my own affair—I’ve got to settle it for myself.” Then his voice rose. “Sam, they didn’t give me a square deal! It wasn’t fair! They trapped me; they caught me by a trick! I won’t stand it! I’m through with them—I want to be through with anybody that’ll treat me as I’ve been treated!”
Sam stared at him in perplexity. The old Trojan had been easy going, good natured, a fellow who preferred compromise; the new Trojan was curiously grim and determined and unyielding. There was a glint in his eye Sam had never seen there before; his jaw was set stubbornly. The Trojan was in earnest, in deadly earnest. Sam realized this, and his heart sank within him. Nevertheless, he was ready to fight manfully.
“You’re all wrong! It wasn’t a square deal—I’m with you there. But I’m not sure that wasn’t accidental—the way it happened, I mean. There’s something else, though—you can’t go ahead as if nobody but yourself was hit.”
“Oh! Can’t I?” growled the Trojan.
“You can’t, because we’re all in the row.I’m in up to my neck; there isn’t a fellow in the club who doesn’t feel that it’s his fight as well as yours and mine.”
“It’s all right to say that, only you can’t prove it.”
“Why—why——” Sam began; but he was to be spared the need of making his argument.
Around the corner, from the direction of the school, came Poke, walking fast and dabbing at his face with a handkerchief. At sight of the others he pulled up; gave a gasp; betrayed symptoms of a desire to turn and retreat; hesitated; reached decision; strode forward, grinning most unconvincingly. Beneath one of his eyes the flesh was bruised and reddened.
“What’s the matter?” Sam demanded sharply.
The grin on Poke’s usually placid countenance was maintained by patent effort.
“Oh, nothing! Just a—no; nothing’s the matter.”
“Who blacked your eye?”
“’Tisn’t blacked.”
“It’ll be black enough in an hour or two. Who smashed you?”
Poke’s glance went from Sam to the Trojan,but returned swiftly, and a bit appealingly, to the chief of the Safety First Club.
“It’s nothing, I tell you. Can’t a fellow do anything without your holding him up?”
“That depends. When it comes to getting black eyes——”
“Oh, that was just a—a bump that came my way,” Poke put in hastily. “Not worth mentioning. And say! I’m in a hurry, Sam. Can’t stop to talk to you fellows. ’By!”
So speaking, Poke stepped by his friends, taking care to keep out of arm’s reach, and hurried along the street.
The others did not pursue him. Sam looked at the Trojan, and the Trojan met his gaze unhappily.
“You know what that means?” Sam asked with a touch of sternness.
The Trojan nodded. Poke Green, most peaceful of mortals, had been in a fight; moreover, it was to be suspected that Poke neither had shunned nor now repented the combat.
Sam pressed his advantage. “It means that what I told you is true: that this thing brings in every fellow in the club. We’re standing together; the crowd is backing you,and it’ll back me, for I’m going to need friends as you need ’em. We can’t quit cold, either of us. We’ve got to play the game through, clear up this mess, and win out!”
“How can we win?”
“I don’t know yet, but we will win, if it takes all summer.”
“I don’t see what’s to be done.”
“Give me time—give the club time, that is.”
There was a little pause. Then said the Trojan, dejectedly:
“It’ll be no use. Still, if you’re so set about it, Sam—and I suppose it’s only right to stand by the crowd, if it’s standing by me. But what do you want me to do?”
“Promise not to bolt till we’ve had a chance to catch our breath. And promise to let us know—give us fair warning—before you do anything.”
There was another pause.
“Sam,” said the Trojan at last, “Sam, I—I guess I’ll have to promise you so much, anyway.”