T. Haviland Hicks Senior

J. Raymond Elderdice

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• Publié par: fiwyor
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 31
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's T. Haviland Hicks Senior, by J. Raymond Elderdice Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: T. Haviland Hicks Senior Author: J. Raymond Elderdice Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8550] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 22, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK T. HAVILAND HICKS SENIOR *** Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, David Widger, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team T. HAVILAND HICKS SENIOR BY J. RAYMOND ELDERDICE TO MASTER LLOYD ELDERDICE CONTENTS I. HICKS—WILD WEST BAD MAN II. "LEAVE IT TO HICKS" III. HICKS' PRODIGIOUS PRODIGY IV. QUOTING SCOOP SAWYER'S LETTER V. HICKS MAKES A DECISION VI. HICKS MAKES A SPEECH VII. HICKS STARTS ANOTHER MYSTERY VIII. COACH CORRIDAN SURPRISES THE ELEVEN IX. THEOPHILUS' MISSIONARY WORK X. THOR'S AWAKENING XI. "ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL" XII. THEOPHILUS BETRAYS HICKS XIII. HICKS—CLASS KID—YALE '96 XIV. THE GREATER GOAL XV. HICKS HAS A "HUNCH" XVI. THANKS TO CAESAR NAPOLEON XVII. HICKS MAKES A RASH PROPHECY XVIII. T. HAVILAND HICKS, JR.'S HEADWORK XIX. BANNISTER GIVES HICKS A SURPRISE PARTY XX. "VALE, ALMA MATER!" T. HAVILAND HICKS, SENIOR CHAPTER I HICKS—WILD WEST BAD MAN "Oh, a bold, bad man was Chuckwalla Bill— An' he lived in a shanty on Tom-cat Hill; Ten notches on the six-gun he toted on his hip— For he'd sent ten buckos on the One-way Trip!" Big Butch Brewster, captain and full-back of the Bannister College football squad, his behemoth bulk swathed in heavy blankets and crowded into a narrow bunk, shifted his vast tonnage restlessly. He was dreaming of the wild and woolly West, and like a six-reel Western drama thrown on the screen in a moving-picture show, he visioned in his slumbers a vivid and spectacular panorama. The first lurid scene was the Deserted Limited held up at a tank station in the great Mojave Desert by a lone, masked bandit who winged the dreaming Butch in the shoulder, the latter being an express guard who resisted. After the desperado, Two-Gun Steve, had forced the engineer to run the train back to a siding, he had ordered Butch to vamoose. Quite naturally, then, the collegian next found himself staggering across the arid expanse, until at last, half dead from a burning thirst, seeking vainly for a water-hole, the vast stretch of sandy, sagebrush-studded wastes shimmered into a gorgeous ocean of sparkling blue waters. Then, as he collapsed on the scorching-hot sand, helpless, the cool water so near, suddenly the scene shifted. In quick and vivid succession, Butch Brewster beheld a burning stockade besieged by howling Indians, and a frontier town shot up by recklessly riding cowboys on a jamboree. Then he became a tenderfoot, badgered by yelling, shooting roisterers, and later a sheriff, bravely leading his posse to a sensational battle with that same Two-Gun Steve and his gang, entrenched in a rock-bound mountain defile. Finally, he stood with hands above his head in company with other passengers of the Sagebrush Stagecoach, while a huge, red-shirted Westerner with a fierce black mustache and a six-shooter in each hand belching bullets at Butch's dancing feet, roared out huskily: "Oh—I'm a ring-tailed roarer (bang-bang)! I'm a rip-snortin', high-falutin', loop-the-loopin' bad man (bang-bang)! I'm wild an' woolly, an' full o' fleas, an' hard to curry below the knees—I'm a roarin' wild-cat, an' it's my night to howl (bang-bang)! Yip-yip-yip-yeee!" Big Butch, opening his eyes and starting up, gazed about him in sheer surprise; for an instant, in that state of bewilderment that comes with sudden awakening, he almost believed himself in a Western ranch bunkhouse, and that some happy cowboy outside roared a grotesque ballad. He gazed at the interior of a rough shack built of pine boards, with bunks constructed in tiers on both sides. There were figures in them—Western cowboys, perhaps. Then it seemed, somehow, that the voice drifting from the outside was strangely familiar. Back at Bannister College, where he remembered he had gone in the dim and dusty past, he had often heard that same fog-horn voice, roaring songs of a less blood-curdling character, and accompanied by that same banjo twanging, which tortured the campus, and bothered would-be studious youths! "I'm not in a moving-picture show," Butch informed himself, as he donned khaki trousers, football sweater, and heavy shoes. "I'm not on a Western ranch, either. I'm in the sleep-shack of Camp Bannister, the football training-camp of the Bannister College squad! Those fellows in the bunks are not cowboys, Indians, and bandits—they are my teammates! I did dream stuff that would shame a Wild West scenario, but I understand it all now—my dreams were influenced by T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.!" At that dramatic moment, to substantiate his statement, the raucous voice, accompanied by resounding chords strummed on a banjo, sounded again. The vocal and instrumental chaos was frequently punctured by revolver reports, as the torturesome Caruso outside roared: "Oh, Chuckwalla Bill thought life was sweet— Till he met up with Sure-shot Pete; A hotter shootin' match Last Chance never saw— But Sure-shot Pete was some quicker on the draw!" The pachydermic Butch, fully dressed—and awake, raging in his wrath like an active volcano, glanced at his watch, and discovered that it was exactly five A.M.! Intensely pacified by this knowledge, he lumbered toward the bunkhouse door and flung it open, determined to crush the pestersome youth who thus unfeelingly disturbed the quietude of Camp Bannister at such an unearthly hour! However, his grim purpose was temporarily thwarted—before him spread a beautiful panorama, a vast canvas painted in rich hues and colors, that indescribably charming masterpiece of nature, entitled dawn. Butch, gazing from the bunkhouse doorway toward the pebbly shore of the placid lake stretching out for two miles before him, beheld Old Sol, blood-red, peeping above the wooded hills on the far-off, opposite strand of Lake Conowingo; the luminous orb laid a flaming pathway across the shimmering waters, and golden bars of light, like gleaming fingers outstretched, fell athwart the tall pines that towered on the high bluff back of the camp. The glorious sunshine, succeeding a flood of rosy color, inundated the scene; it bathed in a gorgeous radiance the early autumn woods, it illumined the bunkhouse, and another rude shanty known to the squad as the grub-shack, it poured down on old Hinky-Dink, the ancient negro cookee, setting the breakfast tables just outside the canvas cook-tent. "Deed, cross mah heart, Mistah Butch," grinned old Hinky-Dink, seeing, as a motion picture director would express it, "Wrath registered on the countenance" of Butch Brewster, "Ah done tole dat young Hicks dat a bird what cain't sing an' will sing mus' be made not to sing! Ah done info'med him dat yo'-all was layin' fo' him, cause he done bus' up yo' sleep!" A jay bird, a flashing bit of vivid blue, shot from a tall pine, jeering shrilly at Butch; out on the lake, a trout leaped above the water for an infinitesimal second, its shining scales gleaming in the sunshine. From the cook-tent, where old Hinky-Dink grumbled at the frying pan, the appetizing odor of frying fish assailed the football captain, softening his wrath. High above the shanties, on a tall flagpole made from a straight young pine, floated a big gold and green banner, its bright colors gleaming in the sunshine; it bore the words: CAMP BANNISTER TRAINING CAMP THE FOOTBALL SQUAD BANNISTER COLLEGE Head Coach Corridan, smashing the precedent that had made former Gold and Green squads have their training camp at Bannister College, had brought the Varsity and second-string stars to this camp on the shore of Lake Conowingo, in the Pennsylvania mountains. For two weeks, one of which had passed, they were to train at Camp Bannister, until college officially opened; swimming, hunting, cross-country runs, and a healthful outdoor existence would give the athletes superb condition, and daily scrimmages on the level field back of the bluff rounded out an eleven that promised to be the strongest in Bannister history. As big, good-natured Butch Brewster stood in the bunkhouse doorway, his wrath at the pestiferous Hicks forgotten, in his rapture at the glorious dawn, he saw something that showed why his dreams had been of the wild West! The expression of indignation, however, yielded to one of humorous affection, as he gazed toward the shore. "I can't be angry with Hicks!" breathed Butch, beholding a spectacle more impressive than dawn. "So, the irrepressible wretch has Coach Corridan's revolvers, used in starting our training sprints, and a lot of blank cartridges! He is giving an imitation of a Western bad man. No wonder I dreamed of Indians, cowboys, and hold-ups; I'll have revenge on the heartless villain, routing me out at five!" He saw a massive rock, rising thirty feet in air, its sheer walls scaled only by a rope-ladder the collegians had r