The Hoosier School-boy Part 5

"I'm not going to play Anthony-over," said Jack. "I'm going to show King Pewee a new trick."

"You can't get up a game of bull-pen on your own hook, and play the four corners and the ring all by yourself."

"No, I don't mean that. I'm going to show the boys how to play hat-ball--a game they used to play on the Wildcat."

"I see your point. You are going to make Pewee ask you to let him in,"

said Bob, and the two boys set out for school together, Jack explaining the game to Bob. They found one or two boys already there, and when Jack showed his new ball and proposed a new game, they fell in with it.

The boys stood their hats in a row on the gra.s.s. The one with the ball stood over the row of hats, and swung his hand to and fro above them, while the boys stood by him, prepared to run as soon as the ball should drop into a hat. The boy who held the ball, after one or two false motions,--now toward this hat, and now toward that one,--would drop the ball into Somebody's hat. Somebody would rush to his hat, seize the ball, and throw it at one of the other boys, who were fleeing in all directions. If he hit Somebody-Else, Somebody-Else might throw from where the ball lay, or from the hats, at the rest, and so on, until some one missed. The one who missed took up his hat and left the play, and the boy who picked up the ball proceeded to drop it into a hat, and the game went on until all but one were put out.

Hat-ball is so simple that any number can play at it, and Jack's friends found it so full of boisterous fun, that every new-comer wished to set down his hat. And thus, by the time Pewee and Riley arrived, half the larger boys in the school were in the game, and there were not enough left to make a good game of bull-pen.

At noon, the new game drew the attention of the boys again, and Riley and Pewee tried in vain to coax them away.

"Oh, I say, come on, fellows!" Riley would say. "Come--let's play something worth playing."

But the boys stayed by the new game and the new ball. Neither Riley, nor Pewee, nor Ben Berry liked to ask to be let into the game, after what had pa.s.sed. Not one of them had spoken to Jack since the battle between him and Pewee, and they didn't care to play with Jack's ball in a game of his starting.

Once the other boys had broken away from Pewee's domination, they were pleased to feel themselves free. As for Pewee and his friends, they climbed up on a fence, and sat like three crows, watching the play of the others. After a while they got down in disgust, and went off, not knowing just what to do. When once they were out of sight, Jack winked at Bob, who said:

"I say, boys, we can play hat-ball at recess when there isn't time for bull-pen. Let's have a game of bull-pen now, before school takes up."

It was done in a minute. Bob Holliday and Tom Taylor "chose up sides,"

the bases were all ready, and by the time Pewee and his aides-de-camp had walked disconsolately to the pond and back, the boys were engaged in a good game of bull-pen.

Perhaps I ought to say something about the principles of a game so little known over the country at large. I have never seen it played anywhere but in a narrow bit of country on the Ohio River, and yet there is no merrier game played with a ball.

The ball must not be too hard. There should be four or more corners.

The s.p.a.ce inside is called the pen, and the party winning the last game always has the corners. The ball is tossed from one corner to another, and when it has gone around once, any boy on a corner may, immediately after catching the ball thrown to him from any of the four corners, throw it at any one in the pen. He must throw while "the ball is hot,"--that is, instantly on catching it. If he fails to hit anybody on the other side, he goes out. If he hits, his side leave the corners and run as they please, for the boy who has been hit may throw from where the ball fell, or from any corner, at any one of the side holding the corners. If one of them is. .h.i.t, he has the same privilege; but now the men in the pen are allowed to scatter, also. Whoever misses is "out,"

and the play is resumed from the corners until all of one side is out.

When but two are left on the corners the ball is smuggled,--that is, one hides the ball in his bosom, and the other pretends that he has it also. The boys in the ring do not know which has it, and the two "run the corners," throwing from any corner. If but one is left on the corners, he is allowed, also, to run from corner to corner.

It happened that Jack's side lost on the toss-up for corners, and he got into the ring, where his play showed better than it would have done on the corners. As Jack was the greenhorn and the last chosen on his side, the players on the corners expected to make light work of him; but he was an adroit dodger, and he put out three of the boys on the corners by his unexpected way of evading a ball. Everybody who has ever played this fine old game knows that expertness in dodging is worth quite as much as skill in throwing. Pewee was a famous hand with a ball, Riley could dodge well, Ben Berry had a happy knack of dropping flat upon the ground and letting a ball pa.s.s over him, Bob Holliday could run well in a counter charge; but nothing could be more effective than Jack Dudley's quiet way of stepping forward or backward, bending his lithe body or spreading his legs to let the ball pa.s.s, according to the course which it took from the player's hand.

King Pewee and company came back in time to see Jack dodge three b.a.l.l.s thrown point-blank at him from a distance of fifteen feet. It was like witchcraft--he seemed to be charmed. Every dodge was greeted with a shout, and when once he luckily caught the ball thrown at him, and thus put out the thrower, there was no end of admiration of his playing. It was now evident to all that Jack could no longer be excluded from the game, and that, next to Pewee himself, he was already the best player on the ground.

At recess that afternoon Pewee set his hat down in the hat-ball row, and as Jack did not object, Riley and Ben Berry did the same. The next day Pewee chose Jack first in bull-pen, and the game was well played.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DEFENDER

If Jack had not about this time undertaken the defence of the little boy in the Fourth Reader, whose name was large enough to cover the princ.i.p.al points in the history of the New World, he might have had peace, for Jack was no longer one of the newest scholars, his courage was respected by Pewee, and he kept poor Riley in continual fear of his ridicule--making him smart every day. But, just when he might have had a little peace and happiness, he became the defender of Christopher Columbus George Was.h.i.+ngton Marquis de la Fayette Risdale--little "Andsoforth," as Riley and the other boys had nicknamed him.

The strange, pinched little body of the boy, his eccentric ways, his quickness in learning, and his infantile simplicity had all conspired to win the affection of Jack, so that he would have protected him even without the solicitation of Susan Lanham. But since Susan had been Jack's own first and fast friend, he felt in honor bound to run all risks in the care of her strange little cousin.

I think that Columbus's child-like ways might have protected him even from Riley and his set, if it had not been that he was related to Susan Lanham, and under her protection. It was the only chance for Riley to revenge himself on Susan. She was more than a match for him in wit, and she was not a proper subject for Pewee's fists. So with that heartlessness which belongs to the school-boy bully, he resolved to torment the helpless fellow in revenge for Susan's sarcasms.

One morning, smarting under some recent taunt of Susan's, Riley caught little Columbus almost alone in the school-room. Here was a boy who certainly would not be likely to strike back again. His bamboo legs, his spindling arms, his pale face, his contracted chest, all gave the coward a perfect a.s.surance of safety. So, with a rude pretence at play, laughing all the time, he caught the lad by the throat, and in spite of his weird dignity and pleading gentleness, shoved him back against the wall behind the master's empty chair. Holding him here a minute in suspense, he began slapping him, first on this side of the face and then on that. The pale cheeks burned red with pain and fright, but Columbus did not cry out, though the constantly increasing sharpness of the blows, and the sense of weakness, degradation, and terror, stung him severely. Riley thought it funny. Like a cat playing with a condemned mouse, the cruel fellow actually enjoyed finding one person weak enough to be afraid of him.

Columbus twisted about in a vain endeavor to escape from Riley's clutches, getting only a sharper cuff for his pains. Ben Berry, arriving presently, enjoyed the sport, while some of the smaller boys and girls, coming in, looked on the scene of torture in helpless pity. And ever, as more and more of the scholars gathered, Columbus felt more and more mortified; the tears were in his great sad eyes, but he made no sound of crying or complaint.

Jack Dudley came in at last, and marched straight up to Riley, who let go his hold and backed off. "You mean, cowardly, pitiful villain!" broke out Jack, advancing on him.

"I didn't do anything to you," whined Riley, backing into a corner.

"No, but I mean to do something to you. If there's an inch of man in you, come right on and fight with me. You daren't do it."

"I don't want any quarrel with you."

"No, you quarrel with babies."

Here all the boys and girls jeered.

"You're too hard on a fellow, Jack," whined the scared Riley, slipping out of the corner and continuing to back down the school-room, while Jack kept slowly following him.

"You're a great deal bigger than I am," said Jack. "Why don't you try to corner me? Oh, I could just beat the breath out of you, you great, big, good-for-nothing----"

Here Riley pulled the west door open, and Jack, at the same moment, struck him. Riley half dropped, half fell, through the door-way, scared so badly that he went sprawling on the ground.

The boys shouted "coward" and "baby" after him as he sneaked off, but Jack went back to comfort Columbus and to get control of his temper. For it is not wise, as Jack soon reflected, even in a good cause to lose your self-control.

"It was good of you to interfere," said Susan, when she had come in and learned all about it.

"I should have been a brute if I hadn't," said Jack, pleased none the less with her praise. "But it doesn't take any courage to back Riley out of a school-house. One could get more fight out of a yearling calf. I suppose I've got to take a beating from Pewee, though."

"Go and see him about it, before Riley talks to him," suggested Susan.

And Jack saw the prudence of this course. As he left the school-house at a rapid pace, Ben Berry told Riley, who was skulking behind a fence, that Jack was afraid of Pewee.

"Pewee," said Jack, when he met him starting to school, after having done his "ch.o.r.es," including the milking of his cow,--"Pewee, I want to say something to you."

Jack's tone and manner flattered Pewee. One thing that keeps a rowdy a rowdy is the thought that better people despise him. Pewee felt in his heart that Jack had a contempt for him, and this it was that made him hate Jack in turn. But now that the latter sought him in a friendly way, he felt himself lifted up into a dignity hitherto unknown to him. "What is it?"

"You are a kind of king among the boys," said Jack. Pewee grew an inch taller.

"They are all afraid of you. Now, why don't you make us fellows behave?

You ought to protect the little boys from fellows that impose on them.

Then you'd be a king worth the having. All the boys and girls would like you."

"I s'pose may be that's so," said the king.

"There's poor little Columbus Risdale----"

"I don't like him," said Pewee.