Petey Simmons at Siwash

Front matter

FRED LOCKLEY

RARE WESTERN BOOKS

4227 S. E. Stark St.

Contents

PAGE

CHAPTER

I Frats and Freshmen 1

II

Isee another young man in this town has gone to the reform school for stealing the brass journals off a fast mail train. This reminds me for the hundredth time that college life is just human life inside out. Take that boy for instance: He steals a few dollars' worth of brass from a train and goes to the reform school. If he had done it in college he would have gotten a medal, not for getting the brass but for figuring out how to do it.

Somehow ever since I left Siwash I have been deeply interested in the criminal news. I don't mean the real murder and arson and thug stuff, but the little playfulnesses like housebreaking and borrowing woodsheds and heaving bricks through windows. I have a brotherly feeling for the boys who are arrested while trying to steal a bridge or a steam roller or who go to probation court because they simply can't stop tearing up cement walks after midnight. I've done it all myself — in college. Of course it doesn't count in college any more than robbery does in finance. I'm mighty glad it doesn't. I wonder how many years I should have to serve if all my college record were dug out and put up to the grand jury ! Makes me shiver to think of it. Why, in one night — when I was a freshman too — I was a whole mob of criminals all by myself, with what help Allie Bangs could give me. I infested the town and created a reign of terror. That's what the papers said. Did it myself, and me only seventeen, with light hair and blue eyes.

It all happened the night after I was initiated into Eta Bita Pie. That was a wonderful event for me. I had been wading through perdition for a week to reach it. I had obeyed the most frivolous whims of my brothers. I had been worse than a slave, for slaves only work, while I had also entertained. I had stopped sifting ashes at daybreak to grease the weather-vane on top of the house; I 33 had hurried down from the roof to peel potatoes for breakfast, and had stood in the dining-room doorway afterward to catch eggshells as the members tossed them at me — getting a glass of water in the face for each error. I had gone out in the cold and lain down on the street-car track to detain the car until a senior could finish his coffee and climb aboard. I had gone to class in boy's clothes and had dusted the snow from the chapel steps with a whisk broom in front of Saunders, our president. I had footed it three miles to the lake in the afternoon to see if the ice was thick enough to skate on, and had been sent back to bring a sample of the ice to prove my statements. I had cleaned washbowls and windows, and had been punished for abandoning the job to run down to the college and bring back a foot-track in the snow made by some sophomore's divinity. I had gone to Browning Hall evenings with half a dozen of my masters and had stood in the corridor all evening holding their hats and coats and listening to the giggles of the young ladies who passed — and something over a thousand of them passed every few minutes. 34

I had done all this and a lot more with a patience that would have made Job welcome a crop of boils as a diversion to make him forget his real troubles. And then one night I was taken to some lonelyplace in the country, where a freshman might be dismembered and the deed not noticed for years, and there I was welcomed by my loving brothers into their ranks as the hungry threshing machine welcomes the sheaf of oats. When they had mangled me beyond repair they stood me up and said some wonderful words. I don't remember what they were, but it seemed to me that they put my fragments together again and made a man of me. And presently I wasn't a shivering piece of human junk any more, but a brand-new brother with my ears full of noble sentiments and my hot young soul panting for a chance to go forth and defy all America and Asia, if necessary, in defense of some young scoundrel who had been spanking me with a barrel stave an hour before.

I wore my new pin on my pa jama jacket that night. When I awoke I looked at it a long time and held it tightly while I bathed, and put it on 35

Petey Simmons at Siwash.

my undershirt until I got my trousers on, and then pinned it on my shirt until I got my vest on. Then I put it on the lower inside left-hand corner of my vest close to the buttons, and propelled it down to chapel, feeling like a man who was wearing a searchlight. Other frat men came up and congratulated me and I blushed and stammered. Girls looked at it and exclaimed over its beauty. I soaked and luxuriated in happiness with just one flaw: Here I had been a full-fledged Eta Bita Pie for eight hours, and as yet I had done no deed to save a brother sorrow and had fought no battle for one who wore the pin.

The thought gnawed at me until by chapel-time I was really unhappy. Here I was a worthless freshman, honored by a great aggregation of brothers, and after all they had done for me I had done nothing in return. Moreover I couldn't think of anything noble or brotherly to do. So when Brother Sam Byers fell into step with me and confessed that he had a calculus test the next morning, and that calculus was to him a sealed book, I leaped at the chance. I would save Sam.

I told him so. He declined the favor. " Don't bother/' said he ; " Fve flunked before and I'll survive it."

That made me tired and I told him so. He was no sort of man to deny a brother a little pleasure. He finally consented to be saved and asked what I was going to do. I told him I didn't know ; that I would save him as soon as I worked out a good plan. He told me to go ahead and amuse myself, and I left him feeling as proud and happy as if I had just been commissioned to take a chair leg and go over and stop this Mexican revolution business.

I also felt about as uncertain as I should have felt under the other circumstances. I had volunteered to save a junior from a flunk. It was considerable of a job for a freshman, and a freshman all cobbled up with court plaster at that. I couldn't take the exam., myself. I couldn't drill a hole into Byers' head and let calculus into him. I should have to suspend class in some manner. It didn't take me two minutes to come to this conclusion.

When I had reached it I shivered a little at the prospects. I had done a lot of primary — you might say kindergarten — deviltry around college, but I had never suspended classes or interfered with the operations of college. This was a really high-class job, worthy of a past-master in crime, and I didn't have the slightest idea how to go about it.

I was depressed. Here was my first chance to make a brother glad and I should probably end up by messing things more than ever.

Just then I noticed that Allie Bangs wasn't looking very cheerful either. Allie had been initiated the night before with me and was probably uncomfortable in as many places as I was. But it went to my heart to think that he also might be worrying because he had no chance to save a brother. And here I was, hugging a saving job to my selfish bosom. It wasn't right. I would divide the chance with Allie, so I got him to bum chapel and told him all about it.

Allie was a splendid boy, with imagination and nerve. He was wonderfully pleased at the chance and went right to work with me to figure out how it could be done.

" There are only two really good ways," said Allie. " We've got to shut down the coll. for the day or prevent Professor Wogg from hearing the class. Personally I think the last is the more artistic. To shut up the whole school would be wasteful. We'd better call off the professor."

That was all very well, but it took us an hour to get even the start of an idea. We finally agreed that the only practical plan would be to get the professor to class late. There was an unwritten rule in Siwash by which a class never waited for a professor more than five minutes. Pive minutes past the hour was the deadline, and some of the most intensely exciting moments in my life have been those where the minute hand was just going over the four-thirty mark with a scout shouting that the professor was now well inside the yard and advancing on the run. More than once we've met the professor coming up the stairs as we came down, but we continued to come down. Artillery couldn't have stopped us. 39

When we decided on this plan Allie and I took deep breaths and looked at each other. Then we shook hands solemnly and gave each other the grip. In another day we might be hunted criminals ; but it would all be for a brother.

Professor Wogg, who chivied the Siwash students through mathematics, was a middle-aged man with a mind which never came down below logarithms and which was usually absent admiring Euclid when it was needed in everyday emergencies. He lived in the north part of town with his deaf old mother, and as we canvassed over the situation it didn't seem so desperate. He was a very methodical man. Each morning at precisely a quarter to eight he appeared on the campus and proceeded to his classroom, which he inhabited, with an interval for chapel, until noon, with his fat old silver watch laid out in front of him on his desk. To be sure, the watch didn't do him very much good, for we always had to remind him that it was time to abandon mathematics for the day by such gentle means as tipping over the chairs or leaving the room in a body. But that watch was 40 our chance this time. We would dispose of it by fair means or foul and then we would get into his house that night and set his clock back half an hour. With his usual regularity and inflexible accuracy, assisted greatly by his calm inattention to earthly affairs, Professor Wogg would arrive for his calculus test the next morning just twenty-five minutes after the class had evaporated.

It was such a simple little plan that we hugged ourselves for joy. But we had to work quickly. We had skipped our own trig, class. Inside of Hve minutes Professor Wogg's last class for the day would be dismissed and our last chance to capture the watch would be gone. We rushed over to his room. As the class passed out we leaped in and began eagerly to question the professor about one of the 1879 knotty problems in trigonometry which were making our young lives a howling desert just then.

The good old man, while a little astonished at our sudden interest, took the bait beautifully. He went to the blackboard to put up the problem. Suddenly there was a crash. 41

Petey Simmons at Siwash.

" Oh, goodness ! " said Allie, horrified. " IVe smashed your watch, Professor Wogg! This is really awful ! "

Professor Wogg reached the desk in two steps. He was agitated. Allie held up the ponderous old turnip. Its thick crystal was broken and it was a dejected-looking affair.

" I was reaching for a book and swept it off," he said abjectly. " I'm awfully sorry."

" It was my grandfather's," moaned the professor, looking at it helplessly.

" I'm going to take it right down and have it fixed this minute," said Allie.

"Oh, no," said the professor politely. "I'll take it down at noon."

"No, you won't," said Allie fiercely. "I've been a clumsy idiot and I'll not allow you to inconvenience yourself. I'll take it down and stay right with it and then bring it up to you."

He took it from the professor's hands and we went away apologizing, through the corridor and down the stairs.

" Fine, so far," whispered Allie as he dropped 42 the watch into his pocket. " Now for the house. What do you know ahout housebreaking ? "

I knew precious little technically, but this didn't seem to be much of a job. Like most of the professors, Wogg had a college student who lived with him and mowed the lawn and fed the cow and kept the fires in winter for his board. We knew the boy. He was in our class. We knew this was the meeting night for his literary society and that even if he came straight home without waiting to fight with members of the rival society he would not arrive before half-past ten. Nine o'clock was the professor's bedtime. It was in the college statistics. Not even presidential elections or fires in the next block kept him up.

Nothing could have been more neatly arranged. Front doors in Jonesville were seldom locked. Student roomers roamed in and out at all times of the night and visited with each other without the formality of bothering the family. We would go up to the professor's house at ten o'clock and one of us would walk boldly in and up to Mangler's room. Then while the other man waylaid 43

Mangier and persuaded him that his watch was fast the criminal would go through the house and turn back the clock. Even if Professor Wogg did hear him he would think nothing of it. Yery few students who made their homes in private families neglected to go out to the kitchen at night to make sure that no piece of pie or cake was pining away and shriveling up from loneliness.

It was all so beautiful that we could hardly wait for night. I was selected as the burglar, and just before ten o'clock I tramped up Professor Wogg's front steps and entered the house. I had done it before to visit Mangier and I knew where his room was. Loudly and confidently I climbed up the stairs. The only thing that worried me was my heart. It was making an awful uproar. If Professor Wogg was awake he might mistake it for a steam pump and come out to investigate. I sat in Mangler's room for a few minutes and then went downstairs.

At the end of the downstairs hall was a tall grandfather's clock whanging away in a dignified manner. I opened its face and turned it back to

9 :25, feeling like a man who was altering the calendar. As the hand passed the six figure the clock had a convulsion and then Doomed out the half hour. It sounded like the first gun in the Civil War. I stopped breathing for a minute or two; but no one stirred.

Then from somewhere upstairs a clock struck ten loudly and defiantly. I was thunderstruck. But still no one rose to inquire, so I went upstairs to find that clock. This was risky work and I felt very uneasy. But the moonlight helped me and presently I found that clock in the professor's study and made a liar of it too. Then downstairs another clock cuckooed ten times.

By this time I was indignant. Was Professor Wogg running a home for aged clocks? I went down again and found the offender in the kitchen. Just for revenge I messed up its internals a little. Then, at peace with all the world, I tiptoed toward the front door, and opened it softly. Mangier and Allie Bangs were just coming up the steps.

" Good," said Allie eagerly. " I hoped you'd be here."

I thought of forty-nine answers and chose one at random. " I'd about given you up," I answered.

We all three went upstairs to Mangler's room. I sat down on the bed while Allie took the rocking chair. I looked at them both a little wildly.

" I haven't told Mangier a word about it," said Allie, acting like a lowbrow and putting the whole job up to me.

" Well," said I taking a long breath, " it's -just like this, Mangier." I stopped a long time, ostensibly for effect, but in reality to figure out what it really was like. " How would you like to be treasurer of the Athletic Association ? "

That had been my own pet hope for the next year, but I abandoned it without a quiver. Anyway it was a sacrifice for a f rat brother and I was proud to pay the price. Mangier stared a minute — he wasn't exactly what you would call prominent in the class. But we went to work and talked to him eagerly for a few minutes and in the end he became enthusiastic. I told him I had been waiting for him in his room for an hour, and Allie 46 cussed me for not remembering it was society night and then we rose to go, unutterably relieved.

" You'll think about it, won't you, old man ? " said Allie anxiously.

" Yes," said Mangier. " You fellows are mighty good to consider me for the place. Got to go ? I'd ask you to sit around a while, but I've got to get up at six." Saying which he reached under the bed and fished out an alarm clock which he proceeded to wind and set with caution.

" I told you my watch was right and you wouldn't believe it," he said triumphantly to Allie. "It's right by this old machine shop anyway."

I looked at Allie desperately. He put his hands in his hair and pulled it thoughtfully for a minute. Suddenly he got up.

" We might as well cinch this thing right here," he said to Mangier. " Graham only lives about six blocks from here. I'll run over and get him, and if he'll support you I think we can put it through."

" But I'm getting awfully sleepy/' said Mangier plaintively.

" It won't take ten minutes/' said Allie eagerly, " and you can afford to murder a little sleep just for once, you dormouse ! "

He darted out of the door. I hadn't the slightest idea what my cue was, but I stuck tight to Mangier and talked of college affairs and the class and the weather, and was just considering thumping him over the head with his dictionary and escaping with his watch and clock when there was a roar and a clang of bells and Jonesville's prize fire department went past on the dead run.

" Fire ! " yelled Mangier, leaping into his shoes. He was fresh from the country and fires had his earnest attention at all times. " Come on ! " he shouted as he flashed through the door.

I came, but not Until I had tarried a minute with that alarm clock. When I had finished it was harmless, but I never knew alarm clocks were so tough before. I could have broken open a cocoanut with less exertion.

I chased Mangier up the street amid the ever- 48

N Saving a Brother

growing throng, and when the firemen stopped at a box a few blocks up, looked eagerly over the neighborhood and then began to indulge in highly inflammable language, I began to feel proud of Allie. Somehow I connected the whole thing with him. He joined us a minute after and we all walked back, Mangier disappointed, but we two perfectly happy. We went up to the room again to get my hat and Mangier yawned once more, furiously this time.

" Gee whiz ! I've simply got to go to bed," he complained.

" Well, good night," I said hastily. " Sorry we've kept you up so long. See you tomorrow."

" I'll let you out downstairs," said Mangier as we hurried downward. " I'm going to call up the telephone operator and find out just what time it really is."

I sat down on the steps so suddenly that he almost fell over me. " What's the matter ? " he complained.

" Hush," I said for want of any better remark. 49

" Mangier, I'd forgotten the most important thing I came to see you about."

" Let it go till tomorrow," said Mangier, yawning again. " I'm too sleepy to talk any more."

" But tomorrow will be too late," I hissed, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him back to the room by main force. " If you don't hear this tonight you'll regret it. It's an awful thing."

" What is it ? " said Mangier eagerly.

Darned if I knew.

I hemmed and hawed and walked round the room and asked if he could keep a secret, and got his pledge to do it ; but I simply couldn't get a line on what it was. Finally I turned to Allie. " You tell him," I said ; " it makes me nervous to think of it."

That was getting even with Bangs all right. I couldn't see him in the darkness, but I could feel his glare.

" You see, Mangier," said Allie, beginning very slowly, " it's just this way."

" Yes, yes," said Mangier after a minute.

" The sophs, you know, are still sore about that 50 party deal where we hoisted Petey in by the window."

" Yes."

u They've sworn to get even with the class, and they say that you were the one who warned Petey," said Allie ; speeding up splendidly.

" But I didn't," said Mangier indignantly.

" So we've told them, but they won't believe it. I've even offered to take the consequences myself," said Allie virtuously ; " but they say they are going to get you and cut off your hair and paint your head with iodine before chapel tomorrow morning."

Mangier was no poet and did not appreciate the beautiful symbolism of sophomore vengeance. He got excited.

" How are they going to do it ? " he stammered.

"I don't know," said Allie, "but I suppose they'll just come on up to your room and do it here. That's one reason why I walked up with you tonight."

" Hush," I said, getting into the game ; " I heard a whistle below."

We listened nervously. "*Allie, come here/' I said. We stepped out into the hall. " I'll cut the telephone wires/' I whispered hastily.

We came back. "It's all right," said Allie. "Petey has a plan. He'll go down and reconnoiter. We'll stay here and wait for him."

I tiptoed downstairs and went round the house. The telephone wires ran in from the other side. They were too thick to cut; I soon realized that. But I had an old nickel chain attached to my watch — it seemed inevitable that the events of the night should be run by watches — and climbing up a porch pillar I wound it round both wires. Then I started down with triumph surging through me. A voice spoke sharply from the sidewalk.

" Come down out of that and come here," it said.

I jumped the rest of the way and took one look. The voice belonged to a policeman fourteen feet high. It was Eed Nelson. I knew him. Thank heaven, I was only a freshman and he didn't know me!

" Come here, you," he cried again, starting my way.

I did not come. I was small and a good sprinter and suddenly I felt an overwhelming desire to manufacture foot tracks. There was a desperate scarcity of foot tracks just then. The whole world yammered for them. He who made them was a philanthropist. I began the publication of a series of 7% tracks, and never in history were they turned out faster. At the back of the yard I met a high board fence. With the thunder of hoofs behind me I dove for the top, landed on my stomach, wriggled over and darted down the alley. A revolver shot rang out and something pinged into a telephone pole beside me.

I didn't care. I shouldn't have stopped then to give first aid to a telephone pole if it had been dying. I kept right on making tracks down that alley and putting them farther and farther apart until it seemed to me that I soared between steps. That policeman may have been a good runner, but he had no chance. He had only two legs, and I had two legs and the healthiest scare I'd ever 53 had besides. I went round a corner into another alley so fast I skidded on the turn, ran through a back yard and down into the street and there, just ahead of me, I saw a street car standing all by itself at the end of the track — that is, it didn't have any crew and there was no one in it but an old lady.

I never was partial to Jonesville's trolley cars. They ran so slowly that only the leisure class had time to ride on them. But that car looked as welcome as a celestial chariot. I wanted to go downtown in a great hurry and I believed that if I got into that car and treated it fairly, and didn't stop it at every corner to wait while some Jonesville young man said good-by to his girl on a near-by porch, I could win its love and get good service out of it.

I jumped into the vestibule and turned on the power. My policeman wasn't in sight yet, but as the car started its crew came out of a saloon on the corner. I wasn't doing a thing but saving them the trouble of coaxing the old ark back to town, but you never saw any one so mad about it.

They chased me for a block, but it was no use. I turned the controller clear round and we went down the street over that prehistoric track like an early June cyclone, the car leaping and crashing over the loose joints and the poor old lady yelling at every bump. I was sorry for her, but it couldn't be helped. The car gained speed and presently we were filling that sleepy street so full of noise that you could hear the windows rattling on both sides. I saw lights flashing up in the houses as I passed, but I didn't stop to satisfy any one's curiosity. I was out to break a record and I gave my entire attention to the job.

Near the business section a railroad crossed the street and I could see a red lantern waving frantically. So I began to figure out some way of stopping the car, and after several attempts I succeeded. I don't think it was the right way, because I produced the finest little electrical display round the car you ever saw.

I beat it up a side street and round four corners, and finally landed in an alley back of the Eta Bita Pie house. I got in the rear door and sat 55 downstairs in the dark for a generation or two getting my breath and waiting for Allie Bangs. He didn't come in for a long time and he was a sight when he arrived. His clothes were dirty and torn, but he was quite cheerful.

" Everything's O. 3L," he whispered happily, "but I've worked like a dog to fix it up. Why didn't you come back % "

That magnified all my troubles and I told him hissingly.

" Oh, well," he said cheerfully, " that's nothing. You got a good ride out of it. But listen to my deeds: I finally persuaded Mangier that the sophs had got you and then I had to calm him down and put him to bed. After that I left with his watch in my pocket, feeling pretty good, and I hadn't gone more than four doors until I heard a clock begin to strike. It had a bell as big as the great bell at Moscow and by the time it had struck twelve the whole ward was echoing. It made me mighty mad I can tell you. There are too many pesky clocks in this world anyway. They are a nuisance. Any one who wasn't stone 56 deaf would wake up when that clock struck. It was the grammar-school clock and the villains who made it had it hid up in the tower. I had to get up and doctor it, and maybe it wasn't a sweet job. I went in through the coal hole and over two transoms, and even after I got into the belfry, which wasn't so feverish up there in the wind, let me tell you I had my troubles. I'm no jeweler you know, and I couldn't decide what to do with that clock. But I unhooked a few weights and things and messed round with the wheels and was turning a lever when the blamed thing began to strike again. I shinned out of that building as fast as I could and came over here. It was still striking when I came in. I guess it's struck about three hundred by this time."