The Girls of Central High at Basketball: or, The Great Gymnasium Mystery

CHAPTER XV – THE KEYPORT GAME

“These are bad burns,” said the physician, looking up at the wide-eyed crowd. “And I believe he is hurt internally. Where did he come from?”

“This gal brought him in her car, Doc,” said the storekeeper, who had forgotten trade for the moment.

“Who is he?” asked the physician, with his hand on the man’s pulse, but looking curiously at Hester.

“I don’t know – oh, yes! I remember! He said his name was Billson.”

“Jeffers-pelters!” ejaculated the storekeeper. “I‘d never ha’ knowed him. His whiskers is burned off, that’s a fac’.”

“Then you know all about him, Carey?” pursued the medical man.

“Not much! not much!” exclaimed the storekeeper, hastily. “He’s jest a squatter. Come from one of the lower counties, I b‘lieve. Holler-chested. Bad lungs, he said. Goin’ to live in the open an’ cure ’em.”

“He ought to go to the hospital at once,” growled the doctor.

“I can take him,” said Hester, quietly. “He’s a very brave man, I believe. He warned all the people through the section back of Tentorville – ”

“I guess you druv the car, Miss,” cackled Carey, the storekeeper.

“But I should have driven it home in a hurry after finding him on the road without knowing anything about the people in danger,” said the girl, honestly. “He did it.”

“No matter who did it. I want to get him to the hospital. I’ll go to Centerport with him, Miss, if you’ll take us.”

“Of course,” said Hester.

“You know him, Carey,” said the doctor, turning to the storekeeper. “Can I use your name at the hospital in Centerport?”

“No, you can’t,” said the other, quickly. “I can’t stand no ‘nearest friend’ game for a man that never spent fo’ bits a week in my store for groceries. No. I dunno him.”

“We’ll stand sponsor for him, sir,” said Hester, hastily. “Come on. You’ll have to tell me how to drive. I don’t know these roads very well.”

“What’s your name, Miss?” asked the physician, climbing into the car as Hester touched the electric starter.

Hester told him, and the medical man nodded. “Henry Grimes’s gal, eh?” he said. “Well, he’s well able to be sponsor for this poor fellow. Drive on.”

He was a shabby old man, this country doctor. His name was Leffert, and he seemed none too blessed with this world’s goods. But he was kindly and he eased the senseless man into a comfortable position in the tonneau with the gentleness of a woman.

The car started on the long run to Centerport with a plentifully filled tank. And the engine worked nicely. When they passed the Sitz place Hester saw that the farmer and Otto were out ploughing along the edge of the woods by lantern light. But the sky above the ridge glowed like a live coal. The forest fire was sweeping on.

When they came down the hill past Robinson’s Woods the doctor nudged Hester from behind.

“Hadn’t you better take that left-hand turn, Miss?” he demanded.

“What for? This is the nearest way,” returned the girl, slowing down a bit.

“But it goes through the Four Corners. They have a habit of setting on automobiles there.”

“They won’t dare bother us,” declared Hester. “Most of those people work for father.”

“Aw – well,” said the doctor, and sat down again.

The car roared through the settlement of shacks about the Four Corners like a fast express. Nobody tried to bother them. In twenty minutes thereafter the car stopped at the City Hospital. The patient was carried in on a stretcher, and one of the interns took Hester’s name and address. Dr. Leffert evidently had no standing at the institution, and he merely handed the patient over to the hospital authorities and hurried away. Hester drove the car home and found both her mother and father excitedly awaiting her coming.

“Now, don’t you bother about me – or the car!” she said, sharply, when her parents began to take her to task for worrying them so. “I haven’t had a bite to eat, and I’m tired, too. Your old car isn’t hurt any – ”

“But you can’t ride that car all over this country alone, Hess! I swear I won’t have it!”

“But I did drive it alone, didn’t I? And it isn’t hurt any. Neither am I,” she replied, and it was several days before her parents learned the particulars of their daughter’s wild ride over the mountainside with the squatter, Billson, warning the small farmers of the coming fire.

“I declare for’t!” her mother then said. “You’re the greatest girl, Hess! The folks say you’re a heroine.”

“They say a whole lot beside their prayers, I reckon,” snapped Hester.

“But one of the country papers has got a long article in it about you and that Mr. Billson. Only they don’t know your name.”

“No. I told Doc. Leffert to keep still about it,” said Hester. “Now! there’s been enough talk. I want two dollars, Ma. I want to send that Billson some jelly and some flowers. He’s having a mighty hard time at the hospital. And there isn’t a soul who cares anything about him – whether he lives or dies.”

“Ain’t that just like you, Hessie?” complained her mother. “You throw that poor fellow good things like you was throwing a bone to a dog! I – I wish you wasn’t so hard.”

But events were making Hester seem harder than usual these days. She was completely cut off from the society of her school fellows. She had no part in the after-hour athletics. Nobody spoke to her about the fine time expected at Keyport when the basketball team went over to battle with the team of the Keyport High.

And when that day arrived, fully a carload entrained at the Hill station of the C. K. & M. Railroad, bound for the neighboring city. These were all the girls of Central High interested in the game and their friends among the boys.

It was not a long run by train to Keyport, but they had a lot of fun. Chet and Lance were full of an incident that had occurred in Professor Dimp’s class that morning, and Chet was telling his sister and a group of friends about it.

“Short and Long got one on Old Dimple again to-day,” said Chet. “You know he’s forever hammering the Romans into us. We ought to call him ‘The Old Roman’ – we really had! There’s that Roman lad who was such an athlete and all-around pug – ”

“‘Pug!’” gasped Laura. “Wait till mother hears you say that.”

“Ha! I’m going to watch to see that she doesn’t hear me, Sis,” returned her brother. “Well, Old Dimple was telling us about this lad who used to swim across the Tiber three times before breakfast. And when he’d expatiated on the old boy’s performance, Short and Long put up a mitt – ”

“‘A mitt!’” groaned Laura again.

“Aw, well! His hand, then. Dimple perked right up, thinking that Short and Long was really showing some interest, and says he:

“‘What’s your question, Mr. Long?’

“And Billy says: ‘What’s puzzling me, is why he swam it three times?’”

“‘Eh?’ says Dimple. ‘How’s that, young man?’”

“‘Why didn’t he swim it four times,’ says Billy, grave as a judge, ‘and so get back to the bank where he’d left his clothes?’ And not a smile cracked Short and Long’s face! Dimple didn’t know whether to laugh or get mad, and just then the gong sounded ‘Time’ and Dimple got out of it without answering Billy’s question.”

“Tickets!” cried Lance, as the girls laughed at the story. “Here comes the conductor. Get your pasteboards ready.”

“Who says that’s the conductor, Lance?” demanded Chet.

“Huh! It’s Mr. Wood, isn’t it? He’s the conductor of this train.”

“Impossible,” sighed Chet “Wood is a non-conductor.”

But the crowd wouldn’t stand for puns like that and shouted Chet down.

When they debarked at the Keyport station they formed in marching order and, the boys with canes and the girls with flags, marched two by two to the Keyport girls’ athletic field. The game was called for four o‘clock, and Mrs. Case got her team out and “warmed them up” with ten minutes’ practice before the referee called both teams to the court selected for the match game.

The boys in the audience droned out the Central High yell, with its “snap-the-whip” ending of, “Ziz – z – z – z – Boom!” and the ball was thrown into play. Right at the start the home team got the best of the visitors. There were excellent players on the Keyport team. Indeed, in all athletics the Keyport girls had excelled for years. Our friends from Central High were outmatched at several points.

But they fought hard. Laura and her mates battled every moment, and when the whistle ending the first half sounded, the Keyport team was only two points ahead. But the visitors ran to their dressing room in no hopeful frame of mind.

CHAPTER XVI – UPHILL WORK FOR THE TEAM

“I declare!” ejaculated Bobby Hargrew; “we’re being whipped out of our boots!”

“I’m doing the best I can!” wailed Roberta Fish.

“Nobody’s blaming you, child,” Jess Morse hastened to say.

“Not at all,” added Laura. “I haven’t a single complaint to make about your work, Roberta.”

“But there’s something lacking somewhere,” declared Dorothy Lockwood.

“We might as well admit that these Keyport girls are better at basketball than we are,” said her twin.

“My gracious!” cried Bobby. “They’re better than we ever dared to be!”

“No!” cried Laura. “That is not so.”

“What’s the answer, then, Miss Captain?” demanded the irrepressible.

“We must play up to each other, that’s all,” said the captain. “Our playing is loose.”

“We’re weak in spots,” admitted Nellie Agnew, slowly.

“And I’m the worst spot,” groaned Roberta.

“Pshaw! you’re not, either,” said Eve Sitz, kindly.

“You do your very best, Roberta,” said Laura, again.

“But that isn’t as good as Hester’s best,” responded Roberta, quickly.

“Hessie is certainly one mighty good player,” grumbled Bobby.

“And we got rid of her rather hastily,” sighed Nellie.

“Don’t wail about that now!” cried Josephine Morse, with some asperity. “My goodness! I’m only glad she’s out of it. And I reckon Laura is.”

“I am sorry it seemed best to ask her to get out,” admitted the captain.

“Bah! she was more trouble than she was good,” declared Jess. “Let’s not weep and wail over what we did.”

“But have you heard what she did last week, girls?” asked the doctor’s daughter, earnestly.

“What now?” returned Bobby, with curiosity.

“Remember the day we found her broken down in that new car of her father’s on the Keyport road?”

“Sure!” cried several of the team together.

“That was the day of that big forest fire. You know, Chet warned her that the wind was likely to change and blow the fire across the road. Well, she rescued a man from the burning woods and then ran that car all over the hill country up there, warning farmers and other people that the fire was coming. She is a very brave girl,” concluded Nellie, softly.

“Pshaw! don’t you weep over Hess Grimes,” exclaimed Bobby. “You’re too tender-hearted, Nell.”

“But she is brave,” said Laura, hastily.

“And just as ill-tempered as she can be,” put in Jess Morse. “We’re well rid of her.”

“I guess nobody in this world is quite perfect – nor all bad, either,” suggested the doctor’s daughter. “And as for Hester, she never let us see her good points.”

“But some mighty mean ones!” exclaimed Dora Lockwood.

“Just the same,” sighed Laura, “if she had only stuck to the rules of basketball in playing she would have been a great help to us right now!”

Lily had been “prinking up” at the other end of the room while this conversation was going on. Now she flung them one malicious “I told you so!” as the gong rang and they hurried out to their places in the basketball court.

“All ready?” cried the referee.

“Do your best, girls!” begged Laura.

The whistle sounded long and loud at the toss-up and the game was on. At first, although the play was fast and furious, neither side scored. Then came the umpire’s shout:

“Foul on Central High for over-guarding!”

It rattled Laura and her team mates. Their opponents got the ball and shot it basketward. Right from the field Keyport made a basket. And then, in little over half a minute they made another!

“Break it up, guards! Break it up!” begged Laura.

But although the girls of Central High fought hard, and there were some brilliant plays on the part of Laura and Jess, it was all to no avail. Nor did the “rooting” of their boy friends help. The Keyport team forged ahead steadily and at the end of the game they were six points in the lead. It was as bad a beating as the girls of Central High had ever received in a trophy game.

Roberta was in tears in the dressing room when Mrs. Case came in to cheer them up.

“Now, now! what have I told you about being good losers?” she demanded, briskly.

“Tha – that’s all right,” stammered Roberta. “We cheered ’em, didn’t we? But I feel it’s my fault. I fumble dreadfully. You know, I always did when I was on the team before. Get somebody else in my place, Mrs. Case – do!”

Naturally Lily Pendleton told all this to Hester; but it only added to Hester’s bitterness of spirit. Deep down in her heart she felt the sting of Central High’s defeat – only she wouldn’t admit it. The team had lost – she believed it, too – because she wasn’t there in her place at forward center!

And Mrs. Case had tried to show her how she might win back, if she would, and Hester had refused. Her bad temper had cut her off from the instructor’s help entirely. She was a pariah – and she felt it.

So she told Lily she was glad the team was having up-hill work and was so nasty about it that Lily, who was feeling bad, too, about the affair, almost got mad herself, and went home early.

“That Hester Grimes can be awfully exasperating when she wants to be,” Lily admitted to her mother.

“Bless me, child! I don’t really see why you associate so much with her. She does come of such common people. Why, Mrs. Grimes is impossible!” sighed Mrs. Pendleton.

CHAPTER XVII – HEBE POCOCK IN TROUBLE

The big frost came soon after the Keyport game and Eve excitedly informed her particular friends when she came in to school that the nuts were falling in showers. It was toward the end of the week when this happened and it had already been arranged that a nutting party should take an entire Saturday for the trip to Peveril Pond, some miles beyond the Sitz place.

The Beldings’ car and one of Mr. Purcell’s sight-seeing autos were to carry the party from the Hill, with two seats reserved for Eve and her brother Otto, whom they would pick up at the farmhouse. Prettyman Sweet and Lily Pendleton were invited – indeed, Eve had insisted upon all the basketball team being of the party – and Purt was dreadfully exercised in advance regarding what would be the proper costume to wear.

“Oh,” said Bobby Hargrew, “when folks go fox-hunting in the fall they wear red coats, because the fox is red, I suppose. Now, you ought to wear a nut-brown suit, hadn’t you?”

“Yes, Purt,” drawled Lance Darby, “something nutty will suit you, all right, all right!”

The girls wore sweaters and old caps and old skirts and lace up boots – all but Lily. She came “dressed to the nines,” as Bobby declared.

“What under the sun are you supposed to represent, Lil?” demanded Jess Morse. “You – you look like a fancy milkmaid.”

“Well, I’m going into the country; I shall look the part,” said Lily, demurely.

“Oh, say!” continued Jess, in a whisper, “you’ve got altogether too much red on your cheeks for a milkmaid, young lady.”

At that Lily flushed deeper than the “fast color” on her cheek.

“Is that so, Miss?” she snapped. “I guess a milkmaid ought to be rosy-cheeked.”

Chet, going by, overheard this. He glanced at the red spots in Lily’s naturally pale cheek, and laughed.

“On the contrary,” he said, winking at Jess.

“What’s on the contrary?” demanded Lily, sharply.

“Milkmaids shouldn’t be rosy-cheeked, you know,” said Chet, gravely.

“Why not, Mr. Funny?”

“Because a milkmaid is naturally a pail girl,” chortled Chet.

Lily was rather angry for a while because they joked her about the rouge. She was the only girl in all the Junior class who used cosmetics and, as Chet laughingly said once, “painting the Lily was a thankless job – it didn’t improve her looks!”

They piled into the two autos and started off with much laughter and blowing of horns. Nellie Agnew was almost the last one to board the Beldings’ car.

“I had to run down to Mrs. Doyle’s for Daddy Doctor,” she explained. “Poor little Johnny is dreadfully sick. He never really recovered from the shock, or the cold, when he fell into the sewer basin. He’s such a poor, weak little thing now. It would make your heart ache to see him, Laura.”

“Lil says that Hester goes there all the time, and that she’s always doing something for Rufe, or the rest of them,” Jess Morse said.

Laura shook her head. “I know,” she said. “I saw Hester and Rufie in the park together the other day. They seem to be very good friends. And I’m sorry.”

“Why – for pity’s sake?” demanded Nellie.

“Why, father is on the Board of Education this year, you know, and he told us – but you mustn’t repeat it! – that Bill Jackway had admitted that the night the gym. was first raided Rufus slipped into the building unbeknown to him early in the evening, and was there until after midnight. Then he cried to go home, being afraid, he said. But Jackway let him out without ever making the rounds of the gym., and so he doesn’t know for sure whether the damage to the apparatus was done while Rufe was there, or afterward.”

“My goodness me!” gasped Nellie. “How awful!”

“Could it be that half-foolish boy, do you suppose?” cried Jess.

“He isn’t so foolish. Rufe is dreadfully cunning about some things,” replied Laura. “Think of those footprints in the athletic field. I know the person who made them walked backwards. Maybe Rufe got into the gym. again unknown to his uncle; and he’d be just sharp enough to get out of that window backward and so reach the fence.”

“And he could be hired to do that for a little money,” said Jess, confidently.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that!” exclaimed Nellie. “It’s too dreadful.”

“But Mr. Jackway can’t make Rufe admit it. The boy won’t speak. And the Board doesn’t know what to do about it,” Laura said. “Now, I’ve told you girls this; don’t let it go any farther.”

They promised – and they were girls who could keep their word. Lance and Chet on the front seat of the machine, with Bobby between them, hadn’t heard it at all.

When the cars reached the Sitz place Eve and Otto were taken into the tonneau of the Beldings’ car, and they went on, down the leaf-strewn road, toward Peveril Pond. The forest fire that had threatened all this side of the ridge had burned out without crossing the wide highway known as “the State Road” and so the lower slope of the ridge and all the valley had been untouched.

They passed the district school which Eve attended before she came to Central High.

“And we had a splendid teacher at the last,” sighed Eve. “But when I first went to it – oh! the boys acted so horrid, and the girls gabbled so. It wasn’t a school. My mother said it was ‘a bear garden!’

“You see, there were some dreadfully bad big boys went to the school, off and on. The Four Corners isn’t so far away, you know. Hebe Pocock – Laura will remember him?”

“I guess so!” cried Laura.

“Well, he was one of the big boys in school when I first came here. We had a new teacher – we were always having ‘new’ teachers. Sometimes there would be as many as four in one term. If they were girls they broke down and cried and gave it up; and if they were young men they were either beaten or driven out of the neighborhood.

“But I can remember this particular young man pretty well, little as I was,” laughed Eve. “He wasn’t very big, but he didn’t look puny, although he wore glasses. But when he opened school he took off the glasses and put them in his desk. He was real mild mannered, and he had a nice smile, and the big girls liked him. But Hebe and the other big boys said they were going to run him off right quick!”

“And did they?” asked Jess, interested.

“Well, I’ll tell you. He was taking the names of all us children, and he got along all right till he came to Hebe. Hebron was the ring leader. He always gave the sign for trouble. When the master asked his name Hebe leaned back in his seat, put his feet up on the desk, and looked cross-eyed at the new teacher. Of course, all the little follows thought it was funny – and some of the girls, too, I guess.

“‘Please tell me your name,’ said the master, without seeming to notice Hebe’s impudence.

“‘Wal,’ drawled Hebe, ‘sometimes they call me Bob, and sometimes Pete, and sometimes they call me too late for dinner. But don’t you call me nothin’, Mister!’

“The teacher listened until he got through,” said Eve, her eyes flashing at the remembrance of the scene, “and then he doubled his fist and struck Hebe a blow between the eyes that half stunned him. Hebe was the bigger, but that teacher was awfully strong and smart. He grabbed Hebe by the collar and hauled him headlong over the desks and seats, stood him up before the big desk with a slam, and roared at him:

“‘What is your name?’

“‘He – Hebe Pocock,’ exclaimed the fellow, only half sensing what had happened to him.

“‘Hebe?’ repeated the master, with a sneer. ‘You look like a ’Hebe.’ Go take your seat.’

“And do you know,” laughed Eve, “that Hebe was almost the best behaved boy in the school all that term?”

“Oh!” laughed Jess, “it must be lots of fun to go to an ungraded school like that one.”

“It’s all according to the teacher,” Eve said. “When we had a poor teacher it was just a scramble for the scholars to learn anything. The big ones helped the little ones. But our present teacher, Miss Harris, is a college girl and she is fine. But some funny things happen because we have the old-fashioned district system of government, with ‘school trustees’ elected every year. This year at the far end of the district they put in old Mr. Moose, a very illiterate man, for trustee. And one of the girls was telling me about the day he visited school to ‘examine’ it. That is the method, you know; each trustee makes an official visit and is supposed to find out in that visit how the teachers are getting along.”