T. Haviland Hicks Senior | Page 3

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 rigged up on one side. Atop of
"Lookout There!" as the campers humorously designated the rock,
roosted a youth who possessed the colossal structure of a splinter, and
whose cherubic countenance was decorated with a Cheshire cat grin.
Quite unaware that his riotous efforts had brought out the wrathful
Butch Brewster, the youthful narrator of Chuckwalla Bill's stormy
career continued his excessively noisy séance.

His costume was strictly in character with his song. He wore a
sombrero, picked up on his Exposition trip the past vacation, a lurid red
outing-shirt, and he had wrapped a blanket around each locomotive
limb to imitate a cowboy's chaps. Two revolvers suspended from a
loosened belt, à la wild West, and as Butch stared, the embryo Western
bad man twanged a banjo noisily, and roared the concluding stanza of
his desperado hero's history:
"Said Chuckwalla Bill, 'Oh, boys, plant me With my boots on--on the
wide prair-eee'-- Where the coyotes howl, they planted Bill-- An' so far
as I know, he's sleepin' there still!"
"Here they come," grinned Butch, hearing a tumult in the bunkhouse,
and a confused Babel of voices. "Hicks has awakened the camp. Now
watch the fellows wreak summary vengeance on his toothpick frame!"
From the sleep-shack, aroused at that weird hour by the clamor of the
irrepressible youth, T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., tumbled others of the squad,
in varying stages of déshabille; big Beef McNaughton, right half-back,
Roddy Perkins, the Titian-haired right-end, Pudge Langdon, a
ponderous tackle, and Monty Merriweather, a clean-cut, aggressive
candidate for left end. From within, other wrathy youths howled
vociferous protests at their tormentor:
"Stop that noise; put your muzzle on again, Hicks!"--"Where's the fire?
Say, Hicks, muffle your exhaust!"--"Say, Coach, must we endure this
day and night?"
The bunkhouse fairly erupted angry collegians, boiling out like bees
swarming from a disturbed hive; Hefty Hollingsworth, the Herculean
center-rush. Biff Pemberton, left half-back, Bunch Bingham, Tug
Cardiff, and Buster Brown, three huge last-year substitutes;
second-string players, Don Carterson, Cherub Challoner, Skeet
Wigglesworth, and Scoop Sawyer. A dozen others, from sheer laziness,
hugged their bunks devotedly, despite the terrific turmoil outside.
"It's a disgrace, a howling shame!" exploded Beef, his elephantine
frame swathed in blankets to conceal a lack of vestiture, "Last night,

until midnight, that graceless wretch roosted on 'Lookout There' and
because the glorious moonlight made him sentimental and slushy, he
twanged his banjo and warbled such mushy stuff as 'My Love is young
and fair. My Love has golden hair!' When does he expect us to sleep?"
"He doesn't!" explained Monty Merriweather, with succinct lucidity,
grinning at his comrades. "Say, fellows, you know how Hicks dreads a
cold shower-bath; well, some of you rage at him from the other side of
the rock, while I climb up the rope-ladder and close with him! Then
some of you prehistoric pachyderms ascend, and we'll chuck that
pestersome insect into the cold, cold lake--"
"Done!" chuckled Butch Brewster, delightedly. So, while he, Beef
McNaughton, Hefty Hollingsworth, and others beguiled the jeering
Hicks, expressing in dynamic, red-hot sentences their exact opinions of
his perfidy, the athletic Monty imitated a mountain-scaling Italian
soldier. He climbed stealthily up the swaying rope-ladder; nearer and
nearer to the unsuspecting youth he crept, while the cherubic Hicks, to
tantalize the group below, again burst forth:
"Whoop-eee! I'm a bold, bad man (bang-bang)! I got ten notches on my
ole six-gun--I'm a killer. I wings a man before breakfast every day! I
got a private burying-ground, where I plants my victims (bang-bang)!
Yip-yip-yip-yee! Oh, I'm a--Ouch, Monty--leggo me--Oh, I'll be
good--why didn't I pull that rope-ladder up here? Don't bust my banjo
--don't let Butch get me--"
Monty Merriweather, reaching the flat top of the rock, had
courageously flung himself, without regard for the Bad Man's desperate
record, on the startled Hicks, whose first thought was for his beloved
banjo. While he held the blithesome tormentor helpless, Butch, Beef,
and Roddy Perkins climbed the rope-ladder, and the grinning youth
was soon in their clutches, while the collegians below, like a Roman,
mob aroused by the oratory of Mr. Mark Antony, howled for revenge:
"Bust the old banjo over his head, Butch!"--"Sing to him, Beef--that's
an awful revenge on Hicks!"--"Tie him to the rock--make him miss his
breakfast!"

"Hicks," growled Butch, eyeing his sunny comrade ominously, "you
ought to be tarred and feathered, and shot at sunrise! When Bannister
opens, you will be a Senior, and you'll disgrace '19's dignity! This is a
sample of what we have endured at college for three years, and the
worst is yet to come! You have committed the awful atrocity of
awakening Camp Bannister at five A.