T. Haviland Hicks Senior | Page 4

M. with your ridiculous imitation,
of a Western desperado. To dampen your ardor, we will chuck you into
the cold lake--just as you are!"
"Help! Assistance! Aid! Succor!" shouted the happy-go-lucky Hicks, as
the behemoth Butch and Beef seized him, swinging him aloft with
ludicrous ease, "Police! Fire! Murder! Take care of my banjo, Monty.
Tell all the fellows at old Bannister I died game, and plant Hair-Trigger
Bill with his boots on! Oooo, Beef, Butch, have a heart, that water is
cold!"
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., relieved of banjo and revolvers, but his
shadow-like structure still clad in shoes, trousers, with imitation
"chaps" and flamboyant red shirt, with his classic head still adorned by
the sombrero, was swung back and forth by the two bulky football
stars--once--twice--
"Three--Let him go!" shouted Butch Brewster, and like a falling meteor,
the splinter-like youth, who had already fallen from grace, shot from
the rock, head-first, disappearing with a spectacular splash in the icy
waters of Lake Conowingo. Knowing Hicks to be as much at home in
the water as a fish in an aquarium, the hilarious squad on shore
prepared to jeer his reappearance above the water; however, their
program was interrupted by old Hinky-Dink, who stood in the
cook-tent doorway, belaboring a dishpan lustily with a soup-ladle, and
shouting:
"Breakfus' am served; fus' an' las' call fo' breakfus; all dem what am
late don't git no breakfus!"
"Breakfast!" exclaimed Monty Merriweather, who, with Roddy, Butch,
and Beef, remained on the rock, despite the summons of the Cookee.
"Hurry up, Hicks, I'm ravenous. Say, Butch, suppose all that Western

regalia makes him water-logged; he's a terribly long while down there!
Didn't he look like the hero in a moving-picture feature? We've given
him the water-cure, but he will do that same stunt over again. That
sunny-souled Hicks is simply Incorrigible!"
A second later, the grinning, cheery countenance of T. Haviland Hicks,
Jr., shot above the water, and simultaneously with his appearance, just
as though he had been chanting below the surface, for the entertainment
of the finny denizens of Lake Conowingo, the irrepressible youth
roared:
"A hotter shootin' match Last Chance never saw-- But Sure-Shot Pete
was some quicker on the draw!"

CHAPTER II
"LEAVE IT TO HICKS"
Head Coach Patrick Henry Corridan, known to toil-tortured Gold and
Green football squads from time immemorial as "the Slave-Driver,"
Captain Butch Brewster, and serious Deacon Radford, the star
Bannister quarter-back, foregathered around a table in the Camp
Bannister grub-shack.
It was ten-thirty of the morning whose dawn T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.,
had blithesomely hailed with an impromptu musicale and saengerfest
on "Lookout There!" rock, and the football triumvirate were in togs.
The squad, over in the bunkhouse, noisily donned gridiron armor for
the morning practice, and the pestiferous Hicks was maintaining a
mysterious silence, somewhere.
This football trio, on whom rested the responsibility of rounding out a
winning Bannister eleven, vastly resembled a coterie of German
generals, back of the trenches, studying a war-map. Before them was
spread what seemed to be a large checker-board. It was a miniature
gridiron, with the chalk-marks painted in white; there were thumb-tacks

stuck here and there, some with flat tops painted green and gold, others,
representing the enemy, were solid red. The former had names printed
on them, Butch, Roddy, Beef, and so on. By sticking these on the board,
the three directors of Bannister's football destiny could work out new
plays, and originate possible winning lineups.
"We've just got to win the State Championship this season, Coach!"
declared Butch, banging the table emphatically, as he stated a
self-evident fact. "It's my last year for Old Bannister, and so with Beef
and Pudge. I'll give every ounce of strength I possess In every game, to
make that pennant float over Bannister Field!"
"Bannister will win it!" vowed the behemoth Beef, his good-natured
countenance grim, and his jaw set. "Not for five years has a Gold and
Green team won the Championship--not since the year before Butch
and I were Freshmen! We've got a splendid bunch of material to build a
team with, and--"
"Our biggest problem is this," spoke Coach Corridan, as with a
phenomenal display of strength he took Beef McNaughton between
thumb and forefinger and placed him on the field. "We must strengthen
both line and backfield, for we lost by graduation Babe McCabe, Heavy
Hughes, and Jack Merritt. Now, to replace that lost power--"
Just then, from directly beneath the open window by which they had
gathered, like the midnight serenade of a romantic lover, sounded the
well-known foghorn voice of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., as to the
plunkety-plunk of a banjo accompaniment, he warbled melodiously:
"Gone are the days--I used to spend with Car-o-li-nah! She had the
sunshine in her laughter (plunkety-plunk) Just like