The Galloping Ghost | Page 4

grind
of football"
But this girl in that other log-walled prison cell? His mind did a sudden
flip-flop.
"She's rich," he mused. "At least her father is. That crook said he was.
She did not deny it." Red did not approve of rich people. They had too
much, others too little. He thought still less of their children. It
mattered little to him that the sons and daughters of certain rich men
had endeavored to make friends with him since his success at football.
He could not understand them, was puzzled by their ways and wished
quite sincerely that they would leave him alone.
"Soft," he had said to his roommate, "that's what they are. No
experiences worth having."
"But this girl over there beyond the log wall," he said to himself now,
"she's different. Got spunk.
Stands up and defies them, she does, when she knows they are beasts,
as all kidnapers are. Tells 'em she'll freeze here all winter rather than do
the thing they want her to do. Nerve, that's what"
He was conscious of an invisible bond that bound his life to that of the
girl. "In the end we may fight it out together."
The hour was late. Once again the drowsy warmth of this narrow cell
settled down upon him.
"Football," he mused. "A tough business Thousands screaming their
lungs out, ten, twenty, thirty, forty thousand people losing their heads
while you must keep yours. Wish this were the end, wish it were all
over. Wish--"
Once again, in the twinkling of an eye, his mood changed.
"For all that," he muttered beneath his breath, "I've got to get away!"

Leaping to his feet, he stood there, hard, straight, square, with purpose
written in every line of his well formed body. "Tomorrow's game, that
is nothing. But Saturday's game, that is everything. It is the end. Final,
that's what it is. Defeat or victory, that's what it means. The
championship or nothing.
And. Prang the Grand Old Man, says it depends on us!
"That means me!" There came a stoop to his shoulders as if a load had
fallen upon them. "For the Grand Old Man, for the school that gave me
a chance, for my mother, for clean sport all over the world, I must
escape. I must I must win. I must! Must! Must!"
Yet, even as these words formed themselves into thought he seemed to
hear others. "On a narrow island within a bay. Icy water. Another larger
island. Fifteen, seventy five, a hundred miles from shore. Superior
never gives up her dead." Of a sudden the boy cursed the school days
when he had neglected his study of geography. He saw it all now.
Geography was travel.
And how could one find travel dull? "But travel!" Again that silent,
mirthless laugh.
"Who expects to travel as I have?"
His thoughts were not finished. From somewhere had come a long, low,
hissing sound. It was followed by a whisper:
"Over here! Come close to the wall."
"Must be that girl." His heart skipped a beat.
"What did they take you for?" the whisper demanded.
"I--I don't know."
"Don't know?"
"Fact."

After that a great silence settled over the place. This Red could not
understand. Why had she started the conversation if she did not expect
to finish it? "Oh, well," he told himself at last, "girls are queer
anyway." He settled back comfortably in his place.
Truth was, the girl suspected him of being a decoy placed there by the
kidnapers. In the end she came to see that she had little to lose if she
confided in a decoy.
Again came her long drawn signal, demanding attention. And after that:
"Don't you want to escape?"
"Never wanted anything half so much in my life!"
Then in a sudden burst of confidence he told her of the game that was
to be on Saturday, of the veteran coach's fatherly interest in his career,
of his hopes, his fears, his secret ambitions. All this he poured into a
not unwilling ear. Only he did not tell her he was the far-famed "Red
Rover." This he reserved for the future.
"Good!" the girl exclaimed, still in a whisper. "Then our purposes are
one. We must join hands. Put her there! Shake on it!"
This, considering that a log wall eight inches thick lay between them,
was of course impossible. But they pledged themselves in pantomime.
CHAPTER III
"WE MUST ESCAPE"
"WE must find some way of escape."
The girl's tone, low, mellow, earnest, was scarcely more than a whisper.
"But we are upon an island within an island. Or did that man lie to
you?"
"He did not lie."

"What then?"
"We can do but one thing at a time. We must escape. And after that--"