The High School Boys Training Hike | Page 8

will never do!" smiled Dick. "Suppose you climb down and let Danny Grin take your place at the reins until the next halt. I suspect that Danny boy already has a few pebbles in his shoes, and that he'll be glad enough to look over the world from the driver's seat."
"I'm willing to sacrifice myself for the good of the expedition, anyway," sighed Dalzell, as Harry drew rein. "Come down with you, Hazy, and begin to share the delights of this walking match!"
The change of drivers made, Dick & Co. plodded on again.
"It seems to me that we ought to put on more speed," suggested Dave Darrin.
"Are you in a hurry to get somewhere, Darry?" drawled Tom Reade.
"No," Dave replied, "but, if we're out for training, it seems to me that we had better do brisker walking than we're doing now, even if the horse can't keep up with us."
"We're making about three miles and a half an hour," Dick responded.
"But will that be work enough to make us as hard as nails?" persisted Darry.
"We're getting over the ground as fast as the troops of the regular army usually travel," Prescott rejoined. "I believe our regulars are generally regarded as rather perfect specimens in the walking line. We might move along at a speed of six miles, and might keep it up for an hour. Then we'd be footsore, and all in. If the first hour didn't do it, the second hour would. But if we plug along in this deliberate fashion, and get over fifteen, eighteen or twenty miles a day, and keep it up, I don't believe any one of you fellows will complain, September first, that he isn't as hard and solid as he wants to be---even for bucking the football lines, of other high schools."
"I know that I can be satisfied with this gait," murmured Reade.
"If Darry wants to move faster," suggested Hazelton, "why not tell him where to wait for us, and let him gallop ahead?"
"I'll stay with the rest of you," Darry retorted. "All I want to make sure of is that we're going to get the most out of our training work this summer."
"I'll tell you what you might do, Dave, by way of extra exercise and hardening," offered Tom.
"What?" asked Dave suspiciously.
"I believe we're going to halt every hour for a brief rest"
"Yes."
"While the five of us are resting under the trees, Darry, you might climb the trees, swinging from limb to limb and leaping from tree to tree. Of course you'll select trees that are not directly over our heads."
"Humph!" retorted Dave.
"Try it, anyway," urged Tom, "it's fine exercise, even if you give it up after a while."
"I'll try it as often as you do," Darrin agreed with a grin.
Their second halt found the high school boys more than six miles from their starting point.
On this trip they were not heading in the direction they had followed on their fishing trip. Instead, they were traveling in the opposite direction from Gridley, through a fairly populous farming region.
At a quarter-past ten o'clock Dick called for another halt. The road map that the boys had brought along showed them that they were now eleven miles from Gridley.
"Pretty fair work," muttered Tom, "considering that these roads were built by men who had never seen any better kind."
"We can more than double the distance," suggested Dave, "before we go into camp for the night."
"If we hike a couple more miles this morning, then halt, get the noon meal and rest until two o'clock," replied young Prescott, "I think we shall do better."
"If we've gone only eleven miles," protested Darrin, "then I'm certainly good for twenty-five miles in all to-day, and I believe the rest of you are, too."
"Wait until we've done eighteen or twenty miles," Prescott proposed. "Then we can take a vote about making it twenty-five."
"For one thing," Darry objected, "none of us actually walks twenty-five miles when we cover that distance. We take turns riding on the wagon, and, as there are six of us, that means that each fellow rides something like four miles of the distance covered."
"What Darry is driving at," proposed Danny Grin, "is that he wants to devote himself wholly to walking hereafter. He doesn't care about driving the horse."
"I'm big enough and cranky enough to do my own talking, when there is any reason for my entering into the conversation," smiled Dave.
At a little after eleven that morning, when thirteen and a half miles had been covered, all hands were willing enough to halt and rest, prepare luncheon and rest again.
"But I still hope we shall cover the twenty-five miles to-day," Darry insisted.
"No difficulty about that, either," declared Harry Hazelton. "Darry, while we are swapping stories over the campfire this evening you can take a lantern and do