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T. HAVILAND HICKS SENIOR
T. HAVILAND HICKS SENIOR J. RAYMOND ELDERDICE TO MASTER LLOYD ELDERDICE
CONTENTS
I. HICKS--WILD WEST BAD MAN
II. "LEAVE IT TO HICKS"
III. HICKS' PRODIGIOUS PRODIGY
IV. QUOTING SCOOP SAWYER'S LETTER
V. HICKS MAKES A DECISION
VI. HICKS MAKES A SPEECH
VII. HICKS STARTS ANOTHER MYSTERY
VIII. COACH CORRIDAN SURPRISES THE ELEVEN
IX. THEOPHILUS' MISSIONARY WORK
X. THOR'S AWAKENING
XI. "ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL"
XII. THEOPHILUS BETRAYS HICKS
XIII. HICKS--CLASS KID--YALE '96
XIV. THE GREATER GOAL
XV. HICKS HAS A "HUNCH"
XVI. THANKS TO CAESAR NAPOLEON
XVII. HICKS MAKES A RASH PROPHECY
XVIII. T. HAVILAND HICKS JR.'S HEADWORK
XIX. BANNISTER GIVES HICKS A SURPRISE PARTY
XX. "VALE ALMA MATER!"
T. HAVILAND HICKS SENIOR
CHAPTER I
HICKS--WILD WEST BAD MAN
"Oh a bold bad man was Chuckwalla Bill--
An' he lived in a shanty on Tom-cat Hill;
Ten notches on the six-gun he toted on his hip--
For he'd sent ten buckos on the One-way Trip!"
Big Butch Brewster captain and full-back of the Bannister College football
squad his behemoth bulk swathed in heavy blankets and crowded into a
narrow bunk shifted his vast tonnage restlessly. He was dreaming of the
wild and woolly West and like a six-reel Western drama thrown on the
screen in a moving-picture show he visioned in his slumbers a vivid and
spectacular panorama.
The first lurid scene was the Deserted Limited held up at a tank station in
the great Mojave Desert by a lone masked bandit who winged the dreaming
Butch in the shoulder the latter being an express guard who resisted.
After the desperado Two-Gun Steve had forced the engineer to run the
train back to a siding he had ordered Butch to vamoose. Quite naturally
then the collegian next found himself staggering across the arid expanse
until at last half dead from a burning thirst seeking vainly for a
water-hole the vast stretch of sandy sagebrush-studded wastes shimmered
into a gorgeous ocean of sparkling blue waters. Then as he collapsed on
the scorching-hot sand helpless the cool water so near suddenly the
scene shifted.
In quick and vivid succession Butch Brewster beheld a burning stockade
besieged by howling Indians and a frontier town shot up by recklessly
riding cowboys on a jamboree. Then he became a tenderfoot badgered by
yelling shooting roisterers and later a sheriff bravely leading his
posse to a sensational battle with that same Two-Gun Steve and his gang
entrenched in a rock-bound mountain defile.
Finally he stood with hands above his head in company with other
passengers of the Sagebrush Stagecoach while a huge red-shirted Westerner
with a fierce black mustache and a six-shooter in each hand belching
bullets at Butch's dancing feet roared out huskily: "Oh--I'm a ring-tailed
roarer (bang-bang)! I'm a rip-snortin' high-falutin' loop-the-loopin'
bad man (bang-bang)! I'm wild an' woolly an' full o' fleas an' hard
to curry below the knees--I'm a roarin' wild-cat an' it's my night to howl
(bang-bang)! Yip-yip-yip-yeee!"
Big Butch opening his eyes and starting up gazed about him in sheer
surprise; for an instant in that state of bewilderment that comes with
sudden awakening he almost believed himself in a Western ranch bunkhouse
and that some happy cowboy outside roared a grotesque ballad. He gazed at
the interior of a rough shack built of pine boards with bunks constructed
in tiers on both sides. There were figures in them--Western cowboys
perhaps. Then it seemed somehow that the voice drifting from the outside
was strangely familiar. Back at Bannister College where he remembered he
had gone in the dim and dusty past he had often heard that same fog-horn
voice roaring songs of a less blood-curdling character and accompanied by
that same banjo twanging which tortured the campus and bothered would-be
studious youths!
"I'm not in a moving-picture show" Butch informed himself as he donned
khaki trousers football sweater and heavy shoes. "I'm not on a Western
ranch either. I'm in the sleep-shack of Camp Bannister the football
training-camp of the Bannister College squad! Those fellows in the bunks
are not cowboys Indians and bandits--they are my teammates! I did dream
stuff that would shame a Wild West scenario but I understand it all
now--my dreams were influenced by T. Haviland Hicks Jr.!"
At that dramatic moment to substantiate his statement the raucous voice
accompanied by resounding chords strummed on a banjo sounded again. The
vocal and instrumental chaos was frequently punctured by revolver reports
as the torturesome Caruso outside roared:
"Oh Chuckwalla Bill thought life was sweet--
Till he met up with Sure-shot Pete;
A hotter shootin' match Last Chance never saw--
But Sure-shot Pete was some quicker on the draw!"
The pachydermic Butch fully dressed--and awake raging in his wrath like
an active volcano glanced at his watch and discovered that it was exactly
five A.M.! Intensely pacified by this knowledge he lumbered toward the
bunkhouse door and flung it open determined to crush the pestersome youth
who thus unfeelingly disturbed the quietude of Camp Bannister at such an
unearthly hour! However his grim purpose was temporarily thwarted--before
him spread a beautiful panorama a vast canvas painted in rich hues and
colors that indescribably charming masterpiece of nature entitled dawn.
Butch gazing from the bunkhouse doorway toward the pebbly shore of the
placid lake stretching out for two miles before him beheld Old Sol
blood-red peeping above the wooded hills on the far-off opposite strand
of Lake Conowingo; the luminous orb laid a flaming pathway across the
shimmering waters and golden bars of light like gleaming fingers
outstretched fell athwart the tall pines that towered on the high bluff
back of the camp. The glorious sunshine succeeding a flood of rosy color
inundated the scene; it bathed in a gorgeous radiance the early autumn
woods it illumined the bunkhouse and another rude shanty known to the
squad as the grub-shack it poured down on old Hinky-Dink the ancient
negro cookee setting the breakfast tables just outside the canvas
cook-tent.
"Deed cross mah heart Mistah Butch" grinned old Hinky-Dink seeing as
a motion picture director would express it "Wrath registered on the
countenance" of Butch Brewster "Ah done tole dat young Hicks dat a bird
what cain't sing an' will sing mus' be made not to sing! Ah done info'med
him dat yo'-all was layin' fo' him cause he done bus' up yo' sleep!"
A jay bird a flashing bit of vivid blue shot from a tall pine jeering
shrilly at Butch; out on the lake a trout leaped above the water for an
infinitesimal second its shining scales gleaming in the sunshine. From the
cook-tent where old Hinky-Dink grumbled at the frying pan the appetizing
odor of frying fish assailed the football captain softening his wrath.
High above the shanties on a tall flagpole made from a straight young
pine floated a big gold and green banner its bright colors gleaming in
the sunshine; it bore the words:
CAMP BANNISTER
TRAINING CAMP
THE FOOTBALL SQUAD
BANNISTER COLLEGE
Head Coach Corridan smashing the precedent that had made former Gold and
Green squads have their training camp at Bannister College had brought
the Varsity and second-string stars to this camp on the shore of Lake
Conowingo in the Pennsylvania mountains. For two weeks one of which had
passed they were to train at Camp Bannister until college officially
opened; swimming hunting cross-country runs and a healthful outdoor
existence would give the athletes superb condition and daily scrimmages on
the level field back of the bluff rounded out an eleven that promised to be
the strongest in Bannister history.
As big good-natured Butch Brewster stood in the bunkhouse doorway his
wrath at the pestiferous Hicks forgotten in his rapture at the glorious
dawn he saw something that showed why his dreams had been of the wild
West! The expression of indignation however yielded to one of humorous
affection as he gazed toward the shore.
"I can't be angry with Hicks!" breathed Butch beholding a spectacle more
impressive than dawn. "So the irrepressible wretch has Coach Corridan's
revolvers used in starting our training sprints and a lot of blank
cartridges! He is giving an imitation of a Western bad man. No wonder
I dreamed of Indians cowboys and hold-ups; I'll have revenge on the
heartless villain routing 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 seance.
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 a
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 deshabille; 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. 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 that state they named her after--"
"Hicks!" announced Butch stealthily approaching the window and
beckoning his companions. "Easy--look at him Deke there he is Hicks
the irrepressible! We might as well attempt to stab a rhinocerous to death
with a humming-bird's feather as to try and reform him!"
Arrayed like a lily of the field a model of sartorial splendor Hicks
occupied a chair beneath the window tilted back gracefully against the
side of the grub-shack. He had decked his splinter-structure with a
dazzling Palm Beach suit and a glorious pink silk shirt off-set by a
lurid scarf. A Panama hat decorated his head white Oxfords and flamboyant
hosiery adorned his feet while the inevitable Cheshire cat grin beautified
his cherubic countenance. A latest "best seller" was propped on his knees
and as he perused its thrilling pages he carelessly strummed his beloved
banjo and in stentorian tones chanted a sentimental ballad:
"Gone are the days--the golden days I'm dreaming of
I think I hear her softly calling (plunkety-plunk)
'Will you be back? Will you be back? (plunk-plunk)
Back to the Car-o-li-nah you love?'"(plunkety-plunk)
For three golden campus years T. Haviland Hicks Jr. had gayly pursued the
even tenor (or basso since he possessed a foghorn subterranean voice)
of his Bannister career. He absolutely refused to take life seriously and
he was forever arousing the wrath--mostly pretended for no one could be
really angry with the genial youth--of his comrades by twanging his banjo
and roaring out rollicking ballads at all hours. He was never so happy
as when entertaining a crowd of happy students in his cozy quarters
or escorting a Hicks' Personally Conducted expedition downtown for a
Beef-Steak Bust at his expense at Jerry's the rendezvous of hungry
collegians.
However despite his butterfly existence Hicks possessed of a
scintillating mind always set the scholastic pace for 1919 by means of
occasional study-sprints as he characteristically called them. But when it
came to helping his beloved Dad realize a long-cherished ambition to behold
his only son and heir shatter Hicks Sr.'s celebrated athletic records it
was a different story. T. Haviland Hicks Jr. ever since he committed
the farcical faux pas of running the wrong way with the pigskin in
the Freshman-Sophomore football contest of his first year had been a
super-colossal athletic joke at old Bannister.
His record to date beside that reverse touchdown that won for the
Sophomores consisted of scoring a home-run with the bases congested on a
strike-out; of smashing hurdles and cross-bars on the track; endangering
his heedless career with the shot and hammer; and making a ridiculous farce
of every event he entered to the vast hilarity of the students who with
the exception of Butch Brewster had no idea his ridiculous efforts were in
earnest. In the high-jump however Hicks had given considerable promise
which to date the grasshopper collegian had failed to keep.
Hicks the lovable impulsive and irrepressible with his invariable sunny
disposition his generous nature and his democratic loyal comradeship
for everybody was loved by old Bannister. The students forgave him his
pestersome ways his frequent torturing of them with banjo-twanging and
rollicking ballads. His classmates idolized him Juniors and Sophomores
were his true friends and entering Freshmen always regarded this
happy-go-lucky youth as a demigod of the campus.
Big Butch Brewster who was forever futilely lecturing the heedless Hicks
thrust his head from the grub-shack window fought down a grin and sternly
arraigned his graceless comrade:
"Hicks you frivolous campus-cluttering infinitesimal atom of nothing
you labor under the insane delusion that college life is a continuous
vaudeville show. You absolutely refuse to take your Bannister years
seriously you banjo-thumping pillow-punishing campus-torturing
nonentity. You will never grasp the splendid opportunities within your
reach! You have no ambition but to strum that banjo roar ridiculous songs
fuss up like a tailor's dummy and pester your comrades or drag them down
to Jerry's for the eats! You won't be earnest you Human Cipher Before you
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