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 We st, and like a six-reel We stern 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 We sterner

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-yipyeee!"

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 We stern 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. The re were figures in them—We stern 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 We stern

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 We st 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: