The Girls of Central High on Track and Field

CHAPTER I – THE GIRL ON THE STONE FENCE

The roads were muddy, but the uplands and the winding sheep-paths across them had dried out under the caressing rays of the Spring sun and, with the budding things of so many delicate shades of green, the groves and pastures – all nature, indeed – were garbed in loveliness.

The group of girls had toiled up the ascent to an overhanging rock on the summit of a long ridge. Below – in view from this spot for some rods – wound the brown ribbon of road which they had been following until the upland paths invited their feet to firmer tread.

There were seven of the girls and every one of the seven – in her way – was attractive. But the briskest, and most eager, and most energetic, was really the smaller – a black-eyed, be-curled, laughing miss who seemed bubbling over with high spirits.

“Sit down – do, Bobby! It makes me simplyache to see you flitting around like a robin. And I’m tired to death!” begged one girl, who had dropped in weariness on the huge, gray rock.

“How can you expect to dance half the night, Jess Morse, and then start off on a regular walking ‘tower?’” demanded the girl addressed. “Ididn’t go to Mabel Boyd’s party last night. As Gee Gee says, ‘I conserved my energies.’”

“I don’t believe anything ever tires you, Bobs,” said the girl who sat next to Jess – a vigorous, good looking maid with a very direct gaze, who was attractively gowned in a brown walking dress. “You are next door to perpetual motion.”

“How’d you know who I was next door to?” laughed Clara Hargrew, whom her friends insisted on calling “Bobby” because her father, Tom Hargrew, had nicknamed her that when she was little, desiring a boy in the family when only girls had been vouchsafed to him.

“And it is a fact that that French family who have moved into the little house next us are just as lively as fleas. They could be called ‘perpetual motion,’ all right.

“And oh, say!” cried the lively Bobby, “we had the greatest joke the other night on Lil Pendleton. You know, she thinks she’s some French scholar – and she does speak high school French pretty glibly – ”

“How’s that, young lady?” interposed the girl in brown. “Put away your hammer. Do you dare knock anything taught in Central High?”

“That’s all right, Mother Wit,” drawled Bobby Hargrew. “But any brand of French that one learns out of a book is bound to sound queer in the ears of the Parisian born – believe me! And these Sourat people are the real thing.”

“But what about Lily Pendleton?” demanded one of the two girls who were dressed exactly alike and looked so much alike that one might have been the mirrored reflection of the other.

“Why,” replied Bobby, thus urged by one of the Lockwood twins, “Lil had some of us over to her house the other evening, and she is forever getting new people around her – like her mother, you know. Mrs. Pendleton has the very queerest folk to some of her afternoons-long-haired pianists, and long-haired Anarchists, and once she had a short-haired pugilist – only he was reformed, I believe, and called himself a physical instructor, or a piano-mover, or something – ”

“Stop, stop!” cried Jess Morse, making a grab at Bobby. “You’re running on like Tennyson’s brook. You’re a born gossip.”

“You’re another! Don’t you want to hear about these Sourats?”

“I don’t think any of us will hear the end of your story if you don’t stick to the text a little better, Bobby,” remarked a quiet, graceful girl, who stood upright, gazing off over the hillside and wooded valley below, to the misty outlines of the city so far away.

“Then keep ’em still, will you, Nell?” demanded Bobby, of the last speaker. “Listen: The Sourats were invited with the rest of us over to Lily’s, and Lil sang us some songs in American French. Afterward I heard Hester Grimes ask the young man, Andrea Sourat, if the songs did not make him homesick, and with his very politest bow, he said:

“‘No, Mademoiselle! Only seek.’

“I don’t suppose the poor fellow knew how it sounded in English, but it certainly was an awful slap at Lil,” giggled Bobby.

“Well, I wish they wouldn’t give us languages at High,” sighed Nellie Agnew, Dr. Arthur Agnew’s daughter, when the laugh had subsided, and still looking off over the prospect. “I know my German is dreadful.”

“Let’s petition to do away with Latin and Greek, too,” suggested Bobby, who was always deficient in those studies. “‘Dead languages’ – what’s the good of ’em if they are deceased, anyway? I’ve got a good mind to ask Old Dimple a question next time.”

“What’s the question, Bobby?” asked Jess, lazily.

“Why, if they’re ‘dead languages,’ who killed ’em? He ought to have a monument, whoever he was – and if he’d only buried them good and deep he might have had two monuments.”

“If you gave a little more time to studying books and less time to studying mischief – ” began the girl in brown, when suddenly Nellie startled them all by exclaiming:

“Look there! See that girl down there? What do you suppose she is doing?”

Some of them jumped up to look over the edge of the rock on which they rested; but Jess Morse refused to be aroused.

“What’s the girl doing?” she drawled. “It’s got to be something awfully funny to get me on my feet again – ”

“Hush!” commanded the girl in brown.

“Can she hear us, ’way down there, Laura Belding?” asked Nellie Agnew, anxiously. “See here! Something’s chasing her – eh?”

The girl who had attracted their attention was quite unknown to any of the walking party. And she was, at first sight, an odd-looking person. She wore no hat, and her black hair streamed behind her in a wild tangle as she ran along the muddy road. She had a vivid yellow handkerchief tied loosely about her throat, and her skirt was green – a combination of colors bound to attract attention at a distance.

When the girls first saw this fugitive – for such she seemed to be – she was running from the thick covert of pine and spruce which masked the road to the west, and now she leaped upon the stone fence which bordered the upper edge of the highway as far as the spectators above could trace its course.

The stone wall was old, and broken in places. It must have offered very insecure footing; but the oddly dressed girl ran along it with the confidence of a chipmunk.

“Did you ever see anything like that?” gasped Bobby. “I’d like to have her balance.”

“And her feet!” agreed Jess, struggling to her knees the better to see the running girl.

“She’s bound to fall!” gasped Nellie.

“Not she!” said Eve Sitz, the largest and quietest girl of the group. “Those Gypsies run like dogs and are just as sure-footed as – as chamois,” added the Swiss girl, harking back to a childhood memory of her own mountainous country.

“A Gypsy!” asked Bobby, in a hushed voice. “You don’t mean it?”

“She’s dressed like one,” said Eve.

“And see how brown she is,” added Laura Belding, otherwise “Mother Wit.”

“There! she almost fell,” gasped one of the twins who stood now, with arms entwined, looking at the flying girl with nervous expectancy. It did not seem as though she could run the length of the stone fence without coming to grief.

But it was a quick journey. With a flying leap the girl in the green skirt and yellow scarf disappeared in a clump of brush which masked the wall at its easterly end, just where the road dipped toward the noisy brook which curved around that shoulder of the ridge and, later, fell over a ledge into a broad pool – the murmur of the cascade being faintly audible to the spectators on the summit of the ridge.

“She’s gone!” spoke Bobby, finally, breaking the silence.

“But who’s that coming after her?” demanded Nellie, looking back toward the West. “There! down in the shadow of the trees. Isn’t that a figure moving, too?”

CHAPTER II – HIDE AND SEEK

“It’s a man!”

Dora Lockwood said it so tragically that Bobby was highly amused.

“My goodness me!” she chortled. “You said that with all the horrified emphasis of a spinster lady.”

“It is a man – isn’t it?” whispered the other twin.

“I – I guess so,” Laura Belding said, slowly.

“It is,” declared Jess. “And he’s a tough looking character.”

“And he is acting quite as oddly as the girl did,” remarked Bobby. “What do you suppose it means?”

“He’s a Gypsy, too, I believe,” put in Eve Sitz, suddenly.

“Say! this is getting melodramatic,” laughed Laura Belding.

“Just like ‘The Gypsy’s Warning,’ or something quite as hair-raising, eh?” agreed Bobby.

“There! he’s coming out,” gasped Jess.

The man appeared for half a minute in the clearer space of the open road. He was staring all about, up and down the road, along the edge of the woods, and even into the air. The seven girls were behind the fringe of bushes that edged the huge rock, and he could not see them.

“What an evil-faced fellow he is!” whispered Dora Lockwood.

“And see the big gold rings in his ears,” added her twin, Dorothy.

“Do you suppose he is really after that girl?” observed Laura, thoughtfully.

“Whether he is, or not, it’s none of our business, I suppose,” returned Jess, who was Mother Wit’s closest chum.

“I’m not so sure of that.”

“My goodness! if they’re Gypsies, we don’t want to have anything to do with them,” exclaimed Dorothy.

“Oh, the Romany people aren’t so bad,” said Eve Sitz, easily. “They have customs of their own, and live a different life from we folk – ”

“Or ‘us folk?’” suggested Nellie, smiling.

“From other folk, anyway!” returned the big girl, cheerfully. “They come through this section every Spring – and sometimes later in the year, too. We have often had them at the house,” she added, for Eve’s father had a large farm, and from that farm the seven girls had started on this long walk early in the morning.

It was the Easter vacation at Central High and these friends were all members of the junior class. Centerport, the spires and tall buildings of which they could now see in the distance, was a wealthy and lively city of some hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, situated on the southern shore of Lake Luna, a body of water of considerable size.

At either end of the lake was another large town – namely Lumberport and Keyport. In each of these latter cities was a well conducted high school, and in Centerport there were three – the East and West Highs, and Central High, the newest and largest.

For a year now the girls of all these five high schools had been deeply interested in athletics, including the games usually played upon the Girls’ Branch Athletic League grounds – canoeing, rowing, ski running, and lastly, but not least in value according to the estimation of their instructors, walking. Usually the physical instructor of Central High, Mrs. Case, accompanied her pupils on their walking tours; but this vacation the seven friends who now stood upon the summit of this big, gray rock, had determined to indulge in a long walk by themselves, and they had come over to Eve Sitz’s house the night before so as to get an early start on the mountain road to Fielding, twenty miles away. From that place they would take the train back to Centerport, and Eve was to remain all night with Laura at the Belding home.

These girls, although of strongly marked and contrasting characters, were intimate friends. They had been enthusiastic members of the girls’ athletic association from its establishment; and they had, individually and together, taken an important part in the athletic activities of Central High.

For instance, in the first volume of this series, entitled, “The Girls of Central High; Or, Rivals for All Honors,” Laura Belding was able to interest one of the wealthiest men of Centerport, Colonel Richard Swayne, in the girls’ athletic association, then newly formed, so that he gave a large sum of money toward a proper athletic field and gymnasium building for their sole use.

In “The Girls of Central High on Lake Luna; Or, the Crew That Won,” the second story of the series, the girls were mainly centering their attention upon aquatic sports; and the Lockwood twins – Dora and Dorothy – were particularly active in this branch of athletics. They won honorable mention if not the prize in the canoe event, and were likewise members of the Central High girls’ crew that won the cup in the contest of eight-oared shells.

The third volume of the series, named “The Girls of Central High at Basketball; Or, The Great Gymnasium Mystery,” particularly related the fortunes of the representative basketball team of Central High, and of which each girl now gathered here on the ridge was a member.

Not long previous to this day in the Spring vacation when the seven were tramping toward Fielding, Jess Morse had made a great hit with her school friends and instructors, as well. She had written a play, which was performed by members of the girls’ secret society of the school and some of their boy friends, and so good was it that it not only won a prize of two hundred dollars for which many of the girls of Central High had competed, but it attracted the attention of a professional theatrical producer, who had made a contract with Mrs. Morse, Jess’s mother, for the use of the play in a revised form upon the professional stage. The details of all this are to be found in the fourth volume of the series, entitled, “The Girls of Central High on the Stage; Or, The Play That Took the Prize.”

“There! the fellow’s going back,” said Jess Morse, suddenly calling attention to the dark man on the road below.

“If he was after the girl he has given up the chase. I am glad of that,” added her chum.

“But where did the girl go?” demanded Bobby Hargrew, craning her neck to peer toward the bushes on the easterly side of the rock.

“There she is!” ejaculated Dora Lockwood, grabbing Bobby by the arm.

She pointed down the side of the ridge, where the rough pasture land dropped to the verge of the brook. The other girls came running and gazed in the direction she pointed out.

The green skirt and the yellow scarf appeared. The girl was wading in the stream, and she passed swiftly along, seen by the spectators at every opening in the fringe of trees and brush that bordered the brook.

“In the water at this time of the year!” gasped Jess.

“And in her shoes and stockings! She wouldn’t have had time to stop to take them off and get so far up stream,” declared Bobby, almost dancing up and down in her eagerness.

“What do you suppose it means?” cried Nellie.

“She is running away from the man, I guess,” admitted Laura, slowly.

“And trying to hide her trail,” added Eve.

“Hide her trail! Is this the Indian country? Are the Gypsies savages?” demanded Nellie. “Has she got to run along the top of a stone fence and then take to a running stream to throw off pursuit?”

“That is her hope, I expect,” Laura said.

“But why?” cried Bobby. “You can’t tell me that even Gypsies are as keen on a trail as all that – ”

“Hark!” commanded Laura. “Listen.”

“It’s dogs,” spoke Bobby, in a moment.

“O – o – o – o! sounds like a wolf,” shuddered Dora.

“It is worse,” said Eve Sitz, her face flushing. “That is the bay of a bloodhound. I remember that we saw one of the great, lop-eared animals in leash when that party of Romanys went past our place last week.”

“You don’t mean that, Eve?” Jess cried. “A bloodhound?”

“And they have put him on the trail of that girl – sure as you live!” declared the farmer’s daughter, with decision.

CHAPTER III – THE GYPSY CAMP

“Why! I think this is outrageous,” said Nellie Agnew. “We ought to find a constable and have such a thing stopped. Think of chasing that poor girl with a mad dog – ”

“I guess he isn’t mad,” ventured Eve, soberly.

Bobby laughed. “Even if he’s only vexed I wouldn’t want a bloodhound tearing after me over these hills.”

“You know what I mean,” persisted Nellie, still wrathfully. “It is a desperate shame! The dog will hurt her – ”

“No, no!” said Eve. “It is trained. And the man has it in leash – ”

“Hush! here they are!” warned Laura, and the girls hid themselves behind the fringe of bushes.

The dog gave tongue just as it came in sight, and the sound sent a shiver over the watchers. The baying of a bloodhound is a very terrifying sound indeed.

With the dogs were three men – one of them the same the girls of Central High had seen before. The other two were fully as rough-looking.

“I hope they don’t find her!” exclaimed Bobby.

“They’ll find you if you don’t keep still,” warned Jess.

But it appeared to the girls that the Gypsies were having considerable difficulty in following the trail of the girl who had fled along the top of the old stone wall. The dog searched from side to side of the road. He leaped the wall, dragging one of the men after him, and ran about the lower field. That she had traversed the stone fence, like a fox, never seemed to enter the men’s minds, nor the dog’s either.

For some time the party of hunters were in sight; but finally they went off in an easterly direction along the road, passing over the brook in which the strange girl had left her “water trail,” and the girls of Central High believed that the fugitive was safe – for the time being, at least.

“I wish we knew where she was going,” said Nellie. “I’d help her, for one.”

“Me, too,” agreed Bobby Hargrew.

“If she should get as far as our house, mother would take her in,” said Eve, in her placid way. “But the Romany folk are peculiar people, and they have laws of their own and do not like to be brought under those of other countries.”

“Why, they’re just tramps, aren’t they? Sort of sublimated tramps, perhaps,” said Jess.

“Not the real Gypsies,” said Laura. “They are very jealous, I have read, of their customs, their laws, and their language. They claim descent in direct line from early Egyptian times. The name of Stanley alone, which is common with them, dates back to William the Conqueror.”

“Well, come on!” sighed Jess. “We don’t care anything about the Gypsies, and we can’t help that girl – just now. If we tried to follow her up stream we would only give those men the idea of the direction in which we went. Let’s get on, or we’ll never get to Fielding.”

“All right,” agreed Laura.

“Forward, march!” sang out Bobby. “How’s the way, Eve? Right down this hill?”

“Keep parallel with the road. We’ll strike another path later,” said the Swiss girl, who had rambled all over these hills with her brother.

“Oh, these shoes!” groaned Jess.

“I told you so,” exclaimed Laura.

“Bah! what good does it do to repeat that?” snapped her chum. “I hate those old mud-scows of mine that Mrs. Case makes me wear when she goes walking with us.”

“Well, you certainly wore a fine pair to-day,” scoffed Bobby. “I guess it doesn’t do to do what Mrs. Case advises against.”

“Not if we want to make points for Central High,” said Laura, laughing.

“That’s so! Where would Jess be to-day if this was a regular scheduled walk, to count for our school in June?” cried Dora.

“Now, rub it in! rub it in!” exclaimed Jess. “Don’t you suppose I know I’ve been a chump without you all telling me so?”

“I do believe it will rain,” burst out Dorothy, suddenly. “Doesn’t that look like a rain-cloud to you, Laura?”

“Pooh!” said Eve. “Don’t be afraid of a little April shower. It won’t drown us, that’s sure.”

“That’s all right,” agreed Dora, the other twin. “But we don’t want to get soaked. If it should start to rain, is there any shelter near?”

“The Gypsy camp, maybe,” laughed Bobby, and then went on ahead, singing:

 
“‘April showers bring May flowers
And sometimes more than that;
For the unexpected downpour
Often ruins the Easter hat.’
 

“Say, girls, we would be in a mess if it should start to rain hard.”

“And that cloud looks threatening,” admitted Nellie Agnew.

“I believe I felt a drop then,” gasped Dora.

“What’s the matter, Chicken Little?” laughed Laura. “Is the sky falling?”

“You can laugh! Maybe it will be a regular flood,” said Jess, ruefully.

“By the way, what caused the flood?” asked Bobby, soberly.

“Folks were so wicked – all but Noah,” replied Dora.

“No,” said Bobby.

“It’s one of Bobby’s ‘burns,’” declared Jess. “What did cause the flood, then?”

“It rained,” said the irrepressible one.

“Come on under this tree, girls!” cried Eve, striding ahead down the hill. “It will only be a passing shower.”

They ran for cover, and the broad branching limbs of the huge cedar Eve had selected faithfully covered them as the brief spring shower went drumming by.

Meanwhile Laura was saying, more thoughtfully:

“We’ve got to give our best attention to the inter-class and inter-school athletics when school opens again, girls, if we want Central High to stand first at the end of the year. You know we are being beaten right along by the East High and Keyport Just think! Central High only Number 3 in points that count when the June field day comes. We can’t stand for that, can we?”

“I should say not!” cried Bobby. “But we beat ’em last year on the water.”

“And we stand first in basketball,” added Dora Lockwood.

“But the fact remains we haven’t got the championship of the League cinched by any manner of means,” returned Laura. “Eve is going to win, I believe, in the shot-putting contests. Mrs. Case says that is on the doubtful list of girls’ athletics. But throwing weights isn’t going to hurt Eve, or Hester Grimes, that’s sure. And look at that girl at Vassar! She put the shot thirty-two feet and three-quarters of an inch when she was only sixteen. Eve can do almost as well.”

“I don’t know about that, Mother Wit,” said the big girl, laughing. “But I’ll do my best.”

“And your best will beat them all, I believe.”

“She’ll beat Magdeline Spink, of Lumberport, I know,” cried Bobby. “And she did all the big ‘throws’ last year – baseball, basketball, putting the shot, and all of ’em.”

“I hope you are right, Bobby,” returned the country girl, smiling. She was proud of her strength and physique. Her outdoor life since she was a little child, and what she had inherited from a long line of peasant ancestors was coming into play now for the benefit of Central High’s athletic score.

“Now, don’t sit down there on the damp ground, Jess. You’ll get a case of rheumatism – and a bad case, too.”

“Oh, I hope not!” cried Jess, jumping up. “I shouldn’t know what to do for it.”

“You’d have to take mud baths,” giggled Dorothy.

“That road below is in fine shape for that purpose, then,” said Jess, looking through the pouring rain at the puddles in the roadway.

“You’d have to wear flannels,” said Dora.

“Hah!” cried Bobby. “That’s it. Flannels are a sure cure. You know,

 
“‘Although it caused within his home
A very serious schism,
He still insisted flannel-cakes
Were good for rheumatism.’”
 

“Go on!” exclaimed Jess, laughing. “You sound like ‘Alice in Wonderland.’”

“Say, rather, ‘Bobby in Blunderland,’” added Laura. “But to get back to athletics – ”

“‘To return to our muttons,’” quoth Bobby, unrepressed.

“We have a chance to win the championship – our school has – if we can bring the relay teams up to the mark, and win the jumping events. It is on field and track that we have got to gain the points. No doubt of that.”

“Then our track teams need strengthening – much,” said Nellie Agnew, thoughtfully.

“I should say so!” exclaimed Bobby. “I could put on one of Lil Pendleton’s peg-top skirts and beat most of the junior runners right now!”

“If it’s as bad as that, we have all got to go into the track athletics, and pull up our score,” declared Laura.

“Hurrah!” cried Dorothy, suddenly. “It’s stopped raining.”

“That little shower didn’t even wet under the bushes,” said Eve, with satisfaction.

“Let’s get along, then, before another comes and washes us away,” said Bobby. “Straight ahead, Evangeline?”

“Yes. Right down to that dead oak you see on the lower hillside.”

“Good! A mark is set before me, and if my luck holds good I’ll reach it. But why prate of ‘luck’? Is there such a thing?”

“Give it up. What’s the answer?” asked Dora Lockwood, directly behind her.

“Luck is a foolish thing – or a belief in it is,” complained Bobby. “List to my tale of woe:

 
“Why wear a rabbit foot for luck
Or nail a horseshoe on the sill?
For if upon the ice you slip
You’ll surely get a spill.
 
 
“Why cross your fingers in the dark
To keep the witches from your track,
When if, in getting out of bed,
You step upon a tack?”
 

“Don’t sing us any more doggerel, but lead on!” commanded Laura.

Bobby was first at the dead tree. There she stopped, not for breath, but because, below her, in a sheltered hollow, where a spring drifted away across a grassy lawn, there was an encampment. She held up her hand and motioned for silence.

There were three large, covered wagons such is Gypsies usually drive. A dozen horses were tethered where the young grass was particularly lush. A fire over which a big kettle of some savory stew bubbled, burned in the midst of the encampment. There were two gaudily painted canvas tents staked on the green, too, although from the opened doors of the wagons it was evident that the Gypsies, at this time of year, mainly lived within their vehicles.

“Oh!” exclaimed Bobby, when the other girls were crowding about her, and looking as hard as she was at the camp. “This is what the girl we saw, ran away from.”