“Lord, I should think you’d have had enough!”
“Why, it’s rather a sociable time. It is a grind, but I’m going to make that News, if I hit it all sophomore year.”
“What, you’d try again?”
“You bet I would!”
There was a matter-of-fact simplicity about Pike, uncouth as was his dress and wide sombrero, that appealed to Stover. He held out his hand.
“Good luck to you! And say—if I get any news I’ll save it for you.”
“Obliged, sir—ta-ta!”
“Holy cats!” said Dink, relapsing into the armchair as the door banged. “Anyone who’ll stick at it like that gets all I can give him.”
“He’s a wonderful person,” said Swazey, drawing up his chair and elevating his hobnailed shoes. “Never saw anything like his determination. Wonderful! Green as salad when he first came, ready to tickle Prexy under the ribs or make himself at home whenever a room struck his fancy. But, when he got his eyes open, you ought to have seen him pick up and learn. He’s developed wonderfully. He’ll succeed in life.”
Stover smiled inwardly at this critical assumption on Swazey’s part, but he began to be interested. There was something real in both men.
“Did you go to school together?” he said.
“Lord, no! Precious little school either of us got. I ran up against him when I landed here—just bumped together, as it were.”
“You don’t say so?”
“Fact. It was rather queer. We were both up in the fall trying to throttle a few pesky conditions and slip in. It was just after Greek prose composition—cursed be the memory!—when I came out of Alumni Hall, kicking myself at every step, and found that little rooster engaged in the same process. Say, he was a sight—looked like a chicken had been shipped from St. Louis to Chicago—but spunky as you make ’em. Never had put a collar on his neck—I got him up to that last spring; but he still balks at a derby. So off we went to grub, and I found he didn’t know a soul. No more did I. So we said, ‘Why not?’ And we did. We hunted up these quarters, and we’ve got on first-rate ever since. No scratching, gouging, or biting. We’ve been a good team. I’ve seen the world, I’ve got hard sense, and he’s got ideas—quite remarkable ideas. Danged if I’m not stuck on the little rooster.”
Stover reached out for the tobacco to fill a second pipe, all his curiosity aroused.
“I say, Dink,” said Swazey, offering him a match, “this college is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?” He stood reflectively, the sputtering light of the match illuminating his thoughtful face. “Just think of the romance in it. Me and Pike coming together from two ends of the country and striking it up. That’s what counts up here—the perfect democracy of it!”
“Yes, of course,” said Stover in a mechanical way. He was wondering what Swazey would think of the society system, or if he even realized it existed, so he said curiously:
“You keep rather to yourselves, though.”
“Oh, I know pretty much what I want to know about men. I’ve sized ’em up and know what sorts to reach out for when I want them. Now I want to learn something real.” He looked at Stover with a sort of rugged superiority in his glance and said: “I’ve earned my own way ever since I was twelve years old, and some of it was pretty rough going. I know what’s outside of this place and what I want to reach. That’s what a lot of you fellows don’t worry about just now.”
“Swazey, tell me about yourself,” said Stover, surprised at his own eagerness. “By George, I’d like to hear it! Why did you come to college?”
“It was an idea of the governor’s, and he got it pretty well fixed in my head. Would you like to hear? All right.” He touched a match to the kindling, and, his coat bothering him, cast it off. “The old man was a pretty rough customer, I guess—he died when I was twelve; don’t know anything about anyone else in the family. I don’t know just how he picked up his money; we were always moving; but I fancy he was a good deal of a rum hound and that carried him off. He always had a liking for books, and one set idea that I was to be a gentleman, get to college and get educated; so I always kept that same idea in the back of my head, and here I am.”
“You said you’d earned your living ever since you were twelve,” said Stover, all interest.
“That’s so. It’s pretty much the usual story. Selling newspapers, drifting around, living on my wits. Only I had a pretty shrewd head on my shoulders, and wherever I went I saw what was going on and I salted it away. I made up my mind I wasn’t going to be a fool, but I was going to sit back, take every chance, and win out big. Lord of mercy, though, I’ve seen some queer corners—done some tough jobs! Up to about fifteen I didn’t amount to much. I was a drifter. I’ve worked my way from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, stealing rides and hoofing it with tramps. I’ve scrubbed out barrooms in Arizona and Oklahoma, and tended cattle in Kansas City. I sort of got a wandering fit, which is bad business. But each year I tucked away a little more of the long green than the year before, and got a little more of the juice of books. About four years ago, when I was seventeen—I’d saved up a few hundreds—I said to myself:
“ ‘Hold up, look here, if you’re ever going to do anything, it’s about time now to begin.’ So I planted my hoof out in Oklahoma City and I started in to be a useful citizen.”
The pipe between Stover’s lips had gone out, but he did not heed it. A new life—life itself—was suddenly revealing itself to him;
