Gladiator, Philip Wylie [win 10 ebook reader .TXT] 📗

instant he was stunned. Had they heard, guessed? Then he realized it was impossible. They wanted him to work. They were going to haze him. “Sure,” he said.

“Then get this trunk and I’ll show you where to take it.”

Hugo was handed a baggage check. He found the official and located the trunk. Tentatively he tested its weight, as if he were a normally husky youth about to undertake its transportation. He felt pleased that his strength was going to be tried so accidentally and in such short order. Lefty and Chuck heaved the trunk on his back. “Can you carry it?” they asked.

“Sure.”

“Don’t be too sure. It’s a long way.”

Peering from beneath the trunk under which he bent with a fair assumption of human weakness, Hugo had his first close glimpse of Webster. They passed under a huge arch and down a street lined with elms. Students were everywhere, carrying books and furniture, moving in wheelbarrows and moving by means of the backs of other freshmen. The two who led him were talking and he listened as he plodded.

“Saw Marcia just before I left the lake⁠—took her out one night⁠—and got all over the place with her⁠—and then came down⁠—she’s coming to the first prom with me⁠—and Marj to the second⁠—got to get some beer in⁠—we’ll buzz out and see if old Snorenson has made any wine this summer. Hello, Eddie⁠—glad to see you back⁠—I’ve elected the dean’s physics, though, God knows, I’ll never get a first in them and I need it for a key. That damn Frosh we picked up sure must have been a porter⁠—hey, freshmen! Want a rest?”

“No, thanks.”

“Went down to the field this afternoon⁠—looks all right to me. The team, that is. Billings is going to quarter it now⁠—and me after that⁠—hope to Christ I make it⁠—they’re going to have Scapper and Dwan back at Yale and we’ve got a lot of work to do. Frosh! You don’t need to drag that all the way in one yank. Put it down, will you?”

“I’m not tired. I don’t need a rest.”

“Well, you know best⁠—but you ought to be tired. I would. Where do you come from?”

“Colorado.”

“Huh! People go to Colorado. Never heard of anyone coming from there before. Whereabouts?”

“Indian Creek.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “You aren’t an Indian, are you?” It was asked bluntly.

“Scotch Presbyterian for twenty generations.”

“Well, when you get through here, you’ll be full of Scotch and emptied of the Presbyterianism. Put the trunk down.”

Their talk of women, of classes, of football, excited Hugo. He was not quite as amazed to find that Lefty Foresman was one of the candidates for the football team as he might have been later when he knew how many students attended the university and how few, relatively, were athletes. He decided at once that he liked Lefty. The sophistication of his talk was unfamiliar to Hugo; much of it he could not understand and only guessed. He wanted Lefty to notice him. When he was told to put the trunk down, he did not obey. Instead, with precision and ease, he swung it up on his shoulder, held it with one hand and said in an unflustered tone: “I’m not tired, honestly. Where do we go from here?”

“Great howling Jesus!” Lefty said, “what have we here? Hey! Put that trunk down.” There was excitement in his voice. “Say, guy, do that again.”

Hugo did it. Lefty squeezed his biceps and grew pale. Those muscles in action lost their feel of flesh and became like stone. Lefty said: “Say, boy, can you play football?”

“Sure,” Hugo said.

“Well, you leave that trunk with Chuck, here, and come with me.”

Hugo did as he had been ordered and they walked side by side to the gymnasium. Hugo had once seen a small gymnasium, ill equipped and badly lighted, and it had appealed mightily to him. Now he stood in a prodigious vaulted room with a shimmering floor, a circular balcony, a varied array of apparatus. His hands clenched. Lefty quit him for a moment and came back with a man who wore knickers. “Mr. Woodman, this is⁠—what the hell’s your name?”

“Danner. Hugo Danner.”

“Mr. Woodman is football coach.”

Hugo took the man’s hand. Lefty excused himself. Mr. Woodman said: “Young Foresman said you played football.”

“Just on a high-school team in Colorado.”

“Said you were husky. Go in my office and ask Fitzsimmons to give you a gym suit. Come out when you’re ready.”

Hugo undressed and put on the suit. Fitzsimmons, the trainer, looked at him with warm admiration. “You’re sure built, son.”

“Yeah. That’s luck, isn’t it?”

Then Hugo was taken to another office. Woodman asked him a number of questions about his weight, his health, his past medical history. He listened to Hugo’s heart and then led him to a scale. Hugo had lied about his weight.

“I thought you said one hundred and sixty, Mr. Danner?”

The scales showed two hundred and eleven, but it was impossible for a man of his size and build to weigh that much. Hugo had lied deliberately, hoping that he could avoid the embarrassment of being weighed. “I did, Mr. Woodman. You see⁠—my weight is a sort of freak. I don’t show it⁠—no one would believe it⁠—and yet there it is.” He did not go into the details of his construction from a plasm new to biology.

“Huh!” Mr. Woodman said. Together they walked out on the floor of the gymnasium. Woodman called to one of the figures on the track who was making slow, plodding circuits. “Hey, Nellie! Take this bird up and pace him for a lap. Make it fast.”

A little smile came at the corners of Hugo’s mouth. Several of the men in the gymnasium stopped work to watch the trial of what was evidently a new candidate. “Ready?” Woodman said, and the runners crouched side by side. “Set? Go!”

Nelson, one of the best sprinters Webster had had for years, dashed forward. He had covered thirty feet when he heard a voice almost in his ear. “Faster, old man.”

Nelson increased. “Faster, boy, I’m passing you.” The words