When the graceless T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had sauntered
gracefully out of the grub-shack, big Butch Brewster,
almost exploding with suppressed wrath, stared at
Slave-Driver Corridan and staid Deacon Radford a full
minute; then he grinned,
“That—Hicks!” he murmured,
struggling against a desire to laugh. “What
a ridiculous prophecy! ‘Just leave it to
Hicks!’ Well, that means the problem goes unsolved,
for though I confess he is brilliant, and
his so-called ‘inspirations’ have helped
old Bannister; when it comes to rushing out and lassoing
a smashing. Herculean full-back—bah!”
Ten minutes later, when Coach Corridan and the Gold
and Green squad climbed the bluff to the field back
of Camp Bannister, for morning signal drill, their
last memory was of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., arrayed
in radiant vestiture, his chair tilted against the
bunkhouse—the chords of the banjo, and
his foghorn voice drifting to them on the warm September
air:
“Oh, father and mother pay all the
bills (plunk-plunk)
And we have all the fun (plunkety-plunk)
With the money that we spend in college
life!”
Two hours afterward, as a tired, perspiring squad
scrambled down the bluff, and made for the cool waters
of Lake Conowingo, a mysterious silence, like a mighty
wave, literally surged toward them. Camp Bannister
seemed deserted, the sun was still shining, the birds
sang as cheerily as ever, but instinctively the collegians
felt an indescribable loneliness, a sense of tremendous
loss.
“</i>Hicks</i>!” shouted Butch Brewster,
loudly, his voice shattering the stillness. “Hicks—ahoy!
I say, Hicks—”
Old Hinky-Dink, a letter in his hand, hobbled from
the cook-tent toward them; like a sinister harbinger
of evil he advanced, grinning deprecatingly at the
squad:
“Mistah Hicks am gone!” he announced importantly.
“He done gib me fo’ bits to row him ober
to de village, to cotch de noon ‘spress fo’
Philadelphy! Heah am a letter what he lef’—”
Big Butch Brewster, to whom the billet-doux
was addressed in T. Haviland Hicks, Jr.’s, familiar
scrawl, tore open the envelope, and while the squad
listened, he read aloud the message left by that sunny-souled
youth;
“DEAR BUTCH:
“Coach Corridan will have to use the alarm clock
from now on! I’m called away on business.
See that my stuff gets to Bannister O.K. Stow
it in the room next to yours. I’ll be back
at college some time in the next century. Give
my adieux to Coach Corridan and the squad.
“Yours truthfully,
“T. HAVILAND HICKS, JR.
“P.S.: Tell Coach Corridan he should worry—not!
I’m hot on the trail of a fullback that will
make Ted Coy at his coyest look like the paralyzed
inmate of an old man’s home. Just leave
it to Hicks!”
HICKS’ PRODIGIOUS PRODIGY
