# The Trail of the Hawk/Chapter 10

CHAPTER X
THEY were gone. Carl was full of the nauseating shame which a matter-of-fact man, who supposes that he is never pilloried, knows when a conscientious friend informs him that he has been observed, criticized; that his enthusiasms have been regarded as eccentricities; his affectionate approaches, toward friendship as impertinence.
There seemed to be hundreds of people in the room, nudging one another, waiting agape for him to do something idiotic; a well-advertised fool on parade. He stalked about, now shamefaced, now bursting out with a belligerent, "Aw, rats! I'll show 'em!" now plaintively beseeching, "I don't suppose I am helping Frazer, but it makes me so darn sore when nobody stands up for him and he teaches stuff they need so much here. Gee! I'm coming to think this is a pretty rough-neck college. He's the first teacher I ever got anything out of—and———Oh, hang it! what 'd I have to get mixed up in all this for, when I was getting along so good? And if it isn't going to help him———"
His right hand became conscious of Gertie's letter crumpled in his pocket. As turning the letter over and over gave him surprisingly small knowledge of its contents, he opened it:
Dear Carl, You are just silly to tease me about any bank clerk. I don't like him any more at all and he can go with Linda all he likes, much I care!
We are enjoying good health, though it is getting quite cold now and we have the furnace running now and it feels pretty ​good to have it. We had such a good time at Adelaide's party she wore such a pretty dress. She flirted terribly with Joe Jordan though of course you'll call me a cat for telling you because you like her so much better than me & all.
Oh I haven't told you the news yet Joe has accepted a position at St. Hilary in the mill there.
I have some pretty new things for my room, a beautiful hand-painted picture. Before Joe goes there is going to be a party for him at Semina's. I wish you could come I suppose you have learned to dance well, of course you go to lots of parties at Plato with all the pretty girls & forget all about me.
I wish I was in Minneapolis it is pretty dull here, & such good talks you and me had didn't we!
Oh Carl dear Ray writes us you are sticking up for that crazy Professor Frazer. I know it must take lots of courage & I admire you lots for it even if Ray doesn't but oh Carl dear if you can't do any good by it I hope you won't get everybody talking about you without its doing any good, will you, Carl?
I do so expect you to succeed wonderfully & I hope you won't blast your career even to stand up for folks when it's too late & won't do any good.
We all expect so much of you—we are waiting! You are our knight & you aren't going to forget to keep your armor bright, nor forget, Yours as ever,
Gertie.
"Mmm!" remarked Carl. "Dun'no' about this knight-and-armor business. I'd look swell, I would, with a wash-boiler and a few more tons of junk on. Mmm! 'Expect you to succeed wonderfully———' Oh, I don't suppose I had ought to disappoint 'em. Don't see where I can help Frazer, anyway. Not a bit."
The Frazer affair seemed very far from him; very hysterical.
Two of the Gang ambled in with noisy proposals in regard to a game of poker, penny ante, but the thought of cards bored him. Leaving them in possession, one of them smoking the Turk's best pipe, which the Turk had been so careless as to leave in sight, he strolled out on the street and over to the campus.
​There was a light in the faculty-room in the Academic Building, yet it was not a "first and third Thursday," dates on which the faculty regularly met. Therefore, it was a special meeting; therefore———
Promptly, without making any plans, Carl ran to the back of the building, shinned up a water-spout (humming "Just Before the Battle, Mother"), pried open a class-room window with his large jack-knife, of the variety technically known as a "toad-stabber" (changing his tune to "Onward, Christian Soldiers"), climbed in, tiptoed through the room, stopping often to listen, felt along the plaster walls to find the door, eased the door open, calmly sat down in the corridor, pulled off his shoes, said, "Ouch, it's cold on the feets!" slipped into another class-room in the front of the building, put on his shoes, crawled out of the window, walked along a limestone ledge one foot wide to a window of the faculty-room, and peeped in.
All of the eleven assistant professors and full professors, except Frazer, were assembled, with President S. Alcott Wood in the chair, and the Greek professor addressing them, referring often to a red-leather-covered note-book.
"Um! Making a report on Frazer's lecture," said Carl, clinging precariously to the rough faces of the stones. A gust swooped around the corner of the building. He swayed, gripped the stones more tightly, and looked down. He could not see the ground. It was thirty-five or forty feet down. "Almost fell," he observed. "Gosh! my hands are chilly!" As he peered in the window again he saw the Greek professor point directly at the window, while the whole gathering startled, turned, stared. A young assistant professor ran toward the door of the room.
"Going to cut me off. Dog-gone it," said Carl. "They'll wait for me at the math.-room window. Hooray! I've started something."
He carefully moved along the ledge to a point half-way between windows and waited, flat against the wall.
​Again he glanced down from the high, windy, narrow ledge. "It 'd be a long drop. . . . My hands are cold. . . . I could slip. Funny, I ain't really much scared, though. . . . Say! Where'd I do just this before? Oh yes!" He saw himself as little Carl, lost with Gertie in the woods, caught by Bone Stillman at the window. He laughed out as he compared the bristly virile face of Bone with the pasty face of the young professor. "Seems almost as though I was back there doing the same thing right over. Funny. But Pm not quite as scared as I was then. Guess I'm growing up. Hel-lo! here's our cunning Spanish Inquisition rubbering out of the next window."
The window of the mathematics class-room, next to the faculty-room, had opened. The young professor who was pursuing Carl peppered the night with violent words delivered in a rather pedagogic voice. "Well, sir! We have you! You might as well come and give yourself up!"
Carl was silent.
The voice said, conversationally: "He's staying out there. I'll see who it is." Carl half made out a head thrusting itself from the window, then heard, in sotto voce, "I can't see him." Loudly again, the pursuing professor yapped: "Ah, I see you. You're merely wasting time, sir. You might just as well come here now. I shall let you stay there till you do." Softly: "Hurry back into the faculty-room and see if you can get him from that side. Bet it's one of the sneaking Frazer faction."
Carl said nothing; did not budge. He peeped at the ledge above him. It was too far for him to reach it. He tried to discern the mass of the ground in the confusing darkness below. It seemed miles down. He did not know what to do. He was lone as a mateless hawk, there on the ledge, against the wall whose stones were pinchingly cold to the small of his back and his spread-eagled arms. He swayed slightly; realized with trembling nausea what would happen if he swayed too much. . . . He remembered ​that there was pavement below him. But he did not think about giving himself up.
From the mathematics-room window came: "Watch him. I'm going out after him."
The young professor's shoulders slid out of the window. Carl carefully turned his head and found that now a form was leaning from the faculty-room window as well.
"Got me on both sides. Darn it! Well, when they haul me up on the carpet I'll have the pleasure of telling them what I think of them."
The young professor had started to edge along the ledge. He was coming very slowly. He stopped and complained to some one back in the mathematics-room, "This beastly ledge is icy, I'm afraid."
Carl piped: "Look out! Y're slipping!"
In a panic the professor slid back, into the window. As his heels disappeared through it, Carl dashed by the window, running sidewise along the ledge. While the professor was cautiously risking his head in the night air outside the window again, gazing to the left, where, he had reason to suppose, Carl would have the decency to remain, Carl was rapidly worming to the right. He reached the corner of the building, felt for the tin water-pipe, and slid down it, with his coat-tail protecting his hands. Half-way down, the cloth slipped and his hand was burnt against the corrugated tin. "Consid'able slide," he murmured as he struck the ground and blew softly on his raw palm.
He walked away—not at all like a melodramatic hero of a slide-by-night, but like a matter-of-fact young man going to see some one about business of no great importance. He abstractedly brushed his left sleeve or his waistcoat, now and then, as though he wanted to appear neat.
He tramped into the telephone-booth of the corner drug-store, called up Professor Frazer:
"Hello? Professor Frazer? . . . This is one of your ​students in modern drama. I've just learned—I happened to be up in the Academic Building and I happened to find out that Professor Drood is making a report to the faculty—special meeting!—about your last lecture. I've got a hunch he's going to slam you. I don't want to butt in, but I'm awfully worried; I thought perhaps you ought to know. . . . Who? Oh, I'm just one of your students. . . . You're welcome. Oh, say, Professor, g-good luck. G'-by."
Immediately, without even the excuse that some evil mind in the Gang had suggested it, he prowled out to the Greek professor's house and tied both the front and back gates. Now the fence of that yard was high and strong and provided with sharp pickets; and the professor was short and dignified. Carl regretted that he could not wait for the pleasure of seeing the professor fumble with the knots and climb the fence. But he had another errand.
He walked to the house of Professor Frazer. He stood on the walk before it. His shoulders straightened, his heels snapped together, and he raised his arm in a formal salute.
He had saluted the gentleness of Henry Frazer. He had saluted his own soul. He cried: "I will stick by him, as long as the Turk or any of 'em. I won't let Omega Chi and the coach scare me—not the whole caboodle of them. I——— Oh, I don't think they can scare me. . . .