“Excuse me, I didn’t mean to touch you,” was the short answer, and Paxton dropped from the rope and started for the other end of the gymnasium.
“Hold on there!” cried Pepper, and ran after Paxton.
“And I say you did! It was a mean thing to do.”
“Oh, you make me tired,” grunted Nick Paxton, but his tone betrayed his uneasiness.
“I believe you struck Andy so as to injure him,” said Jack. To this Paxton made no answer. Instead he moved on, and soon lost himself in a crowd of boys in another part of the gymnasium.
“Andy, does your wrist hurt much?” questioned Pepper, turning to his acrobatic chum.
“Yes, it does,” was the answer. “See, he scraped part of the skin off.”
“He ought to be hammered for it,” was Pepper’s emphatic declaration.
Andy walked over to a sink and there allowed the water to run over his wrist. Soon there was a small swelling, which pained considerably. Jack helped to tie a handkerchief around the bruised member.
“Well, Snow, are you ready for the contest?” demanded Gus Coulter, walking up. He had just passed Nick Paxton, and the latter had winked at him suggestively.
“Andy has been hurt,” explained Jack. “Paxton kicked him in the wrist.”
“Huh! Is this a trick to get out of meeting me?” grumbled Gus Coulter.
“Andy, you can’t meet him with your wrist in such bad shape,” expostulated Pepper.
“Postpone it until to-morrow,” suggested Dale, who was present.
“If he is to meet me at all it must be to-day,” said Coulter, flatly. “That bruise doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. I’ve got a hurt myself,” and he showed the back of his left hand, which had been slightly scratched by a playful kitten several days before.
“That is nothing to Andy’s bruise,” said Pepper. “See, his wrist is quite swelled.”
“Never mind, I’ll meet him, anyway—and beat him, too,” declared Andy. “Come on—I am ready if you are!”
The crowd surrounding Andy were both pleased and astonished by his show of grit. It was easy to see that his wrist was in bad shape.
“Andy, you can’t do it to-day,” pleaded Pepper. “Make him meet you some other time.”
“It is to-day or never,” said Gus Coulter, bluntly.
In a few minutes the necessary space was cleared and the contest commenced. It had been agreed that the trial was to consist of the following: Each boy was to walk the length of the gymnasium on his hands and then rise up and “chin the bar,” that is, draw himself up to his chin on a turning bar. The contestant to “chin the bar” the greatest number of times was to be the winner.