Then Donald Pike,
sprawled out like one of the cats, came sailing down out of the tree.
His teeth were fairly chattering. He believed that Badger was right at
his heels, with hands reached out to seize him. Fortunately, he was not
injured by the desperate leap.
"Fruit!" was yelled by a dozen voices, and the throng pressed together
again to lay hold on him.
But Don Pike's terror gave him the strength of a giant. He hurled aside
those who sought to detain him, and leaped through the crowd and away.
The next instant the Kansan dropped out of the tree, swinging for a
moment by one of the drooping branches, to break the force of the fall,
and alighting on the ground with ease and lightness.
"Fruit!"
The Westerner could not escape, for the students had closed in again,
and he was literally ringed in.
"Fruit! fruit!" was yelled on all sides.
Twenty men threw themselves on the Kansan. He tried to hurl them off,
and did succeed in flinging some of them aside. This enabled him to gain
his feet.
"Let go!" he snarled.
"Fruit! fruit!" was being chorused.
Again the hands and arms closed on him.
"Let me go, I say! I want to overtake that fellow!"
Only a few near him understood his words. The majority thought he was
merely showing a vigorous protest against the threatened loss of his
shirt-tab, and they had no sympathy with anything of that kind, for they
had suffered the same humiliation, and were naturally determined to
inflict the same thing on every student they could lay their hands on.
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