The encounter with Nat Poole had nerved Dave as he had seldom been nerved before. Ben had won, and he made up his mind to do the same, regardless of the fact that Gus Plum and one of the other boys in the race were bigger than himself. He took the first and second hurdles with ease, and then found himself in a bunch, with Plum on one side and a lad named Cashod on the other.
"Whoop her up, Cashod!" he yelled out. "Come on, and show the others what we can do!"
"Right you are, Porter!" was the answering cry.
"Not much!" puffed out Gus Plum. "I'm the winner here!"
"Rats!" answered Dave. "You'll come in fifth, Plum. You're winded already!" And then, with a mighty effort, he leaped to the front, with Cashod on his heels. "Poole didn't do your dirty work well enough," he flung back over his shoulder as he took his fourth hurdle.
The taunts angered Gus Plum, and this made him lose ground, until, almost before he knew it, the third pupil in the race dashed past him. Then he found himself neck-and-neck with the fifth contestant.
"Dave Porter is ahead, with Cashod second!"
"Plum and Higgins are tied for fourth place!"
"And there goes Sanderson ahead of Plum, too! Phew! Wonder if that is what Plum calls winning? He had better study his dictionary!"
[Illustration: Dave cleared the last hurdle and came in a winner.--_Page 87._]
With a mighty leap Dave cleared the last hurdle, and came in a winner. Then the others finished in the order named, excepting that Gus Plum was so disgusted that he refused to take the last hurdle, for which some of the boys hissed him, considering it unsportsmanlike, which it was.
"My shoe got loose," said the bully, lamely. "If it hadn't been for that, I should have won." But nobody believed him.
"Dave, the way you went ahead was simply great," cried Phil. "It was as fine a hurdle race as I ever saw."
"Yes, and he helped me, too," said Cashod. "I was thinking Plum would go ahead, until Porter laughed at him. It was all right," and Cashod bobbed his head to show how satisfied he was.
If Nat Poole had been disgusted Gus Plum was more so, and he lost no time in disappearing from public gaze. The two cronies met back of the gymnasium.
"You hurt Porter about as much as I hurt Basswood," Plum grumbled. "If you can't do better than that next time, you had better give up trying."