The first of the “entertainments” was given that night in the gymnasium. It was a roping-contest between Bill Higgins, of Badger’s ranch, and Tom Bludsoe, a cowboy from the neighborhood of El Paso, who had been traveling with a “Wild West” exhibition and had somehow become stranded in New Haven. Drink may have had something to do with Bludsoe’s loss of position and his consequent poverty; but he was a fine roper, nevertheless, and in arranging to put Higgins against him for the amusement of the students, Merriwell was not at all sure that his friend from Kansas would be able to win out and cover himself with glory.

Perhaps because Merriwell had seemed in some of the class contests to side with the freshmen, Tom Bludsoe was enthusiastically backed by the sophomores, while the freshmen took Higgins for their champion.

“It chills the corpuscles of my sporting-blood to have to turn your picture to the wall to-night, Higgins,” said Ready, ambling into the gymnasium, after his “feed” at the expense of Dick Starbright; “but the sophomores have taken up Bludsoe, and I’m a soph.”

“Oh, that there is all right!” Higgins grinned, as he strung his riata across the gymnasium floor, to make sure it was in good condition. “This hyer ain’t fer blood, ye know! Jist a little fun, to please Merry and t’other fellers! I hear tell there’s another feller that’s got a picture he’d like to turn to the wall.”

“Dashleigh?”

“Picture of a hoss!” grunted Higgins, critically examining his rope and working at it with his fingers to take out an incipient kink which he fancied he had found. “I’m going to hold that agin’ you!”

“He held it against himself!”

“Yes, so I heerd. But I’m a lover of hosses, and I don’t like to have even a picture of one fooled with. That makes me willin’ to champion these pore freshmen fellers to-night, and I’ll string ropes fer ’em fer all I’m wu’th.”

Indeed, Higgins was going into the contest with “blood in his eye.” He believed that he was a better roper than the man from El Paso, even if Bludsoe had been engaged in giving public exhibitions of his roping proficiency, and he was glad of this chance. Higgins delighted in keeping himself in the public eye. Though he was a noble fellow in many respects, he was as vain as a peacock, and he “felt his oats considerably” that night, as he stretched his riata across the floor and walked round in his new cowboy clothing, with his great 

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