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Title: The play that won
Author: Barbour, Ralph Henry
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The play that won" ***
THE PLAY
THAT WON
By Ralph Henry Barbour
YARDLEY HALL SERIES
Guarding His Goal
Forward Pass
Double Play
Winning His Y
For Yardley
Around the End
Change Signals
PURPLE PENNANT SERIES
The Lucky Seventh
The Secret Play
The Purple Pennant
HILTON SERIES
The Half-Back
For the Honor of the School
Captain of the Crew
ERSKINE SERIES
Behind the Line
Weatherby’s Inning
On Your Mark
THE “BIG FOUR” SERIES
Four in Camp
Four Afoot
Four Afloat
THE GRAFTON SERIES
Rivals for the Team
Winning His Game
Hitting the Line
BOOKS NOT IN SERIES
For the Freedom of the Seas
Under the Yankee Ensign
Keeping His Course
The Brother of a Hero
Finkler’s Field
Danforth Plays the Game
The Arrival of Jimpson
Benton’s Venture
The Junior Trophy
The New Boy at Hilltop
The Spirit of the School
The Play that Won
D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, New York
[Illustration: IT WAS LARRY LOGAN WHO FUMED AND IMPLORED....]
THE PLAY
THAT WON
BY
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
AUTHOR OF
“FOR THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS,” “UNDER THE YANKEE ENSIGN,”
“THE HALF BACK,” ETC.
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1918, 1919, by
THE CENTURY COMPANY
Copyright, 1916, 1917, by
PERRY MASON COMPANY
Copyright, 1918, by
SPRAGUE PUBLISHING COMPANY
Copyright, 1919, by
FISK BICYCLE CLUBS OF AMERICA
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE PLAY THAT WON 1
II. THE GREAT PECK 28
III. TERRY COMES THROUGH 53
IV. SPOOKS 101
V. THE QUITTER 130
VI. “PUFF” 156
VII. “PSYCHOLOGY STUFF” 172
VIII. BILLY MAYES’ GREAT DISCOVERY 196
IX. THE TWO MILER 226
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
It was Larry Logan who fumed and implored.... _Frontispiece_
Then the pistol popped and they were off 94
Somewhere in that mêlée was the runner with the precious ball 152
The bridge tender had half closed the second gate 168
THE PLAY THAT WON
When the knock came Ted was slumped on his spine in the Morris chair,
the green-shaded lamp beside him and a magazine propped on his chest.
It was Saturday night and study was not imperative, for which he was
grateful. The baseball game with Prospect Hill in the afternoon had
been a hard one, and the victory――for Warwick had won in the tenth――had
left him rather tired, and he had passed up a lecture in the school
auditorium in favor of rest and solitude at home. Which is why the
knock on the door brought a sigh and a frown. Of course, he might
remain silent, but the light shining through the transom would be a
give-away, and the caller might be Trevor Corwin with his everlasting
stamp album: Trev was a sensitive kid and easily hurt. So Ted laid down
his magazine and said “Come in!” in no very enthusiastic tone. To his
relief, the visitor was Hal Saunders.
“Hello, Bowman,” said Hal, glancing about the study. “George around?”
His eyes sought the darkened bedroom as he closed the door behind him.
“Gone home over Sunday,” replied Ted.
“Gone home!” Hal’s tone held so much of dismay that Ted wondered.
“Yes, his father’s been sick for about a week or so, and he got leave
from faculty. Went right after the game.”
“Gee!” exclaimed Hal worriedly. “He didn’t say anything to me about
it. I wish I’d known. I want to see him about――something important.”
To Ted’s discomfiture he seated himself on the window-seat and moodily
stared at the lamp. “When’s he coming back?”
“Monday. He got permission to cut morning hours. I guess he will be on
the twelve-forty-six.”
“That’ll be too late,” said Hal aggrievedly. “By Jove, that’s rotten! I
don’t see why he couldn’t let folks know he was going.”
Evidently overwhelmed by the news, he made no move to depart. He was
a good-looking fellow of sixteen, well-made, tall and lithe, with
light hair and eyes and a fair complexion which even three months of
baseball had failed to darken. In contrast, the boy in the Morris chair
was a year younger, shorter, heavier, more compact, with dark eyes and
hair and a face which, if not handsome, was rather attractive in spite
of the fact that sun and weather had tanned it to the hue of leather
and that the tip of the nose was peeling. Both boys were members of
the School Nine, Ted being right fielder and Hal first-choice pitcher.
They were not, however, very good friends. Ted thought Hal traded too
much on his ability as a twirler. It was undeniable that he was an
exceptionally good one, perhaps the best that the school had ever had,
but in Ted’s opinion Hal would do well to forget the fact now and then.
He didn’t understand what his room-mate, George Tempest, saw in Hal to
admire; that is, beyond his playing. Naturally George, being captain
of the team, would feel kindly toward a chap who so often pitched to
victory, but he needn’t overdo it! Ted was fond of his room-mate and so
it is possible that jealousy had something to do with his mild dislike
of Hal Saunders.
Presently Hal raised his eyes from a frowning contemplation of his
shoes and Ted was surprised at the trouble shown in his face. It was
a most unusual thing for the self-satisfied, rather superior Hal
Saunders to exhibit anything approaching discomposure. In spite of
himself, Ted’s sympathies were touched. “Was it something about the
Team?” he asked.
Hal shook his head. “No, it was――something――――” He hesitated. Then: “I
wanted to borrow some money from him.”
“Oh!” murmured Ted. It was, he reflected, a lot like Hal to make a
fuss about an unimportant matter like that. Perhaps the other read the
thought, for he suddenly said defensively:
“I’m in a dickens of a hole, Bowman, and I was pretty sure that George
could help me out. Now I’m blessed if I know what to do!”
“Won’t Monday do?”
“Monday morning might, but Monday afternoon will be too late――unless――――”
Hal fell into silence again. Ted wondered if Hal was trying to find
courage to ask him for a loan. He almost hoped so. It would be rather
a pleasure to refuse it. “It’s Plaister, in the village,” Hal went on
after a moment. “He’s got a bill of twelve dollars and eighty cents
against me. I’ve been owing the old skinflint some of it since last
year. And now he says that if it isn’t paid by to-night he will go and
get the money from ‘Jerry.’ And you know what that will mean!”
Ted did know. “Jerry” was the popular name for Doctor Morris, the
Principal, and when “Jerry” learned that Hal had transgressed the very
strict rule against having bills at the village stores, punishment
would be swift and stern. Why, Hal might be dismissed from school! The
very least that would happen to him would be probation!
“Maybe he’s just bluffing,” offered Ted, but with little conviction in
his voice.
“No such luck,” answered Hal. “He’s threatened twice before and I’ve
begged him off. This time he means it. I found a letter from him in the
mail this noon. I was going to speak to George before the game, but
there wasn’t any chance, and I――I sort of funked it anyway. Besides, I
thought there was time enough. Plaister won’t do anything until Monday.
I was pretty sure George had the money and I guess he’d have let me
have it. I meant to beat it over to the village right after chapel
Monday morning. I hadn’t any idea he was going away!”
“Too bad,” said Ted, more than half meaning it. “How the dickens did
you ever manage to run up a bill like that, Saunders?”
Hal shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m always buying fool things.
Plaister was keen enough to charge ’em until he had a nice big bill
against me. Afterwards, too. It got so I was afraid not to buy anything
he showed me for fear he’d ask me to pay up.”
“But you get an allowance――――”
“A dollar a week,” said Hal slightingly. “How far does that go? Mother
sends me a little now and then. If she didn’t I wouldn’t have a cent in
my pocket, ever. I’m a fool about money, and dad knows it. And he will
know it a heap better about next Tuesday!”
“But look here, Saunders. Won’t Plaister stand to lose if he goes to
‘Jerry?’ Faculty always says that shop-keepers giving credit to the
fellows will be deprived of the school trade. Seems to me Plaister will
think twice before he risks that.”
“Oh, he will tell some hard-luck yarn and ‘Jerry’ will believe him.
You know how ‘Jerry’ is. Barks a lot, but doesn’t bite much. Yes, he
might be scared to do what he threatens, but his letter sounded mighty
earnest. He’s got me going, anyway. I say, Bowman, I don’t suppose
you――er――happen to have ten dollars you’d let me have? I’d have to pay
it back fifty cents a week, but――――”
“Sorry,” said Ted, shaking his head. To his surprise he found that he
really was sorry――a little. Hal’s gloom enwrapped him again.
“No, I suppose not. And I don’t guess you’d care much about lending to
me if you had it. You don’t particularly love me. Well, I guess I’ll
toddle.” He arose and stood uncertainly a moment before he moved toward
the door.
“What will you do?” asked Ted anxiously. “If――if you get put on ‘pro’
we’ll be in a nasty fix! Hang it, Saunders, you’ve got to do something,
you know. Crouch would last about two innings in the Temple game! Why
don’t you see Plaister to-morrow and get him to wait another week?
After next Saturday it wouldn’t matter.”
“I’ve talked to him until I’m tired,” replied Hal wearily. “It’s no
good. Maybe he won’t do it, or maybe I can scrape up the money by
Monday. I’m tired worrying about it. I’d just as lief get fired as have
this thing hanging over me all the time.”
“Maybe he would take part of it and wait for the rest.”
“He won’t. I tried that. He says he’s waited long enough and――oh, a
lot of drivel. You know the way they talk. Well, good-night. And say,
Bowman, just keep this to yourself, like a good chap, will you? I don’t
know why I bothered you with it, but I’d rather you didn’t say anything
about it.”
“That’s all right. I won’t talk. Good-night. I hope you――come out all
right.”
Hal nodded dejectedly and went. Ted took up his magazine, but after
finding his place in it he let it drop once more. If Plaister did what
he threatened, and Ted knew the hard-featured little shop-keeper well
enough to feel pretty certain that he would, it would be all up with
Warwick’s chances for the baseball championship that year. With Hal
Saunders in the points they might defeat Temple Academy next Saturday.
Without him they couldn’t. Neither Crouch nor Bradford was good enough
to last three innings against the Blue’s hard-hitting team. The
knowledge brought real dismay to Ted. Personally he wanted a victory
for the school team, but it was the thought of George’s disappointment
that moved him most. George, like every captain, had hoped and worked
for a triumph harder than any of the others. For Ted’s part, he would
go back next year, but this was George’s last chance. Ted was miserably
sorry for his friend. He was such a corking fine fellow. Ted recalled
the day last September when George, learning that fate in the shape
of faculty had wished a strange and two years younger boy on him as
room-mate, had acted so mighty decent about it. Lots of fellows in
George’s place, thought Ted, would have been mad and grouchy, but
George had never let Ted guess for a moment that he wasn’t entirely
welcome. And all through the year George had been a perfect brick. He
had helped Ted in many ways: had got him into Plato Society, helped
him at mid-year exams, introduced him to nice fellows, coached him in
batting until he had become proficient enough to beat out Whipple for
right field position. Ted’s feeling for George Tempest was a mingling
of gratitude and hero-worship that amounted to a very real affection,
and the thought of George’s unhappiness in case the final game of the
school year went against Warwick troubled him greatly. Temple Academy
had routed Warwick overwhelmingly last year and the sting of that
defeat still remained. Warwick wanted revenge, and her three hundred
and odd students had their hearts set on obtaining it next Saturday.
But to none did it mean quite what it meant to Captain Tempest. Ted
tossed the magazine aside and stood up. “Something ought to be done,”
he muttered.
In the bedroom he produced a small tin box from its hiding place in a
dresser drawer and emptied the contents on his bed. Three one-dollar
bills and many silver coins, when counted, came to exactly fourteen
dollars and seventy-five cents. He had been accumulating the hoard
ever since Fall with the intention of buying a bicycle when he went
home in the Summer. When he had about five dollars more he would have
enough. He hadn’t told Hal that he didn’t have the money. He had merely
politely refused to make a loan. And he had no idea of changing his
mind. Hal’s fix was no affair of his, and Hal could get out of it as
best he might. Certainly he couldn’t be expected to give up a whole
Summer’s fun for the sake of a fellow he didn’t like much anyway!
Resolutely he placed the money back in the box and the box again in
concealment. “He will wriggle out of it somehow,” he said to himself.
Sunday was rainy and seemed weeks long, and Ted missed George horribly.
He saw Hal Saunders at dinner and again in the evening, and it was
apparent from Hal’s countenance that he had not yet found a way out of
his difficulty. Ted went over to the library after supper feeling very
angry with Hal, angry because that youth had endangered the success
of the nine, because his foolishness was in a fair way to bring grief
to George, and because he had somehow managed to make one Ted Bowman
distinctly uncomfortable! Ted surrounded himself with reference books,
but all the work he did scarcely paid for the effort.
Ted did not say anything to George, when the latter returned on Monday,
about Hal’s affairs. After dinner that day he received a summons to the
Office, and although conscious of a clear conscience he couldn’t help
feeling a trifle uneasy as he obeyed it. One didn’t get an invitation
to confer with “Jerry” unless the matter was one of some importance.
Events subsequently justified the uneasiness, for when Ted closed the
Office door behind him the second time he was on probation!
He could have stood his misfortune better had George been decently
sympathetic, but George was disgusted and mad clear through. “You’ve no
right to do silly stunts when you’re on the team,” he stormed. “You’ve
got a duty toward the School. A fine thing, isn’t it, to get on ‘pro’
four days before the big game?”
“Well, you don’t think I _asked_ for it, do you?” demanded Ted
indignantly. “Don’t you suppose I wanted to play Saturday just as much
as anyone?”
“Then you might have behaved yourself. You know perfectly well that
Billy Whipple can’t hit the way you can. What did you do, anyway?”
“Nothing much. I didn’t really do anything, only ‘Jerry’ thinks I did
and I can’t――can’t prove that I didn’t!”
“That’s likely,” grunted George. “You must have done something.”
“All right, then, I did. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter whether I did or
didn’t. I’m out of the game. I’m sorry――――”
George withered him with a look and slammed the door as he went out.
After that life was hardly worth living, Ted thought. George scarcely
spoke to him and the rest of his former team-mates were not much more
cordial. In fact the whole school apparently viewed him as a traitor,
and he felt like one. Thursday morning Dr. Morris announced that
hereafter the students were not to make purchases at Plaister’s, and
Ted found a certain ungenerous comfort in the shop-keeper’s misfortune.
In the afternoon, while he was studying in his room――he had avoided the
ball field since Monday――Hal came in with George. For some reason Hal
appeared to view Ted more leniently than the other players did, perhaps
because, having so nearly attained probation himself, he had sympathy
for a brother offender. Hal’s greeting was almost cordial. George’s was
only a grunt. Ted pretended to study, but he was really listening to
the talk of the others. Presently Hal said indignantly:
“I wonder what they’ve got against Plaister, George. It’s a shame to
shut down on him like that.”
“Some chap’s run up a bill, probably,” answered George indifferently.
“Faculty was after him last year for giving credit.”
“Well, I’m sorry. The old codger’s mighty white, and I ought to know it
if anybody should. I owed him something over twelve dollars, some of
it since last year, and he came down on me hard last week and said that
if I didn’t pay right up he’d go to ‘Jerry.’ He had me scared stiff,
and that’s no dream! I had visions of being fired, or at least put on
‘pro,’ and so I came over here Saturday night to see if I could get
some money from you. I had only about two dollars to my name. But you
had gone home. Bowman offered to loan it to me”――Hal winked at Ted’s
startled countenance and grinned――“but I wouldn’t take it. I tried at
least a dozen other fellows, but every last one was stoney broke. I
expected all day Monday to get an invitation to the Office――――”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” interrupted George regretfully. “I could
have fixed you up. Better let me do it now.”
“Not for anything,” laughed Hal. “You see the old chap never showed up
and I had my nervous prostration for nothing. All he did do was to send
me the bill Tuesday morning――receipted!”
“Receipted!”
“Yep, paid in full! Just scratched it right off his books. I suppose he
thought he might as well. Afraid to get in wrong with faculty, maybe.
Still, it was pretty decent of him, wasn’t it? Of course I’ll pay him
as soon as I can, but he doesn’t know that.”
George agreed that it was decent indeed, but he looked somewhat
puzzled. The incident didn’t tally at all with his conception of Mr.
Jabed Plaister.
Saturday dawned breathlessly hot, and the game, set for two o’clock,
was postponed until three. The wait was hard on the nerves of the
players, and Billy Whipple, who was to play right field in place of
Ted, was plainly unsettled. Ted knew of no reason why he should not
enjoy the painful pleasure of watching the game, and so, when Loring,
the Temple Academy pitcher, wound himself up for the first delivery,
Ted was seated cross-legged under the rope behind third base with a
very disconsolate expression on his perspiring countenance. To-day the
consciousness of virtue failed more than ever to atone for his being
out of the game. He strove to find consolation in the reflection that
there was another year coming, but the attempt was a flat failure.
The heat had its effect on spectators and players alike. The cheering
and singing lacked “pep” and the rival teams comported themselves as
though their one desire was to get back to the shade of the benches.
Ted glowered and muttered at the slowness of the contest. In the first
two innings only a long fly by the Temple second baseman that was
neatly captured by Whipple and a couple of inexcusable and innocuous
errors livened the dreariness of the game. The third inning began
like the preceding ones but promised better when, in the last half of
it, Warwick got a man to second on the first clean hit of the game.
The Brown’s cheerers came to life then and, although the next batter
fouled to catcher, making the second out, Warwick paid for the vocal
encouragement by putting the first run across on a hit past third.
Temple got men on third and second bases in the first of the fourth
and tried hard to bring them home, but Hal Saunders, having allowed a
hit and walked a batsman, retrieved himself and saved the situation by
knocking down a hard liner that was well above his head. Very coolly
and leisurely he picked it up, while the man on third scuttled to the
plate, and threw out the batsman at first.
The fifth inning went better. The air had cooled perceptibly and both
Hal and Loring were now twirling real ball and the game was becoming
a pitchers’ battle pure and simple. When Hal got down to business,
hits became as scarce as hen’s teeth, nor was Loring much behind him in
effectiveness to-day. Batters stepped to the plate, swung or waited and
retired with trailing bat. One-two-three was the order. The game went
into the seventh with Warwick’s one-run lead looking very large. Ted,
his disappointments forgotten, was “rooting” hard and tirelessly behind
third. Temperature was now a matter of no moment. Warwick was ahead,
Hal was mowing ’em down and victory was hovering above the brown banner!
It was in her half of the seventh that Temple evened up the score.
With two gone and first base inviolate Temple’s third man up, her
chunky little tow-headed shortstop whose clever playing had frequently
won applause from friend and foe, waited cannily and let Hal waste
two deliveries. Then he swung at a wide one and missed. The next was
another ball, although it cut the corner of the plate, and, with the
score against him, Hal tried to bring the tow-headed youth’s agony
to a merciful end by sneaking over a fast and straight one. But the
shortstop outguessed him that time. There was a mighty _crack_ and away
arched the ball. And away sped the batsman. Probably he had small hope
of safety, for the sphere was making straight for the right fielder,
but he knew enough not to jump to conclusions. Which is why, when the
ball bounded from Whipple’s hands, the runner was almost at second.
Urged on by the delighted coaches, he slid into third a few inches
ahead of the ball.
What caused Whipple’s error I do not know. He had the sun in his eyes,
of course, but he had made a harder catch under like circumstances in
the second inning. But better men than young Whipple have done the same
and so we needn’t waste time trying to find an excuse for him. The
mischief was done, and four minutes later the Temple captain had tied
up the score with a Texas Leaguer back of third.
There were no more hits in the seventh and none in the eighth. In the
ninth Temple almost won by a scratch and an error after Hal had lammed
an inshoot against a batsman’s ribs and he had reached second on a
sacrifice bunt. But the error, while it took him to third, did no more,
and Hal settled down and struck out his tenth man.
Warwick got one runner to second in her half, but he died there and the
contest went into extra innings. By this time the sun was behind the
trees at the edge of the field and a faint breeze was stirring. Ted
was parched of throat and hoarse of voice and was alternately hopeful
and despairing. The tenth inning went the way of the others. Hal had
two more strike-outs to his credit and Loring one. In the eleventh
the strain began to show. Hal passed the first man up, the second hit
safely, the third struck out, the fourth laid down a bunt in front
of the plate. Temple shouted and raved in delight. But Hal was still
master. Another strike-out averted the threatened disaster. Warwick
went in in her half with Captain Tempest up. George tried hard to
deliver, but made an easy out, third to first. The next batter had no
better luck. The third was Billy Whipple. Billy was known as a fair
batsman, although to-day he had signally failed. Maybe Loring eased up
a trifle. If so he produced his own disaster, for Billy picked out the
second delivery and everlastingly whanged it!
In Ted’s words, it went where it would do the most good. It fell to
earth twenty feet short of the gymnasium steps and ten feet beyond the
center fielder’s eager hands. Billy didn’t make the circuit because
George Tempest himself, coaching behind third, blocked his path to the
plate. There was a howl at that, for it did seem that Billy might have
made it. But playing it safe won out for once, for Loring was a bit
shaken by that blow at his record and Warwick’s next batter hit safely
between second and shortstop and Billy romped home. That ended the
scoring in that inning, but the Brown was again in the lead and Warwick
shouted and chanted.
Ted, realizing the effort Temple would make to even things up in the
twelfth, and knowing that the head of her batting list was up, was
on tenter-hooks. Warwick had the victory in her grasp if she could
only hold it. But Hal had been showing signs of fatigue the last two
innings and there had been a perceptible let-down. Ted anxiously took
counsel with himself. Then he jumped to his feet and ran around to the
home bench. Hal, his face rather drawn and plastered with dust in the
wrinkles, was pulling on his glove when Ted reached him.
“Saunders,” said Ted breathlessly, “if you can hold ’em we’ve got the
game!”
Hal viewed him with disgust and weariness. “You surprise me,” he
replied, with a weak attempt at sarcasm.
Ted laid a hand on the other’s arm and took a firm grip there. “Cut
out the mirth,” he said. “You go in and pitch ball, Saunders. Get me?
Don’t you dare let up for a second. If we――――”
Hal shook him off. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Sun-stroke?
You’re a fine one to make cracks like that! Beat it, kid!”
“Listen to me,” said Ted earnestly, dropping his voice. “If Temple
wins this game I’ll go to ‘Jerry’ and tell him what I know. I mean it,
Saunders!”
“Why, you little rotter!” gasped the pitcher.
“That’s all right. You heard me. You pitch ball, Saunders!”
“I’m going to,” sputtered the other, “and when I get through I’m going
to knock your silly block off. Now get out of my way!”
Ted went back to his place well satisfied. Saunders was mad clean
through and Saunders would pitch real ball! And Saunders did. Not since
the game had started had he worked more carefully, more craftily, and
although he had three hard hitters to put aside he never faltered.
Up came the Temple third baseman――and back again to the bench. The
Blue’s captain followed him and, although he brought Ted’s heart into
his mouth four times by knocking fouls, he, too, had to acknowledge
defeat. Temple was frantic now as she saw defeat impending. For luck
she sent a substitute player in for the third batsman and Hal promptly
put his first two deliveries across for strikes while triumphant
Warwick howled with delight. Then a ball, and another one, and――――
“_He’s_ OUT!” cried the umpire.
* * * * *
It was after eight. The riotous celebration had dwindled to mere
sporadic outbursts of joy out on the campus. Ted was talking with
George on the window-seat in their study. The victory had put the
captain in high spirits and since dinner he had returned to the old
footing with his room-mate. They had talked the game over from first
play to last, and Ted, happy in the renewal of friendly relations, was
seeking a fresh topic lest George should become bored with his society
and go away when there was a knock at the door and Hal strode in.
Recalling the threat he had made, Ted viewed his appearance with some
apprehension, but Hal showed no intention of removing Ted’s “block” in
the designated manner.
“I got something to show you fellows,” announced Hal, striding across
to the window. “Look here. Read that. No, wait a minute till I tell
you.” He drew back the sheet of paper he had thrust toward George. “I
thought it would be only the decent thing if I thanked Plaister for
cancelling that account, see? So yesterday I wrote a nice little note
and mailed it to him. This is what I got in answer. Found it in my room
after supper. Read it out loud, George.”
“‘Jabed Plaister, General Emporium, Dealer in――――’”
“Never mind that,” interrupted Hal impatiently. “Read the writing.”
“If I can,” agreed George. “Let’s see. ‘Dear Sir: Yours of like date
to hand. I gave the other boy a receipted bill and I don’t know what
you are talking about unless you are trying to get funny and I’ll tell
you plain there’s a law for such as you. And if you hadn’t paid I would
have seen your principle just like I said I was. Lucky for you you did.
Respectfully, Jabed Plaister.’ Not so very respectful, either! Well,
what about it, Hal?”
“Don’t you see? Someone paid that bill. I didn’t. Who did? That’s what
I came here to find out.” He turned suddenly to Ted. “Did you?” he
demanded.
Ted stared back blankly.
“Did you?” insisted Hal. “You _did_! What for? Why――――”
“He hasn’t said so,” interposed George.
“He doesn’t need to. He isn’t denying it, is he? Besides, he knew about
it. Look here, Bowman, I’m much obliged, of course, and all that, but I
don’t understand why――after you’d refused me that night――――”
“Well,” said Ted at last, slowly, seemingly seeking inspiration from
his shoes, “I knew that if you got fired or put on probation and
couldn’t pitch to-day we’d get licked. I――I ought to tell you frankly,
I guess, that I didn’t do it on your account, Saunders. There was the
School to consider, and――and George. I knew he’d be all broke up if we
lost the game. I had the money put away for――for something, and so I
decided that if Plaister was really going to make trouble I’d pay him.
I met him on the road Monday morning right after breakfast. I tried to
get him to take five dollars, but he wouldn’t, and so I paid it all
and he gave me the receipted bill. I ought to have told you at once,
but――well, I was sort of peeved at you and I didn’t. Finally, when it
got to be supper time and I hadn’t told you, I was ashamed to, and so
I stuck the bill in an envelope and put it in the mail. That’s all;
except that someone――I guess it was ‘Granny’ Lockwood: he’s always
mooning around the landscape――saw me give the money to Plaister and
told ‘Jerry.’”
There was a moment’s silence. Then George said: “But you could have
told ‘Jerry’ the truth, Ted.”
“What good would that have done? He’d have put Saunders on ‘pro,’ and
that’s just what I was working against. Don’t you see?”
“Mighty white,” muttered Hal.
“I wish you had told me, Ted,” said George. “I talked a good deal of
rough stuff. I’m sorry, kid.”
“That’s all right,” said Ted. “You didn’t know. You see, I’d promised
Saunders not to talk about it.”
“Bowman, you’re a perfect brick,” exclaimed Hal. “I know you didn’t do
it on my account, but you got me out of a beast of a hole, and――and I’m
mighty grateful. And you’ll get that money back just as soon as I get
home. I’ll tell dad the whole story and he’ll come across, never fear.
Of course I’ll have to promise to keep inside my allowance after this,
but I guess I’m about ready to, anyhow. Last Monday I’d have promised
anything! And I’ll see ‘Jerry’ at once――――”
“There is no sense in doing that,” interrupted Ted. “There’s only four
more days of school and I don’t mind.”
“But you’re in wrong with faculty――――”
“Not very. ‘Jerry’ was awfully decent. Said my record was so good he
wouldn’t be hard on me. There’s no use in his owning up, is there,
George?”
“No, I don’t think there is,” answered George after a moment’s
consideration. “Ted’s taken your punishment and you’ve learned your
lesson――I hope.”
“I have,” agreed Hal, emphatically. “But it doesn’t seem fair to――to
Ted. He was done out of playing, and a lot of fellows think hardly of
him――――”
“Shucks,” said Ted, “I don’t mind. You fellows know how it was, and the
others will forget by next Fall. And we won. I’m satisfied.”
“We won,” said George, “because of what you did, Ted, and for no other
reason. I don’t see any way to give you credit for it without getting
Hal into trouble, but there’s one thing I can do, and I’m going to do
it.”
“What?” asked Ted uneasily.
“See that you get your W.”
“Bully!” applauded Hal. “Only, do you think you really can? If Ted
didn’t play――――”
“Who says he didn’t?” demanded George. “He must have. It was his play
that won!”
THE GREAT PECK
Eight of us were in Pete Rankin’s room that night, all freshies and all
candidates for the ’21 football team, unless you except this fellow
Harold Peck that I’m telling you about. Jim Phelan had brought him
along, because, he said, he looked lonesome. Jim had planned to room
with a chap he had chummed with at Hollins, but he had failed in exams
and faculty had stung him with Peck. That’s one drawback to rooming
in the yard at Erskine: you can’t always choose your roommate. Peck
was sort of finely cut, with small, well-made features, dark hair
and eyes and a good deal of color in his face. And he was a swell
little dresser. Rather an attractive kid, on the whole, and maybe a
year younger than most of us there. He didn’t make much of a splash
that night, though, for he just sat quiet on Pete’s trunk and looked
interested and polite. Being polite was Peck’s specialty. I never knew
a chap with more different ways of thanking you or begging your pardon.
We were mostly Hollins or Enwright fellows, and we were there to get
the freshman football team started. Dave Walker, the Varsity captain,
dropped in for a few minutes and helped us out; and after he had gone
again we got to talking about our chances of turning out a good enough
eleven to beat the Robinson freshies, and who would play where, and one
thing and another, and presently Bob Saunders, who had played half for
Enwright last year, asked: “What have we got for quarterback material,
fellows?”
Trask, another Enwright chap, said: “Kingsley,” but no one enthused.
Tom Kingsley had been a second choice quarter on Trask’s team and had
been fairly punk, we Hollins crowd thought. Pete Rankin yawned and said
he guessed we’d find a couple of decent quarters all right, and Jim
Phelan said, sure, you can always catch a quarter when he was young and
train him.
“I think I’d like to try that job,” I said. “I guess it’s easier than
playing tackle. You don’t have to exert yourself. You just shove the
ball to someone else. It’s a cinch!”
“You’d make a swell little quarterback,” laughed Pete. “You’re just
built for it, Joe.”
“Well, I’m down to a hundred and eighty-one and a half――――”
“I don’t think I ever saw a crackerjack quarter,” Jim Phelan butted in,
“who wasn’t sort of small. Did you, Pete? Remember Warner, of two years
ago? He was my notion of a properly built lad for the quarter. Wasn’t
he a wonder?” Pete said yes, and “Toots” Hanscom, who will take either
end of any argument you can start, tried to prove Jim all wrong, and
then everyone took a hand. But Jim is stubborn, and he hung out for the
small kind. “Take a chap like――well, like Peck there. If he knows the
game he will play all around your heavy man or your tall one.”
Everyone turned to size Peck up, and he looked embarrassed, and Toots
sniffed and asked him his weight.
“About a hundred and forty-two, I think,” said Peck.
“Thought so. He’d have a swell chance, Jim, against those husky
Robinson freshies!”
“Sure he would,” answered Jim, stoutly. “I don’t say he’d be a marvel
at plugging the line, but I do say that if Peck was a football man a
good coach could take hold of him and make a rattling good quarter of
him. It isn’t beef that counts in a quarter, Toots. It’s brains and pep
and knowledge of football.”
“Piffle! Peck wouldn’t last five minutes!”
“Better induce Mr. Peck to come out,” suggested Monty Fellows. “Then we
can see who’s right.”
Jim started to hedge. “I didn’t say Peck was the man. I said a fellow
of his size and build. Peck isn’t a football player, and so it wouldn’t
prove anything if he tried it.”
“Haven’t you ever played at all, Mr. Peck?” asked Pete.
“Oh, yes, thanks,” replied Peck. “We had a rather good football team at
my school and I――er――I tried for it year before last. But, of course, I
was pretty light, you see――――”
“You could soon beef up, I’d say,” said Pete. “Maybe you’d have better
luck this time. Had you thought of it?”
“Why――why, I did mention it to Phelan, but he thought I’d better wait
until I was a bit heavier――――”
Everyone laughed at Jim then, and Jim tried to explain that he hadn’t
thought of Peck as a quarter. “Just the same,” he said stoutly, “I wish
he would come out and try for the position. I’ll risk it! I’ll bet he
will make good! Come on, now, what price Peck?”
“Oh, really,” began Peck, “you mustn’t hope much of me, Phelan! You
see――――”
“That’s all right! You agree to try for the quarterback position and do
as you’re told and work hard and――――”
“And grow a few inches,” said Toots slyly.
“And I’ll guarantee that you’ll be third-string quarter or better by
the end of the season! What do you say?”
“Why, it’s very flattering,” answered Peck, looking around and smiling
deprecatingly. He had a nice smile, had Peck. “But I’d be awfully
afraid of disappointing you.”
“I’ll risk that,” said Jim. “You show up to-morrow at three-thirty,
then.”
Peck murmured something that sounded like consent and Jimmy Sortwell
asked: “Where is your home, Mr. Peck?”
“Winstead, Maryland.”
“Oh,” said Jimmy. “I asked because I wondered if you were any relation
to the Peck who played on the Elm Park High School team last year.”
“What is his first name, please?” asked Peck.
“I don’t know that I ever heard it. I never met him, but the team came
on from Chicago last December and played a post season game with one of
the Boston teams and licked the stuffing out of them. This fellow Peck
was quarter, and he was a wonder. Don’t you fellows remember reading
about him? Some of the papers in the East here made him All-Scholastic
quarter, and that’s going some, for they hate to name anyone west of
Albany!”
“Seems to me I remember something about a remarkable quarter on some
Western team that played around here last year,” agreed Pete. “Don’t
recall his name, though.”
“It was probably this fellow I’m telling of. He wasn’t much bigger than
you, either, Peck, I’d say. Perhaps a little heavier, eight or ten
pounds. He was a stunning player, though, a regular marvel. And that
sort of helps out your contention, Jim.”
“I don’t believe I have any relatives in the West,” said Peck. “Of
course, there might be some distant ones――――”
“Well, if you take after your namesake,” laughed Burton Alley, “we
won’t kick a mite!”
“Thanks,” said Peck, “but, of course, you mustn’t expect much of me.
There’s a great deal to learn about football.”
“Well, there’s more to it than croquet,” said Toots dryly, “but don’t
let that scare you. With Jim looking after you you ought to get along
fine!”
“Really, do you think so?” asked Peck, gratefully. “Thank you ever so
much!”
* * * * *
We had a whooping big freshman class that year and didn’t expect much
trouble in finding all the material we needed. But we had reckoned
without the war. A lot of fellows were so full of it that they couldn’t
see football. There was talk of introducing military training at
Erskine, too, and although that didn’t come until later, there was
a lot of excitement over it. Of course, we were all strong for the
military stuff, but some of us couldn’t see the necessity for making
the world safe for Democracy before we had knocked the tar out of the
Robinson freshmen. It was more than a week after college had started
when we finally got four full squads together. The Athletic Committee
assigned us a Graduate School chap named Goss as coach. He had played
tackle for Erskine three years before. We didn’t cheer for him much at
first, but he turned out fine. He wasn’t much on the up-to-the-minute
stuff, but he was a corking tactician and hard as nails when it came
to discipline. And he was so set on teaching the rudiments before the
frills that we were soon calling him “Old Rudy.”
Faculty held us down to a six-game schedule, which was a shame, for
we could have licked any team of our weight in New England. Besides,
the Varsity was all shot to pieces, because so many last year men had
enlisted, and was a sort of a joke, and we always took the crowds
away from her. We were really the big noise that Fall and should have
been allowed a decent schedule. Of course, every good team has its
troubles, and ours began after the Connellsville game. We beat her,
all right, but she laid up two of our best linesmen and proved that
neither Kingsley nor Walker was the right man for quarter. We had two
other candidates for the position in Ramsey and Peck. There wasn’t
much to choose between them, it looked; only Peck had a good press
agent and Ramsey hadn’t. Jim Phelan was still backing his roommate
strong. Toots Hanscom told us that Jim was coaching Peck for an hour
every evening. Said he dropped into their room in McLean one night and
found Jim holding the book on Harold and putting him through a regular
exam! Anyhow, Peck was certainly coming all the time, and when we met
the Taylor freshies the next Saturday he had his chance in the third
period. He got mixed a couple of times, but I couldn’t see any signs of
nervousness, and he surely made us hump ourselves. And he played his
position mighty well besides. Jim certainly had no kick coming against
his pupil, for Peck played good football that day, barring those two
mistakes in signals, and ended up in the last three or four minutes
with as pretty a forward pass to Trask as you’d want to see. Trask
didn’t quite make the goal line, though, and so we accepted our first
defeat, Taylor nosing out 12 to 11. But we’d played good ball, and we
knew it, and the school knew it. And you can bet that Taylor knew it,
too, for she was just about all in when the whistle sounded.
Peck got quite a lot of kind words that day, and Jim Phelan went around
saying “What did I tell you?” and making himself generally obnoxious.
But that didn’t win Peck the quarterback position, for Kingsley was
still the better man, especially when he was going well, and young
Peck went back to the second squad Monday, and Jim spoke darkly of
“bonehead coaches.” More trouble developed that week: Wednesday, I
think it was. Pete Rankin――I forgot to say that we’d elected him
captain without much opposition from the Enwright crowd――hurt his knee
in a scrimmage and had to lay off. And one or two other chaps went
wunky and so Townsend Tech didn’t have much trouble with us, three days
later. Kingsley started at quarter and Peck didn’t get a show until
the last of the third period. Then he played the same nice game he’d
played the week before and speeded us up so that we managed to score
our second touchdown. And, considering that we had six second- or
third-string fellows in the line-up by that time, that wasn’t so poor.
And 11 to 20 didn’t sound as bad as 7 to 20, either. So Peck got the
glad hand in the locker room afterwards and old Rudy stopped him on his
way to the showers and spoke kind words.
* * * * *
By that time the college was beginning to sit up and take notice of
Peck. Fellows asked where he’d played before, what school he’d come
from and so on. No one seemed to know, and when you asked Peck himself
he was sort of vague, and so blamed polite that you didn’t have the
crust to keep on asking. But I made out that he’d skipped around
between two or three schools down Maryland way, and I believed it
until two things came off simultaneously. The first was Peck’s sudden
“arrival” in football. It occurred the Thursday after the Townsend
fracas. Kingsley was suffering from shell shock by reason of having
been slammed around by big Sanford, the Townsend fullback, in the
third quarter, and old Rudy started Peck when the scrimmage began.
Well, I don’t know what had got into little Harold that day; or I
didn’t know then. Afterward I thought I had an inkling. Anyway, he
was a revelation. Pete Rankin said awedly that Peck was a composite
reincarnation of Eckersall and Daly. So far as I know, those two
old-timers are still alive and kicking, but you get Pete’s idea. He
meant that Peck was a peach of a quarter that day; and that goes double
with me. We went up against the Varsity scrubs, and they were a heavy,
scrappy bunch, even if they didn’t have much team play. Peck seemed
to sense just the sort of medicine that would do ’em the most good,
and he proceeded to dose it out to them right from the kick-off. He
used Saunders and Hanscom for play after play until we were down to
the scrub’s twenty-yard line, bringing Hanscom around from right end
and busting him through left tackle. He and Saunders were light and
quick, and they got the distance in three plays regularly. Then, down
on the twenty, he switched to his other backs, Fellows and Curtis,
and piled ’em through to the two yards. The scrubs pulled themselves
together then, and two tries failed and Peck gave the pass to Curtis
for an overhead heave to Saunders. But Bob was spilled in his tracks
and, with three to go and one down left, Peck faked a try at goal and
kited around his left end with the pigskin cuddled under his elbow and
slipped across the line near the corner very nicely.
Four minutes later we scored again. The scrub’s kick-off was short and
I wrapped myself around it and busted along for nearly twenty yards
and landed the ball on the forty. Then Saunders slipped up for the
first time and Peck tried a forward to Hanscom that grounded. Curtis
smashed through for four and then Peck took the law into his own hands
again and, faking a pass to Saunders, hid the ball until the scrubs
were coming through. Then he found his hole, slipped right through the
middle of the line, ducked and squirmed past the secondary defense and
raced off straight for the goal. And believe me, that kid could run!
The scrub quarter was the only man with any license to stop him, and
Peck fooled him near the thirty yards, and went right on and placed old
Mister Pigskin squarely between the posts.
I’d got sort of roughly handled by the big mutts when they stopped me
after I’d caught the kick-off and Old Rudy yanked me out, and so I
didn’t see any more of the scrimmage. But they said that Peck kept it
up right to the end, making another corking run from near the scrub’s
forty to her five, and handling the team like a veteran. Monty Fellows,
who could spill language that would gag you or me, said that Peck was
inspired and that he had “indubitably vindicated Phelan’s contention.”
I thought so, too, though not in just those words, and so when I ran
across Jim on the way to College Hall after dinner that evening I
started to hand him a few bouquets. But he only grunted and looked
peeved, and I eased up and asked: “What’s jangling your heart strings,
Jim? I should think you’d be pleased to see little Harold vindicating
your――er――whatyoucallems.” He sometimes called him Harold to annoy Jim.
“You would, eh?” growled Jim.
“Sure I would! Haven’t you toiled with the kid all Fall and taught him
all he knows and everything?”
“I thought so,” said Jim significantly.
“What do you mean, thought so? Who else is responsible? Of course, I’m
not saying Peck wouldn’t have learned football after a fashion even if
you hadn’t――――”
Jim laughed harshly, like a villain in a play. “Say, Joe, you do a lot
of talking with your mouth sometimes, but maybe you can keep a secret.
Can you?”
“Secrecy’s my middle name. Shoot!”
And after a minute Jim shot. “He fooled me, all right,” he began
ruefully. “I thought he was as green as grass and even when he’d learn
a thing too blamed quick to be natural I didn’t suspect. I said, ‘It’s
just natural football instinct he’s got. You can’t explain it any other
way.’ Wasn’t I the bonehead?”
“Sure! But what――――”
“Listen. This morning I wanted a collar stud. Mine had rolled under the
bed or somewhere and it was late. So I pulled open Harold’s top drawer.
I knew he had a little fancy-colored box there where he kept studs and
things and as he had gone to breakfast I thought I’d just help myself
to one. What do you suppose was the first thing I saw when I lifted the
lid?”
“Great big snake?”
“Cut the comedy! One of these little gold footballs you wear on your
watch chain!”
“Well?” I asked, not catching the idea.
“There was engraving on it and I read what it said. ‘E. P. H. S.,
1917,’ Joe! What do you know about that?”
“Still I don’t get you. What’s E. P. S. stand for?”
“E. P. H. S., you dummy! Elm Park High School! Don’t you remember
Sortwell telling about a fellow named Peck who’d played with Elm Park
and asking Harold if he was any relation?”
“Oh!” said I. “Now I savvy! But, look here, Jim, you don’t think
Harold’s this Elm Park star! Why, didn’t he say――――”
“No, he didn’t,” answered Jim sourly. “He was mighty careful not to.
He said maybe Peck was a distant relative or something. And he let me
teach him how to play quarterback! Must have had lots of good laughs at
me, eh? If I hadn’t been an utter idiot I’d have tumbled to the truth
long ago. Why, no one could pick up the game the way he has! Look at
the way he played to-day! He fooled the whole bunch of us, anyway. I
wasn’t the only come-on. Only, why? What did he do it for?”
“Search me! But look here, what does he say? Has he fessed up?”
“He hasn’t said anything because I haven’t. How can I? Borrowing a
chum’s collar stud is all right, but when you run across something
you’re not supposed to know about you keep your mouth shut. If I told
him I was helping myself to a stud and happened to see that gold
football, what would he think? He’d think I’d been snooping, of course.
But I don’t need to ask him. It’s as plain as a pike-staff. That
football is one of those given to the members of last year’s victorious
Elm Park team. I looked up the record. They played eleven games and
won all but two. And Harold was quarterback and was a regular James
H. Dandy. And now you know why I’m a trifle peeved, Joe. Wouldn’t it
set you back some to find that you’d been teaching the fine points of
football to last season’s All-Scholastic quarterback?”
I said it would. Then I asked Jim what he was going to do about it and
he said glumly:
“I’m going to keep my mouth shut, and so are you. What he wants is
for us to find out we’ve been fooled, so he can have the laugh on us.
Nothing doing! If he wants to come out as the Great Peck he can do his
own announcing. Then I’ll tell him I knew it all along, and the laugh
will be on him, hang him!”
We chinned some more and then I left him. In a way, thought I, it was
sort of mean of Peck to put it over on Jim like that, but at the same
time it was funny, and I had to chuckle a bit now and then for the rest
of the evening. It was a shame not to tell the other fellows, too, but
Jim had made me promise to keep quiet and so I couldn’t. But I got some
fun out of it, for the next afternoon I overhauled Harold going over to
the field and I said to him:
“It’s funny, but you remind me an awful lot of that chap who played
quarter for Elm Park last year. You look a lot like him around the
eyes. And the lower part of his face, too. His name was the same as
yours, you know.”
“Really?” he asked, most polite. “Elm Park is out near Chicago, isn’t
it?”
“Yes, but the team came East last Fall for a post-season game. You
said you weren’t related to him, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think I said just that,” replied the fox. “I’d hardly dare to.
As a matter of fact, our family has relations in the West, although
I’ve never heard that any of them lived in Chicago.”
I didn’t want to give the snap away, so I shut up then, but I couldn’t
help admiring the way he carried it off. Never batted an eyelash! Some
boy, Harold!
* * * * *
They made him first choice quarter then and he was never headed all the
rest of the season, although Kingsley and Ramsey tried their hardest
to overhaul him, and he kept getting better and better right up to
the Robinson game, running the team for all that was in it and never
letting a game go by without pulling off a few fancy stunts on his own.
I could see that there was a coolness between him and Jim Phelan, but
it seemed to me that Peck was still unsuspecting that his secret was
discovered. So I guess he often wondered why Jim had stopped giving him
pointers and being chummy. Of course they were still friendly and all
that, but Jim couldn’t forget that Harold had put one over on him. And
so things stood when we faced the Robinson freshmen in the final game.
As the fellow said about the war, we had a good day for it: cold and
snappy, with almost no wind. Robinson brought over a big bunch of
rooters and a good many of our own old boys came up for the game. And
there was a sprinkling of khaki, too, for some of the grads were in
service; and even the Navy was represented by a Reserve lieutenant. He
was a corking looking chap, and when I ran across him just after lunch
he reminded me so much of Harold Peck that for a minute I thought it
was Harold got up that way for a joke. But he was bigger than Harold,
and a couple of years older, I guess, and when I’d had a second look at
him the resemblance wasn’t so strong. Still, it was there, and when he
stopped and asked me which was McLean Hall his voice sort of sounded
like Harold’s. Anyway, he was a corking, clever-looking lad, and I got
to wondering how one of those blue uniforms would look on yours truly.
I’m not going to bore you with the game in detail. It was some game,
but you’ve watched many better ones. Robinson got the jump on us at
the start and scored a goal from our twenty-eight yards. I guess we
had stage fright or something, for we sure played like a lot of kids
in that first period. Even Pete Rankin got temperamental and fell over
his own feet time and again, and young Peck tried hard to show how not
to play quarterback. But Robinson’s score was just what we needed, for
in the second period we pulled ourselves together and inched along for
the goal line and finally pushed Curtis over for a touchdown. We were
pretty well started on the way to a second when time was called for
the half. As Toots Hanscom had missed goal, the score was 6–3 when we
crawled back to the gym. We thought we’d done pretty well until Old
Rudy started at us. Then we realized that we weren’t much better than
a gang of Huns. He certainly did take the skin off! According to him
Robinson should never have scored and we should have had twenty-one
points tucked away. At that, he wasn’t so far wrong, for we had surely
pulled a lot of dub plays in that first fifteen minutes. Anyhow, when
he’d got through with us we were ready to go back and bite holes in the
Robbies!
* * * * *
The third quarter gave us another touchdown, and this time Toots booted
it over. But Robinson wasn’t dead yet, and she put a scare into us
when she sprang a new formation and began to circle our ends for six
and eight yards at a try. Pete was put out of it and Gannet, who took
his place, was pretty punk. We lost two or three other first-string
men in that third period, and so when Robinson worked down to our
fifteen-yard line we couldn’t stop her. We did smear her line attacks,
but she heaved a forward and got away with it, and kicked the goal
a minute later. That made the score 11 to 10, and the world didn’t
look so bright for us. And then, when the last quarter was about five
minutes old, Saunders, who was playing back with Peck, let a punt
go over his head and they had us with our heels to the wall. Curtis
punted on second down and the ball went crazy and slanted out at our
forty-yard line. Robinson tried her kicks again and came back slowly.
Pete Rankin put himself back in the game and that helped some. About
that time when the enemy was near our twenty-five, Peck got a kick on
the head and had to have time out. Old Rudy started Kingsley to warming
up on the side line, but Peck, although sort of groggy, insisted on
staying in, and Pete let him.
They edged along to our twenty and then struck a snag and that’s when
I stopped taking much interest in events, for I was the snag. When I
came around I was lying on a nice bank of hay, with every bone in my
head aching, and Prentiss was playing my position. So what happened
subsequently was seen by little Joe from afar. Robinson put another
field goal over and added three points to her score and we saw the game
going glimmering. There was still five minutes left, however, and an
optimist next to me on the hay pile said we could do it yet. I didn’t
think we could, but I liked to hear him rave.
The five minutes dwindled to four and then to three. We had the ball
in the middle of the field and were trying every play in our bag of
tricks. But our end runs didn’t get off, our forward passes were
spoiled and we were plainly up against it. Young Peck’s voice got
shriller and shriller and Pete’s hoarser and hoarser, and the rooters
were making noises like a lot of frogs. And then the timekeeper said
one minute and it looked as though there was nothing left but the
shouting.
We still had the pigskin and had crossed the center line two plays
back, and Pete and Peck were rubbing heads while the Robbies jeered.
Then something broke loose, and after I’d got a good look at it I saw
that it was Peck.
I don’t know how he got away, for it looked as if he had sort of pulled
a miracle, but there he was, dodging and streaking with the mob at
his heels and a quarter and a half laying for him up the field. The
optimist guy almost broke his hand off pounding my sore shoulder and
I let him pound, for the pain helped me yell. Pete and Trask trailed
along behind Peck and it was Pete who dished the waiting halfback.
After that Peck had a free field and it was only a question of his
staying on his feet, for you could see that the kid was all in. He
got to wobbling badly at about the fifteen yards and I thought sure
a Robinson chap had him, but the Robbie wasn’t much better off and
they finally went across, staggering, with Peck just out of reach, and
toppled over the line together. Then bedlam broke loose.
I must have forgotten my bum ankle, for the next thing I knew I was
down at the goal line with half the college, and the Naval Reserve
lieutenant had Peck’s head on his knees and was telling Tracy, the
trainer, what to do for him. Tracy sputtered indignantly and swashed
his sponge and Toots missed another goal and the game was over. The
crowd got some of the team but I was near the gate and made my getaway.
And so did Peck, thanks to the lieutenant chap, and we were halfway to
the gym before the fellows missed him. We fought them off then right
up to the gym door and dodged inside, and Peck, who was all right now
except for being short of breath, said: “Thanks, West. I want you to
know my brother.”
“Your brother!” I gasped. The Navy chap laughed and shook hands.
“And proud of it,” he said. “The kid played good ball for a fellow who
couldn’t make the team last year, didn’t he?”
“Couldn’t make――Say, what’s the idea?” I gibbered. “Didn’t he play
quarter for Elm Park?”
“Why, no,” said the Navy guy, “that was me! Harold never played any to
speak of until this fall. He tells me that a roommate of his taught him
about all he knows. I want to meet that fellow!”
“Oh!” said I, still sort of dazed. “Well, I guess he will be mighty
glad to meet you, too. You see, he got it into his head that your
brother was the great Peck, and――――”
“But I never told him anything like that!” exclaimed Harold. “Why,
I even pretended I’d never heard of you, Herb, for fear they might
think I was――well, trading on your reputation, don’t you see! I don’t
understand how Jim could have got that idea!”
“Oh, he gets crazy notions sometimes,” said I. “At that, though, he
wasn’t so far off, because if you’re not a Great Peck you’re a mighty
good eight quarts!”
Which wasn’t so poor for a fellow with half his teeth loose! Now was
it?
TERRY COMES THROUGH
“You’re up next, Slim,” said Captain Fosdick, leaning forward to speak
to Maple Park’s third baseman. “Get out there and let ’em think you’re
alive.” Whittier hoisted himself from the bench and leisurely viewed
the row of bats. Selecting two, he ambled out toward the plate. Guy
Fosdick, or “Fos” as he was generally called, turned again to Joe
Tait, frowning. Joe, a heavily-built, broad-shouldered boy of sixteen,
chuckled.
“It’s no use, Fos,” he said. “You can’t put pep into Slim.”
Fos’s frown melted into a smile. He was a good-looking chap at all
times, but when he smiled he “had it all over Apollo and Adonis and all
the rest of those Greek guys.” I am quoting Joe. Doubtless Fos’s smile
had a good deal to do with his immense popularity at Maple Park School,
a popularity that had aided him to various honors during his four years
there.
“Sometimes I think he does it to rile me,” said Fos. “The day they
had the explosion in the chemical laboratory Slim was out in front of
Main Hall, and still going, before any of the rest of us were through
the door! _Good boy, Archie!_” Browne had slammed a grounder between
Linton’s shortstop and second baseman and filled the bags. “Two gone,”
he said regretfully. “If Slim doesn’t do more than he’s been doing――――”
His voice trailed off into silence as he gave his attention to the
Linton High School pitcher.
“Did you see Wendell get down to third?” asked Joe admiringly. “That
kid can certainly run!”
“Terry Wendell? Yes, he can,” agreed the captain thoughtfully. “Put
Terry on base and he will get to third every time. He’s a fast one, all
right. But you’ve got to stop right there, Joe.”
“How do you mean, stop?”
“Terry never comes through. He gets just so far and stops. I don’t know
why. He got to first on an error, stole second nicely, reached third on
Archie’s hit and I’ll bet you a red apple he will die there.”
“Oh, come, Fos, you’re too hard on the kid. He’s a pretty fair fielder
and his hitting isn’t so rotten, and you say yourself that he’s fast on
the bases.”
“Until he gets to third,” responded Fos. “Maybe next year Terry will
make good, Joe, but he doesn’t deliver the goods yet. I’m sorry,
because he’s a friend of yours――――”
“We room together.”
“But I’ve got to let him go. He’s had a fair trial all Spring, Joe, and
the coach would have dropped him two weeks ago if I hadn’t put in my
oar. He’s a nice kid, and he’s promising; but promises won’t win from
Lacon two weeks from Saturday. If―――― What did I tell you?”
There was a chorus of triumph from the knot of Linton adherents behind
third as their right fielder pulled down Slim Whittier’s long fly, and
Captain Fosdick jumped up.
“But that wasn’t Terry’s fault,” protested Joe. “A fellow can’t score
on a third out!”
“I didn’t say it was ever his fault,” replied Fos, pulling on his
glove. “But it’s what always happens, Joe. He doesn’t come through.
Call it hard luck if you like, but that’s the way it is. All out on the
run, fellows!”
When the Linton center fielder had swung thrice at Morton’s delivery
without connecting Joe arose from the substitute’s bench and strode
off toward the track. He had no doubts as to the outcome of the game,
for with but three innings to play it was unlikely that the visitors
would overtake the home team’s lead of six runs, and he was due for a
half-hour’s work with the shot. But he felt sorry about Terry. Terry
was a nice kid and he was fond of him, and ever since he had known him,
which meant since last September, Terry had tried and failed at half
a dozen things. Terry had just failed of making the second football
eleven, had almost but not quite finished fourth in the four-forty
yards in the Fall Handicap Meet, had been beaten out by Walt Gordon
for cover-point position on the second hockey team, had been passed
over in the Debating Society election and now, just when, as Joe very
well knew, Terry was beginning to congratulate himself on having made
the school baseball team, Fate was about to deal him another blow. It
was really mighty tough luck, Joe growled to himself; and if Fos had
been anyone but Fos he would have suspected him of prejudice. But Terry
Wendell’s troubles were forgotten when Joe had thrown off his wrap
and had the twelve-pound shot cupped in his broad palm, and weren’t
remembered again until, just before six, he pushed open the door of 12
Munsing.
Terry was pretending to study, but Joe knew very well from the
discouraged look on his face that Fos had spoken and that Terry’s
thoughts were far from the book before him. He looked up at Joe’s
entry, murmured “Hello!” in a rather forlorn voice that tried hard to
be cheerful and bent his head again.
“How’d the game come out?” asked Joe, banging the door with unnecessary
violence.
“We won; twelve to eight.”
“Linton must have got a couple more runs over after I left,” said Joe.
“How did you get along?”
“Oh, pretty punk, thanks. I got one hit, rather a scratch, and was
forced out at third. I got as far as third again and Whittier flied to
the Linton right fielder and left me there.”
“Hard luck! How about your fielding?”
“Three chances and got them.” There was silence for a moment. Joe
nursed a foot on the window-seat and waited. At last: “I’m out of it,
Joe,” said Terry with a fine affectation of indifference. “Fosdick
told me after the game that they’d decided to get along without my
valuable services.”
Joe pretended surprise. Terry cut short his expressions of sympathy,
however. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I mean I ought to have known
how it would be. I didn’t, though. I thought I’d really made good at
something finally. I wrote home only last Sunday that I’d got on the
nine. Well, I can sit back now, can’t I? There isn’t anything left to
try for!”
“Pshaw, that’s no way to talk, Terry. There’s your track work,
remember. You’re pretty sure to get your chance with the
quarter-milers.”
“I’m going to quit that. I know what’ll happen. Either they’ll drop me
the day before the Dual Meet or I’ll trail in in fifth place.”
“Quit nothing!” said Joe disgustedly. “You’re going to stick, kid, if I
have to lug you out by the feet and larrup you around the track!” Terry
smiled faintly at the idea.
“You won’t have to, Joe. I was only talking. I’ll keep on with the
Track Team as long as they’ll have me. Maybe――――” He hesitated a moment
and then went on doubtfully. “Maybe I can get Cramer to try me in
the half, Joe. I have an idea I could run the half better than the
four-forty. Anyway, I’ll stick. And I’ll try my hardest. There――there
must be _something_ I can do!”
Terry Wendell was fifteen, a nice-looking, well-built boy, rather
slender but by no means frail, with frank brown eyes, somewhat unruly
hair of the same color and a healthy complexion. He had entered Maple
Park School the preceding Fall, making the upper middle class. He was
good at studies and was seldom in difficulties with the instructors in
spite of the time he consumed in the pursuit of athletic honors. Of
course entering the third year class had handicapped him somewhat and
his circle of friends and acquaintances was far smaller than if he had
joined the school as a junior, but he hadn’t done so badly, after all,
for Joe Tait had kindly taken him in hand and become a sort of social
sponsor for him. What friends Terry had were firm ones and, had he but
known it, liked him none the less for the plucky way in which, having
been turned down in one sport, he bobbed up undismayed for another. But
Terry, not knowing that, suspected the fellows of secretly smiling at
his failures, and had become a little sensitive, a trifle inclined to
detect ridicule where none was meant. Which fact probably accounts for
the falling-out with Walt Gordon the next day.
It was Sunday, and as perfect a day as the Spring had given. May was
nearly over, the trees in the campus and on the long slope of Maple
Hill were fully clothed in fresh green and the bluest of blue skies
stretched overhead. Maple Hill, which rises back of the school, is
crowned by a great granite ledge, from which one commands a view of
many miles of smiling countryside. The Ledge is a favorite spot with
the students and its seamed and crumbling surface is marked in many
places with evidences of fires and, I regret to say, too often littered
with such unlovely objects as empty pickle bottles, cracker boxes and
the like. On this Sunday afternoon “Tolly” hailed the bottles with
joy and, having collected five of them, advanced to the farther edge
of the rock and hurled them gleefully far down into the tops of the
trees. Tolly’s real name was Warren Tolliver, and he was only fourteen,
and for the latter reason his performance with the pickle bottles was
viewed leniently by the other four boys. Tolly’s youthfulness gave him
privileges.
Ordinarily the party would have been a quartette; Joe, Terry, Hal
Merrill and Tolly; but to-day they had happened on Walt Gordon and
Walt had joined them. He was a heavily-built chap in appearance, but
when he was in track togs you saw that the heaviness was mostly solid
muscle and sinew. He was Maple Park’s crack miler and, beside, played
a rather decent game at center field on the nine. He was respected for
his athletic prowess, but beyond that was not very popular, for he
thought a bit too highly of Walt Gordon and too little of anyone else.
But none of his four companions really disliked him or had resented his
attaching himself to their party. When he cared to, Walt could be very
good company.
Stretched on the southern slope of the ledge, where sun and wind each
had its way with them, the five boys found little to say at first.
The climb had left them warm and a trifle out of breath. It was the
irrepressible Tolly who started the conversational ball rolling. “Know
something, fellows?” he demanded. Joe lazily denied any knowledge on
any subject and begged enlightenment. “Well,” continued Tolly, “when I
get through college――――”
“Ha!” grunted Hal. Tolly tossed a pebble at him and went on.
“When I get through college I’m coming back here and I’m going to build
one of those aerial railways from the roof of Main Hall to this place.
It’ll cost you fellows twenty-five cents apiece to get up here. No,
maybe I’ll make it twenty-five for the round-trip.”
“I’ll walk before I pay a quarter,” said Walt.
“You won’t be allowed to, because I’ll buy up the hill and put a barbed
wire fence around it. You’ll have to ride.”
“How are you going to run the thing, Tolly?” asked Joe. “Pull it up
yourself?”
“Electricity. There’ll be two cars. Wouldn’t it be fine?”
“You’ll let your friends ride free, won’t you?” Terry inquired.
“Yes, but I shan’t have any then. It’ll cost too much.”
“All that doesn’t cause me a flutter,” said Hal. “By the time Tolly’s
out of college I’ll be dead.”
“Don’t you believe it,” Joe chuckled. “It won’t take him two weeks to
get through college――if he once gets in. It’ll be a case of ‘Howdy do,
Mr. Tolliver. Goodby, Mr. Tolliver!’”
“Huh!” grunted Tolly. “That’s all you know about it, Joey. I can get in
any college I like, and――――”
“Yes, but suppose they found you?” said Hal.
“I’m getting letters every day from all the big ones: Harvard, Yale,
Princeton, Cornell――――”
“Vassar,” suggested Joe helpfully.
“That’s what comes of being a real ball-player,” concluded Tolly.
“Everyone wants you.”
A groan of derision arose. “A real ball-player!” said Hal. “You poor
fish, you never caught a ball but once in your life, and then you
couldn’t get out of its way!” Hal rolled over a little so that he could
see Terry. “You never heard about that, did you, Terry?” he asked.
“It was last Spring. Tolly was trying for the nine and the coach sort
of let him hang around and look after the bats and keep the water
bucket filled, you know. The only trouble was that he was so small
that fellows were always falling over him, and finally Murdock, who
was captain then, decided to get rid of him. But Tolly hid behind the
bucket and Murdock couldn’t find him, and one day we played Spencer
Hall and a fellow named Williams, the regular left fielder, was
sick, and another fellow got spiked or something and there was only
Tolly left. So Murdock called him and Tolly crawled out from under a
glove――――”
“Aw, dry up,” grumbled Tolly.
“And they put him out in center, just to fill up, you know. Of course
Murdock told him that if a fly came toward him to run like the dickens
and not try to worry it. And sure enough one of the Spencer Hall
fellows lit on a good one and sent it into left. Tolly was dreaming
away out there, or picking daisies or something: I forget: and all of a
sudden he heard a yell and here was that awful ball sailing right down
at him! It was a horrible moment in Tolly’s young life. He tried hard
to run away, but the pesky ball just followed him. If he ran back the
ball went after him. If he ran to the right the ball went that way too.
It was awful! Poor old Tolly nearly fainted. Center fielder was coming
hard for it, but it was a long hit――――”
“The longest ever made on the field!” interpolated Tolly proudly.
“And he couldn’t reach it. Tolly saw that there was no use trying to
escape, so finally he stood still, resolved to sell his life dearly,
and put up his hands to ward off the ball. Well, sir, Terry, that ball
went right against Tolly’s hands and Tolly gave a cry of fear and fell
down unconscious!”
“Is that so?” demanded Tolly indignantly. “Well, the ball stuck, didn’t
it? And I wasn’t so unconscious that I couldn’t jump up and peg to
shortstop, was I? _Huh!_”
“So after that,” concluded Hal, “as a sort of reward for accidentally
saving the game, they let him sit on the bench and called him a
substitute fielder.”
Terry joined in the laughter, and then, catching Tolly’s eyes on him,
stopped suddenly. There was something of apology in Tolly’s look and
Terry understood. It was Tolly who had profited by his failure. Tolly
would play right field after this. He was made certain of it the next
moment, for Walt Gordon remarked:
“Well, you’re all right now, Tolly. They can’t keep a good man down,
eh?”
“How’s that?” asked Hal, who was not a ball player, but performed on
the track, being one of the school’s best sprinters and no mean hand at
the hurdles.
Walt shot a questioning glance at Terry. “Don’t you know, Hal? Why,
Terry has decided to quit us,” answered Walt. “What’s next, Terry? The
Tennis Team?”
Terry flared instantly, quite as much to his own surprise as to theirs,
for he was not usually quick-tempered. “You mind your own business,
Walt,” he snapped. “I’ll attend to mine.”
Walt flushed. “Is that so?” he sneered. “Well, I’m just curious, that’s
all. There’s only the Tennis Club left, you know. Unless you go in for
chess.”
“Cut it out, Walt,” said Joe. “Let him alone.”
“Then tell him to let me alone. I didn’t say anything to make him jump
down my throat. Everyone here knows he’s had a whack at everything
there is and fallen down. If he doesn’t like to hear that he knows what
he can do. I’m ready to――――”
Terry leaped to his feet. “Then come on!” he cried, his eyes blazing.
“If you can do anything besides talk, prove it, you――you big――――”
“Shut up, Terry!” commanded Joe sternly. “And sit down. There isn’t
going to be any scrapping. You mustn’t fly off the handle like that.
And you, Walt, shouldn’t say such things. There’s no disgrace in
trying and failing as long as you don’t grouch about it. Terry’s plucky
to keep on trying, I think.”
“Of course he is,” agreed Tolly warmly. “You shut up, Walt.”
Walt shrugged disdainfully. “Oh, very well. Four against one――――”
“There’s one thing I haven’t fallen down at yet,” interrupted Terry,
still angry, “and that’s running, and――――”
“Also-running, you mean,” laughed Walt. “You’re the finest little
also-ran in the history of the school, Wendell!”
“Am I? Let me tell you something, Gordon. I’ll be running when you’ve
quit. If I’m an ‘also-ran,’ you’re a quitter. You quit last Fall
because Hyde had twenty yards on you in the next to the last lap. You
thought no one――――”
“That’s a lie! I turned my ankle on the board――――”
“Did you? Well, you walked well enough five minutes later. Look here,
I’ll bet you right now, anything you like, that I’ll win more points
than you when we meet Lacon!”
“Don’t be a chump, Terry,” begged Hal.
“Oh, piffle!” sneered Walt. “You won’t even be on the track!”
“That’s my lookout. Will you bet?”
“No, he won’t,” said Joe. “And that’ll be about all from both of you.
Now dry up. If I hear any more from either of you I’ll chuck you over
the ledge. Is this what you chaps call a peaceful Sunday afternoon?”
“All right, I will dry up,” replied Terry. “But he heard me. And I mean
what I said. And when the Dual Meet is over he will know it!”
The next afternoon Terry went across to the field the moment he had
finished his last recitation. Mr. Cramer――Sam to the older boys, but
“Coach” to the others――was busy with a bunch of hurdlers, amongst whom
was Hal, when Terry arrived, and he had to wait several minutes before
he was able to claim the trainer’s attention. Down at the farther end
of the oval Joe and a half-dozen others were moving about the pits,
while various white-clad forms jogged or sprinted around the track.
The Dual Meet with Lacon Academy, Maple Park’s dearest foe, was only a
little more than a fortnight distant and a late Spring had held back
the team’s development discouragingly. This Monday afternoon Coach
Cramer was in a hustling mood, and there was a hint of impatience in
his voice when he called the hurdlers back for the third start.
“Stop trying to beat the pistol!” he barked. “The next fellow who does
it will stay out. Now then, on your mark! _Set!_”
_Bang_ went the pistol and six slim, lithe figures hurled themselves
forward and went darting down the lanes. Hal began to gain at the
fourth hurdle――they were doing the 220-yards sticks――and at the finish
was running strong. Terry noticed that he held back between the last
barrier and the string and let Porter breeze past him into first place.
While the next squad were taking their places Terry addressed the
trainer.
“Mr. Cramer, don’t you think I might try the half, sir?” he asked.
“I’ve sort of got a hunch I can do better at a longer distance than the
four-forty.”
“Hello, Wendell. What’s that? The half? We don’t need you in the half,
my boy. You stick to the quarter. I guess that’s your distance, if you
have any. How are you feeling to-day?”
“Fine, sir.”
“All right. Jog a couple of laps and then try some starts. I’m going
to give you quarter-milers a trial at four.”
“Yes, sir: and about that half, Mr. Cramer. There wouldn’t be any harm
in my just trying it, would there? I mean later on, after the trial.”
“I don’t know.” The coach and trainer turned and looked Terry over
speculatively. “No, I guess not, if it’s going to please you. But take
it easy. Three minutes is fast enough. I’ll tell you now, though, that
it don’t do you any good, for we’ve got so many half-milers that we
can’t use them all.”
Terry managed to scrape past in fourth place in the four-forty trial,
beating out Connover and Dale, and felt rather proud until Mr. Cramer
dryly announced the winner’s time to have been 54⅗ seconds, which was
more than a second slower than it should have been. He wrapped himself
in his gaudy green-and-red dressing gown and went over to watch the
jumpers for awhile, and finally, when the field was nearly empty and
Pete, the grounds-keeper, was removing the standards, he walked over to
the start of the distances, wriggled out of his gown, limbered his legs
a minute and then went off, hugging the inside rim. He had to guess at
his speed. He knew from watching others that the eight-eighty was a
different race from the quarter and all the way round the first lap he
held himself back so that he might have some reserve for the finish.
But when he had put the turn behind him and entered the backstretch on
the second lap his lungs were protesting and his legs had lost their
spring. It was a pretty wobbly runner who at last crossed the finish,
and who was glad to sit down for a moment, his gown flung around his
shoulders. He was thankful that none of the few fellows remaining had
apparently noticed his journey along the homestretch. He went back
to the gymnasium rather discouraged, but a shower-bath perked him up
considerably, and after he had talked with Joe he felt still better.
For Joe pointed out that after having run in a quarter-mile trial he
had scarcely been in ideal condition to do himself justice in the
eight-eighty. Joe wasn’t especially sympathetic toward Terry’s ambition
to add the half-mile to his repertoire, but he was too good-natured to
throw cold water on it.
The next afternoon Terry divided his time――and, since he was no longer
essential to the nine, he had plenty of it――between the routine
prescribed by the coach and his self-training for the half. Perhaps
had Terry been viewed by Mr. Cramer a trifle more seriously he would
not have been allowed to risk overtraining, but the coach wasn’t
especially impressed with the boy’s efforts. Perhaps next year Terry
might find himself, and it was in that hope that the coach gave him
such encouragement as he did. Of course Terry didn’t go the full
half-mile on Tuesday, nor yet on Wednesday. He knew better than to do
that. What he did do was follow in a general way the instructions given
to the half-milers. He tried short sprints of thirty and forty yards
at top-speed, jogged a mile each day and at last, on Thursday, cut in
with the half-milers and ran the three-quarters with them――or, rather,
behind them――at a fairly good clip. He was trying hard to learn this
new distance, and it wasn’t easy. He knew fairly well how hard he could
go for the four-forty without running himself out, but twice around
the track, with eight corners to reckon instead of four, was a vastly
different proposition.
And yet, when Saturday came and he gave up seeing the Prentiss game for
the sake of running, he felt sure enough of himself to ask permission
to enter the trial with the regular half-milers. Mr. Cramer gave rather
impatient permission and Terry took his place in the second row and
tried to remain unconscious of the looks of surprise or amusement with
which his companions viewed him. Terry Wendell was in a fair way to
become rather a joke, it seemed. But Terry didn’t do so badly in the
trial, after all, for out of the field of twelve he finished seventh.
It was a poor seventh, to be sure, and he never learned his time,
but he thought that Mr. Cramer observed him a bit more tolerantly
afterwards, even if he had nothing to say to him. That race taught
Terry one thing, which was that the half-mile was not so long as he had
reckoned it. He had run too slow in the first lap. Another time, he
told himself, he would know better than to let the others get away from
him like that. He had finished the race with a lot of reserve which,
had he called on it before, might have put him in fourth place at least.
Relations between him and Walt Gordon were strained. Walt, secure in
the knowledge of his supremacy in the mile run, was not worried by
Terry’s new activity. Walt was pretty sure of handing over five points
to his school in the Dual, for Lacon was known to be weak in the
mile, and was equally sure that if Terry managed to secure the one
point that went with fourth place he would be doing more than anyone
expected of him. But Terry’s accusation to the effect that Walt had
quit in the Fall Meet held just enough truth to be unpleasant to the
latter youth, and his feelings in consequence were not very cordial
toward Terry. As to the incident mentioned, why, it didn’t amount to
much in Walt’s judgment, but, just the same, he preferred that fellows
shouldn’t suspect it. He _had_ turned his ankle in the third lap,
just as he had said, but there was no denying that had Hyde not had
a fifteen or twenty yard lead on him he would have finished the race
without untold agony. As it was, it wasn’t worth while. Everyone knew
that he was better than Hyde. And Walt hated to be beaten! He and Terry
didn’t speak to each other just now: didn’t even see each other if they
could help it: but Terry heard from Tolly that Walt was making amusing
remarks about the new half-miler: and it needed only that to make Terry
buckle down to track work harder than ever.
Tolly had covered himself with glory in the Prentiss game, getting two
hits off the visiting pitcher, which was one more than anyone else had
secured and two more than most. And he had fielded well, besides.
The fact that Prentiss had won the contest in a last fatal inning
didn’t detract from Tolly’s glory. Terry, though still hurt over being
dropped, was glad that Tolly had succeeded to his position, and said
so, and Tolly showed vast relief. “I was afraid you’d be sore at me,”
he explained. “I didn’t want you to think that I was trying to get you
out, Terry. Anyway, you’d have done just as well as I did if you’d been
in my place.” Terry wanted to think that, too, but he couldn’t quite do
it.
On Monday Mr. Cramer surprised him by saying: “I guess you’d better cut
out your sprints to-day, Wendell. You didn’t do so badly in the half
Saturday and I’ve half a mind to let you see what you can do. How did
you come through?”
“Fresh as a daisy, sir.”
“Well, go easy this afternoon. Jog a mile and do a short sprint at the
finish. If I were you I’d try for a shorter stride, my boy. It looks to
me as if you were straining a bit. There’s nothing in a long stride if
it doesn’t come natural.”
The next day, when work was over, the coach spoke again. “I’ll put you
down for the half, Wendell,” he said. “There’s no doubt about your
being a better middle-distance runner than a sprinter. And I’m not
sure that you’ve found your right line yet. Next Fall, if I were you,
I’d have a try at the mile. Maybe you can run them both. There’ll be
another trial about Friday, and if you show up well I’ll enter you for
the Dual.”
Terry went back to Munsing Hall with his heart beating high. He found
Hal Merrill and Phil Hyde there with Joe. Hyde was an upper middler, a
slim, dark-complexioned fellow with quiet manners. He and Hal roomed
together over in Warren. “Here’s another one,” said Hal as Terry
entered. “Want to go on a hike Sunday, Terry?”
“I guess so. Where?”
“Bald Mountain. We’re going to take grub along and make a fire. Phil’s
getting too fat and wants to reduce.”
“That’s a bully way of doing it,” Terry laughed, viewing Hyde’s lean
form. “Bald Mountain’s a good five miles.”
“And the last mile all uphill,” added Joe grimly. “I’m game, though.
Who else is going?”
“Guy Fosdick, I guess, and Tolly. We don’t want too many. Take that
alcohol stove of yours, Joe, will you? We’ll make some coffee on it. I
don’t mind frying steak on an open fire, but coffee’s something else
again.”
Presently Phil Hyde said to Terry: “I hear you’ve blossomed out as a
half-miler, Wendell.” Terry said “Yes” suspiciously and waited for the
inevitable joke. But Phil only remarked that he hoped Terry would beat
out some of those “one-lungers.”
“‘One-lungers’ is good,” approved Hal laughingly. “Some of those
fellows, like Lambert and Tilling, have about as much license to be
running in the half-mile as I’d have to――to throw the hammer!”
“Our chance of winning the Dual is about as big as a piece of cheese,”
growled Joe. “I was figuring this morning and all I can see with a
telescope is forty-four points. We can count on first and second in the
hundred-yards and in the mile, but I don’t see another first in sight;
unless it’s in the high hurdles.”
“Better not count on that either,” said Hal. “Munroe can beat me out
two times out of three. But what about your own stunt? Mean to say you
aren’t going to get a first in the shot-put.”
“I’m not counting on it,” replied Joe. “Cobb, of Lacon, has been doing
thirty-seven feet right along in practice, I hear.”
Hal whistled expressively, but Phil advised them not to believe all
they heard. “And don’t be too sure of second place in the mile, either,
Joe. Walt’s been doing a lot of talking about how poor our hated rival
is, but I’ve a hunch that some of their milers will give us a good
tussle. Of course, Walt’s sure of his five points, but I may be lucky
to get one instead of three. You can’t tell. Besides, they’ll enter
four or five men to our three, and that gives them the edge of the
start. Still, I guess we’ve got a show for the meet, Joe. If you can
see forty-four points to-day we can hustle around a week from Thursday
and round up a few more. Never say die, old dear!”
From Tuesday until Friday Terry lived in a condition of alternate hope
and despair. There were times when he felt that he was bound to fail
in the trial and times when he believed that he could make good. He
was still working at the quarter, but there was no disguising the fact
that at least three of his team-mates had made better progress in their
training than he had, and he felt very certain that his only chance of
representing Maple Park the following Thursday lay in qualifying with
the half-milers.
Mr. Cramer sent them away at a little after four that afternoon, a
round dozen in all, of whom no more than six could expect to be chosen
for competition against Lacon. After it was over, just two minutes and
eleven seconds later, Terry was surprised to think how easy it had
been. He had not made the mistake this time of holding back at the
start, but had pushed to third place at once and held it to the last
corner of the first lap. Then Howland set him back and he passed the
line running fourth. Stevens, setting the pace, yielded as they turned
into the backstretch and Terry was again in third place. A red-haired
senior named Wallace gave him a hard race along the straight, but Terry
beat him to the turn by a stride and hugged the rim as he came around
into the homestretch. By that time the field was strung out halfway
around and two of the competitors had fallen out. Howland had taken the
lead and was having it nip-and-tuck with Green. Terry followed a good
half-dozen yards behind. Stevens put a scare into him just short of
the finish, but Terry had something left and beat him across by a few
strides. The next morning Maple Park’s entries for the Dual Meet were
mailed to her rival and the name of Terry Wendell was amongst them.
There was no work for the track and field men on Saturday, and so Terry
and Joe sat together and saw the Lacon Academy Baseball Team go down
to defeat by the score of 6 to 5 in a ten-inning contest filled with
thrills. Starting out as a pitchers’ battle, it developed toward the
end into a fielding competition. Both sides took to hitting, but hardly
a hit got beyond the infield unless it was a high and safe fly, and
victory depended on perfect defense. It was, properly enough, Captain
Fosdick who broke the tie in the tenth. With one gone and a man on
first, Fos laid down a bunt that should have been converted into an
easy out. But Lacon’s taut nerves jangled badly and the third baseman,
trying for speed, pegged wide of first. The runner on first kept on
to third and then, with the ball speeding across to that bag, took a
long and desperate chance. He put his head down and scuttled for the
plate. Had the third baseman not been rattled by his previous misplay,
the runner’s chance would have been poor indeed, but the Lacon player,
surprised, doubtful, hesitated an instant too long and then had to
throw hurriedly. If the ball had reached the catcher below his waist he
might have sent the game into the eleventh inning, but he had to reach
for it, and before he could sweep it down on the runner that youth had
hooked a foot across the rubber and the baseball championship of the
year was Maple Park’s.
That victory cheered the school hugely and was accepted as a good
augury for the Meet. And it was reflected in the spirits of the five
boys who met in 12 Munsing at two the next day and, a few minutes later
clattered downstairs and started off on their picnic. Fos had failed
them at the last moment, and so the party was composed of Joe, Terry,
Hal, Tolly and Phil Hyde. Each one carried his portion of the provender
and cooking apparatus, Hal looking picturesque with a skillet flapping
over his hip. Tolly produced a chorus of contemptuous protest when he
wheeled his bicycle from concealment alongside the entrance of Munsing
and nonchalantly mounted it.
“This is a hike, you lazy beggar!” said Joe. “Get off that thing!”
But Tolly explained. He was a good explainer. “That’s all right for
you fellows, but I’m not up to ten miles to-day. Think of what I went
through yesterday, Joe! Winning a game like that one takes it out of
you!”
“You didn’t even get a hit!” jeered Hal.
“Hits aren’t everything,” answered Tolly loftily. “Someone has to do
the brain work. Besides, five miles _is_ a bit of a jaunt when the last
two are uphill, and we can take turns on the wheel. And we can strap a
lot of things on it, too, and not have to lug ’em.”
That sounded more reasonable and Tolly won. Later they were thankful
that he had, for Fate brought about circumstances that made that
bicycle a fortunate possession. They didn’t try for a record and
consumed nearly three hours in reaching the top of Bald Mountain. The
roads were good until they reached the little village of Pearson, at
the foot of the mountain, but from there they had rough going. The
wagon road which wound to the summit by devious ways was rutted and
rock-strewn and the last half of it was pretty steep. But they took
it easy and were on top before five and at half-past had their fire
going in the stone fire-place that some thoughtful persons had built
several years before. They still had three hours of daylight before
them, a cooling breeze swept past them from the southwest and they
were comfortably weary and as hungry as five bear cubs. Hal cooked
and Terry officiated at the coffee pot. After all they had to make
coffee over the fire, for, although Joe had faithfully brought along
his alcohol heater, he had made the lamentable mistake of forgetting
the alcohol! But the coffee tasted all right, even if it was muddy.
And the steak――well, when Tolly got his first taste of that steak he
just turned his eyes Heavenward and said “_Oh boy!_” in awed rapture.
There were baked potatoes, too, a bit solid in the middle and somewhat
charred outside but fine elsewhere, and toast――if you could wait for
it――and bananas and cakes of chocolate. Nothing marred the beatific
success of the jaunt up to the time that the fog arrived. It was Joe
who drew the attention of the others to the fact that the wide-flung
landscape below them was no longer visible. As a fog on Bald Mountain
is a damp and chilly affair, and as it is no particular aid to finding
one’s way down a road that twists like a grapevine, they decided to
make an early start.
They still had the sinking sun in their eyes when they began the
descent, but when they had dropped a few hundred feet the gray mist
was about them and, as the sun took that moment to disappear behind the
mountain, they found that they had to proceed slowly and cautiously.
It would be no difficult task to walk off the winding road and so get
down faster and more painfully than desired. Tolly, who had eaten
well but not wisely, had his wheel as well as himself to navigate and
was frequently heard regretting the fact that he had yielded to the
blandishments of the others and fetched it along! More than once the
party came to a pause while Joe, leading, gingerly sought the direction
of the erratic wagon road. The fog began to depress them and affected
even Tolly’s good-nature. Twilight deepened the gloom and called for an
increase of caution, and Joe had just finished an admonition to keep
well toward the mountain side of the road when the accident happened.
There was a sharp exclamation of dismay and then a crashing of the
bushes and low, stunted trees and silence. “What’s that?” called Joe
startledly. “Anyone hurt?”
“Someone went over!” cried Hal. “Terry, I think!”
“I’m here! Tolly?”
“Here! I think it was Phil. O Phil!” There was no answer. They called
again, creeping cautiously to the unguarded edge of the road. “I heard
someone stumble,” gasped Hal, “and then something that sounded like
‘_Gee!_’ and then――――”
“We’ve got to go down there,” said Joe. “I wish we had a flashlight.
Who’s got matches?”
They found him presently, thirty feet below, lodged against a small
boulder that projected from the steep face of the cliff. They could
get no reply to their anxious appeals, and when, by the light of many
matches that burned dimly in the heavy mist, they found the back of his
head wet with blood the explanation confronted them. Tolly went quite
to pieces and babbled incoherently, but the others, to their credit,
kept their heads in spite of their horror and fear. It was a hard task
to get him back to the road, but they did it at last, and then an
attempt was made to use the bicycle as an ambulance. But two trials
showed the impossibility of that, for the road was never meant for
bicycle traffic. To search for poles to make a litter of was out of the
question, for the trees were small, wind-twisted things and the gloom
was too deep for searching further. In the end it was Terry’s plan that
was adopted. The others were to carry Phil between them as best they
might and he would take the bicycle and get to Pearson as fast as he
could and bring the doctor back.
Terry is not likely to forget that ride down the side of Bald Mountain
even if he lives far beyond the allotted age of man. Once started there
was no actual stopping, since he discovered to his dismay that Tolly’s
wheel had no coaster brake. All he could do was hold back to the best
of his ability, try to keep away from the outer edge of the road and
trust to luck. Fortunately the fog thinned almost at once and the road
was dimly visible ahead. But rocks and ruts were not visible, at least
not in time for avoidance, and more than a dozen times Terry’s heart
jumped into his throat as he felt the wheel bound aside perilously
near the edge. After a minute or two the descent became more gradual
and the roadbed better and he threw discretion to the winds and went
tearing, bounding down, clinging to handlebars and saddle on a mad
coast. In spite of his danger, or perhaps because of it, there was
an exhilaration that made him forget for a moment or two the purpose
of his errand. But then a vision of Phil’s white face under the dim
light of flickering matches returned to him and he shuddered and
would have gone faster yet had that been possible. Then the mountain
road straightened out, the fog was gone, the wind ceased roaring past
his ears and making his eyes water and lights shone faintly through
the late twilight ahead. Short of the village he found his pedals
again and, save that his cap had left him far back, presented a fairly
reputable appearance as he brought up before the gate of the little
white house on which he had noted in the afternoon a doctor’s sign.
Fortunately the physician, a middle-aged and rather stodgy man, was
at home, and fortunately too his small automobile was standing in the
lane beside the house, its little engine chugging merrily, and in less
than four minutes Terry had leaned Tolly’s bicycle against the white
picket fence and was rattling and jouncing away into the early darkness
with Doctor Strang. Presently the little car was panting against the
increasing grade but still going well, dodging stones and obstacles,
and before it was forced to acknowledge defeat Joe, Hal and Tolly came
into sight through the darkness with Phil on their shoulders.
Then, with Phil on the back seat of the car and the boys hanging on
wherever they could, the automobile was somehow turned and sent racing
down the road again. Terry helped carry the still unconscious boy into
the doctor’s office and then stood by while an examination was made.
There was one long sigh of relief from all when the verdict was given.
Phil had had a pretty hard blow on the base of the brain, producing
unconsciousness, explained Doctor Strang, but there appeared to be no
fracture of the skull, and it was likely that a few days in bed would
bring him around where he could try more fool stunts like walking off
the side of a mountain! After that the doctor got efficiently busy
and ten minutes later Phil, conscious again, but pretty well bruised
and not inclined to talk, was back in the car and they set off for
Maple Park. It was nearly nine when they reached school and long after
midnight before sleep came to either Terry or Joe.
Phil was a sick looking boy when Terry came in to see him for a minute
the next afternoon in the infirmary, but he spoke hopefully of being
all right by Thursday and Terry went off to the field presently with
no premonition of what awaited him there. Lacon’s list of entries had
arrived and Mr. Cramer and Steve Cooper, the latter captain of the
Track Team and Maple Park’s all-around athlete, had looked it over and
gone into executive session. Lacon had six nominees for the mile run
against Maple Park’s three. Of course she might not start them all when
the time came, but if she did Maple Park was due for a hard time. Six
against three, with all the possibilities of pace-making, pocketing
and general team-work, was too great an odds, and coach and captain
did some tall thinking. If Hyde was able to run they might chance it,
but if he wasn’t they would have only Gordon and Pillon; two entries
against six!
“I don’t like it,” said Mr. Cramer. “It doesn’t look good, Cap. Whether
Hyde enters or doesn’t it’s safe to say that he won’t be much use to
us. I’m for filling up with two or three men to make it look like a
race, anyway. We can count on Gordon copping first or second place, but
we need more points than that. That Lacon bunch can kill off Pillon
easily. Look here, let’s start a couple of half-milers. They can’t do
any harm and they may worry Lacon a bit. If Howland makes the pace
half-way through it may upset Lacon’s calculations and let us edge in
for third place. Howland and Green and――I wonder about young Wendell,
Cap. The boy’s got a lot of grit and he will try anything you can show
him. And I’m not so sure he isn’t meant for a miler, anyway. At least
he might give those red-and-gray fellows a tussle. Sound fair?”
Cooper thought it did, and that’s why, when the day’s workouts were
over three surprised half-milers were trying to get used to the
knowledge that just three days later they were to “kill themselves”
in two laps of a mile run. Neither Howland nor Green showed much
enthusiasm at the prospect. There would be perhaps thirty minutes
between the races, but Howland didn’t think that he would have much
appetite for the mile after running the half, no matter how much rest
he got between whiles. And Green spoke to much the same effect. Of
the three only Terry was pleased. Terry was more than pleased. He was
supremely delighted. He didn’t imagine for a moment that he would
secure first place, or second, or third, but he had a sort of sneaking
idea that fourth place might not be beyond the possibilities, and when
he recalled that rash boast to Walt Gordon he realized that one point
might save him from utter disgrace. He had often wondered why on earth
he had ever issued such a crazy challenge as that! He had as much
chance of winning more points than Walt as――as he had of flying!
There was easy work on Tuesday and none at all on Wednesday, save
that certain of the team were sent on a walk into the country in the
afternoon. Terry was among them. So was Walt Gordon, still haughty
and contemptuous. Hyde was not. It was known now that Phil had been
dropped. He was still in bed and still plastered and bandaged. Maple
Park wasn’t thinking any too well of her chances of winning the Meet
just then. Terry was no longer down for the four-forty. In something
under three weeks he had developed from a quarter-miler into a
distance runner, which was, to use Tolly’s phrase, “going some!” As
the day of the Meet drew near Terry began to experience a mild form
of stage-fright, and there were moments when he almost, if not quite,
wished that he had been less ambitious and had only the four-forty to
win or fail in.
Thursday dawned with a drizzling rain. Before noon the sun came out
hotly, but the track was sodden and slow and the jumping-pits little
better than mud-holes. Lacon arrived, colorful and noisy, at twelve
and by two o’clock the athletic field was a busy scene. The small
grand-stand was crowded and spectators to the number of nearly a
thousand lined the rope outside the track. A tent which flew the
cardinal-and-gray of Lacon Academy had been set up as a dressing place
for the visitors and about it lolled or strolled a fine-looking band
of invaders. The trials in the 100-yards dash opened the event, while
pole-vaulters and jumpers began their leisurely competitions.
Maple Park showed up badly in the first events. Hal Merrill won her
only first in the sprints and got a second place in the high hurdles.
In the low hurdles he failed to qualify, getting a poor start and
not being able to make it up. The quarter-mile went to Lacon and she
took eight of the eleven points. In the field events, however, the
home team was showing up unexpectedly well and, when the half-mile
was called, the adversaries were running close as to scores. That
half-mile proved to be a pretty run. In spite of rumor, Lacon was not
so strong as feared, and Howland finished a good eight yards ahead of
the next runner, a Lacon youth. Terry got third place, to everyone’s
surprise, beating out a red-and-gray boy in the final twenty yards.
Terry got more applause from his schoolmates than Howland, I think,
and walked back to the gymnasium breathless but delighted. At last, he
told himself, he had really succeeded in something, and even if winning
third place and thereby adding two points to Maple Park’s score wasn’t
anything to gloat over it was highly satisfactory to him!
With all events save the mile run, the hammer throw and the pole vault
decided it was still anyone’s victory. Maple Park had 51 points and
Lacon 48. Then, while the milers were limbering up in front of the
grand-stand, word came of the hammer-throw and Lacon had taken six of
the eleven points and was now but two points behind. She had already
secured a first in the pole-vault and it was a question what of the
remaining places she would capture. It very suddenly dawned on the
spectators that the Meet hinged on the last event and that the victory
would likely go to the team winning the majority of points in the mile
run!
Perhaps it was as well for Terry’s peace of mind that he didn’t know
that, for he was feeling rather out of his element and extremely
doubtful as to the part he was to play. His instructions had been to
get up with Howland and Green and force the running as long as he
could, taking the lead from Howland, in case that runner secured it,
and making the pace a hot one to at least the end of the second lap.
But they had placed him in the second row of starters and well toward
the outer edge of the track and he foresaw difficulties in making
his way to the front. Gordon was almost directly ahead and Pillon
was second man from the pole in the first rank, with Howland rubbing
elbows with him. Then the word came to get set and an instant later
they were off, crowding in toward the board, jostling and scurrying.
But that didn’t last long. In a moment or two all had found their
places, a long-legged Lacon runner named Shores setting the pace. At
the turn Pillon went past Shores and Howland passed Pillon. Terry was
in fifth place, with Green just ahead. Walt Gordon was seventh man
and Mullins, the Lacon hope, was ninth. Once around the turn Howland
caused a ripple of surprise by drawing ahead at a killing pace. Shores
accepted the challenge and the leaders generally moved faster, but
neither Gordon nor Mullins altered their speed a mite. Terry moved into
fourth place and the field began to string out. Howland kept the lead
to the end of the lap and then weakened, and Terry, remembering
instructions, strove to get to the front. But Green was at his toes
and a Lacon runner had him effectually pocketed as they went into the
turn. Consequently it was Green who became pace-maker, and a hard pace
he set. One by one the tail-enders fell farther and farther away and
the contestants formed into two groups. At the half distance the order
was Green, Shores, Pillon, Terry, an unknown Lacon runner, Gordon and
Mullins. Well back trailed Howland and three Lacon men.
Green was soon finished as a pace-maker and in the back-stretch Shores
was again in front. As Green dropped back to Terry he gasped: “Get up
there, Wendell!” And Terry tried, but the Lacon unknown moved even and
held him at every attempt, and then came the turn and Terry gave it up.
The race was telling on him now and his legs were getting heavy and his
lungs hot. Into the homestretch they went, the crowd shouting wildly.
As they sped past the mark the brazen gong clanged, announcing the
beginning of the last lap, and at that instant Mullins dug his spikes
and edged himself forward. Past his team-mate he went, past Terry, past
Pillon, and took his place close behind Shores. From behind him Terry
heard the Lacon supporters shout their triumph. He wondered where Walt
was. Every instant he expected to see the blue-and-white runner edge
past him. But they made the turn and straightened out and still Gordon
held back. Terry grew frightened then. Shores and Mullins were gaining.
Pillon came back steadily as Terry dug harder and sought to overtake
the leaders. The unknown Lacon man――his name later turned out to have
been Geary, but at the time Terry had to hate him without being able
to put a name to him――crept up and past. Terry’s fleeting glimpse of
him showed him a runner nearly “all in” but making a desperate effort.
Terry took courage and set his pace by the unknown’s. And just then the
sound from across the oval took on a new note and something appeared at
Terry’s shoulder and slowly moved into sight and Terry, to his great
relief, saw that the something was Walt Gordon.
It was only when Walt had put a half-dozen yards between them and
leaned to the turn that Terry realized with sudden alarm that Walt
was in little better condition than the unknown who, just in front of
Terry, was wavering badly, his head sagging. Shores yielded the lead to
Mullins half-way around the turn and an instant later Terry passed the
unknown. He was running now with only a firm determination to finish.
It would have been the greatest joy in life to have staggered aside
and dropped full-length on the blurred expanse of sod at his feet. He
wasn’t even thinking of points or places. He only wanted to finish what
he had started, and he prayed silently and incoherently to be allowed
to keep his feet past that distant white mark.
Down at the finish were straining eyes and taut nerves, for the
pole-vault was over and Lacon had won first place and fourth and the
score now stood 61 to 60 in favor of Maple Park. As the runners made
the turn Maple Park’s supporters read defeat. Showing the pace, but
still looking strong, came Mullins with a good five yard lead over
Gordon, who was a scant yard ahead of Shores. Four or five paces
behind them was Pillon, about ready to quit, and Terry, scarcely less
willing. The unknown had disappeared. If Gordon had looked better Maple
Park would have found reason to hope, but he was already slipping.
For once his well-known ability to sprint at the finish was lacking.
Terry, looking across the last corner, saw Walt’s head fall back. Walt
recovered the next instant, but Terry understood. Pillon, too, was
giving up. There was nothing to it now but Lacon, and maybe the Meet
would go to the Cardinal-and-White! Terry’s distorted face writhed with
a scowl. If only he had somehow kept himself fresher! If only he could
cut down that distance! They were in the homestretch now and the finish
was in sight. There wasn’t time, even if he had the strength and lungs.
Pillon was no longer in sight to Terry now: only Shores, wobbling on
his long, spindly legs, Walt, losing at every stride, and Mullins,
ready to drop but still fighting. Still fighting! Why, two could play
at that game! After all, thought Terry, he was still there and his legs
were still working under him and his breath was still coming! Perhaps
if he tried desperately―――― There might be time――――.
Somehow he reached Shores, ran even with him for an instant and passed
him. Then Walt came back to him, slowly but surely. He was running in
a dream now, a dream filled with a great noise that seemed to come
from very far away, a dream that was a nightmare of leaden limbs and
aching lungs and tired body. He felt no triumph when he pulled up to
Walt, no exultation when he went past him. He hardly knew that he had
done so. His wavering gaze was fixed on the one last form between him
and the nearing goal. He knew now that he could never overtake it, but
he kept on, doggedly, fighting against exhaustion at every stride.
The great noise was louder in his ears but meant nothing to him. A
little distance away down that interminable gray path other forms were
stretched from rim to rim. When he got there he would be through. That
would be wonderful!
Something tried to get in his way and he weakly put out a hand as
though to push it aside, but some saving sense, or it may have been
utter weakness, prevented, and he let it fall again. He scraped slowly
past the obstacle, slowly because the obstacle appeared to be going his
way and hung at his elbow for what seemed long minutes, and staggered
on. Once his feet got sort of confused and he nearly fell, but he saved
himself. He had forgotten Mullins now, everything save his desire to
reach that goal, to finish what he had attempted, to come through! And
suddenly he was struggling weakly against arms that tried to hold him
back, panting, swaying.
“Let me alone!” he gasped. “Let me――finish!”
“You have finished, Terry!” said a voice that was very far away.
“You’ve won, you crazy kid!”
* * * * *
So that’s how Terry “came through” and how Maple Park School discovered
a new miler. Also how the Blue-and-White won the Dual Meet from Lacon,
for Walt Gordon staggered over in fourth place, making the final
figures 67 to 65. Walt was never quite the same after that, for his
self-esteem had had a pretty severe blow, and as a result he was much
more likeable. He must have been, else he and Terry would never have
roomed together the next year.
SPOOKS
Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., had solemnly pronounced anathema, malediction
and imprecation upon Talbot Cummings. He had put his whole heart and
soul into it and concentrated until his head felt funny. That had been
yesterday afternoon, just after dinner, and now, more than twenty-four
hours later, there was Cummings stalking untroubledly along the sloppy
walk in the direction of the library, for all the world as if Jonesie’s
passionate utterances had been benedictions and blessings. Gee, it was
enough to make a fellow doubt the efficacy of condemnation! Jonesie
flattened his somewhat button-like nose against the pane in order to
watch his enemy’s ascent of the library steps. It was February, and such
things as steps and walks were treacherous surfaces of glaring ice under
pools of water. But Cummings never even faltered, and Jonesie’s radiant
vision of his enemy prostrate with a number of broken limbs and all
sorts of mysterious internal injuries, to say nothing of outward
contusions, lacerations and abrasions, faded into thin air. A prey to
keen disappointment, his painfully oblique gaze unwavering, Jonesie
watched Cummings disappear and the big oak door closed behind him.
Disconsolately he sank back on the window-seat, rearranged his feet
on “Sparrow” Bowles’ treasured crimson silk cushion and again took up
his book. But although it was one of Kingston’s corkingest sea-yarns,
to-day it failed to hold Jonesie’s attention, and presently it was
face-down on that young gentleman’s stomach while his thoughts pursued
the hated Cummings.
Cummings, you must know, had dealt a frightful blow at Jonesie’s
dignity. Cummings might call it a joke, but its victim viewed it
rather as a dastardly attempt to disgrace him. It had started with a
perfectly excusable confusion of words on Jonesie’s part; and if blame
lay anywhere save on Cummings it lay on the English language, which
contained words that looked alike and meant differently.
Cummings, who roomed next door, had dropped in to borrow an eraser,
and while Jonesie, who didn’t possess such a thing, was obligingly
rummaging through the cherished treasures of the absent room-mate,
Cummings’s reptilian eye had fallen on a composition on which his host
had been engaged and which he had left on the table. Jonesie had next
heard a choking sound from the visitor and had then witnessed his
hurried departure, composition in hand. Surprised, Jonesie had made
outcry. Then, suspicious, nay, chilled with dire apprehension, he had
given chase. But a moment of delay had been his undoing. Below on the
steps, where, since it was a mild, thawing day, most of the inhabitants
of the dormitory were awaiting two o’clock recitations, Cummings was
already reading aloud Jonesie’s epochal essay. “‘The ancient Greeks,’”
gurgled the traitorous Cummings, “‘had a law forbidding a man to have
more than one wife.’” The reader’s voice broke, and Jonesie felt that
the tears were near his eyes. “‘This they called _monotony_!’”
“Well, what’s wrong with it?” Jonesie had demanded indignantly,
striving to recover the paper. And that, somehow, had increased the
hilarity. After that it was no use pretending that he had discovered
the mistake and was in the act of remedying it when Cummings had
entered, no use declaring, as a final desperate resort, that he had
purposely written it that way for fun. No one believed him, no one
even listened to him. Everyone just laughed and laughed! For a minute
Jonesie had laughed, too, but he couldn’t keep it up. And Cummings had
waved the beastly paper out of his reach and gurgled “‘This they called
_monotony_’” over and over, until Jonesie’s temper had fled and he had
kicked at Cummings’s shins and promised to get even if it took him a
million years! He had said other things, too, which we won’t set down
here. And his tormentor had simply laughed and choked and gurgled, and
fought him off weakly until, after awhile, a lucky grab had secured
the torn and wrinkled paper and Jonesie had fled back to his room with
it. Since then life had been a horrible nightmare. His appearance in
class rooms had been the signal for idiotic grins and whisperings. The
demure smiles of the instructors showed to what far distances the story
had spread. Dining hall was a torture chamber. “What was that law the
ancient Greeks had, Jonesie?” came to him across the table, or “Guess
I’ll try the apple sauce, Billy, just to vary the _monotony_.”
As I have said, the month was February, and February at prep school
corresponds to August in the larger world. It’s the “silly season.”
The weather is too utterly “punk” for outdoor life. Detestable thaws
ruin sledding, skating and skiing. It is still too early for Spring
sports. Even mid-year examinations are things of the past. Gray skies,
frequent rains, rotten ice, slush and mud: that’s February. Studying
wearies, reading palls, one tires of everything. Room-mates who have
lived together in harmony for months throw hair-brushes at each other
and don’t speak for days at a time. It is, in brief, a deadly dull,
wearisome season, a season in which the healthy boy welcomes anything
that promises to enliven his pallid existence, when mischief finds its
innings and when the weakest, sorriest joke is hailed as roaring farce.
At almost any other time the jest on Jonesie would have been laughed at
good-naturedly and forgotten the next day, but now it was a thing to be
treasured and acclaimed, nourished and perpetuated. Jonesie knew that
until baseball practice started, or――or one of the school dormitories
burned to the ground or something equally interesting happened, he
would not hear the end of that putrid joke, and that if he had ever
been uncertain of the correct meaning of the word monotony that
uncertainty was gone!
Disturbed by such knowledge, he stirred fretfully and the book fell
to the floor and lay there unheeded while his thoughts engaged the
subject of curses. He had always understood that a curse if properly
formulated and delivered with earnestness and solemnity invariably did
the business. Only just before Christmas Recess he had read a corking
story in which a quite ordinary curse had worked wonders. He tried to
find flaws in the maledictions he had cast on Cummings but couldn’t.
As he recalled them they were perfectly regular, standard curses, and
he didn’t see why nothing had happened. Of course, it might be that
curses didn’t act right off quick. Or it might be――and Jonesie gave
a mental jump at the thought――that it was necessary to sort of help
the curse along. Maybe it wasn’t enough to just launch it: maybe you
were supposed to get behind and shove! In other words, if he wanted
ill-fortune in its most dreaded form to overwhelm the obnoxious
Cummings perhaps he had better set his mind at work and sort of――sort
of think of something! Not a bad idea at all! Besides, hadn’t he most
earnestly promised Cummings to get even with him? He had. Therefor――――.
Jonesie knit his troubled brow and half closed his innocent gray-blue
eyes and gave himself to the problem. There was no use in attempting
physical punishment, for Cummings was seventeen and Jonesie fourteen,
and Cummings was tall and broad and mighty and Jonesie was only what
his age warranted. No, what was needed, what was demanded was a revenge
that would hold Cummings up to public ridicule as Jonesie had been held
up and keep him suspended until the world tired of laughing. But just
how――――.
The door of the adjoining room banged shut and Jonesie knew that
Cummings had returned from the library. A second _bang_ proclaimed
books deposited on the table. He hoped Cummings had failed to get what
he wanted. One usually did at the school library. He heard his hated
neighbor draw his chair to the window and heard it creak under its
load. If only, thought Jonesie, it would give way instead of always
threatening to! Eying the door between the rooms that hid the enemy
from sight, Jonesie contemplated a fresh curse; something with more
“pep” than yesterday’s; less academic and more in the vernacular. But
that would necessitate arising, and he was very comfortable, and he
decided to give the original curse another twenty-four hours to deliver
the goods; meanwhile, of course, aiding and abetting said curse to the
best of his ability so soon as his cogitations should suggest――――.
The cogitations ceased and Jonesie, his gaze still on the communicating
door, slid noiselessly from the window-seat and tiptoed across the
room until he stood in front of it. Then, thrusting hands into pockets
to aid thought, he began a slow, close and minute study of it. It was
quite an ordinary door, placed there when the dormitory was built in
order, presumably, that the two rooms might be thrown together and used
as study and sleeping apartment. But Randall’s didn’t believe in too
great luxury, and you drew only one room and, if economical, shared it
with another fellow. Talbot Cummings didn’t share his, which to Jonesie
was most satisfactory. Jonesie whistled under his breath as his eager
eyes became acquainted with every niche and angle and knot and bit of
hardware before him. Of course the door was locked, and the key was
doubtless in safe keeping at the office, but besides being locked it
was secured by a bolt on each side; and some secretive former occupant
of Jonesie’s room had plugged up the keyhole with red sealing-wax. When
it did open it swung into the adjoining room, and, as the hinges were
on the inward side of the door, Jonesie was denied contemplation of
them. He was also denied contemplation of the knob for the excellent
reason that it was not there. He recalled having detached it but
couldn’t remember for what purpose. Not that it mattered, however, for
what is a knob between enemies?
At intervals Jonesie retired to the window-seat and scowled over his
problem. At intervals he arose hopefully and stared anew at the door.
Beyond it, unsuspecting of the malign influences at work, Cummings read
on in peace. The brief afternoon darkened to twilight. Across the yard
pale lemon-yellow pin-points of flame struggled above the entrances.
Below the door a thin line of radiance indicated that Cummings had
lighted up. But in Jonesie’s room darkness crept from the shadowed
corners until only the window remained visible, a grayish oblong in the
encompassing gloom. And presently the eerie silence was shattered by
the sound of a sinister chuckle.
Daniel Webster Jones, Jr., arose phenomenally early the next morning
and at eight o’clock, having attended chapel and eaten a hearty, if
hurried breakfast, might have been seen entering the popular hardware
emporium of Bliss & Benedict. At four minutes to nine, after a return
journey through unfrequented streets and alleys and an entrance to the
building by way of the furnace room door, he turned the key in the
lock of Number 14 and unburdened himself of numerous packages which he
thereupon secreted where they would be safe from the prying eyes of the
chamber-maid. After which he seized on certain books and hurried to a
nine o’clock recitation.
It cannot be truthfully said that he was a shining success in classrooms
that morning, although he managed somehow to “fake” through. His fresh,
cherubic countenance shone with the light of a high resolve and for the
first time in two days he faced the world with fearless eyes. Whispered
jibes fell from him harmlessly. Instructors, noting his innocence and
nobility, viewed him with a suspicion born of experience.
At ten-thirty Jonesie had a free half-hour. Returning to his dormitory
he glanced across to the second floor of Manning and was filled
with gratitude. For there, in the school infirmary, “Sparrow” Bowles
was interned with mumps. Three days ago Jonesie had deeply resented
his room-mate’s good fortune, charging the Fates with inexcusable
favoritism, but to-day he had no fault to find. Envy and all
uncharitableness had departed from him. Indeed, instead of begrudging
“Sparrow” his luck, he sincerely hoped that the malady would continue
for at least a week longer!
I now offer to your attention Talbot Cummings. Cummings was an Upper
Middler, a large, somewhat ungainly youth of seventeen addicted to
bookishness and boils. But in spite of much reading he was not a
learned nor brilliant youth, and in spite of the boils he had little of
Job’s patience. He thought rather well of himself, however, and prided
himself on a delicate wit which was really rather more blatant than
delicate. In spite of the fact that he avoided all forms of athletics
and abhorred physical exertion, he was well-built and, when free from
gauze and surgeon’s plaster, was rather comely. Upper class fellows
viewed him tolerantly and lower class boys pretended an admiration they
didn’t feel because he had an uncanny ability for finding their weak
spots and holding them up to ridicule. As has been said, Cummings lived
alone. In the matter of furnishings he affected artistic simplicity,
leaning toward fumed oak and brown leather. His study――he liked to
call it study rather than room――was supposed to express individuality.
The table was never littered. There was a very good-looking drop-light
with a near-Tiffany shade, three or four soberly-clad books, an
always-immaculate blotting-pad and a large bronze ink-well which, as
he invariably wrote with a fountain-pen, was more ornamental than
necessary. So much for the table. The dresser, instead of being the
repository for numerous photographs and miscellaneous toilet articles,
held a pair of silver-backed military brushes, a silver shoe-horn
and one large photograph in a silver frame. The bookcase was always
orderly. The window-seat adhered to the color scheme of brown and tan,
the tan necessitated by the wall paper, which was not of his choosing.
The cushions were of brown ooze leather or craftsman’s canvas. If I
have seemed to dwell overlong on the room and its furnishings it is for
a reason presently to be perceived.
At a few minutes after twelve that day Cummings threw open the door of
his study and paused amazed. Nothing was where it should have been. The
lovely near-Tiffany shade rested precariously atop a pile of pillows in
the middle of the floor. The drop-light dangled over the edge of the
table. The volumes in the bookcase leaned tipsily outward at various
angles. The silver-framed photograph smiled blithely from the top of
the radiator. And so it went. Everything was elaborately misplaced.
Cummings viewed and swallowed hard, doubled his fists and hammered at
the portal of Daniel Webster Jones, Jr. There was no reply and the door
proved to be locked. Bitterly, Cummings vowed that so his own door
should be hereafter! It took him a long time to restore order and he
narrowly escaped being late for dinner.
He failed to encounter Jonesie until four o’clock. Then they met in a
pool of water in front of Whipple and Cummings spoke his mind to an
amazed and uncomprehending audience. Cummings offered to accommodate
Jonesie in a number of ways, to wit: to break his head for him, to
kick him across the yard, to make his nose even stubbier than it was
and to report him to faculty. Jonesie closed with none of the offers.
Instead he viewed the irate Cummings with surprise and heard him
patiently, and in the end Cummings was assailed by doubts, although he
didn’t allow the fact to be known. Surely such an innocent countenance
and demeanor could not hide guile! Fearing that he might apologize to
Jonesie if he remained longer, he tore himself away, muttering a last
unconvincing threat.
Cummings slept that night, as always, with his door locked and a
chair-back tilted under the knob. (Once in his first year at Randall’s
there had been a midnight visitation attended by unpleasant and
degrading ceremonies.) In the morning he awoke to find that the pillows
had moved from the window-seat to the foot of the bed, doubtless
accounting for a certain half-sensed discomfort. Also that his
clothing, left neatly arranged over a chair, now lay scattered over the
floor. He arose in a murderous mood and tried the door. It was securely
locked, the key was in place and there was the guardian chair just as
he had left it. He cast unjustly suspicious looks at the eleven-inch
transom. It was closed as usual, nor could it be opened from without
in any case. He went to the window. Below was a sheer twelve feet of
straight brick wall. From his casement to the casement on either side
the distance was a good three yards. Then and not until then his gaze
fell on the communicating door and he said “Ha” triumphantly and seized
the knob. It came forth in his hands and he staggered half across
the room. When he had recovered himself he said “Huh!” But further
investigations left him still puzzled, for the stout bolt on his own
side of the door was shot into its socket and secured. Cummings went to
breakfast in a detached frame of mind that caused him to walk into Mr.
Mundy, the Hall Master, in the corridor, and, later, to say “yes” when
he meant to say “no.” As a result of the latter mistake “Puffin” Welch
seized on his second roll and devoured it before Cummings awoke to the
situation.
Thus, then, began the amazing series of depredatory visitations that
befell Talbot Cummings; or, rather, his study, for so long as he was
on hand nothing befell. All one morning he remained uncomfortably
concealed beneath the bed, thereby cutting four recitations and being
obliged to invent an unconvincing attack of toothache. And while he
lay there, inhaling dust, he heard Jonesie arrive gayly next door,
remain for a half-hour of song and depart lightsomely. It was while
he was describing that toothache to the Principal that vandalism again
occurred. When he returned, far from happy, he found that, in spite
of locked door and window, his near-Tiffany shade sat on the rug
surmounted by “Travels in Arctic Lands” and the bronze ink-well, the
latter, fortunately, empty. The silver-framed photograph lay on its
face and the contents of the lower dresser drawer, or most of them,
were lying about the floor. Cummings dropped into a chair, grabbed his
neatly-arranged hair in both hands and raged.
Like most persons who appreciate a joke on another, Cummings hated
ridicule when directed against himself. It was principally for this
reason that for three days he kept the matter quiet. A lesser reason
was that he didn’t like to believe that anyone was smarter than Talbot
Cummings and that he thought he could eventually outwit the perpetrator
of the dastardly deeds. His suspicions had long since returned
irrevocably to Jonesie. He recalled the incident of the composition and
Jonesie’s threats to get even. But there was no use charging that youth
again with the crime until he had proof, and proof was not forthcoming.
At first he suspected Jonesie of having a duplicate key to the
corridor door, but reflection told him that all the duplicate keys in
the world wouldn’t allow Jonesie or anyone else to enter the room and
retire without disturbing the key that was on the inside or the chair
that was under the knob. And after he had added a specially large and
heavy bolt he was still more certain that the vandal did not come in
that way. Neither did he enter by the window. He proved that by locking
it and finding it still locked after the bed-clothes had transferred
themselves to the window-seat. Nor was it possible that Jonesie came
in by the communicating door, for there was the undisturbed bolt, a
key-hole filled with sealing-wax and a piece of paper still reposing
between door and frame, just where Cummings had craftily placed it.
Cummings spent so much time trying to solve the mystery that studies
suffered and he was spoken to harshly more than once. The thing even
began to affect his appetite, and at last, when seven separate times he
had found his study turned topsy-turvy, he offered an armistice.
“Come in!” called Jonesie.
Entered Cummings, smiling knowingly, and seated himself with a fine
nonchalance. Jonesie, looking up from Latin, eyed him with disfavor.
“What you grinning about?” he demanded coldly.
Cummings winked and leered. “You win,” he announced cheerfully, and
managed a deprecatory laugh. Jonesie frowned darkly.
“Win what?”
“You know. I don’t know how you do it――That is, I’m not certain, but
I have an idea. Anyhow, it’s clever, Jonesie. You had me guessing at
first, all right. But I guess we’re quits now, eh?”
“Would you mind giving me a hint? I’ve got Latin and math to get and
there isn’t much time for conundrums, Cummings. If it’s one of the
‘What’s-the-difference-between’ kind, I never could guess those.”
“Oh, don’t keep it up. I tell you I give in, don’t I? What more do you
want?”
“Say, what are you gabbing about, anyway?” inquired Jonesie crossly.
“If you’ve got something on your mind come out with it.”
“You know plaguey well what I’m talking about,” replied Cummings,
losing his temper. “I came in here ready to call quits. If you won’t
have it, all right. Then I’ll go to Faculty. A joke’s a joke, but you
don’t need to keep it up forever!”
“Of course not; that’s what they call _monotony_,” Jonesie agreed
blandly. Cummings scowled.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you? Well, you won’t when you get hauled
up at the Office.”
“What for?”
“What for! For――for making a beastly pig-pen of my study! For upsetting
my things! You know what for!”
“Not _again_?” exclaimed Jonesie in shocked tones.
“Half a dozen times! More! I’m sick of it. A joke’s a joke――――”
“You said that before,” said the other, sweetly. “Now look here,
Cummings: you blamed me two or three days ago for ‘pieing’ your room. I
stood for that, but I’m not going to have you keep it up all――――”
“Then you quit――――”
“――The year. If――if you annoy me any more with――with your unjust
accusations I’ll go straight to Faculty. It――it’s getting _monotonous_.”
Cummings’s jaw fell and for a moment speech deserted him. At last:
“_You’ll_ go to Faculty! Ha, ha! Why, you――you little button-nosed――――”
“Never mind my nose. At least I keep it out of other fellows’ affairs!
I don’t――――”
“You keep it out of my study then! Just once more――――”
“Don’t be an ass, Cummings,” begged Jonesie. “How could I get into your
old study if the door’s locked? Use your bean.”
“I don’t _know_ how you do it! I wish I did! But you _do_ it! I’m sick
of it. And you’ll break something first thing you know! I――I ought to
knock the stuffing out of you, Jonesie, that’s what I ought to do. I’ve
stood mor’n most fellows would stand.”
“Try it and see what happens, old dear.”
“Oh, yes, you’d run to Faculty with it!”
“Like a shot,” agreed Jonesie.
“All right, two can do that. It’ll be probation for you just as
soon――――”
“That doesn’t frighten me. When a fellow’s conscience is clear――――”
“Yah!” Cummings made for the door. “We’ll see! Just wait!”
“Right-o! But, I say, Cummings. If you want to know what I think, I
think it’s spooks!”
Cummings slammed the door behind him and Jonesie looking past the
green-shaded drop-light, fixed his gaze on a recently acquired article
of adornment, a large, brightly-colored calendar, which hung on the
knobless door, and winked gravely.
“Funny about Cummings’s spooks, isn’t it?” observed Jonesie later to
Turner, of the Lower Middle.
“Haven’t heard,” replied Turner eagerly. “What is it?”
Jonesie seemed surprised at the other’s ignorance and enlightened it.
He really made a very interesting yarn of it and when he had finished
Turner was grinning from ear to ear. “Fine!” he chortled. “Oh, corking!
And, say, Jonesie.” Turner’s right eye closed slyly. “Of course _you_
know nothing about it, eh?”
“Me? Give you my word, Tom, I haven’t set foot in his room in weeks!
Besides, how could I? How could any fellow, with his door locked and
everything? It’s spooks, that’s what it is.”
Turner was Randall’s nearest approach to a town crier. If Jonesie
didn’t want the story to spread he shouldn’t have told Turner. It was
careless of him, for inside of two hours the mysterious happenings
in Talbot Cummings’s room were known all over the school. Cummings
attempted denial, but it was no use. Randall’s had found a new
sensation and refused to be deprived of it. Cummings had to tell his
story over and over, until he was sick and tired of it. It wouldn’t
have been so bad had it been accepted seriously, but it wasn’t.
His audiences invariably became hilarious and offered all sorts of
nonsensical advice, like putting sticky fly-paper on the floor,
erecting barbed-wire entanglements or ringing burglar-alarms. The
younger boys, long intimidated, fairly haunted Cummings and with solemn
countenances begged to be told about the spooks. His room became
a Mecca for the curious and he had no privacy. Cummings was most
unhappy, so unhappy that when he awoke the following morning and, in
spite of having laid awake and watchful until well after two, found
his counterpane abloom like a flower garden with his neckties, he
metaphorically threw up the sponge. Those ties had been neatly arranged
in the top drawer of his dresser, and the top drawer was now not only
tightly closed but the key was turned in the lock! It was too much! It
was――yes, sir, it was spooky! Cummings dressed hurriedly and tumbled
down to Mr. Mundy’s study and incoherently told his tale. Mr. Mundy
was young and a man of action. In four minutes he was at the scene of
the crime.
Ten minutes later he owned to defeat. He had found the window secured,
the door between the rooms showed that it had not been opened at least
in months by the accumulation of dust and lint in the interstices, the
transom was impossible and Cummings had shown him how the corridor door
had been fastened: lock turned and key left cross-wise, bolt shot and
engaged, chair wedged under knob. Mr. Mundy frowned and shook his head.
There was just one explanation. He offered it kindly. “What you’ve been
doing, my boy, is walking in your sleep. Maybe you don’t get enough
exercise during the day. Then sleeping with everything shut up like
this――――”
“But I don’t walk in my sleep in the daytime, do I?” asked Cummings
wildly. Mr. Mundy looked blank.
“N-no, but are you――ahem――are you quite certain――――”
“Yes, sir,” declared Cummings bitterly. “It’s _worse_ in the daytime.”
“Hum. And he denies it utterly?”
“Yes, he does, but I know it’s him, Mr. Mundy!”
“_He_,” corrected the instructor from force of habit. “I’ll have a talk
with him. Stay here.”
Jonesie opened promptly, the picture of smiling innocence. And he
spoke _so_ convincingly! “Mr. Mundy, I really think you’d ought to do
something about him, sir,” he said concernedly. “He comes in here and
tells the strangest stories and accuses me of annoying him. He says I
go into his room and disarrange his things when he’s out. He even says
I do it when he’s in bed. He’s threatened to lick me, sir.” Cummings,
listening beyond the door, shook a fist helplessly. “You know that
isn’t right, sir,” pleaded Jonesie. “He says himself he locks the room
up tight. I ask you, sir, how I could get in there if I wanted to.”
“Quite so, Jones, quite so, but――ahem――hasn’t there been some
ill-feeling between you two recently?”
“Why, he came in here and swiped a composition of mine off the table
and read it to the fellows and had a laugh on me, but that was days
ago and I don’t care anything about it _now_, sir. If he’d just stop
having these――these hallucinations of his――――”
“Hallucinations, eh?” Mr. Mundy repressed a smile. “I wonder.” He
sauntered to the communicating door and studied it attentively. He
even lifted the large and brilliant calendar and looked behind it, and
Jonesie, watching politely and imperturbably, blinked twice. Then Mr.
Mundy gazed at the place where the knob should have been.
“Where’s the knob?”
“I don’t know, sir. It’s been gone a long while.”
“Hm.” The instructor seemed about to ask a second question, but changed
his mind. Instead, he threw his weight against the door. It didn’t even
creak. He turned to Jonesie.
“When was the last time you were in Cummings’s room?” he asked suddenly.
“About nine weeks ago, sir. It was before Christmas recess.”
“That’s the absolute truth, Jones?”
“Oh, yes, sir!” Jonesie looked slightly hurt.
“Very well. That’s all. If I were you I’d――ahem――I’d find that knob,
Jones. Or one like it.”
The door closed behind the instructor and Jonesie subsided in the
nearest chair, grinning like the famous Cheshire Cat.
Next door Mr. Mundy spoke firmly but kindly to Cummings. “If I were
you,” he said, “I’d go in for some sort of regular exercise besides
your gymnasium work. Be out of doors more, Cummings. You might take a
good long walk every day; three or four miles. Aren’t worrying about
anything, are you?”
“I’m worrying about having my room upset every time I turn my back,”
said the boy excitedly. “That’s what――――”
“Yes, yes,” soothed Mr. Mundy. “But I think if you’ll follow my advice
regarding the walks and being out of doors you’ll find that――ahem――your
worries will cease. About three miles to-day, to start with, eh? And
drop in this evening and tell me where you went and what you saw.” He
nodded encouragingly and departed.
Oddly enough, Cummings did just what Jonesie had done a minute before.
That is, he subsided into a chair. But he didn’t grin. He groaned.
“_Three miles!_” he muttered. “_Great Scott!_”
But he did them. He didn’t dare not to. And when he stumbled back, at
five, foot-sore and aching from the unaccustomed effort, he found his
study sickeningly confused. “It’s fine for _him_,” he thought bitterly.
“He knows I’m safe out of the way for an hour. Mundy makes me sick!”
Supper that evening was torture, for he was tired and discouraged to
start with and everyone he met asked about his spooks. He lost his
temper completely with Turner and that youth had the cheek to read him
a lecture on manners. He anticipated some satisfaction in reporting to
Mr. Mundy that his walk had not prevented the “pieing” of his study,
but the instructor told him that he mustn’t expect his prescription
to work so soon. “Keep on, Cummings,” he said cheerfully. “It’ll soon
tell. Try four miles to-morrow.”
But Cummings was through. He climbed wearily upstairs and knocked at
Number 14. “When do you want to quit, Jonesie?” he asked humbly.
“I won’t pretend to ignorance of your meaning,” replied Jonesie
grandly. “I’ve been thinking about your case, Cummings, and I’ve
solved it.” Cummings moistened his lips but said nothing. “It’s your
conscience that’s at the bottom of all this, old man. I believe that if
you clear your conscience you’ll stop imagining things.”
“Imagining!” gasped Cummings.
Jonesie nodded. “You have something on your conscience, haven’t you?
You’ve done something you’re sorry for? Something you repent of,
Cummings?”
Cummings nodded, all fight gone. “I guess so,” he muttered. “I――I’m
sorry, Jonesie. I apologize.”
“For what?”
“You know. Reading that composition.”
“Oh! Why, I’d most forgotten that. So many things have happened since
to――to vary the _monotony_, Cummings. But it’s decent of you to
apologize, old man. And I accept it. I never hold grudges, Cummings.
That’s not my way. If I can’t show fellows somehow that they have made
a mistake, why, I forget it. So _that’s_ all right.”
“And――and it won’t happen again?” pleaded Cummings.
“Not if my theory is right, old dear, and I think it is. In fact I
almost think I can promise, Cummings, that it won’t happen again.”
It didn’t. Jonesie’s theory was vindicated.
Three days later “Sparrow” Bowles returned from the infirmary, and
one of the first things he did was to take exception to Jonesie’s
beautiful calendar. But if he hoped to start something he was
disappointed. “That’s all right,” said Jonesie, “take it down. I’m
through with it, anyway.” So “Sparrow” removed it, and, having done so,
regarded the door closely.
“Someone,” said “Sparrow,” “has been monkeying with this panel. Looks
to me like it had been out. That’s funny!”
Jonesie yawned. “Maybe the heat’s loosened it,” he suggested.
A few days later “Sparrow” observed: “Hello, I didn’t know you had one
of these electric torches.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, son,” said Jonesie; adding to himself:
“You don’t know what can be done with a fishing rod with a piece of
wire on the end of it, for one thing!”
THE QUITTER
They were revising the line-up for the final game of the season, that
with Fairfield, when Jack Groom entered: Coach Thornton, Payson Walsh,
manager; Larry Logan, quarterback; and Jim Walsh, left guard. Had
Tinker, the trainer, been on hand too, the Board of Football Strategy
of Staunton School would have been, with Jack’s advent, complete.
“Tink’s” absence, however, had been discounted: and the same was true
of Jack, for none of those in the coach’s study had expected the
captain to hobble all that half-mile between campus and village. There
were four simultaneous exclamations of surprise when he appeared in the
doorway.
“Oh, Doc says I’m out of it for good,” defended Jack. He lowered
himself into a chair, leaned his crutches alongside and scowled
malignantly at the bulky swathings of his right foot.
“Maybe, son, but you don’t want to have trouble with that ankle, even
if you can’t play,” said Mr. Thornton.
“I’ve got all winter to coddle it,” Jack growled. “Shove that footstool
over, Larry, will you? Well, what have you decided?”
“There wasn’t much to decide, Cap,” replied the coach. “With you out of
it――――”
“Preston or Morely.”
“Exactly. And it’s Preston, to my mind.” There was a suggestion of
challenge in Mr. Thornton’s voice. Jack glanced at the others. Logan
nodded, and so did Payson Walsh, but his brother remained non-committal.
“Ted Morely played a pretty snappy game to-day after I came out,”
suggested Jack.
“Oh, Morely’s all right,” agreed the coach, “but in my opinion
Preston’s a better man to start the game Saturday. We’ve got to get
the jump on Fairfield, Cap, and to do that we ought to start with the
best we have. Morely’s smart and fast and――and snappy, but I consider
Preston more dependable.”
“Sure,” said the manager. “Ted’s a quitter.”
Jack turned to him, but Jim Walsh was quicker. “Cut that, Pay,” he
growled. “You never saw Ted Morely quit in your life.”
“Well, you know what I mean,” his brother protested. “Maybe he isn’t a
quitter, exactly, but――he quits! Doesn’t he, now? Didn’t he lie down in
the Fielding game? Oh, I know he did something to his shoulder, but he
was all right the next morning. It couldn’t have been much. I like Ted,
but when it comes to picking a right half for Saturday――――”
“The trouble is that he’s always getting hurt,” said Logan.
“He’s all right now,” Jack said. “He has had punk luck, I’ll grant you,
but being laid up a couple of times hasn’t got anything to do with
Saturday. And you say yourselves that he played a snappy game to-day.”
“I don’t believe it matters an awful lot,” said the coach. “It isn’t
likely the chap who starts will finish, anyway. But you’re captain, and
if you say Morely――――”
“I’m not captain any longer,” returned Jack. “Larry had better take it
on, hadn’t he? As for using Ted, I haven’t anything to say. Only you’re
wrong about him. He’s played in hard luck, that’s all. I knew him back
home. He didn’t play football then, but he was always a mighty spunky
chap, and I never saw anything that looked like quitting. He is a bit
light, but he’s a fighter, and he can do more damage in a broken field
than anyone we have. I’ve heard fellows say, or intimate, just what Pay
said a minute ago; that Ted’s a quitter. It’s too bad, for it’s a rank
injustice, and I’d like to see him have a chance to prove it. But I’m
not going to insist on playing him. You’re running this show, Coach,
and after this minute I’m not going to have another word to say about
it. After this Larry’s captain. I’m out of it.”
“Field captain, of course,” said the coach. “You’re still the real
captain, Jack, and we want your advice and your help as much as ever.”
“Nothing doing!” Jack shook his head. “You won’t hear me open my mouth
again, Thornton. I’m off. Anyone going up?”
“I’ll go along, I guess,” said Jim Walsh. “You don’t need me any more,
do you, Coach?”
“No, I guess not. We don’t have to decide about Morely until the game
starts, anyway, Cap. If you still think――――”
“I’ve stopped thinking,” answered Jack, smiling, as he worked his
crutches under his arm and, aided by Jim, swung himself up. “Good-night,
everybody.”
“Hard luck,” said Payson Walsh as the departing couple passed down the
short brick walk to the street and went off through the rustling leaves
that lay thick on the sidewalk. “Poor Jack! I’ll bet he’s feeling
perfectly rotten.”
“I know he is,” said Larry Logan. “When Jack doesn’t laugh once in a
quarter of an hour――――” He shook his head eloquently.
“We’ll miss him Saturday,” mused the coach. “I don’t mean any reflection
on you, Logan.”
“I know. A team always feels lost without its captain. It’s going to
make a difference in our chances of winning, too. I still think we can
pull it out, but――we’ll have to work harder to do it.”
“Funny to have it happen in a game like to-day’s,” grumbled the
manager. “Why, it was the easiest game of the season!”
“You never can tell about that,” replied Logan. “You get hurt when you
least expect it. Remember two years ago when Tommy Winship broke his
arm in the gym? He didn’t fall three feet! Well――――” He stretched
and yawned widely. “Gee, I’m tired! It was too blamed hot to-day for
football.”
“Yes,” the coach agreed, absently. He was making meaningless marks on
the edge of the paper before him. After a moment: “I suppose it would
be a decent thing to please Jack under the circumstances and start
Morely instead of Preston,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t believe it
would matter much, anyway.”
“Pleasing Jack isn’t what we’re here for,” said Payson Walsh, frowning.
“We want to win a week from to-day, Coach. That’s our stunt. Ted
Morely’s a sort of protegé of Jack’s, and Jack thinks Ted’s been
misjudged, and he wants to give the chap a chance to prove it. He said
so himself. But we’re not staging the contest for Morely’s benefit. If
he’s got the reputation of being a quitter――and as a matter of fact
he has, as you know, Larry――it’s his own fault. It isn’t up to us to
worry. Preston’s the man for the job and I say, use him.”
The coach nodded. “You’re probably right,” he said.
Had Ted Morely known what was being said about him down in the village
he would not have sped his pen so calmly over the paper, but, as it
was, he was at peace with the world. He was writing of the afternoon’s
game at length and with, perhaps, unnecessary detail, for his father
and mother knew woefully little about football. Having reached the end
of the third page, he laid down his pen and read over his effort.
“It was rotten luck for Jack, and everyone’s awfully sorry for him.
They say he’s quite out of the Fairfield game. Isn’t that the limit?
I haven’t seen him since they lugged him off the field, but I guess
he’s beastly cut up about it. I took his place after he was hurt and
played all of the fourth quarter. You know I’ve been fighting Preston
all Fall, and now it looks like I’d won. Anyway, if Jack doesn’t play
Saturday I’m bound to get in sooner or later, for Fairfield plays a
stiff game and not many fellows last through. To-day we were 17 to
their 7 when I went in and Thornton ran in a lot of subs and we only
tried to hold the other fellow from scoring any more. You needn’t worry
about my shoulder because it’s just as good as it ever was. I wouldn’t
have said anything about it if it had been serious――――”
He scored that out heavily and wrote above it. “It was only a wrench
and nothing to bother about. I’ve been in mean luck this Fall about
getting bunged up. You remember I had tonsilitis when we played Camden
High and then there was the time I sort of fainted at practice one
day, but that was only something I’d eaten, the doctor said, and then
hurting that old shoulder took me out of the Fielding game. I’ll bet
you that if they let me play Saturday there won’t be anything the
matter with me, or if there is no one will know it! We want to win this
year pretty bad and the school’s made up its mind to do it, too. I
wish you could see some of the meetings we’ve been having. Talk about
enthusiasm, gee, no one’s got anything on us. Well, I’ll write again
after the game and you’ll know then how it comes out. If you want to
know before that you will find it in the Reading paper, I guess. Now I
must stop and go to bed. I’ve written a pretty long letter for me. Lots
of love to you both.”
He signed it “Your aff. son, Ted,” folded it away into the envelope,
wrote the address and leaned the letter against the drop-light so that
he would see it and remember to borrow a stamp from his room-mate and
post it the next morning. Then, with a comfortable yawn, he arose and
removed his jacket. In doing so he winced slightly, frowned and rubbed
his left shoulder a moment before he began to wind the old-fashioned
silver watch that had been his father’s and had descended to him on his
sixteenth birthday, nearly a year ago. When his room-mate came in Ted
was fast asleep and dreaming brave dreams.
Toward Jack Groom, Ted entertained an admiration that was closely
akin to hero worship. Jack was not quite two years older, but to Ted
he seemed more than that, and with liking went a respectful awe that
to-day, the Sunday following the next to the last game of the Staunton
schedule, kept Ted from doing what he really wanted to do, which was
cross the yard to Fenton Hall and call on the captain. He wanted to
let Jack know that he was horribly sorry about the accident and very
sympathetic, but he was very much afraid of being thought presumptuous:
only to himself Ted called it “fresh.” Ultimately he did go, but it
was because Milton, Jack’s room-mate, hailed him after dinner with: “O
Morely! Jack wants to see you. He’s over in the room. Run over now,
will you?”
Jack was propped up on the window-seat when Ted entered, his offending
foot pillowed before him. Ted’s condolences stumblingly uttered, Jack
came to the reason for the summons. “I can’t play Saturday, Ted,” he
announced, “and so I’ve dropped out of it entirely. Logan’s taken my
place. I haven’t any more say about things. I wanted you to know that
because it looks as if Preston would have the call over you. I think
Thornton will start him Saturday. I’m sorry, Ted. I think you could
play as good a game as Preston, maybe better, but Thornton thinks
you’re a bit light. Of course, you’ll get in before the game’s over.
You can’t help it, I guess. And, in any case, Thornton’ll see that
you get your letter. I just wanted you to understand that it isn’t my
doing, Ted.”
“Of course,” muttered the younger boy vaguely. “That’s all right, Jack.
I――Preston――――” He paused and swallowed. “I guess he’s better than I
am, Jack.”
“Piffle! Next year you’ll put it all over him. Don’t mind about
Saturday, old man. You’ve got another year yet.”
Which, reflected Ted, retracing his steps under the leafless maples,
was true but not very consoling at the moment. He wished he had not
written home with so much assurance. Still, if anything happened
to Preston early in the game――not that he wished Preston ill-luck,
of course. That would be pretty low-down. But accidents did happen!
However, he put that line of conjecture out of his mind presently and
strove to find comfort in the patriotic reflection that if Preston
was preferred by the coach it was with good reason and meant that
Staunton’s chances of winning would be bettered. And, after all, what
everyone wanted, Ted amongst them, was a victory over Fairfield. By
Monday afternoon he had learned to accept the disappointment with a
fair degree of philosophy.
The coach’s intentions were not apparent during practice, either that
day or on any other of the remaining work days. Ted and Preston were
used alternately at right half and no favoritism was discernible.
Preston, thought Ted, was worried and nervous. The fight for supremacy
was telling on him and Tuesday afternoon he called down the coaches’
condemnation by twice “gumming up” plays. Ted knew that he was thinking
too hard about Saturday’s contest to do justice to himself. As for Ted,
he had seldom played the position better. Certain that the struggle was
over, the consequent relief allowed him to put all his mind on his
game, with the result that he went at it in a hammer-and-tongs style
that was almost spectacular. He managed to forget very completely that
Saturday would find him on the bench instead of on the field, and got
a lot of joy and satisfaction from the moment. But after practice on
Tuesday he got to thinking about Preston, and when Fate arranged a
meeting on the gymnasium steps he yielded to an impulse. He and Preston
were always extremely polite to each other, formally friendly, as
became antagonists who thoroughly respected each other.
“I say, Preston,” began Ted, “I――there’s something you ought to know.
I heard it by――by accident, but I know it’s straight.” Preston looked
politely curious. “Thornton’s decided on you to start the game,”
blurted Ted. “I thought you’d like to know it. Now you won’t have
to――to worry, you see.”
“Why, thanks, Morely, but――you’re not stringing me, are you? Where did
you hear it?”
“I can’t tell you that, but it’s――official.”
“Oh! Well, but――it’s a bit tough on you, Morely. Maybe you’re wrong.
You’d better wait and see.”
“I don’t need to.” Ted smiled. “I know. I’m telling you so you can――can
buckle down to business, Preston. You see, I know what it is to have
the other fellow on your mind all the time! One of us had to lose out,
Preston, and it happens to be me. Thornton thinks I’m too light. I
dare say he’s right. Anyway, he’s the doctor, and as long as we beat
Fairfield I don’t mind. Much,” he added as a sop to Truth.
“Well, it’s mighty decent of you,” said Preston warmly. “You’ve
certainly given me a dandy scrap, and I don’t mind telling you that
you’ve had me worried pretty often. I hope you get your letter.”
“Thanks. Maybe I will. So long.”
The last practice was on Wednesday and was largely signal work,
although the kickers had a fairly stiff session later. On Thursday the
school marched over to the field and cheered and sang and the first
team substitutes went through a twenty-minute contest with the second
eleven. Ted didn’t see it, for he was sent back to the gymnasium
with the first squad, but he could hear the onlookers cheering the
disbanding second when the scrimmage was over. And a few minutes later,
while he was tying his shoe-laces, the marching, enthusiastic horde
grouped in front of the gymnasium entrance and cheered the players
individually, and the coaches and the trainer and everyone else. Ted
listened rather anxiously for his own name. It came presently. He was
somehow very glad of that. He would have felt horribly disappointed had
they left him out.
Fairfield descended on the scene in force Saturday noon and the Campus
and the village and the road between were gay with the flaunting blue
of the enemy. The day was an Indian summer day, still, warm and hazy in
the distances. Ted trotted with the rest to the field at a quarter to
two and went through the warming up stunts. Then he donned a blanket
and watched while the rival captains met in mid-field and a coin spun
glittering in the sunlight. Fairfield had won the toss and had elected
to give the ball to Staunton, thus upsetting Coach Thornton’s prophecy.
“All right now,” announced the latter. He referred to the little red
book he carried in a vest pocket. “Aikens, Breadwell, Boyd, Morris,
Walsh, Denton, Conley, Logan, Moore, Preston and Farnsworth. On the
run, fellows!”
Presently a whistle piped, the new brown pigskin arose high against
the blue sky and the final test of the long season’s work was begun.
The cheering had stilled on both sides of the field and some two
thousand pairs of eyes followed the long flight of the ball. Then
a Fairfield half-back had it and was dodging back up the gridiron.
Breadwell almost got him, but he slipped past. Then Larry Logan wrapped
two sturdy arms about the runner’s legs and brought him crashing to the
yellowed turf. Fairfield came hard then and Ted watched anxiously as
the Staunton line bent and buckled against the heavy assault. But the
line didn’t break much and presently the ball was in air again. Then
came the first trial of the Staunton wide-open attack, and a mighty
shout arose as Moore burst through outside right guard and reeled
past two white lines. Again Moore got through, and then the Fairfield
defense solved the play and shifted to meet it, and Farnsworth, faking
a kick and then plunging at the Fairfield left, was spilled behind his
line. A forward pass failed and again the ball flew through the air,
propelled by Farnsworth’s boot, and the teams raced down to the Blue’s
thirty-yard line. That quarter ended without anything approaching a
score, the honors even. But Thornton’s plan to “get the jump” on the
enemy and score in the first few minutes of play had failed.
The second period was a repetition of the first, save that Fairfield
had the ball once on Staunton’s twenty-two yards on a fourth down and
missed a goal from the field by a bare half-foot margin. Ted trotted
back to the gymnasium with the others and sat around in an atmosphere
of steam and liniment and excitement and listened to the babel of
voices. Jack was in uniform but had not joined the players for a
moment, and it was Larry Logan who fumed and implored and advised.
Coach Thornton looked confident and had little to say until just before
half-time was up. Then he made a quietly forceful appeal and, at the
end, called for a cheer. Thirty-two voices answered thunderously.
Fairfield scored two minutes after the third period started. The
kick-off was fumbled by Logan, and, although he fell on it, at his
eighteen yards, Fairfield blocked Farnsworth’s punt and an end broke
through and captured the trickling pigskin a foot behind the goal line.
Fairfield brought the ball out in triumph, and it was then that Ted
saw that one brown-legged player was stretched on the turf. “Tink” was
diving toward him with slopping bucket. Ted’s eyes sped from player
to player of his side. Only Preston was missing along the goal line!
Something pushed his heart into his throat, turned it over once and let
it slip slowly back again. He watched “Tink’s” sponge in fascination.
Then they were lifting Preston to his feet. For an instant it seemed
that he was as good as ever, but suddenly his head fell over sideways.
They were carrying him off now, bringing him to the bench. Someone
amongst the subs leaped forward with a blanket. The stand behind was
cheering bravely for “Preston! Preston! Preston!” Thornton met the
slowly-approaching group at the side line, looked, listened to a word
from Tinker and whirled on his heel.
“Morely! Get in there! Hurry up!” he called.
Ted squirmed from his sweater and raced. Panting, he slipped between
Breadwell and Moore under the cross-bar and waited. A hand waved
downward, the ball flew toward them, there was a moment of suspense and
a roar of relief arose from the Staunton stand. Fairfield had failed at
the goal. Six points to nothing was the score, and virtually half the
game remained to be played.
Larry Logan shot a dubious look at Ted as the latter fell into place
beside Moore when Fairfield had the ball again on her own thirty-four
yards. But he managed a cheerful: “All right, Ted! Let’s see what you
can do! Hard, now!”
But it was Fairfield’s policy to slow up now, and she halted in her
signals and wasted all the time she could without risking a penalty.
Staunton held gamely and then spoiled a forward pass and took the ball
on downs. The wide-open attack was still working, for Fairfield’s men
were a bit heavier and a bit slower and Logan was getting a lot of jump
into his plays. Ted got his chance and crashed through for a scant
three yards, got it again and was downed almost in his tracks by an
unguarded end. Then Moore slipped around right tackle and ran twelve
yards before he was forced over the side line. Staunton got to the
enemy’s twenty-three before she was held, and then Farnsworth tried a
place kick and missed the goal by five yards.
And so it went, Fairfield sparring for time, Staunton forcing the
playing, smashing desperately, running hard, aching to score. Changes
were made. Morris went out at center and young Joyce took his place.
Greenough came in for Breadwell. With three minutes of the quarter
left the ball was Staunton’s in mid-field. Loring had wasted a down
on a weird trick play that had lost four yards and now Farnsworth was
called on. It was the old fake kick and wide run, but it worked, just
as it so often does, and the big full-back galloped over three white
streaks before they stopped him. Then, with the line-up close to the
side of the field, Logan called on Ted. Moore crossed over in front of
him, Farnsworth ran with him. Larry hid the ball a moment and then, as
Ted rushed past, thumped it against his stomach. The Fairfield line
was wide open in the middle and Ted went through like a shot. After
that he had to spin and feint and dodge, but he kept going forward,
kept wresting himself from clutching hands, kept passing the lines
underfoot. The goal came closer and closer and for a wonderful moment
he thought he was going to make it. But the Fairfield quarter spoiled
that. He refused to believe in Ted’s move toward the side line and got
him firmly about the knees and wouldn’t be kicked loose. And then,
when Ted toppled to earth, clutching the ball frenziedly, a pursuing
end crashed down upon him and a million stars blazed before Ted’s
astonished eyes and he fainted.
When he came around, barely a half-minute later, they were pumping his
arms and he had to gasp with the pain of it. Then came Tinker and the
water pail and the big, dripping, smelly sponge, and Tinker’s anxious:
“Where’d they get you, boy?”
Ted did a lot of thinking in something under a second. Too often
already this season had he had to be led off the field. He dared
“Tink’s” searching eyes and gasped: “Nowhere ... Tink. I’m ... all
right!”
“You’re not! Don’t be telling lies.” Tinker’s crafty fingers went
exploring. Up one leg, down another, over the boy’s chest――Ted never
flinched. He smiled railingly.
“Let me up, you ninny,” he expostulated. “I’m all right. That fellow
knocked the breath out of me, that’s all.”
Tinker doubted and looked it. But he dropped the sponge back into the
pail and stood up. “Come on, then,” he commanded. “Let’s see.”
Ted raised himself with his right hand and sprang nimbly enough to
his feet, laughing. Tinker grunted, shot a suspicious look, saw no
evidences of injury and swooped down on his pail. “All right!” he said.
“Go to it!”
It was Moore who gained the next two yards and Moore who lost them
again. Farnsworth bucked through past guard for four. It was maddening
to be on the eleven yards with only one down left and six to go. Larry
hesitated and the enemy jeered. A forward pass was all that would
answer, and Staunton’s forwards had signally failed all the afternoon.
But what must be must be and Larry gave the signals. It was Farnsworth
who remonstrated. Larry listened to his whispers and looked doubtful
and finally shook his head. But shaking his head was only camouflage,
for the signals were changed. Ted’s heart leaped as he heard them.
Then the silence of the portentous instant before the impact, and the
signals repeated, and Ted taking the ball on a longish pass from Joyce
and springing away to the left, with Moore interfering. Then came the
frenzied cry of “_In! In!_” and, sure enough, as Moore went down, a
hole opened, and Ted, pivoting, turned toward the goal line. It was
only a few yards distant, but the Blue’s backs were flocking to its
defense and Ted was already in the midst of them. Arms settled at his
waist, but he tore away. Someone crashed into him from behind and he
was flung forward, his feet stumbling behind him. They got him then.
A hand brushed past his face and thumped down on his left shoulder and
Ted gasped and doubled up and went down, vainly, as it seemed, trying
to push the pigskin forward as the trampled turf leaped up to meet him.
And as he fell he found himself saying to himself in a darkness lurid
with whirling stars and meteors: “I won’t faint! I won’t faint!”
He didn’t, but he lay very still when they pulled the foe from him and
he had to be fairly lifted to his feet. And when he was on them he
could only lean against Farnsworth and whisper gaspingly: “Don’t let go
of me, please! Just a minute! Just a minute!” So Farnsworth, grinning
happily, for the ball was over the line by three inches, held him up
and no one paid much attention to the fact. Presently things stopped
whirling madly around in Ted’s world and he groped his way back to the
gridiron and dazedly watched while Farnsworth, after much cogitation
amidst a great silence, lifted the pigskin straight over the cross-bar!
The quarter ended a moment later and the teams changed places. Staunton
fought for time now, as Fairfield had done before, but went to no undue
lengths to secure it. She was a point to the good and would have been
satisfied had the game ended then and there, but she had also learned
the joy of battle and was willing to fight on. Fairfield came back
with a desperation that for the first few minutes lifted the home team
from her feet. But she rallied on her thirty and took the ball away by
a carefully measured two inches and started back again. She could not
afford to risk anything now and so it was a case of hit the line and
hold the ball. And she did hit it! Moore had to give up, but the eager
substitute who took his place made good. Farnsworth still pegged away,
as mighty as ever, although when play stopped for a moment he could
hardly stand up and Tinker was watching him frowningly from the side of
the field. Ted had more chances and played them through, gaining more
often than not. But he, too, was almost gone it seemed, and Larry was
considerate for what he had already done.
The shadows lengthened and the game drew to its end. Fairfield was
still cheering on the stands, still hopeful on the field. A misjudged
punt brought a groan of dismay from the Staunton adherents and gave
the enemy her opportunity to pull the game from the fire. It was
Stirling, the substitute left half, who erred, and of a sudden the
enemy was pounding at the Staunton gate. From the twenty-six yards to
the fifteen she fought her way in the four downs. There, unwisely,
perhaps, scorning a field goal, she raced against the clicking seconds
of the timekeeper’s watch and plunged on toward a touchdown. Two
yards――three――one――and there were but four to go, with Staunton digging
her cleats into the torn turf of the last defense.
The enemy staged a try-at-goal, but Staunton refused to believe in
it, and, as it was proved, rightly. For the ball went back to a half
instead of the kicker and he sped off toward the left and the line
broke and followed him. His run started near the twenty yards and he
ran in to the fifteen before he began to circle. By that time the
interference was solid about him and when he turned in it seemed
that sheer weight of numbers would carry the ball over. The Staunton
defenders went down battling gamely, the rush slowed but kept moving.
Somewhere in that mêlée was the runner with the precious ball hugged
tightly to his body. They were pushing past the ten-yard line now.
Cries of exhortation, of despair and of triumph arose above the
panting and gasping and the thud of bodies. To the eight yards――to the
seven――――.
[Illustration: SOMEWHERE IN THAT MÊLÉE WAS THE RUNNER WITH THE PRECIOUS
BALL]
A brown-legged player picked himself from the turf with distorted face
and plunged at the struggling mass. Somehow he penetrated it and was
swallowed from sight. And then, wonder of wonders, the forward movement
stopped, the mass swayed, gave before the desperate force of the
defenders and moved back. From somewhere a faint gasp of “_Down!_” was
heard. But already the whistle had blown.
The ball was found just past the six yards. Above it lay a grim-faced
Fairfield half-back and above him, one arm, the right, wrapped
tenaciously about his knees, lay Ted. And, although they had to fairly
pry that arm and its clutching fingers loose, Ted knew nothing about
it, for he had fainted again!
The home team rushed once, kicked out of danger and the game was over
and the crowds overflowed the field, Staunton cheering ecstatically
and wildly as she sought to capture her players. But Ted, over by
the bench, knew very little of that. He felt Tinker’s tenderly cruel
fingers exploring his left shoulder and he groaned. He didn’t mean
to, but he couldn’t help it. And he heard Thornton ask solicitously:
“Break, Tink?”
“Sure. Shoulder blade. A nice clean break, too. He did it when they
tackled him down near their goal that time. He wouldn’t let on and he
had me fooled till I noticed a few minutes ago that he wasn’t using his
left arm much!”
“Hm!” said the coach.
“And that ain’t all of it either,” continued the trainer, his fingers
still at work. “It feels to me like he’d had trouble there before.
There’s a sort of lump――All right, lad, I won’t hurt you any more.
You’re a plucky little divil! I’ll say that for you!”
And last of all Ted heard Jack Groom’s voice from a great distance:
“And that’s the fellow you said was a quitter!”
Then, following that beastly habit of his, Ted fainted again!
“PUFF”
Tom Burrill drew up in the shade at the side of the road, jumped from
the car with a wrench in his hand and, lifting the hood, began to
inspect the spark plugs.
He was a healthy, well-built, intelligent-looking boy of seventeen,
with a lean, sunburned face. Clear gray eyes, a straight nose, a mouth
that showed a sense of humor and a chin that indicated determination
were his most noticeable features. He was tall for his years and had
the look of one who spends much time out of doors.
The automobile deserves quite as full a description as its owner.
It was small, low hung and light in weight――more a cycle car than a
full-grown runabout――and was painted a bright red, all except the
wheels, which were painted black. Its name was “Puff.” There was no
doubt about the name, for it was conspicuously painted in black on the
gasoline tank behind the seat.
Tom’s father had proposed calling the car “_E Pluribus Unum_,” since
it was decidedly one out of many! Tom had built it himself; he had
got the parts at secondhand――here, there and anywhere. The small,
two-cylinder, twelve-horse-power engine that supplied the motive power
Tom had picked up for a song at a repair shop in Kingston. The body he
had built himself, and the engine hood he had had made at the local
stamping works. You would never have suspected that under the two coats
of brilliant red paint the hood was nothing more than a fair quality of
zinc!
The car was air-cooled and chain-driven, and when Tom drove it over
rough roads it rattled like half a dozen dish pans. But for all that it
could do its thirty miles an hour, and perhaps better were it permitted
to! Tom had spent most of his spare time that spring in building the
car; but he had had a great deal of pleasure, to say nothing of his
final triumph when he made his first trip through Kingston, to the
confusion of the scoffers who had predicted failure!
But Puff had its troubles, just as larger and more expensive cars have
theirs, and so far that summer much of its life had been spent in the
stable, undergoing repairs. If the truth were told, however, Tom got
almost as much pleasure out of Puff in the stable as he did out of Puff
on the road, for he was never happier than when he was tinkering with
machinery.
This morning he had overhauled the little car with more than ordinary
care, for he was to make the run to Bristol and back, a matter of
forty-eight miles all told. The trip was in the nature of a supreme
test of Puff’s endurance. All had gone well until Kingston lay two
miles behind. Then Puff had begun to skip and lose power, and Tom had
at last been forced to investigate.
The investigation, however, was not very successful; both spark plugs
were bright and appeared to be firing perfectly. With a puzzled shake
of his head, Tom replaced them and began to survey the wiring. It was
at this moment that a sound up the road toward home drew his attention.
He had barely time to raise his head and look before a huge touring car
raced past him in a cloud of dust.
Yet it did not travel so fast that Tom failed to identify the make. It
was a Spalding of the latest model――a big, six-cylinder car painted
battleship gray, with bright red wheels. In the big tonneau sat a
single passenger, a man in a light gray overcoat and a cloth cap. The
chauffeur was in brown livery. All this Tom saw before the car was lost
to sight round a bend in the road. It did not, he was sure, belong in
Kingston, for there was only one six-cylinder automobile in the town,
and that was a Wright. Probably the car belonged in Bristol, for the
Spalding factory was in that city. It was doubtless returning from a
trip to Kingston, he concluded.
He started his engine again and climbed back to the seat. Puff started
off well, and Tom was congratulating himself on having unwittingly
repaired the trouble, when again the engine began to miss fire. It
seemed very puzzling. His errand made it necessary for him to reach
Bristol before the bank closed at twelve, and so he did not dare to
spend too much time on the road. As long as Puff made its twenty miles
an hour――and it was doing that and more, as the small speedometer
showed――he decided that he would keep on. After he had delivered the
envelope that was in his pocket at the bank and thus done his father’s
errand, he would look for the trouble.
“If I can’t find it,” he said to himself with a smile, “maybe I’ll
drop round to the Spalding factory and exchange Puff for one of those
‘six-sixties’! Only,” he added half aloud as he swung round the turn,
“they’ll have to give me something to boot!”
The next instant he was staring ahead with interest. Beyond, drawn up
at the side of the road, stood the big car. The chauffeur was leaning
under the raised hood and the passenger was watching from the car. As
Tom approached he slowed Puff down a little. He would have been less
than human had he not experienced an instant of mild satisfaction. Puff
had cost him something like eighty dollars, whereas the big Spalding,
as Tom well knew, was priced at nearly four thousand dollars; and
certainly, as far as the quality of “get there” was concerned, the big
car was at that moment inferior to the little one.
As Tom approached, he noticed that the man in the gray overcoat looked
cross and irritated, and that the chauffeur was worried. It seemed
rather ridiculous for him to offer assistance, he reflected, but,
nevertheless, he stopped. “I don’t suppose I can be of any help, sir?”
he inquired.
The man in the car shook his head impatiently, with only a glance
toward him; but the chauffeur, casting a quick and wondering look over
the small car and wiping his hands upon a bunch of waste, replied
sarcastically, “Not unless you’ve got a spare cylinder.”
“What!” cried the man in the car. “Cylinder gone?”
“Piston’s broken, sir. Thought maybe it was only the valve was stuck or
something, but I guess it’s the piston, all right.”
“But jumping cats!” snapped the man in the gray coat. “You can’t mend a
broken piston rod!”
“No sir.”
“And she won’t run?”
“No, sir, not to speak of. She’s pushing the charge back into the
carburetor. We might limp along about ten miles an hour, Mr. Fletcher,
but I shouldn’t like to say that we’d not spoil another cylinder.”
“But I’ve got to get back by eleven! Can we get another car round here?”
“There’s a garage at Kingston, sir. Maybe――――”
“How far back is it?”
“A matter of three miles, I guess.”
“About two and a half,” Tom corrected.
The passenger looked at his watch and frowned impatiently.
“I suppose it would take half an hour to get it,” he said. “It’s 10.18
now and my train leaves at 11.04. There’s less than an hour, and I’ve
got to get that train to Chicago. Look here!” He swung round toward
Tom. “Will that thing you’ve got there run?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Tom a little coldly. He did not like to have Puff
called a “thing”!
“Will, eh?” snapped the man. “Well, there’s fifty dollars in it if
you’ll get me to Bristol in time for the 11.04 express. Can you do it?”
Tom shook his head. “No, sir. If it’s 10.18 now, there’s only forty-six
minutes and the distance is twenty-two miles. This car can do thirty on
good roads, but――――”
“Tut! tut! tut! Any car that can do thirty can do thirty-five if you
push it. I tell you I’ll give you fifty dollars if you get me there.
Isn’t that enough?”
“Plenty, thanks,” replied Tom quietly. “But I’m not running very well
to-day. Something wrong with my plugs, I guess; or maybe it’s the
wiring. Anyway――――”
But Mr. Fletcher was already climbing out of his car. “Dennis!” he said
sharply. “Bring some spare spark plugs!”
He was across the road in a second. “Get your plugs out,” he ordered
Tom, “and see if mine will fit. Get a move on, if you want to earn that
fifty.”
Tom hesitated for an instant. Then he said, “I’ll do the best I can,
sir.”
By the time the chauffeur had found the new plugs Tom had taken the old
ones out. Fortunately, the new ones fitted and the chauffeur quickly
screwed them in. As Tom connected the wires, Mr. Fletcher issued
directions to the chauffeur.
“Get my bag, Dennis. Put it between my feet here. You stay with the car
and I’ll send out and have you towed home. Put it in the shop and tell
Morrison to give you something to use while it’s being fixed. Meet the
4.10 to-morrow afternoon. All right, son! Now let’s see what you can
do.” He pulled his watch out again. “You’ve got forty-four minutes!”
Tom started the engine, sprang to the seat, threw in the clutch,
changed to high speed and bounded gayly off. The seat was narrow and
low, and Mr. Fletcher, who was of ordinary height and stockily built,
filled his half of it to overflowing.
“Most uncomfortable seat I was ever in!” he exclaimed. “What make of a
car is this, for goodness’ sake?”
“Burrill, two-twelve, Model A,” replied Tom gravely, clinging to the
wheel as the car swung round the next bend in the road.
“Never heard of it,” said the other. “Won’t it go any faster than this?”
The hand on the speedometer was hovering back and forth round thirty.
Tom drew the throttle down another notch and the hand went to
thirty-three. The new spark plugs had evidently done the work, for
there was never a skip now. Puff was running as smoothly as a Spalding
Six!
“That’s better!” grunted the passenger, holding on tight to keep from
being jounced out. “If the thing sticks together we may make it. How
much do they get for these things?”
“It cost me about eighty dollars,” answered Tom, tooting his horn
frantically as he saw a wagon ahead.
“Oh, second-hand, eh?”
“Most of it, sir. I made it myself.”
“Made it yourself!” There was both surprise and admiration in Mr.
Fletcher’s tone. “Well, you’re a mechanic, my boy. I’ll apologize for
any disparaging remarks I may have made. Sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
“That’s all right,” replied Tom, as he swung almost into the ditch to
get round the wagon, the driver of which was fast asleep on the seat.
“It isn’t much of a car, but it does pretty well. And I haven’t broken
any pistons yet!”
“Hum!” said Mr. Fletcher. “Well, send her along, son. If she’ll keep
this up we may make it. By Jove, we’ve got to make it! I wouldn’t miss
that appointment in Chicago for a thousand dollars! Let her out another
notch. You’ve got a straight road.”
But Tom shook his head. “I’d rather not. We can make it this way if
nothing happens.”
Mr. Fletcher grunted. The little car was going at its best speed; to
Tom, who was clutching the wheel with strained muscles and intently
watching the road ahead, it seemed to leap past the fences as if it
were alive.
“So you made this yourself?” Mr. Fletcher said presently. “Must have
been something of a job. I’ve made a few myself, but――――”
There was a sharp _crack_! Mr. Fletcher’s side of the car suddenly
sank, and he grabbed wildly at Tom in an effort to keep his balance. As
Tom set the emergency brake, the car swerved and came to a stop. Tom
leaped out and viewed the damage.
“Spring’s busted,” he reported. “I always thought they were too light.”
“Spring, eh? Well, she’ll run, won’t she?”
“Yes, sir, but it’s going to be uncomfortable, because the body’s right
down on the axle on your side.”
“H’m, I guess a little more discomfort won’t matter! Let’s get on,
let’s get on!”
They went on, with the speedometer wavering round thirty-three miles an
hour. Twice Tom had to slow down: once when the road dipped and turned
sharply under a railway bridge, and again when they passed through the
little village of West Adams. At intervals Mr. Fletcher, carefully
releasing his hold on the car, took out his watch and reported the time.
“Ten thirty-eight,” he said, as they speeded up again beyond West
Adams. “How much farther?”
“About twelve miles. We’ll do it if――――”
“We’ve got to do it!”
A few minutes later Mr. Fletcher sniffed the air. “She’s heating up,
isn’t she? Got water in your radiator?”
“No, sir; she’s air-cooled.”
“Smells like it!”
A long hill rose in front, and Tom pulled down his throttle another
notch or two. Puff took the hill flying, and Mr. Fletcher grunted in
unwilling admiration.
“Lots of power! What’s that?”
A dull pounding noise was coming from under the car.
“Flat tire,” said Tom. “We’ll have to run on the rim.”
“Ten forty-seven!” Mr. Fletcher announced. “Can we do it?”
“If she’ll hold together! It’s only about six miles, I think.”
“When you get this side of town, where the two roads branch at the
powder factory, take the right. It’s a poor road, but it’s a mile
shorter and goes straight to the station.”
_Bumpity-bump!_ went the body against the axle! _Thumpity-thump!_ went
the wheel with the flat tire. _Honk! honk!_ went the horn. The little
car tore along. Five minutes later the smoke pall above Bristol was in
sight. The road grew rougher and wagons began to dispute the way. At
the powder factory Tom swung to the right on a road that was rutted by
heavy teaming.
“Just fifty-seven!” shouted Mr. Fletcher above the noise.
Tom nodded. Ahead of them the city, with its tall chimneys belching
smoke, was now in plain sight. Puff jumped and careened, but kept its
pace. Three miles more and seven minutes left!
Suddenly an exclamation of dismay from his companion sent Tom’s gaze
traveling far up the road. A quarter of a mile ahead a drawbridge
spanned a river, and approaching it from downstream was a tugboat. Even
as Tom looked little puffs of gray steam rose from the tug, and an
instant later the whistle blasts from it reached him. She was signaling
for the draw; the tender already had begun to swing the gates.
“That settles it!” groaned Mr. Fletcher.
Tom calculated the distance, pulled down the throttle, and Puff sprang
madly forward.
“Reach past me and blow the horn!” Tom gasped.
Mr. Fletcher obeyed. _Honk! honk! honk!_ shrieked the little car. The
bridge tender had closed one of the two gates on the farther side and
was hurrying toward the other. _Honk! honk! honk!_ Then he heard,
paused, looked from car to tugboat and, raising a hand, warned them
back.
But Tom never hesitated. On rushed the car. The bridge was only a
hundred feet away now, and Mr. Fletcher shouting unintelligible words,
was working the horn madly. The bridge tender had half closed the
second gate, when he changed his mind and hastily swung it open. There
was a roar of planks under flying wheels, a swerve, the sound of a
rear hub glancing from the end of the closed gate, and they were over.
Behind them a wrathful tender shook his fist in the air!
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE TENDER HAD HALF CLOSED THE SECOND GATE]
“Three minutes past!” gasped Mr. Fletcher.
But the station was in sight, beside the platform stood the long
express. Still honking wildly, Puff dashed through the slow-moving
traffic and pulled up with a jerk at the platform. Waving at the
engineer, Mr. Fletcher tumbled out.
“Bag!” he cried.
Tom pushed it across with one foot.
“Thanks! I’ll have to send――that fifty. What’s――the name?”
“Tom Burrill, sir, but I don’t want any money.”
“All abo-o-oard!” called the conductor.
“Nonsense! Tom Burrill? Live in Kingston? You’ll hear from me――day or
two! By!”
Mr. Fletcher rushed away, and was half pushed up the steps of a parlor
car as the train moved off. Ten minutes later, at the bank, Tom put a
question to the man at the window:
“Is there a Mr. Fletcher who lives here in Bristol, sir?”
“Fletcher? Certainly. Mr. Henry L. Fletcher lives here.”
“And――and what does he do, please?”
“Do? Why, makes automobiles, of course! haven’t you ever heard of the
Spalding car?”
“Oh!” murmured Tom.
“Made right here in Bristol. A fine car, my boy.”
“Not bad,” replied Tom carelessly as he turned away. “Weak in the
cylinders, though.”
Four days later at breakfast Tom received a letter in an envelope that
bore the words, “Spalding Automobile Company, Bristol.”
The inclosure was brief. He read:
DEAR SIR: We are instructed by the President, Mr. Henry L.
Fletcher, to deliver to you or your order one of our Model 14
Runabouts, fully equipped. The car is here at your disposal.
Kindly call or send for it at your early convenience. Awaiting
your instructions, we remain,
Respectfully yours,
SPALDING AUTOMOBILE COMPANY,
per W. W. MORRISON, Manager.
“And what,” inquired Tom’s father a little later, “will you call this
new automobile of yours? E Pluribus Fletcher?”
Tom did not hesitate. “I guess,” said he loyally, “I’ll call it Puff
the Second.”
“PSYCHOLOGY STUFF”
Joe Talmadge came to Hollins from some fresh-water college out in
Wisconsin. Anyway, they called it a college, but Joe had hard work
getting into the upper middle class at Hollins, and Hollins is only a
prep school, so it seems that his college, which was called Eureka or
Excelsior or something like that, couldn’t have ranked with Yale or
Princeton. His father had died the spring before. He had been in the
lumber business in a place called Green Bay and had made a pile of
money, I guess. They had opened an office or agency or something in
Philadelphia a year or so before and when Mr. Talmadge died the other
men in the company decided that Joe was to finish getting an education
right away and take charge of the Philadelphia end of the business. It
was Joe’s idea to finish up somewhere in the East, because, as he said,
folks back East were different and he’d ought to learn their ways.
That’s how he came to duck his Excelsior place and come to Hollins.
The first time I saw him was the evening of the day before the Fall
term began. They’d made me proctor on the third floor of Hyde Hall and
after supper that night I was unpacking in number forty-three when I
heard a beast of a rumpus down the corridor and hiked out to see what
was doing. It seemed that they’d put Joe in thirty-seven with a fellow
named Prentice, who hails from Detroit. Prentice was all right except
that his dad had made money too quickly. He had invented a patent brake
lining or something for automobiles and everyone wanted it and he had
made a pile of money in about six years and it had sort of gone to Tom
Prentice’s head. He wasn’t a bad sort, Tom wasn’t, but he could be
beastly offensive if he set out to. When I knocked at thirty-seven no
one inside heard me because there was too much noise. So I just walked
in. The study table was lying on its side and the gas drop light――we
didn’t have electricity in Hyde then――was dangling a couple of inches
from the floor at the end of its green tube. Tom Prentice was lying on
his neck on one of the beds with his heels near the ceiling and Joe was
standing over him waiting for him to come back to earth. Joe didn’t
look mad, but he looked mighty earnest.
He was seventeen, but big for his years, wide-shouldered and powerful
looking. He had a nice sort of face, with gray eyes and very dark hair
and a good deal of sunburn. His hair needed trimming and some of it was
dangling down over his forehead, making him look sort of desperate,
and I wondered what would happen to me if I had to step in between
them. But I didn’t. Joe stopped knocking Tom around for a minute and I
explained that I was proctor and accountable for the peace and quiet
of that floor. By that time Tom was sitting on the bed looking dazed
and holding one hand to his jaw. I never did find out what had actually
started the riot, but it was something that Tom had said about the
sovereign State of Wisconsin, I think. I persuaded them to shake hands
and forget it and Tom said he hadn’t meant whatever it was just the way
Joe had taken it, and when I went out Joe was fussing around Tom with
arnica and wet towels.
* * * * *
They got on all right together after that first show-down. Maybe Tom
realized that he was no match for Joe. Tom wasn’t any frail lad,
either. He weighed about a hundred and sixty and was eighteen years old
and played left guard on the Eleven. It was Tom who induced Joe to go
out for football. Joe had played a little out West, but had never taken
it seriously, and didn’t show any enthusiasm for it now, only Tom kept
at him, I guess. Anyway, I saw Joe working with the dubs a day or two
after the term began. They had him going through the motions at center
on the fourth or fifth scrub. I remember saying to Larry Keets, who was
assistant manager that Fall, that “that guy Talmadge was built for the
part, all right.” Keets looked across and grinned.
“Yeah, he’s built for it, maybe, but he handles the ball like it
was a basket of eggs. Morgan”――Morgan was our coach――“was eying him
yesterday, but he’s still where he is. Anyway, we’ve got centers and
guards and tackles to burn. It’s back field men we need, Zach, and a
couple of good ends.”
Which was all true. We’d lost seven out of the fifteen men who had
played in the big game last Fall, and all but two were backs. Of
the two, one was an end and the other was a guard. Coach Morgan and
Truitt, our right tackle and captain, were raking the whole school for
halfback material and not having much success in finding any.
I ought to say here that Hollins had been having a run of perfectly
rotten luck for four years. Enwright Academy was our big rival and
Enwright had beaten us three times and played us to a scoreless tie
once in those four years. It had got so that a win over the blue and
gold was something mythical, like the dodo or the dope about Hercules
and the Nemean lion. No one in school when I was there had ever seen
Hollins beat Enwright at football and we’d got so that we’d stopped
hoping, or at least expecting, anything like that to happen. And
along about the middle of October, by which time we had been licked
three times, we had resigned ourselves to the regular programme: mass
meetings, secret practice, plenty of cheering, bluffing to the last
minute and――defeat.
We played a ten game schedule that year. The week before the Enwright
game we had Gloversville coming back for a return engagement,
Gloversville being calculated to give us good practice and no risk of
injuries to our players.
About the last week in October I got a surprise. I went down to the
field one Thursday afternoon with a couple of the fellows to watch
practice. Morgan had started secret sessions, but to-day they had
opened the gates. There had been several cuts in the squad by that time
and only the first and second teams were left; perhaps thirty-four or
five fellows in all. They were scrimmaging when we got there and the
second was trying to get over the first’s goal line from the fifteen
yards. They made two tries, wide end runs both of them, and didn’t
gain an inch, but after each play I noticed that one of the second
team men had to trot back about twenty yards to get into position
again. Whoever he was, he had just romped through the first’s line
and was behind the goal posts each time. Then, when we had got over
opposite the play, I saw that it was Joe Talmadge. On the next down the
second’s quarter fumbled and after the ball had rolled around awhile
the second team’s full-back fell on it. It seemed to me that almost
any one of the first team forwards should have broken through and got
that pigskin, but they didn’t, and it dawned on me that the reason
they didn’t was just because the second’s center had been too stiff
for them. After the second had tried a place kick and failed, the ball
went back to mid-field, and during the next seven or eight minutes of
that scrimmage I watched Joe closely. And what I saw made me wonder if
Coach Morgan had lost his eyesight, for Joe simply played Pride to a
standstill. Not once did the first make a gain anywhere near the middle
of the second team’s line, and when the second finally got the pigskin
again, after Stringer had made a mess of a run around left end, it was
always Joe who led the way through. He would just spin Pride around
like a top, or push him back like he was a straw man, and romp past
him. But why Morgan didn’t see it was more than I could figure out, and
that evening, after commons, I tackled Captain Truitt. Tru and I were
pretty good friends, for I had got him into Arcanium the year before.
“Talmadge?” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I know, Zach. He’s been putting
up a corking game on the second right along for two weeks, but when we
try him on the first he falls down flat. We’ve had him over twice. The
first time we thought it was stage fright, but he was just as bad the
next. Sometimes fellows are like that. They’ll work like Trojans for
the scrubs and be no earthly good on the first. Coach hauled him over
the coals last week about it and all Talmadge could say was that ‘he
didn’t know.’ Too bad, for he’d come mighty near to making trouble for
Enwright.”
“It doesn’t sound like sense to me,” I said. “If he can play like a
whirlwind on one team why can’t he do it on another.”
“Search me,” said Tru, “but some fellows are like that. Coach talks
of trying him again Saturday against Wooster High. I don’t know if he
will, though, for we can’t afford to take any chances. I’d like mighty
well,” he added bitterly, “to win one more game this season.”
“One!” said I. “Oh, run away, Tru! The trouble with you chaps is that
you’ve lost faith in yourselves. You’re so used to getting the short
end of it that you can’t believe in winning. Buck up!”
“That’s a fact, old man! I believe you’re dead right. We’re so used to
being rotten that we don’t know how to be anything else. What we need
is one of these psychology sharks to come around and sort of hypnotize
us into a new state of mind. Short of that, Zach, we’ll do the same old
stunt again.”
“Psychology, your grandmother! Use your beans! Why shouldn’t we win
from Enwright? What’s to prevent? Why――――”
“Nothing, except that they’ve got the best team they’ve had in three
years and we’ve got a worse one than we had last year. And last year
they beat us by seventeen――――”
“Sure! I know! You needn’t go into the sickening details. But it’s
idiotic to think that you’re bound to be licked, Tru. I’m not much
on the psychology stuff, but I do think that there’s a whole lot in
believing that you’re going to get what you want. Why not try it?”
“Oh, I do. That is, I try to. I don’t talk this way to the fellows,
Zach. You’re different. You don’t talk. And it’s a relief to be gloomy
once in awhile. On the field I have to be ‘Little Sunshine’ until my
mouth aches from grinning.”
“Well, for the love of lemons don’t quit yet, Tru. Keep a stiff upper
lip and maybe you’ll pull off a miracle.”
Whether Joe Talmadge got onto the first or not was no affair of mine,
but I sort of liked the chap, what little I’d seen of him, and,
besides, it looked to me as if the team ought to go up against Enwright
with the best players to be found. Anyway, I munched it over going
across the yard, and when I got to the third floor of Hyde I stopped
at thirty-seven and knocked. Someone said “Come in,” and I opened
the door. Joe was alone. Tom, he said, hadn’t come back from supper,
and would I wait? I had meant to ask Tom if there wasn’t some way of
getting Joe to put up a fight when they got him on the first, thinking
that maybe he could talk it over with his roommate and find out what
the trouble was. I certainly hadn’t intended talking to Joe himself
about it, but that’s just what I found myself doing a few minutes
later. Joe was a nice sort and he kind of made you say what you had on
your mind. Maybe he had what they call magnetism. Anyway, there I was
pretty soon talking it over with him, he lolling back on the window
seat, hugging his long legs and looking thoughtful.
“You’ve got me, Morris,” he said finally. “They’re dead right about it,
too. Some way, when they stick me in there on the first I sort o’ lose
my pep. I don’t know why. Say, do you believe in――in――――”
He stopped and I said “Fairies?”
“No, but atmosphere.”
“Sure, Talmadge! I’m a firm believer in it,” said I earnestly, not
knowing what he was driving at.
“Honest?” He seemed pleased and I was glad I’d said the right thing.
“Well, sometimes I think it’s atmosphere that does it.”
“Does what?” I asked, puzzled.
“Why, makes me play so dog-gone punk on the first,” he explained
gravely. “I’ll tell you, Morris,” he dropped his knees and thrust his
big hands into his trousers pockets, “when I’m playing on the second
I――I kind of feel like I was doing something that wanted to be done. I
feel like the fellows around me wanted to win the scrimmage. But when
they put me over in the other line I don’t get that――that feeling at
all. I suppose that sounds like silly stuff to you, but――――”
“Hold on!” I said. “It doesn’t, Talmadge. I believe you’ve found the
answer. I believe you’ve put your thumb right on the――the tack! That’s
just what you would feel on the first, I’ll bet. Those chumps have been
licked so often they don’t believe in themselves any more.”
“That it? Well, that’s the way I feel, and I don’t seem to be able to
get rid of it. I guess that coach thinks I’m an awful dub, but I can’t
help it. I try hard enough, but the――whatdoyoucallit――incentive isn’t
there. Or something. Atmosphere I’ve called it. Or feeling. Something.”
We talked it over quite a bit. I thought he was right about the
trouble, and I still think so. I got him finally to promise to make
a good hard bid the next time. “Just try your best to forget the
atmosphere,” said I. “Play your own game, Talmadge. Make up your mind
that, no matter whether the rest of the team want to win or get licked,
you yourself are dead set on winning. Will you do it?”
“Sure! Much obliged. It’s good of you to――to bother.” He insisted on
shaking hands. “If he lets me in Saturday I’ll do the best I can. Maybe
it won’t be much, though. After all, I don’t know an awful lot about
football. Just the rudiments. But I’ll see if I can’t――” he hesitated,
smiled and went on――“can’t create my own atmosphere.”
I had planned to go home Saturday after dinner, but I stayed around and
saw the game and took the five-twelve instead. I wish I hadn’t, for
we got most unmercifully beaten by Wooster. To be sure, Wooster had
every bit of luck there was, but even taking that into consideration
our fellows played a pretty punk game. The big disappointment to me
was Joe. Morgan put him in at the start and let him finish the quarter,
but he didn’t put up any sort of a fight. And I could see that he was
trying, too. Wooster broke up our center time and again, and the only
reason Morgan let Joe stay in was because the play was all in mid-field
and I guess he kept on hoping that Joe would find himself. I came
across him between the halves. He had dressed and was looking on from
the side line. When he saw me he smiled wryly and shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But it wasn’t any use, Morris. I’m kiboshed, I
guess. They smeared me for fair, didn’t they?”
I nodded. “But what was the trouble?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The same, I guess. I tried to make believe that the
whole thing depended on me and that I was the main squeeze, but it
didn’t seem to work. Say, do the rest of those fellows really _want_ to
win, or――or what?”
“Why, yes, they do, of course,” said I. “But――maybe they don’t know it!”
Joe sighed. “Something’s wrong with them. I had the impression all the
time that I was taking a lot of trouble for nothing, that no one cared
what happened, and it balled me all up. I’m going to quit football, I
guess. Anyhow, I ain’t got time for it.”
I said something polite and beat it back to the stand. It didn’t seem
to me to make much difference whether he quit or not.
Things ambled along toward the second Gloversville game. I noticed that
Joe was still playing on the second, and gathered from something Tom
said that he had wanted to quit and had been overruled by the coaches.
We licked Gloversville thirteen to six, in a glorified practice game
in which every substitute had a chance to show his gait. And after
that we settled down for the final humiliation of being whipped to a
froth by Enwright the following Saturday. Honestly, you couldn’t find
ten fellows in school who would say that Hollins was going to win, and
you couldn’t have found one who believed it! I didn’t. I’ll say that
frankly.
Three of the second team were taken over to the first, and Joe was one
of them. Maybe Morgan thought he might need a third center if Enwright
played the sort of game she was expected to. Anyway, Joe was huddled
up on the bench with the rest of the subs when the game started.
It was a cloudy, still November day, with a touch of frost in the air,
and there was no choice between goals. We won the toss and gave the
ball to Enwright. The visitors were a husky lot, all right. They’d
won six out of nine games and hadn’t any doubt about winning another
to-day. They were a rangy, powerful bunch, and looked fast and keen.
As to weight they had it over us by a few pounds in the average, but
not enough to worry about. We weren’t worrying about anything, for
that matter. We had made up our minds to fight hard and die fighting.
Only, we expected to die. And anybody knows that that’s no way to go
into a football game. We believed that Fate had everything all doped
out for us, so what was the use of worrying? I heard afterwards that
Morgan fairly insulted them in the dressing room before the game, but
he didn’t get any reaction. They refused to be insulted. They were
dogged, but there wasn’t enough vanity in the whole bunch to fit out a
Pomeranian lap dog. Then they went out and trotted onto the gridiron,
while we waved and cheered them nobly, prepared to die like heroes.
They had an awful surprise in the first ten minutes of that period.
Enwright absolutely refused to play football. Whether she was a bit
stale or what the trouble was I don’t know, but she fumbled and ran
wild and misjudged punts and acted like a bunch of grammar school kids.
You could have heard their quarter raving at them as far away as the
laboratory, I guess. The first thing anyone knew Hollins had pushed
White over for a touchdown and Tru had kicked a pretty goal!
Oh boy! Maybe we didn’t go crazy on the stand! Why, we hadn’t done
anything like that to Enwright in four years! We got cocky and
crazy-headed and predicted a score something like twenty-eight to
nothing! We ought to have known better, but we didn’t. Enwright sort of
pulled herself together after that and held us off until the quarter
was up. But we were still hopeful and looked for more glory in the
second period. The glory was there, too, but it went to Enwright. She
came bravely out of her trance and pushed us straight down the field
for a touchdown and then, when White misjudged a long corkscrew punt
and had to fall on the ball on our twelve yards, she did it again in
just three rushes. She missed both goals, though, and we got some
comfort from that. Twelve to seven wasn’t so bad, after all. And the
game wasn’t half over yet.
But, although the visitors didn’t score again in that quarter, they
outplayed us badly. And they kept it up in the third period, too,
after we had sung and cheered all during half-time. But they didn’t
score. They had three perfectly good chances, and each time some turn
of the luck queered them. Of course, our fellows did their bit. They
were giving their well-known imitation of Horatius keeping the bridge.
But, shucks, if it hadn’t been for a fumble on our three yards, a
perfectly punk pass from center to fullback and holding in the line,
Enwright would have scored three times in that quarter. The trouble
with us was that we never forgot who we were up against. We were
whatyoucallems――fatalists. When an Enwright runner was tackled he kept
on running and made another yard, maybe two or three. When one of our
fellows was tackled he quit cold. Same way in hitting the line. When
one of our backs ran up against the defense he eased up. Even our
punting showed it. We didn’t mean to quit, but we were doing it. We
oozed through the third quarter with the score still twelve to seven,
and we began to hope then that we could hold the score where it was.
What happened after the whistle blew I got from Tru and Joe.
Coach Morgan called Joe from the bench. “Jones is very bad,” he said in
that quiet, crisp way of his, “and they’re making too many gains at our
center, Talmadge. It’s too bad we haven’t anyone to stiffen it, isn’t
it? If it was only the second team I’d chance putting you in.”
Joe looked troubled. “I’ll try my best, sir,” he said doubtfully.
“We-ell, I don’t know. They’ve got us beaten anyway, and――――”
Joe flared up. “_They_ have! Like fun they have! We’ve got ourselves
beaten. There isn’t a fellow out there that doesn’t think he’s done for
right now. There isn’t one of ’em that really _expects_ to win. There
isn’t more than one or two that’s _trying_. They’re just dying game,
that’s all they’re doing! Beaten! Yah, that Enwright bunch would quit
cold if someone put up a real fight!”
“Think so?” asked the coach mildly. “I wonder. Too bad someone couldn’t
go out there and convince them of that, isn’t it, Talmadge?”
“Yes, but what’s the use? They won’t believe it, Coach.”
“They might――if it was put to them hard enough,” the man mused.
Joe began to pull up his sweater sort of half-heartedly.
“If _you_ think that way, Talmadge, you might get the others to. You
might try it. It wouldn’t do any harm. We’re beaten anyway, and――――”
“That ain’t so!” cried Joe angrily. “You know it, too!”
“What good does my knowing it do?” asked Morgan gently.
Joe pulled his sweater over his head and flung it behind him.
“Jones?” he asked.
The coach nodded. “And tell Truitt I said I’d changed my plans. Tell
him I’ve decided to win the game.”
Joe grinned. Then he ran on just in time and pushed Jones out of the
way.
It was Enwright’s ball on her forty-six yards, second down and five
to go when Joe arrived. Tru looked a bit puzzled at the message for a
moment, but then he grasped the idea and it seemed to do him a lot of
good. “That’s the stuff!” he cried hoarsely. “We’ve got orders from the
coach to win this, fellows! What d’ye say now! Everyone into it hard!
All we want’s one score. Let’s get it!”
Enwright tried out the new center and made only a yard. Joe jeered at
them. “Come again!” he told them. “Always glad to see you!” They got
three past left tackle and Joe was on Conners like a ton of bricks,
bawling him out. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Trying
to chuck this game away? Fight, you big baby! Don’t let ’em walk over
you! _Fight!_”
Conners was so surprised that he forgot to get mad until it was too
late. Tru said that having Joe butt in and take things out of his hands
like that sort of flabbergasted him, but he was so tired and used up
he was glad to have someone else do the bossing. Enwright only needed
another yard to make her distance and she tried to shove her way past
Conners for it. But Conners was insulted and mad clean through now, and
he wouldn’t have it, and blamed if we didn’t take the ball away from
them in the middle of the field, and for the first time that day!
After that Joe created his own atmosphere, as he had put it to me,
and it was a brand new atmosphere for the rest of the bunch. He kept
dinning it into them that they were going to win, that Enwright was
a lot of quitters and all tired out, anyway, that they only needed a
touchdown and that they were on their way to it. And blessed if they
didn’t begin to believe it! And it wasn’t long before Enwright was
thinking there might be something in it, too! Tru said you could notice
the difference five minutes after the last quarter began. They eased
up and didn’t round off their plays. Their quarter began to change
signals, and once they went back and put their heads together. When
they did that Joe gloated openly and began to show even more pep.
“Sure!” he cried, “Talk it over! Know you’re beaten, don’t you? If
you’ve got anything left, show it! Time’s getting short!”
It was, too. There was only about seven minutes left. We had taken
the ball back to their twenty-eight and had to punt, and they had run
it back to the thirty-six and were shy four yards on the third down.
They got two of the four on a delayed pass that fooled every one on
our team except Joe, it seemed, and then had to punt. Of course, all
they wanted now was to kill time, and they tried every means they
knew. But White got away from our thirty-five with a run that landed
the pigskin past the middle again and then Morgan sent Presson back
into the line-up and Press ate up ten yards in three plunges. It looked
like we had them going then, and we were cheering ourselves hoarse on
the stand. Joe snarled and bullied, and praised, too, and in those last
five minutes he had every fellow on the team working for him like dogs.
And they all expected to win, too. That’s the funny part of it. Dobbs
told me afterwards that if we’d been beaten he would have cried like a
kid. But we weren’t. No, sir, we weren’t. Not that year. We ate them up
from their thirty-eight yards right down to their ten. They stiffened
then and at first it was like chipping concrete to make gains. There
was hardly more than a minute left. We could hear Joe barking and
yelping. Even when he sounded the maddest you felt sure that he was
going to get what he was after.
And Enwright knew it, too. Yes, sir, Enwright showed it right then.
She wasn’t cocky any longer. She was pegged out and nervous and
discouraged. You could see it in the way the backs changed positions
behind the forwards, not being sure where they’d better stay, and you
could see it in the way the line started before the ball twice. We made
a yard and a half on the first plunge and lost the half on the second,
and it was nine to go on the third down.
We were all off the stand by that time, clustering along the side line
and back of the goal, cheering and yelping at one moment and then being
so still the quarter’s voice sounded like claps of thunder. Our right
end scampered off, Joe passed to the quarter, quarter faked a forward
and dropped the ball to Maynard and Maynard shot straight into the
center. Joe was clearing the hole out for him, and he did it to the
king’s taste. Right through and into the secondary defense plunged Joe,
taking them with him as he went, while Maynard, head down, pigskin
clutched to his tummy, followed after. They stopped them short of the
last line, but not much short, and we still had another down.
The timekeeper was walking nearer and nearer with his eyes on his watch
and we fellows looking on almost had heart failure. It seemed to us
that our team had never taken longer to line up and that the quarter
had never been so slow with his signals. But he got them out finally
and――Oh, well, you know what happened. It was Joe again, and Maynard
again, and Enwright went down like nine-pins and our whole team broke
through her center and went tumbling, streaming over the goal line! And
when the whistle blew Joe had to trot back from the other side of the
end line, he had been going so hard!
That’s how we broke the hoodoo. Tru failed at goal, but we had won,
thirteen to twelve, anyway. They elected Joe captain a week later, and
he would have been a corker if the war hadn’t come along. He went over
in the spring, and the next thing we heard he was top sergeant. I’m
sorry for the Huns in front of Joe’s platoon if he used that psychology
stuff!
BILLY MAYES’ GREAT DISCOVERY
Captain Ezra Blake, seated on the edge of the deck-house of the little
schooner _Molly and Kate_, was trying to do two things at once. He
was superintending the unloading of ballast by a crew of four men
and a boy and he was answering the questions of Billy Mayes, who sat
beside him. Billy was twelve and Captain Ezra was almost five times
twelve, but they were great cronies. The _Molly and Kate_ was tied
up to Forster’s Wharf only last evening, and already, this being a
Saturday morning, Billy was on hand to hear what wonderful adventures
had befallen his friend on the latest voyage. The _Molly and Kate_
carried lumber to fascinating Southern ports like Charleston and
Savannah and Jacksonville and even, less frequently, Havana, and never
a voyage but what Captain Ezra returned with a new budget of marvelous
tales for Billy’s delight. Some day Billy was going to sail with the
Captain and see the astounding places and things with his own two very
blue eyes: see Charleston and Cape Hatteras and the Sea Islands and
Florida. But more especially he would visit Pirate Key, for it was on
Pirate Key that the Captain met with his very startlingest adventures.
Billy had never been able to find Pirate Key on any map, but, as the
Captain explained, it wasn’t very big and few mariners even knew of
its existence. Somewhere between the Marquesas and the Dry Tortugas it
lay, and beyond that the Captain declined to commit himself: which,
under the circumstances, Billy considered quite proper, for it seemed
that the natives of Pirate Key were a peculiarly sensitive people and
much averse to visitors and publicity. Even the Captain, with his
winning personality, had had much difficulty in becoming friends with
the inhabitants of the island. The first time he had tried to land on
it, many years ago, he and his crew had been fired on with poisoned
arrows. Captain Ezra could still point out the dents made by the arrows
on the old blue dory that trailed astern there. The Captain, with one
mild gray eye on the crew, had just finished a soul-stirring account of
the hurricane that had met them off the South Carolina coast on their
northward trip, and Billy was still glowing with pride at the thought
of knowing so intimately a person of such nautical skill and personal
bravery, for, although the Captain hadn’t said so in so many words, it
was very plain that only heroism and remarkable seamanship had brought
the _Molly and Kate_ safely through great peril, when “Long Joe” Bowen,
shoveling sand nearby, was conquered by a perfectly terrible spasm of
coughing and choking. Captain Ezra viewed him silently for a moment and
then inquired mildly:
“Been an’ swallered some o’ that sand, Joe?”
“Long Joe” nodded and said “Yes, sir,” in a very husky voice.
“Mm, well you want to be more careful,” advised the Captain most
sympathetically, “’cause if you ain’t I’m likely to have to swab out
your throat for you, an’ that’s a remarkably painful operation, Joe.”
There was no response to this, but Billy could see “Long Joe’s”
shoulders heaving and knew that he must already be in much pain. Billy,
like his friend the Captain, had a very sympathetic nature. When the
sufferer appeared to be easier Billy looked up again at the Captain’s
seamed and ruddy countenance and asked:
“Did you get to Pirate Key this time, sir?”
“Pirate Key?” responded the Captain. “Oh, yes, we were there a couple
o’ days. Not on business, but you see I’d promised the King I’d drop in
on him the next time I was down around there. Seein’ as he leads a kind
o’ lonely life, an’ him an’ me bein’ particular friends, as you might
say, I didn’t have the heart to say no to him.”
“Was he quite well?” asked Billy politely.
“Pretty smart for an old fellow. You see, Billy, he’s――let me see――why,
he must be well over a hundred now.”
“A hundred!” gasped the boy.
The Captain nodded gravely. “Them Pirate Key folks lives a long time.
They don’t go to school until they’re twenty. If they did, you see,
they’d forget all they’d learned afore they was what you might call
middle-aged.”
Billy pondered that. Not going to school until one was twenty had
things to be said in its favor. Still, it was revolutionary, and he
decided to put it aside for further consideration.
“And how was the Queen? And the Prince?” he asked interestedly.
“Well, the Queen was well, but the Prince had been an’ ate something as
didn’t agree with him. The Royal Physician was some worried when I got
there, but I give him a couple o’ doses of kerosine oil an’ it did him
a power o’ good.”
“The――the physician?” asked Billy doubtfully.
“No, the Prince, o’ course. There wasn’t nothing the matter with the
physician.” The Captain sounded slightly vexed. “He’d been an’ ate
some――some――what’s this now?――some hoki-moki fruit.” He viewed Billy
sternly. “The Prince had.”
“Really?” asked Billy. “What――what is hoki-moki fruit like?”
“Well,” replied the narrator, knocking the ashes from his pipe and
thoughtfully scraping the bowl with his pocket knife, “it’s a sort o’
like a orange an’ sort o’ like a apple.”
“Oh!”
“An’ it’s pizen if you eat it afore it’s ripe. Don’t never touch a
hoki-moki fruit till it’s purple, Billy.”
Billy promised instantly. “Only,” he added, “I might not know it,
Captain Ezra, if I was to go to Pirate Key. Is it round? Does it grow
on trees?”
“More square than round, you might say. It grows in clusters as big as
that water cask there. Hundreds of ’em together. An’ they grow high
because if they didn’t the wild horses would eat ’em when they was
green an’ die. That’s one o’ the wonders o’ Nature, Billy.”
“Yes, sir. But I didn’t know horses ate fruit.”
“Ain’t you ever see a horse eat a apple? Why, they’re plumb fond o’
apples. Bananas, too. An’ watermelons. Guess the only kind o’ fruit a
horse won’t eat is cocoanuts.” The Captain filled his pipe leisurely
and in silence. Then: “Another peculiar thing, Billy, is that you might
call the affinity o’ the hoki-moki tree an’ them wild horses. They
can’t keep away from ’em, the horses can’t. There’s something about
the――the tree itself that draws the horses: something in the wood, they
say. You don’t never find any bark on a hoki-moki tree low down because
the wild horses keeps rubbin’ themselves against it. Seems like they
just can’t resist the――the sub-tile influence. It’s extraordinary.”
Billy agreed emphatically that it was. “Are there many wild horses on
the key?” he inquired after a moment.
“Thousands. The natives catch ’em an’ train ’em. The King has more’n
three hundred horses in his private stable, an’ the Queen she has
about a hundred, an’ the Prince he’s got maybe thirty or forty, too.”
The Captain applied a lighted match to his pipe and puffed blue smoke
clouds into the spring sunlight. “They kill ’em for their hides, too,”
he went on presently. “They make fine leather.”
“I shouldn’t think they’d need leather,” said Billy, “being just
savages.”
“Savages!” The Captain viewed him reprovingly. “Don’t you ever let ’em
hear you say that, son! Benighted, in a manner o’ speakin’, they may
be, but they ain’t savages. As for leather, why, now, they make lots o’
uses o’ it: saddles an’ harnesses an’ travelin’ bags――――”
“Traveling bags!”
“――An’ trunks.” The captain paid no heed to the interruption. “An’
here’s another peculiar thing. You may be able to explain it, but I
can’t, an’ I never heard anyone who could. Them hoki-moki trees has
just as much affinity for a horse-hide as they has for the horse
himself. Lay a horse-hide saddle twenty feet away from a hoki-moki tree
an’ just as soon as you lets go of it it’ll begin to move right over to
the tree and try to rub itself against it! Now you explain that!”
“But I can’t,” said Billy, wide-eyed. “It――it’s most――most extronry!”
“It surely is!” declared the Captain. “What you might call one o’ the
marvels o’ Science. I ain’t never――That the lot, Joe? Well, I guess
it’s most dinner time, ain’t it? Talkin’ always gives me a powerful
appetite an’ I’m plumb famished. Sing out to Steve to start that galley
fire an’ get a hustle on him!”
Billy’s thoughts dwelt a good deal for the rest of that day on Captain
Ezra’s interesting discourse, and when he went to sleep it was to dream
terribly complicated things about wild horses and hoki-moki trees
and the fascinating inhabitants of Pirate Key who wore the scantiest
attires but indulged themselves in traveling bags! Sunday was always a
hard day to live through, for after church and Sunday school were past
many empty hours stretched ahead. This Sunday, however, was not so bad,
for Mr. Humbleton, the bank treasurer, came to call in the afternoon
and brought Arthur Humbleton with him. Arthur was fourteen and a youth
of affairs and position in the community, as became the son of a bank
treasurer. For one thing, Arthur was captain of the Broadport Junior
Baseball Team. Billy and Arthur were graciously allowed to retire from
the front parlor and the society of their elders and found sanctuary
on the little side porch where the chill of an easterly April breeze
failed to penetrate. Billy was glad of the opportunity to talk to
Arthur, for he had a request to make, and after several false starts he
managed to make it.
“I wish,” he said, after swallowing hard a couple of times, “I wish
you’d let me play on the nine this year, Arthur.”
Arthur Humbleton observed him frowningly. Then he shook his head. “I
don’t see how I could, Billy,” he answered. “The team’s all made up,
in the first place, and then you aren’t much of a player. Maybe next
year――――”
“I can play in the outfield all right,” defended Billy eagerly.
“Oh, most any fellow can catch a fly,” replied the other carelessly.
“There’s more to baseball than just that, Billy. You’ve got to know
how to run the bases and bat and lots of things.”
“I can run bases just as fast as――――” Billy paused. He had been going
to say “as you can,” but diplomacy came to his aid. “As fast as Tom
Wallace can,” he substituted.
“Maybe, but you can’t bat a little bit,” responded Arthur triumphantly.
“And you know you can’t.”
“If I had more practice, Arthur――――”
“No, sir, you couldn’t ever be a real corking batter.” Arthur was
kindly but firm. “A fellow has to have the batting eye. Of course I
don’t say that maybe if you worked awfully hard this year and practiced
every day you mightn’t be a lot better, but I don’t believe you’ll ever
be a real star, Billy.”
The subject, engrossing to both boys, continued for some time, and in
the end it was agreed that Billy should become a sort of unofficial
outfield substitute with the privilege of practicing with the nine
sometimes and making himself useful chasing the long flies that
infrequently went over Mr. Bannerman’s garden fence. As Mr. Bannerman
was aged and crabbed and disliked seeing small boys wallowing across
his asparagus bed in search of baseballs, the position assigned
to Billy promised as much danger as honor. But he knew himself
to be fast on his feet and knew Mr. Bannerman to be slow, and he
accepted gratefully. Soon after that Arthur was summoned hurriedly
by his father, so hurriedly that he left behind him an enticing blue
paper-bound pamphlet entitled “How to Play Base Ball” which Billy
discovered just before supper and which he surreptitiously studied
later behind the shielding pages of “Travels in the Holy Land.”
But he found it difficult to understand until he happened on a dozen
pages at the end of the booklet devoted to advertisements of baseball
goods. There were soul-stirring pictures and descriptions of mitts and
gloves, bats and masks and balls. He admired and coveted, and mentally
compared the prices set down against the articles with the contents
of the little box in his top bureau drawer that was his bank. The
comparison wasn’t encouraging. Billy sighed. And just then his eyes
fell on a word that challenged attention. “Westcott’s Junior League
Ball,” he read. “Regulation size and weight, rubber center, all-wool
yarn, double cover of best quality selected horsehide. Warranted to
last a full game without losing elasticity or shape.”
Billy read it twice. Then he became thoughtful. After that he read the
description of the baseball again and his eyes became big and round.
Later, in bed, with the light from the electric lamp at the corner
illuming the ceiling, he lay sleeping for a long hour, experiencing the
triumph that thrills all great discoverers and inventors.
The next morning he surprised every member of the household by being
downstairs in advance of breakfast _and with his shoes tied_! His
mother viewed him anxiously and felt his face but was unable to detect
anything abnormal save, perhaps, a certain intensity of gaze and
impatience of delay. There was a full half-hour between breakfast and
school and Billy made the most of it. Captain Ezra was smoking his pipe
on the wharf when Billy arrived, breathless, on the scene.
“Well, well,” exclaimed the Captain. “Ain’t you round kind of early?”
But there was scant time for amenities and Billy plunged directly into
his business. “Are you going down South again pretty soon, sir?” he
inquired anxiously. The Captain allowed that he was; as soon, in fact,
as the new cargo was aboard, which, if he wasn’t saddled with the
laziest crew on record, ought to be in about four days. “And are you
going to Pirate Key?” Billy continued. The Captain blinked.
“Well, I might,” he replied after slight hesitation. “Why?”
“Because I want you to bring me a piece of that hoki-moki wood, sir, a
piece big enough to make a bat. You see――――”
“A bat? What sort of a bat?”
“Why, a baseball bat. Could you, do you think? It would have to be that
long――” Billy stretched his arms――“and that big around――” Billy formed
a circle with his small fingers――“and it oughtn’t to have any knots in
it. Is hoki-moki very knotty, Captain Ezra?”
“Knotty? N-no, I wouldn’t call it that. I――――” He coughed and cast a
troubled gaze toward the lighthouse point. “What was it you wanted it
for, now?”
“A baseball bat,” answered Billy, almost impatiently. “I thought if you
could get me a piece big enough I could get Jerry Williams, over at
Morris’s carpenter shop, to make it for me. Could you? Would it――would
it be much trouble to you, sir?”
“Why, n-no, only――hm――you see I ain’t plumb sure of gettin’ to Pirate
Key this trip, Billy.” Billy’s face fell and Captain Ezra went on
quickly. “But I ain’t sayin’ I won’t, you know. Fact is, it’s more’n
likely I will. An’ if I _do_――――”
“Oh, will you please?” cried Billy, beaming. “How much would it cost,
sir? I’ve only got twenty-two cents, but if you’d take that I’d pay you
the rest when you came back.” He dug into a pocket, but the Captain
waved the suggestion aside.
“Shucks,” he said, “a little piece o’ wood ain’t goin’ to cost nothin’.
Why, I guess I could bring off a whole tree if I wanted it. I guess
there ain’t anything on that there island I couldn’t have for the
askin’, Billy, the King an’ me bein’ so friendly. Tell you what I’ll do
now. I’ll get ’em to cut a piece o’ that wood an’ make the bat for you
right there. How’ll that be?”
Billy looked dubious. “Why, that’s awfully kind, sir, but――but do you
think they’d know how to make a baseball bat? Bats have to be made
awf’ly partic’larly, Captain Ezra, or else they aren’t much good.”
“Don’t you worry about that, son. They been makin’ their own bats on
Pirate Key for years, an’ I guess there ain’t no better ones to be
had.”
“Why, do they play baseball _there_?” gasped the boy.
“’Course they do! Leastways, they play what’s pretty near like it.
The――the general idea’s similar. They’re plumb crazy about it, too.
They got a eight-club league down there――――”
But at that moment the bell in the town hall clanged its first stroke
and Billy fled.
During the four days that the _Molly and Kate_ remained at Forster’s
Wharf, Billy and the Captain met twice and when the schooner finally
sailed the Captain had full, detailed and most explicit instructions
regarding that length of straight, well-seasoned hoki-moki wood that
was to be brought back either in the rough or shaped into the Pirate
Key idea of a baseball bat. After that there was nothing for Bill to do
save await the return of the schooner.
April gave place to May and the Broadport Juniors began to play
Saturday afternoon games on the back common and to practice diligently
on other days after school was over. Billy served a rigorous
apprenticeship in the outfield, chasing flies that went over the
heads of the regular players and several times scrambling over Mr.
Bannerman’s fence and recovering the ball from under the rhubarb
or from between the rows of early peas. So far fortune had attended
him and he had invariably escaped with his life. Now and then he
was allowed to take his turn with the batters and stand up at the
plate while Waldo Hutchins pitched his famous “slow ones.” Practice
is supposed to make perfect, but Billy was still a long way from
perfection as a batsman. Nor could either he or Arthur Humbleton
observe any great amount of improvement. But Billy persisted, consoling
himself with rosy dreams of the future. Almost any day now the _Molly
and Kate_ might return bearing Billy’s Great Discovery.
Meanwhile the Juniors won from Scalfield Grammar School, were defeated
by the West Side Reds and were annihilated by the Downerport Eagles.
And then, as it seemed to Billy, just in the nick of time to prevent a
similar fate at the hands of that especial rival, the Broadport White
Sox, the _Molly and Kate_ tied up again at Forster’s Wharf!
That was an eventful day in Billy’s life, eventful from the moment
he heard the glad news to the moment that he was back at the house
with the precious hoki-moki bat in his possession. He had scarcely
heard Captain Ezra’s detailed and interesting account of the securing
of the article. For once, anxious to put the bat to the test, Billy
thought the Captain just the least bit loquacious! But he banished the
thought almost instantly, blushing for its ungraciousness, and quite
overwhelmed his benefactor with thanks ere he hurried away with the bat
tightly clutched in hand and one jacket pocket bulging with a perfectly
good “genuine horsehide” ball that had seen only two weeks’ service in
practice and had been acquired from Captain Humbleton for fifteen cents.
Subsiding, much out of breath, on the edge of the side porch, Billy
once more examined his prize with eager eyes. As to shape it looked as
fine as the best “wagon tongue” ever made. There was no doubt about it,
those Pirate Key natives knew how to make a baseball bat! Billy was
just a trifle disappointed about one thing, however, and that was the
lack of novelty. To all appearance the bat was quite like any other bat
except that the inscription “Genuine Hoki-Moki Wood” appeared half-way
along its smooth length. The words were printed in uneven characters,
and evidently with pen and ink, and the ink had run with the grain of
the wood. The varnish was still new and just a bit sticky, but that
was to be expected since varnish always dried slowly near salt water.
Hoki-moki wood was, contrary to Billy’s preconceived idea, light
instead of dark, and closely resembled ash. A surprising feature of the
bat was the twine-wound handle. It seemed strange to Billy that the
natives of Pirate Key should know of that refinement. His respect for
them grew tremendously then and there.
Having examined the bat to his heart’s content, he stood up and swung
it experimentally. It proved the least bit heavier than he could have
wished, but that wasn’t anything to trouble about. He had frequently
heard Jack Cantrell express a preference for a heavy bat, and Jack was
the hard-hitter of the Broadport Juniors. Remained now the supreme
test, and Billy approached it falteringly. Suppose it failed! Suppose
Captain Ezra’s tales of the peculiar properties of hoki-moki wood
proved false! Billy felt that the disappointment would be more than he
could bear! Nerving himself to the ordeal, he laid the bat at the edge
of the porch, squeezed the horsehide ball from his pocket and deposited
it with trembling fingers against the house. Seven feet separated ball
and bat, and as he withdrew his fingers he gave a deep troubled sigh.
For an instant it seemed that the experiment was to fail, and Billy’s
heart sank sickeningly. But then, as he stepped back across the boards
to the porch’s edge the miracle happened. Slowly, irresolutely the ball
moved, rolled a few inches, stopped, went on, gathered momentum and
traveled straight along a board until it bumped companionably against
the hoki-moki bat!
Billy shrieked his triumph and danced ecstatically on the mignonette
bed. It was true! The Great Discovery was proved.
Again he tried the experiment and again the ball yielded to the magic
influence of the bat as the needle of a compass yields to the influence
of the North Pole. Thrice the experiment worked perfectly. A fourth
time the ball, having been placed further to the left, collided with
the handle of the bat, jumped it and rolled over the edge of the porch
into the flower bed. Billy waited for it to rise up and come back
again, but that effort appeared beyond it. Considering that a distance
of eighteen inches intervened between porch floor and flower bed, Billy
felt that it would be asking too much of the ball. Anyway, it atoned a
minute later by rolling nicely from house wall to bat with what seemed
greater alacrity. Billy was more than satisfied.
I feel that I ought to inform the reader of a fact that quite escaped
Billy, which is that the outer edge of the side porch was fully an inch
and a half lower than the inner, being so built that water would run
off it. I doubt if Billy ever knew of this. Certainly the slope was not
perceptible to an unsuspicious vision. I make no claim that the slope
of the porch floor had anything to do with the remarkable behavior
of the ball. I am willing to believe that the ball would have rolled
across to the bat had the floor been perfectly level. I only mention
the fact in the interest of truth.
Later Billy sought the back yard and tried throwing the ball in the
air and hitting it with the bat. At first this experiment proved
less successful than the other, but presently he found, to his great
delight, that he could hit almost every time! To be sure, he didn’t
always hit just squarely, but he hit. That absorbing occupation came to
an end when the ball went through a cellar window with a fine sound of
breaking glass. Thereupon Billy recovered the ball and went innocently
in to supper.
That night, for fear of burglary, Billy slept with the hoki-moki bat
beside him under the covers.
The next day was Saturday and the day of the White Sox game. Billy
spent most of the morning knocking the ball against the back yard fence
and only desisted when Aunt Julia informed him from an upstairs window
that she had a headache and would go crazy if he didn’t stop making all
that noise. Billy stopped and went and sat on the side porch, with his
feet in the mignonette and the hoki-moki bat hugged to his triumphant
breast, and dreamed dreams worthy of Cæsar or Napoleon.
The Broadport Juniors wanted to win to-day’s game, wanted to win
it more than they wanted to win any other contest in a long and
comprehensive schedule. The White Sox team was comprised of boys who
lived on the Hill. The Hill was the town’s patrician quarter. Just
about everyone who lived up there had an automobile and a chauffeur
to drive it and wore their good clothes all the time. The juvenile
residents of that favored locality were, in the estimate of the
down-town boys, stuck-up and snobbish, and they had a fine opinion of
their baseball prowess. The worst of it was that their opinion was
justified, for the White Sox――the down-towners jeeringly called them
the Silk Sox――usually beat almost every team they went up against! Last
year the Juniors had played two contests with them and had been beaten
decisively each time. And so Captain Arthur Humbleton and all the other
boys of the Juniors and all their adherents――including mothers and
brothers and sisters and an occasional father――were especially keen on
a victory. And when, in the first of the sixth inning, the White Sox
finally solved Waldo’s delivery and made three hits and, aided by an
infield error, sent four runs over the plate the Juniors’ bright dream
faded and despondency gloomed the countenance of Captain Humbleton and
his doughty warriors. The White Sox had already held a one-run lead,
the score at the start of the sixth having been 12 to 11, and now, with
four more tallies added, they looked to have the contest safely on ice.
Billy, his precious bat held firmly between his knees, occupied a seat
on the substitute’s bench, a yellow-grained settee borrowed from the
High School across the common. He had twice offered his services to
Arthur and they had been twice refused, the second time with a scowl.
Billy was absolutely certain that he could, if allowed to face the
opposing batter, who hadn’t much but a fast ball to boast of, deliver
wallops that would radically alter the history of the game. But the
hoki-moki bat was no better than any little old sixty-cent stick so
long as he was not allowed to use it. To his credit is the fact that
he had determined, in case the White Sox still held the lead at the
beginning of the ninth inning, to entrust the bat to others should
Arthur still refuse his services. That was real self-denial, real
patriotism. As much as Billy wanted to wield the wonderful hoki-moki
bat himself victory for the team stood first.
The friends of the Juniors clapped and cheered as “Wink” Billings went
to bat in the last of the sixth, and the one who cheered the loudest
was Captain Ezra Blake. The Captain had come at Billy’s earnest and
repeated behest and had togged himself out wonderfully in honor of the
occasion. The Captain did not, Billy suspected now, know a great deal
about baseball, for he cheered just as loudly when a villainous White
Sox rapped out a two-bagger as he did when one of the Juniors stole
home from third. But it was very evident that the Captain’s intentions
were of the best.
The last of the sixth developed no runs for the Juniors, nor did the
seventh add to the score of either side. In the eighth the White Sox
captain got to third with two down and tried to tally on a bunt past
the pitcher’s box. But shortstop ran in, scooped up the ball and nailed
him a foot from the plate. The Juniors started their inning by a safe
rap that placed Cantrell on first base. Myers sacrificed neatly and
then the next man connected for a screeching liner that was too hot for
the Sox second baseman and Cantrell scored the Juniors’ twelfth tally.
But the score was still four runs to the advantage of the White Sox
when Stone hit into a double and ended the inning.
Captain Humbleton pretended a confidence he didn’t feel and assured
the team that all they had to do now was hold the Sox and then bat
out a victory. It sounded easy, but Billy felt defeat impending. He
tried to get a word with Arthur before that youth hurried off to his
infield position, but failed. The White Sox started by putting their
third baseman on first in consequence of Waldo Hutchins’ inability to
pitch strikes. Then a bunt was mishandled by the catcher and there
were runners on first and second, and things looked very bad. The next
player was thrown out, but the others moved up a base apiece. The
infield crept closer. The White Sox left fielder tried hard to slug,
missed two and finally popped up a silly little foul that dropped
comfortably in the catcher’s mitt, and the Junior nine’s adherents
cheered loudly, Captain Ezra’s voice dominating all like a fog siren.
There was another period of doubt and anxiety when, after knocking the
ball everywhere save between the foul lines, the Sox first baseman
finally whaled out a long, arching fly. The bases emptied and the
runners scuttled home, but Leo Smith arose to the occasion like a
veteran――which he was not――and pulled down the ball.
“Four to tie ’em and five to win!” shouted Arthur as he trotted in to
the bench. “Come on now, fellows! Let’s get this! We can―――― What is
it, Billy? Don’t bother me now!”
“I’ve got to, Arthur,” said Billy firmly, a tight clutch on the
captain’s arm. “You’ve got to listen a minute. If you want to win
this you must let me bat, Arthur. I can’t help hitting with this bat,
honest, and――――”
“You’re up, Waldo! Work him for a base. Get it somehow!” Arthur tugged
impatiently, but Billy held like glue. “You see, it’s a hoki-moki wood
bat, Arthur, and hoki-moki wood has a――a infinity for horsehide. All
you got to do is just swing the bat and the ball comes right up and
hits it. It’s the greatest discovery of――――”
“What are you talking about?” demanded the captain. “Let’s see your
old bat. ‘Hoki-Moki Wood,’ eh?” he jeered. “Where’d you get this
contraption?”
And, still holding him firmly, Billy told him, and in spite of his
expression of incredulity Arthur was secretly a little bit impressed.
“Oh, shucks,” he said, “I don’t believe it, Billy! It ain’t possible!
’Course, you might have luck――――” He paused and frowned intently and
then, with a short laugh, added: “Maybe I’ll give you a chance, Billy.
We’ll see.”
Billy had to be content with that. Meanwhile Waldo Hutchins had waited
and walked. An attempted sacrifice, however, failed to work and Waldo
was cut off at second. The runner was safe on first. With one gone the
audience began to disperse slowly. Then the Juniors’ right fielder
landed squarely and rapped past third and hope crept back into the
breasts of his team-mates. The departing onlookers paused in their
flight. The Sox second baseman let the throw from the pitcher pass
unchallenged over his head and the runners advanced to second and
third. The cheering grew frantic. The coachers shouted and danced.
“Slim” Gaynor did his best but only laid the ball down in front of the
plate and was tagged out before he had taken two strides toward his
base. Two on, now, and two gone!
Billy, his heart racing and jumping, watched Arthur anxiously. But
Joe Ware was allowed to take his turn. Joe was an uncertain batter.
The White Sox pitcher tempted him with a low one and with one on the
outside, but Joe refused them. Then came a fast one that went as a
strike. Then one that hit the dirt just back of the plate. The pitcher
frowned and would have sent the next offering in the groove had not the
catcher signalled for a pass. Joe walked to first, filling the sacks,
and cheers filled the air. Arthur himself followed Joe Ware, and the
bunt he trickled along the first base line was a veritable marvel, for
it sent a tally across, moved runners from first and second and left
Arthur himself safe on his bag!
But three runs were still needed to tie and four to win, and there
were two gone. Billy arose, pale but resolved on sacrifice. He meant
to offer the precious hoki-moki bat to Steve Sawyer, next up, but as
he moved toward the plate Arthur, dusting himself on first, saw him
and recalled that half promise. And perhaps he had what he would have
called a “hunch.” At all events his voice reached Billy just as he was
about to present the bat to Steve’s notice:
“All right, Billy! Hit it out! Let Billy bat, Steve!”
And so Billy, with a fast-beating heart, went on to the plate and faced
his fate. Surprise and condemnation floated from the bench in mutters.
The Sox pitcher observed Billy’s small form with a puzzled frown. Then,
noting the boy’s evident nervousness, he laughed in derision “See who’s
here, Jim!” he called to his catcher. “Home-Run Baker, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s Tris Speaker! Be good to him, Tom!”
“All right! Try this one, kid!” The pitcher wound up. Billy pushed his
bat around over his shoulder. On bases the three runners danced and
shouted. The coachers yelled incessantly. The infield jabbered. But
Billy didn’t hear a sound. Now the pitcher’s arm was shooting forward.
The ball was singing its way toward him. He tried to watch it and
couldn’t. But he swung the hoki-moki bat around just as hard as he
knew how, putting every ounce of his strength into it, and something
happened. There was a resounding blow, electric tingles shot up Billy’s
arms, he staggered and then, first.
Far into right field sped the ball, just inside the base line. In raced
the runners. Billy raced too. Pandemonium assailed his ears. As he
reached the first bag he sent a final look after the ball and his heart
leaped with joy. Straight behind Mr. Bannerman’s garden fence it fell,
right amongst the early peas and bush limas!
“Take your time, Billy!” shouted the coach at first. “It’s a home run,
kid!”
* * * * *
They never did find that ball, for Mr. Bannerman appeared on the scene
most inopportunely, but it didn’t matter and no one cared. The Juniors
had won, 17 to 16! The hoki-moki bat had proved itself! And Billy Mayes
was a hero!
There were unbelievers who denied to Billy’s famous bat any special
virtue, but Billy knew what he knew and had seen what he had seen, and
his faith was unshakable. But, and here is the sorry part of my tale,
it was several years before Billy made another home run, for, although
he became a regular member of the team and, as time passed, became a
fairly dependable hitter, the hoki-moki bat had lost its cunning. It
was not the bat’s fault, however. It was due to the fact that, owing to
the war, baseballs were no longed covered with horsehide!
THE TWO-MILER
We were sure of winning that spring. John Blake, the manager of the
team, said that if we did not win he should walk home when school
closed. And as John lives in the western part of Ohio and is a man of
his word, you can see that we were pretty cocksure.
We met Maynard College and Chamberlain College every June in what we
at Preston called the “Tri-Track,” which was a quick way of saying
Triangular Track Meet. The year before, Maynard had beaten us by five
and a half points. Chamberlain usually did not produce a strong team,
although it had a way now and then of upsetting our calculations in an
irritating manner.
We had been hard at work all the spring, and when the Saturday of the
“Tri-Track” came we had seventeen men ready to do their best. The meet
that year was at Chamberlain, and in consequence we put Chamberlain
down for twenty points, five more than she had ever won. There were
one hundred and seventeen points in the thirteen events; to win first
place in any event counted five, second place three and third place one.
As I say, we allowed Chamberlain twenty points, mostly seconds and
thirds, although we did think that her man Cutler would capture first
in the high jump. Then we put ourselves down for seven firsts. That
made thirty-five points. We felt likewise sure of five seconds. That
gave us fifteen points more, making fifty in all――more than enough to
win. We conceded the rest to Maynard.
Of those seven events in which we expected firsts, only one seemed in
the least doubtful; that was the two-mile race.
Carl Atherton, the captain of the team, had run the distance the year
before in 10 minutes, 41⅘ seconds, and had cut that down a second this
spring in practice. But all the year we had been hearing a good deal
about a new runner at Maynard named Beckner, who was said to have done
the two miles in forty “flat.” We felt willing, however, to trust Carl
for the two miles.
John Blake decided that for once the whole team should go to
Chamberlain. Usually our funds were low, and only the men who were
absolutely necessary were taken; but this year the subscriptions had
been more liberal.
Bobby Hart was almost as much pleased as anyone at John’s decision.
Bobby had worked hard during the two years he had been in school, and
deserved to get into a real race. He was not a great runner, but there
is plenty of room on the track in the “distance” runs.
“I’m going to try for third in the mile,” Bobby confided to me on
Friday night. “I think I can do better than I ever have done.”
“Yes, but I’m afraid you can’t get third. First will go either to Carl
or to Dick Bannet, and Maynard’s sure to have a man close to them. I
shouldn’t wonder if Carl let Bannet have the mile and saved himself for
the two.”
“Well, anyway, I’ll have the fun of trying,” answered Bobby.
We went over to Chamberlain Saturday morning, and nearly the whole
school went with us.
Bobby was in great spirits. He kept us laughing all the way over, and
I could not help thinking what a difference there was between him and
Carl Atherton. There was Bobby, as happy as a clam because they had
entered him for the mile and the two mile with no chance in the world
of his winning better than third, and small hope of that; and there was
Carl, happy, too, perhaps, but not showing it a bit, just sitting down
at the end of the car talking to the trainer or reading a magazine, yet
knowing all the time that he was sure of one cup, if not two. I could
not help thinking that of the two perhaps Bobby would have made the
better captain, if getting close to the fellows and heartening them up
had anything to do with it.
We had luncheon at twelve o’clock, and at half-past one we piled into a
coach and drove out to the field. The old village was much decorated,
and the crimson of Preston was more plentiful than the Maynard blue. Of
course the orange and gray of Chamberlain was everywhere.
We went into our dressing tent, put on our running clothes, and then
went out and limbered up a bit.
At two o’clock the half mile was started, and we were pretty well
pleased with ourselves when it was over. Maynard got third place, but
the one point for Maynard did not look important against eight that we
won.
Then came the trials for the hundred yards; two of our men qualified.
We did not expect much from the sprints, and we did not get much. In
the finals we took third place; Maynard won first and Chamberlain
second. That started the cheering, for the orange and gray was pretty
well represented on the stands, where Maynard and Preston had each only
a handful of fellows. When they called us for the trials of the high
hurdles, I did not have any trouble in winning from the two Chamberlain
runners and the one Maynard man opposed to me. Then came the mile run.
Each school was allowed three starters; our entries were Carl Atherton,
Dick Bannet and Bobby Hart. I heard the trainer giving them their
instructions.
“This is Bannet’s race if he can get it,” he said. “But if Bannet can’t
win it, you must, Atherton. Hart, here, will start in and make the pace
for you two, and at the end of the third lap you must draw up to the
front. Save yourself for the two miles if you can, Atherton; but if you
have to win this, do it. We can’t take any chances. And you see if you
can’t take third place, Hart.”
The nine runners did some pretty maneuvering for the pole. When they
went down the back stretch on the first lap, Bobby was making pace and
Carl and Bannet were running fourth and fifth. That was the order for
two laps. Then a Maynard chap named Green sprinted and took the lead.
Bannet pushed up to third place.
Bobby held on for a while, then dropped back. He had just about used
himself up. Beckner, the Maynard “crack,” was running strongly in sixth
place, and Carl was watching him closely at every turn.
When the last lap began only five men were left in the running――Green,
Bannet, Fuller of Chamberlain, Carl and Beckner.
That was a pretty race; but it did not come out right for us. When the
home stretch began, Fuller passed Bannet and Beckner got away from
Carl. Then it was Fuller, Bannet and Beckner all the way to within
twenty feet of the tape, with a couple of thousand spectators yelling
like mad, and crimson and blue and orange flags waving.
Carl was trying hard to come forward, but he had waited too long
and was out of it; just as much out of it as Bobby, who was jogging
doggedly along half a lap behind. Twenty feet from the finish Fuller
spurted again and left two yards between him and the two others, who
were fighting hard for second place.
“Come on, Dick!” we shrieked. “Come on! Come on!”
But Bannet could not do any more, and Beckner drew slowly away from him
in the last half dozen strides. Bannet was used up when we caught him.
And Fuller, too, was pretty tired. Only Beckner seemed fresh, and we
knew then that he could have had first place if he had wanted it, and
that he was saving himself for the two miles.
Things did not look so bright for us after that race. And after the
next one, the finals in the one-hundred-and-twenty-yard hurdles, they
looked worse; for all I could do was to get second by a hair’s breadth;
Maynard took first by several yards and Chamberlain third.
I was pretty well cut up over that, but there was still the
two-hundred-and-twenty, and I vowed that I would do better in that.
There was need of improvement, for we had thirteen points to Maynard’s
fourteen, with Chamberlain not far behind with nine. Things were not
happening at all as we had figured them.
We had counted on eight points in the quarter-mile race, but all we
got was three, for almost at the start Carstein of Chamberlain left
everyone behind and won by fully thirty yards! That was the trouble
with Chamberlain; you never could tell what mischief it would cause.
They called us out for the two-hundred-and-twenty-yard hurdle race.
The Maynard man and I were nip and tuck at the second hurdle. I was
a little quicker on the cinders than he, but he hurdled a good three
inches lower than I, and that made things even. But at the fourth
hurdle he got down too low and went over the bar. That put him out of
pace a little, and I ran for all I was worth. I tipped the next hurdle
myself, but not enough to throw me out.
At the seventh, I think it was, I was running even with the chap at the
far side of the track and the Maynard fellow was behind. After that I
put every ounce into beating the unknown――for there was no time to see
who he was――and we had a battle royal. We came over the last hurdle
right together, and only my speed on the ground beat him, and then by
very little. Maynard finished a close third. And when I turned round
and looked at the chap I’d beaten, I found it was one of our own men.
Bert Poole, who had never won a place before in his life!
We felt better after that, for those eight points put us ahead;
but when presently Maynard won six points in the furlong dash and
Chamberlain got the remaining three, we began to worry again. The
results from the field events then began to come in, and added to our
anxiety. Chamberlain had taken first in the high jump, as we expected,
but Maynard had left us only third place. In the broad jump Maynard
had won first place and third, and given us second. In the pole vault
that troublesome Chamberlain had again taken first; Maynard had taken
second and Preston third. In the shot put we had first and second, and
Maynard had taken third. In the hammer throw Maynard had beaten us for
first, we had taken second and Chamberlain third. When we had finished
figuring we could hardly believe our eyes. The score stood:
Preston 40
Maynard 40
Chamberlain 28
The two-mile run, the last event, would decide the meet. And there was
Beckner.
Of course we had not lost faith in Carl, but big, strong Beckner was
clearly the freshest man on the field, and he would take a lot of
beating. We had to have first place to win the meet. Second and third
would not be enough, unless Fuller of Chamberlain got first. In that
case the championship would go to the school that took second. We did
not know whether Fuller was going to run or not, and we were pretty
anxious to find out. Only Bobby seemed cheerful.
“We can beat them,” he said. “Why, Carl can make circles round Beckner,
and as for Fuller, that mile run used him all up.”
“Maybe you will do something yourself, Bobby,” said I.
“I shouldn’t mind trying, but I guess they’re not going to let me
enter. I didn’t show up very well in the mile; you can’t go in and set
the pace and have anything left for the end. I came in fifth, though.”
Bobby really looked pleased with himself.
“All out for the two-mile run!” called the clerk of the course, and we
went down to the start. John Blake was looking blue.
“It’s a long way out to Ohio,” he said ruefully. “And the roads are
dusty, too.”
“Fuller’s going to run, isn’t he?” I asked.
“Yes, and I don’t know whether that makes it better for us or worse.”
“Answer to your names!” called the clerk.
There were seven entries there: Carl and Bannet of our school, Beckner,
Green and another Maynard runner, and Fuller and one other Chamberlain
fellow.
“On your marks!” called the starter.
“Hold on, please,” said our coach. “We have another man coming. Where’s
Hart?”
“Here,” said Bobby, stepping out from the group beside the track.
“Get in there,” said the trainer.
So Bobby, much pleased, took his place in the second line.
“Get ready!” said the starter.
“Set!” Then the pistol popped and they were off.
[Illustration: THEN THE PISTOL POPPED AND THEY WERE OFF]
For the first mile and a half a two-mile race is generally rather
uninteresting; but when the meet depends on it, that is different. We
turned and watched the runners jog round the turn and come along the
back stretch.
When they had covered a quarter of the distance, Fuller was no longer
dangerous. He was running in short strides and had dropped back to
seventh place. At the end of the first mile the runners were strung
out all round the track. Green was making the pace. Behind Green was
Beckner, running with a fine long stride, and almost treading on
Beckner’s heels was Carl. Carl was not quite so pretty a runner to
watch as the man in front of him.
Ten or twelve yards behind Carl ran Bannet; Bobby was following close.
A third Maynard runner and Fuller were disputing sixth place. A long
way behind them the last man, a Chamberlain chap, was lagging along.
And that was still the order when the sixth lap began.
Beckner alone seemed untired. Carl’s cheeks were white, and had two
spots of crimson in them. Bannet was looking pretty well used up, but
Bobby seemed not yet fagged and hung on to Bannet closely. He had never
tried himself to any extent in the two miles, but I thought that he
was doing better than he had done in the mile.
Getting tired of making pace Green swung aside and let Beckner take the
lead. Green fell in behind Carl, who was still treading in Beckner’s
tracks. Then the distance between the first group and the second began
to open; Bannet was tiring. For a while Bobby regulated his speed by
Bannet’s, but soon he went round outside Bannet and passed him. That
seemed to do Bannet good, for he spurted and kept close behind Bobby
all round the track. The third Maynard man and Fuller were out of it
for good by this time, and the eighth man had left the track.
There were only two laps left now, and the shouting was pretty
continuous. Up at the head Beckner seemed to want Carl to take the
lead, but Carl refused. That cheered us considerably, for it seemed
to show that Beckner was weakening. Finally Green went to Beckner’s
rescue; but he almost pumped himself out in doing it, and only set the
pace for a few hundred feet, making it so slow that Bobby and Bannet
closed up half the distance between them and Carl. Then Green fell out
again and Beckner was once more ahead, but Carl was holding on grimly.
So it was when they turned into the home stretch. The shouting was
tremendous now, for the spectators had left the stands and lined up
along the track.
“Last lap! Last lap!” shouted the judges.
We shouted to Carl to keep it up! And the Chamberlain people, who liked
us better than they liked Maynard, shouted the same thing. Even Bobby
and Bannet were applauded, and I shouted to Bobby to go on and win.
On the turn Bannet stumbled and half fell, and lost several yards; that
seemed to take the heart out of him. When the runners turned into the
back stretch, Bobby was all alone a dozen yards behind Beckner, Carl
and Green.
About the middle of the stretch Beckner started to draw away from Carl;
but he only opened up about three yards before Carl was after him. That
put Green out of it. We saw him wabble once and then throw up his arms
and go over on the turf.
“Bobby’s going to get third place!” cried John. And, sure enough, there
was Bobby still running, and running strong.
But our eyes were on Carl and Beckner. They were having it out, and as
the turn began Carl crept up to the blue runner and tried to edge past;
but he couldn’t quite do it, and Beckner held the lead by a few feet
until they were in the straightaway and headed for the finish. Then
Carl actually got in front. A lot of us had gone halfway down the track
to meet them and were yelling ourselves hoarse.
“Come on, Carl! Come on! You can do it!”
The Maynard fellows were shouting to Beckner at the top of their lungs.
Carl was just about holding his lead, when suddenly he staggered, got
one foot on the raised board that runs along the inside of the track,
and fell on the cinders. He was up in a second and running again, but
he had lost three or four yards, was limping and was plainly exhausted.
And Beckner, none too fresh himself, came on down the home stretch all
alone, wabbling a bit, but apparently an easy winner.
“Look at _Bobby_!” cried John. “Oh, _look_ at Bobby!”
How he ever got there I don’t know, but there was that blessed Bobby
coming along only a few yards behind Beckner and gaining on him at
every stride. Now he had passed Carl; now he was almost up to the
Maynard man; and we were racing alongside, leaping and shouting, while
twenty yards ahead at the finish the judges were leaning forward with
excited faces and their fingers on the “stops.”
Stride by stride Bobby overhauled Beckner. Now he could have touched
him with his hand. Now he was running even. Now――
“_Preston!_” we cried. “_Preston! Preston!_”
And then there was the finish――Bobby flying down the turn and Beckner
falling into the arms of his fellows.
“Who won?” I shouted, dancing about in the crowd.
“Hart, by two feet!” said some one.
And John and I grabbed each other and danced.
“Hurray!” shouted John. “I don’t have to walk home!”
“Did you hear the time?” cried Poole, hitting me on the back. “Ten
minutes, thirty-six and four-fifths seconds! It breaks the record!”
We did an unusual thing that Spring. We elected a track-team captain
who was not a senior. His name was Robert Hart.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Printer’s, punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently
corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The play that won" ***
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