path: root/77370-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77370 ***




                           HOLD ’EM, WYNDHAM!




By RALPH HENRY BARBOUR


_Yardley Hall Series_

  FOURTH DOWN
  FORWARD PASS
  DOUBLE PLAY
  WINNING HIS Y
  GUARDING THE GOAL
  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
  HITTING THE LINE
  WINNING HIS GAME


_North Bank Series_

  THREE BASE BENSON
  KICK FORMATION
  COXSWAIN OF THE EIGHT


_Wyndham Series_

  THE FIGHTING SCRUB
  BASES FULL
  HOLD ’EM, WYNDHAM!


_Books Not In Series_

  THE LOST DIRIGIBLE
  FOR THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS
  KEEPING HIS COURSE
  THE BROTHER OF A HERO
  FINKLER’S FIELD
  DANFORTH PLAYS THE GAME
  THE ARRIVAL OF JIMPSON
  FOR THE GOOD OF THE TEAM
  UNDER THE YANKEE ENSIGN
  BENTON’S VENTURE
  THE JUNIOR TROPHY
  THE NEW BOY AT HILLTOP
  THE SPIRIT OF THE SCHOOL
  THE PLAY THAT WON
  INFIELD RIVALS
  FOLLOW THE BALL




[Illustration: TOM RAN THE RACE OF HIS LIFE]




                           HOLD ’EM, WYNDHAM!

                                   BY
                          RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
          AUTHOR OF “BASES FULL!”, “THE FIGHTING SCRUB,” ETC.


                             [Illustration]


                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                       NEW YORK :: 1925 :: LONDON




                          COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY


                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                   TO
                             THE MEMORY OF

                         PERCY DUNCAN HAUGHTON

                   SKILLFUL PLAYER, INSPIRING LEADER,
                 BRILLIANT COACH AND GALLANT GENTLEMAN




                   CONTENTS


 CHAPTER                                 PAGE
      I. COACH AND PLAYER                   1
     II. NEW QUARTERS                      11
    III. WATTLES IS WELL                   25
     IV. THE FIRST GAME                    36
      V. CLIF MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE        51
     VI. THE “HOUSEWARMING”                61
    VII. OVER THE CROSSBAR                 75
   VIII. SLOGANS                           89
     IX. “NO DEFEATS!”                    101
      X. JUST KITTENS                     115
     XI. LEMUEL JOHN                      127
    XII. A NEW MAN JOINS UP               139
   XIII. THE BOY WITH THE FUNNY CHIN      150
    XIV. WATTLES ON THE TRAIL             167
     XV. THE TRIUMVIRATE CONSPIRES        179
    XVI. RUN TO EARTH                     189
   XVII. MR. BINGHAM IS STERN             202
  XVIII. TOM HAS NERVES                   212
    XIX. DEFEAT BY TELEPHONE              222
     XX. THE CAMEL EXPLAINS               232
    XXI. LORING TAKES A WALK              248
   XXII. “HOLD ’EM, WYNDHAM!”             261




                           HOLD ’EM, WYNDHAM!




                               CHAPTER I

                            COACH AND PLAYER


Clif Bingham paused in the doorway, clicked his heels together and gave
a military salute.

“Reporting by order, sir.”

“No, Bingham, by request.” The football coach arose and strode across
the floor, hand outstretched. “I can’t issue orders until the term
starts. Well, how are you?”

“Fine and dandy, Mr. Otis. Don’t I look so?”

“Mm, a bit pudgy, I’d say. But we’ll work that off you. Sit here.
Except Hanbury you’re the first of the gang to report. Couldn’t keep
away any longer, I presume.”

“Something of the sort, sir,” answered the boy, smiling. “But the whole
truth is that it was so plaguey hot in Providence yesterday that I
made up my mind to take the first train I could get this morning and
reach here without sizzling. How have you been, sir?”

“Oh, pretty fit, thanks. As you remarked, don’t I look so?”

He did, and Clif said so. The coach was tanned to the color of saddle
leather and the hair on the top――well, more properly on the back and
sides――of his round head looked more faded than ever in comparison
with his skin. Mr. George Gray Otis, popularly known as “G. G.” wasn’t
handsome. In fact he was fairly homely, for his sturdy body lacked
proportionate height and his somewhat bulletlike head seemed a size or
so too large. He had keen brown eyes, a fighting chin, a mouth that
could close to a thin straight line on occasion and a nose that was
far too short and broad for beauty. In age he was a year or so under
thirty, and while it is doubtless possible to experience much trouble
in thirty years, “G. G.” didn’t look like one who had carried a burden
of it sufficient to account for the pronounced bow of his legs. (There
was a legend to the effect that Mr. Babcock, Physical Director at
Wyndham, had once enticed Mr. Otis to the links to play golf and that
there, casting one horrified look at the coach in knickerbockers,
he had fled the scene!) You are not, however, to picture “G. G.” as
a ludicrous figure, nor even an unattractive one, for in spite of
such physical incongruities as I have mentioned he compelled respect
and liking. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that he was
distinctly popular at Wyndham, and this in spite of a hard hand and a
harsh tongue. On the field “G. G.” was pretty much the despot. Off it
he was a kindly chap with a deep, hearty voice and a ready chuckle for
a joke. Tradition had it that while at Wyndham School he had not won
distinction at football although he had played on two of the teams.
His only bid for fame had been made throwing the hammer, and at that
feat he had excelled. However, at college he had come into his own as
a brilliant plunging half-back, and the team he had captained in his
senior year was still being used as a standard by which to measure all
subsequent elevens.

“You’ve got a corking tan,” Clif added in envious tones.

“Good Lord, I’m fairly black!” protested the coach. “I had to appear
in dinner clothes a couple of evenings ago, and when I had a look at
myself in the mirror I almost got cold feet and stayed away from the
party. The white shirt made me look like an Indian! You see, it wasn’t
so apparent as long as I was in sea togs, but once ashore――” He shook
his head ruefully.

“That’s a sea tan, then,” said Clif.

“Yes, a Long Island Sound tan, Bingham. I spent two whole months in
dungaree, and particularly disreputable dungaree, too. We slipped into
Providence once to get out of a blow, and I’d have looked you up if I’d
known where you lived. Well, I could have found that out, I guess. The
real reason I didn’t look in on you was that I was too lazy to shave
and clean up!”

“When was that, sir?”

“Oh, about ten days ago; maybe the nineteenth or twentieth.”

“You wouldn’t have found me, Mr. Otis. We didn’t get back from the
other side until the twenty-second.”

“Oh, abroad, eh? Lucky dog!”

“Father and I went over in July. We had a sort of reunion in Paris in
August. You remember Loring Deane, sir?”

“Deane? Yes, indeed. You met him over there?”

“Yes, sir, he and his folks; and Wattles, of course! We all went to
Switzerland together and found Tom Kemble and his father at Neuchatel.
It was a sort of a date we’d made in the spring. We were all over the
shop together, sir, and had a grand time. Tom was more fun than a goat.
It was his first trip across, and, of course, he’d never seen the Alps.
But you simply couldn’t get him to enthuse. Oh, he was all tied up in a
knot with it, but he wouldn’t let on once! The best you could get out
of him was that the Jungfrau reminded him of Orange Mountain, whatever
that is, and that Lake Lucerne wasn’t in it with Hopatcong, or some
such place. I forgot to say that Tom comes from New Jersey!”

“It wasn’t necessary,” chuckled the coach. “Did Kemble come up with
you?”

“This morning? No, sir, he didn’t, and he’ll probably be fit to
be tied, when he gets to the junction and doesn’t find me there
according to agreement. He’s coming up on the train that gets here at
one-something. I just couldn’t face the trip in such heat as we had
yesterday. It was fairly cold in England when we left, and cool coming
back, and this weather is awful!”

“Yes, it is hot. Guess we won’t do more than limber up this afternoon.
You’d better go pretty slow, my boy, if you’re feeling the heat so.
By the way, that reminds me of something I want to talk to you about,
Bingham.” Mr. Otis took a leather-covered memorandum book from the
table beside him, opened and glanced at it briefly and then gently
ruffled the leaves while he went on. “You’ve put on several pounds
since last fall, haven’t you? Seven? Is that so? Well, you’ll lose some
of it, and――”

“I was seven pounds heavier in July, sir,” explained Clif. “I’m a lot
more than that now, of course, for I haven’t done anything for a month
but sleep and eat. I guess those seven will stick by me.”

“All the better. Fact is, Bingham, I’ve been wondering how you’d shape
as a tackle.”

“Tackle!” exclaimed Clif.

“Yes. You see, we’re going to need tackles more than ends this fall.
I was counting on Raiford, but he’s quit school, I hear. So there’s
only Weldon, Cotter, Coles and Longwell to start with. Well, there’s
McMurtry, too, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the backfield.”

“I guess ‘Blondy’ would make a good back,” said Clif reflectively.
“Gosh, I’m willing to try, of course, if you want me to, sir, but I
don’t know much about the position. It’s a lot different from end, I
suppose.”

“Yes, but you can learn it, Bingham. Anyhow, I’d like to try you out
at tackle. Of course, if you don’t take to it, all right. I certainly
don’t intend to lose a good end to secure a second-rate tackle.
We’re sort of long on end material: Drayton, Couch, Adams, Williams,
two or three others besides. None of them except Drayton what you’d
call top-notchers, maybe, but Couch did well last fall. This is only
tentative, you understand. I wanted to hear what you thought of it.”

“Why, I’m willing enough, sir. It’s up to you, of course. If you think
I can make good I’ll have a shot at it. Funny, though, that I’d been
thinking of myself as a fellow who could never be anything but an end.”

“Well, we’ll see. You’ve got the general build and weight for a tackle,
Bingham, and you’re fast and you use your head. Hang it, give me a chap
who knows his business and has two feet and a pair of hands and I’ll
chance him anywhere in the line or back of it! Do you know what makes a
good tackle or a good center or a good anything, Bingham?”

“I don’t know any _one_ thing, Mr. Otis.”

“I’ll tell you, then.” The coach’s lips set themselves straight and
tight for an instant. “Practice, my boy! Hard practice and plenty of
it. I’ll guarantee to take any fellow in school and, if he is willing
to work and do as I tell him, make a football player of him――_if_ I can
have enough time! It’s lack of time, Bingham, that makes hard sledding
for a football coach. Think of it! I get hold of you chaps two months,
almost to a day, before I have to trot you into the big game! It’s not
so bad when you’ve played a couple of years, but when you haven’t,
when it’s all practically new stuff to you, why, man alive, it’s work!
That’s what puts white hairs in a coach’s locks. Or――” he ran a brown
hand over his head and grinned――“takes ’em out altogether!”

“It isn’t much time, is it?” reflected Clif.

“It isn’t half enough. And that’s why college coaches get their
men together a month beforehand――six weeks, sometimes――and get the
preliminary stuff out of the way before the term starts. But that will
be done away with before long, I guess. There’s a growing sentiment in
favor of starting all teams off the mark together. Fair enough, too.
Well, two months is all I have, Bingham, and I’ve got to make the most
of it. That’s one reason I wrote and asked all you chaps to be on hand
to-day. Even one day counts when there’s only about fifty of them in
all! I’ve been looking over the schedule. Where’d I put it? Here it is.
We’re down for a hard game two weeks from Saturday, I guess.”

“Jordan, sir?”

“Highland. Jordan comes the week after. Here, look it over.”

Clif took the typewritten sheet and read:

    Oct.  4, Freeburg High School, at Home
    Oct. 11, Highland School, at Highland
    Oct. 18, Jordan Academy, at Home
    Oct. 25, Cupples Institute, at Cupples
    Nov.  1, Minster High School, at Home
    Nov.  8, Horner Academy, at Horner
    Nov. 15, Toll’s Academy, at Home
    Nov. 22, Wolcott Academy, at Home

“What’s this Jordan Academy, sir?” Clif asked, returning the schedule.
“Is she supposed to be good?”

“I don’t know much about those fellows yet. We dropped High Point to
make room for them because, as I understand it, one of the instructors
at Jordan used to teach here and he’s been after Dr. Wyndham for two or
three seasons to get a date with us. There’s politics, you see, even
in football schedules! Highland, though, held us to nine points last
year, Bingham, and I have an idea that they’re out to win this time. Of
course the loss of an early-season game isn’t important; no loss is if
you learn by it; but every coach has a sort of secret longing to get
through a season with a clean score, even if he knows that the thing’s
quite impossible, and losing an early game shatters his dream right off
the bat. So I’d rather like to come through safe with Highland.”

“I hope we do, sir. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we did get through
this season with a clean slate? You say it’s impossible, Mr. Otis, but
you don’t really mean it, do you? That is, it _could_ be done if――well,
if we proved good enough!”

“Why, no, it isn’t impossible, Bingham. Let’s say extremely improbable,
instead. We did about as well last season as we can hope to do this.
We won seven out of eight games. Of course, it’s an easy matter to
say that we should have won all eight, that if we had prepared a bit
more for Horner, scouted her and got a line on some of those tricky
plays she used, we’d have beaten her; tied her at the least. But
somewhere in your schedule, at some moment during your season, you let
up just a little. It’s natural. It’s like target shooting. You make
nine bull’s-eyes and then at the tenth, when one more good shot will
give you a perfect score, you miss. You don’t know any reason for it,
either. You held just as steadily, aimed as before, but you missed.
I guess it’s the old law of probability getting in its fine work,
Bingham. Well, maybe we shouldn’t kick if we come through this season
as well as we did last. And, after all, the big prize is the Wolcott
game.”

“Yes, sir, of course. But――gosh, Mr. Otis, it would be a wonderful
stunt to get through without a defeat! Maybe we can, too. We’ve got
a pretty good start, don’t you think? We’ve got six or seven fellows
who started the Wolcott game last year back again, and a raft of
second-string players; and Jeff Ogden will make a corking captain, sir.”

“Yes,” answered Mr. Otis, “it looks promising. There’s not a bit of
harm in setting out with a good big ambition, Bingham, either. The more
you ask for, the more you generally get! So you and I, at least, can
treasure the hope of an undefeated team. Going?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll have to beat it, I guess. I’ve got some stuff to get in
the village. Then I’ll have to be at the station when Tom arrives or
he’ll never speak to me again!”

Mr. Otis smiled. “Are you together in dormitory?” he asked.

“Yes, we are this year. We’ve got Number 40 in West. It’s a corking
room. Tom was with Billy Desmond last year and I roomed with a chap
named Treat, but we thought we’d like to get together for this year and
next.”

“I hope Kemble is going to show up finely this season,” said the
coach. “He looked promising last fall. Well, three-thirty, Bingham. By
the way, if you run across Owens send him to me, will you? He’s here
somewhere, for he called me up from the school half an hour ago.”

“Yes, I will. Well, see you at the field, sir.”

Clif descended the stairway and passed through the empty lobby of the
Freeburg Inn. On the wide veranda, well above the elm-shaded sidewalk,
he paused and searched for the list he had made an hour ago. A locust
in a near-by tree gave an imitation of a mowing machine, reminding Clif
of the heat, and he tilted his straw hat back from his forehead and
sighed as he found the scrap of paper. A green-painted rocking chair
spread inviting arms toward him, but, after an instant of hesitation,
he shook his head virtuously and proceeded on his mission.




                               CHAPTER II

                              NEW QUARTERS


Freeburg, Connecticut is like so many other New England towns that
to describe it would be a waste of time. A central street, broad
and elm-shaded; two blocks of modest buildings devoted to business;
old-fashioned residences, generally white, with green blinds, set back
from the thoroughfare; a few more modern and much smaller houses tucked
around the corners on the side streets; churches, schools, a town hall,
a library, a fire house; irritatingly detached from the village proper,
a railroad station at which trains bound northward for Massachusetts
and southward for New York pause on their way. Not all of them, either,
for there are at least two hoity-toity trains that go straight through
with only a careless, half-contemptuous shriek for the little town.

The one-seventeen from the south, however, wasn’t one of those. The
one-seventeen slowed up cumbrously, sifting gray dust over Clif as
he stood on the platform, and sighed pneumatically as it came to a
halt. There were three parlor cars at the rear, and from these and
the coaches ahead descended the first considerable contingent of
Wyndhamites to a number close on a hundred. The late afternoon train
would bring perhaps half as many more, others would come on the
southbound express and not a few would arrive by automobile. By six
o’clock there would be just short of two hundred of them at Wyndham,
of which number two score or so would be junior school youngsters
seeing Wyndham for the first time, round-eyed, shyly curious, a little
bit homesick under a pathetic assumption of ease. Quite a few of
these were already on the platform, alone or in charge of parents,
clinging desperately to shriekingly new suit cases and staring avidly.
The two school buses, new this fall and resplendent in dark blue
paint and varnish, honked invitingly, free-lance taxis squawked, and
the confusion grew. Up ahead trunks were being crashed and thumped
desperately from baggage car to trucks. At the windows onward-bound
passengers gazed down interestedly at the scene.

For several moments Clif thought Tom Kemble hadn’t come, and just when
doubt was becoming certainty he spied him. It was, Clif reflected with
an affectionate grin, just like Tom to be the last one out of his car
and then to descend as though there was all the time in the world!
Clif pushed his way across the platform and made a grab at a battered
suit case. “Porter, sir? Porter?” he inquired. Tom saw him then, cried
“Alphonse! Alphonse!” in a voice that turned many heads his way,
dropped the suit case and a bag of golf clubs and threw his arm about
Clif, bestowing a resounding smack on the latter’s left cheek. But when
he would have planted a similar salute on the other cheek the other
cheek was out of range.

“Tom, you blamed idiot!” fumed Clif. “Cut it out!”

“_Ah, mon cher ami!_” cried Tom, still clasping Clif tightly. “_Mon
petit chou!_”

“Will you shut up?” cried Clif, struggling, amused but annoyed. “Don’t
be an ass, Tom! Quit it, I tell you!”

Tom quit it, grinning. The custom of embracing and kissing between
Frenchmen had made a great hit with Tom during his visit to Paris, and
later he and Clif had amused themselves considerably in Switzerland
by staging meetings in such public places as station platforms and
hotel lobbies. “_Ah, mon cher Alphonse!_” Tom would ejaculate in
tones of delighted surprise. “_Mon cher Armande!_” Clif would rejoin
ecstatically. Then they would rush together, embrace and kiss, to
the great amusement of Loring Deane and the scandalizing of Wattles,
his attendant. Sometimes Tom followed with the rest of his French,
declaring fervidly that the view was magnificent, asking Clif how he
did and ending up with the seemingly unconnected announcement that his
window looked into the garden.

Well, that sort of thing had been all right over there, away from home,
where folks did pretty much as they pleased, anyhow; but being embraced
and kissed on the station platform at Freeburg, Connecticut, U. S. A.,
was quite another proposition, and Clif looked distinctly uncomfortable
as he pushed his way around the corner of the station, followed by the
amused stares of his schoolfellows and the excited piping of a newly
arrived junior who asked in a shrill voice: “Dad, did you see that boy
kiss the other one?”

“You haven’t as much sense as――as I thought you didn’t have!” Clif
declared irately as he tossed Tom’s suit case into a flivver. Tom
chuckled and climbed in.

“_Aller, cocher! Vit, vit!_” he directed. The driver turned a slow,
inquiring gaze upon him over a shoulder.

“How’s that? Ain’t you fellers for the school?”

“Yes,” answered Clif. “West Hall. Don’t mind this chap. He’s nutty.” He
leaned back and smiled at the nutty one. “Well, how are you?”

“Never better,” replied Tom. “Say, what’s the colossal idea? Thought
you were going to be at the junction, you rotter!”

Clif explained while the taxi bounded schoolwards, and Tom accepted the
explanation with a shrug. “Huh,” he said. “All right, but you only got
what was coming to you back there on the platform, old son. I owed you
that!”

“Seen Loring?” asked Clif.

“No, there wasn’t time. He telephoned yesterday, though. Wanted me
to come up with him, but I knew there’d be a crowd in the car. He’s
bringing a couple of fellows along, and, of course, his folks and
Wattles. Besides, you’d said you’d be at the junction, and there wasn’t
any way of getting word to you.”

“That was sort of low down, my not keeping the date,” said Clif; “but I
didn’t have the courage. Wasn’t it frightfully hot on the train?”

“Hot? It was awful! Say, any of the crowd back?”

“I haven’t seen any of them, but ‘G. G.’ says ‘Swede’s’ here. And Guy
Owens. Some of them came up with you, didn’t they?”

“Four or five. Treader and Sim Jackson and two or three more. How’s Mr.
Otis?”

“Hale and hearty. Looks like an Indian. All tanned up. Practice at
three-thirty, so you’ll just have time to bathe and rest up a few
minutes.”

Tom groaned. “Practice on a day like this? Is the man not so well in
his mind, perhaps?”

“Says we can’t afford to miss a day, Tom. We’re out for big things this
year. Going to clean up. Through the season without a defeat; that sort
of thing, you know.”

“He say that?”

“We――ell, no; but he did say it would be worth trying. I think so, too.
‘Wyndham’s undefeated eleven!’ Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Say,
what’s to keep us from making a stab at it?”

“Stab all you please,” grumbled Tom. “But we’ve got about as much
chance to do it as――” He hesitated, lacking a simile, and was spared
further effort by the arrival of the taxi in front of the dormitory.

Wyndham School is all under one roof, if we except the gymnasium.
When Dr. John Wyatt Wyndham started the institution a quarter of a
century ago it consisted of one building. Subsequently a larger hall
was built to form an L, presenting a fine example of the tail wagging
the dog. However, Wyndham School prospered exceedingly and not many
seasons passed before the dog had two tails and the L had changed to
an E, an E with the middle projection lacking. The old building is now
but a connecting link between the new ones and is devoted entirely to
recitation rooms. The original entrance remains facing a courtyard of
sward and shrubbery and a graveled circle in which a sundial reigns,
but it is no longer used. It is, in fact, of no more practical value
than the sundial which, since it stands in shadow fully half of the
day, owes its presence there solely to æsthetic principles.

The school stands well back from the streets, from the principal
thoroughfare of the town, Oak Street, which runs along the western side
of the grounds, and from Elm Street which lies to the south. From Elm
Street one looks across a gently rising expanse of excellent turf, and
over a long bed of scarlet sage and white cosmos, straight into the
little courtyard. On the right is the front end of East Hall, on the
left the corresponding elevation of West. The old building is known
now as Middle Hall. But one doesn’t approach from our present point
of view. Instead, a curving drive, shaded by a double row of maples,
leads from the junction of the two streets. Here a pair of stone posts,
surmounted by globular lights, indicates the way. Up this graveled
drive the rattling flivver had sped, to stop, as is the manner of such
vehicles, with disconcerting suddenness, in front of the first pair of
wide stone steps.

Clif and Tom struggled out, Tom paid the driver――adding a ten-cent
tip and the seemingly irrelevant statement, “_Ma fenêtre donne sur le
jardin_”――and they went up the steps, occupied by several hesitant
youths and a number of bags, and entered West Hall.

“Welcome home,” murmured Clif.

Tom grinned and led the way to the slate stairway beyond the empty
reception room. Across the wide corridor was the recreation room, its
great stone fireplace offering no appeal to-day. Leather-cushioned
couches and easy chairs, a massive table and many smaller ones stood
about on the warm-hued carpet. Back of the recreation room was the
library. Then, opening from the latter, was the reading room. Across
the corridor the corresponding space was occupied by the office. At the
far end of the corridor a wide entrance, at present barred by heavy
oaken doors, admitted to the dining hall.

“Well, at that,” remarked Tom above the clatter of his shoes on the
stone treads, “getting back doesn’t seem so bad, Clif.”

“Bad? I’ll say it doesn’t! I was tickled to death to get here. Say,
Number 40 is all right, Tom. You see for a thousand miles from the rear
window!”

“_Le coup d’oeil est magnifique_,” agreed Tom.

They climbed two flights to reach Number 40, passed a dozen other
rooms, turned finally to the left and were there. Tom slid his bag
along the floor, Clif tossed the golf clubs onto a bed and they sank
into chairs to mop their faces and inspect the new quarters. Clif
had already taken possession of his half――first arrival had given
him choice of sides――and his brushes and comb and soap box and other
gimcracks were neatly arranged on the fresh white cover atop his
chiffonier. There were two framed portraits there, besides; one of his
mother, long since dead, and one of his father. Tom noted and sighed.

“I’ve got to unpack, too,” he murmured. “The trunk won’t be along
before practice, though.” He slipped out of his coat and unfastened his
tie. “Say, I’ll tell you one thing, old timer; having two window seats
is going to be expensive.”

“Yes, I thought of that,” said Clif. “But they’re worth it. Each of us
has his own, you see.”

“Yes, but which is mine?” asked Tom suspiciously.

“Well, I selected this side of the room,” replied Clif carelessly, “so
I suppose you take the window seat nearest your bed.”

“Sounds all right,” muttered the other; “but I’ll bet there’s a catch
to it somewhere!” He studied the situation frowningly. Then: “Oh,
yes,” he exclaimed sarcastically, “I get the north window, eh? Fine in
winter, what?”

Clif laughed. “Not so good in winter, Thomas; but think of the long,
dreamy days of spring! And look at it to-day. Your window’s nice and
shady and has a breeze――”

“Breeze!” protested Tom.

“――While mine’s got the sun full on it. You see, don’t you? You know I
wouldn’t take advantage of you, old thing.”

“No, you wouldn’t! What time is it? I’m going to have a ger-lorious
shower right now! Say, did you get the stuff out of the storeroom?”

“I did, sir. Everything’s attended to. You’ll find your togs hanging in
your closet, your shoes on the shelf――By the way, Tom, I hate to tell
you, but you need a new pair of brogans.”

“Heck, do I? Life’s just one expense after another! All right. Got a
towel? Mine are in the trunk. Thanks. Where’s your bath robe?”

“In my closet. Any other little thing you need? Soap――sponge――wash
cloth――”

“Yeah, soap. Toss it to me. Atta boy. See you in five minutes, Clif.”

The five minutes were nearer ten, and then Tom reappeared looking
considerably refreshed, and, sketchily swathed in Clif’s bath robe,
stretched himself on the bed. “You said you had a talk with ‘G. G.,’
Clif,” he prompted. “What did he have to say?”

“Well, for one thing, he said he wanted me to try playing tackle.”

“Tackle! Tackle? My sainted Aunt Jerusha! What for?”

“Says we need tackles more than ends. Raiford’s not coming back, he
says.”

“Well, what of it? He wasn’t such a much, was he? Think you can do it?”

“I don’t know, Tom. I told him I’d have a try at it, of course. I
suppose I can learn, eh?”

“Why, yes, you can learn; but, heck, I don’t savvy the idea at all!
You’re a thundering good end, Clif, and you mightn’t be a good tackle;
not an awfully good one, I mean. You don’t suppose ‘G. G.’ has been
exposed to the sun, eh?”

“Well, I don’t have to keep on at it if I don’t show the goods.”

“No.” Tom sought a new position and kicked one muscular leg free of
the robe. “No, of course not. Oh, I guess you’ll make good at it. You
generally manage to deliver. And with me to help you――Say, he didn’t
happen to suggest making me into a guard or a center or anything, did
he?”

“Well, he said he had been considering it, but he guessed it wouldn’t
be possible to make you into anything, and so he’s going to let you tag
along behind the team as usual.”

“Is that so? Don’t get fresh, young feller. I suppose Joe Whitemill
will be back. Of course _he_ couldn’t be the one to quit school. Just
the same, he wasn’t going so frightfully well toward the end of last
year, and I’m out to beat that guy!”

“I think you will, Tom. By the way, how’s your father? I meant to ask
before.”

“Top-hole, Clif. He’s on his way to the coast this minute. He’s got
some sort of a deal on with some folks out there who make oil; refine
it, I mean. If it goes through he will be off to England next month and
I suppose I won’t see him for a whale of a time. I tried to argue him
out of starting in business again. You know he’s been out of it ever
since the War. But he says we need the money; says having a son is a
bit expensive. Heck, I don’t cost him much. Still, there’ll be college
after next year, and college educations do cost, I suppose.”

“I’ll bet it broke your heart to let him make that trip alone,” laughed
Clif. “Or has the wanderlust left you since you got back from abroad?”

“No, that little trip just sort of whetted my appetite,” answered Tom.
“Never mind, though. Summer will be around again before you know it,
and I’m going to make dad take me to China.”

“China? For Pete’s sake, why China?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Why not China? For one thing, I want to see how they
make it.”

“Make what?” asked Clif.

“China.”

Clif launched himself on the other and several moments of rough-house
followed, during which Tom managed to become so involved with the bath
robe that he was eventually helpless. Clif applied punishment and
resumed his seat, considerably warmed up, while Tom, with disgusted
grunts and mutters, untangled himself.

Tom was an extremely good-looking chap, with rather extraordinary
gray eyes, hair that came close to the copper tone and a skin that
in spite of its warm tan was remarkably clear. His chin was a wee
bit aggressive, but it went well with a short, straight nose and a
good-tempered mouth. He was a little heavier than Clif, while lacking
an inch or so of height; but he invariably carried himself with such
military erectness that it would have occurred to none that any
advantage of height belonged to his companion. The two had known each
other for just a year and in that time had become warm friends. Tom was
seventeen years of age, and so was Clif, but Tom would see eighteen
some six months before the other.

Clif Bingham――Clifton Cobb Bingham, to give him his full name――was a
bit more slender than Tom, in spite of those added seven pounds of
whose presence he had assured Mr. Otis, and had a wide-awake, alert
appearance not so noticeable in the other. If you wouldn’t have thought
of calling him very good-looking, at least you would have conceded an
attractiveness of expression that answered fully as well. You would
have liked the way his face lighted up when he smiled, and you’d have
liked the smile particularly. It had made lots of friends for Clif.
Both he and Tom were in the second class this year, a fact which had
been of assistance to them in securing as good a room as Number 40.

Corner rooms were ever in demand at Wyndham, and the new occupants
of Number 40 considered themselves fortunate. Of course it was
rather a nuisance to have to climb two flights of particularly hard
stairs――slate held an advantage from the point of view of the builder
whose thoughts were on fireproof construction, but it was rather
deadly on the feet!――but the view made up for that. From the north
window you had, as Clif had announced, a wide view of fields and hills
near at hand and of the blue peaks and slopes of the Berkshires in
the distance. From the west casement you could look across the side
lawn and between the already yellowing maples that lined the road to
a sloping meadow recently slashed by a new street along which, here
and there, tiny and not unattractive two-story colonial houses were
appearing. Beyond, topping the long hill, was a farm; the big red barn
and the more humble white house, elm-shaded, just poked their roofs
over the summit. By craning your neck a bit you could look toward the
village proper, and at almost any time of the day or evening you
could watch the automobiles whizz past. Sometimes they didn’t whizz.
Infrequently one lessened its speed at sight of the ivy-clad buildings
and curious occupants stared forth and debated whether what they beheld
was a school or a hospital or――who knew?――an insane asylum!

All the rooms, whether in East Hall, most of which was devoted to
the Junior School, or in West, were much the same in size and shape,
and Number 40 was consequently not very different from Number 34, in
which Tom had resided last year, or from Number 17, which had been
Clif’s. It was sixteen feet the longest way and fourteen the other.
On each side of the door, accounting for the little passage beyond
it, was a good-sized closet. Along the right wall were the two single
beds, jutting halfway into the room, two slim chiffoniers and a
straight-backed chair. The space between the foot of the beds and the
opposite wall was rather thoroughly taken up by a study table, four
chairs, two window seats and a radiator. Underfoot was a brown linoleum
and on that rested three grayish rugs with blue borders. Brown was
the prevailing color of the room, for the furniture was brown oak――or
what passes for oak these days――and the walls were tinted a lighter
shade of the same color. It was all extremely harmonious, as Tom
remarked, but he favored “jazzing it up a bit” with a few touches of
color. He suggested red silk curtains for the windows, but Clif was of
the opinion that faculty didn’t allow one to recurtain――the present
draperies were, of course, brown――and prevailed on Tom to confine the
color to the pillows on the window seats and such wall decorations as
the rules permitted.

“You’ve got a couple of pillows somewhere, haven’t you?” he asked.

Tom suddenly sat up with an exclamation of dismay. “Why, heck!” he
cried. “I forgot to pack ’em! They’re over in 34 and I’ll have an awful
time making Billy give ’em up.”

Clif chuckled. “I’ll say you will; and Billy’s too big to lick! Never
mind, I’m going to buy a couple I saw in the village this noon. Not
half bad, although I don’t believe the stuff inside them ever grew on a
chicken. It felt more like cotton batting.”

“What good will your pillows do me?” demanded Tom. “Can’t keep shifting
’em from one window to t’other! I’ll just have to go over some time
when Billy’s out of the room and get mine.”

“Who’s he got in with him this year?” asked Clif.

“Jeff Ogden. And if he gets to sprawling his old carcass on those
pillows they won’t be anything but pancakes! Say, what time is it?”

Well, it was time to get into old canvas pants and blue jerseys and
scuffed shoes and head for the football field, and Tom pulled himself
off the bed with a deep sigh of resignation.




                              CHAPTER III

                            WATTLES IS WELL


It wasn’t quite so hot as it had been earlier in the day, and there
was a perceptible movement of air across the field as Clif and Tom
turned the corner of East Hall and made toward the running track and
the gridiron enclosed by it. To their right the little pond was very
blue, its surface ruffled only slightly by an occasional catspaw. In
winter that same surface was scored by the steel runners of speeding
skaters, brushed by whizzing pucks, and Clif recalled the fact somewhat
incredulously as he fixed longing eyes on the shade of the sloping
concrete grand stand ahead.

There was a far-stretching rank of tall, straight poplars marking
the eastern limits of the field and the school property and turning
westward to continue as far as the garden, the old red barn and the
newer buildings that housed the automobiles. The playing field was
large, affording space for three gridirons and two diamonds and a round
dozen of tennis courts, these latter well behind the buildings. The
quarter-mile track of hard-rolled cinders glared heatedly at them as
they crossed it, and the enclosure of still vividly green turf, not
yet marked off with the white lines, was a vast relief to their eyes.
In front of the stand some score of fellows had already assembled
when they reached its welcome shade, and several minutes were spent
in greetings, in handclasps, in asking questions and answering them.
Captain Ogden was there, and Guy Owens, this year’s manager, and
Billy Desmond, Tom’s former roommate, and Joe Hanbury, better known
as “Swede,” and numerous others. A few were strangers to Clif and Tom
save, possibly, by sight. Mr. Otis presently arrived, with half a
dozen more players and Dan Farrell, the trainer. A handful of early
arrivals sweltered in the stand, braving discomfort to see others more
uncomfortable. At least, that is the way Tom put it to Clif as he waved
a hand to an acquaintance there.

Presently Mr. Otis called the candidates together and they gathered
about the bench and listened, while in the stand behind comparative
quiet reigned and the few spectators tried to hear what was being said
down there.

“Well,” began Mr. Otis conversationally, “here we are again, fellows,
at the start of the race. In about five minutes the gun will go off and
we’ll be on our way. It’s a long race, fellows, and a hard one, and
some of you are going to get mighty tired of it, I suspect, before you
reach the last lap. Some of you, for that matter, probably won’t stay
in that long. If you don’t it’ll be your fault, not mine. I’ll set the
pace, and I’ll make it as easy a one as I can for you, but you’ve got
to keep on running and follow me all the way!

“Well, dropping metaphor, what I especially want to say to you is this:
This year’s team is going to be a hard working team. It’s got to be if
it’s going to win from Wolcott. I know what I’m talking about. I know
what we’ve got in sight here in the way of material, and I know what
they’ve got, and I tell you frankly that they’re better off than we
are. Another thing. Wolcott’s been practicing more than a week already.
A week isn’t a long time, maybe, but it’s a seventh of the whole
season, and a team that’s able to add an extra week of practice is in
luck. Now I――”

“I thought Wolcott wasn’t allowed to do that, sir!” protested Johnny
Thayer indignantly. “Any more than we are!”

“She isn’t,” said the coach dryly. “Officially she hasn’t. What she’s
done is get about fifteen of her last season’s men together over at
Stillwater Lake for a ‘camping party.’ The party began a week ago
yesterday, as near as I can learn, and there’s been a lot more going on
than just fishing and swimming!”

“Gosh!” growled the big full back. “I don’t think――”

“Shut up, Johnny,” said some one. “You’re out of order!”

“But never mind what Wolcott’s been doing,” resumed the coach. “We’ll
attend to our own affairs. As I said, this team is going to be a hard
working team, and any of you who don’t like the sound of that are
invited right now to step to the rear and fall out. I’ll put up with
stupidity, but I won’t stand shirking. Most of you know that, and I’m
stating it now for the benefit of the few who don’t. I’ll be easy with
you to-day, and to-morrow, too, if the weather stays like this, but
after that, fellows, every nose goes down hard against the grindstone,
and I don’t want to hear any squeals if I turn it fast!”

There were chuckles of amusement from the old hands, but some of the
new candidates looked a bit uneasy and exchanged doubtful glances.

“By to-morrow I want every one of you to own a copy of the football
rules. Manager Owens will supply you, or you can get it in the village.
I want you all to read the rules, right through, from beginning to
end, and study them until you know thoroughly what they mean. What I
don’t want you to do is read books on how to play your positions. I
don’t care who the writer is. The stuff is all right, and I don’t care
how much you read of it out of season, but in season you’ll get your
instruction from me and those who assist in the coaching.

“I said that Wolcott is better off than we are for material, and so she
is. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t lick the sawdust out of her in
November. It does mean, though, that we’ve got to work like thunder and
realize every minute what we’re working for. We’re not in bad shape for
the season, even if we might be in better. We’ve won before with less
to start on. You’ve got a corking fine captain to lead you, you’ve got
at least half a dozen veterans to rally to and you’ve got a coach who,
whatever may be said of him, knows a certain amount of football and can
get work out of you if any one can!”

Again there was a ripple of amused appreciation from his audience. Mr.
Otis’s grim mouth didn’t relax, however.

“Now, one thing more and I’m through. You’re going to work hard and
football is going to take up a whole lot of your time, but there’s
going to be plenty of time left for studies, and any fellow who wants
to stay on the squad will have to keep square with the office. I’ll be
generous with cuts so long as they’re necessary, but any one who can’t
play football and keep up with his studies at the same time will have
to quit football. That’s all. Let’s have some balls, Dan.”

Followed an hour of passing and receiving, a little punting and
catching and some practicing of starts. There were frequent rests, and
they were needed, for the material was soft and the later afternoon,
while a slight improvement on the noon hours, was still exhaustingly
hot and close. Afterwards, in the gymnasium, all candidates reported
to Manager Owens and all went on the scales, Harry New, Guy’s first
assistant, presiding at the ceremony. Showers felt extremely good
to-day, and for once the cold water wasn’t cold enough. It was well
after five when Clif and Tom went back to the dormitory, stopping,
however, on the way to discover that Loring Deane’s room in East Hall
was still untenanted.

“Bet you the old ‘Rolled Rice’ cast a shoe,” said Tom. “Or maybe it
just fell to pieces. That’s the trouble with those cheap cars; they’re
always shaking apart. We’ll get dressed and go down and watch for him.”

But getting dressed was a leisurely proceeding to-day, and by the
time they emerged again from the West Hall entrance and looked
speculatively down the driveway Loring Deane was already in possession
of his quarters. It was Lou Stiles who apprised them of that fact.
Lou, looking exhausted, was sprawled on the grass in the shade by the
doorway. “Hi, Clif,” he called. “If you’re looking for Deane, he’s
here. Came quarter of an hour ago, about. His folks have just gone off
again.”

So they walked across to East and along the first floor corridor, past
the parlor and the office of Mr. Clendennin, Junior School head, and
knocked imperatively at the first door beyond on that side. It was
Wattles who opened to them, Wattles looking very, very warm in full
attire of black serge. He could never be prevailed on to lay aside his
waistcoat, no matter how warm the day might be. Wattles looked askance
at negligée, recognized no compromise in the matter of a gentleman’s
attire.

“Hel-lo, Wattles, old skeezicks!” cried Tom, shaking the attendant’s
hand warmly and at the same time thumping him cordially on the back.
“How are you?”

“Quite well, sir, thanks.” Wattles’ long and bony countenance relaxed
in a restrained smile. “And you, Mr. Tom?”

“Never better, old boy! Hello, there, Loring! Glad to see you again,
sonny!”

Clif, too, exchanged handclasps with Wattles and followed Tom inside.
“Have a breakdown?” he asked as he greeted Loring.

“Breakdown? Oh, no, but it was so pesky warm that we stopped on the
way up at one of those wayside robbers’ dens and had cooling drinks
and rested off awhile. I think it was the Bluebird Tea Room, but it
may have been Ye Signe of Ye Olde Washe Tubbe. Well, how are you, you
chaps? Tom, you look fat!”

“Fat? Man alive, I feel as thin as an eel! We’ve just done an hour’s
practice on Ye Olde Footballe Fielde. Yes, and worse still, listened
to ‘G. G.’ speechify. Welcome back to the classic shades, Loring. The
Triumvirate is again assembled!”

“All for one and one for all!” proclaimed Loring.

“Sit down. Wattles, lift that truck off this chair like a good fellow.
That’s it. When did you come up, Clif?”

“Got in about ten-forty-five or something. I don’t know how you fellows
find this weather, but after nearly freezing to death in London for a
fortnight it seems like Africa to me!”

“Just comfortable,” murmured Tom. “I say, Wattles, don’t you find that
black clothes attract the flies?” he asked.

Wattles, busily unpacking a wardrobe trunk, looked around a trifle
blankly. “Flies, sir? I don’t think I ever noticed, Mr. Tom.”

“Fancy that!” said Tom. “Fancy not noticing! You see, Wattles, there’s
something about black dye that flies take to enormously. I’ll bet that
if you stepped around back and stood outside the kitchen door a few
minutes you’d be fairly covered with ’em.”

“Really, sir? Most interesting.” But Wattles didn’t show any desire to
try the experiment. Instead, he went on extracting clothes and shoes
and ties and books and various other things from the trunk. Wattles
deserves a few lines to himself. He was rather tall and rather bony,
was Wattles, and eminently respectable. In age he was about thirty,
but he looked anything between that and forty. Although he had been in
the United States for some ten of the thirty years he still betrayed
his former nationality. I say former because Wattles was an American
citizen and was proud of the fact, and you could not pain him more
deeply than by mistaking him for an Englishman! Of course, he still
retained a huge admiration for the old country, still read with
unflagging interest the results of the English football games and races
and was convinced that in certain matters, especially those concerning
a gentleman’s dress and the deportment of a gentleman’s gentleman, the
land of his adoption was somewhat behind the country of his birth.
It was particularly Wattles’ speech that betrayed him, for, although
he interspersed his carefully correct English with American idioms
and even slang, and although he was an omnivorous reader of classic
literature, the British pronunciation and the British manner gave him
away.

Mr. Sanford Deane, Loring’s father, had once likened Wattles’
countenance to that of a faithful horse, and while the resemblance
was faint it was still there, even to a set of rather prominent and
particularly large teeth. Wattles’ eyes were of a kind of washed-out
brown, and the lashes were faded yellow; his nose was large and long;
his mouth was thin and straight and impressed one as being a misfit;
his chin――but the less said of Wattles’ chin the better. It retreated,
that chin, until you had to look a second or even a third time to see
where it had got to. In other words, everything about Wattles’ face
was prominent, or at least evident, from carefully brushed brown hair
to mouth. Below the mouth Wattles kind of faded away. But if Wattles
didn’t resemble a collar advertisement, he was there in so many other
ways that one forgot it.

Perhaps I have spent altogether too much time on Wattles, but then
he isn’t likely to get in the limelight very often, and so we won’t
begrudge him his moment. On the other hand, I’m not sure that Wattles
doesn’t deserve all this attention and more, for, even if he was only a
paid attendant, a combination of nurse, valet and companion, he was a
mighty good one. Had Loring’s father possessed many more millions than
he did――and he possessed a good many according to public report; too
many in the opinion of numerous less fortunate citizens――he could not
have secured a more faithful or devoted person than Wattles. Nor a more
capable one for the position. Combining the duties already enumerated,
even in the interests of so amenable a charge as Loring, was no slight
task, and while Wattles doubtless drew down a very generous stipend it
didn’t begin to pay for all that Wattles gave in return. You see, labor
and ability may be purchased, but love and devotion are things that
can’t be paid for. Not, at least, in any of the dollars that made up
Mr. Sanford Deane’s fortune.

The trouble with Loring――you’ve already guessed that a trouble
existed――was that his legs weren’t like yours or mine or Clif’s
or Tom’s. Nature had done excellently by him until she had got to
his lower extremities. (Loring called them his lower infirmities.)
Then she had perhaps gone to sleep on the job. He was remarkably
good-looking, with the sort of features one associates with Greek
heroes, finely chiseled, almost perfect. His dark hair was brushed
straightly back from a broad forehead, his eyes were almost black and
held a sparkle of high spirits, his nose was――but, pshaw, he would
utterly detest being catalogued like this! Briefly, then, he was a
very good-looking boy――handsome if you like――of seventeen years with a
clear skin and a general appearance of good health. Considering that he
spent his days in a wheel chair, that healthful appearance was rather
remarkable. The secret of it belonged to Wattles and the very eminent
doctor who was in charge of the boy.

That doctor, as well as many others who had preceded him at home and
abroad, could give you a nice long name for Loring’s affliction, but
in plain English the trouble was that the bones of his legs below the
knees had never hardened as bones should. They were chalky, and, being
chalky, weren’t to be depended on for the ordinary duties of legs.
Some day, said the eminent physician a bit vaguely, Loring would be
able to get about like other fellows, but just when that was to be or
whether it would involve the use of a pair of crutches, wasn’t clear.
Meanwhile, save that the wheel chair or Wattles’ arms served the
purpose of legs, he was a perfectly normal boy, a brilliant student and
quite as cheerful, quite as merry and high-spirited as either of the
other members of the Triumvirate.

Last winter in a frivolous moment some one――Tom, I fancy――commenting on
the unfailing regularity with which the three friends congregated each
evening after supper in Loring’s room, had suggested the formation of
a club. Proceeding with the jest, after several unsatisfactory names
had been suggested, Loring had hit on the Triumvirate. It would be,
Loring had explained, a “strictly fraternal, non-partisan, offensive
and defensive alliance! ‘One for all and all for one!’” After a week
or so they had begun to take it quite seriously, and as time wore on
the motto cribbed from Dumas’ masterpiece became a guiding rule. The
offensive and defensive alliance had borne results, in fact. When three
persons are animated by the same motive and set out to secure a common
result they are very likely to succeed, and so the Triumvirate had
discovered.




                               CHAPTER IV

                             THE FIRST GAME


“I’m sorry,” said Clif, “that I missed seeing your folks, Loring.”

“I know. I tried to get them to stay up for supper, but dad’s got some
sort of a meeting on for this evening, and so they beat it right back.
They’re coming up again in a couple of weeks or so.”

“That shover will have to do some driving to get back to New York in
time for a meeting to-night,” observed Tom.

“Oh, it’s only about a hundred miles. Of course, Edouard will have to
take it slow through some of the towns, but he will make it by eight.
There are plenty of stretches where he can do forty-five.”

“_Mon cher Edouard_,” murmured Tom. “Say, your father doesn’t drive the
car himself, does he?”

“No, he says it makes him nervous, but the real reason is that he can’t
smoke comfortably.”

“I wish mine didn’t,” said Clif. “He’s a perfectly awful driver,
but he doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s a regular wonder at it, but
he’s forever getting into jams and busting something. I don’t mind a
crumpled fender now and then, but I’m always afraid he’ll get hurt.”

“I don’t see anything wrong with his driving,” Tom objected. “I felt
a heap safer last year when he had the wheel than when you had it, old
timer.”

“Oh, he isn’t so bad when he has some one with him,” replied Clif, “but
let him get in the car alone and all rules are off. He drives like the
wind, takes blind corners at thirty and on the left of the road and
thinks side streets aren’t used. Once I asked him why he didn’t sound
the horn and he had to look all around for it! If he has a puncture
he just sits in the car and waits for some one to come along and take
a message to a garage. He hasn’t the slightest idea what’s under the
hood of the car or why the thing goes when he puts his foot down on
the starter.” Clif shook his head gloomily. “We had a chauffeur one
year for a couple of months. Then dad fired him because he wouldn’t go
down Waterman Street, in Providence, fast enough to suit him. Dad was
late for the office and the chauffeur shifted to second and there were
words!”

“I’ve reached the conclusion,” observed Tom, “that the French are the
only folks who really know how to drive a car. Look at those chaps in
Paris. Why, heck, it’s an art the way they fly around and don’t get
killed!”

“I believe you’re right,” said Loring. “A Frenchman seems to have a
genius for driving automobiles. They’re born artists at it. To watch
Edouard take the car down Fifth Avenue is a liberal education. I’ve
never seen him flustered in my life. How about it, Wattles? Have you
ever known Edouard to get rattled?”

Wattles straightened and looked thoughtfully at a handful of Loring’s
cravats. “Well, sir, there was one occasion. I fancy it was about
a year ago. You were not present at the time.” Wattles coughed
delicately. “In fact, Mr. Loring, it happened to be my afternoon off
and Edouard gave me a lift. We were proceeding downtown on Park Avenue,
sir, at rather a lively gait when a taxicab drew away from the curb in
front of us without warning. Oh, quite unexpectedly! There wasn’t room
to swing past it on the left, and as the street was treacherous, sir,
from a recent shower, it would have been impossible to apply the brakes
with the desired result.”

“Great stuff, Wattles!” Tom applauded. “Wonderful suspense! But what
_did_ he do? Don’t tell me you woke up just then!”

“No, sir.” Wattles smiled reminiscently. “The fact is, Mister Tom, I
was most fearfully alarmed. I was sitting beside Edouard, sir, and――”

“Wattles, for the love of Mike, get on!” exhorted Loring.

“Yes, sir. I was about to do so. Edouard turned the wheel very suddenly
and we shot up on the pavement――that is, the sidewalk――and went around
the taxi, sir. Fortunately, the sidewalk was empty.”

“I’ll say so!” exclaimed Tom. “How fast were you going, do you suppose,
Wattles?”

“About twenty-five, sir, I fancy. Possibly a bit more. I considered at
the time that it was very skillful driving, Mr. Loring, for he had to
pass between a hydrant and a light post on one side and a building on
the other. Doubtless it required rather delicate calculation also, sir,
to attain the correct angle between wheels and curb in order that the
car should surmount the――ah――obstacle.”

“You’re blamed right it did,” agreed Tom. “I’ll vociferate that, at
twenty-five an hour, that was some stunt!”

“And you say that Edouard was a trifle flustered on that occasion?”
asked Loring with a chuckle.

“Well, sir, perhaps I shouldn’t go that far,” replied Wattles
cautiously. “He didn’t conduct himself in a manner suggesting it, but I
did hear him say ‘_Sacre bleu!_’ as he went up on the pave――sidewalk!”

“Imagine a New York taxi driver confining himself to ‘_Sacre bleu_’ in
Edouard’s place,” laughed Clif. “Evidently he’s a man of few words and
considerable self-restraint.”

“Funny,” remarked Loring, with a wink at Clif, “that I never heard of
that piquant adventure, Wattles.”

Again Wattles coughed delicately. “I believe, sir,” he replied without
turning from his task of arranging the cravats in a drawer, “that the
incident was not mentioned.”

“Well, all this is mighty interesting,” observed Tom, “but something
tells me――” and he laid a hand on his belt buckle――“that the supper
hour approacheth. What about a game of chess this evening, Loring? I
haven’t seen a chessboard since last spring.”

“All right, Tom,” Loring replied. “I’ll be ready for you.”

Clif groaned. “I was hoping you chaps had forgotten that beastly game,”
he said. “Got any new books? I’ll have to read, because I always fall
asleep when I watch you play. I don’t know anything more――what’s the
word?――sedative than waiting for Tom to move!”

“Yes, I’ve got several new ones, Clif,” answered Loring. “One of them’s
on football, too.”

“That reading’s forbidden us,” said Clif virtuously. “Who wrote it?”

“Come on,” commanded Tom. “I’m starving. Let’s make the most of our
opportunities, Clif, before training table starts. See you after
supper, Loring. ‘All for one and one for all!’”

“‘All for one and one for all!’” echoed Loring.

Fortunately for all concerned in the development of the football
team, the hot weather disappeared by Thursday. After two sessions of
extremely languid practice Mr. Otis hailed the chance to get some real
work done, and on that afternoon the dummy was hitched into place and
a pleasant half hour was spent in tackling and blocking. Pleasant,
that is, from the point of view of the coach. And possibly the stuffed
effigy enjoyed it. Those who launched themselves across the freshly
spaded pit and clasped the swaying canvas legs soon tired of the
entertainment. The weather was seasonable, but it still required but
little exertion to bring a copious perspiration, and the soil in the
pit tasted no whit better than it had a year ago!

New candidates were unusually scarce this fall, and the summons posted
on the bulletin boards in the gymnasium and halls had failed to produce
an outpouring of eager and ambitious recruits. Guy Owens said it was
the weather, but events proved him wrong, for the crop of neophytes
that season never did approach the usual number. However, there was
a bright side to that, for with fewer beginners to handle more time
was left for the instruction of the old hands. Still, Mr. Otis wasn’t
pleased, and during the first week of school the dormitories were
carefully combed in the search for material. A coach has next year to
think of as well as the present season, and a lack of beginners this
fall indicates a want of veterans later. A handful of none too willing
youths were added to the squad by twos and threes over a space of
several days and then the supply ran out. However, the squad totaled
more than fifty by that time, and while that was a smaller number than
usual, it was still many more than would survive the final weeding.
Mr. Hilliard, who taught modern languages to the upper classes and
junior English to the lower school, and who was known as “Pinky,” was
assistant coach. “Pinky,” however, wasn’t always available in early
season, and the task of teaching kindergarten football was taken over
by Captain Ogden and Joe Weldon during the first few days of practice.
Jeff Ogden played full back, while Joe was a tackle, and both were
beginning their third year of football at Wyndham.

By Friday Clif was working with the tackles and making rather heavy
going. Perhaps, oddly, he had never really considered a tackle’s duties
before, and now he made the illuminating discovery that a tackle was,
to fall back on metaphor, “soldier and sailor, too!” That is, while he
was at times essentially a linesman, at other times he held the roving
commission of an end. Fully as much speed was required of Clif as last
year, and, or so he began to think, his duties in the new position were
more numerous. He became discouraged with himself frequently during the
first fortnight of the season and wouldn’t have been surprised at any
moment if Coach Otis had relegated him to his former job. But “G. G.”
appeared to have faith and Clif toiled on.

The first game, that with the local high school team, was no more than
a brisk practice, since high school had been at work only a day longer
than Wyndham. Mr. Otis used nearly three elevens in the course of
forty minutes of actual playing and some weird performances were seen.
Possibly Clif’s performance during the fifteen minutes or so that he
occupied the position of left tackle was as weird as any. His efforts
to reach the rear of the opponent’s line and pick off interference on
defense were not exactly crowned with success. Of course, he had his
lucky moments, but, on the whole, an intelligent observer wouldn’t have
picked him as an ideal tackle. Wyndham appeared, during the last two
periods, to be doing all in her power to present the adversary with
the game, and would probably have succeeded but for two things. One
was that she had accumulated twenty-three points to a mere six for the
opponent, and the other was that you can’t give a thing away unless
some one is willing to accept it, and Freeburg High resisted nobly!
As a football contest, even as a first one of a season, that game was
a good deal of a joke, and the audience knew it. However, it was
interesting if only for its humor.

In the first period, and well into the second, with what might have
been called her regular line-up on duty, Wyndham played fair football.
All positions save two were looked after by veterans of last year’s
team who, either as first- or second-string players, had won their
W’s. Drayton at left end was an experienced hand, Weldon and Cotter
at tackle, Desmond at right guard, Carlson at center, Houston at
quarter, Kemble and Sproule at half and Ogden at full had all played
against Wolcott for longer or shorter periods. There was plenty of
ragged work, to be sure, but the power was there and even if it was
frequently wrongly applied it bored the high school line and whittled
off the high school ends for two touchdowns and a field goal. The real
comedy of errors began when Coach Otis started to use his substitutes.
The second period was half gone then. Pat Tyson, relieving Carlson at
center, signalized his appearance by passing the ball at least four
feet over the head of “Swede” Hanbury, who had taken Jeff Ogden’s job
at full back. Followed a frenzied race for the runaway oval in which
some twenty-two youths participated. That was greatly appreciated by
the audience, which howled and applauded gleefully as, time and again,
the ball eluded the pursuers. By the time Jeff Adams, Wyndham end, had
at last captured the pigskin it was a good twenty-eight yards nearer
the dark blue’s goal than when it had begun its adventures. There was
no more scoring in the half, for by the time Hanbury had booted the
ball away from such dangerous proximity to the Wyndham goal line there
was only time for high school to run off a few plays before the horn
sounded.

High school made her lone score a few minutes after the third period
had begun. An intercepted forward pass gave her a good start, and when,
a minute or two later, Couch was neatly boxed, a fleet-footed half
skirted Wyndham’s right end and went over for a touchdown at the corner
of the field. But high school’s try-for-point was spoiled by Greene,
the blue-stockinged right guard. Just how Greene got through high
school’s line as speedily as he did was a mystery, but there he was,
looming large and forbidding, fairly on the heels of the ball, and the
high school kicker hadn’t a chance to even swing his leg!

Following that incident, Wyndham, greatly assisted by penalties,
went down the gridiron to the enemy’s thirty-two and there heaved a
surprisingly finished forward pass, Hanbury to Whitemill, that was
caught on the eight yards and carried over. Wyndham added another point
by kicking goal. That ended all scoring for the day. Subsequently,
with the home team composed almost exclusively of second and third
substitutes and the visiting eleven freshened――and apparently
weakened――by new men, the game became farce pure and simple. High
school, unable to puncture the line, essayed the end with scarcely
better luck and then resorted to desperate passing. The pigskin shot
hither and thither and frantic defenders rushed wildly about in pursuit
of it. Once or twice high school completed a pass, but almost always it
either dropped harmlessly to earth, well out of range of friend and
foe alike, or went to Wyndham. It didn’t go to Wyndham often, though,
for Wyndham had a bad attack of butter fingers. High school worked as
far as the home team’s twenty-two yard line on one occasion, only to
lose yardage on a penalty first and then possession of the ball on a
fumble. McMurtry, playing his first game at full back in the final
quarter, stood on his nineteen yards and attempted to punt. High school
broke through and McMurtry thought better of punting and ran. He ran
straight across the gridiron and might not have stopped his crablike
progress then if he hadn’t tripped on the edge of the cinder track and
allowed an opponent to grab him. A facetious youth in the stand offered
the explanation that McMurtry had thought he heard the horn and was
taking the ball back to the gymnasium.

The task of punting was next assigned to Treader, and Treader made
a somewhat better job of it. At least he got the ball away, even if
it didn’t go more than twenty yards! High school tried a fair catch,
missed it and chased the ball to the side line. Then, or soon after, it
occurred to some one to stop the game.

Not a very satisfactory start for a successful season you’d have
thought, but “G. G.” didn’t seem at all perturbed. Indeed, he even
found a word or two of commendation for several of the players who had
taken part in the comedy which had ended the entertainment. Clif was
one of the commended. Just for a dreadful instant he suspected “G. G.”
of sarcasm, but apparently the coach spoke in good faith. What he said
was: “Not bad, Bingham. When you learn to use your hands more you’ll
be useful.” Perhaps that doesn’t sound like praise, but for “G. G.” it
was almost fulsome!

By the first of the following week Number 40 West Hall was more to
Tom’s liking. The north window seat was almost hidden by four fat,
frilled pillows purchased in the local stores. One was covered with
brown leather on which was painted a blue canoe floating on yellow
water. A lady of surpassing beauty reposed in the bow, one hand
trailing in the vivid stream. A handsome youth occupied the stern, a
paddle across his knees and a large W on his white sweater. At one side
was a very green tree and above was a purple moon. At least Tom said it
was a moon while Clif held out for having it a toy balloon. Then there
were two red pillows, one undeniably crimson, the other verging on the
magenta. The magenta one was adorned with an Old English W. The fourth
and last artistic effort was Tom’s special joy. It was formed, as to
one side, of cigar ribbons of various hues of yellow and red. The other
side was less beautiful, being merely a square of pink sateen. Tom had
obtained that pillow at a real bargain in the village stationery store
conducted by an American citizen named Poppidalopous. “Poppy” as, for
evident reasons, he was known, informed Tom that the elegant article
had been made by Mrs. Poppidalopous’ own fair hands and that the task
had required several months. Tom, who was aware that “Poppy” was the
proud father of some six round-faced Greek-American children, could
easily believe that “Mrs. Poppy” would find it difficult to attain
such a noble result in less than several months without boarding the
children out! He paid the modest sum of two dollars and eighty cents
for the prize, inducing “Poppy” to knock off twenty cents because he
had failed to receive two Sunday papers last term.

Tom got a great deal of pleasure reading the inscriptions on the cigar
ribbons in moments of relaxation. At such times, luxuriously imposed
on the crimson and magenta cushions――one didn’t lean against the
leather pillow on account of the painting――he placed the Poppidalopous
masterpiece against his knees and perused it, turning it around as
he proceeded. Since he generally read aloud, this was a form of
entertainment enjoyed more by Tom than by Clif. Clif declared that
he could stand it better if it wasn’t for the constant recurrence of
the word “Aurelia.” He didn’t like “Aurelia” in the first place, he
said, and it didn’t improve, in his judgment, for being reiterated. He
suspected that “Aurelia” was a cheap cigar, possibly a five center, and
that Mrs. Poppidalopous had cheated in putting so many “Aurelias” into
the pillow cover. They had long and heated arguments on the subject.
Tom was certain――or said he was――that the “Aurelia” cigar was a very
excellent and high priced article and that Mrs. Poppi――well, Clif knew
what he wanted to say!――had so generously included the ribbons solely
to enhance the value of the pillow and, as it were, lend it class
and distinction. Tom challenged Clif to produce any one who had ever
purchased a genuine “Aurelia” for less than thirty-five cents!

Photographs were also liberally displayed in Number 40, and a large
blue banner bearing the word “Wyndham” in white letters hung from
the molding along one wall. Three pictures adorned as many sides of
the room, a pair of snowshoes were crossed above Clif’s chiffonier
and a pair of almost unsullied boxing gloves dangled above Tom’s.
Incidentally, it may be confided that Tom could use the boxing gloves
quite as scientifically as Clif could manipulate the snowshoes, and as
Clif had almost suffocated in a snow bank last winter before assistance
had reached him and disentangled his shoes you may fairly assume that,
while Tom was always cheerfully willing to scrap, as a boxer he was no
great shakes. Tom was highly pleased with the appearance of the room
and gave it as his opinion that it was pure selfishness not to share
its attractions with others. It would, he suggested, be a charitable
act to hold a housewarming some evening and allow less fortunate
fellows to see what genuine luxury was. Clif agreed to the suggestion
and the following Friday evening was settled on for the event. They had
some difficulty in drawing up a list of guests because Tom objected on
general principles to Clif’s nominees and Clif objected to Tom’s. But
they finally agreed on eight fortunate fellows and then took up the
subject of refreshments. As Tom had spent nearly all his last allowance
money on pillows for the window seat, he was in favor of something
modest in the way of food.

“Crackers and some of that zippy cheese that Danforth carries ought to
do,” he said. “And, of course, some pop; ginger ale for choice; only it
costs more. You see, Clif, ostentation in the matter of refreshments
is vulgar. The best people are going in for simplicity, old timer. I
guess some of that sympathetic orange juice will be better than ginger
ale; Orange Slush, you know, or whatever they call it.”

“The last time I drank that stuff,” replied Clif distastefully, “I
nearly passed out. Only had three bottles of it, too. No, sir, no
synthetic fruit juice for this affair. We’ll have ginger ale, and the
best sort, too. And crackers and cheese may be the proper caper in New
Jersey, Tom, but where I come from a housewarming calls for real chow.”

“Well, what do you call real chow?” asked Tom anxiously.

“Hot dogs and rolls, olives, ginger cookies, bananas and ginger ale,”
replied Clif triumphantly.

“That what you get at parties in Providence?” inquired the other
incredulously. “Heck, that sounds like a village picnic! No――no
restraint! No taste! Why――”

“Taste? You’re crazy! That stuff’s full of taste! We’ll have plenty of
mustard for the hot dogs, and――or do you prefer sauerkraut?”

“Help!” yelped Tom. “Say, who’s going to pay for this banquet? I’m
mighty near broke.”

“Fifty-fifty,” answered Clif. “I’ll foot the bill and you come across
next pay day with your half. We might leave out the olives, I suppose,”
he added reflectively. “Lots of fellows don’t care to waste time on
them.”

“That’s right. Olives are scratched. And aren’t bananas a bit heavy
after hot dogs, Clif? I’ve got my digestion to think of, old timer. It
isn’t what――” Tom stopped abruptly and his jaw dropped. “Why, you crazy
loon,” he exclaimed, “we’ll be at training table by Friday and can’t
eat that mess!”

“Gosh, that’s so! Table starts Wednesday, doesn’t it? Bananas are
scratched, too, Tom!”




                               CHAPTER V

                       CLIF MAKES AN ACQUAINTANCE


Last year Clif had roomed in Number 17 on the floor below with Walter
Treat. They had got along exceedingly well together and Clif had a
real liking for Walt. So far this term he hadn’t seen Walt for more
than an instant, and then merely to shake hands hurriedly and exchange
greetings. He wondered whether his former roommate resented his leaving
him for Tom. Last spring, when he had announced his intention of
pairing with Tom in the fall, Walt had been as nice as pie about it,
but somehow since coming back Clif had acquired the notion that Walt
had felt a trifle hurt and that he wasn’t going to be as friendly as
before. All along Clif had meant to stop in at Number 17 and make a
call, but life had been very busy, and then, too, the suspicion that
Walt might not care a great deal about seeing him had made it easy to
postpone the visit. Now, however, since Walter Treat’s name was down on
the list of guests for the housewarming, it was indubitably up to Clif
to call and deliver the invitation in person. So on Wednesday, after
practice, he parted from Tom in the hall below and made his way to
Number 17.

He had tried to prevail on Tom to accompany him, but Tom had presented
one excuse after another. As a matter of fact, Tom held much the same
doubt as Clif did regarding Walter’s sentiment toward them. He liked
Walt, although there had been a time when he couldn’t abide the other’s
somewhat high-brow manner. Later, finding that it was no more than a
manner and that, even if one did hail from Boston, one could be quite
human, he had accepted the other without reservations. Still, he was
willing that Clif should make the overtures and determine Walt’s
attitude. After all, he told himself extenuatingly, it wasn’t his
funeral. Just the same he felt a bit traitorous as he climbed the next
flight, and would have gone back had Clif made another plea.

Clif’s knock on the portal of Number 17 was answered by a strange voice
and he entered to find the well-remembered room in possession of a
startlingly large youth who, seated at the study table, was observing
him with grave inquiry. This fellow, Clif reflected, was, of course,
Walt’s new roommate, and, although he didn’t know the chap’s name,
memory connected him with a momentary glimpse of an astoundingly broad
pair of shoulders obtained in the corridor of Middle Hall a day or
two before. The large chap had a pleasant voice, and Clif found his
drawling enunciation and odd accent interesting.

“Walt’s out,” replied the fellow in reply to Clif’s inquiry. “Maybe you
can see that for yourself, though. Guess he’ll be along in two, three
minutes, stranger. Have a seat.”

“No, I’d better come again,” said Clif. “It’s getting toward six
o’clock. Just tell him, will you, that Clif Bingham called, and that
I’ll drop around later.”

“Sure will.” The big chap’s sun-burnt and freckled countenance broke
into a wide and engaging smile. “You’re the Bingham that’s on the
football team, ain’t you? Pleased to meet you. My name’s Parks.” The
speaker arose cumbrously from his seat and held out a broad hand.
Accepting it, Clif discovered that Mr. Parks had a mighty grip and that
the inside of the hand had something of the quality of a board.

“Thanks,” responded Clif, opening and closing his fingers in an effort
to restore circulation. “Very glad to know you, Parks, too. Well, I’ll
drop in again.”

“Shucks, better stay and wait for him.” Parks seized a chair and swung
it around on one leg with a mighty thud. “Sit down and talk a minute,
won’t you?”

“Well――” began Clif again. Then he found himself in the chair, induced
partly by Parks’ friendly grin and partly by a big brown hand.

“Can’t get folks to talk to me here,” proceeded the host, returning to
his own seat and lowering himself into it with slow, awkward movements.
“Seems like every one’s too busy to sit down and pass the time with a
fellow. Out where I come from folks is――are more neighborly.”

“Where’s that?” inquired Clif.

“Wyoming. That’s my state. Ever been to Wyoming?” Clif shook his head.
He had been through it on a train, but he knew that Parks wouldn’t call
that a visit. “You ought to,” the other drawled on. “Finest state in
the union. Providence is my town.”

“What?” exclaimed Clif.

“I said Providence was where I live――or did live.” Parks looked a bit
wistful after the correction.

“Well, I live in Providence, too,” laughed Clif. “That’s why I was
surprised. Providence, Rhode Island, though.”

“You don’t say? Rhode Island? That’s the smallest state there is, ain’t
it? Course size ain’t a heap important, though.”

“No, and so I guess your Providence is quite as nice as mine,” replied
Clif. Parks grinned. Then he chuckled, and when he chuckled he had an
odd trick of pressing curved fingers against his generous mouth, as
though laughing was an indiscretion. “Shucks, I’d like for you to see
my Providence, Bingham. There ain’t nothing there but about thirty
houses. Wasn’t, anyhow. Guess it’s built up some now, maybe. Probably
you can’t see the house no more for the oil rigs.”

“Oh, it’s oil country, eh?” asked Clif interestedly. “I’ve always
wanted to see an oil field.”

“Guess there ain’t much to see,” said the other gloomily, “but a heap
of dirt. Derricks ain’t awful pretty, and once those oil fellows get
in, a place just goes to pot. I get sort of homesick for Providence now
and then, but, shucks, I guess I wouldn’t want to go back there if I
was to see what it looks like now.”

“Are you――I mean are your folks interested in oil wells, Parks?”

“Yeah, some interested. It was like this. Pop owned a mighty nice half
section out yonder and we was――were, I mean――doing right well on it.
Had one of the finest houses in the country. Pretty, too, Bingham.”
The voice sounded wistful. “You could stand on the front porch and see
about eighty miles any direction. There was Big Butte, looking like you
could throw a clod and hit it, and the Wind River Range over yonder――”
Parks’ voice trailed away into silence.

“It must be fine,” agreed Clif after a moment.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe you wouldn’t admire it so much. You got to
be born out thataway, I guess. Anyhow, it was a mighty nice ranch until
that ornery oil man came along.” Parks pulled one big foot across a
knee and eased further down in the chair. His face was rather square,
and the fading light from the windows behind him left it in a warm
shadow that blurred the features. Just then Clif felt embarrassingly
alien to the big youth. “That was last spring,” Parks went on. “He told
pop he figured there was oil on the ranch and wanted to sink a well.
Pop told him he’d better figure how to get off the place before he went
in for his shotgun. But the fellow come――came back in a little while,
and he was a good talker and pop finally said he could go ahead and
dig over in a corner of the eighty where the alfalfa was. Pop didn’t
put much stock in the fellow’s talk, you see. Course there’d been oil
discovered plenty of places before that, but none of ’em was nigh us.
Well, they drilled and first thing we knew there was oil spouting all
over the alfalfa field! Plumb ruined the crop before they got the cap
on.”

“Gosh,” said Clif. “That must have been exciting!”

Parks viewed him dubiously. “I don’t know. Yes, it was exciting, I
guess, but pop wasn’t so pleased. We needed that hay, for one thing,
and then, of course, a lot more oil fellows came piling in on us with
papers all ready to sign. Pop tried to shoo ’em away, but they was like
flies――_were_ like flies, I mean――round a sugar barrel! You could swat
a few, but others would come instead. They were milling around thick
pretty soon, and derricks was going up here and there for miles around.
Finally Pop seen――saw there wasn’t any use trying to farm a piece of
land that had oil under it and he give――gave up. Say, it’s sort of hard
learning to talk grammatical, ain’t it? But maybe you was brought up to
it.” Parks sighed and shook his head. “Me, I’m having one awful time!”

Clif laughed. “I like the way you talk, Parks,” he answered. “However,
you needn’t worry. They’ll have you speaking like all the rest of us in
a month. Which, to my thinking, will be a shame.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t know. Ma’s strong for having me talk proper, like
eastern folks. That’s why I come here. So―― Say, I said ‘come’ instead
of ‘came’ again, didn’t I? Shucks, I’ve got a memory about as long as a
piece of wire! Well, let’s see. Where was I?”

“You said your father had to give in finally.”

“Oh, yes! That’s sure right. There wasn’t any sense trying to live
there and fight off oil fellows every minute, so pop gave in. He sold
half the ranch. They wanted it all, but he wouldn’t do it. Ma’s got a
sister living in New York state, place called Albia, and she wanted
us to come east and spend the summer. Said we could go back home in
the fall and pop could look around for another ranch. Pop said he’d be
switched if he’d do anything of the sort.”

The narrator arose, walked to the door and turned the light switch.
“Guess all this is sort of tiresome, Bingham. So long since I got a
chance to do any talking I don’t know when to quit.”

“It isn’t tiresome a bit,” protested Clif. “I want to hear it. But
doesn’t Walt talk? He used to.”

“Yeah, he talks.” Parks grinned. “I said _me_.”

“Oh,” Clif laughed. “You mean Walt wants to do all of it.”

“Well, I don’t know as I ought to say that exactly. I guess what I mean
is that we don’t like to talk about the same things. He’s a pretty nice
fellow, though, ain’t he? Well, as I was telling, we hopped a train
long in June――”

“But you weren’t! You said your father refused to leave.”

“Yeah,” agreed Parks dryly; “but ma didn’t. Ma generally gets her way.
So we come――gosh ding it, _came!_――east in June and visited Aunt Lida.
Pop was so blame homesick, though, you’d pity him, and it wasn’t long
before he went off to New York City and got him a job. Course he didn’t
need it, because――” Parks hesitated and shot a doubtful glance at his
audience――“well, you see, with them wells shooting their heads off and
pop getting so much on every barrel, it wasn’t necessary he should.”

“In other words,” said Clif, smiling at the other’s embarrassment,
“you’re disgustingly wealthy now!”

Parks grinned apologetically. “That’s about it,” he acknowledged. “Got
more money than we know what to do with. Kind of a shame, too, for we
don’t need it. Pop gets right worried at times, it piles up on him so.
Said the other day he wished the tarnation wells would give out. But
they ain’t doing it. They’re getting worse! Ma, she seems to like being
rich. Says she don’t care if she never sees Wyoming again, but I guess
that’s just talk. Still, at that, a woman has a pretty dull time of it
on a ranch, and works pretty hard, too. Maybe she’s got a good right to
like living in a New York hotel for a while.”

“You said your father got a job, Parks. What sort of a job was it?”

“Well, he found a man had a harness store over on the east side――or
maybe west side――no, east side’s right――and he got a job with him.
Then, long in August, he bought the man out. Fellow was glad enough to
sell, I guess, for the harness business in New York’s about as dead as
the ice business in Greenland. Pop got stung, I guess, and he’s sort of
sore about it, too. Don’t hardly make his rent, and that’s worrying him
like anything.”

“But if he has so much money already――”

“Yeah, but pop don’t like the idea of taking hold of a thing and not
making it pay, you see. That’s what’s eating him. Shucks, seems like
he’s done more worrying since we left Wyoming than he ever did before,
long’s I’ve known him!”

“How long is that?” asked Clif.

“Eighteen years. Kind of old to be in the second class here, ain’t I?
I told ma I was, too, but she wouldn’t listen. She’s dead set on having
me gentled. Some lady she met at the hotel told her about this school
and nothing would do but for me to come here. And here I am, a regular
longhorn!”

“Oh, you’ll like it after you’ve been here a while,” Clif assured him.
“It’s a corking good school.”

“Guess I like it all right now,” replied Parks reflectively. “Question
is, does it like me? I ain’t properly broke to harness, Bingham, I
guess. Fellows here are sort of――sort of――now what’s the word I’m
after?――sort of clannish, aren’t they?”

“Mm, well, yes, I dare say, Parks. I suppose they are at all schools.
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t join the clan. Fact is, old man,
you’re just about the sort that goes big with us effete easterners. We
get kind of tired of our own sort, you see.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t know. Maybe I can horn into the herd after a
spell. I’m sure obliged to you for letting me talk to you, Bingham. I
was getting scared my tongue would get stiff in the joints from lack of
exercise. Say, I don’t know what’s keeping Walt. He went out more’n an
hour ago.”

“Never mind,” replied Clif, rising. “Just say I was here and that I’ll
be back this evening some time. I haven’t had a talk with him since I
got back.”

“You and him was together here last year, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

The big fellow sighed. “Guess you were more his style. Well, I’ll tell
him you were asking for him.”

“Thanks.” Clif lingered, his hand on the knob. Then: “By the way,
Parks,” he announced, “my roommate and I are having a little shindig
next Friday evening. Tom――Tom Kemble――calls it a housewarming. I came
to ask Walt to come to it. He may not want to, but, whether he does or
doesn’t, I wish you’d come, Parks.”

“Me?” Parks looked startled. “Shucks, you don’t want me to your party,
Bingham! I――I wouldn’t know what to say!”

“Oh, it isn’t a party at all. Just half a dozen――well, eight or nine
fellows, you know, and something to eat. About nine o’clock, or as soon
as you get through study. We’re going to get permits to run the show
until ten-thirty. Don’t forget, now!”

“Well, I don’t know,” drawled Parks, shifting his weight to the other
foot beside the table. “Maybe if Walt goes, though――”

“Righto! I’m counting on you.”

Outside in the corridor Clif had a moment of regret. After all, Parks
didn’t know any of the others, save Walt, and perhaps he had been silly
to ask him. However, it was done.




                               CHAPTER VI

                           THE “HOUSEWARMING”


Tom was almost irritable when Clif confessed that he had asked Parks to
the party, and Clif’s description of the chap didn’t seem to reassure
him. “Sort of a queer specimen,” detailed Clif as he hurriedly prepared
for supper. “About two sizes larger than ‘Big Bill’ Fargo was last
year. Has a lot of hair that stands up on top and makes him look
taller. Slow moving, like an elephant, and just about as――as ponderous.
Not bad looking. Broad across the forehead, an indication of brains
unfortunately lacking with you, Tommy. What sort of got me, though, was
his――well, kind of helplessness. He’s a bit uncouth――no, that isn’t
just it, either. He reminds you of a piece of homemade furniture;
strong and dependable, you know, and not bad to look at, but lacking
finish. Rough around the corners. And the grain showing――”

“Oh, shut up,” said Tom. “Who cares? What I want to know is――”

“Nice eyes and a big mouth that――”

“――is why we have to be saddled with him? He doesn’t know any of the
others, does he?”

“Don’t believe so,” answered Clif cheerfully. “Don’t believe he’s――what
were his words now?――‘horned in’ yet. That’s one reason I asked him.
He’s going to be quite a hit when he gets known, and you and I, old
son, will get the credit for introducing him to society.”

“You’re plumb crazy,” said Tom in plaintive disgust. “Oh, all right,
only don’t expect me to hold his little hand. He’s your guest,
remember.”

“Fair enough! You’ll like him, though, when you get to know him. All
set? Let’s go, then.”

Clif didn’t have to return to Number 17 that evening to extend an
invitation to Walter Treat, for, as luck had it, Walter was in the
corridor when Clif and Tom came out from supper and joined them.

“Hello, Tom,” he greeted. “How are you?”

“First rate, thanks,” replied Tom, shaking hands and viewing the other
appraisingly. “How’s yourself?”

“Fine, I think. Fact is, I’ve been on the go so much since I got
back that I haven’t had time to consider that important question. My
roommate said you called, Clif, and left word you wanted to see me. Saw
you coming out and thought I’d wait.”

“Why, yes.” Walt’s manner was so cordial that Clif felt vastly relieved
and even grateful, and the fact induced an enthusiasm that may have
surprised the other. “Tom and I are having a kind of blow-out Friday
night in our room, Walt, and we want you to be sure and come. Just a
sort of housewarming, as Tom calls it, with six or seven fellows and
some eats. How about it?”

“Glad to,” answered Walt. “By the way, what’s the number?”

“Forty. On the corner, just around from where Tom was last year. About
nine o’clock. And, by the way, I asked Parks to come.”

Walt smiled. “Did he accept?”

“Well, sort of. Conditionally, as you might say. If you came, he seemed
to think he would.”

“Really? Well, that’s odd. You must have charmed him, Clif. He’s the
shyest chap for his size and age I ever ran onto. I’ve tried to pull
him about, but he won’t stir for me. Did he happen to tell you his
name?”

“Yes, Parks.”

“I mean his first name. It’s Lemueljohn.”

“It’s _what_?” demanded Clif.

“Lemueljohn,” chuckled Walt. “At least that’s the way it sounds. Of
course, it’s really two words.”

“Sounds like a breakfast food,” commented Tom boredly.

“He explained that he’s named after his father and that in order to
differentiate, so to speak, he has always been called Lemuel John. But
as he says it, you’d swear it was all one name! Well, I’ll bring him
along if he will come, fellows. Thanks. See you again.”

“Lemuel John,” muttered Tom, as Walt went on toward the recreation
room. “He must be a prize!”

Football grew strenuous by Thursday of that second week of school.
The Highland game was due on Saturday, and in Highland would be found
an opponent vastly different from the local high school. Coach Otis
more than half expected a defeat, although he didn’t say so, unless to
Captain Ogden or Quarter Back Houston. But he didn’t intend to accept
defeat without struggling against it, and so on Thursday a hastily
organized scrub team made its bow and offered some fair opposition. The
scrub was coached by Mr. Babcock, the Physical Director, familiarly
known as “Cocky.” So far, however, “Cocky” hadn’t had time to impart
much wisdom to his charges, and if the first team hadn’t been as
ragged as it was the scrub wouldn’t have provided very good practice.
As it happened, though, Mr. Babcock’s aggregation did very well for
themselves, especially on Friday when, during a single fifteen-minute
scrimmage, Mr. Otis loaned the enemy a center and a left tackle in the
persons of Pat Tyson and “Wink” Coles. Clif played opposite “Wink” that
afternoon and, although they were extremely good friends, was used
quite brutally. Afterwards “Wink” seated himself by Clif in the locker
room and imparted advice.

“Listen, Clif,” said “Wink,” chastely attired in a large but rather
soiled bath towel, “you’ve got to use your hands more, son. I got to
you lots of times to-day. You don’t want to let the other guy into
you on defense, see? Keep him off with your hands. Like this, see?
Shoulder――head――this way――swing him aside――pull him down!” “Wink”
illustrated with quick gestures. “You’ve got to be shifty, too. Don’t
let the other fellow find you flat-footed. Keep moving. Keep him
guessing. Another thing, too. On attack, now. Don’t charge the same way
twice running. You use your shoulder too much. Lots of times you can do
better by slipping around your man. If you can’t, give him a straight
arm for a change, or bust square into him and go on over. If a guy’s
looking for a shoulder and gets set for it he can’t stop a straight
charge so easy. See what I mean? Don’t get stuck on any one style, old
son. Variety, eh? Spice of life, Clif!”

“I’ve got a heap to learn about playing tackle,” answered Clif
ruefully. “Much obliged, ‘Wink.’”

“That’s all right. Glad you aren’t peeved at me trying to give you
tips. Tackle’s new to you, and there’s little things you don’t catch
onto right off, see? Thought I’d just mention it, you know.”

“Mighty decent of you,” answered Clif. “Especially as we’re both after
the same job!”

“Wink” shrugged. “I don’t expect to make it this year, Clif. You and
Weldon have both got the call on me. Still and all, I’ll give you a
dinged good run for your money!”

“Come a-bustin’, old chap! By the way, don’t forget the blow-out
to-night.”

“Not so’s you’d notice it! I’ll be on hand. As the fellow with the hare
lip said: ‘Iyawyawyawfluller!’”

“What’s it in English?” laughed Clif as the other hurried toward the
showers.

“‘I’m all of a flutter!’” translated “Wink.”

The “housewarming” went off very well that evening, although not much
in the way of entertainment was provided by the hosts aside from a
free and untrammeled opportunity for indulgence in conversation. Seven
guests attended, all that had been invited, filling Number 40 from
side to side and end to end. Football was well represented by Billy
Desmond, “Wink” Coles, “Swede” Hanbury, Jeff Adams and, of course, the
hosts. Literature attended in the person of Walter Treat, this year an
assistant editor of the school monthly, _The Lantern_. With Walt was
Lemuel John, looking a bit bigger than Clif remembered him. Lemuel John
had donned an intensely purple shirt for the occasion. Loring Deane
completed the list, his wheel chair backed up alongside Tom’s bed so
that, in case the party got a trifle rough, he would be out of danger.

Lemuel John was not the only sizable youth present, for both Desmond
and Hanbury approached six feet. Billy was in the first class this year
and was certain of the right guard position on the eleven. “Swede”
Hanbury――his real name was Joe――would have been the logical first
choice for full back if Captain Jeff Ogden hadn’t changed from half to
full last year. It’s a fairly difficult feat to beat the captain out,
and Joe was resigned to being a second-string player this season. But,
as large as Billy and Joe were, Lemuel John still had it over them
for size. He was possibly a half inch taller than Billy, a full inch
broader than “Swede” and many pounds heavier than either.

Jeff Adams was an end candidate and at the present time was giving
Drayton a hard fight for the left wing position. Jeff and “Wink” had
served with Clif and Tom last season on the second team, the “Fighting
Scrub,” as it had been called, and were consequently more than mere
friends. As Tom put it, the four had “fit, bled and died together!”
Jeff’s appearance was misleading. He looked stodgy and sleepy and moved
and talked as he looked――until the whistle blew. Then Jeff was quite
another person. “Wink” was a snapping-eyed youth with red cheeks and a
general air of “go-get-it.”

Conversation didn’t really flow well until the “eats” had been set out,
and, since they had but an hour and twenty-odd minutes at the most
for the party, Clif and Tom didn’t keep their guests waiting long. Of
course the original menu had been painfully cut down. There were no hot
dogs, no bananas, no “zippy” cheese. As valuable an article of diet as
cheese may be, it doesn’t sit on the stomach very quietly when partaken
of at around ten o’clock at night. The same may be said of bananas,
while as for “wiennies”――well, a certain amount of physical exercise is
necessary to subdue those delectable viands. However, if such things
were taboo, football training, so far as the diet was concerned, was
fairly lenient, and sandwiches of chicken and of minced ham, plenty of
ice cream, vanilla wafers and unlimited ginger ale answered very well
indeed. The hosts made up in quantity what was lacking in variety, and
the guests did full justice to the repast.

It was during a comparative lull in the conversation that Billy
Desmond, who had been regarding Lemuel John furtively for some time,
inquired: “I haven’t seen you out on the field, have I, Parks?”

“I’ve been there three, four times,” answered Lemuel John.

It appeared that others had been curious on the subject, for there
was almost a complete cessation of voices in the room as Lemuel John
answered. The answer was followed by an exchange of inquiring looks.
Then Billy said, puzzled: “Three or four times? Why don’t you come out
every day? What are you trying for?”

It was Walt who explained. “He thought you were asking if he watched
practice, Billy. He doesn’t play.”

“He doesn’t!” Billy stared at Lemuel John in unconcealed amazement. “He
looks like he ought to. Haven’t you ever played, Parks?”

“No, I never saw much of football until this fall. I saw a game at
Cheyenne once, but I didn’t understand it very well. It’s sort of
interesting, ain’t it? I guess I saw you playing it one day, didn’t I?”

“You might have,” replied Billy soberly. “Wink,” however, chuckled
audibly, and Lemuel John, whose shyness had somewhat diminished with
the arrival of food, looked embarrassed and twisted one foot around the
leg of his chair until the wood creaked alarmingly. Tom went to his
rescue. “Mean to say, Parks, that they haven’t been after you?”

“Who’s that?” asked the other.

“Well, Guy Owens or some of the football fellows.”

“Oh, asking me to learn the game? Yes, a fellow named――named New, I
guess, was around bedeviling me the other day. He said he was the
manager. He said he’d like for me to play――”

“He’s assistant manager,” corrected Walt rather unnecessarily.

“Still, he might have called himself manager, at that,” laughed Clif.
“Steve’s feeling his oats a bit this year.”

“What did you tell him?” demanded Tom.

“Oh, I said I didn’t know anything about the game. He said it wouldn’t
take me long to learn. Said the coach could teach me quick enough.
But, shucks, I knew better. I don’t learn that easy. Why, I was all one
winter learning how to play chess!”

“Keno!” exclaimed Loring. “You’re mine, Parks!”

“Huh?” Lemuel John faced this new distraction with a blank expression
on his big countenance. “What did you say, stranger?”

“I said you were mine,” laughed Loring. “If you play chess you’re the
man I’m looking for. You see, Parks, most of these dubs don’t know
the game. All they can master is football or baseball or one of those
low-brow sports. I suppose they lack the mentality for chess.”

Lemuel John’s gaze passed leisurely over Loring and came to rest on the
rug that covered him from the waist down. “You a crip?” he asked rather
gently.

There was the sound of a gasp from some one, and an uncomfortable
silence endured for a brief instant. Then Loring answered, smiling:
“Yes, something of the sort. I can’t use my legs. That’s why chess is
the most strenuous sport I go in for.”

Lemuel John nodded. “Yeah, I see. Well, I’ll be glad to play with you
any time. I ain’t much good at it yet, but I’m learning. I guess it’s
pretty tough not to be able to walk around.” He continued to gaze at
Loring, his rather light blue eyes puckered in thought. Then: “You
don’t look very heavy,” he added. “Guess I could tote you easy if there
was some place you wanted to go any time.”

“Thanks,” answered Loring gratefully. “I’ll remember that.”

“Yeah, I’d be glad to,” said Lemuel John.

“Big boob!” murmured Walt in Clif’s ear. Clif looked over at Tom,
expecting to find that youth signaling “What did I tell you about
asking that guy up here?” Instead, though, Tom was regarding Lemuel
John rather kindly, and “I’ll fetch him over some evening, Loring,” he
announced. “And I sure hope he licks the stuffing out of you!”

Jeff Adams swung the conversation to football the next moment. “Who’s
taking the trip to-morrow, Billy?” he asked lazily.

“To Highland? I haven’t heard, Jeff. Guy said there’d be about
twenty-five of us, though. That lets us all in, I suppose.”

“Well, it lets you in,” said “Wink,” “but it’s a dollar to a bean that
I don’t get there.”

“Sure you will,” said Tom. “Who’s going to keep the water bucket
filled?”

“Sit on a tack,” responded “Wink” graciously. “And toss me a couple of
cookies, while you’re up.”

“I’m not up,” said Tom; “but when hospitality calls I respond with
alacrity. Clif, attend to the gentleman’s wants.”

Clif passed a box of cookies and then busied himself with ginger ale.
“Mighty few of the fellows going along, I guess,” said “Swede,” who,
stretched at full length of Clif’s bed, accepted a new bottle and
tilted it over his mouth. “Too far, probably.”

“Too expensive,” said Walt. “It’s all right for you fellows, making the
trip in nice, comfortable automobiles, but the rest of us――”

“Say, we’ve got the new buses, haven’t we?” exclaimed “Wink.” “Gee, I
hope I get to go!”

“You wouldn’t go to a game if it was in the next village, Walt,” said
Clif. “You’ve no more patriotism than a worm.”

“Patriotism,” began Walt indignantly.

“He’s going to-morrow,” announced Lemuel John calmly. “I told him I’d
pay the fares if he would.”

There was a gleeful howl at that, through which Walt declared
defiantly: “Sure, why not? Think I’ve got enough coin to go traipsing
all over the country? Do you know how much it costs to get to Highland
and back?”

“You should worry,” chuckled “Swede.” “At that, I dare say you’ll turn
in the expense to _The Lantern_!”

“A fat chance!” said Walt. “Gosh, I even have to buy my own typewriter
ribbons!”

“Who’s going to win, Billy?” asked Loring.

“Wyndham,” replied the right guard.

“I’ll bet we don’t,” said “Wink.” “Highland’s laying for us this time,
Billy.”

“Let her lay,” retorted Billy untroubledly. “She’s beaten already. Know
why? Because she’s scared of us, ‘Wink.’ Got so she thinks she always
has to lose to us. Psychology, kid.”

“Psychology my eye!” said “Wink.” “What about last year?”

“We won. Nine to nothing, wasn’t it?”

“Sure, we won! I didn’t say we didn’t. But we had one gosh-awful time
doing it, didn’t we? Got a lucky field goal in the first half and then
couldn’t do a thing until the game was nearly over. If Highland had
had any sort of an offense――”

“If,” said Billy dryly. “She didn’t have. She won’t have to-morrow. Or,
if she does, then she’ll be weak on defense. We’ll win, kid. Something
like twenty to nothing. Well, allow Highland a field goal, if you like.”

“‘G. G.’” said Clif, “was pretty doubtful about to-morrow’s game a week
or so back.”

“He has a right to be,” declared “Wink.” “Billy can talk like that if
it gives him any pleasure, but I’m telling you we haven’t got the steam
to run up any twenty points against Highland. Our back field’s as slow
as cold molasses!”

“That’s right, blame it on the back field,” said Tom. “What about a
line that can’t open a hole for you to squeeze through because they’re
dead on their feet? That doesn’t make any difference, eh?”

“Oh, I’m not saying much for the line, either,” answered “Wink.”
“The truth is that the whole team is just about a week behind. And
Highland’s been practicing for nearly a month, I’ll bet. Maybe we’ll
beat ’em, but you guys won’t be on the long end of any twenty-nothing
score!”

“Just so we win,” said Clif. “That’s all I’m hoping. What I’d like
to see is the old team come through the season with a clean slate,
fellows.”

“Some one kill him while he’s happy,” suggested Tom. “We’ve got as much
chance of doing that as――as I have to get through left guard to-morrow!”

“You’ll get through left guard all right, Tom, if you don’t fall over
your feet,” said Billy comfortably. “But I can’t keep the hole open for
you more than five or six minutes.”

“I don’t see that it’s impossible,” said Clif earnestly. “Our
schedule’s no harder than usual and we’re well fixed for players this
year. I’ll bet that if we really set out to do it we could.”

“Maybe so, Clif,” said “Swede,” disposing of his empty bottle by
tucking it under the pillow. “Maybe so if Otis would let us. But he
won’t.”

“How do you mean? Why won’t he? I said the same thing to him and he
talked like he thought it would be fine!”

“Sure enough, but here’s the point, young feller, me lad. ‘G. G.’ won’t
point for any game but the last one. If we set out to win every contest
we might do it. I mean if ‘G. G.’ set out to do it. But he won’t. He
will use every game as a step toward Wolcott, not caring much whether
we win or lose as long as we’re a bit further along. See what I mean,
Clif? Take to-morrow’s game. If we were to get through the season
without a licking we’d have to take the Highland game, of course. That
would mean doing a bit of preparation. Learning what Highland has and
finding a way to stop it. Going up with a few ground-gaining plays
instead of the rag-tag of last year’s stuff that we have. Same way with
the Jordan game and the Cupples and all the rest of them right through
the fall. We’d have to point for each game as it came along and not use
it just as a practice stunt to put us in trim for Wolcott. Gosh, I’m
dry. Any more of that ginger pop?”

“Just the same,” began Clif as he arose to find another bottle.

“Wolcott’s our meat,” said Jeff. “I don’t care how often we get nipped
if we can just get our teeth in her when the time comes. What do you
say, Deane?”

“I think, as Clif does, that it would be a wonderful stunt to have an
undefeated team this year. Wouldn’t it look corking in the papers?
‘Wyndham School Completes Season Without Defeat!’”

“Yes, it would look mighty nice,” agreed Jeff. “But I’d hate to have
the team work so hard winning the first seven games that it would lose
the last one! I guess I’m with ‘G. G.’ Point for Wolcott is my motto.
Say, for the love of mud, what time is it?”

“Swede” glanced at his watch and rolled off the bed, and the stampede
began.




                              CHAPTER VII

                           OVER THE CROSSBAR


“Swede” Hanbury’s prediction that the Wyndham cheering section would
be small at Saturday’s game proved correct. The trip over the border
into Massachusetts was long and costly and only about thirty fellows
followed the eleven to the lair of the Highlanders. Those that went
were well repaid, if a hard, fast contest that was in doubt to the end
of the fourth period could make up for the combination of discomfort
and bankruptcy. The team started in mid-forenoon and were in Highland
in time for luncheon, but those who traveled by train missed their
dinner, consumed sandwiches en route, swallowed a good deal of dust and
smoke and finally arrived at their destination just too late to reach
the field in time for the kick-off. Walter Treat remarked querulously
to Lemuel John as they footed it along a hot highway that he couldn’t
see why any one should want to build a school in an out-of-the-way
place like Highland. Lemuel John, less perturbed, looked around at the
surrounding hills, the green, sloping meadows and the tree-bordered
trout stream that gurgled and splashed under an old stone bridge, and
mildly replied that perhaps it was because the place was so pretty.
Walt, digging a gnat out of his ear, sniffed in a tone suggesting that
in his opinion the explanation was pretty poor.

Thirty boys――there may have been thirty-three or -four――can make
quite a good deal of sound if they set out to do it, and so the dark
blue’s prowess did not go unacclaimed. But Highland opposed over three
hundred to Wyndham’s handful and the odds were much in her favor. It
was evident from the first that the Massachusetts school had set her
heart on wiping out old scores this afternoon. The cheering and singing
were well organized, and there was an intensity――and something of
vindictiveness, too――in the shouts that arose from across the field
that told of grim determination. Highland had more to cheer for than
the Wyndham devotees had in the first half of the game, for, although
there was no scoring by either side, it was Highland who held the upper
hand and who twice threatened the opposite goal.

That the home team was farther along in season experience than the
visitor was soon apparent. Whether, as “Wink” surmised, Highland had
been practicing longer than Wyndham is not known to the narrator, but
it did seem that such smooth, even polished playing could never have
been developed in twelve days. Highland possessed a valuable asset in
a long, rangy left half back who could outpunt Ogden five or six yards
every time and, besides, get much better direction than the Wyndham
captain. It was Talley’s punting that finally yielded Highland’s first
chance to score.

Houston misjudged one of Talley’s efforts and had to chase it back to
his twenty-six yards. An attempt to regain some of the lost territory
was disastrous, for a determined Highland end stayed with him across
the field, and at last, trying to reverse, Houston slammed squarely
into the arms of a tackle and went to earth on his twenty-three. Ogden
very promptly punted, but he was hurried and the pigskin went high
and only to midfield. Highland, with her supporters yelling like mad,
ripped off eight yards inside Couch, and then, failing on a similar
try at the other end, again punted. This time Houston was fairly under
the kick and snuggled it to him on his seven yards. But a Highland end
allowed only two strides, and Jeff Ogden strode back to the goal line
and held out his arms.

“_Block that kick! Block that kick!_” chanted Highland.

Well, she couldn’t quite do that, but the left side of the Wyndham line
did buckle badly and Ogden was hurried by a frantic tackle who somehow
leaked past Sproule. He got the ball away, but it slanted to the left,
barely topping upstretched arms, and was momentarily lost in the crowd
along the Highland side. When it reappeared a heartless referee paced
it back close to the twenty-yard line, waved an arm toward the Wyndham
goal and announced: “First down! Highland!”

Highland shot a back outside tackle on her left, but the play was
expected and only a two-yard gain resulted. Preparing as for a field
goal, Highland used deception and sent the full back smashing into
Billy Desmond. Billy gave, but only to the extent of another yard.
Again came kick formation, with the performer standing just short of
the twenty-seven. But Wyndham didn’t believe all she saw, and when the
play resolved itself into a running forward pass the receiver missed
the ball by yards. Finally Highland was forced to kick, and the pigskin
passed harmlessly under the bar.

Some three minutes before the first half ended Highland again
threatened. Then a brilliant run straight through the whole dark blue’s
team, by the Highland captain and left half, put the ball down on
Wyndham’s eighteen, and there is no reason to suppose that a try at
a goal from the field would not have scored easily. But Highland had
shifted her tactics. A fresh quarter back had recently arrived on the
scene and possibly he brought instructions to accept a touchdown or
nothing. In any case, the mere three points which would have accrued
from sending the pigskin over the crossbar were scorned and Highland
set about smashing through the opposing line. That, however, was
easier said than done, for, although the small gathering of Wyndham
adherents couldn’t find much cause for enthusiasm, the Wyndham line
was largely composed of veterans, and, if they hadn’t found themselves
yet, at least they had bulk and strength. Highland used up two downs
getting four yards through Smythe, tried a crisscross outside Couch
that resulted in the loss of a half a yard and finally, on fourth down,
heaved the ball across the line squarely into the hands of Tom Kemble.
Gloom descended on the Highland cheerers, but, across the gridiron, a
tiny but valiant band of visitors yelled ecstatically.

Tom didn’t make the mistake of trying to run with the ball from behind
his goal, for the enemy was clustered deeply about him. He touched
it to earth instead and a few seconds later play was resumed on the
dark blue’s twenty-yard line and, possibly as an award of merit, Tom
was sent smashing, fighting through a gaping hole on the left. He got
a scant four yards and then Ogden faked a pass and Drayton, coming
around, took the pigskin and went to the thirty-three and made it first
down. Wyndham worked to the middle of the field, or very close to it,
and the half ended.

Lemuel John had been a close and absorbed spectator, and as the two
teams walked off the field he turned to Walt and said: “That fellow who
was up to the room the other day said it wasn’t hard to learn to play
football. He said the coach could teach you right quick. Do you think I
could learn, Walt?”

Considering that Lemuel John was the host and had expended nearly
three dollars for the sake of Walt’s companionship, it would have been
graceful of the latter had he expressed faith in Lemuel John’s ability
to imbibe knowledge, but Walt was in no optimistic mood. A ham sandwich
which he had eaten hurriedly at a lunch counter was feeling like a lump
of lead, the forced march under a hot sun had left him wilted and the
conduct of the Wyndham School Football Team had failed to gladden his
heart. He observed his companion almost coldly and said briefly: “No, I
don’t.”

Lemuel John nodded quite as though the decision had been anticipated
and eased his long legs so that the back of the seat in front of him
would impress itself in new localities in the region of his kneecaps.
A close observer, however, might have detected a faint indication of
disappointment in Lemuel John’s countenance. For some three-quarters
of an hour he had allowed his imagination free rein and had been out
there on the sun-smitten field performing heroic deeds. Now Walt’s
reply dispelled the dream and Lemuel John landed back on earth with a
slight shock. Doubtless Walt was right and the manager fellow had been
stringing him. Lemuel John hadn’t thought much about athletics prior to
his arriving at school, but since his arrival, noting that almost every
other chap he encountered engaged in one sport or another, he had been
wondering if there might not be some place for him in the ranks of the
athletic.

The trouble was that he had never tried anything save baseball, and
then only to the extent of taking part now and then in an impromptu
game among the few boys of the village. Golf was only a name to him, as
were lacrosse and soccer. Hockey he had seen played after a fashion.
Basket ball, too. He thought he would like basket ball if he wasn’t
too big and clumsy for it. Perhaps he could go out for the track team
and try shoving that big ball of metal away from his shoulder as he
had seen some fellows doing only yesterday. He guessed that wouldn’t
be very difficult. Then there was another ball fixed to the end of a
length of steel wire, or something, which you swung around your head
and let go of with remarkable results as to distance. But what Lemuel
John really wanted was to take part in a real game; where there were
other fellows about; where he could run and fall around, and whoop
if he wanted to, and so expend some of the stored-up energy that
had accumulated since life on the ranch had been interrupted by the
pesky oil men. So, on the whole, seeing that football wasn’t among
the possibilities he guessed he’d just sit tight until they began to
play basket ball. Maybe he’d fit in somewhere then. If not, there’d be
baseball in the spring. They were even playing it now, but he guessed
they weren’t looking for any green hands at present.

His communings――Walt was apparently sunk in a discouraged lethargy and
offered no conversation――were here interrupted by a stirring of the
fellows about him and by the sudden ending of the singing which had
been going on across the field. Over there four boys in white shirts
scurried to positions in front of the seats and uttered unintelligible
sounds, and marvelously the occupants of the seats comprehended them
and responded with a burst of measured cheering. At about the same
instant Lemuel John found himself on his feet, following the example
set by his neighbors, saying “Rah!” at intervals and then, having
indulged himself in one more “Rah!” than the others, shouting “Wyndham!
_Wyndham!_ WYNDHAM!” After the final shout he eased himself back to
the seat, ran a finger around the inside of his wilted collar and
discovered to his surprise that the empty gridiron had become again
populated and that hostilities were about to go on.

Mr. Otis had started the game with his best foot forward, which is to
say that the whole string of regulars had been used: Drayton, Weldon,
Smythe, Carlson, Desmond, Cotter, Couch, Houston, Kemble, Sproule and
Ogden. Toward the end he had made several substitutions, however, and
these were still in force. Breeze was playing left guard, Longwell was
at right end and Sim Jackson was in Houston’s place. Clif had rather
expected to play, but evidently “G. G.” didn’t consider him as yet
well enough versed in the duties of his new position, for Weldon had
started at left tackle and was still in when the third period began.
Clif had “Wink” Coles for bench neighbor, and “Wink,” who should have
been filled with gratitude because, contrary to his expectations, he
had been allowed to ride in the new bus, was in a most captious frame
of mind and growled and snarled continuously.

“What’s he think I’m here for, the old robber? If I can’t play tackle
better than Longwell I’ll eat my pads! That dumbbell wouldn’t say ‘boo’
if you slapped his face! He’s got about as much fight as a dicky bird!
‘G. G.’ gives me a sharp pain, if you want to know it.”

“Shut up, you silly coot, or he’ll hear you,” admonished Clif, grinning.

“Let him! What do I care? I’ve got a sight more business playing tackle
than Longwell, and I don’t give a whoop who knows it! And the same
thing goes for you. You could do twice as well as that Miss Nancy.”

“Sounds as if you didn’t particularly admire Longwell,” said Clif.

“I don’t. Not as a football player, anyway. What the dickens did Otis
bring me along for if he doesn’t let me in? He needn’t think it’s any
treat to sit and watch this rotten game!”

“He’s saving you, ‘Wink,’” laughed Clif. “Keeping the best for the
last, you know.”

“He is, eh? He’s a piece of cheese. Bet you anything you like he’ll
let Highland cop the game. He’s kept his first string in and he’s got
nothing to fall back on if we get in a jam. Coach? Say, that queer
couldn’t coach a team of performing seals! Who was it was talking about
us getting through the season without a licking? There’s one coming
right now!”

“Oh, no, not as bad as that, ‘Wink.’ Cheer up and see the old team
march down the field.”

“Yeah, look at it march! Sproule got ahead of his interference and
we’re set back two yards. A swell march we’ll make!”

Nevertheless there was a march, and if it didn’t reach Highland’s
goal line it got within scoring distance, and if Heard, hurried in to
displace Sproule and kick a goal, had put more force into his swing
there might have been a score then and there. But the ball fell a few
yards short and the advance was turned back. The third period ended
with the pigskin on Wyndham’s forty-four yards in Highland’s possession
and the score board still unsullied.

Mr. Otis began to use his substitutes in earnest now. “Wink” growlingly
pulled off his sweater and relieved Longwell, Ellison went in at center
and Hanbury took Captain Ogden’s job at full back. Later, one by one,
those who had started came out until, with the last quarter half gone,
Wyndham presented a substitute team with the single exception of
Houston, back at quarter. Clif was one of the last to find employment.

A scoreless tie seemed certain when Clif pulled his head-guard on
and took his place in the line. Less than five minutes of time
remained――ten-minute periods were being played――and both teams――alike
made up almost entirely of substitutes――seemed to have passed the
possibility of scoring. Between the thirty-five-yard lines the battle
raged, the second-string players eager but generally futile. So soon
as either team was pushed back well into its own territory its defense
stiffened and the opponent was forced to punt. Forward passes were
taboo, it appeared, with both contenders, and probably for the same
reason. The chance of a throw being intercepted by the enemy was too
great. Yet it was, in the end, a forward pass that decided the contest.

It came when there was something under two minutes left. Hanbury,
who had been doing the punting since Captain Jeff’s retirement, had
steadily been distanced by the Highland kicker. Now, however, standing
on his thirty-four yards, he punted high and far and the pigskin came
to earth on Highland’s twenty-six, dropping straight through the arms
of the quarter back. “Wink” Coles failed to arrive on the spot in time
to contest possession of the ball, but he did nail the enemy before,
having scooped the bobbing pigskin up, he could get away. By this time
Highland had ceased hoping for that long-deferred revenge and had made
up her mind to be satisfied with a tie; willing perhaps to accept a
tie as a nominal victory. There had been more than one fumble within
the last fifteen minutes, and Highland had decided not to risk another
so close to her goal. Consequently, her punter stalked back to the
sixteen yards and booted. It looked from the side lines as if the ball
reached him before he was ready for it. At all events, the kick was a
feeble one and the ball arched away to the left. Lou Stiles, coming up
fast from down field, managed to get under it on his forty-eight and,
swinging to his left, plunged squarely into a mob of players. Impetus
carried him past the first tackler, and then a hurried interference
gathered ahead of him and he fell in behind and went to Highland’s
thirty-six. There he was fairly smothered but held on to the ball.

Wyndham asked for time, and, with the frantic shouts of the small but
devoted band of rooters almost drowning the opposition cheers, held
a conference. Houston, acting captain, hoped only to get the pigskin
forward another ten yards, from where, if fortune favored, Whitemill
could kick a goal. When the whistle blew again he tried “Swede” on a
quick slam at the right of the enemy line, and “Swede” got a scant
three yards. On a play that started like the first, “Swede” again
thrust at the guard-tackle hole, but this time it was Whitemill who
carried and who swung outside of end. But a Highland half back had
sensed the deception and stopped Whitemill after a two-yard advance,
and it was third down and five to go.

McMurtry came on from the bench and sent “Swede” out. McMurtry was a
drop kicker of some ability, and Houston knew that Mr. Otis had sent
him in to try a field goal. But there was still a down to be spared,
and every yard gained made McMurtry’s attempt more feasible. Houston
called for a shift that sent the left end across to the other side,
took the ball from center on a long pass and started to the left.
Clif’s play was to block momentarily and then go around to a position
about eight yards behind the line of scrimmage. The opposing end
triumphantly swept him aside and tore through only, however, to run
foul of Stiles. Clif circled back, the Highland secondary defense
moving to its right, and found position just as Houston, having paused
and turned, swept the ball away an instant before the enemy leaped upon
him. The pigskin came straight and Clif got in unchallenged. He even
made his start toward the goal before the adversary threatened. Then he
had his hands full. The play called for a straight journey, for it was
designed to secure only a short gain, but Clif’s progress was barred
in front and he swung perforce to the right. He eluded the Highland
full back and angled toward the side of the field, a fleet-footed end
close on his heels and the safety man coming across fast to intercept
him. He had already secured first down and might have considered his
task completed, but the goal line beckoned and only three trampled
white marks lay between. Realizing that he would be run out of bounds
if he kept on his present course much further, he suddenly swung to the
left, escaped the end by the length of a finger and headed straight
toward the nearer goal post. For a few strides Breeze kept him company.
Then Breeze went down and the safety man sprang. At the same instant
a second desperate Highlander launched himself at the runner from the
left. Clif tried to side step, but his race was over. The next instant
he was fairly buried.

He got up at last, rather dizzy and winded, to find the nearer goal
post but twelve yards away, Houston jabbering impatient commands and
the tiny Wyndham cheering section beside itself with delight. But there
was anxiety in that delight, for the remaining seconds numbered only
twenty-odd. The ball was to the right of the goal, making the angle
fairly difficult for one of McMurtry’s kicking ability. But Houston
didn’t dare risk a play to center it for fear that the fast-ticking
seconds would run away. So McMurtry went back to the twenty-two yards,
decreasing the angle considerably, and, amidst a sudden silence, took
a high pass from the center, stepped forward as the Highland players
charged, and swung a scuffed shoe.

Perhaps the ball knew that time couldn’t be called until the play was
completed, for surely no pigskin ever took longer to sail twenty yards
through almost breathless air! McMurtry had sought to put it high,
impressed at the moment of kicking by a sudden realization that the
goal was dangerously close, and he succeeded. Up and up went the lazy
ball, turning slowly over and over. Clif, watching spellbound, thought
it would never start down! But it did at last, and doing so it seemed
to be possessed by a strong desire to see what the right-hand post
looked like at close quarters! Afterwards McMurtry declared feelingly
that that infernal ball had taken ten years off his life and that he
wouldn’t be surprised to awake in the morning and find that his hair
had turned white!

The ball tried its best to reach that post and cross outside of it,
it seemed, but it couldn’t quite make it. It floated leisurely down a
scant two feet inside, and then, as though angered by its failure,
hurried its flight and fell to earth halfway between goal line and end
line. And a man in a gray running shirt who had been regarding its
progress from behind the goal raised both arms for a moment before he
made after it.




                              CHAPTER VIII

                                SLOGANS


Sunday evening the Triumvirate gathered as usual in Loring’s room. Tom
looked rather disreputable with his left cheekbone a queer mixture
of purple and yellow. Clif declared he could also discern tinges of
green and pink there, too; but Tom didn’t act very elated at the
announcement. Instead he fingered the discolored surface gingerly,
frowned and remarked with apparent irrelevance: “Wig!”

“Won’t do,” said Loring. “Middle letter’s _E_, I told you.”

“_E?_ I thought you said _A_.”

“Well, you don’t spell ‘wig’ with an _A_, do you?”

“Sure he does,” said Clif. “Or an _O_! You don’t know Tom’s abilities
in the spelling line. Why――”

“Shut up,” remarked Tom, concentrating frowningly on the problem.
“Three letters, you said. Middle one’s _A_.”

“Oh, give me patience!” sighed Loring. “Here, look for yourself,
imbecile! _E! E! E!_”

Tom accepted the book and looked. “Yes, that’s right,” he announced
calmly. “Middle letter’s _E_.” Clif howled and Loring shook his head
sadly. “Might be――‘kepi’! Bet you that’s it! ‘Kepi’! _K, e, p_―― Gee,
there’s too many letters!”

“Tom, as a cross-word puzzle solver you’re a perfectly wonderful half
back,” laughed Loring. “Give me the book, moron.”

“Well, it says, ‘Head covering,’” muttered Tom, “and if it isn’t ‘hat’
or ‘cap’ or ‘wig’ what the dickens is it?”

“That’s what we’re supposed to find out,” replied Loring dryly. “What’s
the matter with your brains, Clif?”

“I never could wrestle with those crazy things,” answered Clif. “They
give me a headache. Or they would if I’d let them.”

“Middle letter’s _E_,” murmured Tom, a far-away look in his eyes.

“Never mind,” consoled Loring. “We’ll get some of the others first.
Wattles is the humdinger at this game, fellows. We did this other one
yesterday afternoon and Wattles spent most of his time trotting back
and forth to the library. ‘Wattles,’ I’d say, ‘what are “dried insects”
in six letters, beginning with _K_ and ending in _S_?’ ‘I’ll find out,
sir,’ Wattles would say, and off he’d go. At first he used to get as
far as Middle and forget what he was going to look up and have to come
all the way back again, but after he’d done that a few times he put it
down on a slip of paper. And he always got what he went for, too. No
cross-word contraption can bite Wattles and live!”

“What _was_ the six-letter word meaning fried insects?” inquired Tom
interestedly.

“Dried, Tom, not fried. It was――here it is. ‘Kermes.’ I don’t just know
how you pronounce it, but――”

“Pshaw,” said Tom, “that’s not a dried insect, that’s a sort of a
dance. No, it isn’t, either. It’s some sort of milk folks drink when
they’re sick, or something.”

“You’re thinking of ‘kumiss,’ Tom. This particular word means an insect
that’s used to make cochineal of.”

“What’s cochineal?” asked Tom.

“For Pete’s sake,” laughed Loring, “don’t you know anything at all?
Cochineal’s a red dye that’s used to color things with; like ice cream
and candy and――”

“_What!_ Mean to say I’m eating dried insects when I have red candy?”

“Well――”

“_Fez!_” exclaimed Clif explosively.

“Huh?” asked Loring. “What did you say?”

“_Fez!_” repeated Clif triumphantly, pointing at the book.

“Fez? By Jove, that’s it! Clif, you’re a wiz!” Loring seized his
pencil. “How did you happen to think of it?”

“I don’t know. You said ‘red’ and it――it just popped into my head.”
Clif looked as self-conscious and proud as if he had won the Boynton
Prize in English! “That’s it, eh?”

“Yes. Funny we couldn’t think of it!”

“What’s it mean?” asked Tom.

“That makes this word ‘Mizpah,’” continued Loring unheedingly. “Let’s
see. Yes, that’s right! And this one――”

“What’s a mizpah?” asked Tom doggedly.

Clif placed a pillow firmly against Tom’s face and kept it there in
spite of protests until the latter had promised smotheredly to ask no
more questions!

Later, peace having been restored and the puzzle book laid aside,
Loring said: “I’ve been thinking about something that was discussed in
your room the other night, fellows.”

“Proud to know,” remarked Tom, “that the conversation in our _salon_
was worthy a second thought, Mr. Deane.”

“You remember some one――wasn’t it you, Clif?――said he’d like to see the
football team end the season without a beating.”

Clif nodded. “Yes, I said it, and got sat on by the crowd.”

“Well, I’d like to see it, too,” resumed Loring earnestly. “Wouldn’t it
be possible?”

“You heard what ‘Swede’ said.”

“Yes, but I didn’t think so much of it, Clif. No one was suggesting
that we make any changes in the――the conduct of affairs. As I
understood it, the question was simply whether it couldn’t be done
under present conditions. I was looking over the scores of last year’s
games yesterday. We won every one except the Horner game, and usually
by a good margin. Highland crowded us a bit, and, of course, the
Wolcott game was no cinch.”

“Well, eight to three wasn’t so worse,” protested Tom.

“What I’m getting at,” went on Loring, “is this. If we got through last
year with only one defeat, why isn’t it possible to keep the slate
clean this year, especially as it seems to be generally agreed that
we’re starting off with a better gang?”

“Why, if that’s all you want to know,” replied Tom, “I’ll answer you,
old son. Ever try to say ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ twenty times?”

“No, and I don’t propose to. Talk seriously a minute, Tom.”

“I am serious. You asked a question and I’m trying to answer it so
you’ll understand it.”

“What’s ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ got to do with it?”

“Say it twenty times and you’ll see.”

“Meaning that I can’t do it?”

“Meaning that it’s extremely unlikely. Go ahead and I’ll count.”

“Nebuchadnezzar,” began Loring.

“One,” murmured Tom.

“Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar――” At the fourteenth repetition Loring
paused to take a long breath.

“Fourteen,” said Tom. “Don’t stop!”

“Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadneber――”

“Whoa! Seventeen, old son. That’s not so bad, either.”

“He was getting his ‘nezzar’ a good deal like ‘nazzer’ along about the
twelfth time,” chuckled Clif. “Well, what’s the moral, Tom?”

“The moral is that it’s easy enough to do a thing right ten times, or
fifteen times, we’ll say; but after that you’re going to slip up. I
don’t know why, but I suppose the well-known law of averages gets in
its dirty work.”

“Probably,” said Loring; “either because you grow careless or because
you try so hard not to grow careless that you take your mind off the
job. But I see what you mean, Tom. You think that it isn’t possible for
the team to say ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ eight times!”

Tom shrugged. “Oh, well, nothing’s strictly impossible, they say. I
suppose I mean that the chances are all against it.”

Loring nodded thoughtfully. “Just the same, it would be worth trying,
wouldn’t it?”

“Sure! I’d be tickled to death to tell my grandchildren that I played
on the famous unbeaten Wyndham Team. _But_――”

“Forget the ‘buts’ a minute. Just to prove that it isn’t impossible,
there’s Notre Dame.”

“Oh, a college! That’s different. We were talking about this team. I’ll
bet you Wyndham never got through a season without a drubbing.”

“I’ll take the bet,” said Loring, his eyes twinkling.

“Huh? Well, when was it?”

“Some time ago, to be sure. Twelve years, to be exact.”

“What? Twelve years ago? Heck, were they playing football here as long
ago as that?”

“Our young friend is evidently laboring under the delusion that the
game was not known here until he joined the team,” said Clif.

“I looked it up yesterday,” said Loring. “Twelve years ago this fall
the Wyndham Football Team, led by one Jacob Glidden, later known to
fame as ‘Porky’ Glidden――”

“_What?_ Do you mean that that guy played _here_? Well, what do I know?”

“He was All-American two years,” murmured Clif, impressed.

“Well, he took his team through a seven-game schedule and not only
wasn’t defeated,” said Loring, “but played no ties. If that was done
twelve years ago, why can’t it be done to-day?”

“Football was different then,” hazarded Tom.

“What of it? It wasn’t any easier for Wyndham, presumably, than for
the teams we played. Now see here, Tom. We’ve started out all right.
I mean, we’ve played two games and won both. We’ve got six more. As
far as we know only one of them’s likely to prove dangerous. Only
one besides Wolcott, of course. That one’s Horner. Horner beat us
last year, 14 to 3, and maybe she can do it again. But then maybe
she can’t. If we make up our minds she can’t, it’s mighty likely she
won’t. Suppose we win the first five games of the schedule, fellows,
and suppose it’s got to be a――an ambition with us to finish without a
beating. Don’t you believe that every one of you, from Coach Otis down
to the greenest sub on the squad, is going to work like the mischief
for that game? Don’t you think that every fellow in school is going to
make the trip over there with the team and pull like the very dickens
for a victory?”

“You bet!” said Clif, and Tom nodded.

“Well, then!” said Loring triumphantly.

“Well, what?” asked Tom. “Heck, no one’s said the team isn’t willing
to work for a clean slate, nor that the school isn’t ready to stand
by ’em. But if Horner is better than we are, or if any other team is
better, we’re going to get our noses rubbed in the good old earth, no
matter how hard we fight or how hard the crowd cheers!”

“Fair enough,” agreed Clif. “But here’s the idea, Tom, which you seem
to miss――”

“I don’t miss it at all,” said Tom doggedly. “I know what he’s getting
at――”

“Shut up, you poor fish, and listen. The idea is that if we make up
our minds; all of us, players and others, the whole blamed school,
to go through this season without getting beaten we’ve got a lot
better chance of doing it than if we weren’t――weren’t animated by that
resolution. And you know that it’s the guy who has the most at stake
who works hardest. I’ve said right along――”

“And there’s still another thing,” interrupted Loring eagerly. “There’s
the habit of success, Tom. If I succeed to-day in something I’ve
attempted I stand a better chance of success to-morrow. I increase
my faith in my ability to do what I set out to do. And every time I
succeed that faith gets stronger. Success――”

“Yeah, and then you get a swelled head and blow up!”

“Success breeds success, Tom. Let the team win five straight games this
fall and it will believe in itself so thoroughly that you just can’t
beat it!”

“I won’t have to,” growled Tom. “It’ll beat itself by being
overconfident!”

“There’s that danger, yes. But it can be guarded against. Now,
honestly, isn’t it worth trying?”

“Trying? Sure! I’ll try! Only, as good as I am, Loring, I can’t win all
those six games alone.”

“No, and that brings me to what I’ve been waiting to get at, fellows.
Why can’t we three――the jolly old Triumvirate――start this thing off?
Popularize the idea of an undefeated team, I mean. Get the whole school
behind the thing. Work up a――a sentiment――”

“Society for Maintaining the Inviolability of the Football Schedule,”
offered Tom, grinning.

“No, no society, Tom,” said Loring earnestly. “It wants to be――to be
universal. It must have every fellow in it. It’s got to be a great big,
enthusiastic determination on the part of the school as a whole. See
what I mean? We declare that the team must not be beaten. We keep on
declaring it, louder and louder as the season goes on. We――we _believe_
in it! We _fight_ for it!”

“I see,” said Tom, nodding. “‘They shall not pass.’”

“That’s it!” agreed Loring eagerly. “‘They shall not pass!’ By Jove,
fellows, what a slogan!”

Clif shook his head. “We couldn’t use it, Loring. It wouldn’t
be――wouldn’t be decent. What I mean is――”

“I know what you mean. You’re right, Clif. It would be sort of like
using the start of the Lord’s Prayer for a baker’s advertisement!”

“I didn’t suggest it for a slogan,” said Tom defensively. “And I
wouldn’t let you use it if you wanted to! Besides, I’m sick to death
of slogans, and if we have to have one let’s call it something else.
Heck, in another year or two this country will be known as the Land
of Slogans, I suppose. Probably we’ll be putting billboards all over
Europe. ‘Uncle Sam Wants You!’, or ‘Come and Hear the Eagle Scream!’
Yah, slogans make me ill! ‘Yours on the home stretch――McGuffy’s
Suspenders.’ ‘Nearest the Heart――Gilligan’s Rock-Ribbed Undershirts!’
‘Good All the Way――’”

“Shut up, Tom, you’re out of order,” commanded Clif sternly.

“Wait a minute,” laughed Loring. “What’s good all the way, Tom?”

“Biffam’s No-Spring Counter Scales,” answered Tom, grinning.

“Not so good,” said Loring. “But Tom’s right about slogans, Clif.
They are getting sickening. We ought to have one, but we’ll call it
something else, as he suggests. We’ll call it a rallying cry, or――”

“Don’t call it anything,” grunted Tom. “What’s it going to be?”

“‘Win, Wyndham!’” suggested Clif.

“Not bad,” said Loring, “only――well, I don’t believe we had better
attempt too much. I mean we’d better allow for a tie game, you know.
Nowadays ties are like the tin can in the well-known conundrum, bound
to occur. We’re setting out, not to win every game, but to avoid
defeat. Got any suggestions, Tom?”

“Sure. ‘Don’t Give Up the Ship!’ ‘The Bigger They Are the Harder They
Fall!’ ‘Knock ’Em Down and Throw ’Em Out!’”

“That’ll do from you,” said Loring. “We’ll let the slo――the motto go
for awhile. We’ll think of something. The question now is, how are we
going to start the ball a-rolling?”

“Propaganda,” said Tom.

“Exactly, but how shall we prop? I wonder if the best thing wouldn’t be
to get two or three――more if possible――of the influential fellows with
us.”

“Here am I,” murmured Tom.

“The word was influential, Tom, not inconsequential,” said Clif sweetly.

“Ouch! Well, such as which, Loring?”

“Well, Todd Darlington, for one. Seems as if you’d ought to have the
first class sponsor the scheme, and Todd’s president. And then there’s
Sam Erlingby, representing the baseball crowd.”

“What about Jeff Ogden?” asked Tom.

“I thought of him, and of Owens, too, but don’t you think the thing
ought to look more as if it was started by the fellows who don’t play
football? If you see what I mean,” added Loring doubtfully.

“Huh, I get you,” said Tom. “Want to make it look spontaneous, as it
were.”

“Not exactly, but rather as if it wasn’t a scheme of the football
players to work up support.”

“How about Walt Treat?” asked Clif. “Walt’s on _The Lantern_, you know,
and we really ought to have a corking good editorial――”

“Not yet.” Loring shook his head. “Later, yes. Anyway, Walt’s only an
assistant editor, isn’t he? Lovell would be the right fellow to go
after. But that can wait. Let’s get the thing well started first. I’ll
go after Darlington to-morrow and if he approves――”

“Who cares whether he does or not?” demanded Tom. “We can put it over
without that high hat! Say, why not have a meeting and make speeches
and――”

“We’ll do that, too, Tom,” said Loring, “but not just yet. As I see it,
we want to be――be insidious――”

“What’s insidious?” asked Tom.

“He’s at it again!” said Clif indignantly. “Where’s the pillow?” At
that juncture Wattles appeared, however, a signal that study hour was
imminent, and Clif and Tom sped back to West Hall for their books.




                               CHAPTER IX

                             “NO DEFEATS!”


They were back in Loring’s room after study, and the subject of the
former discussion again occupied them. For that matter, it continued
to occupy them, with increasing insistence, for many days. The plan
appeared to demand a good deal of discussion, an amount rather out
of proportion to the progress made. That progress was slow, however,
was largely because Loring was the only one of the three with much
leisure for action, and, since Loring’s trips here and there must be
made either in the wheel chair or in Wattles’ capable arms, there
was a limit to his ability. Fellows had a way of being out of their
rooms when Loring arrived, or of not being where rumor had placed
them. It required all of Monday afternoon to track Todd Darlington
down, and when he was finally brought to bay he proved discouragingly
unresponsive to Loring’s eloquence.

Todd was a queer chap in some ways. Class presidencies are usually
bestowed as a result of some distinguishing, outstanding merit. Todd,
however, had not performed any signal service to the school, was not
a distinguished student nor a brilliant athlete, was not popular in
the general meaning of the word. Yet he had been honored with the
presidency practically without a dissenting voice. Of course, there
are politics in a preparatory school election, but scarcely enough to
account for the present result. Perhaps had you asked a first class
fellow the reason for Todd Darlington’s incumbency he would have looked
at first a trifle surprised, then a bit puzzled and would finally have
said: “Todd? What’s the matter with him as president?”

The secret was that Todd was impressive. He was eighteen, tall,
straight and undeniably fine looking. But that wasn’t all of it. He
was not only all those things, but he managed to make you realize it.
He had a way of dominating an assembly without pushing himself into
the foreground. It wouldn’t be fair to call it bluff, for Todd didn’t
bluff. He believed implicitly in Todd Darlington and imposed the belief
on others. You felt absolutely certain that Todd was destined for big
things, that years later you would be proud of having known him at
school. Probably he would be a United States senator, at least. He
might even be president. You wouldn’t care to go on record in denial
of that. Fortunately he didn’t appear conceited. No one called him
“stuck-up.” Tom had termed him a “high hat,” but Tom was likely to
secure emphasis, as many of us do, by exaggeration. Todd’s self-conceit
went no farther than self-respect, or seemed to. He was invariably
genial in a somewhat grave manner. He made no enemies, and, as so
often happens, had few close friends. He possessed a pleasantly mellow
voice and owed much of his success as a debater to it. If in ordinary
conversation he verged a trifle on the oracular, you didn’t resent it.
You simply considered that it was Todd Darlington speaking.

Loring’s acquaintance with the first class president was slight, but
he had assimilated the general respect for that youth, and after the
interview he found himself wondering if, after all, the project was
worth while. Todd had smilingly likened it to winning a foot race by
cheering yourself around the course, and the simile had sounded clever
and apt. However, as the effects of Todd’s personality wore off after
Loring had removed himself from Todd’s presence, a little later the
younger boy began to miss the pertinence of the simile. He hadn’t
proposed that the football team should cheer itself to victory, but
that the school should. Of course, a runner couldn’t win a race by
shouting all the way, but he might very well win it if the shouting was
done by his friends. He began to suspect that Todd had sacrificed sense
for the sake of an epigram. By the time supper was over that evening
and Clif and Tom had sauntered in he had regained most of his former
enthusiasm for the scheme.

“I don’t think,” he reported, “that we can depend on Todd Darlington
for support. He didn’t say so, but I fancy he considered me a bit of
a nut. He used the word ‘childish’ once or twice in referring to the
plan and the word ‘sophomoric’ several times. ‘Sophomoric’ is rather a
favorite with Todd.”

“He gives me a severe pain, anyhow,” muttered Tom.

“I also got the impression,” Loring continued, “that he disapproved of
the idea on grounds of good form. He appeared to think that creating a
‘hullabaloo,’ as he called it, would be undignified.”

“Sacred Ibis of the River Nile!” Tom exploded. “How’s it any more
undignified than cheering at a game? He’s crazy!”

“Well, I think I get his notion,” said Loring, “even if I can’t quite
explain it. I fancy it was the idea of the school as a――as a body doing
it that galled him. He appeared to think it would be allowable if it
was impromptu, extemporaneous, you know, but bad form to go at it
deliberately.”

“Sounds to me,” observed Clif, “as though he were trying to draw a line
between amateur and professional encouragement! After all, what we
propose to do is only to encourage the team, isn’t it?”

“Well, rather more than that, Clif, but ‘encourage’ is near enough. You
see, what we’re proposing is not only encouragement for the players but
encouragement for the school, too. Not that it matters.”

“Neither does that big stiff,” said Tom indignantly. “Heck, I’d go
ahead with it now if only to show him up!”

“It wouldn’t show him up a bit,” answered Loring smilingly, “because he
didn’t say a word against it, Tom.”

“Didn’t say――” Tom gasped. “You’re cuckoo!”

“He really didn’t. He criticized it, yes, but he didn’t once tell
me that he was against it or that it wouldn’t do. He didn’t even
refuse to help, now I come to think of it. The fact is, fellows, Todd
Darlington’s a wonder.”

“So’s my grandmother’s gray goose!” jeered Tom.

“He is, though. He ought to make a fine politician some day because he
can say things without――without saying them! If he was in Congress I’ll
bet he could vote against a measure and get himself recorded in favor
of it!”

“Oh, forget Darlington,” said Tom disgustedly. “What’s the next thing
to do? How about Sam Erlingby?”

“I haven’t seen him yet. In fact, Tom, it might be better for you to
talk to him. You know him a lot better than I do.”

“Yes, but I can’t talk to him the way you can. Let Clif do it, if you
don’t want to. He’s got the gift o’ the gab.”

“All right. No, on second thoughts, I’ll do it myself. You fellows have
got plenty to do playing football. I guess the publicity stuff, or
whatever you want to call it, is up to me. I’ll see Erlingby and one or
two others to-morrow. At least, I’ll go after them. It’s plaguey hard
to find fellows this weather.”

“Sam will be over on the diamond about four,” said Clif. “They’re
having fall practice, you know.”

Loring nodded. “That’s so. I’ll run him down. Any one thought of a
six-letter word meaning a rallying cry?”

Every one had, but none of the suggestions met with the approval of the
whole and the selection of a slogan was again deferred.

On Tuesday night Loring had better news. Sam Erlingby had pledged
enthusiastic support, and so had two other fellows of influence. “And,”
narrated Loring, “it was Erlingby who made a corking suggestion. ‘The
place to start a thing of this sort,’ he said, ‘is in East Hall. Go
after the Junior School kids. They’ll eat it up!’”

“Great stuff!” applauded Clif. “He’s dead right.”

“So I think,” replied Loring. “But I’m wondering if there isn’t this
danger, Clif. If the other classes think it’s just a Junior stunt
they’ll simply laugh at it and keep away from it.”

“You said a mouthful,” declared Tom. “Better not have it look like a
kid’s party.”

“Look here,” said Clif, “this thing’s got to be launched somehow so
that it’ll hit the whole school in the face and take ’em by storm.”

“Gosh, talk about mixed metaphors!” exclaimed Tom, grinning.

“Never mind the metaphors,” laughed Loring. “I believe you’re right,
Clif. Only, how?”

“Call a meeting, like I suggested before,” answered Tom. “You make a
speech. Some other guy makes a speech. A lot of us sit on the platform
and clap our hands. We plant some fellow in the audience to get up and
say he doesn’t think it can be done. Clif answers him and tells him
where to get off and the crowd cheers. Easy, what?”

“If you say it quick,” replied Clif. “Of course, there’ll have to be a
meeting before long, but I believe we’ve got to get the fellows in――in
a receptive mood first. I mean, we’ve got to start the fire before
we――we pile on the fuel. Meetings don’t always act the way you expect
them to, I guess.”

“All right, but if we don’t get started pretty soon,” said Tom, “the
football season’ll be over! Maybe, though, we’ll be saving our faces if
we don’t start until after the Jordan game on Saturday. No one seems to
know anything about the Jordan team except where they come from. Me, I
don’t fancy dark horses. They’re likely to kick.”

“Oh, I don’t believe Jordan’s dangerous,” answered Clif carelessly.
“It’s a small school.”

“What of it? There’s a college down in Kentucky with only about three
hundred fellows, and what does its football team do but bite big holes
in every other team it runs against? Answer me those! I say, let’s let
the scheme ride until we’ve got Jordan out of the way. Maybe after
Saturday we won’t want to say any more about it!”

“No, sir, it’s got to be launched before Saturday,” said Clif. “If the
Jordan game’s going to be a tough one, why, all the more reason for
getting the school together for it. We’ve got to think of some way to
spring it, Loring, and――and――”

“Some way to spring it,” offered Tom helpfully, “so that it will hit
the world in the eye and knock the wind out of it! No, wait, I’ve got
it! Descend upon it like a devastating flood and consume it with the
ardor of its――its intensity! Boy, as a metaphor mixer you haven’t got
a chance with me! Why, I was mixing metaphors for Heinz when you were
still in the cradle!”

“Sometimes,” said Clif, addressing Loring. “I think that if we had a
third member in this Triumvirate who didn’t try to turn everything
into a joke we’d get along faster.”

“Huh,” retorted Tom, “if it wasn’t for me you two old ravens would
dry up and blow away. How about a game of chess, Loring, now that
everything’s settled so nicely?”

“There isn’t time, you chump. By the way, I thought you were going to
bring that big fellow down here to see me. What’s his name? Trask?”

“Parks? So I was. So I am. I sort of forgot it, though. Bet you he’ll
lick the tar out of you, too. How are you and Wattles coming out these
days?”

“Wattles has had a sort of a slump since we got back and I’ve been
beating him. You see, this law studying of his seems to get most of his
leisure thought.”

“Is he still at that?” asked Clif.

“Rather! He’s reading it wherever he can lay his hands on it, and now
Mr. Frost is helping him every evening. I suspect that Wattles is with
‘Homer’ right now.”

“For Pete’s sake!” ejaculated Tom. “But I didn’t suppose ‘Homer’ knew
law, even if he does lay it down pretty often!”

“Wattles says Mr. Frost studied for the law and then switched to this
job. Maybe being assistant to the principal here is a more certain meal
ticket than hanging out your shingle as an attorney. Dad says it’s
going to be very convenient, having a lawyer in the family, because the
fellow he employs now is about eighty and has dyspepsia and is likely
to cash in any day.”

Tom chuckled. “I’d certainly like to be around when Wattles makes his
first speech to a jury!”

“Do you suppose he really means to be a lawyer?” asked Clif.

“I’ll say he does! Clif, if you or I or Tom studied one half as hard as
Wattles does we’d be graduating at Christmas! I’ll bet he can recite
Coke or Littleton or any of those fellows right through from beginning
to end!”

“Who’s Coke?” asked Tom.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Coach Otis didn’t seem to be much alarmed at the prospect of meeting
Jordan Academy three days away. In some way a rumor had circulated
through the school to the effect that the new opponent was a savage,
man-eating tiger, and that the home team would be represented about
five o’clock on Saturday by only a pile of bones. As a matter of fact,
Jordan was a small school, tucked away at the other side of the state,
about whose football prowess there was no data obtainable. A former
instructor at Wyndham, now at Jordan, had asked Doctor Wyndham for the
contest. “J. W.” had passed the request on to the Athletic Committee,
with a favoring notation. The “Ath. Com.” had, in turn, handed it on
to the football manager. The latter, in consultation with the coach,
had provided Jordan with a date, eliminating a better known adversary
in the process. Owens had done this not because he approved of the
transaction but because he knew very well that the “Ath. Com.” would
hold up the schedule until he did do it. Thus a merely good-natured
impulse to be obliging on the part of the principal had eventually
caused the school deep perturbation. Because it is human nature to
fear the unknown, Wyndham by the end of the week was crediting the
most awesome tales of Jordan’s bloodthirstiness. The report that the
Jordan line averaged 190 pounds, and that the backfield was the fastest
quartette in the business, started none knew where and spread through
the school. Close on the heels of that came the rumor that the Jordan
eleven had last year played the Yale second team to a scoreless tie.
As there was no record of the Yale scrub available the rumor couldn’t
be successfully contradicted. Perhaps no one particularly wanted to
contradict it, anyhow, for although the legend foretold the doom of the
home team it likewise fed the excitement. By Friday it was generally
conceded that the morrow’s game, while certain to see the decisive
defeat of Wyndham, was to be a whangdinger and one not to be missed.

There was widespread dissatisfaction apparent. Coach Otis, it was
generally held, should have made more of an effort to prevent disaster.
He had not given the team any new plays, nor had he seemingly taken
special pains to strengthen a defense that was acknowledgedly weak. In
short, “G. G.” had gone about his business quite as usual and as though
the approaching game was just another Freeburg High School contest.
The opinion was frequently expressed that he was in ignorance of the
facts possessed by every one else and that it was plainly the duty of
some fellow to put him wise. However, there were no volunteers for the
job. This was probably owing to a well-founded suspicion that the coach
would not prove receptive to advice or thankful to the adviser.

Even the players absorbed the general pessimism. Or most of them did.
There were some who remained incredulous and demanded the source of the
various rumors. Jeff Ogden, for instance, only grinned when anxious
acquaintances sought his opinion of the Jordan team. Or, if pressed
sufficiently, he answered: “You know as much as I do, and that’s
mighty little. Guess we’ll scrape through, though.” Guy Owens even got
impatient and answered shortly when well-meaning friends sorrowfully
pointed it out to him that it would have been safer to have given
Jordan a later date. Quarter Back Houston frankly laughed in the face
of disaster. And there were others who refused to acknowledge defeat in
advance; Clif among their number.

Clif’s confidence in the local aggregation resulted in the laying
of an enormous wager on the outcome of Saturday’s game. Tom was the
second party in the contract. Tom was certain that Jordan was all
that rumor had her, and even a little bit more, and, while he looked
forward to the contest with added zest for that very reason, he was
emphatic in his assertion that “the old team was sure in for a whale of
a trouncing.” He grew a trifle impatient with Clif because the latter
maintained what he called the “Pollyanna business” and, when argument
failed, offered to lay a wager. Tom was among those who believe that an
offer to bet is the final convincing argument!

“Oh, I don’t want to profit by your ignorance,” answered Clif
maddeningly. “Keep your money, Thomas, and found an asylum for
boneheads.”

“If I did you’d be the first inmate! You’d be put in the incurable
ward, too, you blithering idiot! Look here, I’ll bet you that Jordan
licks us, and I’ll――”

“How do I know you won’t throw the game if I bet all this vast sum with
you?” laughed Clif.

“Oh, talk sense,” Tom grumbled.

“I am. It’s been done before. I’ve read of several cases where a player
has deliberately thrown a game away in order to secure pecuniary
profit. So far, Tom, I’ve found you an upright and honorable gentleman,
but how do I know what you’ll do when faced by a great temptation?
You’d only have to drop a punt or――or set fire to the Jordan goal
posts――”

“You make me ill,” fumed Tom. “Will you bet or won’t you?”

“You insist? Well, what do you want to bet, Tommy? Mind now, there’s a
hard winter approaching, so don’t be reckless.”

“I’ll bet you the ice-cream cones at Burger’s!”

“Ye gods, what an anticlimax!” moaned Clif. “I expected you to say five
dollars at the very leastest.”

“You didn’t. I don’t bet for money, and you know it. Make it――make it
_two_ cones, then!”

Clif managed to shudder quite realistically. “Tom, you’ll fill a
pauper’s grave if you go on the way you’ve started. Two cones! But all
right. Here’s my hand on it.”

“I don’t want your old hand! All I want is those cones. And I’ll get
them, too. You’re so blamed cocksure, you dumb-bell, it’ll do you good
to lose!”

“Mind this, though, Tom. I’ll have my eagle eye on you every minute,
and if you pull any funny business the bet’s off. If you make more than
your normal number of fumbles in the game, say three――well, I’ll be
generous; four――”

“Climb a tree,” said Tom. “The last fumble I made was when we played
the Rome ‘Gladiators,’ about 700 B.C.”

It was really remarkable how stirred up the school managed to get over
that Jordan Academy game. After all, the losing of an early-season
contest was not an unparalleled thing by any means, and if the enemy
won life would doubtless go on much the same as before. But you
couldn’t have convinced the average Wyndhamite of that just then. The
Jordan game had assumed a fictitious importance, had indeed taken on
the semblance of a potential disaster somewhat akin to the overwhelming
of Pompeii or the recent earthquake in Japan. It was the principal,
almost the only, subject of conversation during Friday and most of
Saturday. One might easily have pictured the invading players as an
army of Vandals descending on ancient Gaul. Preposterous size, strength
and ferocity were attributed to the linemen and the backs were little
less than super-human exponents of speed and stamina and versatility.
Over in the Junior School the youngsters had their own particular
legends to gloat upon, and in front of the fire in the recreation room
that Friday night shudderous tales were whispered. One could have felt
very, very sorry for the Wyndham Team, but, strangely enough, nothing
like sorrow was expressed. Still, it is often so. If a calamity is
stupendous enough, excitement and awe relegate pity to the background
of our emotions. Perhaps it was thus at Wyndham. The fellows seemed to
take a grim pleasure in the anticipated overwhelming of their warriors
and the morrow had all the earmarks of a fine old Roman holiday. The
score was variously predicted as anywhere between 12 and 45 to 0. A
fellow who gave it as his opinion that Jordan might run up as few
points as six or that Wyndham might, by some fortunate fluke, manage
to score was looked on as a fit subject for――well, for Tom’s suggested
asylum for boneheads!

And then Saturday morning dawned and, just when it was, as you might
say, universally conceded that Wyndham couldn’t possibly avoid defeat,
the school blossomed――yes, really, blossomed is the right word――with
blue and white placards bearing the amazing, preposterous inscription:

                              NO DEFEATS!




                               CHAPTER X

                              JUST KITTENS


They were everywhere; flaunting along the dormitory corridors, in the
lavatories, on the bulletin boards, spread under window sills, tacked
to innumerable trees. You encountered one at every few steps, no matter
where you went. They were even to be seen in the classrooms――until the
instructors arrived! The school stared and marveled. The absurd things
had not been in sight last evening, and now they had fairly taken
possession of the buildings and grounds. Breathless Juniors, returning
from scouting expeditions afield, reported that the front of the grand
stand was almost hidden by the white paper strips with the bold blue
lettering. For something like two hours the football game ceased to
be the all-absorbing topic. Here was a fine and intriguing mystery!
Some one――or, more probably, several some ones――had gone about under
cover of midnight darkness and plastered the school from end to end and
top to bottom as it had never been plastered before in its history.
The difficulties of the undertaking challenged imagination and the
thoroughness of its execution appealed to admiration. In brief, Wyndham
saw, marveled and applauded, and then asked, quite allowably, “What’s
it all about?”

“No Defeats!” What kind of defeats? Football? That was absolutely
crazy, because one was due in about six hours. Still, crazy or not, it
must be football defeats that the paper strips meant, for it wasn’t
likely that any one――or any number of ones――would go to all that
trouble in honor of the debating team! Yes, sir, it meant no defeats
on the gridiron! What did you think of that? Cuckoo? Sure, but just
the same it was――well, it was rather a magnificent gesture, wasn’t it?
And some fellows had certainly worked like beavers to put it over! One
would certainly like to know who had done it, by gosh!

There were six fellows who could have told, but they didn’t. At least,
not just then. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes, had he been called in on the
case, might have solved the mystery. One can imagine him passing the
fellows in review and saying at intervals: “Ah, my dear fellow, you
yawn! Your eyes have a heavy look, as though your slumber had been
interfered with. Or perhaps you were up a bit late last evening.
Watson, you observe, do you not, that the young gentleman seems a
trifle done up? Thank you, my dear Watson!”

But Mr. Holmes didn’t appear and the identity of the bill posters
remained unrevealed for the present.

“No Defeats!” Well, at that, it was a corking slogan, and if the
dumb-bells hadn’t balled things up by taking on a team of world-beating
giants like the Jordan Academy team there’d be some sense in it.
Because, when you thought of it, it would be a simply ripping stunt to
get through the season without being licked, wouldn’t it? And think how
you could howl that at a game! “No Defeats! No Defeats! No Defeats!”
Swell, what? If a miracle took place and Wyndham _did_ get through
to-day―― But, of course, she wouldn’t. That was too much to expect.
Just the same, it was too bad that slogan couldn’t have been made use
of. It certainly was a swell yowl! You’d tell the world!

Fortunately――and designedly――the midnight bill posters had committed
no offense against school laws so far as the location of the placards
was concerned. They had not defaced school property “by the driving of
nails, tacks or patented devices,” as the rules had it. The placards
had been attached by dabs of paste, readily removable from woodwork,
or, as on the trees, secured with toothpicks. Perhaps faculty might
have made an issue of the affair had it cared to, but I suspect that
faculty was as intrigued as the students by the coup. In any case, it
was considered by those who had effected the decorating wise to remain
perdue for the time being.

Clif’s father made his first trip of the term to Freeburg that morning
and Clif was at the inn when he arrived. Being very glad indeed to see
his father again after nearly a month, Clif affected an offhand manner
which, while it may have deceived Mr. Otis, who came out on the porch
at the moment, was quite understood by Mr. Bingham. The latter had
discovered that at the age of seventeen demonstrations of affection are
taboo. Even, however, if Clif was secretly delighted by the reunion he
did not propose to fail in his duty as a son. It didn’t do for a fellow
to allow his emotions to make him too lenient. So, when greetings had
been exchanged, Clif stood off and viewed the dusty touring car from
front bumper to rear. Then he asked sternly: “Dad, when did you have
the car washed last?”

“Well,” replied Mr. Bingham evasively, “you see, son, I’ve been using
it a good deal lately――” Then he encountered Clif’s compelling stare
and ended lamely: “Must be nearly a week ago, Clif.”

“Thought so,” grunted Clif. “And you’ve still got that old, worn-out
spare on back, haven’t you? Dad, I told you you ought to get a new one.
That thing wouldn’t last twenty miles if you had to use it.”

“I’ve been intending to do that, son, but it’s sort of slipped my mind.
I’ll order a new one first thing Monday morning.”

Clif looked as if he had still another matter on his mind, but just
then Mr. Otis came down the steps and Clif introduced him to his
father. Mr. Bingham was tall and well built, a fine figure of a man in
his long motoring coat and cap. He looked almost too youthful to be
Clif’s father; and sometimes it was Clif’s secret notion that he acted
too youthful, too! There were, indeed, times when Clif had to supply
the dignity for both. Clif considered his father awfully good-looking,
which he was, and of late he had begun to fear that, now that he was
no longer at home to keep an eye on him, he would go and get married
again. Clif’s mother had died when he was quite a little kid, but he
remembered her very well and was loyal to that memory. He would, he
thought, simply hate having a stepmother! To be sure, Mr. Bingham had
not so far provided grounds for Clif’s uneasiness, but last month, in
London, he had certainly taken some watching!

When Mr. Otis had gone on they went upstairs to the room that had been
previously engaged by Clif, and Mr. Bingham opened his bag and produced
a handsome box of glacé fruits. Clif was extremely fond of that
particular confection and there was a strained look in his eyes as he
gazed at the box and shook his head. “Gee, dad,” he muttered, “I can’t
eat candy! I’m in training!”

“By Jove, I forgot that! Too bad, son! Well, take it along and give it
to some one who can. How are you getting on?”

“Only fair,” replied Clif ruefully. “I wish ‘G. G.’ hadn’t switched me
from end.”

“Hm,” said Mr. Bingham dryly. “As a matter of fact, Clif, I meant in
your school work.”

“Oh, that! Pretty good, sir. Say, wait till I tell you about the stunt
we worked last night, dad!” So Mr. Bingham, while he washed and changed
into the decorous attire befitting the father of a dignified second
classman, was told about the “No Defeats” campaign and the posters, and
was led to the window and ordered to lean out and crane his neck until
he could see one of the blue-and-white slips adorning a tree at the
next corner.

“Very neat,” said Mr. Bingham. “But, look here, son, won’t the faculty
get up on their ear, eh?”

“No, sir, I don’t think they’re going to bother. We didn’t do anything,
anyway, they can get waxy about. At least――well, they might try to say
that we were out of hall after hours, or out of our rooms, you know,
but they couldn’t prove it. Besides, we weren’t――much. Sam Erlingby
and Tom and I plastered the grand stand about half-past seven, and Sid
Talbot and Billy Purdy did the trees and the buildings――we helped on
the buildings――and we were all in assembly hall at eight. How’s that?
Tom, the silly coot, wanted to put a couple of placards on ‘J. W.’s’
porch rail, but I wouldn’t let him!”

“I should say not!” Mr. Bingham shook his head sadly. “My goodness,
what the present generation is coming to I don’t know!”

“Shucks,” laughed Clif, “that isn’t a patch on some of the things you
did when you were at school! Guess you’ve forgot telling me about them,
eh?”

“Did I?” murmured dad. “Well, you must allow for exaggeration, Clif.
You know how it is when you want to tell a good story. But I say, I’ve
got an idea! Why not get a lot of buttons and wear them? You know,
campaign buttons. White, with ‘No Defeats’ in blue letters. Wouldn’t
that――”

But Clif was out of his chair and shaking his fists. “Great, dad! How’d
you think of it? The very thing! Say, that’s simply corking! Look here,
sir, could you――”

“I could, son. I know the very place to get them. You leave it to me
and I’ll attend to it Monday and have them sent to you inside four
days. They can do it in that time, as I happen to know.” Mr. Bingham
took out a little silver-cornered book, detached a tiny pencil from it
and looked across. “How many do you want?”

“How many? Let’s see. There are just under two hundred fellows this
term, I think. Better have two hundred and――and twenty-five.”

“Pshaw, you’ll want more than that. The things get lost. Besides, three
hundred won’t cost any more, I guess. Dark blue letters, eh?”

“Yes, sir; and big. You know, sort of――sort of startling!”

“Well, I guess you can’t get very big letters on a small celluloid
button, Clif; but I’ll tell them to make them as big as they can.”

“Thanks, dad. Say, those buttons will be great, won’t they? Gee, I’ll
bet we’re going to put this thing over big!”

“Fine! But can you do it, son? I mean, can you get through without
being beaten?”

“I think so,” answered Clif hesitantly. “We’re sure going to try.
Loring thinks that if we can really get the crowd to believing it,
we’ll do it. Do you, dad?”

“Hm, that’s hard to say. There’s no doubt that you can do a thing a
heap better for thinking you can, though. But you fellows will have to
play football, too!”

“Yes, sir, I guess we will.” Clif’s gravity lightened and he chuckled.
“Most of the crowd think we’re going to get licked to-day!”

“To-day? How’s that?”

Clif shook his head. “I don’t just know, sir. Some one started a rumor
that Jordan is awfully good and it just kept on getting bigger and
bigger. Now most every one believes it, I guess. We’re not supposed to
have a chance. It――it’s sort of funny.”

“What do you think?” Mr. Bingham sat down, selected a cigar from a
leather case and sighed comfortably.

“I’ve bet Tom a couple of ice-cream cones that we’ll win; but, gosh,
when every one else talks defeat you sort of wonder if there isn’t
something in it!”

“Well, but _is_ this Jordan crowd so good, son?”

“That’s the funny part of it, sir. No one seems to know! We can’t
find any records of theirs. They don’t play any of the teams we play.
They――they’re sort of an unknown quantity.”

“The _X_ in your problem, eh? Well, we’ll hope for the best. Are you
playing this afternoon?”

Clif shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid not. Oh, he may let me in for a
while, like he did last week, but Joe Weldon’s still got the call for
the position. Mr. Otis told me when he first talked about it that if I
didn’t show the goods he’d put me back at end. I sort of wish he would.
I’d be sure of my place then. Tom’s got his place cinched all right,
and I’d be the same way if ‘G. G.’ hadn’t got this fool notion in his
bean.”

“But doesn’t the fact that he’s still using you at tackle indicate that
he’s pretty well satisfied with what you’re doing? Downstairs there he
spoke very well of your playing.”

Clif grinned. “Dad, you’re awfully innocent sometimes! Don’t you
suppose coaches always pull that line when they’re talking to fellows’
fathers? That doesn’t mean a thing. Still, like you just said, it does
seem that if he wasn’t halfway satisfied he’d put me back where he
got me. If he’s going to I’d rather he did it now, because Drayton and
Couch are getting mighty good, and first thing I know I’ll be left out
all around. And Jeff Adams is no slouch of an end, either. And then
there’s Gosman――”

“Jeff Adams? He’s your captain?”

“No, sir, that’s Jeff Ogden. It’s the first names that got you mixed.
You’ll remember Ogden when you see him. He was with us last spring one
day. He was our pitching ace, sir. He and Adams are both called Jeff,
but Ogden’s name is Jeffreys and Adams’ is Jefferson. Sounds like a
list of the presidents, doesn’t it?”

“Hm, reversed, yes. Lunching with me, son?”

“No, sir, I can’t. Best I can do is dinner to-morrow. May I bring Tom?”

“Surely, and another chap if you like. How’s my friend Walter?”

“Fine, sir. I’ll ask him. Gosh, I’ve got a recitation in six minutes!
Come on over with me, dad. I say, you haven’t seen our room yet! You
wait up there and I’ll be through in forty-five minutes. Nothing
afterwards until eleven-forty. How’d you like to lunch at school?”

“No, I guess not, thanks,” answered Mr. Bingham a trifle grimly. “I
tried that once last spring, if you remember, and they put me next to a
talkative lady and I nearly starved!”

“Mrs. Flood, sir, the matron,” chuckled Clif. “I’ll bet you made eyes
at her, dad. She’s been looking sort of wistful ever since!”

Mr. Bingham reached for Clif’s legs with his cane, but the legs whisked
themselves out of reach and led the way down the stairs.

Jordan arrived on the scene at a little after one o’clock, almost
breathlessly observed by the Wyndham students, nearly a hundred of whom
happened――designedly――to be out in front when the big motor bus rolled
up the drive and around the corner of East Hall to the gymnasium. That
first view of the enemy was slightly disappointing. Dressed in civies,
they didn’t look nearly so big nor ferocious as report had pictured
them. Nor were there very many of them. However, you couldn’t tell much
about them, as the bus didn’t loiter, and street attire may disguise a
player considerably. Wyndham decided to reserve judgment.

But some forty minutes later, trotting out on the field in their neat
and surprisingly immaculate green and white sweaters and hose, the
Jordan heroes were again disappointing. They were not giants after
all. They weren’t even sizable! Well, there were several quite tall
youths in the number, but they were also slim and apparently lacking
in muscular development. And they looked awfully young, too; as if
seventeen might be the average age. Wyndham, assembled early for the
exciting event, stared and stared again, at first in surprise, then in
disillusionment. A murmur of something very like chagrin moved across
the stand. Wyndham felt cheated!

The man-eating tigers had turned out to be, in appearance at least,
no more than kittens! What Wyndham gazed at disconcertedly were some
twenty-five nice-looking, clean-limbed boys of sixteen and seventeen
and, rarely, eighteen, who handled themselves in practice as though
they were not any too well coached and were horribly conscious of being
under observation. The coach aroused rueful mirth in the opposing
camp. He was quite evidently one of the teachers, a short, chunky,
motherly sort of man of possibly thirty-five, very carefully dressed
as though for an afternoon tea, who moved about among his charges
with the anxious watchfulness of a plump bantam hen with a hatching
of long-legged Indian games. He held innumerable conferences with his
players and was apparently quite as perturbed by the unceasing stare
of the enemy as they were. On the Wyndham bench, Clif leaned forward,
grinning, and spoke to Tom, further down the line of waiting players.

“Tom!”

“Huh?”

“I’ll take a maple walnut!”

Tom only shook his head incredulously.

A few minutes later the game began.

It can be best disposed of in terms of scoring. At the end of the
first twelve-minute period the score was Wyndham 9, Jordan 0. At the
end of the half it was Wyndham 22, Jordan 0. When the third quarter
was over, the dark blue’s line-up then consisting almost wholly of
substitutes――Clif amongst them――the figures were 29 to 0. When the
memorable contest had finally dragged to its end the score stood,
Wyndham 36, Jordan 0.

In the locker room, Clif leaned over Tom’s shoulder as the latter
tiredly removed his shoes. “Tom,” he said, “know something?” Tom turned
a suspicious countenance. “I don’t believe Jordan ever played the Yale
Second to a tie. Now, honestly, do you?”

Then Clif hurdled a bench and made the corner of the alley just ahead
of a shoe.




                               CHAPTER XI

                              LEMUEL JOHN


It was curious how many fellows were to be found that evening who
had expected all along that Wyndham would capture the game. Indeed,
it was difficult to discover any one who, no matter what he had
predicted, had not secretly known that Jordan couldn’t win. A Junior
named Seton――prophetic cognomen if you pronounced it with the short
E!――was seriously man-handled by exasperated classmates because, having
yesterday stoutly maintained that Wyndham would score, he now went
about reminding the world of the fact. The monitor to whom the victim
made appeal dismissed the case curtly. “Justifiable assault,” he called
it!

The day’s happening worked almost magically in favor of the “No
Defeats” campaign. A pendulum, having reached the limit of its swing
to the right, promptly starts the other way. Wyndham, having indulged
enthusiastically in pessimism, now whole-souledly went in for optimism.
It even credited those blue-letter placards with having worked a spell,
and the possession of one of the talismans became the object of most
of the younger fellows. By Sunday morning the posters had disappeared
from buildings and trees to adorn the walls of many rooms. Then, on
Monday morning, a notice appeared on the boards in East and West Halls
announcing that the next day “No Defeats” slogans could be obtained
at Room B, East, printed on heavy cardboard, for the sum of ten cents
each. Loring or Wattles passed out eight dollars and forty cents’ worth
before the demand ceased, which receipts not only paid the printer, but
left a balance on hand of five dollars and four cents. At a meeting of
the original sponsors of the campaign and five other conspirators it
was decided to devote the surplus to paying for the buttons which were
being made in Providence. They were, however, never able to dispose of
the balance in that manner since Clif’s father at first “pooh-poohed”
the idea of reimbursement, then unwillingly consented to accept the
money as soon as he got the bill from the manufacturer and subsequently
invariably forgot to bring the bill or send it. He also displayed a
lamentable memory for a man who had secured financial success by never
being able to recall the amount of that bill. However, the surplus from
the sale of placards was eventually disbursed in the interests of the
campaign.

But I am far ahead of the story. Sunday turned out to be a somewhat
disagreeable day, with intermittent showers and a chill easterly
wind, and, reduced to indoor occupations, Wyndham in general spent
the leisure hours talking over yesterday’s game, reading the papers
and hazarding guesses as to the identity of the unknown youths who
were fostering the “No Defeats” idea. Clif, Tom and Walter Treat dined
splendidly at the inn with Mr. Bingham and remained there until the
host left for home at about four o’clock. The ride which usually
followed such banquets was canceled to-day. Speeding over country roads
in an open car in a rain is not the most gorgeous way in which to spend
a Sunday afternoon. Of course Tom came in for not a little joshing
because of his lost wager, but he didn’t mind. With a good dinner in
prospect, under way or consumed, Tom was amiability itself!

Chance mention of Lemuel John Parks reminded Tom of his promise, and
that evening after supper was over he routed Lemuel John out of Number
17 and conducted him down to Loring’s room, where Clif and Sam Erlingby
were already on hand. Sam was a first class fellow who pitched on the
nine and was a general favorite throughout the school. After a few
minutes Tom set the small table in front of Loring’s chair, placed the
chessboard and chessmen on it and ceremoniously escorted a grinning
but slightly embarrassed Lemuel John to a seat opposite. Then he said
earnestly: “Parks, this fellow beats me at this game too often. I want
r-r-revenge, and it’s up to you, my friend, to produce it. Something
tells me that you can lick the hide off him. Go to it and win the
gratitude of――of――”

“Oh, I don’t play much of a game,” demurred Lemuel John modestly,
setting his men. “I guess Deane can beat me, all right.”

“That’s the wrong thought,” Tom protested. “Confidence, Parks,
confidence! Summon the will to win, my lad! Remember, my happiness
depends on you!”

“Oh, let him alone,” said Clif. “How do you expect him to play while
you’re hanging over him and talking guff? Go sit down, you poor nut.”

So Tom sat down, affecting nerve-wracked suspense, and watched. Sam,
who didn’t understand the game, was politely silent. Clif pulled a book
from a shelf and read. But he didn’t read long, for very soon there was
a triumphant yelp from Tom and that youth was shaking Lemuel John’s
hand and offering him half his kingdom. And Loring was shaking his head
and staring, smiling ruefully, at the board.

“I guess he didn’t try very hard,” said Lemuel John. “He――”

“Try?” exclaimed Tom. “Try! Man, the perspiration was standing out in
drops on his marble dome! Look at that countenance! Does it show utter
exhaustion or doesn’t it? Thank you, it does!”

“I think you’re too good for me, Parks,” laughed Loring; “but I’d like
to try you again some time. It’s mighty interesting, playing with some
one whose stuff is new to you. Now Tom, or Wattles, either――”

“Prepare for insults!” hissed Tom dramatically.

“No, I was only going to say that I can generally tell beforehand what
your move will be. Parks makes me guess.”

“I’ll say he does!” Tom showed a disposition to start the hand shaking
all over again. “And he makes you guess wrong, too, young Mr. Lasker!
Ah, revenge is sweet, _mon cher_ Alphonse!”

But Clif fought him off, refusing to be embraced.

After a while Sam Erlingby took himself off, first conducting a
whispered conference with Clif outside the door, and a few minutes
later Lemuel John, too, disappeared. He had declined a second game on
the score that he had studying to do, but had promised to give Loring
his revenge soon. When he had gone Loring said: “That chap can play
chess, Tom.”

“I had a hunch he could,” replied Tom. “I sort of like the big queer.”

“Yes,” agreed Loring thoughtfully. “I wonder if he’s a sample of the
sort they raise where he comes from. Wisconsin, isn’t it?”

“Some place up there,” answered Tom vaguely.

“Wyoming,” said Clif. “He seems a mighty decent fellow, I say. Too bad
he doesn’t play football, eh? Look at the shoulders on him!”

“I was wondering about that,” said Loring. “Why shouldn’t he play,
Clif?”

“He should, I suppose. Thing is, he never has, doesn’t know how and
doesn’t want to learn. And, of course, he isn’t the sort of fellow
they’d be likely to draft. I mean by that he isn’t exactly promising.
Of course he’s built for it, you might say, but he’s frightfully
awkward and kind of slow. I dare say Steve New was frightfully relieved
when Lemuel John refused to have anything to do with his old game.”

“He isn’t any more awkward than lots of fellows I’ve seen trying for
the team,” said Tom. “He really ought to go out, fellows, because
they’ll be needing some one like him next year. What class is he?
Second, eh?”

Clif nodded. “Walt says he’s only seventeen, but he looks older,
doesn’t he? You’re right about next year, Tom; for there’ll be a lot
of losses in June; Billy Desmond, Smythe, Breeze, Weldon; a bunch of
guards and tackles; and I don’t see many new fellows that look awfully
promising.”

“Parks ought to be playing with the Scrub right now,” said Tom
decidedly. “Wonder ‘Cocky’ doesn’t grab him. Bet you he would if he
thought of it.”

“You know,” observed Loring, “I have a sort of theory that the ideal
football player, lineman especially, is a lot like Parks in the
beginning. I’d like to take him myself and see what I could do with
him. I mean, that is, if I were――well, able to get about.”

“I’m not sure you couldn’t make a player of him as it is, Loring,” said
Clif. “Of course, he’d have to be willing.”

“No, I couldn’t do it as things are,” answered Loring. “If I were you,
Clif, or Tom, I’d like to try it. You see, Parks has a lot to start
with; size and weight and strength and the sort of temperament that
makes steady players. And he doesn’t look as if he ever had an ache or
a pain. He’s rather awkward and he’s easily embarrassed――”

“It’s a crowd that makes him that way,” interpolated Clif. “There
wasn’t any embarrassment about him the day I ran in on him in his room.”

“I was going to say,” continued Loring, “that awkwardness and――and
shyness suggest a kind of stupidity in most fellows, but I don’t
believe Parks is stupid. No fellow who can see the right move in chess
as quickly as he can is stupid; not by a long sight!”

“All right,” said Tom. “Grant that he’s a wonder, Loring, and what
about it?”

“Then, if he is, he ought to be trying to learn to play football. We’re
out to have the team come through without a beating, and it seems to
me that we oughtn’t to miss a trick, Tom. If we see any way of making
success more certain we should take hold.”

“Meaning,” asked Tom dubiously, “that you think Parks’ playing on the
Scrub would hold the first team to a clean record?”

“Why not? If Parks turned out to be a good guard or tackle――”

“Too slow for tackle,” said Clif.

“I’m not so sure. You’d see a big difference in him after a week’s
practice. Anyhow, guard or tackle, if he proved good he’d strengthen
the second, and the stronger the second is the better the first will
be. Because, you know as well as I do, that it’s the opposition and
experience the big team gets from the Scrub that counts the most. It’s
the daily battles and not the Saturday scraps that teach the first team
fellows what to do and how to do it.”

“Think so?” asked Tom. “Well, perhaps you’re right. Just the same, I
can’t see Lemuel John Parks setting the world on fire as a football
artist! Why, heck, common sense will tell you that no fellow named
Lemuel John could ever win renown!”

“I’m not talking about his winning renown,” answered Loring seriously.
“When you come to that, how many fellows who play line positions ever
do win it? Perhaps one in ten ever sees his name in a paper outside a
line-up, Tom. It’s you backfield fellows who get the bouquets.”

“And us linemen who do the honest-to-gosh work,” said Clif.

“Huh! We spend most of our time helping you guys out,” replied Tom.
“If we weren’t right behind you on defense, old timer, you’d lose your
jobs. I don’t see that you need more than five men on a football team,
anyway; a center to put the ball in play and four backs to do the work.
The other six are just in the way!”

“In the other team’s way, you mean,” Clif laughed.

“I really think,” said Loring, not to be turned aside by levity, “that
it’s up to us to persuade Parks to have a go at it.”

“Oh, have a heart!” Tom protested. “Let some one else do it. Get Guy on
his trail.”

“All right, let Owens try him first. If Owens fails we’ll get after
him.”

“I don’t believe you’ll be able to interest Guy,” said Clif. “‘G. G.’
isn’t looking for any more candidates now, and Guy won’t bother to find
men for ‘Cocky’s’ team. Why not sick ‘Cocky’ on him?”

“That’s the stuff,” commended Tom. “Or――hold on; who’s captain of that
bunch?”

“Warner. Plays left guard,” said Clif.

“Hm, I wonder if he’d be keen for another guard!”

“He certainly would,” replied Clif stoutly. “I know George Warner. He’s
a fine, straight chap. I’m going to speak to him about Lemuel John the
first thing to-morrow. Only thing is, fellows, it’s sort of late in the
season to join up.”

“Oh, ‘Cocky’ will take fellows on any time if he likes their looks,”
Tom said, yawning. “But I’d certainly hate to be in Parks’ shoes.
‘Cocky’ will sure make him hustle!”

George Warner, captain of the second team, button-holed by Clif the
next morning in the corridor, was interested until Clif had divulged
the identity of the tentative candidate. Then Warner grinned. “Why,
Clif, I know that fellow. I mean I’ve seen him around. Couldn’t help
seeing him very well!”

“Well, what do you say? You really ought to have him, George. He’s got
the making of a nice player.”

“Who said so?” asked Warner incredulously.

“I’ve heard several fellows say so. Besides, you’ve only to look at
him!”

“I’ve looked at him and I don’t see it,” replied the captain, shaking
his head. “He’s big, all right, and he’s built pretty well, but so’s
an elephant, Clif. You couldn’t get that fellow to move out of a walk,
I’ll bet! Still, if you put it as a favor――”

“Favor be hanged! I’m trying to do you poor nuts a good turn. Parks
would make a corking guard, with a bit of training, and you sure need
one!”

Warner acknowledged the insult with a wider grin. “All right, old chap.
You tell your friend to show up this afternoon in togs and I’ll speak
to ‘Cocky’ about him. Maybe we can use him somewhere.”

“That’s not the idea,” replied Clif. “He isn’t going to come out just
for my telling him to. That’s the point. He doesn’t want to play――”

“Well for goodness’ sake!” ejaculated Warner. “What’s the idea, then?
If he doesn’t want to play, you can bet your life, Clif, I’m not going
to force him! I thought you were trying to tell me that he was looking
for a chance on――”

“Listen, George, and try to get this, will you?” said Clif patiently.
“Parks is good material but he doesn’t care a hang about playing on
your old outfit. But you need him. Yes, you do, too. A week or so from
now you’ll be wishing hard you had a couple more big linemen to take
the place of the killed and injured. What you’ve got to do is see him
and tell him he’s wanted and that it won’t do him a mite of good to
refuse. He will play if he thinks he has to. Understand now?”

“Sure, I understand,” jeered Warner; “but I’ve got plenty of troubles
without hunting them, Clif. _I_ don’t want the chap!”

“I tell you you do,” persisted Clif. “The Scrub needs him. Now don’t be
an ass, George. Go on and do like I tell you. He rooms with Walt Treat
in Number 17, West.”

“I know where he rooms,” muttered Warner. “He’s in my corridor. I ran
into him the other morning and nearly dislocated my neck! Oh, all
right; but, gosh ding it, Clif, there’s not a bit of sense in it. Mr.
Babcock will think I’m plumb crazy. And I’ll tell you this, too. I’ll
ask him to play, but I’m hanged if I’ll coax him!”

“I don’t want you to coax him,” replied Clif cheerfully. “Coaxing
probably wouldn’t fetch him. You’ve got to threaten him.”

“Sounds all right,” said Warner dubiously; “but he’s ten pounds heavier
than I am and I guess he’s got a better reach. Still, I can leave the
door open, and I’m plumb certain I can outrun him!”

“See him to-day, will you, George?” asked Clif.

“Yes, I’ll look him up this morning. He’s in my Latin class and I
guess I can get him there. Listen, Clif, don’t make any more weird
discoveries, eh? Or, if you do, take ’em on the first!”

Turning from Warner, Clif encountered Todd Darlington on his way to
the staircase, and to Clif’s surprise Todd stopped. “Say, Bingham,
you’re in with Deane on this ‘No Defeats’ thing, aren’t you? I think
he mentioned you the other day in connection with the scheme. Well,
you’ve certainly started it nicely. I was surprised, really, because
when Deane spoke of it to me I was afraid the fellows would shy away
from it. No reason why they should, of course, except that it’s just a
trifle sensational, if you see what I mean. Then, too, when the team
does get licked, and I guess even Deane doesn’t really expect it to win
every game, it’s going to make us all feel a bit foolish, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so,” answered Clif. “There’s no reason why one should
feel foolish because one tries a thing and fails. That would keep a lot
of us from trying, Darlington.”

“Oh, no, not if the effort is――well, worth making, Bingham. That’s not
my idea at all. But this business seems to me just a trifle sophomoric.
Still, of course, there’s no real harm in it; and it’s a fine thing to
see the school get together on it as they have. I told Deane that I
wished him luck, but I really didn’t dream that he’d make a go of it.
I’m mighty glad, Bingham. Tell him that when you see him, will you?”
The first class president nodded, a trifle benignly, and went on up the
stairway, leaving Clif feeling as though he had been patted on the head.




                              CHAPTER XII

                           A NEW MAN JOINS UP


Clif wasn’t able to discover that afternoon whether Lemuel John had
been captured by the second team, for he was pretty busy until the
second came over for a brief scrimmage and exceedingly busy afterwards.
The substitutes opposed the Scrub to-day and Clif played left tackle
all through with fair success. He tried to find an opportunity to ask
Warner about Lemuel John, but Warner was in the line-up for only a few
minutes and the opportunity didn’t present. Later, the matter went out
of his mind until Loring brought it back that evening.

“He wasn’t on the bench with the second when they came across,” said
Tom. “I guess Warner forgot it.”

“More likely he didn’t try very hard,” said Clif. “I’ll drop in on
Lemuel John after study and see what happened. I don’t suppose it will
matter if he learns that we’re interested in getting him out.”

“Not a bit,” said Loring. “If he turned Warner down, Clif, try to get
him to come over here with you and we’ll have a talk with him. Perhaps,
between the three of us, we can get him to change his mind.”

Clif found Lemuel John alone at a little after nine. He was writing a
letter and Clif apologized for disturbing him. “No disturbance,” said
Lemuel John. “I was just writing a letter to dad because I didn’t have
anything else much to do. I’d a sight rather talk. I thought you’d
forgotten this number, Bingham.”

“N-no,” said Clif awkwardly; “but I’ve been rather busy, what with one
thing and another. Walt off for the evening?”

“Down the hall,” said Lemuel John. “He asked me along, but I didn’t
care about it. I saw you play this afternoon.”

“Oh, did you? Er――were you――I mean, you weren’t playing yourself, were
you?”

“Me?” Lemuel John chuckled. “No, but it’s funny you said that, because
there was a fellow up here this forenoon asking me if I didn’t want to
join the second team. Maybe you know him, Warner. He’s captain of the
second.”

“Yes, I know him,” said Clif. “Of course you told him you did want to.”

“No.” Lemuel John shook his head. “I told him it wouldn’t be any use.”

“Well, I guess he didn’t take that for an answer,” replied Clif,
smiling.

“Why, yes, he did. Why not? Shucks, I couldn’t learn football, and I
told him so.”

“How do you know you couldn’t?” Clif asked.

“Walt says so. I asked him one day if he thought I could and he said no
pretty emphatic.”

“Walt knows less about football than I know about――about the Gothic
language! Look here, Parks, if you don’t really want to finish that
letter just now, come over to East with me, won’t you? To Loring’s, I
mean.”

Lemuel John consented a trifle doubtfully, wondering what was up. Tom
was already on hand when they reached Loring’s room, and after a minute
of rather perfunctory conversation, Loring turned his chair a trifle,
so that he could more directly face Lemuel John, and asked: “You’re
with us in this ‘No Defeats’ campaign, I suppose, Parks?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Good! Because you can do quite a bit for the cause, I think.”

“I can?” Lemuel John smiled incredulously.

“Yes. You see, if the team is to come through the season with a clean
record it’s got to get plenty of good, hard practice as well as
coaching. Well, practice is supplied, as you know, by the Scrub; Mr.
Babcock’s team. And it follows that the stronger the second is the
better practice it can provide for the first. So far I make myself
clear, eh?”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” answered the other.

“Well, the second can do with more players, Parks. And it occurred to
us that you might be just the fellow to help out.”

“Shucks, no, Deane! I wouldn’t be any good. I’ve never played a bit.”

“That wouldn’t matter. Plenty of fellows do their first football
playing right here, and make good. You’re about the right build for a
lineman, Parks; guard, say, or maybe tackle; and personally, as I told
these chaps, I believe you could make a corking good one.”

“Shucks!” Lemuel John looked about as though he suspected the others
of being in league to make fun of him. But the countenances denied
it. “I don’t believe,” he went on doubtfully, “that I’ve got enough
brains. I was looking at a book the other day that explained the rules
of football――” he glanced apologetically at Loring――“I couldn’t make a
blame thing out of them!”

“I’ll bet you couldn’t!” exclaimed Tom. “I’m supposed to know a little
about the game, but I give you my word, Parks, that if I look into the
rules book I get all balled up in a minute!”

“About all the average candidate brings to the field with him the
first day,” continued Loring, “is a healthy body and a normal mind.
The rest is provided by the coaches. I’ll swear you’ve got the first
requirement, and as for the second――well, it’s no secret that lots
of fellows in prep school and college who have made big names for
themselves as football players would never startle the world with
their intellects! I’m not likening you to them, Parks, however. I’m
only trying to reassure you, you know. As a matter of fact, any fellow
who can play chess as you play it needn’t trouble about not having
enough brains for football. About seventy-five per cent of football
is doing what you’re told, which leaves only twenty-five per cent for
the exercise of your mentality. You haven’t any good reason for not
playing, have you? I mean your folks aren’t down on it, for instance?”

Lemuel John grinned. “I guess they don’t know what it is,” he answered.

“Well, I don’t see, then, why you don’t go out to-morrow and report for
the second.”

“Oh, shucks, I don’t know!” Lemuel John looked frowningly from one to
another. “Think they’d want me?”

“Yes. In fact, I’m surprised they haven’t grabbed you long ago.”

“Why, there was something said about me playing, Deane. And then just
to-day a fellow named Warner came to see me. I was telling Bingham
about it upstairs a while back. Warner’s captain of the second. He said
he’d like me to come out and try for the team, but I told him I didn’t
think I’d better.”

“What did he say then?” asked Clif.

“Said maybe I knew best, or something like that.”

“The silly coot!” commented Clif disgustedly. “I told him――” Then he
caught a cautioning look from Loring and stopped.

“I think you’d enjoy playing football, Parks,” said Loring. “Of course
it’s hard work, but it’s fun, too. Maybe you’re wondering how I know,
since I’ve never tried it. I do know, though; and Clif and Tom will
tell you the same thing.”

“Oh, I guess I’d like it,” said Lemuel John. “I mean if I could really
play the game. I’d sort of hate to go out on that field and make a fool
of myself, though.”

“Not a chance of it,” said Clif. “Just remember that every one of us
has been through the same thing, Parks. You’ll feel awkward at first,
maybe, but it won’t take you more than two or three days to get onto
the ropes.”

“Think so? Well, I don’t know. I can be pretty dumb sometimes, Bingham.”

“At that, you’ll have nothing on the rest of ’em,” Tom chuckled.
“There’s a chap on the Scrub named Kinsey――”

“Never mind the scandal, Tom,” said Loring. “There’s still another
thing, Parks, that I haven’t mentioned. That’s duty. Duty enters into
it, too, you know. A fellow who can help the school by playing football
or baseball or any other game mustn’t pay too much attention to his own
wishes. If the school needs his services that ought to be sufficient.
Don’t you agree with me?”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean I suppose you’re right, Deane. I never
thought about that. You see, fellows, all this is sort of new to me.
I’m a tenderfoot here. This kind of a school’s considerably different
from the school at home. There’s a lot of things I ain’t onto yet. But
I guess you know what you’re talking about, all right.”

“The gentleman flatters you, Loring,” said Tom.

“I wasn’t meaning to flatter him,” began Lemuel John earnestly. Then he
caught the smile on Clif’s face and chuckled. “I ain’t onto him yet,
either,” he said, nodding toward Tom. “He’s a kind of a funny feller,
ain’t――isn’t he?”

“He’s a plain nut,” laughed Clif. “Pay no attention to him, Parks. No
one else does.”

“Now I guess you’re the one that’s stringing me. Well, I’m going to
think over what you said, Deane.” He began to assemble his long legs
preparatory to arising, but Loring motioned him back.

“Don’t be in a hurry, Parks. It’s still early. Besides, I’d rather have
you decide this business before you go. I might as well tell you――” and
here Loring flashed that compelling smile of his――“that I’ve made up
my mind you’re going to play. That means that if you say no now you’ll
just have to unsay it later, for I’m a frightfully persistent fellow,
Parks, and I’m likely to make life mighty unpleasant for you till you
let me have my way.”

“Shucks!” Lemuel John laughed amusedly. “I guess if it come――came to
a show-down between us two I’d win pretty easy for stubbornness. But,
gosh, if you want me to play as bad as you say, why, I’ll do it. Guess
I’d have decided to do it, anyway. I wish you’d tell me, though, what
the――the proceedings are. Do I get me one of those suits they wear
first-off, or do I wait and see will it be needed?”

“You wear your togs when you report,” said Loring; “but if I were you
I wouldn’t spend any money just yet. You’ve got some old togs, haven’t
you, Tom?”

“Yes, I’ve got some spare parts,” answered Tom dubiously, appraising
Lemuel John’s frame; “but maybe they won’t fit.”

“I can help out, too,” said Clif. “Tom and I will bring the things down
to you on our way to breakfast in the morning. Shoes, though――”

“Yes, I guess I’ll have to buy those,” said Lemuel John, grinning. “I
wear a nine.”

“A nine! Sacred Ibis of the River Nile, Parks! If I ever see you
coming my way there’ll be a half back missing from the first!” And Tom
shook his head awedly.

“I guess I ain’t likely to trouble you fellows any,” said the big chap.
“Not this year, anyway. I guess I’ll be going now. I’ve got a letter
half written to my father and I’d like to tell him about this football
business. It might interest him some. He don’t have much to interest
him where he is.”

“Why,” asked Loring solicitously, “where is your father, Parks?”

“New York City. It’s kind of dull down there for an active man like
dad. Good night.”

“Good night. Come again without being shanghaied. And don’t forget that
game of chess you promised. How about――let’s see――how about Wednesday
night?”

“Well, I don’t know,” drawled Lemuel John. “Maybe I won’t be able to by
then. But if I am I’ll sure drop around.”

“Think he will make the second?” asked Clif when the door had closed
behind the visitor.

“I certainly do,” answered Loring. “Don’t you, Tom?”

“Well,” said Tom haltingly, “I don’t ... know!”

But Lemuel John did make it. He lounged over to the second team
gridiron the next afternoon attired――rather abruptly, as a matter of
truth――in some old togs belonging to Tom and Clif and told George
Warner that he had changed his mind and guessed he’d see could he be
a football player. George managed to conceal his delight remarkably.
Indeed, an observer might almost have suspected that the captain was
bored rather than thrilled! However, he conducted Lemuel John over
to Coach Babcock and explained, and “Cocky,” after a swift survey of
the new candidate, smiled and asked: “Well, how’d we happen to miss
you before, Parks?” Lemuel John was an object of some amusement to
the other members of the Scrub squad, but they were decent enough not
to let him suspect it, and later, when the rookie had his initial
experience of handling a football, he was the first to chuckle at his
awkwardness. Before preliminary practice was over Lemuel John had
exactly twenty-eight new friends, for no one, from “Cocky” down to the
least of the substitutes, could resist his good nature and patience
under trying circumstances. Mr. Babcock didn’t excuse Lemuel John from
any of the pleasant diversions, but made him take his place in line
with the more experienced and muddle his way through. The spectacle of
the big fellow attempting his first tackle of the dummy was amusing
enough, in all faith, and even “Cocky” had to join his laughter with
that of the others; but when, still later, Lemuel John was instructed
to take his place with the catchers and let a high spiral punt settle
into his arms the result was ludicrous. Lemuel John’s mouth fell open
as he gazed anxiously at the descending ball and he became tense in
every muscle. Then, almost at the last instant, he discovered that he
was several paces away from the probable landing place of the pigskin
and came to life wildly. He leaped forward and to the left and shot
two great, long arms skyward. I suspect, too, that he closed his eyes,
since for at least a second after the ball had struck the sod two
yards behind him he still remained there as though supplicating the
gods!

More than once that afternoon Lemuel John earnestly regretted his
decision. Even though he knew that his inept efforts were funny, and
though he laughed at them, sometimes a bit ruefully, himself, no one
likes to be the sole and continual object of amusement, and Lemuel
John’s cheeks reddened several times under their tan. But it ended
finally and he accompanied the others over to the first team field and
sat on the bench in frowning concentration while the first trampled
on the Scrub to the tune of 13 to 0. Loring Deane had predicted the
position of guard or tackle for him, and Lemuel John focused his
observation on those positions. It seemed to him when the first
scrimmage period was over that the four fellows playing them on the
second were wrong in allowing the opposing players to thrust them aside
as they did. Of course, he reflected, he didn’t know much about the
fine points of the game yet, but it stood to reason, didn’t it, that
if the Scrub linemen would only stop those other fellows from going
ahead when they had the ball the other fellows wouldn’t score like
they had. Maybe, though, there were rules in that book he had looked
at which said the defenders mustn’t do that. He didn’t know about that
yet and he meant to find out. To that end he edged along the bench and
addressed a youngster who, like himself, had not yet seen service. In
the course of the next five minutes he received more information on the
subject of the duties of linemen, both on attack and defense, than he
could have derived from an hour’s perusal of the rules book. And, to
his surprise, it came out that the reason Sawyer and Burns and Warner
and Dawson didn’t stop the opponents from getting past them was that
they couldn’t help themselves! Lemuel John, considered that for a long
moment. Then he drawled: “Well, I don’t know, stranger, but it seems to
me like I’d make a heap more effort than those fellows if I was doing
it. Looks to me like they quit too easy!”




                              CHAPTER XIII

                      THE BOY WITH THE FUNNY CHIN


On Wednesday Lemuel John turned up for the chess game in spite of
certain infirmities consequent on two days of unfamiliar and rather
strenuous exercise. And once more he won from Loring with comparative
ease. He seemed more at ease on this occasion and didn’t sit as
though he was expecting an alarm of fire and might have to rush for
the nearest exit at an instant’s notice. And he was decidedly amusing
when, subsequent to the chess encounter, he confided the tale of his
experiences on the football field. He was so big and capable looking
that, when he told in a plaintive drawl of the indignities put on
him by the remorseless “Cocky,” Tom doubled up and fairly gurgled.
On the whole, Lemuel John was a distinct hit that evening, and when
he departed he left the Triumvirate sensible of several excellent
qualities, not the least of which was his unfailing good humor. Tom
came out flat-footed for Lemuel John.

“He’s a fine old coot,” declared Tom, “and I’ll bet you anything you
like that next year he will be a pretty warm baby on the football team.
I haven’t seen him in action, and from what he says he must be fairly
awful, but he’s got something that’s going to get him where he wants
to go, no matter where that is. If he says to himself ‘I want to
play good football,’ he’s going to play good football. On the whole,
fellows, I’m glad I thought of persuading him to go out for the Scrub.”

“You’re glad _you_ thought of it!” exclaimed Clif. “Well, of all the
colossal nerve!”

“That’s it,” Tom complained. “Refuse me credit for everything!
Perhaps I didn’t actually make the first suggestion, but if I
hadn’t――er――nurtured the plan it would have fallen flat. I suppose next
thing you’ll deny I didn’t think of that slog――I mean battle cry!”

“No, we give you credit for ‘No Defeats,’” laughed Loring. “And, by the
way, those buttons ought to be along to-morrow, Clif, oughtn’t they?”

They came Friday. Tom voiced disappointment because they were only the
size of a nickel, but Clif and Loring pointed out to him that fellows
would wear a small button where they would disdain a larger one. “You
know, Tom,” Clif reminded him sweetly, “this isn’t a banquet of the
Kiwanis Club.” The buttons were of white, with a narrow rim of blue and
the words “No Defeats” in the same color. The blue was not exactly the
correct Wyndham blue, for the latter was decidedly dark; but that was a
detail.

Distribution was effected with little effort. Each of the sponsors in
the campaign filled a pocket with them and then pinned one to a lapel.
After that all that was necessary was to keep dipping a hand into the
pocket until the supply was exhausted and then drop around to Loring’s
room for more. By bedtime that night every student wore a button.

The idea of holding a meeting to aid in putting the thing over had
already been abandoned. The deed was already accomplished. Wyndham
was “sold” on the idea solidly. “No Defeats” took its place in the
language of the school, stared down from the walls of dormitory rooms,
challenged the visiting opponent from the front of the grand stand and,
when the next number of _The Lantern_ appeared the following Tuesday,
headed the editorial page in bold face type. What pleased Loring
especially was that the school adopted the motto seriously. It might
have made a joke of it or taken it up as an amusing diversion, in which
case it would have lasted a week, perhaps, and then been forgotten.
But Wyndham was really in earnest about an unbeaten team, and, while
the expression “No Defeats” was used frequently in a laughing way, it
found no vogue as flippant slang. The idea had captured the imagination
of the school and the school earnestly meant to see that the defiant
prediction came true.

As a result of the enthusiasm almost three-fourths of the fellows
accompanied the team on Saturday when it went down state to play
Cupples Institute. That was something that had possibly never happened
in the history of the school save when the opponent had been Wolcott.
Wyndham went with banners and arm bands and little white-and-blue
buttons and much vocal demonstration, and it would have been a
most ungrateful football eleven that would not have won with such
encouragement. Cupples was never a very formidable enemy, although it
is true of football that the best team doesn’t always win. Last year,
at Freeburg, Wyndham had won by 20 to 0, and there was no expectation
of a very different result to-day. The Dark Blue had developed
considerably during the past week, and the attack, more or less latent
hitherto, was at last visible. Coach Otis started off with first-string
players in all positions save left guard and full back. Smythe had
been acting rather temperamental since the Jordan game, and Breeze was
at guard on the left side. Captain Ogden had hurt an ankle two days
before in practice, and, while the injury was slight, Dan Farrell, the
trainer, thought it best to keep him quiet for a few days longer. That
put “Swede” Hanbury at full back.

Wyndham started off with a rush after receiving the kick-off and pushed
Tom Kemble over for the first score six minutes later. Sproule missed
the try-for-point. The dark blue scored again before the quarter
was over when a long forward pass from Hanbury to Drayton covered
thirty-four yards, with Drayton’s run, and left the pigskin on Cupples’
seventeen. There the home team stiffened and when Wyndham had gained
but four yards on three attempts, “Swede” retired to the twenty and
lifted the ball over from a drop.

Cupples had a brief moment of supremacy toward the last of the second
period. Houston and Tom between them managed to mess a pass and the
fumbled ball was recovered by Cupples on Wyndham’s thirty-seven. From
there a short heave over the left of the line took it to the thirty-one
and the attack gained first down on three tries at Breeze, in the last
of which he was considerably messed up. Howlett took his place, and on
the next slam Cupples shot a back past Howlett to the nineteen yards,
at least three of the visitors missing their tackles. With two yards to
go, Cupples tried a fake forward pass, the ball going to right half for
a wide run. Couch nailed the runner for a four-yard loss and Cupples
shot the pigskin overhead on the next try. Tom spoiled the pass and the
ball grounded. Cupples’ placement kick from the thirty-one went short
of the goal.

Clif started the third period at left tackle and won momentary fame
on the third play after Wyndham had possession of the ball. The shift
took Drayton to the other end of the line, leaving Clif eligible to
take a pass, and Clif took it very nicely, well off to the left of the
scrimmage, and sped it down the field for twelve yards and a total
of twenty-six. A penalty set the Dark Blue back, however, and in the
end Clif’s feat went for naught. It wasn’t until the last quarter had
started that another score was made, and then it was Cupples who made
it. Cupples got a back away on a nice around-the-end run, outside
Williams, substituting Couch, and the fleet-footed youth reeled off
fifty-three yards before he was pulled down from behind. Unable to
advance from Wyndham’s twelve by attacks at the enemy line, Cupples
again tried a placement kick and this time succeeded, leaving the score
9 to 3.

A little later a Cupples punt was short and Jackson, at quarter, made a
fair catch on Cupples’ forty-seven yards. McMurtry and Whitemill made
good gains off tackle and advanced the pigskin to the thirty-six. Then
“G. G.” mended his line with three first-string players who had retired
late in the first half and Wyndham went steadily forward to her third
score. Just at the last the going grew heavy and the gains short, but
Stiles, who had taken Sproule’s place at right half, solved the final
problem by slipping around the Cupples left end behind a well-built
wall of interference and carrying the ball over the remaining eight
yards for a touchdown. This time Sim Jackson officiated at the
try-for-point and had no difficulty in securing the last score of the
contest.

Wyndham went home with a 16-to-3 game dangling at her belt, more than
ever convinced that “No Defeats” meant just what it said!

There were, however, some who reflected that 16 to 3 didn’t sound
quite so pretty as 20 to 0, and who remembered that Wolcott had
defeated Cupples two weeks ago by 18 to 0. And when Monday came there
were evidences of dissatisfaction on the part of Coach Otis. He tried
Craigie at left guard that afternoon and Jeff Adams at left end, and
he made brief experiments at other places on the team. And he was
decidedly brusque all during practice. In short, the signs indicated
that any fellow who cared much for his job had best settle his nose
closer to the grindstone and keep his eyes ahead! Those who had played
a full two periods on Saturday were exempted from the scrimmage to-day,
and the second rode rough shod over the second- and third-string subs,
a fact which pleased “G. G.” not at all and which led to expressions
of opinion not at all flattering to the subs. Tom and Clif, pausing
on their way to the showers to hearken, grinned sympathetically and
exchanged meaning glances as they went on again.

Loring attended football practice very regularly. Rain was about
the only thing that kept him away. And, of course, Wattles went,
too, wheeling Loring’s chair from East Hall across the field to a
corner of the bench and then occupying a few inches of space at the
extreme end of the seat. The boy in the wheel chair and the eminently
dignified attendant were so much a part of the scene that their
infrequent absences were invariably noted and commented on. Wyndham
School was proud of Loring Deane, proud for various reasons. In the
first place, it was something of a feather in the Wyndham cap to have
for a student the son of a man internationally famous as a financier
and immensely wealthy. There were, to be sure, a few who tried to
dislike Loring because of Sanford Deane’s wealth, but they were few.
What accounted for most of the school’s pride, however, was Loring’s
patience and pluck and cheerfulness in misfortune. There were some
who observed cynically that they’d be willing to have their walking
done for them if they could be Sanford Deane’s sons. But they were
either thoughtless or untruthful, for no amount of wealth can make
up for physical disability. Loring not only smiled in the face of
adversity, but laughed at it! If he couldn’t use his feet, at least
he had an otherwise sound body and he made the most of it. All that
he could do he did well. He was a brilliant student, and last winter
he had won the Seymour Scholarship, the principal prize open to third
class fellows. The fact that he had declined the money accompanying
the honor didn’t lessen his popularity any. Popularity, though, isn’t
quite the word to use concerning Loring, for popularity suggests a
sort of easy familiarity lacking in his relations with the school
_in toto_. Loring’s close friends were few, his acquaintances many.
Back of his apparent approachability was a reserve born, doubtless,
of his misfortune and compounded largely of shyness. It was necessary
to negotiate that inner defense before one could win to the citadel
of Loring’s friendship, and not very many succeeded. Yet those who
remained without were almost invariably as loyal as those who entered,
and Tom once said that Loring had more bosom friends who didn’t even
know him than any fellow he had ever met!

During practice Loring was seldom dependent on Wattles for conversation,
for some one was usually visiting with him down there at the end of the
bench: one of the players, or one of the managers, or not infrequently
Dan Farrell, the trainer. One of Dan’s favorite remarks was that just as
soon as Loring got to using crutches he was going to train him for the
track. “And, by gorry,” Dan would add, “you’ll be winning races, too,
Mr. Deane, for it’s you has the pluck that can’t be beat!” Last year the
trainer’s optimism had been reprimanded smilingly by Loring. “I guess
I’ll never get to crutches,” he had said. But this fall he didn’t
challenge the hopeful statement. The possibility was not quite as remote
as it had been.

Now and then Mr. Otis paused for a word, but the coach was usually
too busy to do more than exchange greetings. On Tuesday afternoon,
though, Loring’s chair was wheeled into place a few minutes earlier
than customary, and by chance Mr. Otis came directly from the inn to
the gridiron without stopping at the gymnasium. Only a small handful of
players were about and the stand was practically deserted. Loring sat
fairly imbedded in a raccoon coat, for the day was cloudy and cold, and
even Wattles, whose soul abhorred the undignified drapery of such loose
apparel, wore a pepper-and-salt overcoat which, being of no more than
medium weight and stopping short slightly below his knees, looked far
from sufficient. However, Wattles had further fortified himself against
the weather by encasing his rather large feet in a pair of rubbers.
He called them galoshes, which was just another indication of how
difficult it was for Wattles to become wholly Americanized. As always,
he wore a bowler――that is, begging his pardon, a derby. It was a black
derby, irreproachably lustrous of nap, of a distinctly square tendency.
Wattles’ derby had become a Wyndham feature; like “Old Brad’s” one
cream-colored necktie or the battered football in the glass case in the
gymnasium, which bore the barely decipherable inscription: “Wyndham 28,
Wolcott 0.” In Wattles’ philosophy a man might conceivably murder his
grandmother under stress of strong emotion, or default with the funds
of widows and orphans, but a gentleman could not wear a soft hat. At
least, not without the permitting accompaniment of homespun. And he had
his doubts as to that!

Wattles arose with a murmur of respectful greeting and Mr. Otis said:
“No, no, Wattles, keep your seat. I’ll sit over here for a minute.
Well, Deane, I haven’t had a real word with you this fall. How are you?”

“Oh, fine, thanks, sir.”

“Well, you look it; what I can see of you! How are those legs coming
along, my boy? Any improvement?”

Loring shook his head, still smiling. “Not much, I’m afraid. Wattles
thinks he sees an improvement, or says he does; but he’s a confounded
optimist about other folks’ troubles!”

“Well, I hope he’s right. What do you say, Wattles?”

Wattles coughed delicately. “There is an improvement, sir. The doctor
admits it, too, sir. Mr. Loring is naturally not so capable of
appreciating it, Mr. Otis. It is――very gradual; oh, very, sir.”

“I’ll say it is,” laughed Loring. “If you’re thinking of holding the
quarter back job open for me next season, sir, you’d best not bother.”

“Hm. I’d like mighty well to see you in it, Deane.” Mr. Otis was
plainly sincere, and Loring’s cheeks flushed with pleasure behind the
barrier of the big fur collar. “What do you think of our outfit this
fall, by the way?”

“It looks mighty good to me, Mr. Otis. I guess we’ve been sort of slow
in getting started, but it looks now as if we were headed about right.
Don’t you think so, sir?”

“Oh, we’re better than we were. If we had a few more pounds in the line
we’d pass for a fair team.”

“Especially on the left side, I guess,” said Loring.

The coach looked at him quickly and then nodded. “You’ve got good
eyes,” he commented dryly. “Yes, we need something better there, but
we haven’t got it. Well, I never saw a team yet that had an evenly
balanced line.”

“I’ve got a fellow coming along,” said Loring carelessly, “who may be
useful on that side later, Mr. Otis.”

“You’ve――what?” asked the coach, puzzled.

“I said I had a fellow coming along who might work in there, sir.
He’s just started on the second, but he’s promising and I wouldn’t be
surprised to see him make pretty good. He’s built for a guard. Or he
might be used at tackle if he could be speeded up a little.”

“Who are you talking about?” asked “G. G.,” frowning.

“Fellow named Parks. I guess you haven’t noticed him. He’s still on
the bench over there.” Loring nodded toward the next gridiron. “He’s
absolutely green, but he’s learning fast, I understand.”

Mr. Otis laughed. “Deane, you’re a funny chap. You don’t expect a man
starting in now to play guard on the first team in a fortnight, do you?”

“Well, it is sort of improbable, isn’t it?” laughed Loring. “And
maybe I’m being a bit optimistic. Just the same I wouldn’t be awfully
surprised to see Parks get into the Wolcott game. You see, Mr. Otis,
he’s got just about everything but the know-how, and I’m looking to Mr.
Babcock to supply that deficiency.”

“Well, I’ll give him a welcome when he arrives,” said the coach, with
a chuckle. “And I’ve known Babcock to knock the corners off in mighty
short time, Deane. But I guess I’d better not count too strongly on
this prodigy of yours, eh?”

“No, sir, don’t do that,” replied Loring. “Better wait another week or
so before you begin to build any plays around him. I’ll report on him
later, sir.”

“Just how does he happen to be your discovery?” asked “G. G.”

“Oh, he isn’t that, exactly. Owens went after him long ago and didn’t
have any luck. I happened to meet him one night and liked his looks. So
we――that is, Tom Kemble and Clif Bingham and I――”

“The Triumvirate?” smiled Mr. Otis.

“Gee, have you heard about that?” Loring asked laughingly. “Well, we
got hold of him and persuaded him to join Mr. Babcock’s outfit. He
didn’t want to at first. At least, he did want to, I guess, but he
didn’t have the nerve. Some one had told him he couldn’t learn the
game, you see. However, he forgot it and went out, and I hear that he’s
made a hit with the second team fellows.”

“If he turns out to be any good,” said Mr. Otis quietly, “I’ll have
something to say to Owens for missing him!” After a moment of silence
he said: “Deane, didn’t I hear that you were going to manage the
baseball team next spring?”

“Yes, sir, I’m supposed to, but I’m awfully doubtful about being able
to――to make good, and if I don’t I’ll――I’ll jump out a window, I guess,
because Mr. Clendennin and some of the others simply boosted me into
it, right over the heads of some fellows who deserved it more. Gee, if
I turned out to be a blah I’d feel pretty sick.”

“Well, I don’t think you need worry. I believe you’ll be a long way
from a ‘blah,’ as you call it. Fact is, I was just thinking that it
would be rather fortunate for me――and the team――if you were football
manager!”

“Gosh, Mr. Otis!”

“I mean it.” Mr. Otis cast a side glance at Wattles, seemed reassured
by that gentleman’s apparent concentration on an arching ball, and
added with a trace of asperity: “You see, Deane, the difference between
you and the average chap who acts as football manager here is that you
have everything except the ability to walk and the others have the
ability to walk and not much else! Well, I must start things up.”

“Mr. Otis, what do you think our chance is of getting through without a
licking, sir?” asked Loring quickly.

“What? Oh, that business. Well, frankly, Deane, I think our chance is
about one in three.”

“Gee,” murmured Loring dejectedly. “But we’ve got through half the
schedule, sir.”

“Yes, and I’ll change that. I’ll say one in two. You see, Deane, it’s
a safe bet that either Horner or Wolcott will get us, if not both of
them. This is just between us, old chap, and not for publication.”

“You don’t really mean that you think Wolcott’s going to win this year,
sir!”

“Well, perhaps I don’t quite think it, but――oh, hang it, Deane, look
at the left side of that line! You know what any fairly strong offense
will do to it, and if your line won’t hold together what good’s the
best attack in the world? As for Horner――well, I dare say we may
weather that game if Horner’s no better than she looks now. But I
wouldn’t wager a peanut shell that we’ll win both those games!”

“Gee,” Loring muttered. “‘No Defeats!’”

“Well, it’s a noble ambition, anyway,” replied “G. G.,” smiling down
reassuredly, “and it’s no disgrace to strive for perfection, Deane.”

“No, sir,” agreed Loring mournfully, “not even if you stub your toe
going after it.”

Mr. Otis chuckled, nodded and hurried off. Loring looked after him a
moment and then said, half to himself, half to Wattles: “Just the same,
he may not be right. I still believe we’ve got a show.”

“Oh, absolutely, sir,” said Wattles gravely!

A little later Loring said: “Wattles, there’s the fellow with the funny
chin again. Halfway up the stand, alongside the post.”

Wattles looked and assented. “Quite so, Mr. Loring,” he answered. “I
don’t think he’s one of our crowd, sir.”

“I’m plumb sure he isn’t,” returned Loring, “and I can’t make myself
believe that he’s one of the town fellows, either. This is about the
fourth or fifth time I’ve seen him, and he looks just as much like
something the tide washed in as ever.”

Wattles again turned his head and appraised the subject of Loring’s
disparagement. “Well, sir, he’s not such an unpresentable
young――er――person,” he protested fairly.

“Oh, I’m not talking about his clothes or his manners,” said Loring.
“But study that face, Wattles. Don’t you see that his eyes are too
blamed close together and that that funny chin makes him look like a――a
camel or something?”

Wattles allowed himself a smile. “I do see the resemblance, Mr. Loring,
and that’s a fact. A camel, yes, sir. Oh, undoubtedly.”

“Yes, and――well, I suppose it’s a perfectly asinine idea, Wattles, but
the silly coot acts to me as if he were up to something and was afraid
some one would get onto him. I tried to catch his eyes the other day
and he wouldn’t look at me for a half second. If I was a bit better at
climbing steps I’d go up there and ask him what he’s up to.”

“I’d say, sir, that he’s just looking on a bit, like the rest of us.”

“Hm, yes,” said Loring dubiously, “but he watches mighty closely. I’ve
seen him staring so hard you’d think he’d have strabismus. Do I mean
strabismus, Wattles?”

“Quite possibly, Mr. Loring. I――er――the word is not――”

“It means cross-eyed or something, and I dare say it doesn’t occur in
Blackstone.”

“No, sir, I don’t think it does.”

“Of course the silly ass may be trying to learn how to play,” went on
Loring. “Although if I were he I’d keep out of football. I’d be awfully
afraid some chap would land on that chin. I know a chin like that, a
chin that wiggles like a rabbit’s nose, would be a great temptation to
me if I was opposite it!”

Wattles chuckled politely. “It would be a temptation, sir, and no
mistake,” he agreed.

“In fact, Wattles, it not only would be, it is! Gee, it must be
wonderful to be able to walk up to a guy and punch his face! I sure
envy you that, Wattles!”

Wattles coughed deprecatingly, “I’m not sure, Mr. Loring, I hope that
if――when you are better you will not attempt anything of that sort,” he
said earnestly.

“Won’t I! Well, no, I won’t, Wattles, for the simple and sufficient
reason that I’ll never get the chance. But if I could――why, listen,
old chap. If I could do it I’d walk up there right now and say to that
fellow with the trick chin: ‘I don’t know who you are or what you’re up
to, but I don’t like your looks and so you’d better beat it.’ And then,
if he didn’t beat it, and mighty quick, too, I’d――” Loring smiled down
pleasurably at a capable brown fist―― “I’d let him have it, Wattles.”

Wattles shook his head disapprovingly, but at the same time he turned
it toward the stand as though contemplating in fancy a pleasant
proceeding. Then he coughed again, rather severely this time, and
said: “The young man is scarcely the sort, sir, that one would wish
to――er――engage in a bout with, begging your pardon, Mr. Loring.”

“Oh, I say, Wattles,” laughed the other, “a fellow can’t stop to
exchange cards, you know, in such an event!”

“N-no, sir, but――er――one wouldn’t, I fancy, engage in a difference of
opinion with a person one wouldn’t have to dinner!”

“Wattles,” chuckled Loring affectionately, “you’re a delight!”

“Thank you, sir,” replied Wattles.




                              CHAPTER XIV

                          WATTLES ON THE TRAIL


On Wednesday Loring didn’t attend practice. This was not because of
inclement weather, but because a certain very distinguished physician
motored up from New York in an impressive car of foreign make, driven
by a liveried chauffeur, and spent some thirty minutes with the boy in
his professional capacity and something over an hour in unprofessional
conversation. When he took his departure at last Wattles accompanied
him to the automobile and the two conferred for several minutes more.
Perhaps the eminent doctor was kind enough to compliment Wattles on his
care of the patient, for Wattles’ eyes were shining when he went back
up the steps of East Hall. All this is just to explain why it was that
when Clif and Tom came into Loring’s room after supper that evening
Loring was quite unprepared for Clif’s appearance.

“Why, what――what――” stammered Loring in evident concern.

There was a distinct but apparently reconsidered snigger from Tom that
ended in a fit of choking. Clif turned and gazed at him reproachfully.
Then the reproach turned to amusement and Clif chuckled, too. “Lemuel
John,” said Clif, sinking into a chair, with a sigh.

“Lemuel John?” echoed Loring. “What about him?”

Clif pointed to a left eye which had the ensanguined appearance of a
piece of raw beef. “This,” he replied briefly.

“You mean you had a scrap?” exclaimed Loring.

Tom broke in with a chuckle. “I’ll say they did,” he answered for his
chum. “‘Cocky’ put Lemuel John in at right guard on the second when we
started scrimmage. Lemuel John used up Smythe and Weldon in about seven
and one-eleventh minutes. Then ‘G. G.’ called on his reserves. Breeze
and Bingham, you know. Great pair, Breeze and Bingham. Lemuel John
looked them over and said ‘Howdy’ and then proceeded to smear ’em.”

“Not really!” ejaculated Loring almost joyfully. Clif once more
registered reproach. Tom nodded and waved a hand toward Clif.

“See for yourself. Exhibit one. The other exhibit doesn’t show his
wounds on the surface so much but, believe me, he’s got hurt feelings!”

“But――but Lemuel John didn’t――didn’t _hit_ you, Clif!”

“Not with malice aforethought,” Clif acknowledged; “but my eye doesn’t
know that. Oh, it was in a sort of a ruckus we had. It wasn’t his
fault. Second worked down to our fifteen, about. Ogden gave her all the
decisions, hang him! ‘G. G.’ threatened us with boiling oil if we let
her cross the line, and ‘Cocky’ as good as told his team that he’d
have them shot at sunrise if they didn’t score. Resultantly there was a
sort of a Donnybrook Fair staged on that fifteen-yard line and the fur
flewed――flew, I mean. They tried to push that Converse guy, their full
back, you know, through Breeze, and I happened to be passing by and saw
what was going on――”

“Passing by!” jeered Tom. “You were just aching for trouble, and you
sure got it!”

“I think it was Lemuel John’s knee that hit me,” said Clif. “I remember
that he towered above me some nineteen or twenty feet for a moment, and
I’m sure it couldn’t have been his elbow.”

“You mean that you were down?” asked Loring interestedly.

“Down? By no means. I was standing on my feet. Anyway, some one’s feet.
Then the cyclone passed.”

“Did you hold them?” Loring’s voice was eager.

“Hold who?” inquired Clif.

“Why, the second!”

“Oh! Yes, we held the second. Most of them, that is. The one we didn’t
hold was Lemuel John. Fact is, we didn’t hold Converse, either; but
that wasn’t our fault. We might have stopped him only he got right
behind Lemuel John and no one could see him, of course. Not until he
was on top of the goal line, anyway. You know there ought to be a rule
against a player hiding himself like that. It isn’t sporting.”

Loring was laughing enjoyably by now, and Clif grinned, too, sending
exploring fingers to his left cheek bone. Tom said: “Loring, when you
wished that wild hyena on the Scrub you sure played a dirty trick on
your friends.”

“Good, was he?” asked Loring eagerly.

“Good? No, as a player he was rotten. He broke all the commandments. He
got out of position, he charged standing up, he――he――”

“But he got through,” chuckled Loring.

“Oh, yes, he got through. He’s a rotten football player, but he’s a
whale of a battering-ram. Boy, let me tell you something. When Lemuel
John learns what a football is for and what the white lines that they
paint on the grass mean and a few little things like that, and when he
remembers to play low and start with the ball, he’s going to be some
warm baby! I had a hunch right along that he had the stuff in him. You
fellows wouldn’t believe me, but――”

A howl went up from the others. “Yes, you did!” scoffed Clif. “You were
the one who couldn’t see him with a spyglass!”

“What do you mean, spyglass?” asked Tom, grinning. “No one offered me
any spyglass. I just had a feeling――”

“Is Lemuel John really as bad as Tom says, Clif?” Loring interrupted.

“Oh, pretty nearly. Why not? He hasn’t been with the Scrub more than a
week, has he? He’s sort of roughhewn just now, but I know ‘Cocky’ well
enough to feel pretty certain that Lemuel John will have the corners
all chipped off neatly before the season’s over.”

“Funny Mr. Babcock let him play so soon,” mused Loring.

“Not so very funny,” answered Tom. “Their regular right guard had a cut
to-day and the next best bet got a bum knee yesterday. It was Lemuel
John or a third sub, I guess, and ‘Cocky’ chose Lemuel.”

Loring smiled in a thoroughly pleased fashion. “Only yesterday,” he
said, “I told Mr. Otis about him. Of course I was kind of joshing, but
I said I had a guard coming along who might fit in nicely before the
season was over.”

“_You_ had! Where do you get that ‘you’ stuff?” Tom demanded. “Who was
it thought of Lemuel John as a football player in the first place?”

“Well, it wasn’t you,” laughed Loring. “However, I don’t claim all the
credit. I didn’t yesterday. I told ‘G. G.’ that we’d all been working
on Lemuel John. Gosh, but wouldn’t it be corking if he really did make
the team?”

“The first, you mean?” Clif asked. “Not likely, I guess. Just the same,
I wish he would, and I wish ‘G. G.’ would play him at left guard. I’d
sure like to rub elbows with Lemuel John!”

“I should think you’d done enough of it,” chuckled Tom.

“I told you it wasn’t his elbow,” replied Clif with dignity. “It was
his knee. Or maybe he just kicked me. Anyway, he was terribly concerned
afterwards and said, ‘I guess I’ll have to be careful and not play so
rough, Bingham!’ I said, ‘You play as rough as you like. It won’t be
anything in my life, Parks, because the next time I see you making up
your mind to come my way I’m not going to be there!’”

Wyndham had no difficulty with Minster High School on the following
Saturday, meeting the opponent on Wyndham Field and administering a
neat drubbing. The final score of 24 to 3 practically duplicated last
year’s victory. The home team did not, perhaps, deserve all the glory
the figures indicated, for Minster was not a strong team. Still, the
Dark Blue showed an improvement over last Saturday and put up a firm
defense against any attack the visitors showed; and they tried about
every ruse known to the game. Wyndham played through without the
services of “Punk” Drayton, left end, and Captain Ogden, full back.
Drayton had developed a mild case of tonsilitis and Jeff’s ankle was
still weak. However, Adams, who took “Punk’s” place, and “Swede”
Hanbury, who substituted for Ogden, were well able to look after their
jobs. On the whole, Wyndham was fairly well satisfied with herself that
Saturday evening and those who, while flaunting “No Defeats!” buttons,
had secretly doubted the ability of the team to come through with a
whole skin, now took heart. What Coach Otis thought about the game or
the prospects of the team was not known. The coach didn’t confide his
opinions very often.

November came in the day of the Minster contest. November in the
vicinity of Freeburg may be anything so far as weather is concerned.
Tradition tells of one Wolcott game fought on an afternoon in late
November so warm that the spectators gasped and perspired and the
players almost collapsed before the final whistle. Indian summer is a
season not to be depended on, however. Sometimes it comes early and
sometimes late, and sometimes it doesn’t come at all. This year it
hadn’t shown itself yet; or, if it had, no one had recognized it. The
Sunday after the Minster game was cloudy and cold, with a whistling
breeze blowing down from the higher hills to the north. Steam pipes
rattled and radiators whistled that morning, and the slogan of the
day was “Shut that door!” Sunday papers were read very thoroughly,
for no one was appreciably drawn toward the great open spaces. There
was much football talk and discussion, and much to discuss if one was
in the mood. For instance, there was the Yale-Army game which had
resulted in another tie, contrary to the expectations, warranted or
not, of many Wyndham followers of the game. And there was, too, the
Princeton-Swarthmore contest, and the Harvard-Boston University fracas
and the Dartmouth-Brown affair, all of momentous interest to youths who
in anticipation were students of one or another of those institutions
of learning and who surreptitiously scribbled “Smith, Princeton ’29,”
or some similar inscription, on the backs of their blue books and
hastily erased the words the next moment. Then, too, there was the
Wolcott-Hoskins encounter to mull over. As usual, the game had been
bitterly contested and the final score close. But this time Wolcott had
come off victor, one touchdown and a field goal to two field goals.
There was much comparing of scores, much argument seeking to prove, on
the one hand, that Wolcott was a “lucky stiff” to win, on the other
hand that only the breaks of the game had given Hoskins those field
goals. It all depended on the end sought. Comparative scores and the
story of the game could be made to favor either team. However, when
all was said, it was still necessary to acknowledge that Wolcott’s team
this year had the appearance of something that got what it went for.
If Wyndham held up a clean slate, so too did Wolcott. And Wolcott’s
victories had been, on the whole, rather more impressive.

Two afternoons later Loring once more drew Wattles’ attention to the
youth with the funny chin. “There’s the Camel again,” he said. “I
do wish you’d go up there in the stand and ask him what he’s doing.
He’s got conspirator written all over that trick countenance of his,
Wattles.”

Wattles looked. “Yes, sir,” he answered, “but I hardly think, if you’ll
pardon me, Mr. Loring, that I would be――er――justified in asking the
young man such a question.”

“Eh? Oh, I was only spoofing, old chap. Just the same――” But Loring
didn’t complete the remark. Instead he returned to his observation of
the scrimmage going on between the first and the scrub teams. Ever
since last Thursday Loring had eagerly waited to see Lemuel John
officiate as guard on the second once more. But his waiting had been
vain. Lemuel John, after that one notable and much discussed appearance
in the line-up, had remained on the bench. Loring made up his mind that
to-morrow he would go over to the other gridiron and watch Lemuel John
in practice there. Meanwhile, however, he felt a bit resentful toward
Mr. Babcock for not giving the big fellow an opportunity to repeat his
performance. This in spite of the fact that Clif’s face still showed
the marks of Lemuel John’s enthusiasm!

Clif was generally believed to have deposed Weldon at left tackle now.
At all events, he was being used much more than Weldon in that position
and was gradually shaping into a brilliant performer on offense. In
defense he was not quite so good, but neither Smythe nor Breeze,
alternate incumbents of the next position toward center, was showing up
well, and a weak guard may easily bring discredit on his tackle. Tom
was going finely of late. Indeed, with the exception of Captain Jeff
himself――and Jeff’s style was too different to invite comparison――Tom
was showing up as the cleverest back on the squad. He had developed
a speed in starting that he had lacked last season, a speed that was
adding a yard or more to every effort. And he was winning praise,
too, as a unit of the secondary defense, making his tackles hard and
seldom missing his man. Loring was glad that the other members of the
Triumvirate were doing so well. Next to playing himself, the thing that
gave him the most pleasure was witnessing the success of Clif and Tom.

A few minutes before the end of the scrimmage Loring turned to Wattles
and said: “I’d like to go over to the village and get a book at
Leeson’s, Wattles. There’s time enough, I guess.”

They were two blocks from school――Loring had requested Wattles to pause
so that he might inspect the contents of the window of the hardware
store――when the boy with the funny chin passed. Although Loring’s back
was turned he had no difficulty in seeing his approach, for the street
was excellently mirrored in the window pane. When the boy had gone by
Loring said: “All right, Wattles. Let’s go on down the street.”

“Leeson’s is just across, sir,” said Wattles.

“I know, but I feel like taking some exercise.” That was, of course,
Loring’s joke, since the exercise fell to Wattles. “Isn’t that the
Camel ahead there, Wattles?”

“Yes, sir, he just passed.”

“You might sort of keep him in sight then. I’m rather curious to know
where he’s going.”

Wattles had a soul for intrigue and adventure, although the fact would
not have been suspected, and he perked up at once. “Very good, Mr.
Loring,” he replied with relish. “He seems to be in a bit of a hurry.”

“Yes, doesn’t he? Well, carry on.”

So Wattles carried on for two blocks further. Then the boy with the
funny chin turned abruptly to the left down a side street that, as
Loring knew, was lamentably ill-paved. “Leave me here, Wattles,” he
said, “and beat it! See where he goes to. Don’t lose him, Old Sleuth!”

Wattles abandoned the wheel chair beside a hitching post and used his
long legs to advantage. In a moment he, too, had disappeared, and
Loring set himself to wait. He knew Wattles well enough to be sure that
if the quarry resided within a reasonable distance――say anything under
two miles――Wattles would see the project through. But his waiting was
over in less than five minutes. Wattles returned looking triumphant in
a repressed fashion. “He went off in a car, sir,” reported the amateur
detective. “A small car. In fact, sir, a flivver.”

“A car, eh? Which way did he go? Was he alone?”

“Alone, sir, yes. He went east.” Wattles waved a hand.

“East? Where was the car?”

“About halfway along the block, in front of a sort of shed, Mr. Loring.
A stable, perhaps. There’s a carpenter’s sign on it. He got in and went
right on down Pierson Street.”

“But Pierson Street doesn’t lead anywhere,” Loring protested. “We were
on the other end of it last spring.”

“It goes as far as the road where the stone machine is, sir.”

“Stone machine? What―― Oh, the rock crusher! Of course! And that leads
over that way to Stoddard――no, Elm Street.”

“To Stoddard, too, sir. I believe it crosses Elm.”

“And Stoddard Street goes over to the old turnpike!”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the old turnpike―― Gee, I wish I had a map!”

“They have them at Leeson’s, Mr. Loring.”

“Right you are, Wattles! On to Leeson’s.”

A few minutes later, a road map spread across his knees, Loring
exclaimed in triumph. “Just as I thought, Wattles! That road hits the
state road about four miles north of town!”

“Indeed, sir?” Wattles commented.

“Yes! And don’t you see what that means?”

Wattles’ cough was deprecatory. “I’m afraid I don’t, sir.”

“Why, think, man! Where does the state road go from here?”

“I believe it goes to Canaan, sir, and then――”

“Canaan, my eye! Before Canaan, I mean?”

“Before Canaan? Why, to be sure, sir! Cotterville!”

“Cotterville, Wattles! And I’ll bet you that chap is on his way back to
Wolcott right this minute!”




                               CHAPTER XV

                       THE TRIUMVIRATE CONSPIRES


They talked it over that evening in Loring’s room. Since Lemuel John
was on hand for a game of chess he was made a party to the conference,
but his verbal contributions were few. The Triumvirate was unanimous as
to two things. These were, first, that the Camel, as they called the
unknown youth for want of a better appellation, was attending Wyndham
practices for the purpose of obtaining information which, passed on to
the Wolcott football team, might prove of aid to the latter along about
the twenty-second of the month; and, second, that such espionage was
unsportsmanlike and deserving of severe condemnation. Of course, they
didn’t put it just like that, but that’s what they meant. I have used
my own phraseology rather than theirs that the gentle reader may be
spared the shock of certain uncouth expressions.

Having agreed that the thing was undesirable from the Wyndham
standpoint they discussed measures for suppressing it. The discussion
caused the postponement of the chess game until after study hour, and
after study hour it caused a second postponement until the following
evening. But before they parted for the night they had reached a
solution of the problem, said problem being: How’ll we get the guy and
pin it on him? Whether or not to report the matter at its present stage
to the coach or the manager or the captain, or to all of them, was
threshed out at length. Clif was for putting the affair up to Mr. Otis
and letting the latter take whatever steps he thought proper. Tom was
opposed. Tom pointed out that, while it was practically certain that
the Camel had been spying on the team, it was yet to be proved that the
Camel was a student at Wolcott or was performing his stunt with the
approval of the rival school. “Let’s find out who he is first,” advised
Tom reasonably. “He may be just a plain nut and have no connection at
all with Wolcott. Of course we all know that Wolcott’s the poorest
apology for a prep school in the country and that fellows who go there
are thieves, murderers and pickpockets, but, aside from that, they’re a
fairly decent lot over there and I don’t believe that the coach or any
one connected with football affairs would try to put over anything as
low down as this.”

Lemuel John made his first suggestion of the evening. “Guess the best
way to do would be to follow him and see where he goes to,” he drawled.
“If you nabbed him and asked questions he might lie.”

“Might?” said Clif. “Would, you mean! Well, maybe you’re right, Tom.
Only, if we find that the Camel really is spying here and tipping off
the Wolcott football crowd, I say we’ve got to tell Mr. Otis.”

“Of course,” agreed Tom, “when we know anything. But we don’t yet. If
Wattles had only got the number of the car――”

“He said it was too dirty to read,” said Loring. “Besides, it isn’t
likely the fellow owns the car. He probably rents it. Wattles says it
was just a rattle-trap, anyway.”

“Say, how about Wattles?” asked Clif. “Couldn’t he follow the fellow
and see where he goes?”

“It ought to be one of us,” answered Loring. “Of course, it can’t be
me. I’ll tell you. Clif has a driver’s license, and can drive, too;
which isn’t always the case! If he could get hold of a car――”

“But I couldn’t get away from the field in time,” Clif objected.

“Wait a sec. Where’s that map I brought home? Thanks, Tom. Now look
here, fellows. Gather around. Here’s where he had the car this
afternoon. It isn’t likely that he leaves it the same place every time
he comes over here, but it’s safe to say he parks it far enough from
the school to avoid suspicion. Anyway, what he probably does do when he
starts back is to head over to this road here. What’s the name of it?
Or hasn’t it got any――”

“Treadwell Street,” said Clif, laying a finger on the map.

“All right. Well, he goes over here and then turns north, reaches Elm
Street here, jogs right, turns again here and gets to Stoddard Street.
Then he follows Stoddard about half a mile and comes out on the old
turnpike. After that he’s got plain sailing for three or four miles
and hits the state road at Gerson’s Corners. Then he’s only got to
follow the paved road right into Cotterville. The whole distance is
about twenty-seven miles, I guess, just a nice hour’s run in his little
flivver. Now if some one was waiting over here――” Loring put his finger
down where Stoddard Street and the turnpike met on the road map――“it
wouldn’t be any trick to keep him in sight. And if some one――Clif,
for example――had a car parked here on Stoddard Street near the corner
of the field it wouldn’t take but a few minutes to get out to the
turnpike. Then he could stop with his car headed north and pretend he
had a puncture or engine trouble or――”

“Painter’s colic,” suggested the irrepressible Tom.

“But wouldn’t he recognize me?” asked Clif doubtfully.

“I don’t think so. Not if you were in street clothes. And you could
pull your cap down pretty well and sort of keep your head turned.”

“‘Hink’ Connell’s got a false mustache,” said Tom, chuckling. “It’s
red, but――”

“Cut out the comedy,” said Loring. “Let’s get this thing fixed up
somehow before the gong rings. Hang it, if you fellows can’t take hold
of it I’ll trail him myself, in this chair, with Wattles chauffeuring!”

“I’m ready to try it,” protested Clif. “But I don’t see how I can get
away over there by the time the Camel does. I’ve got to get a shower,
change my street clothes, beat it across to the corner――”

“It might be a pretty close shave,” acknowledged Loring. “Still, the
Camel has to walk from the field to where his car is parked, start it
up and go nearly twice as far as you, Clif. Look here, wouldn’t Mr.
Otis let you off five or ten minutes early if you asked him to?”

“I dare say he would, but what’ll I tell him? And here’s another thing.
It’ll be an hour’s run to Cotterville and an hour’s run back. That
means that I’ll miss supper, probably. Besides, won’t faculty kick if
they find out?”

Loring questioned Tom with his eyes and Tom shook his head. “Search
me,” he said. “A fellow’s at liberty to cut a meal if he wants to, but
I’m not sure he’s supposed to be joy riding when he does it.”

“I don’t think the rules say anything about being outside the grounds
at supper time,” said Loring.

“Maybe not,” remarked Clif pessimistically, “but that wouldn’t mean a
thing if they didn’t like it. They’d make a rule.”

“I’d do the job if I could drive a flivver,” said Lemuel John.

“So would I,” said Loring. “Seems to me, Clif, you can think up more
objections――”

“Oh, shut up! All right, I’ll do it. I’ll get that trick flivver we
went out to the boat races in last spring. I guess he will let me have
it if it’s still alive. But, listen, wouldn’t it be a sell if the Camel
didn’t turn up to-morrow?”

“That’s so,” said Loring. “And I don’t believe he does come every day.
At least, I haven’t noticed him more than two or three times a week, I
suppose. That’s a complication, isn’t it?”

“You arrange for the flivver in the morning,” advised Tom. “If the
Camel shows up some one――Wattles maybe――can pass the word to have the
car brought up from the village and left there at the corner. If the
coot fools us to-morrow he will probably be on hand the next day.”

Clif nodded. “All right,” he agreed. “I’ve got to own up, though, that
I haven’t got much enthusiasm for the business. I have a hunch that
we’re going to fall down on it somewhere.”

“Well, we can try,” said Loring. “If we can’t make it go the first time
we can try again, I guess.”

“What! Now look here! I’m not going to――to spend the rest of the month
doing this Paul Revere stunt! I’ll try it once, but after that it’s
some one else’s turn.”

“Don’t be a piker,” said Tom. “You’re doing it for the dear old school,
aren’t you? And the dear old team? Really, Clif, you’re not showing the
proper spirit!”

“I’ll show you a punch in the jaw,” growled Clif. However, he didn’t
look as if he quite meant it, and Tom failed to show apprehension. The
return of Wattles from the West Hall library presaged the gong, and the
visitors arose to depart.

“Sorry about our game, Parks,” said Loring.

“Oh, that’s all right,” answered the big chap. “This other thing’s been
right interesting.”

“Well――oh, by the way, you’ll keep it under your hat, eh?”

“Eh?” asked Lemuel John. “Oh! Sure, don’t you worry. I’ll keep the old
trap shut tight, Deane.”

Wednesday started in with a drizzle that persisted until nearly noon.
However, the gridiron, although moist and a bit slippery, was usable by
three-thirty and the sun was out to do its bit. Loring didn’t pay his
call on the Scrub that afternoon, but followed his custom of spending
practice time at the end of the first team bench. Coach Otis looked
more than usually grim to-day, and those who were well acquainted with
his moods predicted a strenuous afternoon. With the Horner Academy game
coming in three days it doubtless behooved the coach to make the most
of his opportunities to-day and to-morrow. Horner was a much respected
opponent. She had a disagreeable habit of beating the Dark Blue about
every other year on an average, and, although she had performed that
feat last fall and it might well be considered Wyndham’s turn to
conquer, there was a feeling that Saturday’s game might prove the
hardest encounter of the season and even put an end to the prevalence
of those blue-and-white buttons. The fact that this year’s game was to
be played at Horner had a bearing on the outcome, too, for Horner was
a long railroad journey away and the team had to start before seven
in the morning in order to reach the New York village in time for
luncheon. Such a trip is more or less of a handicap to the team that
makes it, and there were plenty of doubting Thomases around Wyndham
just now.

Mr. Otis started the afternoon’s proceedings with long sessions at the
tackling dummy for both Squads A and B, and Loring and Wattles were
left for awhile in possession of the bench. Even the onlookers lounged
across to the dummy to enjoy the sight of their fellows begriming
themselves with the nice moist soil. It was moist, too, for the rain
had collected in the recently spaded space across which the canvas
effigy traveled and brought the brown loam to the consistency of
mud-pie material. When the squads returned to the bench they looked a
sad lot!

Meanwhile Loring had been on the lookout for the youth with the funny
chin. The Camel, however, was not in the stand and Loring concluded
by the time that the audience dribbled back to the seats that he was
not coming to-day. Clif and Tom came over for a whispered conference
and Loring reported the Camel’s absence. Clif looked relieved, Tom
disappointed. Then, just as the two players were turning away, Wattles
leaned forward over Loring’s chair.

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Wattles in the proper tones for a conspirator,
“but the――er――the young man’s there now.”

“Don’t all look together,” Loring warned. “Where is he, Wattles?”

“In the further section, sir. Fourth row from the top and next to the
post.”

“Right-o!” whispered Loring. “See him, Clif? It’s all right; he isn’t
looking this way.”

“So that’s the Camel,” murmured Clif. “Well, hanged if he doesn’t look
like one! What’s the matter with his chin, anyhow? Looks as if it was
made of putty. See him, Tom?”

“I see something,” said Tom cautiously, “but I’m not sure it’s real.
Say, don’t they have ’em queer over at Wolcott? Heck, fellows, that
dumb-bell hasn’t got sense enough to spy on a――on an ant’s nest!”

“You can’t tell,” said Clif. “Folks aren’t always as foolish as they
look, Thomas. You ought to know that.”

“Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute! What’s that mean, eh? I never said
you looked foolish, no matter what I’ve thought, Clif. If――”

“Think you’ll know him when you see him in the car?” interrupted Loring.

“Yes, unless he hides that chin,” chuckled Clif. “All right, fellows,
Paul Revere rides at five o’clock!”

“‘One if by land and two if by sea,’” murmured Tom. “Summon the
chariot, Wattles.”

“Get a good five minutes start of him, Clif,” Loring advised. “Maybe
you can be taken sick or something, eh?”

“I’ll fix it,” answered Clif confidently. “You look after the flivver.
Tell him to have it down there by the end of those poplars at ten
minutes to five with the engine running, Wattles.”

“Very good, Mr. Clifton,” replied Wattles quite animatedly. “The car
will be there, sir.”

Mr. Otis’ voice summoned the players from the bench and Clif and Tom
hurried off. Loring turned to Wattles.

“On your way, old chap,” he said. “I’ll wait here for you, so don’t
hurry. Only be sure that fellow understands what he’s to do, Wattles.
Clif’s explained it all to him once, but he’s a sort of a dumb goof and
you’d better go over it again.”

“Oh, I’ll make it quite clear to him, sir,” said Wattles.

Whereupon, having set his black derby carefully in place and buttoned
his coat, he made off with unhurried dignity.




                              CHAPTER XVI

                              RUN TO EARTH


It was early dusk when Clif pulled up at the side of the road, shut
off his engine and descended from the shabby flivver. There was
still a dull glow in the western sky, but it was fading fast and the
shadows were deepening. Although he had left the field before the end
of practice and changed from football togs to his present regalia of
trousers and sweater and cap in something approaching record time, he
was still in doubt as to whether he had reached the turnpike ahead
of his quarry. He had made the little car hustle, and it didn’t seem
possible that he had arrived too late, yet, if he hadn’t, where was the
Camel? Clif looked back along the road, but it was empty and silent.
He sat down on the running board and thought rather sadly of supper.
He was already hungry enough to eat an ox, he assured himself, and
goodness only knew what his condition would be by the time he saw the
present adventure to its end and got back to school! And when he did
get back it would probably be too late for anything to eat! He began to
hope that the Camel had eluded him, in which case, after waiting where
he was long enough to satisfy himself on that point, he could run the
flivver back to the village and return to school in plenty of time to――

These pleasant reflections were suddenly disturbed. Far back on the
narrow road he had traveled from the direction of the school two weak,
lemon-yellowish points of light appeared in the purple twilight. Clif
looked, sighed and arose. When the Camel went by he was to pretend to
be puzzling over a balky engine. He lifted the hood and assumed the
familiar attitude of the stalled motorist, in spite of the fact that,
had there been anything wrong with the engine, he wouldn’t have been
able to find the trouble by peering into that dark and smelly cavern.
The sound of the approaching car grew louder and its lights played
wanly against the bare trees beyond Clif’s silent chariot. Then, with
a squeaking of springs and a rattle and hum the oncoming car slowed
slightly for the corner, slewed to the left and bounded on again.

“Huh,” thought Clif, “he wouldn’t even offer assistance, the low life!
One more score against you, Funny Face!” This, considering that Clif
hadn’t wanted him to stop, was a trifle unreasonable. The borrowed car
was a conservative. It didn’t hold with these newfangled notions like
self-starters. So Clif had to wind it, and he was still winding it
when the other car was represented by a tiny red speck afar down the
turnpike. But it came to life eventually and Clif vaulted over the side
and began the pursuit. By calling on every bit of power contained under
the shaking hood he managed to cut down the lead of the other flivver
within the next mile. He didn’t go too close to it, however, but
remained some three hundred yards behind, accommodating his pace to the
Camel’s and watching the ruby light swaying about the road. Evidently
the Camel was not a very accomplished driver, for the car he occupied
wandered from side to side in a most erratic fashion. Following that
reflection came a most appalling thought. How, Clif demanded of
himself, did he know that the driver of the other car _was_ the Camel?

It had been planned that he was to identify the boy with the funny chin
as he went past at the corner back there; and do it without allowing
the recognition to be mutual. But, even if he had looked――and he had
purposely not looked for fear that the Camel might take alarm――it would
have been impossible to identify any one in the half dark. So now it
amounted to this: Clif was chasing some one who might or might not be
the person he had set out to chase! At considerable risk of leaving the
turnpike, none too wide at any point in its leisurely meanderings, he
stretched his head around the side of the car and looked back. There
was no one behind; or, at least, no one within sight. Oh, that just had
to be the Camel ahead there! Nevertheless doubt continued to disturb
him.

Belonging, as I have said, to the Old Régime, Clif’s vehicle had no
speedometer. In brief, it possessed none of the modern improvements.
Consequently Clif had to guess both at his speed and at the distance
covered. He surmised the latter to be about three miles when it became
apparent that the car ahead was slowing down. Clif slowed, too, until,
finding himself in danger of bumping the other from the rear, he
increased his speed a trifle and went by. He didn’t want to pass, but
the other flivver had slowed to scarcely more than eight miles, and
to have followed suit would have certainly apprised the Camel――if it
was the Camel――that he was being pursued. As Clif chugged by he threw
a careless glance to the right. The lone occupant of the other car was
hardly more than a blur in the gloom, yet Clif was very certain that
he was being stared at hard. He kept on until he was some two hundred
yards ahead and then looked back. It wouldn’t do to let the Camel――and
now he was practically certain that it was the Camel――turn around and
escape. But the other car was coming along slowly, as though repenting
of its former mad haste and determined to lead a better life. All well
enough, reflected Clif, but now he was the one being trailed, and that
was extremely silly!

He continued, however, maintaining a demure twenty-mile gait, for
another half-mile or so. Then the turnpike merged into the wider
ribbon of the state road and the hard, smooth paving glistened under
the lights of the car. Clif stopped short and made pretense of looking
for signs. There were plenty of them, although as usual they were more
concerned with the merits of suspenders, self-rising flour, automobile
oil and other merchandise than with the destination of the roads. But
the ruse worked, for the Camel’s flivver passed again and, as though
the driver had decided that his neighbor on the road was a harmless
tourist, took up its former headlong flight. Clif grinned and followed.

Twenty-two miles distant lay Cotterville. At the present rate of speed,
thought Clif, they would reach it about ten minutes to six. Well, if
the Camel didn’t take too long in running to earth――of course it was
foxes and not camels who ran to earth, but Clif saw no reason for being
fussy about metaphors just now――he might be able to get back to school
before seven. And if he could slip through the dining hall doors before
they closed at that hour he would chance starving to death! Gee, a
couple of slices of toast and a glass of milk would be wonderful! He
couldn’t remember having been as hungry as he was now in months!

On and on went the two cars, a distance of from two to three hundred
yards separating them. It really looked now as if the Camel was trying
to throw off pursuit, for Clif had to get everything out of his flivver
to keep the tail light ahead from running away into the darkness.
Fortunately the road was wide, straight and at this time of evening
fairly deserted. During the first four or five miles but two cars
passed in the opposite direction and no horns from the rear warned
Clif to make room. Clif didn’t know what the speed was, but he guessed
both cars were doing forty, and he devoutly hoped that the worn tires
beneath him would stand the strain. Now and then, but infrequently, he
and the Camel were forced to slow down a trifle where a few buildings
huddled together at some crossroad junction. It had either rained
harder or continued later over this way, Clif concluded, for there were
puddles along the sides of the road, and now and then, approaching too
closely, water spattered the cracked wind shield and sodden leaves
encouraged skidding. He had to hold the wheel pretty steady as Loomis
came into sight, for a car track, debouching from a side street,
contested the right of way, its rails perched well above the road
level.

Clif believed now that the Camel was aware that he was being trailed.
Otherwise, or so it seemed to the pursuer, he wouldn’t have driven
so recklessly. After all, if the Camel had only to travel as far
as Cotterville he had plenty of time to reach that town before six
o’clock, and he needn’t have taken such chances as he had. Clif
recalled Loomis as being a place of some size, with a bridge across a
rocky river bed――occasionally showing water――a factory of some sort
that stretched for a good block along the main road and numerous small
alleylike streets leading left and right. It wouldn’t be a difficult
feat for the Camel to turn into one of those streets and give him the
shake, Clif reflected; especially if the Camel knew the village. So,
when the Camel reduced his forty-mile speed to something about thirty,
Clif didn’t follow his example at once. He waited until scarcely more
than a dozen yards intervened between the two cars, and presently he
was glad he had done so. A few stores, still open for business, a fire
house, a white Town Hall went past on the left and the factory loomed
ahead, its hundreds of windows dark. Just beyond was the bridge, in
fair sight under the light of an arc lamp. But suddenly the flivver in
the lead swerved sharply to the right and was gone!

Clif jammed on his brake, peering ahead. Then, with a disconcerting jar
the car slid down a narrow, rutted alley in the shadow of the factory,
barely escaped a board fence and went bumping along the edge of the
river. It was no more than a mud hole of a place, one side guarded by
the sagging fence, the other littered with empty packing cases and all
sorts of rubbish from the factory. Under the wheels of the bouncing car
a rotting wooden pavement had succeeded the earth, and occasionally a
plank had fallen away and left a yawning hiatus of six or eight inches,
into which the tires descended with a thud and from which they emerged
with a heave that made Clif clutch the wheel desperately to keep from
flying out. Once he barely grazed the end of a huge truck that had
been left standing beside a loading platform. Fortunately his lights
picked it up in time to allow him to swerve aside. When he had time to
look ahead he could see the beckoning tail lamp of the Camel’s flivver
bobbing and swaying in the darkness. Then it disappeared once more.
Following, Clif manipulated a corner on two wheels, felt a mud guard
strike an obstruction of some sort and then went charging up a steepish
incline that was evidently paved with cobbles. The Camel turned to the
right, fifty yards ahead, and Clif followed, and, lo, he was back on
the main road again, the factory was beside him and the bridge still
ahead! He had, it appeared, completely encircled the factory.

He found a more comfortable location on the seat and settled again for
less exciting stretches. The Camel whirred over the bridge, defying
speed laws, and Clif followed, though a bit more circumspectly. Across
the river, the trolley tracks disappeared and tree-enveloped residences
held for a block or two. Then came the open road once more, with the
Camel again doing his forty. Clif’s luminous watch dial proclaimed the
time as five-thirty-two, and he judged that the journey was more than
half over. He let the Camel retrieve some of his former lead but was
careful not to allow him too much. And then, as suddenly as before, the
red tail light was gone.

Puzzled for an instant, Clif sent his complaining chariot forward at
its best pace. But then the explanation came to him. The Camel had not
left the state road, but had doused his lights! Well, if he wanted to
take the risk, all right; fortunately, Clif didn’t have to. And perhaps
the risk wasn’t so great, after all, for the road passed through open
country here and the starlight was not filtered through the trees as
it had been further back. In any case, the Camel kept his pace, and
Clif, even with the aid of his lights, had to hustle to keep the dim
form of the other car in sight. In such manner they passed a little
hamlet where, beyond an uncurtained casement, Clif saw a tall, thin man
lifting food to his mouth. It was the briefest sort of a vision, but
it was painfully clear, and right then Clif’s flivver almost went into
a telephone pole! Recovering control, he wondered sadly if they would
have given him food after dragging his body from the wreck!

The approach of Cotterville was heralded by the appearance on the road
of more traffic and Clif was forced to use all his skill in guiding
the car past vehicles going in the opposite direction or moving more
slowly toward the town. The danger of losing the Camel increased the
nearer they got to Cotterville, and Clif took more than one chance
during those last two miles in the attempt to keep the other car in
sight. Fortunately, the Camel had had to put his lights on again,
and by now Clif could have picked that particular tail lamp out of a
hundred! And so Cotterville’s main street began, brilliantly lighted
for a half-dozen blocks, well lined with parked automobiles, busy with
the bustling of last-minute shoppers. An illuminated clock pointed its
hands at eleven minutes to six. The Camel dodged on, past the green,
past the colorful front of a moving picture theater, and swerved into
a tree-lined residence street. Clif’s familiarity with Cotterville was
not great, but he knew that the school lay in the direction taken now
by the quarry. Some six or seven blocks further, after negotiating two
turns, the leading flivver came to rest at last outside a building
which had once served as a livery stable and now was quite evidently
used as a garage. The pursuing car likewise stopped, stopped between
street lamps in a veritable pocket of gloom, and very swiftly Clif
turned off its lights and vaulted to the sidewalk.

In front of the garage a man sauntered from the open doorway and a
few words were exchanged between him and the Camel. Then, as though
he had never hurried in all his life, the Camel sauntered on. Clif,
well concealed in the darkness, watched. The Camel reached the bole
of a large tree some thirty feet beyond the garage and stepped behind
it. He remained there for perhaps a dozen seconds, and then, evidently
reassured, went on more briskly, slanting across the street toward
where, a block distant, the Wolcott Academy grounds began. Perhaps
the Camel was of an optimistic mind and believed what he wanted to. In
which case he doubtless told himself that the person who had clung to
him so closely all the way from the outskirts of Freeburg had merely
been amusing himself by attempting to get to Cotterville first. After
all, it isn’t likely that the Camel dreamed that his presence in the
stand at football practice had aroused suspicion. Perhaps his concern
at being trailed by the strange automobile had to do with the stories
of hold-ups he had read in the newspapers. At all events, he showed no
concern now as he made his way toward the school gate.

After allowing him a fair start, Clif followed. When the Camel entered
the grounds the amateur sleuth was no more than fifty paces behind.
At Wolcott the buildings are scattered over a wide expanse of campus,
and, since it lacked but a few minutes of six, once inside, Clif was
only one of several dozens of youths moving along the paths. Most of
the others were heading toward the dining hall, but the Camel made his
way to a near-by dormitory and Clif went that way, too. He allowed the
Camel to reach the staircase in the middle of the long corridor before
he entered the doorway. When the Camel reached the second floor, Clif
was on the stairs. When the Camel pushed open the door of a room some
thirty feet along the hall Clif was watching, his head barely above
the floor level. This procedure aroused considerable interest in a
spindling youth on his way down from the floor above, but Clif returned
his curious stare with a look so haughty that the youth scurried on.
Other fellows appeared and there was a general opening and closing
of doors throughout the dormitory, but no one paid any particular
attention to the stranger as he walked to the portal of Number 27. The
door was closed but not latched, and from within came the sound of a
shrill, unmusical whistle. Before he applied his knuckles to the panel
Clif read the two cards attached to the door with thumb tacks.

                      Mr. Charles Wayne Goddard.

                     Mr. Chester Fontaine Campbell.

Then he knocked, a voice said: “Yeah? Come on in!” and Clif pushed the
portal open.

Oh, it was the Camel all right! Almost the first thing Clif saw was
that trick chin. He still couldn’t believe that it was real and not
formed of putty, for it stood forth like something thought of after the
rest of the Camel had been put together. The Camel stared inquiringly,
pausing in the act of applying a pair of military brushes to dampened
hair.

“Goddard?” asked Clif.

“Not in. Gone to supper, I guess.”

“Oh,” said Clif, still looking fascinatingly at the chin, which waggled
engagingly when the Camel spoke. “Well, I’ll drop around later.”

He started out, but the Camel was curious. “Who’ll I tell him called?”
he asked.

Clif smiled engagingly. “Henry Ford,” he replied. Then he closed the
door and went away, chuckling.

The Camel’s name was Campbell; Charles――no, Chester Fontaine Camp――

Clif clutched at the stair railing. Campbell! Wasn’t that pronounced
Camel sometimes? Surely it was! Cambell or Camel, both ways. “The
Campbells are coming!” Gosh, wasn’t it a scream? Wouldn’t Loring be
tickled when he heard that the Camel really was a Camel? Clif grinned
and chuckled all the way back to the flivver and was still grinning
when he swung about and started back toward home.

The illuminated clock said six-six as he passed the green. He wondered
if he could roll the car up to the school grounds in time to make
a hasty flight through West and reach the dining hall before the
doors were closed. It had taken him all of forty minutes to do that
twenty-six miles on the outward trip, but going back he wouldn’t have
to chase a tail light around the factory building in Loomis. If he hit
it up pretty well he could make it, he thought.

There were fewer cars on the road now and he fairly gave the flivver
its head once he was past the limits of the town. The little car
complained in every joint as it bounded along, but the engine kept up a
steady if agitated tune and the miles went past. Clif was a bit proud
of his success, rather fancied himself as a detective. What was to come
of his identification of the Camel he didn’t know, but he had done his
part. He rattled across the bridge at Loomis, skirted the big factory
and passed through the village at a speed that would have caused the
town constable acute pain had he been on hand. But the constable was
probably eating supper behind one of the dimly lighted windows that
whizzed by.

Frequently Clif consulted his watch and found each time that he did so
that he was doing better than when he had gone in the other direction.
Perhaps, he told himself with a smile, automobiles were like horses in
one thing: they went faster toward home than away from it! Only three
other vehicles had passed him so far; two automobiles and a farmer’s
wagon laden with boxes of vegetables; Clif guessed them to be cabbages.
Consequently he was not overcautious as he neared one of the little
hamlets a few miles beyond Loomis. There were no more than half a dozen
houses and a store in it, and they stretched for many rods on each side
of the road. The store was dark and few of the houses showed more than
a glimmer of light. On the right stood an automobile, just beyond the
store, and Clif’s headlights picked it up none too soon. He swerved
sharply to avoid it, and then many things happened at once. Beyond the
darkened car, a second and smaller car, hidden from Clif’s view, came
to life and pulled abruptly into the road. Clif’s first knowledge of it
came when other lights suddenly blended with his on the pavements. Then
the car itself loomed directly in his path. There was no time to sound
his horn, no time to use his brakes effectively. There was just one
thing to do and Clif did it. He wrenched hard on the steering wheel and
shot over to the left. There might be room and there might not. There
wasn’t. The flivver went head-on into a tree.




                              CHAPTER XVII

                          MR. BINGHAM IS STERN


It was about a quarter to seven when the news reached Mr. Frost,
Assistant to the Principal at Wyndham, that a boy giving his name as
Bingham had been in an automobile accident at Ledyard and was now on
his way to Freeburg. The informant, a woman, was vague as to the extent
of the boy’s injuries; but thought he was pretty badly hurt. He had
been unconscious, she said, when they had picked him up. He had run
his car right into a tree. No, he wasn’t unconscious now; no, sir, not
when her husband had started off with him. They didn’t have a doctor at
Ledyard; the nearest one was four miles away, at Loomis; and so they
were taking the boy to Freeburg; yes, sir, to a doctor. No, she didn’t
know what doctor, but――

Mr. Frost hung up then and became active.

Twenty minutes later, a speeding car having been stopped at the end
of Stoddard Street and diverted up the driveway, Clif lay in his bed
in Number 40 West Hall and smiled grimly while the school physician,
hastily summoned to the scene, expertly determined the damages. In
the room were also Mr. Frost, Mr. McKnight and Tom. Tom looked much
whiter and sicker than Clif did, even if not so disreputable as to
countenance. Clif had a red lump on the side of his head and a number
of scratches that, while superficial, gave him a decidedly battered
appearance. Finally the doctor stood up and smiled genially.

“Well, my friend, you came off pretty well,” he informed Clif. “You’ve
got a broken left clavicle and a sprained thumb. Nice, clean break,
too. Any other sore places you’ve forgotten to mention?”

“No, sir. What’s a clavicle, doctor? Collar bone?”

“Exactly.” The doctor’s fingers settled again on Clif’s left shoulder
and the boy winced. “You’ll probably be rather stiff all over
to-morrow, but you got out of it pretty luckily. All right. Now we’ll
truss you up.” The doctor opened his bag wide and began to set out an
appalling array of bandages and splints. “We’ll have you as good as new
in two or three weeks, my boy.”

“Two or three weeks!” cried Clif. “Gosh, I’ve got to be fixed up a
whole lot quicker than that, sir!”

The doctor paused in unrolling a bandage and lifted his eyebrows
inquiringly. “That so? What’s the hurry?”

“Why――why――I’m on the team, sir!”

“Oh.” The doctor shrugged, smiled and went on with his preparations.
“That’s it, eh? Well, the team will just have to worry along without
you for a while. Now, then, let’s have this arm up here. Easy! Hold it!”

“But――but――” Clif’s expostulations died away. What was the use? He
realized that the doctor knew what he was talking about. He met Tom’s
troubled gaze and tried heroically to smile. But the smile wasn’t a
great success. Mr. McKnight――“Lovey” out of his hearing――said: “Hard
luck, Clif, but you must try and look on the bright side of it, you
know. It’s rather a miracle, I fancy, that you’ll be in shape again at
all. Better consider that, eh?”

Clif agreed without enthusiasm, frowning a bit as the doctor swathed
him in yards and yards of bandage. Mr. Frost said: “I’ll drop a line
to your father, Bingham, when I go down. I’ll see you in the morning
and let you explain how you came to be running about in an automobile
this evening.” Mr. Frost smiled as he spoke, and Clif wasn’t worried.
Mr. Frost was a good scout, he reflected. He did wish, though, that
his father didn’t have to be informed. Dad would think him such an
ass to do a thing like that! He ventured the suggestion that it might
not be necessary to trouble his father with the tidings, at least not
just yet, but Mr. Frost wouldn’t entertain it. He went off then, and
presently the doctor finished his work, wrote a prescription and gave
it to Mr. McKnight and shook Clif’s good hand gently.

“Well, there you are, my friend,” he said cheerfully. “You’re going
to be a trifle uncomfortable for a few days, but you’ll have the
satisfaction of knowing that nature is on the job every minute. A
couple of days in the room will be best, I think. I’ll drop around
to-morrow afternoon and see that the bandages are holding. Good night,
my boy. Take it patiently.” Then, to Tom: “You’re his roommate, eh?
Well, here’s a word to you. See that he stays right where he is until
I see him on Friday, and don’t let him move that arm any.”

“Gosh, I couldn’t if I wanted to!” grumbled Clif.

“Well, don’t want to,” chuckled the doctor. “Oh, by the way, a little
iodine on that goose egg there might help. Have you any?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Tom. “I’ll attend to it, sir.” Then he added in a
weak attempt at facetiousness: “That’s nothing to what a fellow did to
him in practice last week, doctor!”

When the two were alone, Tom seated himself gingerly on the side of
Clif’s bed and the two stared at each other for a long moment without a
word. Then Tom shook his head dejectedly and Clif sighed. “I’m dished
for this season, Tom,” he muttered.

“Looks like it,” Tom acknowledged. “Tough luck, old scout. Wish it had
been me.”

Clif considered that. Then he shook his head. “No, if one of us had to
do it, it’s lucky I was the one. You’re a good deal more valuable to
the team than I am, Tom. Does Loring know?”

“I guess so. It’s all over school. I haven’t seen him since supper,
though.”

“Maybe you’d better drop around there and tell him that I’m all right.”

“I’ll see him right after study hour. The gong’s about due. ‘Lovey’
will be in again presently, Clif, and I’ll be back as soon as I see
Loring. Are you all right? Does it hurt a lot?”

“N-no, not much. My head’s the worst. It――it sort of buzzes. I guess
I’ll try to take a nap. Gosh, this thing’s awkward! I don’t see why he
has to tie me up like――like a――”

“Here, I’ll pull that pillow up a bit. That better? Well, I’ll have to
beat it.” Tom approached the door slowly, remembered his books, came
back for them and paused to stare sorrowfully at his chum.

Clif smiled. “Chase yourself, Tom. I’m all right. Oh, by the way, I
forgot! Tell Loring I ran the Camel to his lair, will you?”

“You did? I’ll have to hear about it when I get back!” Then the
eagerness died out of Tom’s voice. “Heck,” he growled; “I wish Loring
had never seen the coot!”

Mr. Bingham arrived at Wyndham the next afternoon, proving conclusively
that Mr. Frost had performed his duty promptly. He looked very
sympathetic as he sat down by Clif’s bed and made anxious inquiries,
but Clif had a disturbing suspicion that there was a twinkle lurking in
his dad’s eye. He had always been the counselor of caution, protesting
against his father’s recklessness on the road, and now see what had
happened! He shifted restively, bringing a sharp twinge to the injured
shoulder, when Mr. Bingham said: “Now tell me just what happened, son.
You were driving some one’s car and――”

So Clif told his story and Mr. Bingham listened gravely to the end.
Then: “Well, of course, it isn’t necessary for me to tell you, Clif,
that you shouldn’t have been going through the village at thirty miles
an hour,” he said. “Ordinary precaution would have spared you the
accident. Certainly you couldn’t have seen the second car, but if you
had been traveling at a――ah――moderate speed you could have stopped in
time to avoid a smash-up.” There was more of it, and Clif listened
patiently and in silence. But it didn’t somehow sound just like his
father, and he was puzzled. It sounded a whole lot like a speech
composed beforehand. He sent several suspicious glances across and
became more certain than ever that something was up. At last, when the
homily was ended, Clif had an idea.

“Did you drive over, dad?” he asked carelessly.

“Er――no. No, as a matter of fact, Clif, I didn’t. You see, Mr. Frost’s
letter didn’t reach me until eleven, and it’s quite a ways by road.
After all, the train does get you there fully as quick, doesn’t it?”

“Not the trains on this road,” answered Clif. “Not when you have to
change and then stop at every telegraph pole! You’ll have to think up a
better alibi than that, dad!”

Mr. Bingham was frankly chuckling now. “Well, I suppose I’d better
confess, son,” he answered. “The reason I didn’t drive is that the car
isn’t――that is, it needs overhauling.”

“How come? It was in the shop only five weeks ago.”

“Was it? It seems longer.” Mr. Bingham sounded quite surprised. “How
time doesn’t fly, eh?”

“You’d better come clean, sir,” said Clif severely. “What happened to
the car?”

“Hardly anything at all, really! You see, Clif――say, you remember that
turn just before you get into Pawtucket?” Mr. Bingham specified the
location at length and with much detail in spite of Clif’s nodded
assurance that he did remember. “Well, yesterday afternoon I was coming
around that corner――”

“How fast, dad?”

“Oh, not very fast. Maybe twenty or twenty-five. And――”

“Or maybe thirty-five. All right. Then what?”

“Why, there was one of those infernal oil wagons backing out of a side
street. You know how big they are. Well, there was just about room to
get around him and I’d have done it before he hit me if this other
dummy hadn’t been coming the other way. Really, the way some men drive
is a crime, Clif! Mind you――”

“Which did you hit, dad? The oil wagon or the other one?”

“I didn’t hit either of them,” said Mr. Bingham indignantly. “They hit
me. Both of them. At once and simultaneous.”

“Geewhillickens! And you mean to say the car isn’t hurt much?”

“Oh, of course it got scratched a bit. Lamps and front bumper. And one
running board. And a dent in the left-hand rear door. Still, a hundred
and fifty dollars will cover it. And the insurance folks will look
after everything.”

“What happened to you, sir?”

“Not a thing. I sat tight. I honestly think that’s the best thing to
do, Clif. Sit tight, eh? Now if you had sat tight last night――”

“I like your nerve! And――and lecturing me like you did about being
careful! And you running into two things at once in broad daylight――”

“No, no, Clif! Not _broad_ daylight, really! It was getting along
toward five o’clock.”

“That’s broad daylight,” said Clif uncompromisingly. “I had my trouble
when it was pitch dark! Gee, you’ve got a crust, dad!”

“Have I?” laughed Mr. Bingham. “But didn’t I do it pretty well, son? I
was more than an hour getting that speech together on the train coming
up here. Had to write it on an envelope and commit it to memory――most
of it. I did add a few impromptu touches, however. Now, honest, wasn’t
it――well, pretty fair?”

Clif’s indignation held for a moment longer and then his lips trembled
and after that he laughed until he had to hold on to his injured
shoulder. And Mr. Bingham laughed, too, and found a cigar in his case
and almost lighted it before he remembered where he was. Finally Clif
sobered again.

“Just the same,” he said severely, “it’s no laughing matter. You’re
going to get smashed up some day, dad, if you don’t use more sense
in driving. How many times have I told you you ought to slow down at
corners? Gosh, you come around a turn like there was no one else owned
a car! When you can’t see what’s ahead of you you ought to――” But just
then Mr. Bingham’s grin brought him up. “Well, it’s so,” he ended
rather lamely.

His father laughed. “Son,” he said, “it looks like a tie. Let’s call it
off. What do you say?”

Clif nodded, smiling. “Guess we’d better. Just the same, I’m going to
feel a heap happier as long as the car’s in the shop, and I hope they
keep it for months!”

“Well, they told me six days,” said Mr. Bingham. “And, look here, what
about the Lizzie you were driving? Who settles for that?”

“I do,” answered Clif promptly. “It’s sort of folded up, like an
accordion, Tom says; but they’re going to pull it out again for forty
dollars, and I’m going to settle out of my pocket money.”

“Hm, forty dollars is a lot of money. Look here, how would it do if
they only pulled it out halfway, say about twenty-five dollars’ worth?”

“It isn’t all for pulling it out,” Clif laughed. “It got busted up
pretty well, I guess.”

“Well, I think you’re right about paying for it yourself, son. Maybe
it will teach you to be more――” But he caught the warning gleam in his
son’s eye and broke off with a cough. “What I started to say was you’re
likely to be rather hard up after settling for the wreck and so I’ll
just leave a little check to carry you on.”

“No, sir, I don’t want――”

“Of course not! I understand that. But there’s Christmas coming along
pretty soon――”

“Six weeks and more,” jeered Clif.

“I know, but six weeks goes before you realize it.” Mr. Bingham was
already busy with check book and fountain pen. “I’m expecting something
particularly nice from you this year and――” His voice trailed away as
he tore the check from the book and waved it.

“You’re going to get an edition de luxe of the _Rules of the Road_,”
said Clif sternly. “That’s what you’re going to get from me.” He
accepted the check, looked at the amount and frowned. “What’s the good
of giving me fifty dollars?” he demanded. “It’s only going to be forty.
And, anyhow, I want to pay it myself, dad.”

“I’m not stopping you. That check hasn’t a thing in the world to do
with that busted flivver, son. It’s just a little present from a
grateful parent.”

“Grateful for what?” asked Clif suspiciously.

“Grateful to find you with nothing worse than a broken collar bone,
Clifton,” answered Mr. Bingham gently.

Clif looked away. Then he said, a bit gruffly: “Don’t see that I ought
to get the check, though. It wasn’t my fault I didn’t get killed.”

“Some one’s got to take it,” replied his father lightly.

“Well, I’ll use some of it for the doctor. Thanks, dad.”

Mr. Bingham waved the thanks aside with a hand which again held the
absent-minded cigar and laid his other hand on Clif’s. “Now I’m going
down for a short smoke,” he said. “It’s been rather a trying day, son.
Then I’ll come back and have supper with you.”

“Up here?” exclaimed Clif incredulously.

Mr. Bingham nodded. “Little idea of my own. Rather clever, don’t you
think?”

“Well, but――will they let you?”

“Oh, yes, I made the suggestion to Mr. Frost and he agreed to it. Not
with enthusiasm, perhaps, but――he agreed. Back in ten minutes, son.”




                             CHAPTER XVIII

                             TOM HAS NERVES


Tom was extremely flattering when he returned from practice. He
declared that Clif’s absence from the team was universally regarded as
a frightful catastrophe. He even hinted that “G. G.” was on the verge
of a nervous breakdown as a consequence of Clif’s loss. Mr. Bingham
visibly swelled with pride, but Clif told him not to be a silly ass
and requested particulars of the afternoon. Well, said Tom, they had
managed to pull through the scrimmage to the tune of 11 to 3. Weldon
had been in Clif’s place at left tackle; but, joking aside, hadn’t
played it for beans. Coles had had a whack at it, too, just at the end.
Oh, Clif could laugh, but the old outfit had felt his loss just the
same!

Friday he was allowed to get up and move around the room. Being an
invalid wasn’t all velvet by any means. You had to do your lessons,
even if you did carry your arm strapped up under your chin, because if
you didn’t something unpleasant would happen to you when you returned
to classes. That day Clif began to entertain visitors. More than a
dozen fellows called. They all said about the same thing, but they
were genuinely sorry for the accident and convinced Clif of it. Lemuel
John was of the number. He came tiptoeing into the room just after
dinner, looking extremely concerned, and collided with two chairs
before he reached Clif. They talked football and Lemuel John showed a
surprisingly complete understanding of the subject for one who, a bare
fortnight before, had been incredibly ignorant. He said he guessed
Mr. Babcock meant to use him at guard right along from now on. He had
played the position three days in succession and was getting the hang
of it. Clif had heard much the same thing from Tom.

“Sure do miss you, Bingham,” said Lemuel John in taking leave. “You
were a mighty nice fellow to play against.”

“Huh,” laughed Clif, “you liked me because you could put it all over
me!”

Lemuel John grinned and shook his head. “That ain’t so, but I did feel
sort of proud when I bested you once or twice. This fellow Smythe, and
the other fellow――Weldon, ain’t it?――aren’t terribly smart, I guess.
Anyway, I don’t have a hard time with ’em.”

Clif was doing his best to take his fate philosophically, but it wasn’t
easy. If the accident had happened earlier in the season he could have
borne it better, for then there would have been a chance of getting
back into harness for a little time at least before the end came. But
as it was, the doctor’s best verdict was two weeks, and two weeks
would bring them to the nineteenth, and the Wolcott game was on the
twenty-second. Oh, Mr. Otis might let him run in for thirty seconds at
the end of the game; a coach would have to be pretty hard-hearted to
refuse him that comfort; but there was no satisfaction in such a sop!

Mr. Otis visited him that Friday evening during study hour. He was very
sympathetic and kind, but his visit didn’t make Clif any happier. Even
“G. G.’s” repeated assertion that Clif’s loss to the team was a genuine
misfortune, while pleasing as a compliment, didn’t butter any parsnips.
Clif wanted to play football.

Loring came, borne by the faithful Wattles, and Clif gave a full but
apathetic narrative of his adventure in pursuit of the Camel. Loring’s
look of incredulous delight when told that the chap’s name really was
Campbell got a laugh from Clif. “Have you said anything to any one
about it?” Loring asked.

“Only to dad, and he didn’t repeat it.”

“I suppose we’d better tell Mr. Otis. He hasn’t been back since. The
Camel, I mean. Maybe he suspected something, eh?”

“I don’t think he did,” replied Clif. “I don’t believe he connected me
with the fellow on the road. He couldn’t have seen my face very well,
for it was getting pretty dark, and when I followed him to his room
I put my cap in my pocket. He probably thought me one of the Wolcott
bunch, or, maybe, some chap from the village.”

“Well, if he should come back――” Loring paused and viewed Clif
thoughtfully.

“Of course,” mused the latter, “you can’t make trouble for a fellow
just because he comes and watches the football practice.”

“Not――er――officially,” agreed Loring.

“No, not officially.” Then they looked at each other a moment in
silence. Finally Clif smiled. Then Loring smiled.

“We’ll wait a few days before we say anything to Mr. Otis, I guess,”
Loring said. “How is the shoulder?”

“Oh, it hurts,” answered Clif. “The doctor says it’s knitting. If it
is, it gives me a jab every time it takes a stitch!”

“I feel pretty rotten about it,” said the other. “If I hadn’t started
the business you wouldn’t have got smeared up this way. No hope of
getting back to the team, I suppose?”

“Not a mite. But you don’t need to blame yourself. It was my own silly
fault. I don’t honestly believe I ever took a chance like that before.
Of course, the road looked clear enough, but I oughtn’t to have been
going so fast. You see, I was so plaguey hungry! And then, confound it,
when I could eat I didn’t want a thing!”

“Too bad you can’t see the game to-morrow.”

“Rotten! Are you going over? You said last week――”

“No.” Loring shook his head. “I changed my mind.” He didn’t state,
however, that he had changed it on Clif’s account. “Tell you what I
thought we’d do, old chap. If you are going to be around to-morrow――”
Clif nodded――“we’ll get the returns by telephone in East. The booths
are right near my room, you know.”

“Well, but who――how――”

“There’s a chap named Sanford, a junior, whom I’ve been helping a bit
with his Latin. He’s a decent kid. Sanford’s agreed to call up East
on the telephone after the first half and after the game’s over and
slip me the tidings. At least, we’ll know how it’s going. It will beat
waiting until the crowd gets back.”

“Good stunt,” agreed Clif. “I’d sure like to see that game, though. Tom
says no one seems very hopeful.”

Loring shook his head. “I was hopeful until to-day, but every one else
is so pessimistic that I’m slipping, too. I’m rather afraid that we’re
in for a licking. They say Horner’s awfully good.”

“She was last year, too.” Clif shook his head gloomily. “What price ‘No
Defeats’?”

“I’m going to be pretty sore if we do lose,” muttered the other.
“Still, perhaps we’ll pull through. The left side of our line isn’t
much, but maybe Horner won’t discover it.”

“Don’t you fool yourself. Horner knows all there is to know, I’ll bet.
How much will you give me for this button, Loring?”

Loring glanced at the blue-and-white disk on Clif’s lapel and smiled.
“Just what it cost you,” he answered. Then: “Oh, hang it, Clif, we
mustn’t get licked now after getting through so far!” he protested.
“We’ve _got_ to win!”

“That’s the talk!” Clif sat up so suddenly that he jarred the injured
shoulder, and winced. “We’ll have to use the old will power, Loring.
If we can’t see the game we can still root for a victory. Me, I refuse
to consider the possibility of defeat. Calm and serene, I face the
impending struggle with――with unshaken confidence!”

“A-a-ay!” cheered Loring.

“‘No Defeats’ is my motto, and long may it wave o’er the land of the
free and the home of the brave!”

“Gentlemen,” said Tom, entering on Clif’s peroration, “I shall have
to ask you to make less noise. It is requested that quiet reign after
nine-thirty in order that the gallant heroes of to-morrow’s battle may
retire early and slumber undisturbed. I shall also have to ask you, Mr.
Deane, to take your departure.”

“Go to thunder,” said Loring pleasantly.

“Tie that outside,” advised Clif. “Where do you get all this soft pedal
stuff?”

“Coach’s orders,” replied Tom with dignity. “After nine-thirty――”

“It isn’t nine-thirty yet, you poor boob!”

“It is by my watch. At least, it’s nine-twenty-eight.”

“Your watch!” jeered Clif. “What good’s a watch that’s soaked two or
three times a week?”

“This valuable and inflammable――I mean infallible timepiece has never
been pawned, I’d have you know.”

“No, but you take it into the bathtub regularly. How many times do you
suppose you’ve had it under water, Tom?”

Tom grinned. “Maybe a dozen. It doesn’t seem to hurt it much, though.
Oh, it gains a few minutes now and then, or loses; but it still ticks
on.”

“How was the meeting?” asked Loring.

“Noisy. Jeff made a pretty good spiel, though.”

“They didn’t call on you for a speech, by any chance?” Clif inquired.

“No, and I had one all ready, too. I was going to say: ‘Mr. Chairman,
gentlemen and members of the faculty.’” Tom struck an attitude and
stared sternly at the lamp. “‘Unprepared as I am for this unexpected
honor, it nevertheless gives me great pleasure to be here this evening
and find before me this brilliant assemblage of beauty and gallantry.
Never before in all my experience as a public speaker have I addressed
a more intelligent looking audience. Even, gentlemen, when I turn and
gaze upon those seated here on the platform, I still find distinct
traces of――I dare not say intelligence, but of sanity. I particularly
refer to those on my left, the shining-faced members of our so-called
musical clubs. The others, as you will readily perceive, are football
players, faculty and similar members of the lower orders; in a word,
ameba. I will say――’”

“Where’d you get it?” inquired Loring. “‘Ameba’! What do you know of
our young friend, Clif? I believe he’s looked into a dictionary!”

“Wrong. Mr. Babcock used it one day last week in hygiene. What else,
Tom?”

“You’ve interrupted the flow of my thoughts,” said Tom severely. “There
was much more of it, but it has gone. I composed it while ‘Pinky’
Hilliard was getting off his usual drivel about ‘honor before success.’
It was good, too.”

“Did you really sit on the platform?” asked Clif.

“Me? I wouldn’t go near it! Sit up there to be stared at and try to
look like a dog-gone hero? Not on your radio! I sat at the back with
Lemuel John and we ate peanuts. We had to crack them in our pockets;
and that reminds me.” Tom moved to the wastebasket and got rid of the
shells.

“What was the spirit of the meeting?” asked Loring.

“Death with honor,” replied Tom, finding a peanut that hadn’t been
opened and gobbling the contents before Clif could formulate a protest.
“Oh, we all sang and yelled hard enough, and shouted ‘No Defeats!’
whenever we got a chance; but, heck, every one knows we’re going to get
the can!”

“That’s the wrong thought,” said Clif. “Of course we’ll get licked if
you and the rest of the gang go over there to-morrow with that belief.
Loring and I are optimists, Thomas. We don’t know the meaning of the
word defeat. We――”

“You’ll know it to-morrow,” answered Tom, pulling off his coat. “Lemuel
John talked the same sort of rot. Stuff about ‘the team that won’t be
beaten can’t be beaten,’ and all that. Some one’s been feeding that
baby raw milk! I’m going to bed.”

“Which means that I’ve got to beat it,” said Loring. “And my carriage
wasn’t to call until nine-fifty. If you want to get rid of me, Tom,
you’ll have to find Wattles. He’s down in the library.”

“Heck, I don’t want to get rid of you. You won’t bother me any, because
I don’t expect to do much sleeping before midnight. I’m willing to
try, just to oblige ‘G. G.,’ but I know it can’t be done. My sprightly
little mind is far, far too active. ‘Just before the battle, Mother,
I――’”

“Blessed if Tom hasn’t got nerves!” marveled Clif.

“I’ve got something,” growled the accused. “You would, too, if you’d
listened to ‘G. G.’ this evening in the gym.”

“What did he say?” inquired Loring.

“Never mind,” answered Tom darkly. “He said plenty. He said things no
gentleman can say to another without fighting!”

“Did you fight him?” asked Clif innocently.

“Did I? I’ll say I did! I knocked him down and kicked him all over the
gym floor――in my mind! If we do win that blamed game to-morrow it’ll
be just because he told us we couldn’t do it; that we haven’t got the
stuff in us to beat a team that knows any real football! The big stiff!”

“Well, have you?” asked Loring quietly.

Tom’s head came up and he glared across belligerently, one shoe
suspended in air. Then he grinned. “You wait and see,” he muttered.

“Atta boy!” applauded Clif, laughing.

“Oh, I don’t say we’re going to beat those guys,” said Tom doggedly;
“but ‘G. G.’ isn’t going to be able to tie any can to me when it’s
over! I’ll show the fresh simp that he doesn’t know what he’s talking
about when he says I dope _my_ hair!”

“_What!_ Did he say that?” exclaimed Clif.

“Yes, he did. Not me, especially, but the run of us. ‘Trouble with you
tea hounds,’ he said, ‘is that you’re scared to move around much for
fear you’ll get the slickum off your hair!’”

“Oh, lovely!” Clif gurgled.

“I don’t see anything lovely about it,” protested Tom, viewing the
laughing countenances of the others. “Or funny, either. ‘Tea hounds,’
eh? Fresh Aleck!”

“Well, Tom, you know you did work up a patent-leather finish one night
in Paris,” said Loring. “Maybe it still shows.”

“Oh, shut up! I just tried the stuff, and you know it. Anyhow――” and
Tom seemed to be struck by a sudden thought――“what if some of us do use
the stuff? Don’t we wear head guards?”

To Tom’s puzzlement, the others again went into gales of laughter. “You
make me sick,” he informed them aggrievedly.

“You’re so――so beautifully literal,” chuckled Loring.

“I’m going to suggest,” Clif laughed, “that we change that slogan to
‘No Slickum!’” Wattles’ appearance relieved the situation.




                              CHAPTER XIX

                          DEFEAT BY TELEPHONE


Wyndham departed early Saturday morning, valiantly shouting “No
Defeats!” Team and supporters left the school together, and not for a
long while had the staid old village of Freeburg listened to such a
matutinal disturbance. It would be permissible to say that all Wyndham
went to the game, although, if I am to be tied to facts, some two score
fellows, mostly juniors, remained behind. There were no classes to-day,
and after seeing the crowd off, Clif wondered what on earth he was to
do with himself. He didn’t feel very happy, anyway, and the prospect of
an interminable morning was not cheering. Of course there was Loring,
but even Loring didn’t make up for what he had lost.

Until Friday noon he had clung to the hope of making the journey to
Horner. The doctor had “pooh-poohed” the idea, but he hadn’t actually
said no to it. It was “Homer” who had settled the matter. Mr. Frost
had been very brief. “Not to be considered, Bingham.” Perhaps, Clif
thought, “Homer” was doing a bit of disciplining. He had not penalized
Clif for making that trip to Cotterville, possibly because he
considered a broken clavicle sufficient punishment, possibly because
no printed regulation had been infringed. It might just be that he was
regretting previous leniency. However, Clif was fair enough to own to
himself that Mr. Frost had a good case, for fellows with broken bones
weren’t in very good shape for long and jarring railway journeys and
the pushing and scrambling incident to football contests.

Being allowed to come and go as he liked about the school and village
helped somewhat to-day. Of course he felt uncomfortable and awkward and
was sure that he must look rather silly, and in consequence he didn’t
venture beyond the gates. He parted from Loring with the plea that he
meant to do an hour or so of studying, and after some delay he actually
did bury his nose in his books for almost that long. But his thoughts
didn’t take kindly to the subjects imposed on them and it was hard
going. Outside, on the nearer gridiron, a handful of youngsters were
kicking a football about, and their cries and the sound of the impact
of shoe against pigskin came in through a half-opened window. It was
such wonderful weather for football, too! A cloudy day with no wind and
just a touch of frost in the still air. Clif thought his fate pretty
hard.

About eleven, sheer loneliness sent him over to Loring’s and from
that time on he was glad indeed of the other’s companionship. Dinner
was rather a makeshift meal, with only some half-hundred students and
faculty dotted about the big hall. At least a third of the instructors
had gone to Horner, it seemed. About two o’clock Loring opened his room
door and they began to listen for the telephone bell. Wattles departed
for the school laundry with an armful of Loring’s clothes to be
pressed. A dozen juniors held forth in the recreation room across the
corridor, and at intervals one or another came to the door and looked
inquiringly toward the telephone booths. Of course there were false
alarms at first. Thrice Clif hurried forth, snatched a receiver from
a hook and, after inquiries, returned the information that the person
sought would be there in a minute or couldn’t come at all by reason
of having gone to Horner. But finally, at about twenty-five minutes
after two, a voice asked for Loring Deane. Clif relayed the summons and
Loring came rolling out in his chair and took the telephone. Clif bent
beside him so that he, too, could hear. At the door of the recreation
room a group formed hurriedly.

“This is Sanford,” came a distant but clear voice. “The first quarter
is just over, Deane, and there’s no score. We won the toss and Horner
kicked off, but neither side was able to score. Can you hear me all
right?”

“Yes,” answered Loring. “How does it look, Charley? Who’s going to win?”

“I don’t know, really. You see, both teams played sort of ragged. We
made a couple of fumbles and got penalized twice and Horner wasn’t much
better. It has just started to rain here; not hard, though; and they’re
saying that if the field gets wet Horner will have an advantage. She’s
got a whale of a team for size! I’ll call up again after this quarter.”

“All right, Charley. Thanks.” Loring hung up, glanced a question at
Clif and received a shrug for reply. Then he gave out the news to
the juniors, and Clif pushed him back to the room. They talked over
the scant information received, but there was so little to go on
that discussion soon petered out. After that they waited, glances
continually seeking the little clock on Loring’s chiffonier and
conversation becoming more desultory as three o’clock approached. It
was three minutes of the hour when Clif again crossed to the nearer
booth. This time Loring didn’t wait to be called, but was on hand when
Clif held out the phone.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” said Sanford apologetically at the other
end; “but I’m telephoning from the field house and half a dozen fellows
got ahead of me. Half’s over, Deane, and it’s two to nothing. Horner
threw Sproule for a safety.”

“Oh, the dickens! How did it happen, Charley?”

“They’ve been going through our left side pretty hard, and just before
the end of the half they tried a forward pass from our thirty, about;
and Kemble got it and then it went to Sproule for a punt. Horner broke
through and nailed him before he could kick.”

“Well, we must be playing pretty rotten,” said Loring dejectedly.

“We aren’t playing so badly, really,” answered the distant voice.
“Horner’s had all the breaks, Deane. Say, we thought we had the game
once. Kemble ran from their forty-two for a touchdown. At least, we
all thought it was a touchdown and nearly went crazy. Then the referee
brought the ball back and we were penalized for off-side!”

“Gee!” said Loring. “Well, we can’t win against that sort of luck, I
guess! Must have been a corking run, though.”

“It was! And you never heard such yelling, Deane! Gosh, the crowd was
sore when――Deane, there’s a fellow waiting to phone and I’ll have to
hang up. I’ll give you the final score, if I can get to a phone. So――”

“What about the field, Charley. Has it stopped raining?”

“No, but it’s just sort of a Scotch mist, you know. I don’t believe
it’ll make much difference. Well, good-by.”

“Two to nothing at the end of the half,” announced Loring. “Horner
blocked a kick and Sproule was thrown for a safety.”

The group in the hall broke into excited discussion and Loring and Clif
retired once more to the room. “He said Horner was gaining through our
left,” reflected Loring. “That means Smythe, I suppose. Weldon, too,
probably. I guess you’d have been useful over there this afternoon,
Clif.”

Clif sighed. “Oh, well, it isn’t over yet. Even a field goal will beat
two points. Gee, I’ll bet Tom was fit to be tied when he found he
hadn’t scored that touchdown!”

“Wasn’t that perfectly beastly luck? I wonder who the dumb-bell was
that was off-side. Anyhow, Clif, he showed ‘G. G.’ that he doesn’t
varnish his hair!”

But Loring’s humor fell rather flat. Clif wandered around the room,
stared from the windows, took up a magazine and dropped it again and
showed pretty conclusively that he was suffering from nerves. The
return of Wattles was a relief to both boys. “Horner’s ahead, Wattles,”
said Loring. “She scored a safety. Or we did. How is that, anyway,
Clif?”

“We scored it and she gets it,” he answered despondently.

“A safety is two points, isn’t it?” inquired Wattles as he disposed of
the suits on their hangers. “At what stage of the game, Mr. Loring?”

“End of the half.”

“Oh, then, we’ve still a chance, haven’t we?” Wattles brightened
perceptibly. “I fancy Mr. Tom will be heard from, sir.”

“He’s been heard from,” said Clif flatly. “He went forty-two yards for
a touchdown, Wattles, but some idiot was off-side and it was no good.”

“Forty-two yards! My word, sir, but that was extraordinary. I’d like to
have seen it.”

“I’m glad I didn’t,” growled Clif. “It must have been awful when they
called him back.”

It was almost four when the telephone rang again. Clif shook his head.
“That can’t be he. It isn’t time for the game to be over, not by five
minutes. You see what it is, Wattles.”

Wattles returned in a minute. “Mr. Sanford, sir, on the wire.”

“Already? It can’t be over!” But Loring, with Wattles as chauffeur,
made the width of the corridor in record time. “Hello, Charley! Yes?
This is――”

“I came out ahead of the mob, Deane.” Sanford sounded a bit breathless.
“Knew I couldn’t get to the phone if I didn’t. There’s about a minute
yet, but we’re beaten. Two to nothing. Isn’t that rotten? We made a
mighty good fight in the third quarter and got to Horner’s twenty-five
once and Houston tried a field goal and missed it badly. Horner tried
one, too; from our twenty-three, I think it was; but she kicked short.
Anyway, they didn’t cross our goal line, Deane.”

“I see. Well, thanks awfully for phoning, Charley. Drop in soon and let
me hear all about it.”

“All right, Deane. Very glad to have――”

The other’s voice ended abruptly and after waiting a moment Loring
jiggled the phone. “Guess some one cut me off,” he muttered. “Doesn’t
matter, though.” He waited a moment longer and handed the instrument
back to Clif. “Hard luck, eh?”

“They defeated us, sir?” asked Wattles anxiously.

Loring nodded. “Final score, fellows,” he announced to the small
audience. “Horner won, two to nothing.”

Well, that was that. Clif shut the door on the sounds of disappointment
that came from the recreation room, thrust his hands in his pockets and
went to the window. It was already twilight outside, for the clouds had
been thickening during the afternoon. Rather a dismal-looking world out
there, he thought.

“‘No Defeats!’” murmured Loring.

“At that,” growled Clif defiantly, “I’ll bet we played as well as they
did! They had a lot of luck, that’s all. You can’t win when the other
fellow’s hung with horseshoes!”

“And some one’s got to lose,” said Loring reflectively. “They say an
occasional defeat is good for a team’s morale.”

“They say a lot of things,” muttered Clif. “Hang it, don’t start
talking philosophical, Loring. I don’t feel that way. Look here,
where’s that cross-word book of yours? Let’s try one of those puzzles,
will you? I don’t want to think any more about that rotten game.”

“Good scheme, Clif. Neither do I, I guess. I say, Wattles, find that
cross-word book, will you?”

“Here it is, Mr. Loring. If you’ll not be requiring me here, sir, for
about a half-hour, I’d like to walk into the village before the shops
close.”

“Go to it, old chap. And, say, Wattles, stop at the Greek’s and tell
him to be sure and save us the New York papers to-morrow. We didn’t get
the _Times_ last week.”

“Chasing the emu,” which was Tom’s term for working out cross-word
puzzles, proved absorbing enough presently to take the boys’ minds off
the football defeat. With Clif officiating at an abridged and sometimes
inadequate dictionary, not only the emu but the roc and the moa were
discovered, there was an exciting adventure with an asp and they were
hot on the trail of a skink when Wattles came back. Wattles brought
with him a long, unwieldy parcel from which depended an express tag,
and Clif, glancing up in the very act of impaling the skink on his
pencil point, voiced curiosity.

“For the love of lemons, Wattles, what have you got there?” he asked.

Wattles smiled deprecatingly, glanced at Loring and deposited the
elongated package in the closet. Clif thought he acted decidedly
surreptitious and was going to comment on the fact when Loring asked
hurriedly: “How do you spell it, Clif?”

“Skink? How would you spell skink, for Pete’s sake? _S, k, i, n, k_,
skink. The _T_ is silent as in ‘Oolong.’”

“Well, but――”

“Beg pardon, Mr. Loring,” said Wattles, withdrawing his head from the
closet; “but there appears to have been a mistake about the score.”

“Score?” Loring looked up a trifle blankly. “What score?”

“The score of the football game, sir. I fancy Mr. Sanford was in error.”

“Huh? How come?” Clif swung about eagerly. “What did you hear, Wattles?”

“Why, sir, in the village they had it three to two, in our favor.”

“Gosh!” Clif looked questioningly at Loring. Loring shook his head.

“They’ve probably got it wrong, Clif. Sanford would know best, I guess.”

“Yes, but it wasn’t over when he phoned! Look here, I’m going to call
up and find out!”

“There’s no necessity, Mr. Clifton.” Wattles fumbled in a waistcoat
pocket and brought forth a slip of yellow paper. “I thought I’d better
make certain, and so I dropped in at the telegraph office and asked.
I got the operator to write it down, Mr. Loring, so you’d know it was
correct.”

“Well, what was it? Hang it, Wattles, if you know anything――”

But Wattles was not to be hurried. He unfolded the slip, identified it
and then laid it on the open cross-word book. Loring and Clif bent over
it eagerly.

“Final,” they read. “Wyndham 3, Horner 2. Carlson, Wyndham, kicked
placement from forty yards just before whistle. Congratulations!”




                               CHAPTER XX

                           THE CAMEL EXPLAINS


Wyndham returned about nine o’clock, wearied but rejoicing. Very few
voices had successfully stood the strain of that last moment triumph,
and it was two days before the school spoke normally again. Even Tom,
when he turned up at Loring’s room a few minutes subsequent to his
return, was decidedly hoarse. He had, he explained, talked most of the
way back, like every one else, and the effort to make himself heard
above the noise of the train had been too great. They made him talk
some more, nevertheless――Loring and Clif――while Wattles, inventing an
occupation in a corner of the room, remained to hear.

Tom wasn’t a bit peeved about that lost touchdown. “Oh, well,” he said,
“we didn’t need it, after all; and I had the fun of making the run. I
was a little sore at the time, you bet; but what was the use?”

“Who was off-side?” asked Clif.

Tom looked blank. “I couldn’t see,” he said.

“Well, you heard, didn’t you?”

“Oh, I didn’t pay much attention. Forget it, Clif. He felt worse than
the rest of us. Besides, it was just because he wanted to win. He was
too anxious.”

“Of course he didn’t mean to do it,” agreed Clif. “All right. What
about Carlson’s kick?”

Tom became animated. “Say, you missed the thrill of a lifetime,
fellows,” he croaked. “Mind you, we’d lost the game. We couldn’t make
two consecutive gains by that time. We’d pushed Horner back some in the
third quarter, but after that the field had got so slippery we couldn’t
keep our feet. All we could do was smash into the line a couple of
times and then punt. Horner couldn’t do much better herself. When she
hit us she made more, because she had the weight, but she couldn’t
make her ten yards, even then. ‘G. G.’ had sent three or four new men
in, Braley amongst ’em, and Braley had got his signals twisted. It was
getting darkish, too, and you weren’t quite sure of the ball when it
got into the air. Yes, sir, we were licked, and we knew it. We kept
on trying, though. You know how it is. You don’t think such an awful
lot about being beaten. There are too many other things to think of.
You just keep on trying. That’s what we did. Horner got the ball on
her thirty-eight after a punt and kicked back on second down. Some one
tipped the ball as it started off and it went pretty near straight up.
When it landed it fell through half a dozen fellows and hit the ground
and went whanging off and Lou Stiles made a leap for it. A couple of us
jumped ahead of him and he got to the thirty-five yards, pretty near.
We shoved into ’em for two or three and then ‘Swede’ got four right
over that big left guard of theirs. We needed about three more, but I
couldn’t get started and it was last down. Braley asked for time and we
talked it over. There was less than a minute left then; some one said
less than thirty seconds, but I don’t know. Billy Desmond was acting as
captain, and Billy wouldn’t consent to a forward pass. Well, we’d been
foozling ’em all the afternoon, what with the wet turf and a mighty
clever defense. Braley said let ‘Swede’ try a drop, and ‘Swede’ said
no, he couldn’t lift a wet ball that far. Then Jim Carlson pushed in
and said he thought he might get it over from placement if they’d hold
the line hard for him. So ‘Swede’ moved up to center and he and Billy
and Breeze locked legs. Horner couldn’t get what was coming and shifted
around at a great rate. Heck, I didn’t have any idea we’d score. I was
expecting the horn would toot before we got the play started, for that
matter. But it didn’t, and ‘Swede’ made a nice pass back to Braley and
Braley put the ball down just about six inches short of the forty,
and Carlson stepped forward and swung. It was all we could do to hold
the line, for Horner sure acted rough, but we did. I didn’t see the
kick, of course, having my hands full with a Horner tackle who leaked
through, but I heard it, and it sounded sweet. When I had a look there
was the old ball sailing square over the bar. As I say, it was getting
sort of dark by then, and at first I thought I was mistaken, and I
began to look around the field. But just then our gang bust loose and
I knew I’d seen it right. Noise? Honest, you never heard a small bunch
make such a riot as our crowd did! They were out on the field in a
second, and it took two or three minutes to get the place cleared off
again. Talk about your thrills! Some of us just couldn’t believe it
was a goal, and we stood around expecting the referee to call the ball
back or something. It took me two or three minutes to get it through my
bean that we’d won!”

“I wish I could have seen it,” murmured Loring.

“So do I,” sighed Clif.

That hairbreadth victory worked a swift and amazing change at Wyndham.
The school had journeyed to Horner hoping, but fearing, and had
returned convinced of success. Carlson’s place kick was regarded as
something close to a miracle, and when miracles come to your aid you
can’t help believing in your destiny. But Wyndham wasn’t overconfident.
The narrow escape had left her a bit chastened, in spite of ultimate
triumph, and the general feeling was that while the prize was to be
won it must be worked for. “No Defeats!” was no longer a phrase to be
shouted glibly. It was no longer merely a slogan. It had become an
invocation. Clif would no longer have protested had some one likened it
to “_On ne passe pas!_” One heard it less often during the following
fortnight, but when it was heard it had a deeper significance, a more
earnest sound.

On Sunday the Triumvirate discussed the Camel after Tom had asked for
information. He said he was surprised that they hadn’t told Mr. Otis
before then and insisted that the coach ought to know at once. “We
thought we’d wait and see if he turned up again,” said Loring. “If he’s
learned anything he shouldn’t know it’s too late now, Tom, and ‘G. G.’
couldn’t do anything about it. But if he comes back we might――well, we
might teach him a lesson.”

“Sure, that’s all right. Teach him all you want,” responded Tom; “but
Mr. Otis ought to know about it, just the same. If some of the Wolcott
football crowd sent the Camel over here to spy it’s well to know it.
Maybe ‘G. G.’ would like to do something about it. I don’t know what,
but something.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Loring acknowledged. “You and Clif had better go
over to the inn and see him.”

They did. Coach Otis was interested, but not greatly concerned. “So
that’s what you were up to when you got that busted collar bone, eh?”
he asked Clif. “Next time you’d better come to me and let me handle it.
What that fellow learned from watching our practice can’t be much, and
certainly not nearly so serious as losing a good lineman just when he’s
most needed. If you or Deane see him around again let me know and I’ll
have a talk with him. I hardly think he’s been sent by the football
team or the coach over there. More likely he’s doing it on his own
hook, with some silly notion that he’s going to make some important
discovery. Can’t imagine what, though. He must know that we don’t
prepare for Wolcott until a couple of weeks beforehand, and that when
we do we keep practice secret. To-morrow will be about his last chance
of getting into the stand, so pass the word to Deane to keep his eyes
peeled, will you?”

Clif had thought that he wouldn’t mind being side-tracked so much
after he could go over to the field and watch the team, but on Monday
he found that it didn’t work out that way. Seeing the other fellows
at practice just seemed to make his own lot the harder. He sat with
Loring and Wattles and was rather a quiet companion for a while. Loring
paid more attention to the stand than to the gridiron, searching the
well-filled seats for the boy with the funny chin. He didn’t miss so
much, either, for practice to-day was participated in only by the
substitutes, and not all of those, and there was a rumor current along
the bench that there was to be no scrimmage. Yet one mild sensation
did materialize that afternoon. About ten minutes after the session
had begun Clif, his gaze wandering along the players’ bench, discerned
Lemuel John Parks. He passed the surprising news on to Loring and,
after a minute spent on conjectures, arose and sought the subject of
them. Lemuel John acknowledged that he had forsaken the second team.

“Mr. Babcock sent me over here,” he explained, “so I guess it’s all
right. I ain’t――haven’t spoken to any one about it, and maybe I’d ought
to.” He ended questioningly. It wouldn’t be fair to say that Lemuel
John looked frightened, for somehow you couldn’t associate fear with
him, but he certainly did look awed. Tom shook his head.

“Sit tight,” he advised. “‘G. G.’ knows you’re here and he will let you
know when he wants you. Going to play guard?”

“Well, I don’t know,” answered the big chap. “I guess so. Ain’t much
else I could do, is there?”

When Clif went back to Loring he found that youth in a state of mingled
excitement and delight. “He’s up there,” he announced in low tones,
as though feeling the distant Camel might overhear him. “Wattles just
discovered him. Almost straight back and about two-thirds way up. Sort
of up against the pillar. See him?”

“Yes,” replied Clif after a moment’s search. “That’s he, all right.
Guess I’d better tell ‘G. G.’”

“Yes, but don’t let him see you point him out. He might get scared and
beat it.”

Clif had to wait several minutes before a chance to communicate with
the coach occurred. Then he gave his message and cautiously located the
Camel in the stand. But Mr. Otis was too far away to see him. Also, he
was much too busy to waste time in the effort.

“Hang the fellow!” he said impatiently. “I can’t talk to him now,
Bingham. Look here, you go up there and see what he’s up to. Take some
one with you.” Mr. Otis glanced along the bench. “Take that big fellow,
Parker.”

“Parks, sir?”

“All right. Take him. Make that sneak talk, Bingham. Find out who sent
him over here, and why. I wouldn’t――better not make any trouble, you
understand. Unless he won’t answer questions, that is.”

Clif beckoned to Lemuel John and passed around to the back of the
stand where two stairways arose. On the way he put his companion in
possession of the main facts of the case. “He will talk, I guess,
Parks; but if he doesn’t we’ll have to make him. Then it’s up to you,
for I couldn’t make a pig squeal tied up this way!”

“Sure,” said Lemuel John. “I’ll persuade him.”

The Camel sat next to a post. On the other side was a third classman
of Clif’s acquaintance. Followed by Lemuel John, Clif pushed his way
along the row which, while not closely occupied, was well sprinkled
with fellows. “Move over, will you, Jordan?” asked Clif. Jordan
obligingly moved and Clif seated himself by the Camel. Lemuel John
pushed past and squeezed down beyond the post. The Camel viewed
the operations with evident concern, if not suspicion. Clif opened
conversation casually.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hello,” muttered the Camel.

“You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”

The Camel turned then and got a fair view of the questioner. Recognition
dawned and the puttylike chin trembled agitatedly. For a moment he
seemed to be contemplating flight, but his first glance to the left
revealed Lemuel John observing him calmly but interestedly past the
pillar, and the idea vanished. He returned his gaze to the field. “No,
I’m not,” he muttered.

“Well, I suppose it doesn’t take you long,” said Clif. “How’s Goddard?”

“All right.” The Camel moved restively. Then he broke out, weakly
defiant, with: “Say, what’s the idea? What do you want, anyway?”

Neighbors were observing them curiously now. There was something
up, that was plain, and they wanted to be in on it. Clif laughed
good-naturedly. “Why, all I want is a little information, Campbell.
Suppose we go down where we can talk without being overheard.”

“No!” The Camel was emphatic. “You talk right here.”

“I think it would be better if the others didn’t hear,” insisted
Clif gently. “They might――well, they might not like it; and if they
didn’t――” He left the rest to the Camel’s imagination. After a moment’s
consideration the Camel said: “All right, but you haven’t anything on
me, and if you get funny I’ll――I’ll――” Then he saw Lemuel John again
and stopped for good.

They went down to the back of the stand, the Camel sandwiched between
Clif and Lemuel John. Above, a line of faces stared down at them. Clif
led the way to the farther end of the structure. “Now,” he said, his
jesting manner gone, “let’s hear all about it. Who sent you over here,
Campbell?”

“No one sent me. I just came to――I wanted to see you fellows play
football.”

“We appreciate that, but why not stay at Wolcott and watch your own
team? If you’re not an absolute idiot, Campbell, you know that you’re
in wrong here. If we passed the word back to that crowd up there you’d
be in for a peck of trouble.” The Camel, already distinctly uneasy,
looked nervous. “Now we know that you haven’t been coming all the way
from Cotterville two and three times a week just for amusement. We
want to know who sent you, Campbell, and we mean to find out. So you’d
better come clean if you know what’s best for you.”

Evidently the Camel thought so, too. He took a furtive look at the
faces still watching over the edge of the stand and cleared his
throat. “It’s like I told you,” he said a trifle huskily. “No one sent
me. The fellow I room with, Charley Goddard, is on our team. He’s
quarter back.”

“Oh, no, he isn’t,” said Clif. “Your quarter back is Monroe.”

“Yes, but Goddard’s trying, too. He’s played two or three games.”

“Oh, a sub, eh? All right, go ahead.”

“He said it would help him if he knew something about――about――” The
Camel hesitated and glanced doubtfully at Lemuel John. Lemuel John
was in togs and loomed very large. “Well, if he knew the sort of game
Wyndham played. Because he’s pretty sure to play quarter back part of
the game, and if he handled the team well――”

The Camel sort of ran down then. Clif nodded. “I see. You were to come
over here and watch our fellows play and tell Goddard all you could
find out so that he’d know what he was up against if he got a chance in
the big game. Very pretty, Campbell. Your idea, you say?”

The Camel nodded, watching the faces of the others anxiously. Clif
looked at Lemuel John. “What do you think?” he asked.

“He’s lying,” said the other calmly. “This Goddard got him to do it.”

“He didn’t!” protested the Camel. “I offered to! Really, I did!”

“Why?” asked Clif.

“Because――” the Camel’s gaze fell.

“Because Goddard’s your chum and you wanted to see him do well against
our crowd and, maybe, make quarter back’s position next year?” The
Camel nodded again. “But you knew you were doing something that wasn’t
fair, didn’t you? You knew that that sort of thing wasn’t sporting?”

“I suppose I did,” muttered the boy.

“If Goddard didn’t put you up to it, at least he knows you’re doing it.
On the whole I think Goddard’s the more to blame. How about it, Parks?”

“Sure. Dirty rat, I’ll say.” The Camel looked resentful, but Lemuel
John hadn’t dwarfed any since last viewed and the Camel swallowed his
emotion.

“Well,” resumed Clif, after a moment’s consideration, “I guess you’d
better run along, Campbell. I’ll report this to our coach and he will
do whatever he thinks best. But I don’t want to ever see you around
here again. Get that? If you ever put your nose inside these grounds it
will be the worse for you. We’ll walk along with you and see that you
don’t lose your way going out.”

They waited until the Camel had disappeared around the corner of Oak
Street and then hurried back to the gridiron. “I guess,” said Clif on
the way, “he told the truth, don’t you?”

“Mostly. What really happened was this fellow Goddard thought up the
scheme, suggested it to Funny Face and let Funny Face think it was an
idea of his own. He don’t look to me like he had any too much brain!
Gosh, though, you can’t get really riled with the fellow, seeing he
did it just out of liking for this other fish. I suppose he thinks
Goddard’s pretty fine, eh?”

“I guess so, the poor chump,” agreed Clif.

Mr. Otis was on the point of sending out a search party for Lemuel
John when they got back to the bench, evidently having forgotten that
he had detailed him for Clif’s mission. “Where on earth have you been,
Parker――Parks?” he demanded. “You’re not supposed to leave the bench
in the middle of practice! Get in there and see what you can do. Left
guard. No, no, the other squad! You’d better show something if you want
to stick around here, son!”

Lemuel John went off as directed, offering no excuse, while Clif
reported to Loring. The latter was inclined to be sympathetic toward
the Camel. “It’s Goddard we ought to get after,” he said. “Trying to
swipe our secrets is bad enough, but getting that poor boob to do the
dirty work is worse. Have you told Mr. Otis?”

“Not yet. Just have a look at him. Does he strike you as a――as an
approachable sort of guy?”

He didn’t. He was tagging the squad of which Braley was quarter
and Lemuel John left guard, and his voice came across the field in
decidedly irascible tones! Clif shook his head gently.

“If you don’t mind,” he murmured, “I’ll wait until he has calmed down a
mite.”

Clif reported the result of the conversation with the Camel in the
gymnasium, after practice, by which time “G. G.” was once more fairly
placid. “Goddard, eh?” he said reflectively. “Yes, I think we have some
dope on Goddard. Well, let it lie, Bingham. Goddard’s not much of a
player and I don’t believe he will see action. If he does, what his
friend has slipped him about us won’t do him a mite of good. I’m going
to be too busy during the next fortnight to make trouble for any one
outside our own crowd. Thanks, just the same, Bingham.”

“Oh, that’s all right, sir. But doesn’t it seem as though Goddard ought
to get called down, at least? I mean, it was sort of a dirty trick, and
he oughtn’t to get off so easy.”

“Bingham,” replied Mr. Otis, “you’ll learn by the time you’re a little
older that those things sort of look after themselves. You think that
if we let Goddard get away with this he will escape the penalty. But
he won’t, my boy. Fellows who do that sort of thing provide their own
punishment. I’ve seen it over and over. Bingham, the punishment the
law inflicts on us is mighty trivial alongside what we inflict on
ourselves!”

Clif departed not wholly satisfied. What Mr. Otis had said might be
quite true, but so far, he reflected, the only punishment sustained by
any of the actors in the recent little drama had fallen to the lot of
the innocent. He couldn’t quite discern why he should have a busted
shoulder blade and Goddard and the Camel should get off scot-free!

Followed a hectic week at Wyndham, or, at least, a hectic five days.
The football squad worked hard and long every afternoon and then put in
most of an hour in the gymnasium in the evening. Two graduates arrived
on the scene Wednesday and helped Mr. Otis and Mr. Hilliard during the
rest of the season. At least, they were supposed to help. Sometimes
it seemed that they were just in the way. Mass meetings became almost
nightly events, and the enthusiasm and the determination to beat
Wolcott grew hourly.

Lemuel John Parks must have satisfied Mr. Otis as to his right to
remain with the first team, for he stayed on the squad, received
a flattering amount of attention from the coaches and seriously
threatened Breeze’s title of first substitute left guard. Lemuel John
was all that could be desired of size, strength and willingness. If he
had had a year of football experience behind him he would have ousted
Smythe beyond a doubt. But Lemuel John, although he listened with
almost painful intentness to the coaches and tried very, very hard, was
undeniably lacking in technic. Effort, no matter how intense, will fail
of its objective if wrongly applied. Yet Lemuel John made progress,
and Mr. Otis recognized promising material for another year and said
so to Loring one afternoon. Loring, although not officially connected
with the team, was a privileged person and as such admitted past the
dead-line of patroling Juniors whose proud duty it was to keep the
public out of the stand and at a respectable distance from the gridiron.

“Deane,” said “G. G.” “you’ve really got a good eye for talent. That
big fellow is quite as promising as you said and you did us a real
service when you discovered him. I only wish we had gotten hold of him
earlier!”

“Well, I didn’t really discover him, Mr. Otis,” answered Loring. “All
I did――that is, the three of us――was to persuade him to report to Mr.
Babcock. I’m glad you think he will make good, sir, for I think so,
too. Next year he ought to be a corking good lineman, oughtn’t he?”

“Yes, I think so, Deane. He’s not so bad right now. If only he knew a
little more, I’d――” Mr. Otis pursed his lips, frowned and strode off
quickly. “Cotter! _Cotter!_ Do that just once more if you want to quit
the team! That wasn’t your man! You knew it wasn’t! Jackson, let’s have
that again. Now let me see you do that right, Cotter!”

The game on the fifteenth, that with Toll’s Academy, was looked on
as no more than a practice contest and proved such. Wyndham, using
a second-string line-up through most of the second half, ran up
twenty-eight points and held Toll’s scoreless. The adversary was light
and not too well trained, and the home team might have made that score
larger by two more touchdowns had Coach Otis seen fit. For the first
time that season the Dark Blue’s left side was as firm as its right.
Lemuel John and Weldon worked together well and hardly a dent was made
between left end and center. Tom, too, came in for glory, for he scored
two of the four touchdowns while he was in the line-up. It really
seemed that the Wyndham football team had found itself at last, and
on Sunday the school awoke in a hopeful frame of mind and turned its
eyes on the sporting pages of the morning papers. Among other things,
it read that Wolcott had yesterday entertained Minster High School
and, with her team liberally peppered with second- and third-string
players, had swamped the enemy to the tune of 47 to 0! As Wyndham’s
score against Minster had been 24 to 3, the papers that Sunday morning
provided food for thought.




                              CHAPTER XXI

                          LORING TAKES A WALK


Clif got rid of some of his splints and bandages on Tuesday, although
he still had to carry his arm in a sling. That afternoon Dan Farrell,
the trainer, stopped to inquire about the injury and remained to talk
for a few minutes with Clif and Loring. Presently Loring asked: “You’re
going to let Clif in for a while next Saturday, aren’t you, Dan?”

“Me? Sure, I won’t stop him. It’s up to the coach, my boy. He’ll run
him in for a bit, likely. But, listen, Bingham, keep that shoulder down
if you play.”

“Would it get broken again?” asked Clif.

“No, it’s as good as ever it was, or it will be Saturday. But there’d
be no sense in taking chances. If I was you I’d find me a harness and
wear it; that is, if you think you’ll be playing any.”

“A harness? Where would I get one, Dan? Say, look here, if I had a good
heavy pad on this shoulder why couldn’t I play all right?”

“For a time you might, but you’d need to be very careful. Tell you what
I’ll do, seeing it’s you――” Dan winked at Loring――“I’ll fix you up a
pad that’ll work fine. I’ve got part of an old one in there and all I
need is some felt and a bit of leather and――” Dan stopped and closed
his eyes. When he opened them again he slapped Clif on the knee.
“There’s a fellow in the village who runs a bit of a harness shop, and
I’ll take the thing over to him and have him do it. Sure, ’twon’t be
any job at all!”

“Why, that’ll be fine,” said Clif. “If there’s any expense, Dan, you
must let me――”

“Expense! Where would there be? The little man won’t be asking me money
for a few stitches. If he does I’ll beat him up with his own hammer!
Stop over after practice and let me study the build of you, my boy.”

Clif had been attending the evening football sessions in the gymnasium
and no one had said him nay. Even if he couldn’t play again until next
season, he was still a member of the team and under team rules. But
that Tuesday night he absented himself from “skull-drill” and went to
the mass meeting in assembly hall and sang and cheered with the others.
Over the back of the platform hung a long banner that bore the legend
in big blue letters “NO DEFEATS” and on the platform sat the musical
clubs――the mandolin and guitar and the orchestra――and the evening’s
speakers. It was all very inspiring and Clif thrilled many times. Todd
Darlington, first class president, was in charge, and toward the end
made a speech that carried the already excited throng fairly off their
feet. It was so good, indeed, that Clif wondered how he had ever gained
the impression that Todd was a bit of a four flusher. Even the two
faculty members looked impressed by its eloquence! There was a parade
afterwards, with more singing, much more singing, and more cheering.
The thing wasn’t over until just before ten, and Clif returned to
Number 40 rather hoarse and limp to find Tom already in bed.

“Wind the cat and put the clock out,” murmured Tom sleepily. “And call
me early, mother dear, for I’m to be――to be――”

Then came a gentle snore.

Meetings of the Triumvirate were few that week. Once, on Wednesday,
Clif and Tom stopped at Loring’s room, after supper, on their way
to the gymnasium. Usually the door was ajar, but now it was tightly
closed, and when, after a brief knock, Tom tried to open it it was
found to be also locked. From beyond it came the voices of Loring and
Wattles.

“Just a minute, fellows!”

“One moment, please!”

Tom looked at Clif, slightly puzzled. “What’s the idea?” he muttered.
From inside came various sounds suggesting haste. Then the door was
opened by Wattles. “Yes, sir, come in, please, Mr. Tom. Good evening,
Mr. Clifton.” Wattles sounded a trifle breathless, Clif thought. Loring
had a paper on his knees and the room looked as usual.

“What’s going on in here?” demanded Tom suspiciously.

“Going on?” repeated Loring. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, well, locked door.” Tom waved toward the portal. “Mysterious
sounds. Wattles looking foxy. Yes, you are, Wattles; decidedly foxy!
Come clean, Loring. Where’s the body hidden?”

But Loring declared that no murder had been committed, and, since their
time was short, the visitors didn’t pursue the inquiry further. In
fact, they didn’t think of it again until Friday night.

The last real work of the season was held Thursday, and on Friday the
school, lately barred from the gridiron, paraded in force and watched
the first and second take part in a brief scrimmage that was mostly
all punting. After that the second disbanded, cheering themselves and
the first team and Mr. Babcock and, finally, themselves once more, and
romped off the field with much dancing and horse play. The first team
players disappeared by ones and twos toward the gymnasium, a squad of
second substitutes ran through signal drill and then it was over save
for the shouting. That lasted until every member of the squad, the
coach, the assistant coaches, the managers, the trainer and the team
had been cheered, and only ended outside the gymnasium entrance with
one last mighty “long cheer, fellows, with nine Wyndhams!”

And so, amazingly sudden, the eve of battle arrived.

Clif and Tom came back from the gymnasium about twenty minutes to
eight, after a brief session before the blackboard. There was to be
another drill in the forenoon and to-night Mr. Otis had been lenient.
The two had promised Loring to drop in on him if they returned before
study hour and so they turned in at East Hall and Tom rapped on the
closed door: one ... one, two; the Triumvirate’s particular signal.
Once more Wattles’ voice came forth.

“One moment, please!”

Tom turned to Clif and shook his head. “I smell a mystery,” he
muttered. “If it was Christmas Eve, now――”

But just then the door was pulled open and Tom lapsed into silence.
Halfway across the room stood Loring. No, that isn’t exactly so, for
he didn’t stand, but to the amazed regard of the two in the doorway
he seemed to. At least, he was erect, and never before had Clif or
Tom seen him so. Under each armpit was a crutch, and the toe of one
foot rested on the floor. The other foot was held poised, as if to aid
in the difficult feat of balancing. Having opened the door, Wattles
swiftly returned to Loring, hovering about him anxiously. Any one well
acquainted with Tom could have foretold his next words.

“_My sainted Aunt Jerusha!_” exclaimed Tom slowly, awedly,
incredulously.

Loring chuckled, and, chuckling, swayed precariously. Wattles sprang
forward, but Loring recovered his equilibrium. The visitors came slowly
in, as though expecting the spectacle to vanish into thin air if they
moved precipitately, and Clif closed the door gently behind him and
leaned on it.

“My first public appearance,” said Loring somewhat excitedly.
“Semipublic, that is. I’m going to use these things to-morrow, and I
wanted you chaps to see them first. I’m not very expert yet. Wattles
has heart failure, almost, whenever I try them!”

“You do very well indeed, sir,” said Wattles, watching anxiously.

“Do you mean, Loring,” Clif asked, “that you can use them? That you
won’t have to get around in the chair any more?”

“So the doctor says. Of course, I’m supposed to start off pretty
slowly, Clif. A few minutes a day at first.”

“Sacred Ibis of the River Nile!” murmured Tom, all eyes. It was his
second-choice invocation, and its use proved that he was gradually
recovering. “Crutches, by gum! What ... do ... I ... know?”

“All ready for the great exhibition, Wattles?” asked Loring.

“Yes, sir,” answered Wattles nervously.

“Let’s go then!” Loring advanced one crutch, set his heel lightly to
the floor, advanced the other. It was a slow and halting progress he
made, a series of hitching maneuvers that looked painfully difficult,
but he finally reached the other end of the room, Wattles close behind
him, and his arms half advanced.

“Great!” said Clif.

“I’ll be dingfoozled!” breathed Tom.

Turning was something Loring couldn’t accomplish without aid as
yet, and Wattles had to steady him while he prepared for the return
trip. “You see,” Loring explained as he came hitching back, “I’m
supposed to let a little of my weight on my feet, but――” he smiled
apologetically――“I’m so blamed scared yet that I don’t do it――much.
It’s awfully new stuff to me, fellows, but I guess I’ll get the hang of
it in time. These things are adjustable, you see. After a while they’ll
be shortened a fraction of an inch, and, if I don’t bust something
meanwhile, some day I’ll be putting my whole foot down flat. At least,
that’s what Wattles says. He and the doctor worked this business up
between them.”

“It was the crutches Wattles brought back that day I was here,” said
Clif. “That long bundle. Loring, it’s just wonderful!”

“Well, if you think so,” answered Loring, “how about me? All right,
Wattles. We’ll call it a day. No encores to-night. Gosh, the old chair
feels pretty good again! I wonder if I’ll really ever put this away in
the attic.” He patted the arms of the wheel chair as he spoke. “It’s
been a pretty good pal!” He looked whimsically at the crutches of which
Wattles had relieved him and shook his head. “Clever contraptions,
Wattles old chap, but I don’t feel at home with them yet!”

“No, sir; very likely, sir,” said Wattles. “I fancy it will require
some time, Mr. Loring, to become fully accustomed to them, but I
predict, sir, that you’ll have no use for the chair by spring.”

“Spring?” mused Loring. He shook his head. “Wattles, you’re an
optimist!”

Tom, fully recovered from his surprise, spouted questions now. When had
Loring known first about the crutches? How long had he had them? Would
he be able to go up and downstairs on them? Didn’t it make his legs
feel funny to hang ’em down like that? Was he really going to use them
to-morrow when he went out?

The doctor had spoken of crutches nearly a year ago, Loring answered,
but only since he had returned from abroad had the matter been talked
of seriously. He had had them two weeks. Wattles had brought them from
the express office the day of the Horner game, and Clif had fussed him
by asking what they were. As for going up and downstairs, why, Loring
had his doubts about that, but Wattles declared that there’d be no
difficulty once he had become proficient in the use of the things. And
yes, he was going to make a public appearance to-morrow if his courage
didn’t fail him. The gong clanged its warning and the visitors made for
the door. Not, though, before Tom had gravely shaken Loring’s hand.

“I’m so glad, Loring,” he declared earnestly, “I can’t say it. I――I――
Come on, Clif!”

Outside, hurrying toward the staircase, Tom blew his nose, startlingly
loud. Well, for that matter, Clif felt a trifle sniffly himself.

Saturday dawned brightly. The morning was cold, but by noon the sun had
toned down the nip of the northerly breeze that blew almost straight
down the gridiron. Overhead, the sky was very blue, with here and
there a scurrying cloud. Freeburg was very blue, too, for the old
village had brought out the flags that once a year swung over porches
or hung in windows. Going to the inn at half-past eleven, Clif found
that vine-draped edifice colorfully patriotic, with a huge blue banner
flapping over the entrance. Mr. Bingham had arrived a few minutes
before in the renovated car and there was just time for a few minutes
of conversation on the porch before Clif had to hurry back for the
early luncheon. The inn was well tinged with brown by the time he left,
for Wolcott arrived in numbers just before noon and the team and many
of its followers invaded the hostelry for lunch.

At half-past one Clif and Tom went across to the gymnasium and changed
into togs, some of the last to arrive there. Clif sought Dan and had
the shoulder protector strapped and laced into place. He had had the
use of his arm for several days now and, although Mr. Otis had not been
consulted, Clif hoped that the formidable appearing contrivance of
brown leather and gray felt would suggest to the coach that he was able
to take more than a merely incidental part in the day’s proceedings.

The stand filled early, and long before two o’clock the settees and
chairs provided for the visitors were exhausted. Scurrying youths
invaded the nearer rooms in East Hall and replenished the supply with
anything they could lay hands on. Wyndham’s cheering section was well
into its stride by the time the dark blue squad trotted across the
field from the gymnasium, and the noise that broke forth then was
surprising. Blue megaphones and pennants gyrated and, on the staff,
the big Wyndham flag snapped briskly in the breeze, while beneath it a
long white banner bearing the blue-lettered legend “No Defeats” wrapped
itself artistically about the pole. While both teams were occupying
the field a shrill-voiced junior in the stand proclaimed excitedly and
pointed beyond the fringe of automobiles that encircled the track. A
murmur of surprise arose and grew to a shout of acclaim. Coming from
the front of East Hall was a figure on crutches. Very slowly he came,
and with obvious effort, pausing frequently in the course of that
hundred-yard journey between the hall and the big limousine which held
two anxious faces. Close behind him strode the thin, black-clad form of
Wattles.

“It’s Loring Deane!” some one shouted. “On crutches!”

The cheer that went up was not evoked by the white-sweatered cheer
leaders. It was a wholly spontaneous roar that grew in volume as
Loring came hitching onward over the turf. Not even the cheer which
had greeted the team had been louder. Megaphones, flags, caps waved.
The stand was on its feet, incredulous but delighted, shouting
congratulations, encouragement.

“Good boy, Deane!” “Keep a-coming!” “A-a-a-ay, Deane!” “Attaboy!”
“Deane! Deane! Deane!”

Loring kept a-coming and Wattles followed a stride behind, his long
arms ready to go to the rescue if his charge stumbled. It is doubtful
if Wattles even heard that cheering and shouting, so intent was he. And
then, at last, Loring reached the big car, Wattles took the crutches
and the long journey was over. Settling down between his father and his
mother, Loring smiled proudly but tiredly. “I did it,” he said rather
faintly. He looked at his father. “The fellows seemed――pleased, I
thought, dad,” he said.

Mr. Sanford Deane nodded. “Sounded that way,” he answered huskily. Then
he, too, blew his nose quite startlingly.

Wolcott won the toss and, choosing the north goal, at exactly three
minutes past two o’clock kicked the ball away. From that moment until
seven minutes before three the shouting was never utterly stilled, the
excitement never on the wane. When the rivalry is as intense as it was
on Wyndham field that twenty-second day of November it is not necessary
that great deeds be performed by the opponents. Excitement remains at
fever heat even if neither team so much as threatens the adversary’s
goal. Cheers are given for no more startling an event than a one-yard
gain or an incompleted forward pass. Even when Couch broke the chin
strap of his head harness and had to be supplied with a new one by
Trainer Farrell the Wyndham section cheered as one man!

An outsider, a person not sympathetically interested in either the
Dark Blue or the Brown, would doubtless have found those fifty minutes
tame and uninteresting. He might even have said, and without fear of
successful contradiction, that the contending teams played at times no
better than mediocre football. There were three fumbles in the half, of
which two were accredited――or discredited――to Wyndham, and each team
lost twenty yards through penalties. Several opportunities were wasted,
by Wyndham and Wolcott both, and more than once signals were muddled
by the quarter backs. But this was preparatory school football and not
a college game, and the supposititious outsider would doubtless have
recalled the fact and been lenient in his criticisms. I can be no less.

Both teams played raggedly at times, more from overeagerness than
from any other cause, and, as was not unusual, seemed too awed by the
opponent to press any advantage that might come to it. As when, in the
second quarter, Wolcott, having advanced to Wyndham’s twenty-eight
yards, switched from the attack on the Wyndham left, an attack which
had carried her slowly but surely from the middle of the field, and
sent her backs at the other side of the enemy line. Two downs were
thrown away against an impregnable defense, and Wolcott, seemingly at
a loss, tried Couch’s end and only succeeded in gaining two yards. As
a last resort, the ball was tossed over the center and Captain Ogden
pulled it down.

For her part, Wyndham got as far as the Brown’s thirty-two just before
the end of the half, wasted two tries at the center, with Ogden
carrying, and then lost ground when Houston, attempting a quarter-back
sneak, was thrown behind his line and was forced to punt. Wyndham had
started with her strongest line-up: Drayton and Couch, ends; Weldon
and Cotter, tackles; Smythe and Desmond, guards; Carlson, center;
Houston, Kemble, Sproule and Ogden, backs. But before the second period
was at an end three changes had been made. Drayton, hurt in a tackle,
had given way to Jeff Adams, Smythe had been replaced by Breeze and
Tom had been succeeded by Stiles. The opportunity to try a field goal
came to neither side, unless Wolcott could be said to have had such
an opportunity when, with one down left and eight yards to go, she
had stood on Wyndham’s twenty-six. But the breeze was still fresh and
Wolcott had chosen to forward pass instead. The first half ended with
the ball in Wolcott’s possession on her forty-one, ended with Wyndham
and Wolcott still cheering loudly and defiantly and with the issue no
nearer decided than it had been an hour before.

In the gymnasium five coaches talked earnestly amidst the confusion
of sounds, and just before the intermission was over Mr. Otis had his
say to the whole team. He didn’t say much and he didn’t scold once. He
scarcely uttered a word of criticism now. The first half had contained
some mistakes, he said, but that was what a first half was for; to
get the bad football out of the system! Now all they had to do was go
back there and, profiting by former errors, win the game! Wolcott, he
declared, was an overrated team. If she wasn’t she would have had the
game tucked safely away before this. They must get rid of the idea that
Wolcott couldn’t be knocked down and trampled on, for she could. It
would take a better team to do it, but the team was right here.

“I want a score in each of these periods, Wyndham. Give me two scores
and I’ll promise you a victory. Keep your eyes open and your heads up.
When you tackle, tackle for keeps. Charge low and keep on going, you
linemen. And all of you――” Mr. Otis’ fist shot out――“_fight_!”




                              CHAPTER XXII

                          “HOLD ’EM, WYNDHAM!”


Clif found himself beside Lemuel John when he got back to the bench.
Lemuel John was enjoying――enduring would be a better word――his first
big game as a player, and he was considerably wrought up. For that
matter, so was Clif, and Clif was not exactly a tyro. The usual
ecstatic cheering died down and Carlson sent the ball away on a long
journey into the south. Wolcott was unable to advance by rushing
from her seventeen and punted to Wyndham’s forty-six. The Dark Blue
revealed her campaign then and there by returning the kick on first
down. The Brown’s safety man was caught napping and chased the ball
over the line. From the twenty Wolcott reeled off six around Drayton
back at left end, and made it first down on the next try when the whole
backfield concentrated on Breeze. But a second attempt to negotiate
the enemy’s left end failed, and, after two thrusts at Cotter, Wolcott
again punted from her thirty-seven.

Ogden made the best of Carlson’s poor pass and kicked to Wolcott’s
twenty-eight, the wind aiding a weak punt. Wolcott chose to make a
fair catch and the ball was stepped forward to her forty-three when
Couch interfered. Wolcott used a fake kick to throw the pigskin to her
right end, who was unguarded, but the wind aided the opponents and the
pass grounded. A second attempt, across the line, went for two yards,
Sproule nailing the receiver. On a cross buck Breeze was put out of
the way and Wolcott plowed through for five. With something less than
three yards to go, the Brown faked a kick and threw a long pass across
the field. Her left half caught, ran eight yards and was tackled hard
by Stiles. Time was called and Coach Otis sent Williams in at right end
for Couch. Wolcott twice gained through the Wyndham left and made first
down on a delayed pass with quarter going inside right tackle. The ball
was now on Wyndham’s thirty and the Dark Blue’s adherents were shouting
hoarsely for Wyndham to hold.

Smythe was sent back to left guard and Tom relieved Stiles. A minute
later, after Wolcott had smashed once at the defenders’ center,
Longwell replaced Cotter after the latter had failed to respond to Dan
Farrell’s first-aid treatment. Cotter was helped off to a loud cheer
from the stand. Wolcott got four yards on two attempts at the line and
then shot her full back past Williams for three more, taking the ball
to the twenty-three. A tall half back retreated to the thirty-five
yards and surveyed a rather difficult angle. The Wolcott quarter knelt
on the thirty-two and patted the sod smooth. Cries of “_Block that
kick!_” drowned the signals as the ball shot back. The pass was good
and the quarter quickly and deftly cocked the pigskin, but the wind was
still a factor and the ball started away with too much elevation and,
after pausing undecidedly in the air, descended well short of the goal
line and to the right of the posts. And when it came down Tom was under
it.

An instant later Clif was on his feet, waving his arms as well as that
shoulder pad would allow him to and shouting at the top of his lungs.
And Lemuel John was shaking both clenched fists at the speeding runner
and talking pure Wyoming at him. After all, it was rather simple,
that run of Tom’s. For only a moment at the beginning of the race
was the outcome in doubt. He was almost stopped by a Wolcott tackle
before he had found his stride, but after that, while a hastily formed
interference cut a path for him, and when the interference had been
left behind, he had a clear field to the Wolcott goal line. He was
pursued all the way by the enemy’s fleetest runners, but he ran the
race of his life and at the end of it a clear ten yards separated him
from the nearest adversary.

Wyndham stood on her feet and went wild, stark, staring crazy, and
the cheer leaders shouted and waved in vain. The pandemonium that was
let loose had neither rhythm nor coherence, but it was whole-souled
and prodigious! After a while the leaders did manage to evoke several
thunderous pæans, the final one waning a trifle toward the end as
Houston prepared for the try-for-point. Wolcott was savage and
desperate and Houston’s foot never touched the ball. The whole Wyndham
left side caved in and the Brown poured through the breach. But six
points looked very large just then and Wyndham was triumphant.

The quarter had ended during Tom’s eighty-nine-yard scamper, and Tom,
for one, was probably glad of the minute’s respite. The blue cohorts
shouted and waved and thumped each other on the back, and every one on
that particular side of the gridiron was very, very happy. As though to
emphasize the triumph the long white banner above the stand unwrapped
itself from the mast and whipped out in the breeze, displaying to the
gaze of the Wolcott supporters the legend “No Defeats!”

Wyndham now had only to defend, but that might prove no easy task, for
Wolcott had the wind behind her and would play with the desperation
of a team who has all to gain and nothing to lose. Wyndham chose to
kick off and Carlson sent the ball low and far. But the Dark Blue ends
couldn’t cover that kick and a Wolcott back made twelve yards after
the catch. The Brown uncovered everything she had then, and she had
several things unsuspected of the adversary. One was a reverse play in
which the quarter back, with a tackle preceding him, ran wide around
the short end, the attack being apparently aimed the other way. Wolcott
used this to advantage until, after many yards had been lost, Wyndham
solved it. Wolcott ripped through Smythe and inside Weldon, found a
weak spot at Williams until that youth was relieved in favor of Wells
and twice used short forward heaves for five- and six-yard gains. It
took Wolcott eight minutes to reach the Dark Blue’s thirty-four yards,
and there the tide was turned.

Time was called for a Wolcott half back, and Coach Otis seized the
opportunity to send a fresh center in and to substitute Tom with
Whitemill. Clif was trying hard to catch the coach’s eye, but he didn’t
succeed. Ellison, at center, steadied the Dark Blue line at once,
and two attempts by the enemy to make ground between tackles yielded
but three yards. On third down the Wolcott full back smashed past
Longwell for six more, however, placing the pigskin inside Wyndham’s
thirty-four. Wolcott wanted that last yard badly and had no desire
to yield possession of the ball almost within striking distance of
the goal. Yet she doubted her ability to make first down by straight
rushing. She solved the problem to her own satisfaction by faking a
forward pass, with full back throwing, and developing an end-around
play. Perhaps the trick might have succeeded had she chosen her
right end to carry, but she didn’t, and Drayton spoiled a very neat
attempt by refusing to believe too implicitly in the pass. When the
enemy runner sought to cut in Drayton was awaiting him. He let the
interference pass and then took the man with the ball, and Wolcott,
when the chain was trailed off the field again, had missed her distance
by some inches.

Wyndham tried the Wolcott left tackle for a scant yard and then punted.
The punt went too high for the best results and the wind shortened it,
bringing it down just beyond midfield. And from there, with some six
minutes remaining, Wolcott launched her final and supreme offense.

She brought in fresh reserves first; a new quarter, a new full back,
two linemen; and, not many plays later, again switched quarter backs.
She no longer placed much reliance on trick plays, but smashed
hard on tackles and left guard positions, using straight bucks for
the most part. There was no doubt but that Wyndham was weakening.
Wolcott crossed the Dark Blue’s forty in four plays and went on to
the thirty-four in two more. There, however, a fumble by the quarter
brought a moment’s pause in her advance. She recovered the ball for an
eight-yard loss and the offending player was returned to private life.
Mr. Otis, half a dozen yards along the bench, cupped his hands and
spoke a single word to Clif.

“Goddard,” he said.

Wolcott went on desperately, retrieving her loss and three yards more
by an unexpected and well-worked double pass that put her on the
defenders’ thirty-one. From there to the twenty she smashed four times
at Smythe, and when the referee waved to the linemen Smythe was of very
little present use. Greene took his place, and at the same time Clif
went in for Weldon. “You’ve been asking for it all the afternoon,” said
“G. G.” dryly. “Go ahead and show me. Dan says you can stand the gaff,
but I’d save that bad shoulder all I could.”

Time was running fast now and Wolcott knew it and played like so many
demons. Wyndham knew it and longed desperately for the horn. She could
safely pull in her secondary defense now, for the enemy had settled
down to hammer-and-tongs football. Why should she risk a forward pass
when she could make ten yards in four downs? And why should she attempt
a field goal when only a touchdown could avert defeat? It was the
Wyndham secondary defense that saved the day more than once, since the
line was weakening fast. Captain Jeff was into everything and played a
hero’s part that afternoon. But the enemy drew nearer at every play,
fighting not only Wyndham but time. Back on her twelve yards, the Dark
Blue called a halt. Both teams were plainly tuckered, yet not a player
left his feet. Less than two minutes remained, but two minutes was more
than enough to turn what had seemed a certain victory into a tie or a
defeat for the Dark Blue. New men came on for both teams; Jackson for
Houston, Craigie for Desmond, Coles for Longwell, on the Blue’s side.
Then the whistle blew and the final struggle began.

Wolcott had one down left with which to reach the ten yards and she
used it in trampling over Greene, and again the chain was moved on.
Clif had forgotten that he wore a shoulder pad, forgotten that he had
ever had a broken collar bone. He remembered little except that his
back was close to the last white line and that Wolcott must not reach
it. Sim Jackson was fairly beside himself, croaking supplications and
insults almost in a breath. Captain Ogden, ready to drop, reeled weakly
down the line, thumping backs and pleading hoarsely. Clif found himself
saying “No Defeats! No Defeats!” over and over as he dug his cleats
anew and settled himself.

From further down the field came an unceasing wave of sound. Over
and over and over it boomed, deep, measured, imploring: “_Hold ’em,
Wyndham! Hold ’em, Wyndham! Hold ’em, Wyndham!_”

The enemy surged again, the lines met, writhed and struggled for a long
moment. Then the whistle shrilled and the referee emerged from the
confusion. “Second down! About seven!”

Almost three yards that time, thought Clif in dismay as he crawled
to his feet again. They had come straight at him and he had failed!
Something hurt horribly somewhere, but he hadn’t time to think of that.
Wolcott was giving signals again. No, a whistle had blown. Some one was
coming on. For whom? Gosh, it was Lemuel John! Wyndham was cheering
now: “Rah, rah, rah, Parks!” “Rah, rah, rah, Greene!” Yes, Greene was
out, and here was Lemuel John, pale, earnest and startlingly big. Clif
took heart. If only the enemy would smash at left guard now!

But the enemy didn’t. A back slid off to the left and when the dust of
battle had settled the ball was close to the four yards. Almost three
yards at a time! Lemuel John could talk now, and he did. “Back yonder
they’re telling us to hold ’em, fellows!” shouted the big fellow.
“What do you say we do it? What have they got we ain’t? Not a thing,
pardners! Come on and heave ’em back!”

“That’s the stuff!” croaked Sim Jackson. “Don’t let ’em have another
inch, Wyndham! Hold ’em! You can do it! I’m telling you you can!
_Won’t_ you hold ’em, fellows?”

And from the stand came the measured slogan again, “_Hold ’em,
Wyndham!_”

Four to go and two downs! Wolcott was playing fast, for the timer’s
watch was ticking off the seconds at breakneck speed. Again the
attack came and again it was aimed at the left tackle. But this
time Clif wasn’t hurled before it. Something big moved forward and
met the onslaught. The attack paused. Then out of the mêlée strode
Lemuel John. He strode forward, and with him, held tightly, was a
struggling half back, the ball clutched to his stomach. The whistle
blew, but Lemuel John went on in spite of opposition, went on until he
was back near the ten-yard line. There he released the captive, set
him down very carefully on his feet and grinned into his convulsed,
sweat-streaked face.

“Try again, young feller,” said Lemuel John.

And Wolcott tried again, while the Wyndham stand still laughed
ecstatically, tried and failed utterly when a back sped the ball over
the line in a last desperate effort to conquer and Captain Jeff smote
it mightily to earth!

                   *       *       *       *       *

“Thought I’d drop in and see did you get damaged much,” drawled Lemuel
John as he came into Loring’s room and faced the Triumvirate after
supper that evening. He looked at Clif as he ended his statement.

“Not badly,” smiled Clif. “I thought the pesky thing was busted again,
but ‘Doc’ says no. He said things unfit for publication, though, and
asked me right to my face if I was――well, a particularly profane kind
of a fool!”

“Bet you couldn’t answer that,” chuckled Tom.

“Well, I didn’t know,” said Lemuel John, accepting Loring’s invitation
and easing his big frame onto the edge of a chair. “I saw you looked
sort of pained when I got there and I heard afterwards that you’d hurt
the shoulder again.”

“Parks,” said Tom―― “No, by heck, I’m going to call you Lemuel John!
Anyway, I was going to say that I’ll bet you anything you like, from a
doughnut to a covey of cows――I mean herd, don’t I?――that you could be
elected captain if they’d hold the election right now!”

Lemuel John smiled and shook his head. “You’re kidding, I guess. I
didn’t do anything. Didn’t have any chance to. I just fooled with that
kid a bit because I thought our fellows sort of needed a laugh. They
was――were all sort of excited, you know; kind of wrought-up like; and
I was scared they’d let those other fellows push that ball over before
they’d got hep to the fact that the other fellows wasn’t any better
than they was――were――was?” Lemuel John looked helplessly at Loring.

“Were,” said Loring gravely.

“Yeah. Well, that’s all there was to that. Guess folks did get a good
laugh, but, shucks, ’twasn’t anything to do.”

“Wasn’t it?” said Clif. “Well, it did the trick, just the same. Those
murderers were on their way to a touchdown, and no mistake!”

“I’ll say they were,” agreed Tom. “I was just closing my eyes so as
not to see the tragedy. And another thing, fellows: if Wolcott had got
that score she’d certainly have won, because that left half of hers
hasn’t missed but one ‘try’ this season. Lemuel John, you’re a poor
little half portion, and oughtn’t to be allowed to take part in such a
strenuous pastime as football, but you sure saved the old game!”

“Oh, shucks,” muttered Lemuel John.


                                THE END




                         BY RALPH HENRY BARBOUR


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                   *       *       *       *       *


 Transcriber’s Notes:

 ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

 ――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 THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77370 ***