CHAPTER IX
Counting Their Chances
Tom Allison was called next, to fill the post of fullback, and Pete Maddern went in at right tackle. Then the coach shifted about some of the old players on the scrub team and completed his line formation with Hick Dabney.
Only two positions remained unfilled—quarterback and right half.
Garry and Rooster exchanged gloomy glances. Their chances seemed to be vanishing into mist.
"For the position of right halfback," Mr. Garwin went on, through a silence tense with expectation, "I've chosen a boy who has had some experience in the backfield and who, from the look of him, ought to be a pretty good punter. Yes, I mean you, Long. Don't look as though the moon had dropped into your lap."
Rooster grew red as a chorus of laughter greeted this sally. He tried to stammer something, but stopped short in the middle of a sentence, gulping.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" shrilled Ted Dillingham, and there was more laughter.
"Good old Rooster," said Garry to himself. "At right half he'll have a chance to show his stuff."
All but him! All but him! Was he going to be left out?
Coach Garwin was looking at him, a twinkle in his eye.
"Thought I'd forgotten you, Grayson?" asked the coach, while Garry thrilled with a sudden, fierce excitement. "Well, you'll be apologizing to me for that in just a minute. I've got to have a quarterback. Think you'll do?"
Garry took a quick step forward. His face glowed.
"I'll do my best," he said earnestly.
Coach Garwin looked at him steadily for a moment, then nodded as though satisfied.
"Yes, I think you will," he said. "Now, second team, line up."
They shaped up considerably lighter than the regulars. But there was a look in their eyes that warned the haughty first string players that they would have to watch their step.
The coach now addressed both teams, including in his remarks also the crestfallen boys who had failed to make either.
"You boys," he said, "understand of course that the positions I have assigned you to-day are by no means my final selection. Each one of you has got to work to keep his place and work hard. I play no favorites. If I see a boy isn't doing his best, or perhaps is not qualified to hold the position, he will have to surrender it to some one else. Lenox High has held the championship before, and this year we are going to win it again."
A spontaneous cheer broke from the boys, and the coach smiled.
"But to get that championship," he went on, "we've got to work hard—not only each boy for himself in his own position but each boy for the team in every position. We've got to develop a love for the team and a loyalty to the team that goes beyond all personal ambition. If a fellow is dropped for the good of the team, he must take his medicine smiling and cheer the boy who takes his place with all his heart—for the good of the team. That's all that counts. Each one of the eleven players is only a cog in the machine where everything depends on each cog doing its best. Forget personal ambition in ambition for your team, think and act to the limit of your ability, be ready to fill not only your own position but any position on the field, if necessary, and we'll have a Lenox team this year that will sweep all before it.
"What do you say? Are you with me? Are you going to play that kind of football?"
The answer was a great shout that rose to the very roof of the gymnasium and seemed to crash against it. There was no doubt that the coach had caught the boys' imagination and aroused their enthusiasm. They crowded about him, already itching for the feel of the pigskin, impatient to get out on the field.
"Too late to-day for any real practice," he said. "Meet here to-morrow afternoon after classes and have your suits with you. I'll assign each of you a locker then, and we'll get some real practice that will tell me how right or how wrong I've been in picking you out. And you fellows," he called after the group of rejected aspirants who were making their way more or less dejectedly out of the gymnasium, "be on hand too. It's likely enough that I'll want to make some changes after I've seen the teams in action, and that's where your chance will come in. Don't give up too soon. The season's just commenced and anything is liable to happen."
"Sounds almost like a threat for the rest of us," remarked Garry, as, with his friends, he made his exit from the gymnasium.
"A tip to us to be on our good behavior if we don't want to be bounced," agreed Nick.
"I have an idea we'll have to play like all possessed to keep on the right side of Coach Garwin," put in Ted. "He'd just as soon drop a fellow from the team as he would an ash from a cigar."
"All the more reason for us to work like beavers," cried Garry, tossing his cap in the air as they reached the street and freedom. "We may not be on the regulars, but that's all the more reason why we've got to make Mr. Garwin sit up and take notice. Say, fellows—" He paused and the others looked at him expectantly.
"What's on your mind?" queried Rooster.
"Or what you call your mind," chaffed Ted.
"I may be a nut, probably I am," said Garry. "But I have an idea that we may get a chance to play on the first team yet."
"Come off the perch!" admonished Bill.
"How do you get that way?" asked Nick.
"Oh, let him rave," counseled Ted.
"All right, you gloom hounds," retorted Garry. "Just watch and see who's right. My hunch tells me that I'm going to have the last laugh."
It was hardly correct to apply the term "gloom hounds" to Garry's friends, for on the whole they were considerably elated.
Though they had had a faint hope that one of them at least might make the first team, their judgment had told them that anything like that was wholly improbable.
Then, later, in the gymnasium when they had sensed the possibility that they might not be chosen either for regulars or scrubs, a place even on the second team had seemed highly desirable.
This, however, they had achieved. They were in the running. So by the time they had reached home they had practically forgotten their original vaulting ambition and were almost as jubilant as though they had made the regular team.
Ella was in the library reading. She looked up as Garry entered, with an expression of lively interest.
"I saw the football call on the board," was her greeting to him. "I've been staying at home purposely this afternoon to get the news at first hand. Any luck?"
Garry flung his cap on the table and stretched out luxuriously in a deep leather chair. He grinned at Ella.
"Made the team," he said.
"The first? Why, Garry—"
"Hold on. I didn't say the first, did I? Old Shrugg says that the habit of jumping at conclusions is the sign of an inferior mind—"
"Say, listen, Garry Grayson, leave my mind alone! It belongs to me, and I like it anyhow. Go on and talk football. If you didn't make the first team, what did you make?"
"Mud pies," grinned Garry. Then as Ella flopped about indignantly in her chair and picked up her book again he condescended to explain.
"There are two teams, sis. I thought you knew that—first and second. I made the second."
Ella looked at him with interest.
"What position?"
"Quarterback."
"That's good, Garry! I didn't think a freshman would have much of a chance to make either team. That's what they were all saying up at the school."
"They don't very often. Not but what a fellow always has an idea that he may be the exception," he added. "Of course, on the second team I'm only a doormat for the regulars to wipe their feet on."
"What a horrid way to put it!" ejaculated Ella. "All the same, I'd be willing to bet something right now."
"What's that?"
"That you won't be a doormat, as you call it, very long, and that before the end of the term you'll be on the regulars."
"Thanks for them kind words," returned Garry. "Gee, sis, I wish you were right." He shook his head dubiously. "Seems a pretty tough problem though, this getting on the first team when you're only a poor downtrodden freshman. But you can better believe I'm going to do my best."
"How about Pete Maddern and Tom Allison?" asked Ella.
"They're on the scrubs too," replied Garry.
"I'd like to see you boys take the conceit out of the regulars by beating them!" exclaimed Ella.
"You said it," replied Garry. "Swell chance though. Still we'll muss their hair a little, if I'm any judge. And I'll bet that more than once this season we'll throw a scare into them."
The next morning Garry called for Bill at the Sherwood home, which lay between his own house and the high school.
As he stepped up on the porch he noticed that the front door was ajar. As the boys were accustomed to have the run of each other's houses, Garry did not ring but pushed the door open and stepped into the hall ready to sound his halloo for Bill.
The moment he found himself inside he was sorry. In the room just off the hall that served as a library he heard the sound of voices.
If they had been the voices used in ordinary conversation, Garry, so much at home in the household, would have tapped on the door and made his presence known. But the voices were angry and high-pitched, and Garry knew at once that the subject must be a private one, not to be intruded upon by any one outside the Sherwood family.
While Garry stood hesitatingly, hardly knowing whether to advance and make his presence known or to back hurriedly to the porch and ring the bell, he could not avoid hearing a sentence that gave him the key to the trouble.
"I tell you, Frank," came from Bill, in a voice tense with excitement, "you've got to lay off that poolroom crowd before it's too late!"