The water bucket was set on the field and the teams plied the dippers, the trainer watching like a hawk to see that no more than a drop of the ice-cold water passed down the parched throats. Monty rinsed his mouth out, struggling against the temptation to swallow the delicious fluid, and followed his teammates across the center line. Weston was scolding hard and Captain Winslow was helping.
“You’re playing like a lot of mutts!” stormed Weston. “You’re letting those dubs jump you every time! You’ve got to score this quarter, First! You’ve got to do it!”
“That’s right,” seconded Winslow. “We’re perfectly rotten. Let’s show ’em some real football, fellows. There’s fifteen minutes more and we ought to score twice. Just a minute, Gus.”
Captain and quarter conferred aside. The second formed again. Taunts, mostly good-natured but some frankly hostile, passed from the rival groups. Tired, strained faces glared or grinned. Then the inquiry came again, “All ready, First? All ready, Second?” The whistle blew. Weston barked his signals. Winslow and Hanser and Monty shifted to the right. The ball snapped back to Weston. The backs plunged in tandem, and Winslow, the oval snuggled to his stomach, went smashing forward. But there was no hole for him.
“Second down! Nine and a half to gain! On side, Left End!”
Monty was called on then for a slide off left tackle and gained a scant two yards. Weston was on him the instant he was pulled to his feet again. “Don’t quit like that, Crail!” he stormed. “Fight, can’t you? Fight or get out! Where were you, Hanser?”
“Perfectly rotten, First!” growled the coach. “Every one of you was asleep. Hold up, Quarter. We’ll try some new blood. Mann! Train! Hurry up! That’ll do, Spalding and Bellows. All right now. Go ahead. Show some football if you know any, First.”
Winslow made four around his own side and then kicked to the second’s twenty. Second came back a scant five and began to hurl her backs at the first team’s left guard. Twice she piled through for gains. Then she was held. An attempt around Tray’s end lost four yards and she punted short to the middle of the field. Hanser caught but was run out for no gain. Captain Winslow retired in favor of Brunswick and the newcomer made six on his first attempt through center. Weston followed with two in the same place and Monty hammered out three more off tackle. Brunswick’s forward pass to Tray went wrong and the second captured it on her twenty-eight yards. Time was called for an injury to a second team back. Weston went out and Blake replaced him. Second gained seven on a forward pass and then the rest of her distance on a fake-kick play that sent the fullback around the first team’s left end. Mann was badly fooled and it was Monty who made the tackle. For once he had sensed the play in time. He was congratulating himself on his acumen when he heard Coach Bonner’s voice beside him.
“How did you happen to get into that, Crail?”
“I saw it coming, sir,” panted Monty.
“Oh, you did? Then why didn’t you tip off your side? Why keep a good thing to yourself?”
“I wasn’t certain,” faltered Monty.
“Be certain! You’re expected to learn what they’re up to and signal it! Get on your job!”
Monty went back to his place ruefully, but there was no time for nursing hurt feelings. The second, encouraged by their success, were fighting more desperately than ever. Only six minutes remained now. She reached the fifty-yard-line on six plays, most of them on Longley. The latter was pretty badly bruised up and Little took his place. A penalty for holding set the second back and eventually produced a kick on third down which Blake gathered in on his twenty-two yards. The second team ends smothered him before he could get under way. Blake used Monty on a line-buck that produced four yards and then tried a quarterback run that failed. Brunswick punted to the second’s forty. A back got away around first’s left end and was toppled over by Blake after a sixteen-yard romp. Second tried the center again and found no gain. A forward-pass netted the distance, however, and the first was fighting desperately on her thirty-yard line. Monty discovered suddenly that he was extremely tired and that he had a fine big swelling over his right eye and a cut on his nose. The second put in a new center and two new backs and went at it again. Another penalty for holding sent her back, however, and after two short gains through the left of the line she essayed a goal from the field with the kicker on the thirty-five-yards. But the distance was too much for any talent she possessed and the ball dropped short and into the arms of Brunswick. The left half doubled himself over it and plunged into the mêlée. Somehow he got through, kicked a leg free from the clutch of a second team end and had a clear field in front of him. But Brunswick was not as fleet of foot as Winslow and the second team quarter pulled him down from behind just short of the forty yards.
“One minute and about sixty seconds!” called the time-keeper as the teams faced each other again.
“That’s more than enough!” shouted Nick Blake. “Let’s have it now, First! Tear ’em up! Get your gait! Show something for once!”
Brunswick pushed and heaved past guard on the left for three yards.
“That’s the stuff, First!” encouraged Blake. “Once more now in the same place! You can do it! They’re groggy! They can’t stop you now! Signals! Kick formation!”
Brunswick fell back and Monty slid into his place. “Watch this!” shouted the opposing captain. “Watch for a fake! Block hard, Second!”
Brunswick dropped his outstretched arms, swung his leg. Hanser plunged straight ahead into the line. Monty heard his “Ugh!” as he banged into a second team player. Then he was grabbing the ball from Blake, who had crouched to hide it, and was ripping through the left of the second’s line, spinning as he went in his effort to straighten out for the distant goal. Arms clutched at him, he tripped over a fallen player as he emerged from the broken line. There was no time to select a course now. The secondary defence was all about him. He could only go as hard as he knew how, putting every ounce of weight and strength into each plunging stride. He shook himself free of one tackler by his very impetus and the effort sent him staggering fairly into the arms of another. But just as he expected to feel the clutch of desperate arms around his legs he saw the enemy crumple. Brunswick stumbled past in front of him. Then he was free for the moment.
Recalling that other run, when he had fled from one of his own side, he saw now that there had been nothing ridiculous in it after all. He might do the same thing now for all he could tell, for there was no time to look back. He knew that feet were pounding along behind him, although he couldn’t have said that he heard them. When one’s mind is very busy planning how to escape trouble ahead the faculties refuse to interest themselves in what is going on behind. Monty was wondering what would happen when he reached that determined looking quarterback ahead. Should he try to sidestep or should he try to dodge or should he go at him full-tilt, trusting to beat him down by weight and speed? Whichever it was to be, it must be done soon, for already the quarter was treading warily toward him, his hands unconsciously clutching emptily in anticipation of closing around the runner’s legs. Monty couldn’t remember having ever encountered a fellow whose whole appearance was more distasteful to him! He hated him with a big and burning hatred! And hating him so intensely, he found new determination to outwit him.
The last line was surprisingly near. There were the padded goal posts just ahead. To be stopped now would be criminal. He pressed the ball more tightly to his thumping ribs and stretched his right hand before him. But that beast of a quarterback meant to tackle from the left. Well, then he must shift the ball. But that is no easy matter when you are running as hard as you know how, and Monty funked it for an instant. Then time was almost up, the quarter was nearly on him. Desperately he groped for the pigskin and slid it quickly across and into the hollow of his right elbow. It slowed his stride, but only for the instant. Then he was staring into the hated, anxious eyes of the enemy. And then came the tackle.
Monty tried to meet the quarter with his left hand as the former dived for his legs. But the quarter got under the straight-arm and Monty felt the sudden shock as the enemy’s body hurled itself into his path. He swerved to the right, dug one heel hard into the turf and pivoted on it. An arm was across him, clutching, but the body was out of his path. The fingers closed on his knee padding, held, slipped, held again. Monty stumbled, turned around, wrenched loose, went falling backward. The quarter was on the turf, a queer huddle of khaki and scarlet. Monty seemed to go on staggering for minutes before he finally fell. The earth rose and knocked the breath from him and he wanted to lie there and, in his own quickly uttered phrase, “call it a day,” but he found his legs soaring above him as he turned completely over and then he was on one elbow and one knee again and it was as easy to get up as to stay there! And so he pushed the turf away from him with his free hand and found his feet under him once more and went staggering ahead across the remaining five white lines. As he saw the third disappear beneath him he became sensible of renewed danger. Footsteps raced beside him. He looked over his shoulder anxiously into the detestable face of the quarterback. He tried to hurry and couldn’t, tried to swerve away from the enemy. Then arms were locked tightly about his thighs, slipped to his knees and closed there like a vise. Monty clung to the ball and shuffled, even managed two short strides. Then it was all up. A trampled, yellow-white streak shot up into his face, he had just sense enough to fend it off with his hand and elbow and there was a crash.
This time, though, Monty had not run the breath from his body, and after the first short instant of shock he began to work himself onward, pulling the clutching quarter with him, inch by inch toward that last white line somewhere ahead. He heard the enemy panting incoherent words of remonstrance, but he paid no heed. It seemed to him that his one remaining duty in life was to somehow pull himself on and on until he came to the goal line. He was still squirming, digging the point of a sore elbow into the turf, when voices reached him.
“Get up, Stanley! They made it. Good work, son.” Someone seized Monty’s arm and pulled him to his knees. Still clutching the ball, he looked up at Nick Blake.
“He got me!” he gasped.
Someone else put an arm about him and raised him to his unsteady feet. Players were all about him. Others were trotting up.
“Bully work, Crail!” Blake was saying, thumping him on the back. “Ata boy!”
Monty grinned weakly. “I nearly did it,” he panted. “That Indian——”
He stopped abruptly. Where the dickens was the goal line?
“Nearly did it be blowed!” said Brunswick. “This is good enough, old scout. If I can’t lift it over from here you may kick me around the campus. You take it out, Nick.”
Monty stared stupidly at the goal line. It was a full two yards behind him! It suddenly dawned on him that he had gone over after all! He took a long breath.
“Well!” he gasped. But no one heard him. He followed his teammates back to the field, leaving Blake kneeling on the ball five yards to the right of the nearest goal post. The second was lining up dejectedly along behind the line. Mr. Bonner, hovering nearby, nodded across. “Nice run, Crail,” he called. Others said so, too, patting his tired back, grinning delightedly. Then Blake walked out with the ball, stretched himself on the ground and pointed for Brunswick. And Brunswick neatly and easily lifted the pigskin across the bar while the second came plunging and leaping impotently out from under it. A scant forty seconds remained, barely long enough for the second to kick off again, and then they were all crawling tiredly to the field house, the first team joyous and happy and the second taciturn and disappointed. And on the way, while Weston was telling him what a corking run he had made, Monty was inwardly smiling. He had nearly wrenched himself apart at the waist trying to crawl along with that ball when he was already two yards past the line! Would he ever, he wondered, stop making a fool of himself?
Ten minutes later he passed that second team quarter on his way to the showers. They each smiled. Monty was surprised to find that the quarter was a remarkably nice-appearing chap, after all!