Interference and Other Football Stories Part 15

By game time the stadium was a howling, wet ma.s.s. The rain had subsided to a spraylike drizzle, and Carrington, after a minute study of the sky line, decided that this improvement was the best which could be hoped for.

The conditions underfoot were bad. The sod was soggy and slippery.

Punters, in practice, stationed themselves with great care before getting off their kicks. Even then the punting experts were observed to retain their footing, at times, with difficulty. Davies shook his head forebodingly. There was nothing encouraging to the Crimson in the outlook.

The sons of Old Eli were cheering their steam-roller eleven to the echo. As Davies compared the heavy Yale line with the noticeably thinner Harvard wall, he shuddered instinctively as he thought of these men taking the impact of what was due to come. He was seized with a sense of futility at the very outset, and a ready sympathy for the Harvard back field. He had been in just such a position years before when it seemed as though he was battering his head against the side of a brick building, and all for naught, it seemed, too--only that he knew he should keep on battering, battering, just for the Crimson, the dear old Crimson.

Plunk! The hollow, wet sound of toe meeting pigskin and a mud-spattered object turning end over end, with beneath it--jerseyed figures charging! Harvard had kicked off!

Davies rose spontaneously from his seat and added his puny voice to the maelstrom of noise. On the Yale ten-yard line a blue-clad man pulled down the mud-spattered object and, clutching it firmly against his chest, took a few slipping side-steps to dodge an eager tackler. The Eli succeeded in this, only to crash directly into the arms of a second Harvard tackler, who bore him to the sodden earth on the Blue's fifteen-yard stripe. Davies sank back into his seat with a sigh of relief. The first p.r.i.c.kling moment of the game was over.

There were, though, further p.r.i.c.kling moments to come. On the first play Yale launched a line-smashing offensive, aiming her backfield men at different points on the Harvard forward wall. It was slip-slosh-bang, slip-slosh-bang! There were slow, heavy shiftings, then a mud-smeared man with the ball diving through a hole for one, two, three, or five yards--sometimes ten. Yielding, always stubbornly, but always yielding, the slender Harvard line bent back and back under the savage, relentless onslaught of unmuzzled Yale Bulldogs thirsting for the blood of victory. Davies wore his voice to shreds trying to stop Yale's advance.

It was no use. This was one of those days when all the cheering that could be martialed, and all the resistance that could be offered against the foe, availed but little. Thwarted from a touchdown by the Crimson's grim stand on their very goal line, Nixon, Yale's star kicker, dropped back and booted the dripping-wet ball between the uprights for a spectacular field goal which shot the Elis into a three-point lead.

In the second quarter, facing the same bitter opposition and impeded by the slow, heavy conditions underfoot, Yale satisfied herself with battering the Crimson eleven back until, clawing at one another on the Harvard twenty-yard mark, Nixon mechanically duplicated his first field goal to bring his team's score for the half up to six points. Yale supporters shrieked their joy. The Harvard stands roared loyal encouragement, then lapsed into mournful silence.

During the intermission, Davies confessed to himself that he had never seen a "fightinger" team except, perhaps, the eleven that had fought that memorable battle back in 1905. Here were Crimson gridiron gladiators who made the heart burst with pride; who, though being slowly ground into defeat, were displaying Spartanlike valor; who, by the inspired nature of their resistance, were putting gnawing lumps in the throats of their ardent followers. Ah, this was a contest worth watching, a combat which would go down in history, a story of how a slight Harvard eleven, struggling against tremendous odds, had all but wrested victory from one of the most powerful Yale machines of all time!

When the teams reappeared on the field for the second half, Davies felt the years fall away as in a strange dream. He began to wax exultant about the weather, remembering with what grim satisfaction he had rubbed his nose in the wet dirt behind Yale's goal line after his sensational dash the length of the gridiron twenty years ago--yesterday? No, twenty years----

A frenzied cheer brought Davies back to the present. Yale had kicked off, and Harvard, receiving, had run the ball back fifteen yards.

First down on their twenty-one yard line! Broadhurst, slim-figured Harvard quarterback, seemed a dynamo of pep from the way he was barking out signals and urging the utmost from his men. Another cheer, more frenzied than the first, burst out as a Crimson back slid around right end for a four-yard gain. The next play netted seven yards around the same end and a first down. Harvard rooters went crazy and Davies went with them.

Given cause for hope in the first worth-while ground gained against the powerful Yale eleven, the Harvard team threw its whole remaining force into the drive. For seven pulsating minutes it seemed as though the Crimson could not be denied a touchdown. Yard after yard was torn off on slipping end runs and slashing plunges through the line. Davies forgot some of the sympathy he had felt for the team of his Alma Mater.

It was now risen to the heights of David against Goliath.

Alas, though, with the ball on Yale's five-yard mark and the Harvard, stands wildly intreating a touchdown, Broadhurst, trying to carry the ball himself, fumbled! The pigskin was seen to strike the ground and then to be swallowed up by a cloud of flying forms. When the referee had dug through the confused ma.s.s of arms and legs, he found the ball in Yale's possession, and Harvard's big glimmer of hope immediately vanished. Broadhurst, who but a second before had been credited with putting the driving force into Harvard's great attack, was now roundly censured as the blunderer who had blown the golden opportunity. The quarterback was a soph.o.m.ore, Davies learned from the talk of some of the more recent Harvard graduates near by.

Overjoyed at having brought a stop to the one serious threat of the enemy, the Yale team lined up on their four-yard mark and held like a stonewall while the great Nixon got off a forty-yard punt from behind his own goal line.

With the punch gone from Harvard's attack, the Crimson made but a scant yard in two downs; then the little Broadhurst threw a long forward pa.s.s. The play was well screened; but an alert son of Yale, keenly on the job, managed to intercept the ball. He was thrown in his tracks.

It was growing dark, with the lowering clouds threatening a genuine deluge. A chilling gust of wind whistled through the stadium. Some of the less hardened "rooters" got up and began forcing their way toward the exits. A gloomy silence hung over the field.

Once more in swing, the Yale steam roller got under way. It took up its old battering tactics--slip-slosh-bang, slip-slosh-bang. There was nothing sensational in its movement, just methodical. And back--ever back--though courageously resisting, went the Crimson line. A flock of subst.i.tutes came running out now. The ball was on Harvard's twenty-three yard line, four minutes more to play. The subst.i.tutes brought a new, if hopeless touch of spirit to the Harvard eleven. They were ambitious, almost pathetically so in the circ.u.mstances, to make a good showing in their fleeting chance for glory.

"Touchdown, touchdown, touchdown!" the Yale supporters began to chant in monotonous fashion. It was not a question now of who would win, but could Yale go over the goal line in the time that was left? Harvard had put up a surprising battle against an eleven which had been favored to defeat her by at least twenty points. And Yale was a bit miffed at this, sternly desirous of adding to the score by hammering through for a touch down. A victory won solely through the talented toe of the great Nixon was hardly sufficient tribute to the supposed offensive power of the team itself.

There were two minutes left to play when Yale brought up on Harvard's three-yard line for a first down. Behind the battered and tottering Crimson wall a figure raved and ranted and roared, entreating his teammates to stave off the Bulldog's advance. He stamped from end to end in the churned up sod, prodding each player in a vicious manner.

But there was no visible stiffening of the Harvard defense at the savage barking of its quarterback. The team was crushed after having done its best to no avail.

"Look at that bird begging his line to hold and he the one who made that costly fumble!" cried a Yale supporter, who somehow had obtained a seat in the Harvard sections. It was next to that of Davies'. "Wonder if he thinks they'll pay any attention to him now?"

Davies felt like making some hot retort to this, but he didn't. He decided to salve his feelings in a cigar and to escape the agony of watching Old Eli crush the Crimson under the added weight of a touchdown. As Davies lighted up, the lowering clouds spread wide apart, letting down sheets of driving rain.

"A good thing it's almost over," he told himself. "About time for one more play. Well, I don't suppose we could have expected anything different, with the odds against us, and the weather, but if Broadhurst had only----"

Settling back in his seat, Davies was gloomily conscious of the hosts of Yale rising to their feet with a stupendous din. His view was blotted from the gridiron by flashing arms and wildly lurching forms.

But Davies was no longer interested. There was no use, he thought, in getting excited over a Yale touchdown.

While all was confusion about him, Davies sat still, puffing on his cigar.

But the cheering kept up! There was a different note in it now, a great, heart-rending groan that was drowned out by an ear-bursting, joyous roar.

Davies looked up wonderingly. "Say, what's happening?"

Just how Davies got to a standing position on his seat he never knew.

But he was suddenly and overwhelmingly conscious of a most unusual sight. Crossing the Harvard thirty-yard line, running toward the distant Yale goal with head down, straight into the driving rain, was the slim-lined figure of the Harvard quarterback--the ball tucked under his right arm.

Behind the speeding man with the ball, trailed three desperate Yale players, while another was cutting across the gridiron in the hope of intercepting the Crimson runner from in front. Back near the Harvard goal line, teammates on both sides, now completely out of play, yelled encouragement to pursuers and the one pursued.

Davies, eyes glued on Broadhurst, jabbed out an arm and grabbed the Yale supporter by the shoulder. "Yea! How'd we get the ball?" the hero of twenty years before demanded.

"Let go my collar bone!" The Yale fan winced, trying to jerk away.

"All right; but how'd we get the ball?" persisted Davies.

"Nixon fumbled on your goal line. What's the matter, you poor fish!

Why don't you watch the game?"

Davies _was_ watching it now for dear life. The slender Harvard quarterback was being pressed from front and back. He had been forced close to the side line in an effort to evade the tackler who was lumbering at him across water-soaked sod. But, it was now evident that Broadhurst must face this peril. The soggy condition underfoot had made it impossible for him to evade the Eli even by keeping close to the side line. There was no turning outward. To do so would carry the ball out of bounds. And any hesitancy or slowing up would close the distance between the Crimson runner and the three Yale men who kept doggedly pounding along after him.

Instinctively Davies stiffened his right arm and pushed it out violently. For one heart-quaking second it seemed to him that the years had rolled back and that he was carrying the ball. He sensed acutely the sensation that must be Broadhurst's, and he suddenly found himself shrieking: "Give him the straight arm! Give him the straight arm! Give him the----!"

And as if, from out that mad pandemonium of sound, Broadhurst had heard and heeded, the Harvard quarterback ran directly at the oncoming tackler; then, when it appeared as though Broadhurst must go down with arms reaching out to encircle him, he jabbed a mud-stained hand straight from the shoulder, catching the Yale man in the face.

The impact almost threw Broadhurst from his feet, but he saved himself by a quick jump to the side and, a slipping lurch which shook a foot loose from the last frantic grab of the tackler as he dived head foremost into a muddy sheet of water.

"Atta boy! Atta boy!" cried Davies, no longer accountable for what he might say or do.

The man with the ball now had a clear field and was crossing the fifty-yard line. The going was difficult, each step uncertain.

Several times he all but fell, the ground was so heavy and sodden that it seemed almost as if Broadhurst were running in one spot, his feet slipping under him. And with the tread-mill effect it looked as though the three frenzied pursuers were gaining.

In Yale territory now, the bleak goal posts looming up in front of him, Broadhurst chanced a glance back over his shoulder. What he saw was none too rea.s.suring. The Yale stands broke into a roar of insane entreaty. A Yale man was at Broadhurst's very heels, and Broadhurst was crossing Old Eli's ten-yard line with a touchdown in sight! It was but a matter of seconds. If the Crimson runner could be overtaken, Harvard's last bubble of hope would be punctured.

"Yea! He's got him!" yelled the Yale supporter, crashing Davies over the head.

"He hasn't, either!" the Harvard grad shouted, with a shove which all but upset the rival rooter. "Look at that, will you?"

At the four-yard line the Yale tackler left his feet in a frantic dive.

He struck the man with the ball just below the knees, and Broadhurst crumpled forward, giving a tugging leap. It may have been due to the fact that he was soaked to the skin and that the tackler's hands were wet and chilled; at any rate, the Eli's grip slipped to one leg, and, instead of going down, Broadhurst strained along, dragging his tackler after him. As he reached the goal line the two other Yale men sailed through the air and hit him. All four went down in a splashing fall.

Then every one in the stands went wild.

With the strength of a team gone delirious with joy, the Crimson players took their positions in front of the Yale goal and prepared for the play which would give them a try at the extra point after touchdown. The stands rocked with tributes of noise, bestowing upon Broadhurst one of the most deafening ovations ever accorded a gridiron hero. He had fittingly redeemed himself. His blood-tingling length-of-the-field run in the last minute of play had tied the score at six to six.

Davies waited only long enough to see the water-soaked ball sail between the uprights for the winning point. Then he clambered over the seats and cut across the outraged gridiron in the direction of the clubhouse, unmindful of the fact that the mud had sucked off both his rubbers.

At the clubhouse, Carrington Davies encountered unexpected opposition in gaining admittance. It seemed that no one had known who he was and, what was more, no one seemed to care after being informed. Such cra.s.s ignorance irritated Davies greatly, but he held his patience. The disregard shown him was only due to the prevailing excitement. If any one of them had only stopped to think!