Interference and Other Football Stories Part 3

"Frank around right end!" he exclaimed, "that play looked like a nifty when they ran through it last night. But I'll nail Frank this time!"

Racing to his left, Mack rapidly loomed in front of the fast traveling Frank who was shielded by his interferer, Dave, running a step ahead and in front of him. Dave, seeing Mack coming, prepared for the impact. Mack, eyes only for Frank, charged savagely, intending to brush Dave aside and keep on going until he had brought Frank to the ground with a diving tackle. What actually happened was extremely jolting to Mack. He hit Dave but did not tumble him. Instead it was he who rebounded and Dave continued on. Mack, rolling over, painfully, saw Dave go on down the field to bowl quarterback Alf Rigsbee, playing safety, out of the way and leave Frank with a clear path to the goal line.

"Great work!" Mack heard Coach Edward complimenting Dave. "That's what I call 'interference'!"

The Varsity lined up in front of the Seconds' goal line with Dave holding the ball while Frank place-kicked the point after touchdown. A chagrined Mack Carver could only turn to Alf and declare: "The score should have been a tie if that touchdown of ours hadn't been disallowed."

Alf shrugged his shoulders, expressively. "What do we care?" was his answer. "It's only practice!"

To Mack, however, his entire efforts seemed to have been punctured like a toy balloon. He had tried to put more fight in his play. He had tried, moreover, to show the coach that Dave was not so hot as a blocking back. But he had actually only served to further demonstrate Dave's great ability to dump would-be tacklers. This scrimmage had been more than practice to him--it had been a final testing of abilities he had claimed to have which he apparently did not possess.

The coach would probably discount the runs he had made while impersonating Pomeroy's star back, Dizzy Fox. He had already discredited the touchdown scored on a trumped up play, despite its perfect execution. In fact, every way you looked at it, this fellow Mack Carver appeared as a complete wash-out. He even marvelled now that he had had the audacity to visit Coach Edward and ask why he wasn't a regular on the Varsity. How foolish of him to have imagined that the Coach was holding his relationship to Carl Carver against him!

He really owed the coach an apology!

"Hey, Mack!" said a voice, and Grinnell's subst.i.tute back, momentarily lost in a solemn revery, realized that Dave Morgan was at his elbow.

"Listen, old man," Dave was saying. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No," Mack replied. "But you sure took me out of those plays. It was swell interfering."

Dave nodded. "You came at me like the charge of the Light Brigade," he grinned, "only you hit me too high ... gave me a chance to get under you and I hoisted you out of the way. Next time try the shoulder and the half roll--like this ...!" And Dave put his words into action, sending Mack spinning as he did so.

"Much obliged!" was Mack's comment, when he had recovered his balance.

"Don't mention it!" said Dave, and was off to join his Varsity mates as the two elevens lined up again for kick-off.

Mack, standing staring after the fellow who had beaten him out for the team, could scarcely control his feelings. He had carried a chip on his shoulder all season; hadn't mixed with the fellows the way he might have; had taken the game and its incidents too seriously, and here was a guy--his rival--who was sport enough to take him aside and tip him off as to how he might be stopped!

"I'll try it next chance I get," Mack decided, "and if it works...!"

Varsity kicked off to the Seconds who lost the ball on downs after putting on another advance--this one for forty yards. Mack was responsible for half of the yardage gained but the Varsity was now getting on to the Pomeroy plays and developing an effective defense to cope with them. Taking the ball on its twenty-three yard stripe, the Varsity started a slashing drive, mixing straight line plays and end runs. Finally, with the Seconds' defense stiffening, quarterback Bert Henley called upon Coach Edward's new play--the lateral opening out into the forward pa.s.s.

"Now!" thought Mack, as he a.n.a.lyzed what was coming.

Dave Morgan, intended as Frank's screen on the pa.s.s, lateralled to Frank and stationed himself in front as interferer. Frank, who had started to run wide, faded back for the throw. Coming in fast, Mack, following instructions, tore into Dave, hitting him low. Frank's interference disappeared suddenly and completely in a jolting somersault and Mack, with a half roll, was upon his feet and diving back after the man with the ball. Frank tried to elude him and to forward pa.s.s at the last instant but Mack had covered him too fast. He was tackled before he could get the ball away for a loss of twelve yards.

"Great stuff!" congratulated a winded Dave who had staggered to his feet. "That's getting past interference!"

"Now aren't you sorry you wised me up?" smiled Mack, appreciatively.

"You could have had things all your own way."

"But it wouldn't have been any fun," was Dave's reply. "Now I've got to _work_!"

And Dave's prediction proved correct. A friendly feud developed between Mack and himself. It was no longer possible for Dave to block Mack out of the play and keep going himself. Invariably the two went down and out together. Occasionally Mack would so batter his interference as to reach the man with the ball himself. If he did not, he so thoroughly removed the interference that he forced the ball carrier in the open and made him comparatively easy prey for fellow Seconds to bring down.

"Dave, you've done wonders for me," Mack said, gratefully, at the end of a gruelling practice. "I don't know how to thank you."

"Don't try," Dave answered. "I've been watching you for some time. I knew you were just missing out. You ought to make it tough for anybody from now on!"

That any fellow player would have been so unselfish as to help a rival overcome a fault in charging interference and thus jeopardize his own position on the team was almost beyond Mack's comprehension. Long after the practice session was over he puzzled Dave's great kindness and wondered, too, whether Coach Edward had finally been impressed with the way he had played.

"After I got the hang of it, I made even Dave look bad," Mack told himself. "I certainly didn't intend to do this ... but every time I broke up the interference and nabbed Frank it counted in my favor and against Dave. Coach doesn't know, of course, who's responsible for my improvement. I only wish it was earlier in the season. I might be able to get somewhere." But this thought brought a feeling of remorse since Mack's advancement would ordinarily have to be at Dave's expense.

"I see now what Coach meant about a fellow's playing wholeheartedly for the team," Mack reflected. "Dave wasn't thinking of himself when he helped me out. If I should develop into the better player, I know he'd take his hat off to me. And here I've been playing for myself right along. Swell guy--this Mack Carver!... So swell he ought to be ducked in Grinnell Lake!"

News travels fast across a college campus. The following morning students were thrown in a turmoil of excitement by word that Coach Edward's office had been rifled during the night and nothing disturbed but the team plays. It was rumored that two detectives had been employed by the college to determine, if possible, the guilty party or parties. Despite an attempt to keep the matter quiet, newspapers got hold the story and, later in the day, papers appeared with streaming headlines:

GRINNELL PLAYS STOLEN FROM COACH'S OFFICE

POMEROY AUTHORITIES INDIGNANTLY DENY ACCUSATIONS OF PART IN ATTEMPT TO SECURE GRINNELL PLAYS AND SIGNALS

The Grinnell _Leader-Tribune_ went so far as to declare, in its news story, that relations between Pomeroy and Grinnell had been strained for the past two years since Grinnell had developed into a school to be feared by the larger college. It seemed that Pomeroy had scheduled Grinnell merely for the purpose of giving her a drubbing and taking it easy between big games and that Grinnell's increased opposition had been embarra.s.sing to Pomeroy students and alumni who rated their eleven far better than the intended victim. Now matters had become so acute, a report was going the rounds that Coach Carl Carver's job at Pomeroy hung upon his winning the Grinnell game, about which there was some doubt owing to Pomeroy's uncertain season. A victory for Grinnell, on the other hand, would be the greatest triumph ever scored by that school since Pomeroy was a nationally known eleven, accustomed to playing the best in the country. "It's a step up or a step down for either coach," the news article concluded, and Mack Carver, Grinnell subst.i.tute back, who read the stories with a strange lump in his throat, breathed his thanksgiving that no mention was made of him.

"This is one time when my not being well known as a football player has helped out," he said to himself. "If I'd been prominent on the Grinnell team, I'd have been played up along with my brother. As it is, they'll probably let me alone."

But in this surmise, Mack was wrong. On reporting for football practice that afternoon, he found fellow team members regarding him with traces of suspicion.

"Coach wants to see you in the Field House," Frank informed. "He says not to dress."

Mack stiffened with surprise.

"Okay," he replied, face sobering. "Any idea what it's about?"

"How should I know?" rejoined Grinnell's star back, but Mack fancied he noted an attempt on Frank's part to conceal his real feelings.

"Maybe," Frank added, rather lamely, "he's moving you up as a regular!"

"No chance of that," said Mack, grimly. "See you guys later!"

He turned on his heel and strode out of the locker room. On the way to the Field House his thoughts ran together crazily. There could only be one answer to the Coach's request to see him. It must be in connection with the stolen plays!... Mack's mind raced back to the moment in Coach Edward's office when he had been detected examining the plays.

He winced. This was probably the meagre clue upon which he was being drawn into the case ... this and the fact that he was a brother of Carl Carver's!

Coach Edward was apparently awaiting Mack's arrival. He was in the company of two strange men when Grinnell's subst.i.tute back located him in one of the conference rooms.

"Meet Mr. Pierce and Mr. Greene," the Coach introduced. "Take a chair over here."

Mack sat down, feeling the two men looking him over, shrewdly.

"You've been called," explained Coach Edward at once, "in the hopes that you may help us throw some light on what happened in my office last night."

"I thought so," answered Mack, eyeing his coach squarely.

"Why did you think so?" demanded the man referred to as Pierce. He was solidly built, black moustache and heavy eyebrows. Mack took an instant dislike to his bullying manner.

"The reasons should be obvious," he replied.

"As we understand it," spoke up the man introduced as Greene, "you paid Coach Edward a visit some days ago--at his office."

"I did," acknowledged Mack.