Left End Edwards Part 17

"Hm," Mr. Conklin would say. "Hm; but that seems to be in direct contradiction of another rule over here!"

"Quite likely," the coach would reply indifferently. "There are quite a few contradictions there. Of course, you may accept either rule you like, gentlemen."

Disarmed in such wise, the officials invariably decided the play to be legal, and Quarter-back Milton, of Brimfield, would protest volubly and get very, very red in the face in his attempt to carry his point and, at the same time, omit none of the respect due a faculty member! It was hard on Milton, that game, and several times he nearly had apoplexy.

Then, too, Canterbury did the most unexpected things at the most inopportune moments. When Brimfield expected her to rush the ball she was just as likely to get off a kick from close formation. When the circ.u.mstances indicated an attack on the short side of the field Canterbury's backs swung around the other end. When a close formation was to be looked for she swung her line half across the field, so confusing the opponents that they acted as though hypnotised. The forward pa.s.s was to Canterbury a play that afforded her infinite amus.e.m.e.nt. She used it in the most unheard of locations; in midfield, under the shadow of her own goal, anywhere, everywhere and almost always when least expected. At the end of the second period Brimfield trotted away to the gymnasium dazed and tired of brain, with the score 7 to 0 against her.

The surprising thing about the visitors was that they played as though they were just having an afternoon of good fun. They romped, like boys playing leap-frog or follow-my-leader. They romped up the field and they romped down the field and, incidentally, over and through and around their opponents. And the more care-free and happy Canterbury became, the more anxious and laboured grew Brimfield. The Maroon-and-Grey reminded one of a very staid and serious middle-aged party with a grave duty to perform trying to restrain the spirited antics of a small boy with no sense of decorum!

When the second half began, Canterbury added insult to injury. Instead of booting the pigskin down the field in an honest and earnest endeavour to obtain distance, she deliberately and with malice aforethought, dribbled it on the bias, so to speak, toward the side-line. Benson, right end, should certainly have got it, but he was so perplexed that he never thought of picking it up until a Canterbury forward had performed the task for him and had raced nearly twenty yards down the field! It was an unprecedented thing to do, or, at least, unprecedented at Brimfield, and the audience voiced its disapproval strongly. But as the ball had gone the required ten yards there was nothing to do but smile--a trifle foolishly, perhaps--and accept the situation. And the situation was this: Canterbury had kicked off and gained over thirty yards without losing possession of the ball! But in one way that play was ill-advised. Brimfield had stood all sorts of jokes and pranks from the enemy with fairly good grace, but this enormity was too much.

Brimfield was peeved! More than that, she was really angry! And, being angry, she forgot that for twenty minutes she had been outplayed and started in then and there to administer a licking to the obstreperous small boy.

Even then, however, Canterbury continued to romp and enjoy herself. She found hard sledding, but she worked down to Brimfield's eight-yard line before she was finally halted. Then her right half romped back for a try at goal and joyously booted the ball. But, to the enormous relief of the onlookers, the ball went under the bar instead of over, and Canterbury romped back again. That third period was very evenly contested, Brimfield, smarting under a sense of wounded dignity, playing well together and allowing Canterbury no more opportunities to attempt scores. The visitors, still untamed, sprang strange and weird formations and attacks. A favourite trick was to start a play without signals, while one of her men was ostensibly tying a shoe-lace yards away or requesting a new head-guard near a side-line. It invariably happened, though, that the shoe-lace was tied in time to allow the youth to get the ball on a pa.s.s and attempt a joyous romp around the opponent's end. There was no scoring in the third period, but the whistle blew with the pigskin down on Canterbury's twenty-five yards and Brimfield with four to go on third down.

As there was no practice that afternoon, Steve and Tom saw the game from the grand stand, with two cronies named Draper and Westcott. Draper's first name was Leroy and he was called Roy. He was a tow-haired youngster of fifteen with very bright blue eyes and a tip-tilted nose that gave him a humorously impertinent look. He, like Steve and Tom, was a Fourth Former. His home was in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and, while Pittsburg was a good hundred miles from Tannersville, the fact that they were citizens of the same glorious commonwealth had drawn he and Steve together. Harry Westcott was a year older and came from a small town in Connecticut. He was Roy's room-mate in Torrence. He had a slim, small-boned body and a good-looking face with an aquiline nose and a pair of very large soft-brown eyes. His dark hair was brushed straight back from his forehead and was always very slick. Harry was what Roy called "a fussy dresser" and affected knickerbockers and golf-stockings, negligee shirts of soft and delicate hues of lavender or green or blue and, to quote his disrespectful room-mate once more, "symphonic ties."

Harry was the embodiment of aristocratic ease and always lent a "tone"

to any gathering. He maintained an air of what he probably considered well-bred composure and tabooed enthusiasm. Harry never declared that a thing was "bully" or "fine and dandy"; he mildly observed that it was "not half bad." This pose amused him, doubtless, and entertained his friends, and underneath it all he was a very normal, likable chap. It was Roy Draper who broke the strained silence that had endured until the whistle put an end to the third period.

"I wouldn't give a cent for Canterbury's chances in the next period," he said. "Look at Andy's face, fellows. It has the 'blood-l.u.s.t' on it. When Andy looks that way something has just got to happen!"

"He looks annoyed," a.s.sented Harry.

"You'd be annoyed if you had your lip cut the way his is," chuckled Roy.

"Do you think we'll beat them?" asked Tom anxiously.

"Nothing can save them," replied Roy conclusively. "Andy has his dander up."

"It took him long enough to get it up," grumbled Steve. "He let those fellows run rings around us in the first half."

"That's his foxy way. Now he's got them all tired out and we'll go in and rip 'em up. You watch!"

"There's Marvin going in for Milton," announced Tom. "Say, those chaps haven't made a change in their line-up yet."

"One," corrected Harry. "They put in a new right guard last period.

They're a funny lot, seems to me. You'd think they were having the time of their lives."

"I like that, though," said Roy. "After all, you know, this thing of playing football is supposed to be amus.e.m.e.nt."

"It's a heap more like hard work, though," replied Harry. "Not that I ever played it much."

"Did you ever play at all?" asked Roy.

"Once or twice at grammar school. It was too fatiguing, though."

"I'll bet it was," chuckled Roy. "I'd like to see you playing, old thing."

"I did, though; played right half-back. A fellow stuck his elbow into my face and I knocked him flat. Captain said it was part of the game, you know, and I shouldn't have done it. I said that any fellow who b.u.mped my nose would have to look for trouble. Then the umpire put me off and the game lost a real star."

"Here we go," said Steve. "Now let's see if they can carry it over."

They didn't, however, just then. Canterbury held finely in the shadow of her goal and Marvin's forward pa.s.s to Captain Miller went out at the twelve-yards. But Canterbury was forced to punt a moment later, and Brimfield took up the march again. On the adversary's thirty-yard line, with six to go on the third down, Norton, full-back, attempted an impossible drop-kick--he was standing over forty yards from the cross-bar--and made it good.

"What did I tell you?" demanded Roy, digging Steve with his elbow.

"That's only three points, though," answered Steve doubtfully. "We couldn't make a touchdown."

"It isn't over yet," said Roy confidently. "We're getting better all the time."

Canterbury gave the ball to Brimfield for the kick-off and Fowler booted it down to the opponent's fifteen yards. Andy Miller was under it all the way and upset an ambitious Canterbury back before he was well started. Canterbury tried two plunges and then punted from her twenty-five-yard line to Brimfield's fifty. Marvin caught and brought the stand to its feet by reeling off twelve yards across the field before he was downed. Then Brimfield found herself and went down the gridiron by steady plunges, plugging the Canterbury line for good gains from tackle to tackle. Norton, at full-back, was the hero of that period. Time after time he took the pigskin and landed it for a gain.

Marvin, cool and heady, ran the team beautifully, and when four minutes of playing time remained, Brimfield was again knocking at Canterbury's door, the pigskin on the latter's eighteen yards.

"First down!" proclaimed Roy triumphantly. "Here's where she goes over, old thing!"

"Let her go," replied Harry. "I'm watching."

"I hope they don't try another silly field-goal," muttered Steve.

"Not on first down, they won't. Bully work, Norton! Did you see it?

Three yards easily!"

Then Marvin himself cut loose for four around left end and the Canterbury coach hustled three subst.i.tutes on. But Brimfield was not to be denied now. It was first down on Canterbury's seven yards, and, with the spectators yelling like Indians, Kendall, right half, took the ball on a delayed pa.s.s, found an opening outside right tackle and slipped through and over the line for six more points.

Captain Miller kicked goal and the score stood 10 to 7. Another minute of play followed, with Brimfield again pushing the high school team before her, and then the game was over and the quartette on the stand thumped each other elatedly--all save Harry--and ambled down to join the throng that spread over the field on its homeward way.

"What did I tell you?" asked Roy. "You can't fool your uncle!"

"You hate yourself, don't you?" drawled Harry. "Come on over to the room, you fellows."

Canterbury, having cheered the victor wholeheartedly, romped home.

CHAPTER XIII

SAWYER VOWS VENGEANCE

Miter Hill School followed Canterbury the next Sat.u.r.day and was an unexpectedly weak opponent. The contest was slow and lifeless and dragged its weary length along until almost twilight. Miter Hill's players were in poor physical condition and, since the afternoon was warm and close, made a poor showing. The weather affected Brimfield, too, although she was not as susceptible to injury as the other team.

Miter Hill was forever getting hurt, it seemed, and the audience which had braved a remorseless sun and a horde of blood-thirsty midges soon began to grumble.

The game was further slowed down in the last two periods by the subst.i.tution of half the members of the second and third squads for the Maroon-and-Grey. Even Tom had a three or four-minute experience on the 'varsity, something which he had long ceased hoping for, while Steve played nearly all of the fourth period at right end. He did very well, there, although Miter Hill was too weak in all departments of the game to afford any of her opponents a fair test. Toward the last the contest degenerated into more or less of a farce, Miter Hill tuckered and played out, and Brimfield, with a line-up of third and fourth subst.i.tutes, fumbling and mixing signals and running around like a hen with her head off!

By that time those who had remained so long began to view the game as what it really was, a comedy of errors, and got lots of fun out of it.

When Peters, at centre, pa.s.sed the ball at least two feet above the upstretched hands of Harris, who wanted to punt, and at least nine youths raced back up the field in pursuit of it, shoving, tripping, falling, rolling, and when it was Peters himself who finally dropped his one hundred and seventy-odd pounds on it, the onlookers rocked in their seats and applauded wildly. Later on another dash of humour was supplied when Carmine poised the ball for a forward pa.s.s only to discover that no one of his side was in position to take it. The quarter-back shouted imploringly, running back and across the field, dodging two or three of the enemy and by some miracle holding the ball out of harm's way all the while. When, at last, thoroughly desperate, he heard someone shout from across the field to throw the ball, he threw it, and not until the catcher had reeled off twenty yards or more toward Brimfield's goal did Carmine discover that he had been cruelly deceived by the Miter Hill right end! Even Mr. Robey, who had been viewing the game rather grimly, had to swing on his heel to hide a smile at that fiasco. But, if the subs didn't do much in the way of attack, they at least held the enemy from crossing their line, and the weird contest at last came to a close with the one-sided score of 26 to 0.

On Monday there was a fine shake-up, for the Miter Hill game, if it had not held any thrills, had at least shown up many faults, individual and otherwise. Several second squad men went to the first as subst.i.tutes, Fowler was shifted from left tackle to left guard on the first and two members of the third squad were advanced to the second. These latter were Freer, half-back, and Hall, guard. Tom was both surprised and delighted, while seriously doubting the coach's wisdom. Later, when he found that Steve had not secured promotion as well, most of his delight vanished.