THE BATTLE
VARRELL took to the management of the team with a quietness and
assurance that put hope into the hearts of the small but determined band
which represented the great West. The few days that were left for
practice were used to the utmost. In the morning the captain found time
to show individual players about shooting and lifting and stopping
shots. In the afternoon he drilled the team in passing and dodging and
checking. There was a little murmuring when a big forward was taken out
of the game because he was uncertain on his skates; and more still when
another was relegated to the list of substitutes for playing his own
game instead of fitting into the scheme for team work. But Varrell’s
answer was conclusive: “Our only chance to win is by team play. We have
no stars, and on their team are two or three men who have played in the
best city rinks. United we win; scattered we lose.” The murmurers said
no more.
That last Saturday before the Christmas holidays was clear and cold. The
course had been chosen on the river where high banks ran nearly parallel
twenty yards apart. The snow, which had been cleared away the day
before, was piled up behind the goal-posts, forming end barriers sixty
yards from each other, and completing, with the river banks, a natural
enclosure of about the regular rink size.
[Illustration: The Western contingent were established among the pines
on the right.—Page 26.]
On the banks gathered the patriotic factions,—the New Englanders in the
open field on the left, swaggering merrily about their fires and hurling
derisive cheers across the ice to the Western contingent, who were
established among the pines on the right. This latter band of
supporters, though weaker in numbers, had, from their position, a
certain advantage which they made the most of. They swarmed into the
trees with impromptu banners; when they were out-cheered, they devised
an unintelligible chant which made up for lack of voices; and, finally,
Tompkins of Montana developed a weird, penetrating yell, something
between a whoop and a scream, which no one on the opposite bank could
imitate or match, and which he uttered at impressive intervals from the
upper branches of the tallest pine.
Yet, with all this show of patriotism, the noisy rivalry seemed quite
free from bitterness. The gibes flew back and forth; there were cheers
and counter cheers and chants, and Montana hoots from the pine tree, but
the mood was of frolic, not of fight. For the spectators it was a lark,
pure and simple; hardly any one really cared at the outset what the
result was to be.
On the ice the spirit was different. Dick looked into John Curtis’s face
and, behind the patronizing grin, read very clearly a poorly masked
defiance. Todd, the Yank forward end, fingered his stick nervously over
the ice as he waited for the call to places, and on his cheeks appeared
the telltale white spots which Dick had seen before in the great
football games when Toddy had set his teeth and fought for ground by the
inch. Bosworth, the Yank coverpoint, leaned scowling on his stick, eying
his opponents with sombre malevolence.
“They are fighters, not players,” said Dick to himself, disapprovingly.
“They seem to think they’re out against Hillbury.”
And it did not occur to him that his own men looked equally fierce and
determined. Sands stood ready at goal, but he had not a word for the boy
who was beside him waiting to take his sweater when the game was called.
Varrell was moving about with the quiet confidence of a master, which is
more impressive to an opponent than noisy display. And as for Melvin
himself, one did not need to be told that his whole heart was in the
contest. The school knew well that what Melvin did, he did with all his
might; a stranger would have read determination in the open face. Little
Durand was about the only one of the fourteen who seemed to share the
mood of the spectators. He flourished and circled about, chattering
gayly up to the very moment of beginning.
The preliminaries were soon arranged. “Ready!” called the captains, and
a moment later, at the first sound of the referee’s whistle, the two
forwards were scraping and twisting to secure the puck on the
“face-off.” Curtis got it, or thought he had; but before he could really
call it his, a Greaser blocked his play, and Durand, dexterously picking
out the puck, swept it across to Rawle, who dribbled it along, passed
back to Durand, received it again, and lost it in the crush at the Yank
goal. In another moment it came flying through the air on a lift, far
down in the Greaser defence field.
Dick succeeded in stopping it and sending it on toward Varrell. The
Greaser captain was off-side; but he allowed his opponent just to touch
the puck, and then with a sudden swing to one side he was off down the
ice, sweeping the puck with him. The first opponent he dodged. Big
Curtis, who was next in order, made him pass; but the exchange gave him
the puck again, and after several quick diagonal passes with Durand that
brought them near the Yank goal, Varrell gave his stick a sudden hard
flourish, and the puck shot like an arrow between the goal-posts,
grazing the goal-tender’s knee as it passed.
It was all done so quickly, so unexpectedly, that for a moment the
Western supporters under the pines and in the pines seemed unaware that
their team had scored. Then as the sticks of the team brandished in air
made the fact clear, a confused mixture of cheers, screeches, whoops,
and catcalls gave proof that the West was both patriotic and
appreciative. On the New England side indifference seemed to prevail.
“One!” said Sands with joy, as the puck came back to the centre.
“The first one, you mean,” returned Dick, in a low tone. “We’re not
through yet.”
The next goal came hard. The Eastern team was heavier and generally
stronger, but the members could not or would not play together; and if
they got the puck down near the Greaser goal, they usually lost it
before the goal was really threatened. Once a hard shot close at hand
struck Sands in the pit of the stomach, and the spectators cheered and
jeered as the gasping lad feebly lifted the puck away from its dangerous
proximity to the goal. He had his breath again in a moment, however,
apparently none the worse for his experience. Soon after, Curtis and
Durand came together as both rushed for the puck at the same time, and
the spectators under the trees cheered wildly as the little fellow
crouched low for the collision, and the big football player sprawled
over him upon the ice. But Varrell was the objective point of the
strongest attack. Though he played coverpoint, he had an arrangement
with Brown, one of the forwards, to exchange places on signal; and the
result was that he appeared now in the defence, now in the attack,
apparently scenting the course the puck was destined to take, and always
equal to the need.
The Yanks grew rougher and more violent. Todd took to body checking
where it was not necessary; Bosworth, when a Greaser got the puck away
from him, followed on at his heels with ill-concealed malice, and banged
away viciously at the unlucky man’s shins, even though it was apparent
that the puck was wholly beyond the pursuer’s reach. Such tactics,
unless checked, are usually the prelude to rougher play; and Dick, for
this reason, was doubly grateful when, from the edge of the mêlée around
the Yank goal-posts, Rawle swiped the puck through a second time. Play
had hardly been resumed when the referee’s whistle announced the end of
the first half.
As was to be expected, the jubilation under the pines was earnest and
loud. In the opposite camp, where the neglected fires were dying away in
smoke, quite different conditions prevailed. A few, with heroic
repression of natural sympathy, still pretended to regard the whole
matter as a joke, in which victory or defeat meant little or nothing.
The great majority, however, unable to rise to this level, were
distinctly conscious of having in some way been cheated. They had come
out to be amused, and part of the amusement was to consist in seeing the
impudent Greasers given a sound beating. And here were their men,
including such big husky athletes as Curtis and Todd, and fellows who
had been glorified as city rink experts, like Bosworth and Richmond,
overthrown by a set of amateurs.
“Rotten!” said Marks, the connoisseur of sports, as he interviewed
Curtis and Todd during the intermission. “Perfectly rotten! Did you get
us up here to fool us?”
“I didn’t ask you to come,” returned Curtis, trying to keep his good
nature. “If you can do much better, come out yourself.”
“Oh, I’m no athlete,” rejoined Marks, hastily, “but I can see what the
fault is better than you do. That Varrell plays most of their game.
You’ve got to use him up. Give them a rougher game. Push ’em hard. When
two of you start for the puck, let the puck go where it pleases; just
smash at the man. When the man’s out of the way, you can take your time
about the puck. You’re heavy and have the advantage.”
“That seems rather mean,” said Curtis.
“Mean!” exclaimed Marks. “Did you ask a Hillbury man to excuse you when
you tackled him on the football field? I guess not.”
Curtis glanced around the group and read the looks of approval. “Well,
then,” he said finally, “make it rough, but let’s have fair play,”—his
eye rested on Bosworth as he said this,—“and no low tricks. Everything
must be straight and aboveboard.”
When the game began again, the new spirit was immediately apparent. The
Yanks got the puck and tried to drive it down by weight, but the
off-side rule checked them. Durand still stole the puck from behind
their sticks and put his shoulder so low that he could not be
overturned; while Varrell still hovered on the edge of the scrimmage and
drew the puck as a magnet draws a scrap of iron. Despite the heavy body
checking, the play lingered about the Yank goal, for the Yank forwards
did not follow the puck back closely on the defence, and Melvin or Sands
soon sent it into Yank territory again. Rawle tried for goal, and
failed. Durand missed in his turn, and then Varrell got the puck thirty
yards away, and while his opponents were watching for a pass, by a long
beautiful shoot made the third score for his side.
And now the Yanks’ patience gave out. Rules or no rules, they were
determined that their opponents should make no more goals.
Again Varrell took the puck, and with his familiar tricky movement of
the wrist started down the ice.
“Look out for Bosworth,” yelled Durand, whom Todd was obstructing at the
side-lines. But Varrell’s dull ears served him ill. Bosworth, who was
close at the Greaser’s heels, thrust his stick suddenly between
Varrell’s rapidly moving legs and threw him with a crash to the ice,
right under the feet of Richmond, who was speeding up from another
direction. Richmond went down, too, tripping hard against the prostrate
form.
The Greasers hissed, the Yankees groaned. John Curtis, be it said to his
credit, ordered Bosworth from the ice before the referee could
interfere; but the advantage of the “accident,” as Bosworth called it,
was on the side of the Yankees. Varrell was helped off the scene, barely
able to lift his leg.
The teams went on with six men each. With Varrell the Greasers had lost
the mainspring of their attack. Superior weight and superior physical
strength began to tell. The puck kept returning to the Greaser defence.
Then came a scrimmage before the goal, a quick shoot from the outskirts
of the crowd, and the Yanks were exulting over their first score.
“Only four minutes more,” pleaded Dick, skating down the Greaser line.
“Hold them that long for Varrell’s sake. We can do it, if we will.”
And the weary six rallied once more. Durand was knocked about like the
puck itself, but he stuck gamily to his work, and zigzagged and circled
and dodged as before. Sands saved one goal with his hands, another with
his feet. Dick met body check with body check, and lifted high and sure.
But never before had he listened so anxiously for the sound of the
referee’s whistle. When it came, and he knew certainly that the game was
won, he flung his stick into the air and led the gathering Greasers in a
long, hearty cheer for Varrell, who, lying on the meadow bank bedded in
Yank blankets, was watching the result with his heart in his mouth.
“Great work you did this afternoon,” said Tompkins two hours later,
popping his head into Melvin’s room. “Any part of you that isn’t black
and blue?”
“I didn’t suffer much,” replied Melvin. “It wasn’t as bad as it looked.”
“I hope not,” said Tompkins. “Do you know what battle in Roman history
the fray reminded me of?”
Dick shook his head. “I don’t know any history. I passed it off last
year.”
“The battle of the Ostrogoths and Visigoths,” replied Tompkins, wisely.
“It’s a case of history repeating itself. The Visigoths won both times.”
And then he added, “I don’t believe the Goths would have been guilty of
some of the things I saw done on the ice this afternoon.”
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