FOURTH DOWN
[Illustration: IN THE VERY CENTER OF IT, PLUNGING, FIGHTING, WAS HEMING]
FOURTH DOWN!
BY
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
AUTHOR OF “THE PLAY THAT WON,”
“THE LOST DIRIGIBLE,” ETC.
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BACK TO SCHOOL 1
II. NEW QUARTERS 15
III. SID OFFERS ADVICE 25
IV. G. W. TUBB 37
V. WITH THE SECOND 46
VI. SIGNALS 57
VII. TOBY MAKES A CALL 67
VIII. TUBB TRIES FOOTBALL 79
IX. YARDLEY PLAYS GREENBURG 94
X. TOBY EMPTIES HIS LOCKER 105
XI. TOM FANNING, OPTIMIST 117
XII. FIRST TEAM VS. SECOND 136
XIII. TEAM-MATES FALL OUT 146
XIV. TOBY AT QUARTER 156
XV. THE “TOUGH BUNCH” 169
XVI. TUBB WINS PROMOTION 189
XVII. AN “ACCIDENT” 201
XVIII. A QUARTER-BACK RUN 218
XIX. ARNOLD HAS A THOUGHT 231
XX. AN ENCOUNTER ON THE BEACH 241
XXI. TUBB BARKS A KNUCKLE 255
XXII. A VISIT TO THE OFFICE 269
XXIII. TUBB ON THE TRAIL 283
XXIV. FRICK IS CALLED AWAY 294
XXV. FOURTH DOWN 305
FOURTH DOWN
CHAPTER I
BACK TO SCHOOL
“We ought to be there in about twenty minutes,” observed Arnold
Deering, glancing at his watch.
One of his companions in the day-coach tossed the magazine he had been
idly glancing through, to the top of the pile of suitcases beside him,
yawned widely, and nodded without enthusiasm.
“If nothing happens,” he agreed.
“What’s going to happen, you chump?”
“Nothing, I suppose. Only, something might. There might be an
earthquake, or the train might jump the track, or――――”
“Or you might talk sense, Frank! As for jumping the track, this old
train couldn’t jump a crack in the floor! I guess you’re wishing
something would happen so you wouldn’t have to go back.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Frank Lamson answered doubtfully. “I guess I don’t
mind――much. School’s all right after a day or two. It’s getting into
the swing, just at first, that’s hard.”
“In the interest of education,” proclaimed Arnold pompously, “I move
that summer vacations be abolished.”
“Put it the other way around,” said Frank, “and I’ll second the motion.
Joking aside, though, summer vacations are fine, but they certainly
spoil a chap for hard work.” He shook his head dolefully. He was a
heavily-built youth of seventeen, but the heaviness was that of bone
and sinew rather than of fat. With regular features, dark hair and eyes
and a healthy skin, he was undeniably good-looking, although the mouth
somehow suggested a sort of lazy arrogance and led an observer to the
conclusion that he was not invariably as amiable as at present. He was
almost painfully correct as to attire.
“Work!” sighed Arnold. “Why introduce unpleasant subjects? Ever since
I struck Yardley fellows have dinned it into me that this year is the
toughest of all. ‘If you think Third Class is hard,’ they said, ‘just
wait till you’re in Second!’ It doesn’t sound good to me, Frank!”
“Piffle! Fellows always talk that way. Even First Class fellows shake
their heads and tell you they’re the hardest worked bunch in school,
and any one with a grain of sense knows that the last year’s a perfect
cinch. Anyway, you don’t need to worry. You’re starting clean. I’ve got
a condition to work off, worse luck. I’m the one who ought to be sore.”
“Too bad,” said Arnold sympathetically. “Still, ‘Old Tige’s’ bark is
worse than his bite, Frank. You’ll get clear all right.”
“Hope so.” Frank leaned across the piled-up luggage to look through the
window. A fleeting glimpse of the sun-flecked surface of Long Island
Sound met his vision, and he frowned, mentally contrasting the lazy,
frolic-filled days of the passing summer with the duties drawing nearer
every minute. “Light House Point,” he said, nodding. “Greenburg in ten
minutes.”
“If nothing happens,” quoted Arnold, with a smile. Like the boy
opposite him, he was seventeen years of age, and, like him, too, he
was extremely well-dressed. But in Arnold Deering’s case the attire
appeared to stop short of effort, or it may have been that he was less
conscious of it. While it is fair to call Frank good-looking it is no
exaggeration to say that Arnold was handsome. A straight nose under
a broad forehead, deep brown eyes, a mouth showing good-temper, and a
round chin, all went to make up a countenance extremely attractive.
He wore his dark brown hair brushed straight back, a style that went
well both with his face and with his height and slenderness. There
was nothing effeminate about him, though. He was not what fellows
contemptuously call a “pretty boy” and his slim frame was well-muscled
and suggested the best of physical condition.
“Don’t think I’d mind if something did happen,” answered Frank, rather
disconsolately, “so long as it put off the evil day.”
“Cheer up, old thing!” laughed Arnold. “To-morrow you’ll be as gay as a
lark, won’t he, Toby?”
The third member of the party, who, next the window, had been occupied
with a magazine for the last half-hour, turned a pair of very blue eyes
toward the speaker and smiled. Although he had been following the story
closely, the conversation of his companions had not been entirely lost
to him, and Arnold’s question had reached him between the last word on
page 19 and the continuation on an elusive page 134. “I’d never expect
to see Frank as gay as a lark,” he replied readily. “If you had said
as happy as a seagull, though――――” He returned to the search for page
134.
“Seagull?” protested Arnold. “The silly things never _are_ happy!
They’re always crying and making a fuss.”
“Oh, they’re happy enough,” said the other, with a twinkle in his eyes,
“but they don’t want to think so!”
Arnold laughed and Frank said, “You go to the dickens, Toby,” but
grinned a little as he said it. There had been a time when he would
have taken Toby Tucker’s jest not so amiably, but closer intimacy with
that youth had rendered his dignity less tender.
“Toby’s got you sized up, Frank,” laughed Arnold. “You do like to
grouch a bit, you know.”
“We all do, at times,” said Toby, comfortingly. He found the page he
was seeking and settled back again. But Arnold plucked the magazine
from his hands and tossed it to the opposite seat.
“We’re nearly in Greenburg, T. Tucker,” he said. “Sit up like a
gentleman and talk to us.”
Toby looked reproachfully at his friend and regretfully at the
magazine. Then he smiled. He had rather a remarkable smile, had Toby.
It made you forget that his nose was too short, his chin almost
aggressively square, his tanned face too liberally freckled, his hair
undeniably red. It made him almost good-looking and eminently likable.
Tobias Tucker’s smile was a valuable asset to him, although he didn’t
know it.
“What shall I talk about?” he asked. “Want me to tell you a dreadfully
funny story?”
“What’s it about?” demanded Arnold, suspiciously.
“About old Cap’n Gaines,” replied Toby, innocently. “He――――”
“_Help!_” cried the others with unflattering unanimity.
“If you ever try to tell that again, Toby,” added Arnold, very stern
and very solemn, “we’ll――――”
But what was to happen in such an event was never told, for what
happened at that moment very effectually ended Arnold’s discourse.
There was a terrific grinding of brakes, a loud hissing sound, and an
irresistible tendency on the part of every one and everything in the
day-coach to proceed hurriedly to the front door. Because of various
obstructions none succeeded, but all did their best. Arnold landed in
Frank’s lap and Toby draped himself over the piled-up luggage, his
head hanging over the back of the seat ahead. A cloud of unsuspected
dust filled the car as, with a series of emphatic and uncomfortable
jerks, the train came to a standstill. To the accompaniment of a vocal
confusion of cries, exclamations, and grunts, the occupants of the car
disentangled themselves from each other or picked themselves from the
floor.
“Get――off――me!” groaned Frank. “You’ve――broken――my neck!”
“What was it?” gasped Arnold, relieving the other of his unwelcome
embrace. “Are we wrecked?”
“I am, anyway!” growled Frank. “Where’s my hat? Oh, thanks!” He
accepted it from a dazed occupant of the seat ahead. Toby Tucker
retired from his graceful position atop the suitcases and observed
Arnold questioningly, his straw hat tilted down to the bridge of his
nose. Arnold chuckled. “Guess it was Frank’s earthquake,” he said.
“Keep your places!” admonished a trainman, putting his head in the
forward door. “Obstruction on the track! No danger!”
“Gee!” muttered Toby. “That was some stop, fellows!”
“It sure was!” agreed Frank emphatically, feeling doubtfully of his
neck. “It nearly snapped my head off! And then Arn landed on me like a
ton of bricks.”
“Let’s go see,” said Toby. “What’s this?” He raised a foot from which
dangled Arnold’s hat. “I’m sorry. Sort of mussed, I’m afraid.”
Arnold took it, viewed it ruefully and put it on. “It’s all Frank’s
fault,” he grumbled as he joined the exodus through the nearer door.
“He insisted that something was going to happen, and it did!”
How near that something had come to being a catastrophe was revealed
to them when they pushed their way through the throng at the head of
the train. Not eighty feet distant from the pilot of the throbbing
locomotive stood a lone box-car, its forward truck lodged against its
rear. It was loaded and sealed and marked “Greenburg.” A curve in the
track behind had hidden it from the fireman’s sight until there had
remained just space in which to avert a collision.
“How do you suppose it got here?” asked Frank.
“Front truck got loose and the car broke its coupling, so they say,”
volunteered a boy beside him.
“Hello, Billy,” greeted Frank. “You on the train? I didn’t see you. I
suppose this will hold us up awhile, eh?”
“I thought they always had a caboose on the tail-end of a freight,”
objected Arnold.
“I believe they do,” agreed Billy Temple, “but this car and some more
were on a siding about a mile back and they were sort of switching ’em
into the Greenburg yard. Hello, Tucker. What car were you fellows in?”
“Fourth, I guess,” answered Arnold. “If it hadn’t been for Frank,
though, I’d have landed in the first when we stopped! Felt as if my
spine was being pushed right through to the front of me!”
“Me too,” chuckled Temple. “There was an old codger in my car with
a basket of eggs. He got on at that last stop we made. There wasn’t
much room, so he kept the eggs in his lap. Then Mr. Engineer put the
airbrakes on and――Bingo!”
“What happened?” demanded Arnold delightedly.
“Why, the old gentleman and the eggs went on top of a fat man in front.
Talk about your omelets! Oh, boy!”
“Let’s go back and sit down,” suggested Toby when Temple’s narrative
had been properly appreciated. “It’s too hot out here. And I suppose we
won’t get started again for an hour.”
“More like two,” grumbled Frank. “They’ll have to send a wrecking
train and lift that car out of the way. Rotten luck!”
“Hark to the plaintive wail of the seagull,” murmured Toby.
“That’s right, Frank,” Arnold chuckled. “Ten minutes ago you wanted
something to happen to keep you from getting to Yardley, and now――――”
“That’s all right,” answered Frank haughtily, “but it’s nearly four,
and supper’s at six.”
“True, O Solomon! I get your viewpoint. There is much in what you say.
Still, if we get moving again in an hour or so――――”
“We might walk, if it wasn’t for the bags,” mused Toby. “It can’t be
more than eight or nine miles.”
“Eight or nine miles!” moaned Arnold. “And on an empty stomach!”
“We-ell, I meant on the railroad,” said Toby demurely, “but if you
prefer――――”
“Wish we had a pack of cards,” said Frank gloomily as they returned
to their car. “We might have a three-handed game of something. Or get
Billy Temple in here.”
“I’m going to finish that story I was reading,” said Toby. “You two
play.”
“Well, if we can find some cards,” began Arnold, leading the way to
their seats. Then: “What’s the matter with the chap over there, Toby?
Nose-bleed?” he asked.
Toby, following his friend’s gaze, saw a pale-faced, large-eyed boy of
perhaps fifteen holding a crimson-stained handkerchief to his face.
“Guess so,” said Toby. “Maybe he got bumped. Wonder if he knows how to
stop it?”
“Do you?” Arnold asked, pushing by to his seat.
“Yes, I know four or five ways. Guess I’ll ask him.”
He left the others and walked back three seats to where the boy was
hunched somewhat disconsolately beside an open window. He was a
surprisingly unattractive chap, Toby thought, but maybe he couldn’t
help that unwholesome white complexion. But he could help, Toby told
himself a moment later, that very soiled collar he was wearing!
“Nose-bleed?” asked Toby smilingly.
The boy shook his head, looking up over the stained handkerchief with
an expression of sullen suspicion in his staring brown eyes.
“What’s the trouble then?” Toby took the vacant seat. “Let me have a
look, won’t you?”
After a second of hesitation the boy removed the handkerchief,
revealing a short but deep cut on his upper lip. It was bleeding
profusely. Toby clucked sympathetically. “How’d you get it?” he asked.
“I was getting a drink back there,” muttered the boy, “when the train
stopped. It threw me against the arm of a seat, I guess. Anyway, first
thing I knew I was on the floor.” His tone was resentful and his look
seemed to hold Toby to blame for the accident.
“Too bad,” said the latter kindly. “Got another handkerchief with you?”
The boy shook his head. “I’ll lend you one, then. I’ll get it and wash
the cut well. You step back to the water tank.”
Toby returned to his seat and dragged his suitcase from the pile.
“Fellow’s got a nasty cut on his lip,” he explained. “Fell down when
the train slowed up and hit on something.”
“What are you going to do?” inquired Frank. “Operate on him?”
“Find a handkerchief for him.”
“Who is he? One of our chaps?” asked Arnold.
“I don’t know. He may be. Doesn’t look it. Get your enormous feet out
of the way. I’ll be back in a sec.”
“If you want any one to administer the ether――――” suggested Frank.
Toby laughed and joined his patient by the rear door. There he gave
the wound a thorough washing, while the boy scowled and grunted. Then,
seeing that the sides of the cut ought to be brought together, he left
the other with a folded handkerchief pressed to the wound and made
his way forward to the baggage car. When he returned he had a roll of
surgeon’s tape and a wad of absorbent cotton. The boy protested in
his sullen way against further repairs, but Toby overruled him. “You
don’t want a nasty scar there,” he said cheerfully. “You hold this
cotton there until I get the tape ready. That’s it. All right now. Hold
steady, now. I’m not hurting you. There! Now we’ll roll this cotton in
the handkerchief and you can stop the blood with it. I don’t think it
will bleed much longer. Have you got far to go?”
“Wissining,” muttered the boy.
“Oh, do you live in Wissining?”
“No, I’m going to school there,” answered the other resentfully. “I
thought maybe you were, too.”
“Why, yes, I am. You must be a new boy then.”
The other nodded. “I’ve never seen the rotten place,” he said.
“Really?” asked Toby rather coldly. “Well, I hope you’ll like it better
than you think.”
The boy stared back in his sullen fashion. “Shan’t,” he muttered. Toby
shrugged.
“That’s up to you, I guess.” He nodded curtly and moved away, feeling
relieved at the parting. But the boy stopped his steps.
“Say, what’ll I do with this handkerchief?” he asked.
“Oh, throw it away, please,” said Toby.
If he had done so this story might have been different.