Major putnam stone is dead, but his soul goes marching on. Mainly it
does its marching on at Midsylvania University. Every fall, down yonder,
on the night of the day of the last game of the season, when the squad
has broken training and many of the statutes touching on the peace and
quiet of the community, there is a dinner. At the end of this dinner the
captain of the team stands up at one end of the table and chants out:
“Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom!”--just like that. Whereupon there
are loud cheers. And then, at the far end of the table from him, the
chairman of the athletic community stands up in his place and lifts his
mug and says, in the midst of a little silence: “To the memory of
Major Putnam Stone!” Then everybody rises and drinks; and there are no
heel-taps.
This ceremony is never omitted. It is a tradition; and they go in
rather strongly for traditions at Midsylvania, and always have since the
days when there was not much else to Midsylvania except its traditions.
The team may have won that afternoon, or it may have lost. The boys may
be jubilating for the biggest victory of the whole year, or, over the
trenches and the tankards, consoling themselves and one another for an
honourable defeat at the hands of their classic rival, Vanderbeck. It
makes no difference. Win or lose, they toast the shade and the name of
Major Stone.
So there is no danger that the Major will be forgotten at the
University, any more than there is danger of such a thing coming to pass
in the _Evening Press_ shop where the Major used to work. Most of the
old hands who worked there with him once upon a time are gone elsewhere
now. One or two or three are dead and the rest of us, with few
exceptions, have scattered over the country. But among the men who are
our successors on the staff the spirit of the old man walks, and there
is a tale of him to be told to each beginner who comes on the paper. It
is as much a part of the history of the city room as the great stories
that Ike Webb, who was our star man, wrote back in those latter
nineties; as much a part as the sayings and the doings of little Pinky
Gilfoil, who passed out last year, serving with the American ambulance
corps over in France.
The last time I was down that way I stopped over between trains and went
around on Jefferson Street to look the old place over. It was late in
the afternoon, after press time for the final edition, and the day force
had all departed; but out of the press-room to greet me came limping old
Henry, the black night watchman, who, according to belief, had been a
fixture of the _Evening Press_ since the corner stone of the building was
laid.
“Yassuh,” said Henry to me after this and that and the other thing had
been discussed back and forth between us; “we still talks a mighty much
about ole Majah. Dis yere new issue crop of young w'ite genelmens we
got workin' 'round yere now'days gits a chanc't to hear tell about him
frequent an' of'en. They's a picture of him hangin' upstairs in de big
boss' room on de thud flo'. Big boss, he sets a heap of store by 'at air
picture. An' they tells me 'at de mate to it is hangin' up in 'at
air new structure w'ich they calls de Forbes Memorial, out at de
Univussity.”
If my recollection serves me aright I have once or twice before touched
on sundry chapters in the life and works of the old Major, telling how,
for him, nothing of real consequence happened in this world between the
surrender of Lee at Appomattox and the day, nearly forty years later,
when all his tidy property was wiped out in an unfortunate investment,
and he moved out of his suite at the old Gault House and abandoned
his armchair in a front window at the Shawnee Club, and, at the age
of sixty-four and a salary of twelve dollars a week, took a job as cub
reporter on the _Evening Press_; how because he would persist in gnawing
at the rinds of old yesterdays instead of nosing into the things of the
current day he was a most utter and complete failure at the job; how
once through chance, purely, he uncovered the whoppingest scoop that a
real reporter could crave for and then chucked it away again to save a
woman who by the standards of all proper people wasn't worth saving in
the first place; how by compassion of the owner of the paper and against
the judgment of everybody else, he hung on all through the summer,
a drag upon the organization and a clog on the ankle of City Editor
Wilford Devore; how on the opening day of the famous Lyric Hall
convention he finally rose to an emergency that was of his liking and
with the persuasive aid of a brace of long-barrelled, ivory-handled
cavalry revolvers stampeded the Stickney gang, when they tried by force
to seize the party machinery, having first put that official bad man and
deputy subheader of the opposition, Mink Satterlee, out of business, by
love-tapping Mink upon his low and retreating forehead with the butt end
of one of his shooting irons; and how then as a reward therefor, he was
made war-editor of the sheet, thereafter fitting comfortably and snugly
into a congenial berth especially devised and created for his occupancy.
All this has elsewhere been told.
This present tale, which has to do in part with the Major and in part
with the student body of Midsylvania, dates from sometime after the day
when he became our war editor, and was writing those long and tiresome
special articles of his, dealing favourably with Jackson's Campaign in
the Valley, and unfavourably with Sherman's March to the Sea.
Midsylvania, those days, was a university with a long vista of historic
associations behind it and a puny line of endowments to go forward
on; so it went forward very slowly indeed. To get the most favourable
perspective on Midsylvania you must needs look backward into a
distinguished but mouldy past, and consider the list of dead-and-gone
warriors and statesmen and educators and clergymen who had been
graduated in the class of '49 or the class of '54, or some other class.
Chief among its physical glories were a beech tree, under which Daniel
Boone was said to have camped overnight once; an ancient chapel building
of red brick, with a row of fat composition pillars, like broken legs
in plaster casts, stretching across its front to uphold its squatty
portico; and in the centre of the campus, a noseless statue of Henry
Clay.
Sons of Old Families in the state attended it, principally, I suppose,
because their fathers before them had attended it; sons of new families
mostly went elsewhere for their education. With justice, you might speak
of Midsylvania as being conservative, which was true; but when you said
that, you said it all, and it let you out. There was nothing more to be
said.
If poor shabby old Midsylvania lagged behind sundry of her sister
schools in the matter of equipment, most certainly and most woefully
did she lag behind them in the matter of athletics. In that regard, and
perhaps other regards, she was an Old Ladies' Home. Eight governors of
American commonwealths, six of them dead and two yet living, might be
listed on the roster of her alumni--and were; but you sought in vain
there for the name of a great pitcher or of a consistent winner of track
events, or of a champion pole vaulter. If anybody mentioned Midsylvania
in connection with college sports, it was to laugh. So there was a good
deal of laughing one fall when, for the first time, she went in for
football. The laughter continued, practically without abatement, through
that season; but early the following season it died away altogether,
to be succeeded by a wave of astonishment and of reluctantly conceded
admiration, which ran from the Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico, and
from the Atlantic Seaboard to the Mississippi River. Other football
teams began to respect Midsylvania's football team. They had to; she
mauled it into their respective consciousness.
The worm had turned--and turned something besides the other cheek, at
that; for in that second year she won her first game, which was her game
with Exstein Normal. Now Exstein Normal came up proudly, like an army
glorious with banners, and went down abruptly, like a scuttled ship:
Score, thirty-one to nothing. Following on this, she beat Holy Mount's
team of fiery Louisiana Creoles, with a red-headed demon of a New
Orleans Irish boy for their captain; and, in succession, she took on and
overcame Cherokee Tech., and Alabama State, and Bayless.
She held to a tie what was conceded to be the best team that
Old Dominion had ever mustered; and Vanderbeck, the largest and,
athletically considered, the strongest of them all, bested her only by
the narrowest and closest of margins on Vanderbeck's own gridiron. It
was one of the upsetting things that never can happen, but occasionally
do, that Midsylvania should go straight through to Thanksgiving Day with
a miraculous record of five victories, one tie and one defeat out of
seven games played, and with not a man in the regular lineup seriously
damaged. And yet not so miraculous either when you came to cast
up causes to find results. Her men had steam and had speed and had
strategy, which meant team-work; in fact, they had everything. Heaven
alone knew where, within the space of one year they had got it, but they
had it: that was the main point, the incontrovertible detail.
You know the old saying: Home folks are always the last ones to
appreciate us. More or less I think this must have been true of us as
regards our own University's football outfit. Undoubtedly a lot had been
written and said in cities farther south about it, before the _Evening
Press_ and the other papers in town began fully to realise that
Midsylvania was putting the town on the football map. But when we did
realise it we gave her and her team front page space and sporting page
space, and plenty of both. Before we had been content to bestow upon
her a weekly column which one of the undergraduates turned in at space
rates, and pretty poor space rates at that--departmental stuff, mostly
dealing with faculty changes, and Greek letter society doings and campus
gossip and such-like. Now though almost anything that anybody on the
staff or off of it chose to grind out about the boys who wore the M on
their sweater breasts found a warm welcome after it landed on the City
Editor's desk. Local pride in local achievement had been roused and
if anybody knows of anything stronger than local pride in a city of
approximately a hundred and fifty thousand population, please tell me
what it is. We covered the games that were played at home that year as
fully as the limitations of a somewhat scanty staff permitted, and Ike
Webb was detailed to travel with the squad when it played away from
home. He sent back by telegraph, regardless of expense, stories on the
games abroad, which were smeared all over the sheet under spread heads
and signed as being “By Our Special Staff Correspondent.” They were good
stories--Ike was not addicted to writing bad ones, ever--and they made
circulation.
There is no telling how many letters from subscribers came to the chief
commending him for his journalistic enterprise. He ran a good many of
them. The paper rode with the team on the crest of the popularity wave.
Trust Devore for that. He had a sense for news-values which compensated
and more than compensated for certain temperamental shortcomings as
exhibited inside the plant.
One day in the tail end of November the old Major came stumping down the
stairs from his sanctum--anyhow, he always called it his sanctum--upon
the top floor in a little partitioned-off space adjoining the chief's
office, where he had a desk of his own and where he did his work. He had
a wad of copy paper in his hand. In dress and in manner he was the same
old Major that he had been in the flush times two years back, when he
used to come in daily, ostensibly to get some exchanges but really to
sit and sit, and bore everybody who would listen with tiresome long
accounts of things that happened between 1861 and 1865--not the
shabby forlorn figure he became that first summer after he got his
twelve-dollar-a-week job--but his former self, recreated all over again.
His fullbreasted shirt of fine linen jutted out above the unbuttoned
top of his low waistcoat in pleaty, white billows and his loose black
sailor's tie made a big clump at his throat where the ends of his Lord
Byron collar came together. His cuffs almost covered his hands and his
longish white hair was like silk floss lying on his coat collar behind.
That little white goatee of his jutted out under his lower lip like
a tab of carded wool. Altogether he was the Major of yore, rejoicing
sartorially in his present state of comparative prosperity. The boys
around the shop always said that if the Major had only ten dollars and
fifty cents in the world he would spend five dollars of it for his club
dues and five of it on his wardrobe and give the remaining fifty cents
to some beggar. I guess he would have, too.
He came downstairs this day and walked up to Devore, and laid down his
sheaf of pages at Devore's elbow. “A special contribution, sir,” he said
very ceremoniously.
Devore ran through the first page, which was covered with pencil
marks--the Major always wrote his stuff out in long hand--and glanced
up, a little bit astonished.
“Kind of out of your usual line, isn't it, Major Stone?” he asked.
“In a measure, sir--yes,” stated the old man; and he rocked on his
high heels as though he might be nervous regarding the reception his
contribution would have in this quarter. “Under the circumstances I feel
justified in a departure from the material I customarily indite. But if
you feel--”
“Oh, that's all right!” said Devore, divining what the Major meant to
say before the Major finished saying it. “There's always room for good
stuff.”
He laid the first sheet aside and shuffled through the sheets under it,
picking out lines and appraising the full purport of the manuscript, as
any skilled craftsman of a newspaper copy desk can do in half the length
of time an outsider would be needing to make out the sense of it.
“About young Morehead, eh? I didn't know you knew him, Major?”
“Personally I do not. But, in his lifetime, I knew his gallant father
well; in fact, intimately. For some months we served together on the
staff of General Leonidas Polk. Accordingly I felt qualified by my
personal acquaintance with his family to treat of the subject as I have
treated it.”
“Oh, I see!” Devore gave an involuntary smile quick burial in the palm
of his cupped hand. “And so you've caught the fever too?”
“Fever, sir? What fever?”
“I mean you've got yourself all worked up about football, the same as
everybody else in town?”
“Not at all, sir. Of the game of football I know little or nothing. In
my college days we concerned ourselves in our sportive hours with very
different pursuits and recreations.”
The Major, as we knew from hearing him tell about it a hundred times,
had left the University of Virginia in his second year to enlist in the
army. And we knew his views on the subject of sports. If a young person
of the masculine gender could waltz with the ladies, and ride a horse
well enough to follow the hounds without falling off at the jumps, and
with a shotgun could kill half the birds he fired at--these, from
the Major's standpoint, were accomplishments enough for any Southern
gentleman, now that the use of duelling pistols had died out. We had
heard him say so, often.
“Football, considered as a game, does not interest me,” he went on
now. “I have never seen it played. But on account of Mr. James Payne
Morehead, Junior, I am interested. Being of the strain of blood that
he is, I am constrained to believe he will acquit himself in a manner
worthy of his ancestry, wheresoever he may be placed. In the article you
have there before you I have said as much.”
“So I notice,” said Devore, keeping most of the irony out of his tone.
“Thank you, Major--we'll stick the yarn in to-morrow.” And then, as the
old man started out: “By the way, Major Stone, if you've never seen a
game you might enjoy seeing the one next Saturday--against Sangamon.
It'll be your last chance this season. I'll save you out a press
ticket--if you don't mind sitting in the newspaper box with the boys
that I'll have out there covering the story?”
“I am obliged to you, sir,” said Major Stone. “I shall be pleased to
avail myself of the courtesy, and nothing could afford me more pleasure
than to have the company of my youthful compatriots in the field of
journalistic endeavour on that occasion.”
He talked like that. Talking, he made you think of the way some people
write in their letters, not of the way anybody else on earth spoke in
ordinary conversation.
Out he went then, all reared back and Devore read the copy through,
chuckling to himself. It wasn't a malicious chuckle, though. Devore was
not likely to forget what the Major did for him that day eighteen months
before at the Lyric Hall convention when Bad Mink Satterlee tried to
cave in Devore's skull with a set of brass knuckles and doubtlessly
would have carried the undertaking through successfully if Major Stone
hadn't been so swiftly deft with the ivory butt of one of his pair of
cavalry pistols, nor to forget how nasty he, as City Editor, had been
before that, during all the months of the Major's apprenticeship as a
sixty-four-year-old cub reporter.
“Just like the old codger!” he said, tapping the manuscript with his
hand affectionately. “Starts out to write about the kid; gives the kid
a couple of paragraphs; and then uses up twenty pages more telling what
great men the kid's father and grandfather were. Here, you fellows, just
listen a minute to this.”
He read a few sentences aloud.
“Get the angle, don't you? Major figures that any spunk and any sense
the Morehead boy's got is a heritage from his revered ancestors, and
that he'll just naturally have to make good because he had 'em for his
ancestors. Well, at that, the Maje is probably right, without realising
it. I'm thinking Captain James Payne Morehead, Junior, and his bunch
of little fair-haired playmates are going to need something more than
they've got now when they go up against that bunch of huskies from
Sangamon next Saturday. How about it, eh?” We knew about it, or at least
we thought we knew about it, as surely as anyone may know in advance of
the accomplished event. There was a note of foreboding in the answers we
made to our immediate superior there in the city room. One of the boys
summed it up: “'Pride goeth before a fall,'” he said; “and biting
off more than you can chaw is bad on the front teeth--provided the
Midsylvania eleven have any front teeth left after the Sangamon eleven
get through toying with their bright young faces on Saturday afternoon.”
Which, differently expressed, perhaps, was the common sentiment. A chill
of dread was descending upon the community at large; in fact, had been
descending like a dark, dank blanket for upward of a week now. During
the first few hours after the announcement came out that the team of
Sangamon College, making their post-season tour, would swing downward
across Messrs. Mason and Dixon's justly celebrated survey marks for
the express purpose of playing against Midsylvania, there had been a
flare-up of jubilation that was statewide.
It was no small honour for victorious Midsylvania that her football
eleven should be the chosen eleven below the Line to meet these
all-conquering gladiators from above it. So everybody agreed, at the
outset. But on second thought, which so often is the better thought of
the two, the opportunity seemed, after all, not so glorious. A hero
may go down leading a forlorn hope--may die holding a last ditch--and
posterity possibly will applaud him; but we may safely figure that he
does not greatly enjoy himself while thus engaged; nor can his friends
and well-wishers, looking on, be so very happy, either, over the dire
and distressful outcome of the sacrificial deed. The nearer came the day
of the game and the more people read about the strength of the invaders,
the more dismal loomed the prospect for the defenders.
To begin with, Sangamon was one of the biggest fresh-water colleges on
the continent, and one of the richest. Sangamon had six times as many
students enrolled as Midsylvania, which meant, of course, six times
the bulk of raw material from which to pick and choose for her team.
Sangamon had a professional coach, paid trainers and paid rubbers; and
Sangamon had a fat fund to support her in her athletic endeavours.
Midsylvania, it is almost needless to state, had none of these. Sangamon
had gone through the fall, mopping up ambitious contenders, east and
west, due north, north by east, and north by west. Sangamon had two
players--not one, but actually two--that the experts of the New York
dailies had nominated for the All-American--her fullback, Vretson, known
affectionately and familiarly as the Terrible Swede; and her star end,
Fay, who, in full football panoply of spiked shoes and padded knickers,
had, on test, done a hundred yards in twelve seconds flat. It isn't
so very often that the astigmatic Eastern sharps can see across the
Appalachians when they come to make up the roster of nominees for the
seasonal hall of football fame. This year, though, they had looked as
far inland as Sangamon. At the peril of a severe eyestrain they had to,
because Sangamon simply would not be denied.
This was what Midsylvania must go up against this coming Saturday
afternoon. Wherefore the apprehension of disaster was that thick you
could slice it with a knife.
They played the game out at Morehead Downs, where every year the Derby
was run. Neither the baseball park nor the rutty common at the back of
the University campus, where the Varsity scrubs and regulars did their
stint at practise, could begin to hold the number that was due to attend
this game, decent weather being vouchsafed. So Morehead Downs it was,
with the lines blocked out in the turf on the inner side of the white
fence that bounded the track, a little way up the home stretch, so that
the judges' stand should not cut off the view of any considerable number
of the spectators sitting across in the grand stand.
For the newspaper fellows they rigged up elbowroom accommodations of
bench and table against the base of the judges' kiosk. There we sat--Ike
Webb and the Major and Gil Boyd, who was our sporting editor, and
myself, all in a row--and there we had been sitting for nearly an hour
before the time for starting. Ike Webb was to do the introduction and
Gil Boyd the running account of the game, play by play. My job was to
keep tab of incidents and local-colour stuff generally. But the old
Major was there as a spectator merely.
He certainly saw a sight. In that town we always measured multitudes
by our Derby Day figures; yet even Derby Days did not often turn out a
bigger crowd than the crowd that swarmed to the Downs that bright gusty
December afternoon. The governor came down from the capital and most
of the statehouse force came with him. There were excursions by rail in
from out in the state, all of them mighty well patronised.
As for the local attendance--well, so far as compiling a directory of
the able-bodied adult white population and a fair sprinkling of the
black was concerned, the enumerators could have simplified and expedited
their task considerably by going up and down the aisles and jotting down
the names as they went. They could have made a fairly complete census
of our prominent families without straying beyond the confines of the
reserved-seat section at the front, or fashionable, side of the grand
stand. And if a single society girl in town was absent it was because
her parents or her guardian kept her at home under lock and key.
Before two o'clock, the slanting floor beneath the high-peaked red roof
of the structure made you think of a big hanging garden, what with the
faces and the figures of all those thousands packed in together, row
after row of them, with the finery of the women standing out from the
massed background in brighter patches of colour, and the little red
pennons that the venders had peddled in the audience all dancing and
swaying, like the petals of wind-blown flowers. That spectacle alone,
viewed from our vantage place over across the race course, was worth the
price of admission to anybody.
Carrying the simile a bit farther, you might have likened two sections
of space in the stand to hothouses where noise was being brought into
bloom, by both artificial and natural means. One of these forcing beds
of sound was where Midsylvania grouped herself--faculty and students
and old graduates. The other, a smaller area, held the visitors from
Sangamon, two hundred strong and more, who had come down three hundred
miles by special train, to root for the challengers, bringing with them
a brass band and their own glee club--or a good part of it, anyhow--and
their own cheer leader.
This cheer leader, being the first of a now common species ever seen
in our parts, succeeded in holding the public eye mighty closely, as
he stood, bareheaded and long-haired, down below on the track, with
his gaudy blue-and-gold sweater on, and his big megaphone in his hand,
jerking his arms and his body back and forth as he directed his chorus
above in its organised cheering and its well-drilled singing of college
songs.
Compared with this output, Midsylvania's cheering arose in larger
volume, which was to be expected, seeing that Midsylvania so greatly
excelled in numbers present, and had behind its delegations the favour
of the onlookers almost to a unit'; but, even so, it seemed to lack the
force and fervour of those vocal volleys arising from the ranks of the
enemy. Each time Sangamon let off a yell it was platoon firing, steady
and rapid and brisk; and literally it crackled on the air. When this had
died away, and Midsylvania had answered back, the result somehow put
you in mind of a boy whistling to keep up his courage while passing a
cemetery after dark.
It is hard to express the difference in words, but, had you been there
that day, you would have caught it in a jiffy. One group was certain of
victory impending and expressed its certainty; the other was doubtful
and betrayed it. In the intervals between the whooping and the singing
Sangamon's imported band would play snatches of some rousing air, or
else Midsyl-vania's band would play; between the two of them pumping up
the pulsebeats of all and sundry.
I was struck by one thing--the Major maintained calm and dignity through
all the preliminary excitement. In the moment of the first really big
outburst, which was when the Varsity's students and former students
marched in behind their band, out of the tail of my eye I caught the
Major with a pencil, checking off the names of the home squad on his
copy of the official programme. Knowing the old fellow as I did, I
guessed he was figuring up to see how many of the players were members
of Old Families. Nearly all of them were, for that matter. He even held
himself in when, at two-fifteen or thereabouts, first one of the teams
and then the other trotted out from under opposite ends of the grand
stand and crossed the track to the field to warm up.
He asked me to point out young Morehead to him; and when I did he
nodded as if in affirmation of a previous decision of his own. On my own
initiative I pointed out some of the other stars to him too.
In advance we knew Sangamon was going to have the advantage of beef
on her side; but I do not think anybody realised just how great the
advantage was until we saw the two teams on the same ground and had
opportunity to compare and appraise them, man for man. Then we saw, with
an added sinking of the spirit--at least I knew my spirit sank at the
inequality of the comparison--that her front line outweighed ours by
pounds upon pounds of brawn.
In another regard as well, and a more essential regard, too, she showed
superiority. For these champions from the upper Corn Belt had what
plainly their opponents always before during the season had likewise
had, but now lacked: they had an enormous conceit of themselves, a
mountainous and a monumental belief in their ability to take this game
away from the rival team.
They had brought it with them--this assurance--and they had fed it
stall-fat beforehand; and now, with the easy and splendid insolence of
lusty, pampered youth, they exhibited it openly before all these hostile
eyes upon the enemy's soil. It showed in them individually and as a
unit. Almost as visibly as though words of defiance had been stencilled
upon their tight-laced jerkins fore and aft, they flaunted forth their
confidence in themselves, somehow expressing it in their rippling leg
muscles and in their broad backs and in their hunched shoulders as they
bunched up into formidable close formation, and in everything they did
and said in the few minutes of practice intervening before they should
be at grips with their opponents.
They accepted the handclaps from the onlookers--a tribute of hospitality
this was, extended by people to whom hospitality for the stranger was as
sacred as their religion and as sincere as their politics--with an air
which betokened, most evidently, that presently they meant to repay
those who greeted them for the greeting, by achieving one of Sangamon's
customary victories in Sangamon's customary workmanlike fashion. Among
them Vretson, the much-advertised, loomed a greater giant above lesser
giants, justifying by bulk alone his title of the Terrible Swede.
As for Midsylvania's players, upon the other hand, it seemed to me, as I
watched them, that they, in turn, watched the young Gogs and Magogs who
were to grapple with them in a half-fearsome, half-furtive fashion. I
marked that they flinched nervously, like débutantes, before the volleys
of friendly applause from the crowd. It occurred to me that their
thoughts must be studded with big black question marks; whereas we
all could understand that no suggestion of doubtfulness punctuated the
anticipations of the opposing eleven touching on the possibilities of
the next two hours.
The feeling of foreboding spread like a cold contagion from the field
to the press stand, affecting the newspaper men; and, becoming generally
epidemic, it reached the spectators. That earlier lustiness was almost
altogether lacking from the outbreak signalling the beginning of play.
In the salvo there was nothing heartening. It appeared rather to be
pitched in the tone of sympathetic consolation for a predestined and an
impending catastrophe; and even the bark and roar of Midsylvania's yell,
as all Midsylvania gave it,' seemed to have almost a hollow daunted
sound to it. Where we sat we could sense this abatement of spirit with
particular plainness; in fact, I rather think Major Stone was the
only person there who did not sense it in its full effect and its full
import.
I am not going to spend overmuch space in describing the first half of
that game; this was in the days when games were divided into halves, and
not quartered up into periods. Anyhow, I have forgotten a good many of
the details. The principal points are what stick out in my memory. I
remember that on the toss of the coin Sangamon won and kicked off.
It was Vretson--no less--who drove his talented punting toe into the
pigskin.
There was a sound as though some one had smote a taut bladder with a
slapstick, and the ball soared upward and away, shrinking from the size
of a watermelon to the size of a gourd, and from a gourd to a goose egg;
and then it came whirling downward again, growing bigger as it dropped.
Woolwine, our quarter, caught it and took a flying start off his shoe
hobs. Fay and the other Sangamon end, whose name I have forgotten, were
after him like a pair of coursing beagles after a doubling hare; and
together they nailed him before he had gone twenty yards, and down he
went, with Fay on top of him and What'shisname on top of Fay. When they
dug the three of them out of their heap little Woolwine still had the
ball under him.
As the teams lined up, boring their heads forward to a common centre,
billy-goat fashion, and Morehead, who was playing end, called out
the signals, “Six--eight--twenty-eight--thirty-one”--or some such
combination of figures--we caught the quaver in his voice. Ike Webb,
sitting next to me, gave a little groan and laid down his pencil, and
put his pessimistic face in his sheltering hands.
“Listen to that tremolo note, will you?” he lamented from between his
fingers. “Licked, by golly, before they start! They won't play to win,
because they're scared to death already. They'll play to keep from being
licked by too big a score, and that means they won't have a chance. Just
you fellows watch and see if I'm not right. Ah-h! There she goes!”
We watched all right; and we saw that our boys meant to try to carry
the ball through for gains. There was not a chance of that, though. They
butted their heads against a stone wall until they fairly addled the
football instincts in their brains. In two attempts they did not advance
the ball six feet; so they tried kicking it. Young Railey punted well
into Sangamon territory and now Sangamon had the ball. She lost it on
a fumble, but got it back a minute or two later on a fumble slip by the
other side. In their respective shortcomings as regards fumbling it was
even-Stephen between the teams; but Ike Webb couldn't view the thing in
any such optimistic light. He had turned into a merciless critic of the
Varsity outfit.
“Aha!” he muttered dolorously as a scrimmaging tangle of forms
disentangled and showed that Sangamon, by a smart bit of strategy, had
gained three yards. “What did I tell you not five minutes back? Those
boys lost their hearts before they even began, and now they're due to
lose their heads too.”
It really looked as though Ike Webb was qualifying for clairvoyant
honours, for promptly Midsylvania's defence became more and more
inefficient, more and more uncertain. Sangamon had a smart field
commander, and he took leeway of the advantage. He set his men to the
job of jamming through; and jam through they did. It took time, though,
because Midsylvania, of course, offered a measure of resistance. To me,
however, it appeared to be the mechanical resistance of bodies in action
rather than anything guided by a spiritual determination--if you get
what I mean. It took a good deal of time; but after a while, by dint of
shoving ahead with all her tonnage against Midsyl-vania's slighter
and lighter displacement, the visitors forced the ball along to
Midsylvania's thirty-yard line.
At this point, Sangamon suddenly changed her tactics. Collop, her
captain, made a gesture with his arms and the Blue tackles dropped back
a little. From the centre of the massed wedge of shapes a signal was
barked out. So swiftly that the spectacle made you think of a pyramid of
pool balls scattering over a pool table when the cue ball hits it hard
on the nose, the visiting players shifted positions.
For ten seconds we lost sight of the ball altogether. When we saw it
again it was cuddling in Vretson's vast, outspread paws. Who had passed
it, or how it got there after being passed, I never knew. Magically it
had materialised in his grasp in the same way that a prestidigitator's
china egg is produced from a countryjake's whiskers. He tucked it into
the bight of his left arm and, with his mighty right arm swinging behind
him as a rudder and before him as a flail, he tore down the field, going
away out to the right.
He was fast for his size--wonderfully fast, and besides, he had perfect
interference to help him along. His mates, skirmishing out on his flank,
threw back and bowled over the men who bored in to tackle him. In his
flight he himself accounted for at least two Varsity players who sprang
round the wings of his protecting line, hoping to intercept the big
sprinter. One he dodged, the other he flung aside; and then he kept on
and on until after a run of thirty-five yards, he flung himself through
the air; and, with Cabell, of Midsylvania, clutching at the wideness
between his shoulder blades, he dropped flat across Midsylvania's goal
line. A groan went up from the grand stand.
There wasn't a sound from any quarter, though, as Vretson squared off to
kick for a goal; but whoops of relief arose when the ball, after soaring
high and straight, veered off under pressure of a puff of air and,
instead of passing over the bar, struck one of the goal posts with
a mellow smack and dropped back. So the score, by the rules of those
times, stood four to naught.
Nearly everybody there, I guess, figured that Sangamon would promptly
buttress her lead by at least four additional points, and very possibly
more; but she didn't. True, she played all round and all over and all
through Midsylvania during the remaining portion of the first half, but
she did not score again. This was due not so much to the rebuttal fight
the defenders offered, for now their playing sagged more woefully weak
than ever, but to small misplays and slip-ups and seeming overconfidence
on the part of Sangamon.
It may have been they were cocksure of their power to score again when
they chose. Maybe they were a trifle tired. Maybe they were satisfied to
postpone the slaughter-house work until toward the end of the game and
make a spectacular, overwhelming finish of it. Anyhow, it struck us,
in the press stand, that the reason behind their failure to push their
advantage still farther, during the next ten minutes or so, was rather
because of their own disinclination than because of any strategy or
strength Midsylvania's plainly despondent eleven presented against them.
Along here I became aware, subconsciously at first, and then in a minute
or so with a fuller sense of realisation, that Major Stone had waked
up. I felt him wriggling on the bench, joggling me in the side with his
elbow; and when I looked at him his face was an indignant pink and his
little white goatee was bristling like a thistle pod.
He was saying something to himself, and by listening, I caught from
his muttered words the purport of the change that had come into the old
man's emotions, which change, as I speedily divined, was exactly what
might have been expected of him. He did not have the attitude of the
average spectator over in the grand stand, for his bump of local pride
was not being bruised, as theirs was, by this exhibition. Nor had he
grasped and assimilated the feelings of those two groups of youngsters
whose cleated feet ripped up the turf in front of him.
It did not lie within his capabilities to share their youthful and,
therefore, profound conviction that all which was desirable in life,
here or hereafter, centred on the results of this struggle; and that
the youth who failed now to acquit himself to the greater glory of his
comrades and his class and his college--and, most of all, himself--would
droop an abased and shameful head through all the years to come. For,
as I may have remarked before, Major Stone was not a bright person, but
rather a stupid one; and his viewpoint on most subjects had not altered
materially since Appomattox.
That was it--it had not altered since Appomattox; and because it had
not he was viewing the present event as a struggle between North and
South--as a conflict into which Civil War causes and Civil War effects
directly entered. Possibly you cannot understand that. But you could if
you had known Major Stone and men like him, most of whom are now dead
and gone. His face turned from a hot pink to a dull brick-dust red, and
he gnawed at his moustache.
“It is monstrous!” I heard him say. “It is incredible! Southern sons
of Southern sires, every damned one of them! And because the odds
are against them they have weakened! I myself can see that they are
weakening every minute. Why, the thing's incredible--that's what it is!
Incredible!”
Just then the whistle blew, and the teams, which had been in a mix-up,
unsnarled themselves. The Sangamon eleven came off the field; some
of them were briskly trotting to prove their fitness, and some were
swaggering a little as their band hit up the tune of Marching Through
Georgia to play them into their quarters under the stand. But the
Varsity eleven passed out of sight with shoulders that drooped and with
no spring in their gaits.
Back at the tail end of their line went little Morehead, wiping his damp
eyes with the dirty sleeve of his jersey. Morehead was no young Saint
Laurence, to expire smilingly on a gridiron. He was not of the stuff
that martyrs are made of; he was a creature, part man and part boy, and
the man part of him made him furious with self-reproach, but the boy
in him made him cry. I take it, some of the spectators felt almost like
crying too; certainly their cheering sounded so.
One of the Red tackles--Rodney--had been disabled just before the
breakaway, and I ran over to Midsylvania's quarters to find out for
the paper whether he was injured to the degree of being definitely
incapacitated for further participation in the game. In what, during
race meets, was a refreshment establishment, under the grand stand, I
obtruded upon a veritable grand lodge of sorrow.
Gadsden, the coach, who had played with the team the year before, which
was his graduating year, was out in the centre of the floor making a
brave pretense at being hopeful; but I do not think anybody present
suffered himself to be deceived thereby. His pleas to the team to buck
up and to brace up, and to go back in and fight for every point, lacked
sincerity. He appeared to be haranguing them because that was the
ordained thing for him to do, and not because he expected to infuse into
them any part of his make-believe optimism. Lying on their backs upon
blankets, with limbs relaxed, some of his hearers turned dejected faces
upward. Others, sitting upright or squatted on their knees, kept their
abashed heads on their breasts, staring down steadfastly at nothing at
all.
Morehead was sulking by himself in a corner, winking his eyelids and
wrinkling his face up to hold back the tears of his mortification. He
blamed himself, I take it, for what was the fault of all. Cabell was a
tousled heap, against a wall. He was flexing a bruised wrist, as though
that small hurt was just now the most important thing in the world to
him. Even the darky rubbers and the darky water carrier showed their
sensations by their dejected faces. There was enough of downcastness in
that room to supply half a dozen funerals with all the gloom they might
require; the whole place exhaled the essence of a resentful depression
that was as plainly to be sniffed up into the nostrils as the smells
of alcohol and arnica and liniment which burdened the air and gave the
accompaniment of a drug-store smell to the picture.
As I halted at the door on my way out of this melancholy spot to the
scarcely less melancholy atmosphere of the open, having learned that
Rodney was not really injured, somebody bumped into me, jostling me to
one side; and, to my astonishment, I saw that the impetuous intruder was
Major Stone. I had not known until then that he had followed me here,
and I did not know now what errand could have brought him along. But he
did not keep me wondering long; in fact, he did not keep me wondering at
all. He burst in on them with a great “Woof!” of indignation.
Before scarcely any one there had realised that a newcomer, arriving
unheralded and all unexpected, was in their midst, he stood in the
middle of the littered floor, glaring about him and snorting loudly. His
first words, too, were calculated not only to startle them but deeply to
profane the semi-privacy of their grief and their humiliation.
“Young gentlemen,” he fairly shouted, “I am ashamed of you! And I have
come here to tell you so, and to tell you why I am ashamed.”
By sight, even, he was probably a stranger to most of those who, with
one accord, now stared at the little, old-fashioned figure of this
invader. They straightened up. There was a rustle and a creaking of
their harnessed and padded bodies. Perhaps surprise held them dumb; or
perhaps they were in a humour to take a scolding, even from an outsider,
feeling that they deserved it. At any rate, only one of them spoke. I
think it was the voice of Gadsden, the coach, that answered back.
“Who the devil are you?” he asked. “And who the devil let you in here,
anyhow?”
“You may not know me,” snapped the Major; “but I know you.” He wheeled
on his heels, aiming a jabbing forefinger at this man and that. “And I
know you--and I know you--and I know you--and you, and you, too, young
sir, over there in the corner. What is more, I knew your fathers before
you.”
“Well, what of it?”
“What of it? This much of it: Your fathers before you were gallant
Southern gentlemen--the bearers of honoured names; names revered in this
state and in the Southern armies. That is what your fathers were.
And what have you, their sons, proved yourselves to be this day?
Cravens--that is the word. Cravens! Out of all the South you were chosen
to represent your native land against these Northerners; and how have
you repaid the trust imposed in you? By quitting--by showing the white
feather, like a flock of dunghill cockerels--by raising the white flag
at the first attack!” A babble of resentful voices arose:
“Say, look here; now--”
“What do you know about football?”
“Who gave you any license to butt in here?”
“Say, that's pretty rough!”
He broke into the confused chorus of their protests, silencing the
interrupters by the stormy blare of his rejoinder. He was so terribly in
earnest that they just had to hearken.
“I know nothing of this game you have essayed to play. Before to-day I
never saw it played; and if this miserable exhibition by you is a sample
of the game I hope never to see it played again. But I know courage when
I see it and I know cowardice when I see it.”
He levelled his condemning finger at little Morehead and focused his
glare upon that un-happy youth.
“Your name is Morehead! Your grandfather was a great governor of this
great state. Your father was my companion in arms upon the field of
battle--and no braver man ever breathed, sir. This historic inclosure
bears the honoured name of your honoured line--Morehead Downs. You are
the chosen leader of these companions of yours. And how have you led
them to-day? How have you acquitted yourself of your trust? I ask you
that--how?” He halted, out of breath.
“The other team is stronger. They've got us outclassed. Look--why, look
at the reputation they've got all over this country! What--what chance
have we against them?”
The confession came from little Morehead haltingly, as though he spoke
against his own will in his own defence.
“Damn their reputation!” shouted Major Stone. “Your very words are an
admission of the things I allege against you, and against all of you
here. Concede that your antagonists are stronger than you, man for man.
Concede that they outclass you in experience. Is that any reason why
they should outclass you in courage and in determination? Your father
and the fathers of more than half of the rest of you served in an army
that for four years defended our beloved country against a foe immensely
stronger than they were--stronger in men, in money, in munitions, in
food, in supplies, in guns--stronger in everything except valour.
“Suppose, because of the odds against them, your people had lost heart
from the very outset, as you yourselves have lost heart here today.
Would that great war have lasted for four years? Or would it have lasted
for four months? Would the Southern Confederacy have endured until it no
longer had the soldiers to fill the gaps and hold the lines; or food
for the bellies of those soldiers who were left; or powder and lead for
their guns? Or would it have surrendered after the first repulse, as you
have surrendered? Answer me that, some of you!
“These Northerners are game clear through; I can tell that. Their
ancestors before them were brave men--the Southern Confederacy could
never have been starved out and bled white by a breed of cowards. And
these young men here--these splendid young Americans from up yonder in
that Northern country--have the same gallant spirit their people showed
forty years ago against your people. But you--you have lost the spirit
of your race, that surely must have been born in you. You are going to
let these Yankees run right over you--your behaviour proves it--and not
fight back. That is what I charge against you. That is what I am here to
tell you.”
“How about me?” put in one of the blanketed contingent of his audience.
“My people were all Unionists.”
“Your name?” demanded the Major of him. “Speedman.”
“A son of the late Colonel Henry T. Speedman?”
“His nephew.”
“I knew your uncle and your uncle's brothers and your grandfather. They
were Union-men from principle; and I admired them for it, even though
we differed, and even though they took up arms against their own kinsmen
and fought on the opposite side. They wore the blue from conviction; but
when the war was over your uncle, being a Southerner, helped to save his
native state from carpetbaggery and bayonet rule. That was the type
of man your uncle was. I regret to note that you did not inherit his
qualities. I particularly observed your behaviour out there on that
field yonder a while ago. You quit, young man--you quit like a dog!”
“Say, look here; you're an old man, and that's enough to save you!”
Speedman suddenly was sobbing in his mortification. “But--but you've got
no right to say things like that to me. You've--you've-” A gulp cut the
miserable youngster's utterance short. He choked and plaintively tried
again: “If we can't win we can't win--and that's all there is to it!
Isn't it, fellows?”
He looked to his companions in distress for comfort; but all of them,
as though mesmerised, were looking at Major Stone. It dawned on me,
watching and listening across the threshold, that some influence--some
electric appeal to an inner consciousness of theirs--was beginning to
galvanise them, taking the droop out of their spines, and making their
frames tense where there had been a sag of nonresistance, and putting
sparks of resentment into their eyes. The transformation had been almost
instantaneously accomplished, but it was plainly visible.
“I am not expecting that you should win,” snapped the Major, turning
Speedman's words into an admonition for all of them. “I do not believe
it is humanly possible for you to win. There is nothing disgraceful
in being fairly defeated; the disgrace is in accepting defeat without
fighting back with all your strength and all your will and all your
skill and all your strategy and all your tactics. And that is
exactly what I have just seen you doing. And that, judging by all the
indications, is exactly what you will go on doing during the remaining
portion of this affair.”
There were no more interruptions. For perhaps two or three minutes more,
then, the old Major went steadily on, saying his say to the end. Saying
it, he wasn't the Old Major I had known before; he was not pottering and
ponderous; he did not clothe his thoughts in cumbersome, heavy phrases.
He fairly bit the words off--short, bitter, scorching words--and spat
them out in their faces. He did not plead with them; nor--except by
indirection--did he invoke a sentiment that was bound to be as much a
part of them as the nails on their fingers or the teeth in their mouths.
And, somehow, I felt--and I knew they felt--that here, in this short,
stumpy white-haired form, stood the Old South, embodied and typified,
with all its sectional pride and all its sectional devotion--yes, and
all its sectional prejudices. All at once, in the midst of a sentence,
he checked up; and then, staring hard at them through a pause, he spoke
his final message: “You are of the seed of heroes. Try to remember that
when you go back out yonder before that great crowd. You are the sons of
men who had sand, who had bottom, who had all the things a fighting man
should have. Try--if you can--to remember it!”
Out from behind the group that had clustered before the speaker, darted
a diminutive darky--Midsylvania's self-appointed water carrier:
“He done jest said it!” whooped the little negro, dancing up and down in
frenzy. “He done jest said it! 'Cinnamon Seed an' Sandy Bottom! 'Dat's
it! Cinnamon Seed an' Sandy Bottom!'--same ez you sez it w'en you sings
Dixie Land. Dem's de words to win by! W'ite folks, youse done heared
de lesson preached frum de true tex'. Come on! Le's us go an' tear dem
Sangamonders down! 'Cinnamon Seed an' Sandy Bottom!' Oh, gloree, gloree,
hallelujah!”
He rocked back on his splay feet, his knees sprung forward, his mouth
wide open, and his eyes popping out of his black face.
The Major did not look the little darky's way. Settling his slouch hat
on his head, he faced about and out he stalked; and I, following along
after him, was filled with conflicting emotions, for, as it happened, my
father was a Confederate soldier, too, and I had been bred up on a mixed
diet of Robert E. Lee, N. B. Forrest and Albert Sidney Johnston.
I followed him back to our post, he saying nothing at all on the way and
I likewise silent. I scrouged past him to my place alongside Ike Webb
and sat down, and tried in a few words to give Ike and Gil Boyd a
summary of the sight I had just witnessed. And when I was done I
illustrated my brief and eager narrative by pointing with a flirt of
my thumb to Major Stone, stiffly erect on my left hand, with his chest
protruded and his head held high in a posture faintly suggestive of
certain popular likenesses of the late Napoleon Bonaparte; and on
his elderly face was the look of one who, having sowed good seed
in receptive loam, confidently expects an abundant and a gratifying
harvest.
It was a different team which came out for the second half of that game;
not exactly a jaunty team, nor yet a boisterous one, but rather a
team that were grimly silent, indicating by their silence a certain
preparedness and a certain resolution for the performance of that which
is claimed to speak louder than words--action.
The onlookers, I judged, saw the difference almost instantly and
realised that from some source, somehow, Morehead's men had gathered
unto themselves a new power of will, which presently they meant to
express physically. And three minutes later Sangamon found herself
breasted by a mechanism that had in its composition the springiness
of an earnest desire and a sincere determination, whereas before,
in emergencies, it had expressed no more than sullen and downhearted
desperation.
Now from the very outset there was resilience behind its formations and
active intelligence behind its movements, guiding and shaping them. The
confronting line might give under the pressure of superior weight, but
it bounced right back. At once it was made manifest that the Red eleven
would not thenceforward be content merely to defend, but would have
the effrontery actually to attack, and attack again, and to keep on
attacking. No longer was it a case of hammer falling on anvil; two
hammers were battering against one another, nose to nose now, and in one
stroke there was as much buoyancy as in the other.
In my eagerness to reach my climax I am getting ahead of my story. Let's
go back a bit: The whistle blew. The antagonists having swapped goals,
Midsylvania now had what benefit was to be derived from the wind, which
blew out of the West at a quartering angle across the field. Following
the kick-off an interchange of punts ensued. Midsylvania apparently
elected to continue these kicking operations indefinitely; whereupon
it is probable the Sangamon strategists jumped at the conclusion that,
realising the hopelessness of overcoming the weight presented against
them, the locals meant to make a kicking match of it. Be that as it may,
they accepted the challenge, if challenge it was, and a punting duel
ensued, with no noteworthy fortunes falling to either eleven.
I think it was early in this stage of the proceedings, after some mighty
brisk scrimmaging, when the strangers, by coming into violent physical
contact with their opponents, discovered that a new spirit inspired and
governed the others, and began to apprehend that, after all, this would
not be a walkover for them; but that they must fight, and fight hard, to
hold their present lead, and fight even harder if they expected to swell
that lead.
When, at the first opportunity for a forward push, the Red line came
at the Blue with an impetuosity theretofore lacking from its frontal
assaults, you could almost see the ripple of astonishment running down
the spines of the Northerners as they braced themselves to meet and stay
the onslaught. Anyhow, you could imagine you saw it; certainly there
were puzzled looks on the faces of some of them as they emerged from the
mêlée.
With appreciative roars, the crowd greeted these evidences of a newer
and more comforting aspect to the situation. Each time some Midsylvania
player caught the booted ball as it came tumbling out of the skies the
grand stand rocked to the noise; each time Midsylvania sent it flying
back to foreign ground it rocked some more; each time the teams clashed,
then locked together, it was to be seen that the Midsylvanians held
their ground despite the efforts of their bulkier rivals to uproot and
overthrow them.
And, at that, the air space beneath the peaked roof was ripped all to
flinders by exultant blares from sundry thousands of lungs. Under the
steady pounding feet the floor of the grand stand became a great bass
drum, which was never silent; and all the myriad red flags danced
together. Into the struggle an element of real dash had entered and
mightily it uplifted the spectators. They knew now that, though the
Varsity team might be beaten, and probably would be, they would not be
disgraced. It would be an honourable defeat before overpowering odds,
and one stoutly resisted to the end by all that intelligence, plus
pluck, could do.
There was no fault now to be found with Midsylvania's captain. Little
Morehead, with his face a red smear, was playing all over the lot. The
impact of a collision with a bigger frame than his, had slammed him face
down against the ground, skinning one cheek and bloodying his nose. He
looked like a mad Indian in streaky war paint, and he played like one.
He seemed to be everywhere at once, exhorting, commanding, leading; by
shouted precept and by reckless example giving the cue to his teammates.
I suppose the latter half was about half over when the Sangamon team
changed their tactics and, no longer content to play safe and exchange
punts, sought to charge through and gain ground by sheer force.
Doubtlessly their decision was based on sound principles of reason; but
by reason of certain insurmountable obstacles, personified in eleven
gouging, wrestling, panting, sweating youths, they were effectually
deterred, during a breathless period of minutes, from so doing.
It was inevitable that a break must come sooner or later. It was
not humanly possible for any team or any two teams to maintain that
punishing pace very long without giving way somewhere.
The ball, after various vicissitudes, was in the middle of the field,
and the Northerners had it. As the Blue tackles slipped back of their
comrades stealthily, and Vretson, stealing forward, poised himself to
take the catch, we on the press benches realised that Sangamon meant to
undertake a repetition of the device that had won her lone goal for her.
Thirty minutes earlier it would have seemed the logical move to try.
Now, in view of everything, it was audacious.
At that, though, I guess it was Sangamon's best card, even though
Midsylvania would be forewarned and forearmed by their earlier
disastrous experience to take measures for combating the play.
Everything depended on getting Vretson away to a flying start and then
keeping his interference intact.
The captain chanted the code numbers. The Blue press shifted in quick
shuttlelike motions, and the ball, beautifully and faultlessly handled,
was flipped back, aiming straight for Vretson's welcoming grasp.
Simultaneously something else happened. That something else was
Morehead.
As the ball was passed he moved. There was a hole in Sangamon's
breastworks, made by the spreading out of her men. It was a little hole
and a hole which instantaneously closed up again, being stoppered by an
interposing torso; but in that flash of space Morehead saw the opening
and, without being touched, came whizzing straight through it like a
small, compact torpedo. Head in and head down, he crashed into Vretson
in the same tenth-second when the ball reached Vretson's fingers. With
his skull, his shoulders, his arms, and his trunk he smashed against the
giant.
Vretson staggered sideways. The ball escaped from his grip; and,
striking the earth, it took one lazy bound, and then another; but no
more. As it bounced the second time, Morehead, bending double from his
hips, slid under it with outspread arms, scooped it up to his breast,
and was off, travelling faster, I am sure, than Morehead in all his life
had ever travelled. He was clear and away, going at supertopspeed, while
Vretson still spun and rocked on his heels.
Obeying the signal for the play the majority of the Sangamon team
already had darted off to their right to make a living barrier upon the
threatened side of the imaginary lane their star was due to follow.
It behooved them to reverse the manouvre. Digging their heels into the
earth for brakes they wheeled round, scuttling back and spreading out to
intercept the fugitive; but he was already past and beyond Vretson, and
nearing the line of cross-angle along which the nearest of his pursuers
must go to encounter him. Before him, along the eastern boundary of
Sangamon's territory, was a clear stretch of cross-marked turf.
Vretson recovered himself and made a stem chase of it, and Vretson could
run, as I said before; but it would have been as reasonable to expect
a Jersey bull to overtake a swamp rabbit when the swamp rabbit had the
start of the bull, and was scared to death besides, as to expect Vretson
to catch Morehead. The Red captain travelled three feet for every two
the bigger man travelled. Twenty yards--thirty, forty--he sped, and
not a tackler's hand was laid on him. With the pack of his adversaries
tagging out behind him like hounds behind a hare, he pitched over the
goal line and lay there, his streaming nose in the grass roots, with the
precious ball under him, and the Sangamon players tumbling over him as
they came tailing up. Single-handed, on a fluky chance, Morehead had
duplicated and bettered what Vretson, with assistance, had done.
The crowd simply went stark, raving crazy and behaved accordingly. But
the Varsity section in the grand stand and the clump of blanketted
Varsity substitutes and scrubs on the side lines were the craziest spots
of all.
After this there isn't so very much to be told. Midsylvania kicked for
a goal, but failed, as Sangamon had done. The ball struck the crossbar
between the white goal posts and flopped back; and during the few
remaining minutes of play neither side tallied a point, though
both tried hard enough and Sangamon came very near it once, but
failed--thanks to the same inspired counterforces that had balked her in
similar ambitions all through this half.
So, at the end, with the winter sun going down red in the west, and
the grand stand all red with dancing flags to match it, the score stood
even--four to four.
Officially a tie, yes; but not otherwise--not by the reckoning of the
populace. That Midsylvania, outmanned and outweighted as she was, should
have played those Middle West champions to a standstill was, in effect,
a victory--so the crowd figured--and fitting to be celebrated on that
basis, which promptly it was.
Out from the upstanding ranks of the multitude, down from the stand,
across the track and into the field came the Varsity students,
clamouring their joy, and their band came with them, and others,
unattached, came trailing after them. Some were dancing dervishes
and some were human steam whistles, and all the rest were just plain
lunatics. They fell into an irregular weaving formation, four or six
abreast, behind the team, with Morehead up ahead, riding upon the
shoulders of two of his fellows; and round the gridiron they started,
going first between one pair of goal posts and then between the
other pair. Doubtlessly the band played; but what tune they elected to
play nobody knew, because nobody could hear it--not even the musicians
themselves.
As the top of the column, completing its first circuit, swung down the
gridiron toward the judges' stand, Morehead pointed toward where we sat
and, from his perch on their shoulders, called down something to those
who bore him. At that, a deputation of about half a dozen broke out of
the mass and charged straight for us. For a moment it must have seemed
to the crowd that this detachment contemplated a physical assault upon
some obnoxious newspaper man behind our bench, for they dived right
in among us, laying hands upon one of our number, heaving him bodily
upward, and bearing him away a prisoner.
Half a minute later Major Putnam Stone, somewhat dishevelled as to his
attire, was also mounted on a double pair of shoulders and was bobbing
along at the front of the procession, side by side with young Morehead.
Judging by his expression, I should say the Major was enjoying the
ride. Without knowing the whys and the wherefores of it, the spectators
derived that in some fashion this little, old, white-haired man was
esteemed by Midsylvania's representatives to have had a share in the
achieved result.
As this conviction sank home, the exultant yelling mounted higher and
higher still. I think it was along here the members of the band quit
trying to be heard and stopped their playing, and took their horns down
from their faces.
Immediately after this still another strange figure attained a
conspicuous place in the parade: A little darky, mad with joy, and
wearing a red-and-gray sweater much too roomy for him, came bounding
across the field, with an empty water bucket in one hand. He caught
up with the front row of the marchers; and, scuttling along backward,
directly in front of them, he began calling out certain words in a sort
of slogan, repeating them over and over again, until those nearest him
detected the purport of his utterances and started chanting them in time
with him.
Presently, as the chorus of definite sounds and the meaning of the
sounds spread along down the column, the Varsity boys took up the
refrain, and it rose and fell in a great, thundering cadence. And then
everybody made out its substance, the words being these:
“Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom! Cinnamon Seed and Sandy Bottom!
CINNAMON SEED AND SANDY BOTTOM!”
The sun, following its usual custom, continued to go down, growing
redder and redder as it went; and Midsylvania, over and above the
triumph it had to celebrate and was celebrating, had also these three
things now added unto her: A new college yell, in this perfectly
meaningless line from an old song; a new cheer leader--her first, by the
way--in the person of a ragged black water boy; and a new football
idol to take to her heart, the same being an elderly gentleman who
knew nothing at all of the science of football, and doubtlessly cared
less--an idol who in the fullness of time would become a tradition, to
be treasured along with the noseless statue of Henry Clay and the beech
tree under which Daniel Boone slept one night.
So that explains why, each year after the main game, when the team of
a bigger and stronger Midsylvania have broken training, they drink a
rising toast to the memory of Major Putnam Stone, deceased; whereat, as
afore-stated, there are no heel-taps whatsoever.