FORWARD PASS
BY RALPH HENRY BARBOUR.
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[Illustration: “He went staggering around the goal-post for a touchdown
and victory.”]
FORWARD PASS
A STORY OF THE “NEW FOOTBALL”
_By_
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
AUTHOR OF “THE SPIRIT OF THE SCHOOL,” “THE
HALF-BACK,” “WEATHERBY’S INNING,”
“ON YOUR MARK,” ETC.
[Illustration]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK
1908
Copyright, 1908, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published September, 1908_
TO
GILBERT H. SHEARER, JR.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--OFF TO SCHOOL 1
II.--MR. FINDLAY SETTLES THE QUESTION 14
III.--THE FIRST ACQUAINTANCE 24
IV.--“28 CLARKE” 36
V.--YARDLEY HALL 56
VI.--“TUBBY” JONES SURRENDERS 66
VII.--PAYSON, COACH 75
VIII.--DAN JOINS THE FOOTBALL SQUAD 92
IX.--THE FIRST GAME 105
X.--DROPPED! 124
XI.--A RESCUE 140
XII.--AT SOUND VIEW 148
XIII.--A RICH MAN’S SON 162
XIV.--DAN JOINS A CONSPIRACY 170
XV.--GERALD VISITS YARDLEY 183
XVI.--AN AFTERNOON AFLOAT 194
XVII.--LIGHT BLUE OR DARK? 205
XVIII.--LORING DECIDES 215
XIX.--FOOTBALL WITH BREWER 225
XX.--MR. AUSTIN LOSES HIS TEMPER 236
XXI.--MR. PENNIMORE CONSENTS 251
XXII.--NORDHAM SPRINGS SOME SURPRISES 261
XXIII.--WHAT HAPPENED “BLUE MONDAY” 275
XXIV.--DAN WONDERS 291
XXV.--ON PROBATION 304
XXVI.--“TUBBY” PACKS A BAG 316
XXVII.--VINTON’S VICTORY 331
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
“He went staggering around the goal-post for a touchdown
and victory” _Frontispiece_
“He staggered to his feet, stumbled blindly through the
doorway” 142
“‘Go in for Minturn.... Use your brains,’ he added” 232
“Tubby went over backward in his chair” 258
FORWARD PASS
CHAPTER I
OFF TO SCHOOL
“_All aboa-a-ard!_”
There was a warning clang from the engine bell and a sudden return
to darkness as the fireman slammed the furnace door and tossed the
slicer-bar back onto the tender. The express messenger in the car
behind pulled close the sliding door and hasped it, pausing afterwards
to glance questioningly at the cloudy night sky. At the far end of
the train, which curved serpent-wise along the track, the conductor’s
lantern rose and fell, the porter seized his footstool and Dan Vinton,
after a final hurried kiss, broke from his mother’s arms and ran nimbly
up the steps of the already moving sleeper.
“Good-bye, mother,” he called down into the half-darkness. “Good-bye,
father! Good-bye, Mae!”
They all answered at once, his father in a hoarse growl, his mother
softly and tearfully and his sister in a shrill, excited voice as she
tripped along beside the car steps, waving frantically. The eastbound
express carried ten cars to-night, and for a moment the big engine
puffed and grunted complainingly, and the train moved slowly, the wheel
flanges screaming against the curving rails. From across the platform
Dan heard his father’s voice lifted irritably:
“Ma, if you’re coming I wish you’d come! Can’t expect me to keep these
horses standing here all night!”
Dan smiled and choked as he heard. Dear old dad! All the way to the
station he had been as cross as a wet hen, holding his face aside as
they passed a light for fear that the others would see the tears in
his eyes, and trying with his gruffness to disguise the quiver in his
voice. Dan gave a gulp as he felt the tears coming into his own eyes.
The dimly-lighted station hurried by, there was a flash of green and
red and white lanterns as the trucks rattled over the switches and then
they had left the town behind and were rushing eastward through the
September night, gaining speed with every click of the wheels. There
was a sudden long and dismal shriek from the engine, and with that the
monster settled down into the stride which, ere morning came, was to
eat up three hundred Ohio miles and bring them well into Pennsylvania.
The porter, with a muttered apology, closed the vestibule door, and
Dan, blinking the persistent tears from his eyes, left the platform and
entered the sleeping-car.
“I put your suit-case under the berth, sir,” said the porter as he
followed the passenger down the aisle. The lights were turned low, and
Dan was glad of it, for he didn’t want even the colored porter to think
him a baby. The green curtains were pulled close at every section and
from behind some of them came sounds plainly indicating occupancy.
“Lower eight,” murmured the porter. “Here you are, sir. Hope you’ll
sleep well, sir. Good night.”
“Thanks,” muttered Dan. “Good night.”
“We take the diner on at Pittsburg, sir, at seven. But you can get
breakfast any time up to ten, sir.”
Dan thanked him again and the porter took himself softly away. When he
was finally stretched out in his berth, with his pocketbook tightly
wrapped up in his vest under his pillow, and the gold watch which his
father had given him when he had graduated from the grammar school last
June tucked into the toe of one of his stockings as seeming to him the
last place in which a thief would look for it, Dan raised the curtain
beside his head and rolled over so that he could look out. It was
after eleven o’clock and he knew that he ought to be asleep, but he
felt as wide awake as ever he had in his life. The moon had struggled
out from behind the big bank of clouds which had hid it and the world
was almost as light as day. For awhile, as he watched the landscape
slide by, a panorama of field and forest and sleeping villages, his
thoughts clung somewhat disconsolately to Graystone and his folks. But
before long the excitement which had possessed him for days and which
had only left him at the moment of parting crept back, and, although he
still stared with wide eyes through the car window, he saw nothing of
the flying landscape.
He was going to boarding-school! That was the wonderful, pre-eminent
fact at present, and at the thought his heart thrilled again as it had
been doing for two months past. And at last the momentous time had
really arrived! He was absolutely on his way! The dream of four years
was coming true! Do you wonder that his heart beat chokingly for a few
minutes while he lay there with the jar and rattle of the train in his
ears? When one is fifteen and the long-desired comes to pass life grows
very wonderful, very magnificent for awhile.
Ever since Dan had been old enough to think seriously of the matter
of his education he had entertained a deep longing for a course at
boarding-school. In Graystone it wasn’t the fashion for boys to go
away from home for their educations; Graystone had a first-class
school system and was proud of it; a boy who wanted to go to college
could prepare at the Graystone High School as well as anywhere else,
declared the Graystone parents; and as for the Eastern schools--well,
everybody knew that the most of them were hot-beds of extravagance and
snobbishness. This is a belief that unfortunately prevails in plenty
of towns beside Graystone. Dan’s father was quite as patriotic as any
other citizen of the town and held just as good an opinion of its
educational advantages. So when, during his second year at the grammar
school, Dan had broached the subject of a term at a preparatory school
in the East he was not surprised when Mr. Vinton refused to consider it.
“Pooh! Pooh!” scoffed Mr. Vinton, good-naturedly. “What’s the matter
with our own High School, Dan? Isn’t it good enough for you, son?”
Dan tried to explain that it was the school life he wanted to try, and,
unfortunately for his argument, mentioned “Tom Brown.”
“Tom Brown!” exclaimed his father. “Well, that’s a fine story, Dan, but
it’s all romance. I went to boarding-school myself, and I can tell you
I never ran up against any of the things you read about in ‘Tom Brown.’
No, son, if that’s all you want you might as well stay right here in
Graystone. You’ll find just as much of the ‘Tom Brown’ romance in High
School as you will back East.”
Dan wanted to tell his father that the kind of school he wanted to go
to was little like the boarding-school which his father had attended.
Mr. Vinton’s early education had been obtained at the Russellville
Academy, an institution whose name was out of all proportion to its
importance. Mr. Vinton had been born in one of the smaller towns along
the Willimantic River in Connecticut, and Russellville Academy had
possessed for him the advantages of proximity and inexpensiveness.
The tuition and board was one hundred dollars a year, and on Friday
afternoon he could reach home by merely walking twelve miles. Mr.
Vinton’s schooling had terminated abruptly in the middle of his
third year, when the death of his mother--his father had died years
before--left him dependent on an uncle living in Ohio. So Russellville
Academy was abandoned in favor of a position in the Graystone Flour
Mills. To-day Mr. Vinton owned the mills and, for that matter, pretty
much everything else in that part of the county. But the fact that
he had succeeded in life on a very slim education hadn’t made him
a scoffer at schools and colleges; on the contrary, he was a firm
believer in those institutions and was determined that Dan, who was
an only son, should have the best education that money and care could
provide.
Dan’s private and unexpressed opinion of Russellville Academy wasn’t
flattering. He believed that his father must have had a pretty forlorn,
unpleasant experience there. But Mr. Vinton had come to look back upon
his few years of school life through rose-tinted glasses.
“There were only about thirty of us fellows,” he would say when in
reminiscent mood, “but maybe we had better times for that reason; every
fellow knew every other fellow. Why, the first month I was there I
fought more than half the school!”
“Did you ever get licked?” asked Dan eagerly.
“Licked!” laughed Mr. Vinton. “Lots of times, son. Why, seems to me as
I look back at it, my nose was out of kilter more than half the time!”
“You must have been a set of young barbarians,” observed Dan’s mother
with conviction on one occasion.
“Nothing of the sort, Mary; just a parcel of youngsters full of life.
We didn’t think anything of a fight; used to make up half an hour
afterwards and bandage each other’s heads.”
“Were the fellows nice?” asked Dan doubtfully.
“Nice? Of course they were, most of them. Still, I guess we had all
sorts at the Academy. There was ‘Slugger’ Boyd and ‘Brick’ Garrison
and ‘Fatty’ Thomas and--and others like them that maybe you wouldn’t
just call ‘nice.’ ‘Brick’ got his nickname because of a way he had of
grabbing up a brick or a stone when it came to a fight. No one cared to
fight ‘Brick’ except in the barn where there weren’t any loose stones
lying around handy.”
“Did you have a nickname, too?” Dan asked.
“Yes, they used to call me ‘Kicker.’ You know we didn’t have any
special rules to fight by; every fellow just went at it the handiest
way. I was a good kicker; used to jab out with my fist and kick at the
same time. I won lots of fights that way, for some fellows can stand
any amount of punching on the head or body and quit right away when you
get a good one on their shins.”
“We wouldn’t call that fair fighting nowadays,” said Dan uneasily.
“No? Well, fashions change. It was good scientific fighting when I went
to school,” answered Mr. Vinton smilingly.
“Well, I think your folks must have been crazy to let you go to such a
place,” said Mrs. Vinton irascibly. “Fighting all the time and living
on almost nothing and sleeping on corn-husks and walking twelve miles
to get home and nearly freezing to death!”
“Oh, I only came near freezing once,” responded Mr. Vinton pleasantly.
“But that was a close shave. I guess if Farmer Hutchins hadn’t come
along just when he did that time--”
“I don’t want to hear about it again!” declared Dan’s mother. “If
that’s your idea of having a good time it isn’t mine! And you can just
believe that no son of mine ever goes to boarding-school!”
“Well, as for that, ma, I dare say boarding-schools have changed some
since my day,” responded Mr. Vinton.
But in spite of this assertion Russellville Academy remained to Mr.
Vinton a typical boarding-school, and remembering how little he had
learned there and, when the rose-tinted glasses were laid aside, how
many unhappy moments he had spent there, he was resolved in his own
mind that his wife’s decision was a wise one.
In the end Dan had given up all hope of getting to boarding-school,
without, however, ceasing to desire it. In June he had graduated high
in his class at the grammar school with every prospect of entering the
High School in September. But toward the last of July a conversation
had occurred at the dinner table which later put a different complexion
on things.
“Well, son, what you been doing to-day?” asked Mr. Vinton, absentmindedly
tucking his napkin into his collar, yanking it quickly away again and
glancing apologetically at his wife.
“Nothing much, sir. I played baseball for awhile and then ‘Chad’
Sleeper and Billy Nourse and Frank Whipple and I went over to Saunders’
Creek and went in bathing.”
Mr. Vinton frowned.
“‘Chad’ Sleeper, eh? Is that old Dillingway Sleeper’s boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And young Nourse and that Whipple boy, you said, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“See a good deal of those boys, do you? Go around with them a lot, eh?”
“Yes, sir, a good deal.”
“I thought Frank Whipple was going to work this summer in his father’s
store.”
“He did start to,” answered Dan, “but--I don’t know. I guess he didn’t
like it.”
“Didn’t like it, eh? Did he tell you so?”
“Well, he said it was pretty hard work; said the store was awfully hot
and his mother was afraid he’d take sick.”
Mr. Vinton grunted.
“All those boys in your class next fall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Which one is your especial chum?”
“‘Chad,’ I guess. I like him better than the others.”
“What is it you like about him, son?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He’s a good baseball player, and a dandy half-back;
you know he played half on the team last fall, sir.”
“Did he? I’d forgotten. Well, any other good points you can think of,
son?”
Dan hesitated. He didn’t like his father’s tone. It was a tone which
Mr. Vinton was likely to use when, to use Dan’s expression, he was
“looking for trouble.”
“He--he’s just a good fellow, sir, and we get on pretty well together.”
“I see. Ever hear of him doing anything worth while?”
“He won the game for us last Thanksgiving Day,” answered Dan doubtfully,
pretty certain that the feat mentioned wouldn’t make much of a hit with
the questioner.
“Ever hear of him doing anything helpful, anything kind, anything
useful to himself or anyone else?” pursued Mr. Vinton remorselessly.
Dan was silent for a moment.
“I guess he would if he got the chance,” he replied finally.
“Well, did you ever see him shading his eyes with his hand and looking
for a chance?”
“John, don’t talk such nonsense,” expostulated Mrs. Vinton, glancing at
Dan’s troubled countenance.
“No nonsense at all, my dear,” answered Mr. Vinton. “Dan’s got three of
the most useless, shiftless, no-account boys in town for his special
chums and I’d like to know just what he sees in them. That’s all.
‘Chad’ Sleeper’s father never did a real lick of work in his life,
excepting the time he did the State out of forty thousand dollars on
that bridge contract, and ‘Chad’s’ just like him. And young Whipple is
no better; and I guess Nourse belongs with them. Look at here, son,
aren’t there any smart, honest, _decent_ fellows you can go with?”
“‘Chad’ and Billy and Frank never did anything mean that I know of,”
answered Dan resentfully.
“Did you ever know any of them to do anything fine?” asked his father.
“Outside of winning a football game, I mean?”
Dan was silent, looking a trifle sulkily at his plate. There was a
moment’s pause. Then Mr. Vinton said more kindly:
“Well, I’m not finding fault with you, son. Maybe the boys here are
pretty much alike; and as I come to think about it I guess they are.
But it’s going to make a difference with you what sort of friends you
have during the next five or six years. And if you can’t find the right
sort here in Graystone, why--”
But Mr. Vinton paused there and relapsed into a thoughtful silence
that neither Dan nor his mother nor even his sister Mae, who was the
privileged member of the family, cared to disturb.