SUMNER CHOOSES A SUCCESSOR
THE first skirmish in the feud that was bound to arise came on the
following day at Adams’s, when a group of fifth and sixth lads, thinking
themselves safe in the shadow of the dormitory, sang out the new
nickname derisively across the field to Dunn. Dunn, who was still in a
state of irritation, and by no means ready, as yet, to accept the
inevitable nickname, made a dash for the group, which broke into
screaming flight round the corner of the locker house. The first lad
whom Jason met as he rounded the corner in full pursuit, was Mike,
engaged in tossing a football against the side of the building. Without
stopping to raise the question whether Mike had been one of the
offenders, Dunn proceeded to the agreeable task of teaching the urchin a
lesson. The boy resisted with hands, feet, voice, and teeth. The older
fellows, hurrying forth at the shrill cries for help, found Mike lying
on his back, like the arms of a hay tedder, squirming to keep his
antagonist at bay and squawking like a hen in distress.
[Illustration: HIS FEET GOING LIKE THE ARMS OF A HAY TEDDER.]
The majority of the newcomers lined up in good positions, to enjoy the
amusement which chance had thrown in their way; but Talbot, who had seen
the beginning of the incident from a distance, pushed through the line,
jerked the boy to his feet, and commanded him to stop his noise.
“He knocked me down when I wasn’t doing a thing!” screamed Mike, weeping
more from rage than because of any hurt which he had received. “Let me
get a stone, and I’ll kill him!”
“You won’t do anything of the sort,” said Talbot, firmly. He turned to
Dunn. “What’s the row, anyway? What’s the use of pitching into a little
fellow like him?”
“I’m not going to have him calling me names,” said Dunn, defiantly. “He
thinks because he’s small he can be as fresh as he wants to, without
getting hurt.”
“I didn’t call him names,” sobbed Mike. “I wasn’t doing a thing.”
“It wasn’t him,” offered Dickie Sumner, who had been tempted back by
all-compelling curiosity. “He wasn’t with us at all.”
Talbot turned and seized the rash youngster by the arm. “So it was you,
was it? Now, look here! We aren’t going to have any calling names or any
other freshness from you young kids round this place. If we catch you at
it, we’ll duck you under the cold-water faucet and forbid you the
grounds. Understand?”
Dickie understood. “All right,” he answered faintly, and tried to pull
away; but Talbot still held him in a tight grip.
“What do you say, Jack?” he added, turning to Dick’s older brother, who
shared with him the responsibility for order on the grounds.
“That’s right!” replied Jack Sumner, sacrificing his fraternal
obligation in the cause of justice with surprising equanimity. “He’s a
good one to begin on.”
Talbot released the youngster, who speedily escaped from the circle of
danger to join his confederates over by the tennis courts, where they
discussed for a time in subdued voices the probability that Pete meant
business. They were soon diverted by tag.
“All the same, Dunn is a fool to notice them,” murmured Talbot in
Hardie’s ear as they returned to the locker room to finish their
dressing.
“I don’t believe he can shake off the nickname, now,” said Roger.
“No, it’s branded in. He isn’t showing much of the good-nature they talk
about, is he?”
In fact, Dunn’s good-nature didn’t extend far below the skin. It was a
mannerism assumed to win him the popularity which he craved. He was
vain, lazy, and characterless. In the football field his fine physique,
together with the professional air with which he bore himself, for some
time blinded the eyes of critics to his shortcomings. Yards, the coach,
felt sure that something could be made of a man of Dunn’s vigor and
apparent knowledge of the game. Yet a strong player opposite him, or the
grinding strain of an uphill contest, invariably produced slackened
effort and excuses.
“It’s come to be the weakest place in the team,” said the coach, a few
days before the Groton game. “If we could brace up the left end and
quarter-back, we should have some hope of giving Newbury a tussle.”
“Is Sumner so bad as all that?” asked Harrison, disturbed. “I thought he
was running the play very well.”
“He runs the play well enough, but look at the errors! He fumbles, muffs
punts, misses tackles. A quarter-back has no right to do anything of the
kind.”
“No one plays perfectly,” Harrison hastened to offer in defence of his
friend. “Besides, he’s the only man we’ve got for the place.”
“Hardie is coming on well,” observed the coach. “He’s going to push Ben
Tracy pretty hard for tackle. We might give him a trial at quarter.”
“I don’t think he’d do at all,” answered Harrison, quickly. “He’d be
entirely new to the position, and we shall need him as a substitute
tackle before the season is over.”
The coach considered for a time in silence. Yards was a loyal Westcott
graduate, whose devotion to his school was strong enough to make him
sacrifice his afternoons at the Law School for the sake of helping the
Westcott team. He knew the game well and could teach it, but he lacked
confidence in his own judgment of the comparative merits of individuals,
and he was morbidly anxious to avoid the foolish jealousies which he
remembered as a source of weakness to the school in his own day. It was
clear that Harrison’s heart was set on keeping Sumner in his place. To
insist on a change which would be at best an experiment with an unknown
quantity, and which might give rise to factions, seemed at present
unwise.
“We’ll give McDowell a chance on the end, anyway,” he said, “and let
Dunn rest.”
To this proposition Harrison assented eagerly, and went hot foot to warn
Sumner that he must bestir himself if he wanted to keep his post.
“Am I as bad as that?” asked Sumner, in consternation.
“You’re not bad, but you’ve got to be better.”
In place of replying, Sumner swung his sweater to the other shoulder and
gazed, a sober, startled expression in his eyes, across the field.
Harrison stole a side glance at his friend’s face and took his arm
affectionately. “It’s all right, Jack; don’t worry,” he said. “Just play
your best game, and I’ll stand back of you.”
“You’re wrong there, Harry,” Jack said quietly. “You’ve no right to
stand back of me. My playing has been rotten lately, and I know it. I’m
fumbling punts and missing tackles all the time. If you’ve got some one
else who can do better, I won’t have you keep me on just out of
friendship.”
“You’re talking rot,” returned Harrison, impatiently. “Stubby Weldon is
no use, as you know perfectly well. There’s no one else.”
Sumner breathed easier. “I’ll do better if I can,” he said.
So McDowell went to Groton to play left end, and Dunn was told to stay
at home and rest. He neither stayed at home nor rested. Stover took him
to the game with Hargraves and Reeves in his flyer. He amused himself
watching the play incognito, and got back before the return train
delivered the weary, disheartened team at the station in Boston.
Westcott’s fared ill at Groton. Sumner’s game was worse than ever.
McDowell strove like a hero against men a whole head taller and many
pounds heavier, tackling fiercely and surely whenever he got within
striking distance of the ball; but his opponents brushed his
interference aside, charged through him in the line and blocked him off
from the play almost at will. The score was eighteen to nothing at the
end of the first half.
“I can’t do it!” groaned McDowell, as the players tried to hearten each
other during the intermission. “I’m not big enough. Put Hardie in.”
As Dunn was out, there was nothing else to do. Hardie went in at left
end, and fat Bumpus, who had lost in weight but gained in muscle and
wind by his patriotic exertions on the field, relieved Kimball at guard.
The team sallied forth once more, crestfallen but determined.
Groton got the ball on Talbot’s kick-off, and tried the old trick of
circling Westcott’s left end, but Hardie could not be disposed of, and
the play came to grief. They bucked the centre, only to find big Bumpus
sprawling effectually in the path. A forward pass found its way into
Horr’s hands. Then Sumner gave the ball to Talbot, who discovered a hole
where McDowell had failed to make one. Encouraged, he repeated the play
and made the first down. A lucky forward pass which, to his great
delight, fell into Hardie’s hands, saved Westcott’s at the next third
down, and carried the ball to the centre of the field. Twenty yards
farther they pressed, and then Talbot was forced to kick. Groton started
on a return journey, which proved to be slow and frequently interrupted.
A fumble by Westcott’s before the goal posts gave the home eleven the
only score which they made during the second half.
Roger Hardie felt very happy as he took his seat in the barge with his
mates to drive to the station, for he knew, without regard to the
compliments paid him by his polite opponents, that his chance had come
and he had not missed it.
The leaders, however, were in no exultant mood. Twenty-three to nothing
is a big score for a coach and captain to swallow, especially when it is
clear that two-thirds of it is due to avoidable errors. On the train Mr.
Adams, who had accompanied the team, sat with Yards, Harrison, and
Talbot in a double seat, and tried to point out signs of hope for the
future in the day’s disaster.
“I should like to suggest two changes,” he said at length, “which may
help the team. One I think you will accept. The other I have my doubts
about.”
The trio looked at him expectantly. “Hardie should play regularly at
left end,” went on the teacher. “His work to-day was almost equal to
Harrison’s.”
“Better, sir!” said Harrison, quickly. “We accept that suggestion on the
spot, don’t we, Yards?”
Yards nodded. “We ought to have had him there before. What’s the other
suggestion,—Bumpus?”
“No. Bumpus can take care of himself. I want to propose that you try
McDowell at quarter. He’s out of place in the line, but he’s a good
tackler, catches punts well, and has a good head.”
Talbot looked at Yards, and Yards looked at Harrison, who pressed his
lips together and looked at no one. There was an interval of silence.
“I don’t see why he should be any better than Sumner!” said the captain,
defiantly.
“I don’t see how he could be any worse!” ejaculated Talbot.
“I don’t urge it,” said Mr. Adams, kindly. “I merely suggest it for
consideration.”
“He couldn’t run the game as Jack does,” said Harrison.
“He could save touch-downs as Jack doesn’t,” asserted Talbot. “I think
as much of Jack as you do, but my thinking a lot of him can’t make him
play well.”
“He has been on the team all the season. It is hard to put him off now.”
“No one stays on the crew because he’s been on all the season—I’ll tell
you that in advance!” blurted Pete, savagely. “I’ll fire myself if there
are four better men.”
Harrison smiled faintly. “It’s easy to say that now. Wait till spring.”
“Sh! Here he comes,” exclaimed Yards, speaking for the first time.
“We’ll think it over during the night.”
Sumner came oscillating down the aisle from the seat which he had
occupied, dismally brooding alone, during half the journey. He stopped
at the end of the double seat and addressed Harrison, but his gaze, as
he spoke, wandered uneasily away over the captain’s head; while his
flushed cheek and hurried tones betrayed the strain under which he had
been laboring.
“I’ve been thinking the thing all over,” he began, “and I see perfectly
plainly what’s the right thing to do. I’ve gone to the bad in my play. I
know it as well as anybody. I want you to put little Mac into my place
at quarter and give him a good, fair show to prove what he can do. He’s
no good in the line because he’s so light, but he tackles like a little
fiend in the open, and he can catch anything that can be kicked. I could
tell him all he doesn’t know about signals and plays in twenty minutes.
I believe the change would give the team a new start.”
“By Jove, you’re the stuff, Jack!” cried Talbot, as he clutched his
friend’s hand and gave it a wring. “If we win anything this year, that’s
the spirit that’ll bring it. There’s something in a name, after all.”
“Give McDowell the place and wrest it back from him,” suggested Mr.
Adams, who felt the tension of the scene.
“I shan’t wrest it back, if he has a fair show, sir,” answered Sumner,
with a melancholy laugh.
“We’ll try him, then,” concluded Harrison; “shan’t we, Yards?”
Yards acquiesced with a vast sense of relief. He had already determined
on this very change, though how he was to bring it about had greatly
perplexed him. Sumner’s magnanimity relieved him of all anxiety.
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