BACK AGAIN
All day long on the fourteenth of September the trains disgorged batches
of young studiosi upon the platform of the Seaton station. The older
boys, veterans of at least a year, hallooed jubilantly over the heads of
the crowd to their returning friends, and in joyous groups which rapidly
formed and dissolved, clinched grips and thrashed each other’s arms
about in gestures quite contrary to the latest rules of etiquette. The
newcomers, awed and diffident, threaded their way ungreeted through this
waste of welcomes. Some came with mammas, who viewed the boisterous
crowd with disapproval and skirted it in haste; some with papas, who
looked and smiled and wished their own lads among the merrymakers; some
with older brothers, who knew the station agents and the townspeople,
but not the boys; and some like Dick Melvin of old and Laughlin of two
years before, alone, unknown, with little money in the purse, but in
their hearts a valiant purpose to accept the opportunity the school
offered and climb the hard path others had climbed before them.
“Where’s Dave Laughlin?” was Wolcott’s first cry as he jumped from the
car steps and was seized on one side by Durand and Ware, and on the
other by the twins.
“Over there smashing baggage,” said Ware, pointing down the platform.
“He’s delivering trunks round town.”
“I’ll take him your order,” said a Peck.
“I’ll take it myself, thank you,” answered Wolcott, scanning the two
sunburned faces. “You’ve grown different during the summer. I can tell
you apart now.”
“Well, which is which?” demanded Durand.
“That’s Donald. He’s the one that has the mole on his back,” Wolcott
replied promptly, pointing to the twin who had spoken.
The Pecks chuckled. Durand hooted: “Wrong! And they’ve both grown moles
by this time, I’ll bet my hat!”
“How’d the exams go?” asked Ware, coming to Wolcott’s aid.
“Fine. I got eighteen points, a lot better than I expected. How were
yours?”
“Fair,” replied Ware.
“Four honors, that means,” put in Durand.
“Butler here, and Pope and Jackson?”
“Yes, all back, and every old football man except the three who
graduated last June. Buist’s failed and is coming back for another year,
so the old back field will be here. If we have any kind of luck, we
ought to have a great team this year.”
Ware’s words were meant to bear a message of good news, but they brought
instead a quiver of disappointment to Wolcott’s heart. If the ranks were
so full, the chances for new men were certainly small. He was ashamed of
the feeling as soon as he recognized it, and he threw it off with a
sudden jerk of the head, as a swimmer shakes the water from his hair.
“That’s bully,” he said. “The best is none too good for us. I’m going to
find Dave.”
Laughlin was standing beside the pile of baggage, in cap and overalls,
receiving checks and addresses and making out receipts. Two big wagons
were backed up to the platform, and two assistants were clumsily lifting
in the heavy trunks.
“That’s mine, Dave,” called Wolcott, calmly reaching over the heads of
the row of fellows who in jolly bustle and with unconcealed desire to
rattle the amateur baggageman were insisting each on immediate
attention.
The big fellow looked up and squared his broad face, dripping with
perspiration, toward the familiar voice. Over his features spread a
smile fairly glowing with the spirit of welcome.
“Hello, Wolcott!” he cried, grasping the outstretched hand by the
knuckles and shaking it vigorously. “Awfully glad to see you.”
“Then take this check,” said Wolcott. “I’m at the old place.”
But Laughlin only nodded shrewdly and retorted: “No, sir! You take your
turn at this shop.”
With this uncompromising reply on his lips, the deliverer of trunks
turned to one of the half dozen who were shouting: “Here!” “Here!” “I’m
next!” and gave himself up to business. Wolcott, thus forced to wait his
proper time, waited still longer and watched the scene.
The two assistants stumbled with a heavy trunk. The boss pushed them
aside, grasped the unwieldy thing and tossed it into the wagon.
“What a hand you’d be in a baggage car, Dave!” cried Wolcott.
“I’ve done it before,” answered Laughlin. “It’s not so hard if you know
the trick.—Here, you fellows, get into the wagon and push ’em up while I
throw ’em in.—I’ve got a lot of things to say to you, but I can’t say
’em now. I’ll be over this evening sometime.”
It was nearly ten o’clock when Laughlin at last came slowly up the
stairs and with a sigh of satisfaction stretched out on Wolcott’s sofa.
“About as hard a day’s work as I ever did,” said the truckman. “One
hundred and eight trunks since six o’clock this morning! I could have
done a lot more if I had had another outfit.”
“I hope you made a good pile out of it,” said Wolcott, “and that all the
fellows will pony up.”
“They paid cash,” replied Laughlin, shrewdly, pulling out a fistful of
halves and quarters. “If they ever have ready money, it’s when they come
in the fall. One hundred and eight trunks at twenty-five cents each is
twenty-seven dollars. Taking out two dollars for each of the fellows who
helped me, and six dollars for the wagons, I have seventeen left. How’s
that for a day’s work?”
“Great! I haven’t earned as much money in all my life. You won’t do it
soon again either, unless you get paid for playing college football,” he
added with a teasing smile.
“Then I never shall,” returned Laughlin, quietly. “Those fellows down at
X have been after me again.”
“Same offers?” asked Wolcott.
“Better ones. I can have the earth. They promise to find me a place to
work where all I have to do is to draw my pay, and they’ll see to it
that my expenses don’t worry me. It amounts to an offer to get me into
college, keep me there, and find me a job when I get out. All I have to
do is to play football.”
“Going?” asked Wolcott, laughing.
“Going!” repeated Laughlin, as he snapped himself up into a sitting
position on the sofa and stared reproachfully at his questioner. “Not if
I know myself! There isn’t money enough in the whole institution to buy
me. And what’s more, I’m not going to a place where they do business in
that way. I’d rather not go to college at all than hire myself out to
play football.”
Wolcott gazed at his big friend in silence, but the admiration which his
lips failed to express was revealed by the gleam of feeling in his eyes.
Laughlin had toiled away the vacation weeks as porter in a summer hotel.
His school life was but a routine of close study and hard manual labor,
of plugging at lessons and furnace tending and snow shovelling and odd
jobbing. The time given to football involved a personal sacrifice to be
made good by greater effort after the season closed. The future had
nothing in store for him except what his own hands and brain could
provide. What a temptation, then, this promise of an easy and glorious
college course!
“There seems to be a wrong notion of me going round,” continued
Laughlin. “I don’t see why they should keep after me so. Even if I were
willing to sell myself, I doubt if I could deliver the goods. I’m really
only a fair sort of player. They seem to think I belong on an
all-American eleven.”
“You’ll make it some day if you keep on,” declared the admirer, his
ardor of feeling finding expression in emphasis rather than in words.
“Whether I do or not makes mighty little difference to me at present.
All I ask is to win the Hillbury game.”
“Oh, you’ll do that fast enough. Just look at the old men you’ve got
back.”
“I’ve looked at ’em,” the captain answered sagely. “Some of ’em will be
better than they were last year and some worse, and all harder to
control. It looks like just the kind of a veteran team that gets done
up. You’re coming out to-morrow, aren’t you?”
Wolcott reddened with pleasure. “Yes, if you want me.”
“Want you! We want everybody. Give us your hand.”
Wolcott reached out his hand and clasped the other’s brawny, callous
fist.
“Squeeze!” commanded the captain, tightening his grip.
Wolcott squeezed. His summer, though wholly unlike Laughlin’s, had not
been spent in idleness, and he met pressure with pressure. Second
followed second, and still the two hands trembled in the clasp, while
eye searched eye for sign of wavering. Wolcott’s muscles were failing,
his hand was growing numb; but he marshalled his nerves to reënforce his
muscles, determined not to show the white feather if his hand were
crushed to pieces, and holding his own against his antagonist. It was
Laughlin who ended the ordeal by suddenly wrenching his hand loose.
“You’ll do. What have you been doing all summer—rowing?”
“Yes, lots of it, and swimming and hauling sails.”
“How much do you weigh?”
“One hundred and seventy-nine, stripped.”
Laughlin nodded thoughtfully. “That’s not much in these days. I’m under
my usual weight at two hundred and ten. Is that the outside wall there,
behind the sofa?”
“Yes,” answered Wolcott, with wonder.
“Let’s pull the sofa out, then; I don’t want to smash a partition.”
The sofa out of the way, Laughlin began again. “You know how to charge?”
Wolcott nodded assent.
“A good way to practise it is to charge against a wall. You ought to do
it outside, and of course if you have a charging machine with a padded
surface to smash against, it isn’t so hard on the wrists; but I can show
you what I mean right here.”
Laughlin crouched on the floor a yard from the wall, resting on his
finger-tips and toes, with one foot somewhat behind him. Then he counted
three and at the last number suddenly lifted and threw himself forward,
catching himself with the palms of his hands against the wall.
“That’s a charging exercise. It’s hard on the wrists, but it’s good
training. The main thing is to hold your head up and go like a shot when
you hear the word. Try it with me.”
They stooped side by side on the imaginary line. At first Dave counted,
afterward Wolcott. Each time, however, the old player, in spite of his
weight, got off first and was the first to strike the wall.
“I beat you,” said Laughlin, reproachfully, “and they call me slow.”
“I’ll learn it,” declared Wolcott, resolutely.
“I don’t doubt you will,” Laughlin said, as they resumed their seats,
“for you’re naturally quick. It isn’t all the game by a long shot, but
it’s much better to start right. The same holds true about tackling. You
don’t want to make a single bad tackle the whole season through. That
means that the first time you try it, and every time you try it, you go
straight for the man’s knees. If you follow that scheme in everything,
you won’t have bad habits to come back at you later on.”
Wolcott nodded understandingly, and seeing that Laughlin, weary though
he was from his hard day’s work, was still inclined to talk, smothered
the questions on his lips and listened.
“I believe that most of the end-of-the-season careless playing comes
from poorly learned elements like tackling, charging, and dropping on
the ball. You see, at the start-off, everybody, old and new, is
hammering away at these things, and they all do pretty well. Then weeks
afterward, when we’re working at signals, and practising combinations,
and everybody’s attention is on the team work and not on the elements,
there’s likely to be a big slump. The poor tacklers go high, and the
fumblers juggle the ball, and the linesmen get interested in their men
and don’t watch the ball, and break for the wrong bunch. It’s about then
that the new man who has got the elements so sure that he does them
right automatically elbows the old player off the field.”
“I think I’ve learned the elements,” said Wolcott, cautiously.
“Learn them over again, then,” returned Laughlin, “and keep learning
them till you’d no more do them wrong than you’d walk backward over to
recitation. It’s one thing to do a thing right when your mind is on it;
it’s a very different thing to do it right always, whatever your mind is
on. Take a fumbling back, for example. Let a coach give a fumbler an
awful rake-down before a game, and the probability is he won’t do any
fumbling; but he won’t do anything else either. His mind is on the
fumbling.”
“I’ll do my best. What had I better try for?”
“Guard,” replied Dave, instantly. “You are rather light, but I’ve had a
quick, light guard keep me working my hardest to stop him. We’ve three
fair tackles now, but we need a guard to play second to Butler. If you
work hard through the season, you may get a chance for your ‘S’ in the
Hillbury game. Well, good night. Be out at three, sure!”