COTTING IS PUZZLED
News travels fast in school, and by ten o’clock the next morning it was
known from one end of the campus to the other that Kittson was going to
report that afternoon for football practice. The result was that every
fellow who could possibly get to the field was on hand long before the
fateful hour of three-thirty. Tad, who had the effrontery to walk to
a point of observation some ten feet away, declared later that it was
worth a thousand mile journey to see the expression on Coach Cotting’s
face when Kitty informed him that he would like to try for the team,
please. Kitty, in brand new football togs, with his trousers at least
six inches too long for his short legs――there had been no time to alter
them――and his knotty calves incased in green stockings, was a sight to
behold. And yet there was no suggestion of self-consciousness about
him. Had you attired Kitty in the uniform of a Scotch Highlander or a
Turkish _bashi bazouk_ he would have shown no awkwardness. Kitty had a
mind above clothes.
Coach Cotting, maintaining his composure with the utmost difficulty,
entered Phineas Kittson in his red book and consigned him to
the awkward squad. Rodney, who had just been promoted from that
aggregation, mourned the fact. He wanted so much to be near when Kitty
fell on his first ball.
The school at large cheered when Kitty followed his companions down the
gridiron, and after that, flocking closely along the side line, they
watched his every performance and offered him enthusiastic applause and
encouragement. Kitty knew well enough that he was being joshed, but he
didn’t mind. Fellows were always poking fun at him for one thing or
another. Let them! Kitty had his own ideals and pursued them, his own
views and held to them. No, Kitty didn’t mind much. Not nearly so much
as Gordon. The fullback stood the ribald shouts and laughter and cheers
as long as he could, and then walked over to the throng and informed
them that this was football practice and not a funny show, and that if
they didn’t shut up he’d have Cotting put them out and close the gates.
After that practice proceeded more decorously.
Meanwhile Kitty was having his troubles. But the queer thing about
Kitty was that he had a funny notion that troubles were things you
could get the better of if you put your head down and worked hard. So
Kitty did as he was instructed to do to the best of his ability, using
up a good deal of unnecessary strength in the doing, and was perhaps
after all no more awkward than half a dozen others in the squad. And
Gordon, who had smiled for a while at first, soon came to admire the
fellow’s dogged courage and perseverance, and was extraordinarily
patient and gentle with him toward the last. By that time the novelty
had worn away for the spectators and the crowd had thinned out,
and Kitty’s return to the gymnasium in the wake of the others was
unattended by any demonstration. On the next day he was again the
cynosure of all eyes, as Tad so aptly put it, and again on the day
following. But after that the school decided that the fun had worn thin.
On Friday Coach Cotting made the first cut, and some dozen youths
abandoned aspirations for that season. Strange to say, however, Kitty,
at the good-natured solicitation of Gordon, was retained and became a
fragment, a rather weighty fragment, of the third squad. Rodney, too,
was retained, and whether he was glad or sorry he couldn’t make up his
mind. He was confident that he would never survive the next cut, and
he begrudged the time that practice took from his studies, although
for that matter he couldn’t honestly say that his class standing was
suffering any. On the other hand, he had discovered to his surprise
that he was getting not a little interested in football. He rather
liked the camaraderie of it, and the feeling of well-being that
followed a hard afternoon out there on the yellow turf and――yes, and
he would have been less than human otherwise――he liked the knowledge
that less fortunate fellows observed him with respect as one who had
succeeded where they had failed, and as one chosen to uphold the
gridiron honor of Maple Hill. And all the time he was growing to like
it better he was telling himself that no matter how hard he tried or
how hard Coach Cotting tried he would never become anything more than
an indifferent player. But meanwhile he did as best he could, and
Cotting and Captain Doyle puzzled over him considerably.
“He knows football,” said Doyle one day when he and the coach were
discussing Rodney, amongst other candidates, “but he doesn’t seem to
get beyond a certain point. He plays as well and not much better than
he did the first day, as far as I can see.”
“I can’t make him out,” acknowledged the coach. “He seems willing
enough to learn, and he seems to try hard enough, but he gets no――no
‘forrader.’ Why?”
Doyle shook his head. “Blessed if I know. Guess he lacks football
instinct.”
“‘Football instinct,’” echoed the coach smilingly. “You’ve been reading
stories, Terry. ‘There ain’t no such critter’ as football instinct.
Instinct is a natural impulse. You may say that a boy has a natural
impulse toward athletics and, if he happened to come of athletic
parents, you’re probably right. But football hasn’t been played long
enough in this country to generate instinct, if you see what I mean.
Perhaps in another hundred or two hundred years boys may be born with
football instinct, but not now, Terry.”
“Well, it’s something,” replied the other vaguely, “and Merrill doesn’t
seem to have it.”
“Call it football sense,” said the coach. “He does as he is told and
as he has been taught, but he appears to have no initiative. In other
words, if he found himself during a game suddenly in a position where
he had to depend on his own resources, mental and physical, he’d likely
fail right there. Strange, too, that I was speaking to Mr. Howe about
Merrill yesterday. Howe has him in two classes, I think. He said he’d
never found a boy with a greater aptitude for learning nor one with
a more retentive memory. But then perhaps that proves my contention.
Merrill, I dare say, lacks imagination. Well, we’ll keep him along for
another week or so and see what happens.”
Maple Hill went down the river a few miles on Saturday and played her
first game of the season. Her opponent was Phoenixville High School, an
aggregation not at all formidable. In fact the contest was looked upon
as nothing more than a slightly glorified practice, and for that reason
Coach Cotting took along two complete elevens and used every player at
some time during the game. Phoenixville managed to score a touchdown
as the result of a fumble by a Maple Hill substitute near the end of
the last period, but the Green-and-Gray ran up twenty-eight points
and was well enough satisfied. Neither Rodney nor Phineas was taken
along that day. How Kitty spent his afternoon I don’t know; probably,
however, in taking a little ten mile jaunt around the country; but
Rodney, after declining the invitation of Tom and Pete to follow the
team as a rooter, remained at home and joined Tad and the twins at
tennis. Rodney had Matty for a partner, and there were two hard fought
sets. For some reason Rodney’s strokes were less certain than usual
and, although he played perhaps as well as Tad, the opponents won each
set, the first 7–5 and the second 9–7. Matty was not up to her sister
on the tennis court, and May’s better playing accounted for the double
victory. They had a jolly time, however, and afterwards Tad played
host at Doolittle’s and they consumed ice-cream sodas and talked over
the contests. Tad insisted that playing football had injured Rodney’s
tennis.
“It always does,” he said. “Your arm gets sort of stiff and set, you
see. A fellow has to keep his wrist pretty supple to do good backhand
work.”
Rodney agreed that possibly football was to blame. “As soon as they let
me go, I’ll try you again,” he said.
“Don’t worry. They won’t let you go, Rod. Why, you’re doing finely,
aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not. I’m playing about as poorly as the rest of the duffers in
the second squad, I suppose. I guess another week will settle me.”
At this there were lamentations from the twins. They had, it seemed,
made up their minds that Rodney was to be a football star like his
famous brother. “You oughtn’t to talk like that,” Matty protested
earnestly. “You――you must _think_ you’re going to do well, mustn’t he
May?”
“Yes, indeed. What we think we are,” replied May gravely.
“I _think_,” laughed Rodney, “that I’m full of soda.” He pushed his
glass away.
“Don’t you like it?” asked Matty, viewing his unemptied glass.
“Yes, but I’ve got to walk up that hill yet. I’m thinking about that.”
“You don’t have to go back yet, do you? Let’s you and I play against
them at croquet. It’s only fair we should beat them at something!”
So presently they toiled up the street to the little side gate in
the hedge, and after recovering from their exertion――for thirty
games of tennis leaves one rather disinclined for further effort for
awhile――they played three fairly hard games of croquet, of which Rodney
and Matty managed to win two.
A week later autumn announced her arrival. Rodney awoke one morning
to find a brisk wind blowing and the trees nearly bare of foliage.
Yellow and red and russet-brown leaves frolicked along the roads and
there was a keen nip in the air that lent zest to living. After that
football practice was less like hard labor, and the players didn’t
come off the field bathed in perspiration and feeling as though they
had emerged from a particularly strenuous Turkish bath. That afternoon
Coach Cotting drove his charges hard. As soon as the candidates reached
the field they were put to work punting or catching, all, that is, save
Stacey Trowbridge and Roger Tyson, who put in the time trying goals
from the field. At last, when all the players were out, there was one
lap around the track at a fast jog, the pace being set by Mr. Cotting,
who, clad in a faded green jersey and an old pair of gray flannel
trousers, trotted at the head of the bunch. For several minutes one
heard only the fall of many feet on the cinders, the swish-swish of
rasping canvas, and the breathing of the runners. When the circuit was
complete the several squads assembled quickly and, under the direction
of shrill-voiced quarterbacks, went through twenty minutes of signal
work. Then:
“All right!” called the coach. “Get your head guards!”
That was the signal for scrimmage, and the fellows hurried to the
sidelines and donned the black leather helmets. Somehow, everything
to-day was done on the jump. The brisk weather was incentive enough,
and the coach’s perfunctory “Look alive, fellows!” was quite
unnecessary. Later, though, when the second squad backs appeared to
have lost some of their snap, the coach’s voice rang out harshly enough.
“Stop loafing, you backs! If I catch you at it again out you come! _And
you don’t go back!_ Now get into it!”
The warning had the desired effect, for Coach Cotting kept his word and
every fellow knew it.
The third squad went over to the practice gridiron and played the Third
Form Team, and both Rodney and Kitty got into the game and enjoyed it
thoroughly. The Third Form Team had had only a few days of practice
under the direction of one of the submasters and so were not formidable
opponents. The third squad scored almost at will, and in some fifty
minutes of actual playing ran up forty-nine points against their
opponents, who, taking a long chance on a forward pass that ought not
to have worked but did, crossed the third squad’s goal line for a
solitary touchdown.