“BULL RUN”
The next day was Wednesday by the calendar, and “Bull Run” according to
the football crowd. Whether it was intentional or not, true it was that
Coach Bonner invariably made Wednesday practice something to remember
for at least forty-eight hours. That was his day for driving, and every
player went down to the field fully convinced that, whether he lived to
eat his supper or not, he was not due to die of ennui. On Wednesdays
the scrimmage with the second went the full sixty minutes, with no
let-up save such as the rules exacted, and no pauses for instructions.
It was fight all the way, from first whistle to last. On the whole,
“Bull Run” was by no means a misnomer.
On this particular Wednesday afternoon Monty doffed his street
clothes, and pulled his togs on with misgivings. He wasn’t physically
frightened, but he was very doubtful of his ability to hold his own in
the real contest that was due. He walked from the field house over to
the gridiron with Blake and Ordway, and he envied those experienced
youths their gay and careless spirits. Personally, he was rather silent
and preoccupied. He wanted to ask, yet scarcely liked to, whether
Manson was likely to play, reasoning that if the regular fullback
showed up, he, Monty, was not likely to be called on. And, when, a
minute later, he descried Manson on the bench he didn’t know whether to
be glad or sorry.
There was no tackling of the dummy today. The three squads went right
to signal work, and Monty found himself on the second, with Weston,
Brunswick and Hanser in the backfield with him. When, in the course of
plunging up and down the field, he presently passed the first squad, he
saw that Manson was not playing, after all. Still later, on returning
to the side line, the fact was explained. Manson leaned on a good stout
cane when he walked and limped perceptibly. The second team poured on
the field like a lot of colts, evidently fully primed for their task,
and, with a grim disregard of everything save the business of the day,
Coach Bonner summoned the still breathless players from the benches.
“All right, First Team! Derry, Spalding, Kinley, Musgrave, Gowen,
Gordon, Tray, Blake, Winslow, Ordway and Caner. Take the east goal
and kick off to the second. Burgess, you all ready? Boynton, you find
another fellow and hold the chain on this side. Hurry them, Burgess.
Get to work!”
Monty sighed his relief when he heard Caner’s name instead of his, and
he settled back on the bench, with his blanket snuggled around him,
resolved to be very attentive, and learn all he might from watching
the way Caner played. But that mode of imbibing knowledge was speedily
denied him, for Manson limped up the moment the game had started.
“Crail, get a ball, and come over here, will you? Willard, you’re
wanted, too.”
Wonderingly, Monty received a ball from the trainer, and, accompanied by
Willard, a big, solid upper middle fellow, who ranked as third-string
center, followed Manson. The latter led them to the end of the stand.
“Bonner wants you to learn to get the ball from center, Crail,” he
explained. “We’ll be using the direct pass a good deal from now on,
and you’d better be able to handle it. Willard, you go on about eight
yards, please. Whoa, that’ll do! Now, Crail, get in place. Squarely
behind, please. That’s the ticket. End run on the left first. No, no;
don’t hold your hands out. Hide the play until the ball is coming. All
right, Willard. One, two, three―― Let her go! Get it, Crail! Shoot now!
Hard! Run, you rascal! All right! That’s pretty good, but you want to
be ready to start the minute the ball gets to you. Tuck it under your
arm and swing off with the same movement. Here, I’ll show you. Oh,
confound this leg! Snap her, Willard!”
Manson, having discarded his cane, poised himself, and when the ball,
turning lazily over and over, came to him, with one motion slammed it
into the crook of his left elbow and started away. The next moment he
was full-length on the ground, but, as Monty observed, still held the
ball. Monty helped him to his feet, and Manson ruefully shook his head.
“I guess I can’t give practical demonstrations,” he said, with a laugh.
“Here you are, Willard. Now, try that again, Crail. You see what I mean
by doing it together? You mustn’t lose any time doing those two things
separately. Swing the ball under your arm, and step off with your left
foot at the same instant. The two moves work right together. All right,
Willard. One, two, three―― Let her go!”
“Better,” he commented, a moment later, “but you must cut out that
little hop with your right foot. Swing your left right out. Get your
stride at once. That first step’s going to be shorter than the others,
but learn to cover ground with it, just the same. Every fraction of a
split-second counts, Crail.” Manson snapped his fingers. “Bing! You’ve
done a yard! Bing! Bing! You’ve done two yards! Speed, speed, Crail!
That’s what counts, laddie! Once more, please!”
“You got it that time. That was a lot better. Now try it to the left.
Remember that you still step off with your left foot.”
“Left?” inquired Monty.
“Always when you take a pass from center to run right or left, Crail,
because the ball goes under your arm. If you’re going straight ahead
or nearly straight, so you carry the ball against your stomach, start
naturally with your right foot. Now then, you’re running the left end.
Ready, Willard!”
Once or twice there came a poor pass which Monty failed to get or,
getting, mishandled, and once he fumbled a perfectly clean throw. But
his catching was good, on the whole. After awhile he was moved closer
to Willard and at one side and took the ball at an oblique pass. “The
play’s a shift,” explained Manson, “with you three backs strung out in
a line. At the ‘Hep!’ your quarter falls back and the ball shoots to
you and you slide off their guard on the opposite side. Willard, you
step forward as though you were breaking through. Your play is square
over the spot Willard stands now, Crail. That’s that ‘44, 44’ shift,
with ball to right half or fullback. I want you to get that pat.”
After a half-hour or so――Monty knew that it was about that time because
the teams were back on the benches when he had time to look――Manson
called a halt. “That’ll do for this time. Much obliged, Willard. Now,
Crail, I’m going to talk a little while.” He limped back around the
grandstand and sank onto a seat away from the bench. “Sit down and get
your breath. Bonner may be wanting you in the next quarter. Crail,
you strike me as a chap who was intended to play fullback and play it
well. What I don’t understand is how you got into the line in the first
place. Didn’t you ever think you’d like to play behind?”
“Never thought much about it,” answered Monty. “All the playing I’ve
ever done was last fall at the military school out in Indiana. I didn’t
know anything about football when I struck there and only went out
because they got after me. They stuck me at tackle and I didn’t set the
world on fire so you’d notice it.”
“Well, tackle wouldn’t be a bad place for you on a team that played
a hard running game, Crail, but you’d be a misfit in that place with
a team that played the plunging game. No, I think you’re meant for a
fullback. Now I’m going to tell you something, and I don’t want you to
breathe it to anyone before the Mount Morris game. That a bargain?”
“Yes, of course, Manson.”
“Well, I’m out of it for this season. I might play, I suppose. Doc
says I may and Bonner thinks I’m going to. But I’m not. I’ve only got
one knee on that leg, Crail, and next fall I’ll be at Dartmouth. My
brother made a name for himself at Dartmouth and I’m expected to follow
his example. Well, if I do I’m not going to do it with a bum knee. No,
sir, that knee is going to have a rest from now until next fall. It may
sound as though I was going back on the school, Crail, but I don’t
figure it like that. I know well enough that I could go into the Mount
Morris game and play for awhile. Maybe I’d last the game through. But
if I did play this knee of mine would never be any real good again.
I know that. Doc’s as good as said so. I want Grafton to win, you
bet, but I’m not flattering myself enough to think that she can’t win
without me. She can. Caner can play well enough, and there’s Fenton and
you. If I take care of this old leg I’ll have four years of football at
college. If I don’t I’ll have to get my letter on the Chess Team. Not
only that: I might have a weak knee all my life, and that’s too much of
a price to pay. Now, what do you say? Think I’m a squealer?”
“No, I don’t think so,” answered Monty thoughtfully. “I think you’re
sensible, more sensible than most fellows would be about it. And I have
a hunch that it’s a lot harder for you to give up playing the rest of
the season than you’re letting on.”
“It is,” acknowledged Manson wryly. “It――well, it sort of hurts,
Crail!” He was silent a moment. Then: “Sometimes I think I’ll take
a chance,” he muttered. “I might get through all right. With a good
pad――” His voice dwindled into silence again. Then: “Well, what I was
getting at was that you’ve got a pretty fair chance to make a killing,
Crail, if you buckle down and learn the――the fine points. It isn’t
likely that Caner would play the Mount Morris game through. That bunch
play hard and a back is likely to be pretty well used up by the end of
the third period, if not before. Fenton’s all right, but he doesn’t
carry enough weight for the job; or, rather, his weight isn’t low
enough; he doesn’t keep his feet very well. So you’d probably get in
if Caner came out. That’s something to work for, Crail, because you’d
get your letter, if you didn’t do any more, and getting your G in your
lower middle year is quite a feat. I’m telling you this because I want
you to make good. I’ll do everything I can to help you along. I owe it
to the team and the school to find a good substitute if I――desert them.”
“Thanks,” said Monty. “That’s mighty nice of you, and of course I’d
like to make good; but I’m kind of scarey, Manson. Suppose I didn’t.
Suppose I just――well, just made a beastly mess of it. You see, I
haven’t played much.”
“You’ll have played much by that time,” said Manson grimly. “You’ll
find yourself about the busiest chap in school, I guess. You’ll
probably want to quit more than once, Crail. It won’t be any picnic,
old man. But you won’t quit, because――well, because I guess you’re not
the quitting kind. Besides that, you’ll want to do your bit against
Mount Morris. It’s a chance that――There’s Bonner calling you!”
“Go in for Caner, Crail,” directed the coach when Monty trotted up.
“Show a little more speed today. Play as though you meant it!”
The third quarter was nearly over. Caner, just about exhausted, made no
demur at being taken out and handed over his head-guard with a weary
air of relief. Monty pulled it on and encountered the glaring gaze of
Weston, who had taken Blake’s place at the beginning of the second
half. It was evident that friendship had ceased, for Weston snarled,
“Now, for the love of Pete, Crail, show something! Don’t die on your
feet! All right, fellows! Let’s have this!”
Neither side had scored. Substitutions had already been numerous on
each team. Coach Bonner was driving the first relentlessly, while
beyond the panting, restless lines, Dinny Crowley’s voice barked
incessantly. The first had lost the ball on a fumble and the second
had been slamming into the guard-tackle holes for short gains and had
edged the pigskin back to the first team’s twenty-nine yards. Monty,
watching, tried to guess the play, but dared not trust his judgment,
and it was Captain Winslow who gave the warning as the opposing backs
shifted to the left.
“_Right! Right!_” shouted Winslow. “Play in, Pete!”
Then the ball went from Monty’s sight, the backfield divided and
the linesmen crashed together. For a moment the point of attack was
in doubt. Then Monty, hesitating, saw that Winslow had predicted
correctly. Hanser was already skirting the broken line and Monty
followed. The right side of the second’s line was swinging around
behind the runner. Monty saw Pete Gordon go down, saw Tray try for a
tackle and miss. Then the runner was crashing toward him. Hanser had
overshot the hole and it was Monty who took the brunt of that rush.
The second team back went into him like a runaway horse, but Monty got
his grip and, grunting as he was borne back under the impetus of the
charge, held desperately. For an instant the enemy ploughed on, but
then something that felt like a ton of bricks banged into Monty and he
and the runner said “Ugh!” in the same breath, stopped, toppled and
went over, the runner grunting “_Down!_” as he disappeared under a
half-dozen bodies.
“Up! Up!” cried Weston. “Our ball, sir!”
“Second’s ball,” corrected Burgess, somewhere in the entanglement.
“Second down! About seven to go!”
“All right! Signals!” chanted the opposing quarter. “Give it to ’em
again, Second! They’re soft and mushy! Easy picking, fellows, easy
picking! Signals!”
Again came the attack and Longley, at center, was toppled aside. But
the backs stopped the runner for less than a yard gain. Third down now,
and six to go. “Watch for a forward, First!” warned Winslow. “Spread
a little, Hanser!” But the second chose to punt and Monty trailed
back under the arching ball, warily, facing about at every other step
to watch the oncoming enemy. Then the ends were threatening and he
tried to get the first and failed, recovered in time to send the other
sprawling, went down himself under the charge of a big second team
lineman, scrambled to his feet again to find the tide flowing back
toward him and did his best to get into the hasty interference. But
Weston, ball in arm, slipped across the field, with only Hanser on his
flank, and, turning, twisting, gaining and losing, was finally brought
to earth near the side line after a twelve-yard run back. And before
the next play could start the whistle piped.