his team; and it was Oliver McKnight, son of any number of millions
of Consolidated Steel, who applied the loosening twist. In an
intermission, McKnight came and flung himself down beside Larry.
“Say, Donovan,” he began abruptly, “you ought to push my face in. Four
or five weeks ago I said some things about you to Cal Rogers that
gave you a good right to hate me straight through the four years. Of
course, I didn’t know you were overhearing me; but that only makes it
worse――looks as if I didn’t have the nerve to say such things to your
face. I was a mucker; and ever since, I’ve been trying to dig up sand
enough to come and tell you so.”
There was more than a drop of good, warm, Irish blood in Larry
Donovan’s veins, as his name would indicate, and for an impulsive
half-second he wanted to throw his arms around the pampered son of
Consolidated Steel. He didn’t quite do that, but he did say what was
fitting.
“That’s all right, Mac――perfectly all right. You just forget it. I
won’t say that it didn’t rub me the wrong way at the time, but――――”
“Thanks, old scout,” McKnight broke in. “I’ve had that on my chest
until I’m sore as a boil. What chance do you think we’re going to stand
to lift the hoodoo to-morrow?”
The morrow was the day set for the “Blacksmiths” to play Rockford
Poly on the home field. Rockford was not in the Conference, but it
had a strong eleven, and even the best friends of the Sheddon team
were saying that they hadn’t a chance in the world. But at McKnight’s
question Larry scraped around and found a bit of the newly boosted
college loyalty.
“We’ll never say die till we’re dead,” he asserted. “We’ve got to get
in with both feet and put a barrel of pep behind our fellows to-morrow.
We simply can’t _let_ them lose!”
“Gorry! it sure sounds good to hear you talk that way. But we’re lame,
Donnie. Since Critchett and Johnson were laid out in that game with
the down-State eleven, we’ve been sewed up. Brock’s put in all of his
subs, first and last, and they’ve fizzled on him, one after another.
Shebbie’s been keeping in wire touch with the team, and he says we’ll
have to have new material here to-morrow for Brock to draw from.”
It was here that Larry showed that he could be generous.
“You’re the best all-round man on the Freshman, Mac, and here’s hoping
for you,” he said; and he meant it.
“Not on your cabinet photo!” retorted the son of much money. “If it
comes down to us, you’re It. You’ll be here on the field, won’t you?”
“Sure thing!” said Larry; though, up to that heart-mellowing moment
when McKnight had made the _amende honorable_, it had been anything in
the world but a sure thing.
Dickie Maxwell saw a new light in his room-mate’s eyes that night as
they settled themselves on either side of the study table, but Dickie
had a wise streak in him which came to the surface once in a while, and
he forbore to say anything. But, just before they turned in, Larry had
his say.
“You remember that bleat that I made about Ollie McKnight four or five
weeks ago, Dick?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“I guess I was pretty thin-skinned about that. Mac’s all right. He came
to me to-day and squared things like a man. I’m telling you because
I beefed to you about what he said; but you’re not to let it go any
further.”
The day of the Sheddon-Rockford game was all that could be desired,
weather-wise. A light frost during the night――not enough to hurt the
field――put a keen tang in the air: but the sun was like the one in
Alice in Wonderland――shining with all its might. A “pep” meeting of
the student body had been held the night before, and when the game was
called there wasn’t a vacant seat on the bleachers.
The Rockford team, big fellows, to a man, showed up in fine form, and
it was evident from the kick-off that it was to be a fight for blood.
Brock’s men, playing for the first time in the season on their home
field, and with all Sheddon present to shout encouragement, did their
best; but it wasn’t quite good enough. At the end of the second quarter
the score stood 7 to nothing in favor of the visitors, Rockford having
pushed the ball over for a touch-down and kicked goal――at which the
trainload of rooters who had come over from Rockford were yelling their
heads off.
“Our offense is pitiful!” Larry told Dick in the intermission.
“Shubrick acts as if he’d been crippled, and he’s the only back that’s
any good. Brock ought to take him out.”
As he spoke, one of the subs came running up to them, breathless with
excitement.
“Donovan!” he panted, “coach says get on your uniform, quick! He’s
going to put you in Shubrick’s place next half!”
For a moment Larry stood as if dazed. But the next instant he was
racing for the gymnasium with Dick at his heels.
While Larry fairly jumped from his “civies” into his foot-ball togs,
Dick talked excitedly. It was a chance――biggest chance that had ever
been given a Sheddon Freshman――Larry could put it through――he _must_
put it through; and things like that.
“I’ll be found trying,” was all Larry said; but there was a “do-or-die”
grin to go with the promise as he jerked his belt tight, grabbed up his
headgear, and started for the field on a run.
A moment later he was reporting to the coach. The members of the team
were stripping their sweaters preparatory to the dash on the field for
the second half.
“I’m not going to start you, Donovan,” said the coach, putting an arm
across Larry’s shoulders. “You sit on the bench with me and I’ll send
you in when you’re needed.”
Sitting quietly beside the coach, Larry looked on while Rockford took
the ball and, by superior weight and superb interference, pushed it
over for another touch-down just as the third quarter ended. The goal
was missed, and with just fifteen short minutes left to play, the score
stood Rockford 13, Sheddon nothing.
Suddenly Brock gripped Larry’s arm.
“Now’s the time. You take Shubrick’s place. Remember to report to the
referee. Then, after the first play, tell Clark to run 43――with you
back――that’s you, just outside tackle on the right; and then to call
you back on the other side and run 44――that’s off tackle on the other
side. Tell him to keep on running you as long as you can gain. You’re
our only chance, boy!――and I believe you’ll pull us out of the hole!”
Larry didn’t speak; he merely grinned and dashed on the field with his
fists clenched so tight that his finger-nails were white, and with his
teeth set.
“Donovan for Shubrick at right half!” he snapped at the referee.
“Shubrick out!” shouted the referee; and a moment later blew his
whistle for the resumption of play.
Sheddon had received the kick-off on the thirty-yard line. On the first
down, Shubrick had been thrown for a loss. Clark, Sheddon’s quarter,
did not wait for the coach’s instructions. He had seen Larry play and
knew his power. As soon as Larry was in position, Clark barked his
signal: “Formation right! Donovan back! 32――43――59!” The ball came to
Larry on a direct pass from the center. Starting toward opponent’s
tackle, he swerved suddenly to the right and found his hole just inside
of the end. Rockford’s full-back got him, but he had gained five yards.
“Good boy, Larry!” yelled Dugald, the big Sheddon captain, helping him
to his feet. “Do it again!”
“Watch me!” Larry grinned, jumping back to his position.
And, sure enough, he did do it again, on the same play, only this time
for seven yards and a first down. By this time the Sheddon bleachers
were beginning to realize that something was happening. There had been
little cause for joy in that section of the stands during the first
half. But now business was certainly picking up.
“Who’s the new man?” the cheer leader called to the coach.
“Donovan!” the coach shouted back; and then the cheer leader turned to
the stands and held up his hands.
“Everybody get into it!” he yelled. “Fifteen for Donovan!” and the
fifteen might have been heard in the next county.
Larry heard them just as he got the ball for the straight third time.
The opposing end had crowded in close to stop him, so Larry simply
ran around him, taking the ball to Rockford’s ten-yard line, where
Rockford’s quarter-back brought him down by a beautiful diving tackle.
Immediately Rockford’s coach sent in several substitutes in an attempt
to stem the tide and prevent a score. The Rockford captain was walking
up and down, slapping his linemen on the back, and urging them to
“get low,” while the Rockford bleachers answered Sheddon’s chant of
“Touch-down, Sheddon! Touch-down, Sheddon!” with a prayer to “Hold ’em,
Rockford! Hold ’em, Rockford!”
Sheddon’s full-back shot into the line for a scant yard. He tried
again, but could add only two more. Two more downs to make seven yards
and a touch-down. Sheddon’s rooters stood up. Something was wrong.
First came cries from individuals: “Give it to Donovan!” Then the
stands roared out, “Give it to Donovan!”
Rockford knew then that it was to be given to Donovan, and quickly set
themselves to stop him. This time the signal was for a mass on left
tackle. But Larry saw at a glance, as the ball came into his hands,
that the Rockford players were bunched just where the play should go
... and in the same glance he saw that there was a hole through right
guard. Leaving his interference, he shot through the hole, dodged the
full-back, and dived across the goal line.
Dugald kicked goal, while the Sheddon stands rang with the name of
Donovan, and the Sheddon players patted him on the back and called him
“Good old Larry!” The score was now 13 to 7, and Sheddon could win with
another touch-down and goal.
“How much time to play?” Dugald asked, as Sheddon lined up to receive
the kick-off――Rockford having chosen to kick.
“Ten minutes!” answered the timekeeper.
“Come on, fellows――we can do it!” Dugald cried; and the team answered
him in bellowing unison, Larry’s voice ringing out with a new-found
happiness: “Sure we can do it! Let’s go!”
But it was not so easy, this time. Rockford began to watch Larry, and
every time he took the ball it seemed as if the whole Rockford team was
on top of him. But steadily Sheddon pushed the ball down to Rockford’s
fifteen-yard line, only to lose it on a fumble. Rockford kicked out
of danger, and Sheddon again started the march to victory. Then the
timekeeper announced four minutes to play――and the goal was sixty yards
away!
Dugald came out of the line and spoke low to Larry.
“Larry, you’re the only one who can gain. Can you stand to take it
every time?”
“Give it to me!” Larry answered, gritting his teeth.
Eight straight times the ball came to him, and eight straight times
he carried it toward Rockford’s goal. He followed no signals――merely
took the ball and bucked, dodged, fought his way forward. Rockford
knew he was coming, but they came to know that they could not stop
him. The bleachers were now giving forth a continuous roar; and when,
on the eighth try, Larry carried the ball over for Sheddon’s second
touch-down, he knew, as every man on the field knew, that he had won
for Sheddon――for Dugald made the victory an assured fact by kicking
goal, thus making the final score 14–13.
It was from no lack of college spirit that Larry Donovan did not turn
out that night to join in the song-singing, cheer-bellowing “snake
dance” wherewith Sheddon celebrated its victory. A bruised ankle――that
he didn’t know was lamed until the game was over――kept him in his
room, and it was here that Dick found him when the long, noisy parade
wriggled its way back to the campus after having shouted itself hoarse
all over town.
“How’s the old foot-knuckle by now?――hurt much?” inquired the
celebrator, peeling off the white night-shirt which was the regalia for
the parade.
“Nothing to weep about,” said Larry. “It’ll be all right in a day or
so. Parade over?”
“Fellows were just coming across the campus when I skipped out. Going
to disband at the gym., I guess,” he added, stepping to the window to
look out. Then: “No, by jinks! They’re coming this way: Larry, you old
snipe, they’re coming for you!”
Pallid panic leaped into the eyes of the temporarily crippled
substitute half-back.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Dick――can’t you stop ’em?” he gasped.
But it was too late to stop them. Already the white-robed mob was
filling the street in front of Mrs. Grant’s. “Donovan! Donovan!” it
yelled; and Larry, with Dick to help him, had to hobble to the window,
which Dick threw open.
They didn’t demand a speech; all they wanted was to see him. When he
waved awkwardly to the surging mass, a roar broke forth. Then, with the
cheer leader to time it, they gave him the Sheddon series.
When the crowd broke up, Dick led the cripple back to his chair, and
for quite some little time Larry sat with his head in his hands,
staring down at an open book which might have been printed in Sanskrit
for all that the words in it meant to him. Dick waited as long as he
thought he ought to. Then he said: “How about that ‘workingman’ class
line now, Larry?”
Larry looked up, and the good gray eyes were suspiciously bright.
“They’ve broken it down for me, individually, Dick; but it’s here, just
the same――you know it is. I had a bit of good luck this afternoon, and
for that they’ve taken me in. But there are lots of others who won’t be
taken in; little Purdick, and Jungman, and dozens that I could name.”
“Well?” said Dick, as one who would say, “What are you going to do
about it?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Dick,” Larry shot back, much as if
he had read Dick’s unspoken question; “I’m going to make it my job to
break the combination――or as much of it as can be broken from my side
of the fence. Old Sheddon ought to be one and indivisible, all through
the year, just as it is on the day of a foot-ball victory. I’m going to
do what one fellow can to make it so.”
Dickie Maxwell started to gasp, but caught himself in good time.
“That’s the right old stuff!” he chanted heartily. “Go to it, old
scout, and when the pinches come, I’ll be there to help.”
Yet, later, it was Larry who was to do the helping――but that does not
belong to the story of the Offish Worm.
III
THE LAME DOGS
Old Sheddon, calling itself pretty strictly an engineering school,
is peculiar in one respect: it has no dormitories on its campus. Its
two thousand (more or less) undergraduates live in clubs, fraternity
houses, and with the neighbors. Practically everybody in the college
town takes roomers and boarders, and among these private houses the
“Man-o’-War” was popular for two reasons: Mrs. Grant was a most
motherly home body; and her pies were, as Dickie Maxwell put it,
“simply out of sight.”
Dick and Larry had the largest of the upstairs rooms, with two windows
on the side toward the street and the campus. While the college year
was still in its infancy, it began to be remarked that these windows
were seldom dark in the evening. Which meant that at least one of the
room’s occupants knew what he wanted and was going stubbornly after it.
“Great Peter!” Dick complained, one evening after the Thanksgiving game
had closed the foot-ball season, “aren’t you ever going to take any
time off at all, Larry? See here; I’ve got an ‘invite’ to a blowout
at the Omeg house to-night, and it includes you. Cut out the studious
stuff for a change and surprise yourself by coming along to mix and
mingle for an hour or so.”
“Nix on the social stuff,” grumbled the big, red-headed fellow at the
study table; “I’ve got two English themes to write.”
“Which means that you don’t want to go,” Dick charged discontentedly.
“All right; you can put it that way, if you like. You know what I think
about the frats.”
“I know you’re a howling crank about ’em. You haven’t a single argument
against ’em that’ll hold water.”
“Sure I have. But I haven’t time to trot them out for you now. Got
these themes to chew on, and after that――――”
“Yes; and after that, your lame dogs will begin to string in. You’ve
got the wrong slant on the cripples, Larry; the faculty has the right
one. If a fellow can’t keep up with the parade, out he goes. And he
ought to go.”
“I can’t see it that way――not for the kind of fellows who have taken to
dropping in here. They want to stay in college――want to make good. And
most of ’em only need a little boosting and jacking up.”
“Well,” said Dick, hustling into his good clothes, “I’m mighty glad I
don’t have to look at it through your spectacles. I don’t want to be a
pack-mule before my time.”
When he was left alone, Larry dug for the themes. English was his
“black beast,” as a Frenchman would put it, and he had to work like
a Turk for it――that is, if Turks ever do work. In his time――which
was only yesterday――managers of the nation’s great industries were
beginning to say that the technical colleges were paying too little
attention to English; that they were turning out engineers who
couldn’t write an ordinary, every-day business letter. Hence the
technicals, Old Sheddon among them, were stressing the English course.
Larry’s home surroundings hadn’t been particularly conducive to the
growth of literary English. In the Donovan home “ain’t” and “he
don’t” and “might of” had their places at the fireside, along with
split infinitives, plural verbs in the wrong places, “let him and I,”
telephone answers like “this is him,” and a lot of other expressions
that the grammar books call “colloquialisms.” So he had to labor pretty
heavily in “English I.”
But in Mathematics it was exactly the other way around. Here the big,
athletic Freshman soon became known as a “shark,” and a good-natured
“shark” is an institution not to be undervalued in any college. Before
the foot-ball season closed, Larry was acquiring a small following of
“lame dogs”; fellows who had to be helped over the stile, if they were
going to get over at all; hence, Dickie Maxwell’s wail about pack-mules
and such.
Down underneath the good-nature which prompted these helpings, Larry
had a sort of ill-defined motive which was more or less to his credit.
As a son of a workingman he had entered college with the feeling that
he was going to be looked down upon, and certain fellows with more
money than sense had either thoughtlessly or maliciously helped the
feeling to grow. But in the better part of him, Larry was too square
and man-sized to become that bitterest of all things, the college
grouch, so he had begun to open out a bit on the side of the helpings,
this though he was still hanging on to the idea that between the son
of an ex-locomotive engineer and, let us say, a member of the richest
Greek-Letter fraternity, there was a gulf fixed, great and impassable.
Dick had been gone a full hour, and the second of the English themes
was well on its way to completion when the door opened and little
Purdick slid in. At first sight, anybody would have said that Charles
Purdick had certainly missed the mark by a broad mile in choosing an
engineering course. Undersized, with a thin, eager face and pale-blue,
tired eyes, he looked more like a candidate for a sanitarium than
anything else.
“Hello, old scout!” said Larry in a cheerful growl. “Thought maybe
you’d be showing up. Drag out that easy-chair and flop. Had a tough
day?”
The undersized one tried to laugh his weariness off.
“If you ever have to work any part of your way through, don’t you take
a restaurant for it,” he advised; adding, “I don’t mind waiting on
table and having to refuse the tips――I’m sort o’ case-hardened to that
now. But the dish-washing sure does get next to me.”
“I’ll bet,” said Larry. “At home I was lucky; have a sister two years
younger than I am. But that’s all that saved me. Stuck on the trig,
again?”
“I’m always stuck on the trig. If I didn’t love machinery so well, I’d
think I’d made the mistake of my life in coming to Sheddon. Yet the
High School Math. didn’t bother me so much.”
“Pull up your chair and let’s have a crack at it,” said Larry. “I
looked it over just after supper, and it isn’t so awfully rocky, this
time.”
With the trigonometry lesson but fairly begun, another of the lame ones
dropped in; then a third and fourth. Larry didn’t “baby” the mental
mendicants――not any; on the contrary, with the exception of little
Purdick, he was gruffly sarcastic with them, calling them cripples,
and demanding to know how long it was going to be before they’d throw
the crutches away. It was the wise thing to do, but Larry didn’t do
it because he was wise; it was chiefly impatience with a bunch of
fellows the majority of whom hadn’t made the most of their preparatory
advantages while they had them.
Purdick, the first to come, was the last to go. After the others had
dropped out one by one, he told Larry why he was lingering.
“You’ve been rattling good to me, Donovan, and there’s something I
ought to tell you,” was the way he began the thing that had to be said.
“All right; spill it,” said Larry.
“This fellow Underhill, in your section; you had a racket with him
after the foot-ball game with Rockford Poly, didn’t you?”
“Not much of a racket. He was standing, with a bunch of his own
kind, on the gym. steps as I came from the showers, and was busy
black-listing the coach for having put me in: said it was a disgrace
to Sheddon to use a ‘mucker’ on the ’Varsity, and then chucked in some
things about my home folks that I don’t take from anybody.”
“Did you hit him?”
“No; I tried it, but the others got between. Then I guess I did a
fool thing. Underhill’s father is the head of a firm of railroad
contractors. A couple of years back this firm had a job on our home
railroad, and it did so much crooked work that the contract had to be
cancelled. Dick told me about this one day when Underhill had gone out
of his way to cold-shoulder me.”
“And you slammed that in Undy’s face?”
Larry nodded. “I was hot, and didn’t have any better sense.”
Little Purdick wriggled uneasily in his chair.
“It’s snitching, in a way, I suppose, but I’ve got to tell you, Donnie.
Underhill and his bunch eat at the restaurant, pretty often. They talk
before me just as if I wasn’t there――as I guess they would before any
‘menial.’ Underhill’s got it in for you. I overheard him tell the other
fellows of his crowd that he was going to make Sheddon too hot to hold
you; he said the university wasn’t big enough to hold you and him at
the same time.”
“That was just bunk,” said Larry contemptuously.
“I don’t know,” Purdick returned slowly. “He’s got all the money there
is in the world; and a spender always gets a crowd around him――of the
kind that’ll do his dirty work for him.”
“How come you know so much about it, Purdy?”
“It’s up to me to know. This is my second year in Sheddon. I was here
last year and flunked out――had to take the work over again. I guess I’m
not much good, anyway.”
Larry had his own opinion about that. What he suspected was that
Purdick had had to do so much outside work for the money-earning that
he hadn’t had time, or the needed energy, for study――which was the fact.
While Larry was arriving at the fact, Purdick got up to go. But at the
door he turned, and his face was white and the hand on the door-knob
was shaking.
“Donovan, I hope you’ll do that fellow up, cold!” he snapped, with his
pale eyes ablaze.
“Ump!” said Larry. Then: “Why the sudden burst of fury?”
“You know, perfectly well. He and his kind are always putting you and
me and our kind to the wall――squeezing the life out of the working
classes. They got my father between the millstones and ground him till
he died! But our time’s coming; and when it does come――look out!”
“Here, you firebrand――come back here!” Larry called; but the door had
slammed and the lame dog was gone.
For some little time after Purdick had left him, Larry sat at the table
with his square chin propped in his cupped hands. Class distinctions,
as between rich and poor, had never troubled him very much in his home
life. There hadn’t been any hard-and-fast line drawn in the home High
School, or, if there had been, it was fellows like himself――sons of
workingmen――who drew it.
Naturally, while he was working spare time in the railroad shop and
roundhouse, he had heard more or less talk about labor and capital,
and about the battle that would one day be fought to a finish between
the two; but most of this had gone in one ear and out the other. Dick
Maxwell’s father, who, besides being general manager of the railroad,
was a fairly wealthy mine owner, was the only “capitalist” he had ever
known, and there was certainly no fault to be found with him.