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AT
GOOD OLD SIWASH
BY GEORGE FITCH
ILLUSTRATED
BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1916
_Copyright, 1910, 1911,_ BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY.
_Copyright, 1911,_ BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved_
Printers S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
[Illustration: Twenty-five yards with four Muggledorfer men hanging on
his legs
FRONTISPIECE. _Page 19_]
AT GOOD OLD SIWASH
PREFACE
Little did I think, during the countless occasions on which I have
skipped blithely over the preface of a book in order to plunge into the
plot, that I should be called upon to write a preface myself some day.
And little have I realized until just now the extreme importance to the
author of having his preface read.
I want this preface to be read, though I have an uneasy premonition that
it is going to be skipped as joyously as ever I skipped a preface
myself. I want the reader to toil through my preface in order to save
him the task of trying to follow a plot through this book. For if he
attempts to do this he will most certainly dislocate something about
himself very seriously. I have found it impossible, in writing of
college days which are just one deep-laid scheme after another, to
confine myself to one plot. How could I describe in one plot the life of
the student who carries out an average of three plots a day? It is
unreasonable. So I have done the next best thing. There is a plot in
every chapter. This requires the use of upwards of a dozen villains, an
almost equal number of heroes, and a whole bouquet of heroines. But I
do not begrudge this extravagance. It is necessary, and that settles it.
Then, again, I want to answer in this preface a number of questions by
readers who kindly consented to become interested in the stories when
they appeared in the _Saturday Evening Post_. Siwash isn't Michigan in
disguise. It isn't Kansas. It isn't Knox. It isn't Minnesota. It isn't
Tuskegee, Texas, or Tufts. It is just Siwash College. I built it myself
with a typewriter out of memories, legends, and contributed tales from a
score of colleges. I have tried to locate it myself a dozen times, but I
can't. I have tried to place my thumb on it firmly and say, "There, darn
you, stay put." But no halfback was ever so elusive as this infernal
college. Just as I have it definitely located on the Knox College
campus, which I myself once infested, I look up to find it on the Kansas
prairies. I surround it with infinite caution and attempt to nail it
down there. Instead, I find it in Minnesota with a strong Norwegian
accent running through the course of study. Worse than that, I often
find it in two or three places at once. It is harder to corner than a
flea. I never saw such a peripatetic school.
That is only the least of my troubles, too. The college itself is never
twice the same. Sometimes I am amazed at its size and perfection, by the
grandeur of its gymnasium and the colossal lines of its stadium. But at
other times I cannot find the stadium at all, and the gymnasium has
shrunk until it looks amazingly like the old wooden barn in which we
once built up Sandow biceps at Knox. I never saw such a college to get
lost in, either. I know as well as anything that to get to the Eta Bita
Pie house, you go north from the old bricks, past the new science hall
and past Browning Hall. But often when I start north from the campus, I
find my way blocked by the stadium, and when I try to dodge it, I run
into the Alfalfa Delt House, and the Eatemalive boarding club, and other
places which belong properly to the south. And when I go south I
frequently lose sight of the college altogether, and can't for the life
of me remember what the library tower looks like or whether the
theological school is just falling down, or is to be built next year; or
whether I ought to turn to my right, and ask for directions at Prexie's
house, or turn to my left and crawl under a freight train which blocks a
crossing on the Hither, Yonder and Elsewhere Railroad. If you think it
is an easy task to carry a whole college in your head without getting it
jumbled, just try it a while.
Then, again, the Siwash people puzzle me. Professor Grubb is always a
trial. That man alternates a smooth-shaven face with a full beard in the
most startling manner. Petey Simmons is short and flaxen-haired, long
and black-haired, and wide and hatchet-faced in turns, depending on the
illustrator. I never know Ole Skjarsen when I see him for the same
reason. As for Prince Hogboom, Allie Bangs, Keg Rearick and the rest of
them, nobody knows how they look but the artists who illustrated the
stories; and as I read each number and viewed the smiling faces of
these students, I murmured, "Goodness, how you have changed!"
So I have struggled along as best I could to administer the affairs of a
college which is located nowhere, has no student body, has no endowment,
never looks the same twice, and cannot be reached by any reliable route.
The situation is impossible. I must locate it somewhere. If you are
interested in the college when you have read these few stories, suppose
you hunt for it wherever college boys are full of applied deviltry and
college girls are distractingly fair; where it is necessary to win
football games in order to be half-way contented with the universe;
where the spring weather is too wonderful to be wasted on College
Algebra or History of Art; and where, whatever you do, or whoever you
like, or however you live, you can't forget it, no matter how long you
work or worry afterward.
There! I can't mark it on the map, but if you have ever worried a
college faculty you'll know the way.
GEORGE FITCH.
July, 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I OLE SKJARSEN'S FIRST TOUCHDOWN 1
II INITIATING OLE 28
III WHEN GREEK MEETS GROUCH 50
IV A FUNERAL THAT FLASHED IN THE PAN 78
V COLLEGES WHILE YOU WAIT 105
VI THE GREEK DOUBLE CROSS 135
VII TAKING PACE FROM FATHER TIME 169
VIII FRAPPÉD FOOTBALL 196
IX CUPID--THAT OLD COLLEGE CHUM 223
X VOTES FROM WOMEN 253
XI SIC TRANSIT GLORIA ALL-AMERICA 284
ILLUSTRATIONS
Twenty-five yards with four Muggledorfer
men hanging on his legs _Frontispiece_
PAGE
"Aye ent care to stop," he said. "Aye kent suit
you, Master Bost" 20
He pulled himself together and touched Ole gently 26
There wasn't a college anywhere around us that
didn't have Ole's hoofmarks all over its pride 33
Martha caused some mild sensation 63
My, but that girl was a wonder! 74
"Har's das spy!" he yelled. "Kill him, fallers;
he ban a spy!" 120
We spent another five minutes hoisting him aboard
a prehistoric plug 125
He may have been fat, but how he could run! 132
Naturally I was somewhat dazzled 147
He was so bashful that his voice blushed when he
used it 151
With our colors on and four particularly wicked-looking
chair legs in our hands 167
Our peculiar style of pushing a football right
through the thorax of the whole middle west 205
"If you don't like that beanbag, eat it" 220
He invited Miss Spencer to go street-car riding
with him 246
You can always spot these family friends 252
It was a blow between the eyes 264
"How are all the other good old chaps?" she said 270
Why, they even made us cut chapel to go walking
with them 280
AT GOOD OLD SIWASH
CHAPTER I
OLE SKJARSEN'S FIRST TOUCHDOWN
Am I going to the game Saturday? Am I? Me? Am I going to eat some more
food this year? Am I going to draw my pay this month? Am I going to do
any more breathing after I get this lungful used up? All foolish
questions, pal. Very silly conversation. Pshaw!
Am I going to the game, you ask me? Is the sun going to get up
to-morrow? You couldn't keep me away from that game if you put a
protective tariff of seventy-eight per cent ad valorem, whatever that
means, on the front gate. I came out to this town on business, and I'll
have to take an extra fare train home to make up the time; but what of
that? I'm going to the game, and when the Siwash team comes out I'm
going to get up and give as near a correct imitation of a Roman mob and
a Polish riot as my throat will stand; and if we put a crimp in the
large-footed, humpy-shouldered behemoths we're going up against this
afternoon, I'm going out to-night and burn the City Hall. Any Siwash man
who is a gentleman would do it. I'll probably have to run like thunder
to beat some of them to it.
You know how it is, old man. Or maybe you don't, because you made all
your end runs on the Glee Club. But I played football all through my
college course and the microbe is still there. In the fall I think
football, talk football, dream football, even though I haven't had a
suit on for six years. And when I go out to the field and see little old
Siwash lining up against a bunch of overgrown hippos from a university
with a catalogue as thick as a city directory, the old
mud-and-perspiration smell gets in my nostrils, and the desire to get
under the bunch and feel the feet jabbing into my ribs boils up so
strong that I have to hold on to myself with both hands. If you've never
sat on a hard board and wanted to be between two halfbacks with your
hands on their shoulders, and the quarter ready to sock a ball into your
solar plexus, and eleven men daring you to dodge 'em, and nine thousand
friends and enemies raising Cain and keeping him well propped up in the
grandstands--if you haven't had that want you wouldn't know a healthy,
able-bodied want if you ran into it on the street.
Of course, I never got any further along than a scrub. But what's the
odds? A broken bone feels just as grand to a scrub as to a star. I
sometimes think a scrub gets more real football knowledge than a varsity
man, because he doesn't have to addle his brain by worrying about
holding his job and keeping his wind, and by dreaming that he has
fumbled a punt and presented ninety-five yards to the hereditary enemies
of his college. I played scrub football five years, four of 'em under
Bost, the greatest coach who ever put wings on the heels of a
two-hundred-pound hunk of meat; and while my ribs never lasted long
enough to put me on the team, what I didn't learn about the game you
could put in the other fellow's eye.
Say, but it's great, learning football under a good coach. It's the
finest training a man can get anywhere on this old globule. Football is
only the smallest thing you learn. You learn how to be patient when what
you want to do is to chew somebody up and spit him into the gutter. You
learn to control your temper when it is on the high speed, with the
throttle jerked wide open and buzzing like a hornet convention. You
learn, by having it told you, just how small and foolish and
insignificant you are, and how well this earth could stagger along
without you if some one were to take a fly-killer and mash you with it.
And you learn all this at the time of life when your head is swelling up
until you mistake it for a planet, and regard whatever you say as a
volcanic disturbance.
I suppose you think, like the rest of the chaps who never came out to
practice but observed the game from the dollar-and-a-half seats, that
being coached in football is like being instructed in German or
calculus. You are told what to do and how to do it, and then you
recite. Far from it, my boy! They don't bother telling you what to do
and how to do it on a big football field. Mostly they tell you what to
do and how you do it. And they do it artistically, too. They use plenty
of language. A football coach is picked out for his ready tongue. He
must be a conversationalist. He must be able to talk to a greenhorn,
with fine shoulders and a needle-shaped head, until that greenhorn would
pick up the ball and take it through a Sioux war dance to get away from
the conversation. You can't reason with football men. They're not
logical, most of them. They are selected for their heels and shoulders
and their leg muscles, and not for their ability to look at you with
luminous eyes and say: "Yes, Professor, I think I understand." The way
to make 'em understand is to talk about them. Any man can understand you
while you are telling him that if he were just a little bit slower he
would have to be tied to the earth to keep up with it. That hurts his
pride. And when you hurt his pride he takes it out on whatever is in
front of him--which is the other team. Never get in front of a football
player when you are coaching him.
But this brings me to the subject of Bost again. Bost is still coaching
Siwash. This makes his 'steenth year. I guess he can stay there forever.
He's coached all these years and has never used the same adjective to
the same man twice. There's a record for you! He's a little man, Bost
is. He played end on some Western team when he only weighed one hundred
and forty. Got his football knowledge there. But where he got his
vocabulary is still a mystery. He has a way of convincing a man that a
dill pickle would make a better guard than he is, and of making that man
so jealous of the pickle that he will perform perfectly unreasonable
feats for a week to beat it out for the place. He has a way of saying
"Hurry up," with a few descriptive adjectives tacked on, that makes a
man rub himself in the stung place for an hour; and oh, how mad he can
make you while he is telling you pleasantly that while the little fellow
playing against you is only a prep and has sloping shoulders and weighs
one hundred and eleven stripped, he is making you look like a bale of
hay that has been dumped by mistake on an athletic field. And when he
gets a team in the gymnasium between halves, with the game going wrong,
and stands up before them and sizes up their insect nerve and rubber
backbone and hereditary awkwardness and incredible talent in doing the
wrong thing, to say nothing of describing each individual blunder in
that queer nasal clack of his--well, I'd rather be tied up in a great
big frying-pan over a good hot stove for the same length of time, any
day in the week. The reason Bost is a great coach is because his men
don't dare play poorly. When they do he talks to them. If he would only
hit them, or skin them by inches, or shoot at them, they wouldn't mind
it so much; but when you get on the field with him and realize that if
you miss a tackle he is going to get you out before the whole gang and
tell you what a great mistake the Creator made when He put joints in
your arms instead of letting them stick out stiff as they do any other
signpost, you're not going to miss that tackle, that's all.
When Bost came to Siwash he succeeded a line of coaches who had been
telling the fellows to get down low and hit the line hard, and had been
showing them how to do it very patiently. Nice fellows, those coaches.
Perfect gentlemen. Make you proud to associate with them. They could
take a herd of green farmer boys, with wrists like mules' ankles, and by
Thanksgiving they would have them familiar with all the rudiments of the
game. By that time the season would be over and all the schools in the
vicinity would have beaten us by big scores. The next year the last
year's crop of big farmer boys would stay at home to husk corn, and the
coach would begin all over on a new crop. The result was, we were a dub
school at football. Any school that could scare up a good rangy halfback
and a line that could hold sheep could get up an adding festival at our
expense any time. We lived in a perpetual state of fear. Some day we
felt that the normal school would come down and beat us. That would be
the limit of disgrace. After that there would be nothing left to do but
disband the college and take to drink to forget the past.
But Bost changed all that in one year. He didn't care to show any one
how to play football. He was just interested in making the player afraid
not to play it. When you went down the field on a punt you knew that if
you missed your man he would tell you when you came back that two stone
hitching-posts out of three could get past you in a six-foot alley. If
you missed a punt you could expect to be told that you might catch a
haystack by running with your arms wide open, but that was no way to
catch a football. Maybe things like that don't sound jabby when two
dozen men hear them! They kept us catching punts between classes, and
tackling each other all the way to our rooms and back. We simply had to
play football to keep from being bawled out. It's an awful thing to have
a coach with a tongue like a cheese knife swinging away at you, and to
know that if you get mad and quit, no one but the dear old Coll. will
suffer--but it gets the results. They use the same system in the East,
but there they only swear at a man, I believe. Siwash is a mighty proper
college and you can't swear on its campus, whatever else you do.
Swearing is only a lazy man's substitute for thinking, anyway; and Bost
wasn't lazy. He preferred the descriptive; he sat up nights thinking it
out.
We began to see the results before Bost had been tracing our pedigrees
for two weeks. First game of the season was with that little old dinky
Normal School which had been scaring us so for the past five years. We
had been satisfied to push some awkward halfback over the line once,
and then hold on to the enemy so tight he couldn't run; and we started
out that year in the same old way. First half ended 0 to 0, with our
boys pretty satisfied because they had kept the ball in Normal's
territory. Bost led the team and the substitutes into the overgrown barn
we used for a gymnasium, and while we were still patting ourselves
approvingly in our minds he cut loose:
"You pasty-faced, overfed, white-livered beanbag experts, what do you
mean by running a beauty show instead of a football game?" he yelled.
"Do you suppose I came out here to be art director of a statuary
exhibit? Does any one of you imagine for a holy minute that he knows the
difference between a football game and ushering in a church? Don't fool
yourselves. You don't; you don't know anything. All you ever knew about
football I could carve on granite and put in my eye and never feel it.
Nothing to nothing against a crowd of farmer boys who haven't known a
football from a duck's egg for more than a week! Bah! If I ever turned
the Old Folks' Home loose on you doll babies they'd run up a century
while you were hunting for your handkerchiefs. Jackson, what do you
suppose a halfback is for? I don't want cloak models. I want a man who
can stick his head down and run. Don't be afraid of that bean of yours;
it hasn't got anything worth saving in it. When you get the ball you're
supposed to run with it and not sit around trying to hatch it. You,
Saunders! You held that other guard just like a sweet-pea vine. Where
did you ever learn that sweet, lovely way of falling down on your nose
when a real man sneezes at you? Did you ever hear of sand? Eat it! Eat
it! Fill yourself up with it. I want you to get in that line this half
and stop something or I'll make you play left end in a fancy-work club.
Johnson, the only way to get you around the field is to put you on
wheels and haul you. Next time you grow fast to the ground I'm going to
violate some forestry regulations and take an axe to you. Same to you,
Briggs. You'd make the All-American boundary posts, but that's all.
Vance, I picked you for a quarterback, but I made a mistake; you ought
to be sorting eggs. That ball isn't red hot. You don't have to let go of
it as soon as you get it. Don't be afraid, nobody will step on you. This
isn't a rude game. It's only a game of post-office. You needn't act so
nervous about it. Maybe some of the big girls will kiss you, but it
won't hurt."
Bost stopped for breath and eyed us. We were a sick-looking crowd. You
could almost see the remarks sticking into us and quivering. We had come
in feeling pretty virtuous, and what we were getting was a hideous
surprise.
"Now I want to tell this tea-party something," continued Bost. "Either
you're going out on that field and score thirty points this last half or
I'm going to let the girls of Siwash play your football for you. I'm
tired of coaching men that aren't good at anything but falling down
scientifically when they're tackled. There isn't a broken nose among
you. Every one of you will run back five yards to pick out a soft spot
to fall on. It's got to stop. You're going to hold on to that ball this
half and take it places. If some little fellow from Normal crosses his
fingers and says 'naughty, naughty,' don't fall on the ball and yell
'down' until they can hear it uptown. Thirty points is what I want out
of you this half, and if you don't get 'em--well, you just dare to come
back here without them, that's all. Now get out on that field and jostle
somebody. Git!"
Did we git? Well, rather. We were so mad our clothes smoked. We would
have quit the game right there and resigned from the team, but we didn't
dare to. Bost would have talked to us some more. And we didn't dare not
to make those thirty points, either. It was an awful tough job, but we
did it with a couple over. We raged like wild beasts. We scared those
gentle Normalites out of their boots. I can't imagine how we ever got it
into our heads that they could play football, anyway. When it was all
over we went back to the gymnasium feeling righteously triumphant, and
had another hour with Bost in which he took us all apart without
anæsthetics, and showed us how Nature would have done a better job if
she had used a better grade of lumber in our composition.
That day made the Siwash team. The school went wild over the score. Bost
rounded up two or three more good players, and every afternoon he
lashed us around the field with that wire-edged tongue of his. On
Saturdays we played, and oh, how we worked! In the first half we were
afraid of what Bost would say to us when we came off the field. In the
second half we were mad at what he had said. And how he did drive us
down the field in practice! I can remember whole cross sections of his
talk yet:
"Faster, faster, you scows. Line up. Quick! Johnson, are you waiting for
a stone-mason to set you? Snap the ball. Tear into them. Low! Low! Hi-i!
You end, do you think you're the quarter pole in a horse race? Nine men
went past you that time. If you can't touch 'em drop 'em a souvenir
card. Line up. Faster, faster! Oh, thunder, hurry up! If you ran a
funeral, center, the corpse would spoil on your hands. Wow! Fumble! Drop
on that ball. Drop on it! Hogboom, you'd fumble a loving-cup. Use your
hand instead of your jaw to catch that ball. It isn't good to eat.
That's four chances you've had. I could lose two games a day if I had
you all the time. Now try that signal again--low, you linemen; there's
no girls watching you. Snap it; snap it. Great Scott! Say, Hogboom, come
here. When you get that ball, don't think we gave it to you to nurse.
You're supposed to start the same day with the line. We give you that
ball to take forward. Have you got to get a legal permit to start those
legs of yours? You'd make a good vault to store footballs in, but you're
too stationary for a fullback. Now I'll give you one more chance--"
And maybe Hogboom wouldn't go some with that chance!
In a month we had a team that wouldn't have used past Siwash teams to
hold its sweaters. It was mad all the time, and it played the game
carnivorously. Siwash was delirious with joy. The whole school turned
out for practice, and to see those eleven men snapping through signals
up and down the field as fast as an ordinary man could run just
congested us with happiness. You've no idea what a lovely time of the
year autumn is when you can go out after classes and sit on a pine seat
in the soft dusk and watch your college team pulling off end runs in as
pretty formation as if they were chorus girls, while you discuss lazily
with your friends just how many points it is going to run up on the
neighboring schools. I never expect to be a Captain of Industry, but it
couldn't make me feel any more contented or powerful or complacent than
to be a busted-up scrub in Siwash, with a team like that to watch. I'm
pretty sure of that.
But, happy as we were, Bost wasn't nearly content. He had ideals. I
believe one of them must have been to run that team through a couple of
brick flats without spoiling the formation. Nothing satisfied him. He
was particularly distressed about the fullback. Hogboom was a good
fellow and took signal practice perfectly, but he was no fiend. He
lacked the vivacity of a real, first-class Bengal tiger. He wouldn't
eat any one alive. He'd run until he was pulled down, but you never
expected him to explode in the midst of seven hostiles and ricochet down
the field for forty yards. He never jumped over two men and on to
another, and he never dodged two ways at once and laid out three men
with stiff arms on his way to the goal. It wasn't his style. He was good
for two and a half yards every time, but that didn't suit Bost. He was
after statistics, and what does a three-yard buck amount to when you
want 70 to 0 scores?
The result of this dissatisfaction was Ole Skjarsen. Late in September
Bost disappeared for three days and came back leading Ole by a rope--at
least, he was towing him by an old carpet-bag when we sighted him. Bost
found him in a lumber camp, he afterward told us, and had to explain to
him what a college was before he would quit his job. He thought it was
something good to eat at first, I believe. Ole was a timid young
Norwegian giant, with a rick of white hair and a reënforced concrete
physique. He escaped from his clothes in all directions, and was so
green and bashful that you would have thought we were cannibals from the
way he shied at us--though, as that was the year the bright hat-ribbons
came in, I can't blame him. He wasn't like anything we had ever seen
before in college. He was as big as a carthorse, as graceful as a dray
and as meek as a missionary. He had a double width smile and a thin
little old faded voice that made you think you could tip him over and
shine your shoes on him with impunity. But I wouldn't have tried it for
a month's allowance. His voice and his arms didn't harmonize worth a
cent. They were as big as ordinary legs--those arms, and they ended in
hands that could have picked up a football and mislaid it among their
fingers.
No wonder Ole was a sensation. He didn't look exactly like football
material to us, I'll admit. He seemed more especially designed for light
derrick work. But we trusted Bost implicitly by that time and we gave
him a royal reception. We crowded around him as if he had been a T. R.
capture straight from Africa. Everybody helped him register third prep,
with business-college extras. Then we took him out, harnessed him in
football armor, and set to work to teach him the game.
Bost went right to work on Ole in a businesslike manner. He tossed him
the football and said: "Catch it." Ole watched it sail past and then
tore after it like a pup retrieving a stick. He got it in a few minutes
and brought it back to where Bost was raving.
"See here, you overgrown fox terrier," he shouted, "catch it on the fly.
Here!" He hurled it at him.
"Aye ent seen no fly," said Ole, allowing the ball to pass on as he
conversed.
"You cotton-headed Scandinavian cattleship ballast, catch that ball in
your arms when I throw it to you, and don't let go of it!" shrieked
Bost, shooting it at him again.
"Oll right," said Ole patiently. He cornered the ball after a short
struggle and stood hugging it faithfully.
"Toss it back, toss it back!" howled Bost, jumping up and down.
"Yu tal me to hold it," said Ole reproachfully, hugging it tighter than
ever.
"Drop it, you Mammoth Cave of ignorance!" yelled Bost. "If I had your
head I'd sell it for cordwood. Drop it!"
Ole dropped the ball placidly. "Das ban fule game," he smiled dazedly.
"Aye ent care for it. Eny faller got a Yewsharp?"
That was the opening chapter of Ole's instruction. The rest were just
like it. You had to tell him to do a thing. You then had to show him how
to do it. You then had to tell him how to stop doing it. After that you
had to explain that he wasn't to refrain forever--just until he had to
do it again. Then you had to persuade him to do it again. He was as
good-natured as a lost puppy, and just as hard to reason with. In three
nights Bost was so hoarse that he couldn't talk. He had called Ole
everything in the dictionary that is fit to print; and the knowledge
that Ole didn't understand more than a hundredth part of it, and didn't
mind that, was wormwood to his soul.
For all that, we could see that if any one could teach Ole the game he
would make a fine player. He was as hard as flint and so fast on his
feet that we couldn't tackle him any more than we could have tackled a
jack-rabbit. He learned to catch the ball in a night, and as for
defense--his one-handed catches of flying players would have made a
National League fielder envious. But with all of it he was perfectly
useless. You had to start him, stop him, back him, speed him up,
throttle him down and run him off the field just as if he had been a
close-coupled, next year's model scootcart. If we could have rigged up a
driver's seat and chauffeured Ole, it would have been all right. But
every other method of trying to get him to understand what he was
expected to do was a failure. He just grinned, took orders, executed
them, and waited for more. When a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound man takes
a football, wades through eleven frantic scrubs, shakes them all off,
and then stops dead with a clear field to the goal before him--because
his instructions ran out when he shook the last scrub--you can be
pardoned for feeling hopeless about him.
That was what happened the day before the Muggledorfer game. Bost had
been working Ole at fullback all evening. He and the captain had steered
him up and down the field as carefully as if he had been a sea-going
yacht. It was a wonderful sight. Ole was under perfect control. He
advanced the ball five yards, ten yards, or twenty at command. Nothing
could stop him. The scrubs represented only so many doormats to him.
Every time he made a play he stopped at the latter end of it for
instructions.
When he stopped the last time, with nothing before him but the goal, and
asked placidly, "Vere skoll I take das ball now, Master Bost?" I thought
the coach would expire of the heat. He positively steamed with
suppressed emotion. He swelled and got purple about the face. We were
alarmed and were getting ready to hoop him like a barrel when he found
his tongue at last.
"You pale-eyed, prehistoric mudhead," he spluttered, "I've spent a week
trying to get through that skull lining of yours. It's no use, you field
boulder. Where do you keep your brains? Give me a chance at them. I just
want to get into them one minute and stir them up with my finger. To
think that I have to use you to play football when they are paying five
dollars and a half for ox meat in Kansas City. Skjarsen, do you know
anything at all?"
"Aye ban getting gude eddication," said Ole serenely. "Aye tank I ban
college faller purty sune, I don't know. I like I skoll understand all
das har big vorts yu make."
"You'll understand them, I don't think," moaned Bost. "You couldn't
understand a swift kick in the ribs. You are a fool. Understand that,
muttonhead?"
Ole understood. "Vy for yu call me fule?" he said indignantly. "Aye du
yust vat you say."
"Ar-r-r-r!" bubbled Bost, walking around himself three or four times.
"You do just what I say! Of course you do. Did I tell you to stop in the
middle of the field? What would Muggledorfer do to you if you stopped
there?"
"Yu ent tal me to go on," said Ole sullenly. "Aye go on, Aye gass, pooty
qveek den."
"You bet you'll go on," said Bost. "Now, look here, you sausage
material, to-morrow you play fullback. You stop everything that comes at
you from the other side. Hear? You catch the ball when it comes to you.
Hear? And when they give you the ball you take it, and don't you dare to
stop with it. Get that? Can I get that into your head without a drill
and a blast? If you dare to stop with that ball I'll ship you back to
the lumber camp in a cattle car. Stop in the middle of the field--Ow!"
But at this point we took Bost away.
The next afternoon we dressed Ole up in his armor--he invariably got it
on wrong side out if we didn't help him--and took him out to the field.
We confidently expected to promenade all over Muggledorfer--their coach
was an innocent child beside Bost--and that was the reason why Ole was
going to play. It didn't matter much what he did.
Ole was just coming to a boil when we got him into his clothes. Bost's
remarks had gotten through his hide at last. He was pretty slow, Ole
was, but he had begun getting mad the night before and had kept at the
job all night and all morning. By afternoon he was seething, mostly in
Norwegian. The injustice of being called a muttonhead all week for not
obeying orders, and then being called a mudhead for stopping for orders,
churned his soul, to say nothing of his language. He only averaged one
English word in three, as he told us on the way out that to-day he was
going to do exactly as he had been told or fill a martyr's grave--only
that wasn't the way he put it.
The Muggledorfers were a pruny-looking lot. We had the game won when our
team came out and glared at them. Bost had filled most of the positions
with regular young mammoths, and when you dressed them up in football
armor they were enough to make a Dreadnought a little nervous. The
Muggleses kicked off to our team, and for a few plays we plowed along
five or ten yards at a time. Then Ole was given the ball. He went
twenty-five yards. Any other man would have been crushed to earth in
five. He just waded through the middle of the line and went down the
field, a moving mass of wriggling men. It was a wonderful play. They
disinterred him at last and he started straight across the field for
Bost.
"Aye ent mean to stop, Master Bost," he shouted. "Dese fallers har, dey
squash me down--"
We hauled him into line and went to work again. Ole had performed so
well that the captain called his signal again. This time I hope I may be
roasted in a subway in July if Ole didn't run twenty-five yards with
four Muggledorfer men hanging on his legs. We stood up and yelled until
our teeth ached. It took about five minutes to get Ole dug out, and then
he started for Bost again.
"Honest, Master Bost, Aye ent mean to stop," he said imploringly. "Aye
yust tal you, dese fallers ban devils. Aye fule dem naxt time--"
"Line up and shut up," the captain shouted. The ball wasn't over twenty
yards from the line, and as a matter of course the quarter shot it back
to Ole. He put his head down, gave one mad-bull plunge, laid a windrow
of Muggledorfer players out on either side, and shot over the goal line
like a locomotive.
We rose up to cheer a few lines, but stopped to stare. Ole didn't stop
at the goal line. He didn't stop at the fence. He put up one hand,
hurdled it, and disappeared across the campus like a young whirlwind.
"He doesn't know enough to stop!" yelled Bost, rushing up to the fence.
"Hustle up, you fellows, and bring him back!"
[Illustration: "Aye ent care to stop," he said "Aye kent suit you,
Master Bost"
_Page 24_]
Three or four of us jumped the fence, but it was a hopeless game. Ole
was disappearing up the campus and across the street. The Muggledorfer
team was nonplussed and sort of indignant. To be bowled over by a
cyclone, and then to have said cyclone break up the game by running away
with the ball was to them a new idea in football. It wasn't to those of
us who knew Ole, however. One of us telephoned down to the _Leader_
office where Hinckley, an old team man, worked, and asked him to head
off Ole and send him back. Muggledorfer kindly consented to call time,
and we started after the fugitive ourselves.
Ten minutes later we met Hinckley downtown. He looked as if he had had a
slight argument with a thirteen-inch shell. He was also mad.
"What was that you asked me to stop?" he snorted, pinning himself
together. "Was it a gorilla or a high explosive? When did you fellows
begin importing steam rollers for the team? I asked him to stop. I
ordered him to stop. Then I went around in front of him to stop him--and
he ran right over me. I held on for thirty yards, but that's no way to
travel. I could have gone to the next town just as well, though. What
sort of a game is this, and where is that tow-headed holy terror bound
for?"
We gave the answer up, but we couldn't give up Ole. He was too valuable
to lose. How to catch him was the sticker. An awful uproar in the street
gave us an idea. It was Ted Harris in the only auto in town--one of the
earliest brands of sneeze vehicles. In a minute more four of us were in,
and Ted was chiveying the thing up the street.
If you've never chased an escaping fullback in one of those pioneer
automobiles you've got something coming. Take it all around, a good,
swift man, running all the time, could almost keep ahead of one. We
pumped up a tire, fixed a wire or two, and cranked up a few times; and
the upshot of it was we were two miles out on the state road before we
caught sight of Ole.
He was trotting briskly when we caught up with him, the ball under his
arm, and that patient, resigned expression on his face that he always
had when Bost cussed him. "Stop, Ole," I yelled; "this is no Marathon.
Come back. Climb in here with us."
Ole shook his head and let out a notch of speed.
"Stop, you mullethead," yelled Simpson above the roar of the auto--those
old machines could roar some, too. "What do you mean by running off with
our ball? You're not supposed to do hare-and-hounds in football."
Ole kept on running. We drove the car on ahead, stopped it across the
road, and jumped out to stop him. When the attempt was over three of us
picked up the fourth and put him aboard. Ole had tramped on us and had
climbed over the auto.
Force wouldn't do, that was plain. "Where are you going, Ole?" we
pleaded as we tore along beside him.
"Aye ent know," he panted, laboring up a hill; "das ban fule game, Aye
tenk."
"Come on back and play some more," we urged. "Bost won't like it, your
running all over the country this way."
"Das ban my orders," panted Ole. "Aye ent no fule, yentlemen; Aye know
ven Aye ban doing right teng. Master Bost he say 'Keep on running!' Aye
gass I run till hal freeze on top. Aye ent know why. Master Bost he
know, I tenk."
"This is awful," said Lambert, the manager of the team. "He's taken
Bost literally again--the chump. He'll run till he lands up in those
pine woods again. And that ball cost the association five dollars.
Besides, we want him. What are we going to do?"
"I know," I said. "We're going back to get Bost. I guess the man who
started him can stop him."
We left Ole still plugging north and ran back to town. The game was
still hanging fire. Bost was tearing his hair. Of course, the
Muggledorfer fellows could have insisted on playing, but they weren't
anxious. Ole or no Ole, we could have walked all over them, and they
knew it. Besides, they were having too much fun with Bost. They were
sitting around, Indian-like, in their blankets, and every three minutes
their captain would go and ask Bost with perfect politeness whether he
thought they had better continue the game there or move it on to the
next town in time to catch his fullback as he came through.
"Of course, we are in no hurry," he would explain pleasantly; "we're
just here for amusement, anyway; and it's as much fun watching you try
to catch your players as it is to get scored on. Why don't you hobble
them, Mr. Bost? A fifty-yard rope wouldn't interfere much with that gay
young Percheron of yours, and it would save you lots of time rounding
him up. Do you have to use a lariat when you put his harness on?"
Fancy Bost having to take all that conversation, with no adequate reply
to make. When I got there he was blue in the face. It didn't take him
half a second to decide what to do. Telling the captain of the Siwash
team to go ahead and play if Muggledorfer insisted, and on no account to
use that 32 double-X play except on first downs, he jumped into the
machine and we started for Ole.
There were no speed records in those days. Wouldn't have made any
difference if there were. Harris just turned on all the juice his old
double-opposed motor could soak up, and when we hit the wooden crossings
on the outskirts of town we fellows in the tonneau went up so high that
we changed sides coming down. It wasn't over twenty minutes till we
sighted a little cloud of dust just beyond a little town to the north.
Pretty soon we saw it was Ole. He was still doing his six miles per. We
caught up and Bost hopped out, still mad.
"Where in Billy-be-blamed are you going, you human trolley car?" he
spluttered, sprinting along beside Skjarsen. "What do you mean by
breaking up a game in the middle and vamoosing with the ball? Do you
think we're going to win this game on mileage? Turn around, you chump,
and climb into this car."
Ole looked around him sadly. He kept on running as he did. "Aye ent care
to stop," he said. "Aye kent suit you, Master Bost. You tal me Aye skoll
du a teng, den you cuss me for duing et. You tal me not to du a teng and
you cuss me some more den. Aye tenk I yust keep on a-running, lak yu
tal me tu last night. Et ent so hard bein' cussed ven yu ban running."
"I tell you to stop, you potato-top," gasped Bost. By this time he was
fifteen yards behind and losing at every step. He had wasted too much
breath on oratory. We picked him up in the car and set him alongside of
Ole again.
"See here, Ole, I'm tired of this," he said, sprinting up by him again.
"The game's waiting. Come on back. You're making a fool of yourself."
"Eny teng Aye du Aye ban beeg fule," said Ole gloomily. "Aye yust keep
on runnin'. Fallers ent got breath to call me fule ven Aye run. Aye tenk
das best vay."
We picked Bost up again thirty yards behind. Maybe he would have run
better if he hadn't choked so in his conversation. In another minute we
landed him abreast of Ole again. He got out and sprinted for the third
time. He wabbled as he did it.
"Ole," he panted, "I've been mistaken in you. You are all right, Ole. I
never saw a more intelligent fellow. I won't cuss you any more, Ole. If
you'll stop now we'll take you back in an automobile--hold on there a
minute; can't you see I'm all out of breath?"
"Aye ban gude faller, den?" asked Ole, letting out another link of
speed.
"You are a"--puff-puff--"peach, Ole," gasped Bost.
"I'll"--puff-puff--"never cuss you again. Please"--puff-puff--"stop!
Oh, hang it, I'm all in." And Bost sat down in the road.
A hundred yards on we noticed Ole slacken speed. "It's sinking through
his skull," said Harris eagerly. In another minute he had stopped. We
picked up Bost again and ran up to him. He surveyed us long and
critically.
"Das ban qveer masheen," he said finally. "Aye tenk Aye lak Aye skoll be
riding back in it. Aye ent care for das futball game, Aye gass. It ban
tu much running in it."
We took Ole back to town in twenty-two minutes, three chickens, a dog
and a back spring. It was close to five o'clock when he ran out on the
field again. The Muggledorfer team was still waiting. Time was no object
to them. They would only play ten minutes, but in that ten minutes Ole
made three scores. Five substitutes stood back of either goal and asked
him with great politeness to stop as he tore over the line. And he did
it. If any one else had run six miles between halves he would have
stopped a good deal short of the line. But as far as we could see, it
hadn't winded Ole.
Bost went home by himself that night after the game, not stopping even
to assure us that as a team we were beneath his contempt. The next
afternoon he was, if anything, a little more vitriolic than ever--but
not with Ole. Toward the middle of the signal practice he pulled himself
together and touched Ole gently.
[Illustration: He pulled himself together and touched Ole gently
_Page 26_]
"My dear Mr. Skjarsen," he said apologetically, "if it will not annoy
you too much, would you mind running the same way the rest of the team
does? I don't insist on it, mind you, but it looks so much better to the
audience, you know."
"Jas," said Ole; "Aye ban fule, Aye gass, but yu ban tu polite to say
it."