WHISPERS IN THE NIGHT
As Red Rodgers stretched his feet out before the tiny stove in his narrow
room, his brow wrinkled. Here was a situation for you! A football game to
be played to-morrow four or five hundred miles away. He laughed a silent,
mirthless laugh.
“Football,” he whispered. He was surprised to find within his being a
certain feeling of relief. He relaxed to the very tips of his toes.
“Football.” He had seen a lot of it. Too much. This was his first year on
the varsity. Almost without willing it, or even realizing it, he had
become the central attraction of his team. He was the hub about which the
offense circled. His had been the power and the glory, the power to dash
and beat, weave and wind his way to many a touchdown, the glory of the
victor.
“The power and the glory.” Little enough Red cared for glory. But power?
Ah, yes! All his life he had striven for power, physical power for the
most part. But he meant in the end to go forward, to succeed in life.
Born and raised in a city of mills, he had, from the age of fourteen,
played his little part in the making of steel. For three summers and at
every other available hour he had toiled at steel. Bare to the waist,
brown, heat-burned, perspiring, he had dragged at long bars, raking away
at steel bars, but recently formed by rushing, crashing rollers, that
were still smoking hot. Other hours he had spent on the gridiron. The one
helped the other. Struggling with steel, he had become like steel
himself, hard, elastic, resisting. As he went down the field men were
repelled from his Robot-like body as they might had he been a thing of
white-hot metal.
And then had come his great opportunity. A quiet, solidly built man, with
wrinkled face, bright eyes and tangled hair, had watched his high school
football exploits from the sidelines. From time to time he had beckoned
and had whispered: “Hold the ball closer to your body. Lean. Lean far
over. Don’t run for the sidelines. Break your way through.”
There had been an air of authority and knowledge not to be questioned
about this old man. Red had listened and had tried to follow the other’s
teaching.
Then, one day during his senior year at Central High the old man had
touched him on the arm and had pronounced magical words:
“The university will need you.”
Red had thrilled at these words. He knew now, on the instant, that this
was the “Grand Old Man” of football, the fairest, squarest coach that
ever lived.
It had been good to know that the university would need him, for long ago
he had learned that in his upward climb he would need the university. The
university had found him. He had found the university. In his freshman
year, a cub, there had been bitter days and hours of triumph. But why
think of all that?
With a restless motion he rose, took three steps, the extent of his
cabin, retraced them and sat down. “Like a beast in a cage!” he muttered
low. “I’ll not stand it!”
He thought soberly: “No, this is not to be endured. Better the hard grind
of football.”
But this girl in that other log-walled prison cell? His mind did a sudden
flip-flop.
“She’s rich,” he mused. “At least her father is. That crook said he was.
She did not deny it.” Red did not approve of rich people. They had too
much, others too little. He thought still less of their children. It
mattered little to him that the sons and daughters of certain rich men
had endeavored to make friends with him since his success at football. He
could not understand them, was puzzled by their ways, and wished quite
sincerely that they would leave him alone.
“Soft,” he had said to his roommate, “that’s what they are. No
experiences worth having.”
“But this girl over there beyond the log wall,” he said to himself now,
“she’s different. Got spunk. Stands up and defies them, she does, when
she knows they are beasts, as all kidnapers are. Tells ’em she’ll freeze
here all winter rather than do the thing they want her to do. Nerve,
that’s what!”
He was conscious of an invisible bond that bound his life to that of the
girl. “In the end we may fight it out together.”
The hour was late. Once again the drowsy warmth of this narrow cell
settled down upon him.
“Football,” he mused. “A tough business. Thousands screaming their lungs
out, ten, twenty, thirty, forty thousand people losing their heads while
you must keep yours. Wish this were the end, wish it were all over.
Wish—”
Once again, in the twinkling of an eye, his mood changed.
“For all that,” he muttered beneath his breath, “I’ve got to get away!”
Leaping to his feet, he stood there, hard, straight, square, with purpose
written in every line of his well formed body. “To-morrow’s game, that is
nothing. But Saturday’s game, that is everything. It is the end. Final,
that’s what it is. Defeat or victory, that’s what it means. The
championship or nothing. And Prang, the Grand Old Man, says it depends on
us!
“That means me!” There came a stoop to his shoulders as if a load had
fallen upon them. “For the Grand Old Man, for the school that gave me a
chance, for my mother, for clean sport all over the world, I must escape.
I must play. I must win. I must! Must! _Must!_”
Yet, even as these words formed themselves into thought he seemed to hear
others. “On a narrow island within a bay. Icy water. Another larger
island. Fifteen, seventy-five, a hundred miles from shore. Superior never
gives up her dead.” Of a sudden the boy cursed the school days when he
had neglected his study of geography. He saw it all now. Geography was
travel. And how could one find travel dull?
“But travel!” Again that silent, mirthless laugh. “Who expects to travel
as I have?”
His thoughts were not finished. From somewhere had come a long, low,
hissing sound. It was followed by a whisper:
“Over here! Come close to the wall.”
“Must be that girl.” His heart skipped a beat.
“What did they take you for?” the whisper demanded.
“I—I don’t know.”
“Don’t know?”
“Fact.”
After that a great silence settled over the place. This Red could not
understand. Why had she started the conversation if she did not expect to
finish it?
“Oh, well,” he told himself at last, “girls are queer anyway.” He settled
back comfortably in his place.
Truth was, the girl suspected him of being a decoy placed there by the
kidnapers. In the end she came to see that she had little to lose if she
confided in a decoy.
Again came her long-drawn signal, demanding attention. And after that:
“Don’t you want to escape?”
“Never wanted anything half so much in my life!” Then in a sudden burst
of confidence he told her of the game that was to be on Saturday, of the
veteran coach’s fatherly interest in his career, of his hopes, his fears,
his secret ambitions. All this he poured into a not unwilling ear. Only
he did not tell her he was the far-famed “Red Rover.” This he reserved
for the future.
“Good!” the girl exclaimed, still in a whisper. “Then our purposes are
one. We must join hands. Put her there! Shake on it!”
This, considering that a log wall eight inches thick lay between them,
was of course impossible. But they pledged themselves in pantomime.