WYNDHAM PLAYS WOLCOTT
Friday was an unreal sort of a day to Clif. He made a miserable fizzle
of three recitations and conducted himself generally as though he
was sleep-walking. It was only at three-thirty that he really became
conscious. Then he came out of his trance and trotted around the field
at the end of a line of seven third-string players, trying to get the
signals right when Braley barked them. Two other squads indulged in
the same recreation; and there were several fellows left out, at that,
for the Wyndham First Team now consisted of thirty-seven players.
Clif’s squad was the last to quit signal drill, and after it was over
he joined a dozen others and caught and threw the ball while the
field gradually emptied. By five the last practice was over and the
last player clumped across the running track and over the turf to the
gymnasium leaving the field to darkness. Lights were already on in the
gymnasium and East Hall when Clif and “Wink” left the gridiron.
That evening there was an hour of blackboard drill in the rowing room
from seven-thirty to eight-thirty. Team members had been given study
cuts since recitations had been abolished for Saturday. After drill
Mr. Babcock brushed the chalk from his hands and spoke briefly. “I want
every fellow to go from here right to his room,” said the Coach. “At
any rate, keep away from that cheer meeting over there. Read or talk
for a while and then get to bed. Bedtime to-night is nine-thirty for
all of you. No matter if you aren’t sleepy. Get into bed and relax and
try not to think about anything. That’s the best way to get to sleep
that I know of.
“We’ve got a hard job ahead of us, fellows, but we’re equal to it. I
tell you honestly that you’re good enough to beat Wolcott to-morrow,
if you’ll do your best and fight hard. We’ve had our troubles here, as
you know, but we’ve surmounted them all just as fast as they showed
themselves. We’ve had to change our whole plan of battle at the last
minute, but we’ve developed another plan that will answer fully as
well. I don’t want one of you to acknowledge to himself the possibility
of defeat. I tell you you’re going to win. But you’ve got to believe
it yourselves, and you’ve got to _work_. Keep your thoughts right,
fellows. Say to yourselves, ‘I’m going to play harder to-morrow than
I ever played in my life, just as all the others are going to, and
together we’re going to win!’ Half the battle is in having faith. The
other half is in doing. Cultivate the will to win. Now we’ll go out
quietly, with no cheering. We’ll leave the cheering until to-morrow
evening.”
Over in assembly hall, Doctor Wyndham finished his speech by reading a
letter from Coach Otis. It was only a few lines in length, predicting
a Wyndham victory and counseling the School to stand firm behind the
Team and show its faith. There were cheers for the Principal and for
the absent coach and a big, long cheer for Wyndham, and then the
meeting stampeded through the doors and down the hall and formed again
outside and became quite mad. Clif and Tom, up in Number 17, stopped
their talk and listened.
“_Rah, rah, rah! Drayton!_”
“_Rah, rah, rah! Cotter!_”
On they went, through the long list. “_Rah, rah, rah! Kemble!_” Clif
grinned nervously. He was afraid they would cheer him and afraid they
wouldn’t. They did, at last. And they ended up with “Wink” Coles. After
that there was a moment of confused shouting and then came a long
cheer for the Team. Subsequently a strident voice began “Whoop It Up”
and every one down there joined in and the bravely rollicking strains
drowned Tom’s statement that it was close to half-past and he guessed
he’d better hit the hay. He waited until the song was over, humming the
words softly, and then nodded and closed the door behind him. Alone,
Clif sat for several minutes where Tom had left him while the sounds
below quieted and died away. Finally he began to undress and discovered
to his surprise that his fingers were trembling so that they made hard
work of the buttons!
Clif didn’t go to Cotterville with his father, although the latter
appeared at Freeburg long before eleven o’clock. Trying hard to seem
offhand and casual, Clif explained the circumstances, but he had to
grin when Mr. Bingham jammed his thumb against the horn button and sent
forth a strident wail that populated the steps of East and West Halls
in something under three seconds.
“Well, well, well!” exclaimed Mr. Bingham. “Gosh, son, that’s great
news, isn’t it? Aren’t you mighty proud, eh? Hang it all, don’t stand
there and make believe you’re not! I am, anyway. Yes, sir!”
_Toot, to-o-o-ot!_ went the horn.
“Gee, dad, don’t!” begged Clif. “The fellows’ll think――”
“What if they do?” laughed his father. “I want them to!”
Mr. Bingham took Walter Treat and three other boys of Walt’s choosing
over to Cotterville, while Clif traveled in one of the three big
busses that rolled away at twelve to the cheering of their companions,
massed in front of West. Loring, declining Mr. Babcock’s offer of
transportation, was one of many youths who made the trip by auto in
company with parents or friends. Loring rode between his father and
mother, and Wattles sat with the chauffeur, who, to Wattles’s disgust,
knew no football save soccer. Wattles had a thoroughly pleasant ride,
and by the time Cotterville was reached the chauffeur had become vastly
better informed on one subject at least.
Clif and Tom had tried to stick together, but somehow in the
confusion of departure they had got into different busses. Clif had
Joe Whitemill and Phil Cotter for immediate neighbors. Phil was in
rather hectic spirits and, claiming to have founded Cotterville,
related many humorous and hitherto unpublished incidents connected
with the early history of the town. He flatly refused, however, to
accept responsibility for Wolcott Academy. That misfortune, he stoutly
averred, had taken place during one of his absences from the old home.
The sun shone brightly, but there was a cold northwest wind blowing
and much speculation was indulged in as to the effect of that wind on
the kicking game. There was a good deal of discussion about Wyndham’s
chances, and what sort of a line Wolcott had and whether its ends were
any better than last year’s. And now and then they sang a little. But
the singing soon petered out. Every fellow in the bus at one time or
another fell into silent abstraction. Clif didn’t say a great deal. His
remarks were spasmodic and his laughter somewhat tuneless. Away down
inside somewhere he was scared, and, while he assured himself countless
times that there wasn’t the ghost of a chance of his getting into the
game, unless for a moment at the end that he might get his letter, at
the back of his mind the thought persisted that he might be called on.
He tried to remember the play numbers and discovered to his horror that
he had forgotten nearly all! He finally got hold of the straight buck
sequence, 2 to 5, but couldn’t remember what 6 was. Nor 7. Nor 8――hold
on, though, 8 was a cross-buck with left half carrying. Gradually
memory returned, although to the end of the journey six plays eluded
him. He might have asked Whitemill or Cotter, but he was ashamed to.
Besides, there would be time enough on the bench in which to refresh
his memory.
When the busses passed through a village there was loud cheering,
not only for Wyndham but for anything else that captured interest.
At Peyton a much bewhiskered citizen leaning against a post in front
of the general store made an instant hit. Three royal cheers were
given for “Ostermoor”――though how the fellows knew his name must
remain a mystery――and the surprised gentleman was the recipient of
many compliments. Between the villages opportunities for “razzing”
were fewer but never neglected. A faster car, passing a bus, was
pursued by indignant cries of “Speedhound!” “Oooh, wait till I tell
the Constabule!” “Hey, Mister! You’re hittin’ twenty!” “Oh, you
Dare-devil!” “You pesky city folks, you!” All this, Clif found, helped
you to forget that your luncheon, as light as it had been, had become
a leaden lump and that there was a spot somewhere between the nape of
your neck and the top of your head that felt like a small lump of ice!
At Cotterville they pulled up in front of a small yellow frame building
at the edge of the athletic field. Across a wide stretch of still
green turf the school buildings peered back at them from behind nearly
leafless trees. It was twenty minutes past one then, and the game was
to start at two-fifteen, but already there was a trickling stream of
folks crossing the far side of the field in the direction of the iron
stands. Many automobiles, too, were in place beyond the ropes, and the
occupants were having picnic lunches there. Above the grandstand a big
brown flag bearing a white W waved and whipped in the wind. The sun
was doing its best for the occasion. It made the freshly drawn lines
of the gridiron gleam, gave the dying grass a real semblance of summer
verdancy, found a clump of birches on the nearby hillside that still
held their leaves and made a golden splendor of them and, flashing
against the varnished surfaces of the parked cars, created blobs of
light that dazzled the eyes. And over there, too, it discovered a
fluttering blue pennant bearing a white W and illumined it gloriously.
In the field house Dan Farrell, the trainer, laid out the contents of
his bags and the haunting odor of his own special liniment permeated
the quarters. The call to change into togs came at half-past one and at
a quarter to two they were all ready. Mr. Babcock and Mr. Hilliard and
Mr. Connover ended their low-voiced conference in a corner and herded
the players outside to the sunlit porch. It wasn’t one of the coaches,
though, who spoke to them then. It was Captain Dave Lothrop, and partly
because Dave never did say much and even now couldn’t find the right
words, although he tried hard enough, his little speech got under their
skins. He didn’t say anything new. Indeed, what is there new that may
be said at such times? It has all been said over and over again,
hundreds, thousands of times, since the first football team was formed.
But Dave, floundering, seeking desperately for words, his eyes fixed on
the barred field over yonder, managed to endow old sounds with a fresh
meaning.
“Coach says we can do it, fellows,” said Dave. “He’s not lying to
us. Besides, I know, too. I know that if we think――if we just _say_
we can lick ’em――go out there and fight every minute, every second,
just forgetting everything but beating Wolcott――why, I _know_ we can,
fellows! We’ve got to fight, fight _hard_. Well, we can do it. We’ve
got to fight harder than they fight. We can do that, too. I――I wouldn’t
want to lead you fellows out there if I wasn’t certain right down to my
boots that you meant to lick those guys. Think what it would be like to
go back to Wyndham to-night beaten. We couldn’t face the School! Why,
hang it, we’ve _got_ to win! That’s all there is to it. We’ve _got_ to
win! And when you’ve got to do a thing, you――you”――Dave’s gaze came
back from the gridiron and challenged them――“you do it, if you’re not
yellow! Well, that’s all. Only”――Dave shot out a big fist――“tell me
this. Are you going to fight? Are you going to _win_?”
“_Yes!_” The reply was an explosion of pent-up emotions, a determined,
defiant, exalted burst of sound that carried far across the sunlit
field.
“_Come on, then!_” said Dave.
Twenty minutes later the gridiron was empty again. A silver half-dollar
had spun into the sunlight and dropped to the turf. Captains and
officials were back on the side-lines. The raucous blaring of the
Wolcott Student Band was stilled, the cheering had momentarily hushed
and the throng that filled every seat in the stand and overflowed along
the ropes drew coats and wraps higher, resettled in their places and
braced themselves for the fray. Then eleven brown-stockinged youths ran
out from one side of the barred battlefield and eleven blue-stockinged
youths from the other, and the cheers began again and the Wolcott
bass-drummer thumped mightily and several thousand persons, many of them
normally unemotional, experienced a sudden shortness of breath
accompanied by a fluttery sensation of the heart. And at about that
moment, on the east side of the field, a man in a black derby confided
to a man in a chauffeur’s livery that, “That’s the captain of our side,
Henry. Lothrop his name is. He’s to kick the ball away.”
“With them long legs, and the powerful looks of him,” responded his
companion with relish, “I’m thinkin’ them other laddies’ll be chasin’
it back to the hills yonder!”
That no such performance as that was contemplated or desirable was
being explained when the ball sailed up and away and the informant
relapsed into silence. Somewhere at the north end of the field a player
caught the pigskin, tucked it against him and went down before he had
taken two strides. The Wyndham cheers burst forth, high and sharp.
Wolcott tried the Wyndham left and was repulsed, shot her fullback
at Desmond and got three yards and then punted far, the wind that
quartered the gridiron adding a good ten yards to the kick. Wyndham ran
the ball back six yards or so, tried two slams at the brown line and
punted back to Wolcott’s forty. The ancient enemies were trying each
other out.
Wolcott got three yards outside Cotter and two more through Captain
Dave, but a five-yard penalty set her back and again she punted on
third down. This time the ball rolled over the line. Jensen got free
around Wolcott’s left end and carried the pigskin on the first down to
the twenty-eight yards. Ogden, from kicking position, tried a straight
buck on right tackle and was thrown for a yard loss. Jensen made two
outside left tackle and Ogden punted short to midfield, where the ball
went out. Not until the quarter was almost over did either team bid
for a score. Then Wolcott tried a short forward-pass over the center
that grounded and followed it from the same formation with a fake that
sent left half around the right for fourteen yards and placed the ball
on Wyndham’s twenty-eight. A cross-buck on Cotter failed of an inch
and Wolcott again threw forward. This time the throw was long, fast
and low and aimed at the corner of the field. Over there, close to
the goal-line, the Brown’s left halfback turned as the pigskin sped
forward. Four strides would have taken him across, but, although he had
skillfully eluded the Wyndham defense until now, Nemesis, in the form
of Pete Jensen, was at hand, and while Pete couldn’t get in position
to steal the catch he could and did bat the ball aside.
With two downs left, Wolcott sent her fullback outside right tackle
from kicking position and gained four yards, placing the ball on the
twenty-four. From the thirty-three, with quarterback holding the ball,
Johnson, Wolcott’s rangy left tackle, tried a goal from placement while
the Wyndham cohorts held their breaths. Johnson had the quartering gale
to figure with, and it seemed that he underestimated the force of it,
for the pigskin, while it started true enough, met the full strength of
the wind before it had covered half the distance and swerved widely to
the left. Not until an official waved his arms negatively, though, was
Wyndham certain that the effort had failed.
A minute later, after Wyndham had punted, the whistle blew and the
teams made for the water pails. The Wolcott band came to life again,
and the cheer leaders swung their megaphones. Then Wyndham took the
north goal and faced the enemy on the thirty-nine yards. There were
no changes in the Wyndham line-up. Archer and Drayton were still the
ends, Cotter and Weldon the tackles, Lothrop and Desmond the guards,
Carlson the center, Stoddard the quarter, Whitemill and Jensen the
halfs and Ogden the fullback. Nor had Wolcott yet altered her team. The
opposing elevens were strikingly alike in appearance. Each presented
a center trio of big, fairly heavy men closely matched for height and
weight. Each featured fast, rangy tackles and rather light ends. In
the backfield Wolcott had a slight advantage in weight, for James,
her fullback, was a fellow after “Big Bill” Fargo’s style, although he
lacked Fargo’s ability to start quickly and was far less dangerous on
end runs. Wolcott’s quarter had weight and carried the ball frequently.
Her halfbacks were fairly light and showed speed. One, Hoskins, had
already proved himself a very shifty player.
The second period saw a good deal of old-fashioned football on the part
of Wolcott and a punting game on the part of the opponent. Wolcott used
straight plunges and slants with sufficient success to take her to the
Blue’s thirty-six yards. There her gains lessened and two sweeping
plays and two forward-passes took her no further than the twenty-seven,
where she yielded the ball. Hoskins was the Brown’s forward-pass ace,
but Hoskins was so closely watched that he was unable to show anything.
Wyndham punted on second down and watched for a break. With that wind
quartering the field a fumble by a Wolcott back would have surprised
no one. But the break didn’t come. Wolcott declined to catch the punts
after two narrow escapes and the ball was allowed to roll, twice going
over the goal line for touchbacks. Four penalties were handed out by
the referee, two to each team, but none affected the fortunes of the
game appreciably. The whistle ended the half fifty-two minutes after
the kick-off.