DYNAMITE TAKES IT ON THE CHIN
Never before had there been such excitement about a Hillcrest football
game. By one o’clock in the afternoon, Hillcrest was deserted. Coaches,
busses, trucks and private cars had been forced into service. All
Hillcrest, professors, students, men, women, boys, and girls, everyone
journeyed to Naperville where the game was to be played.
When the time for the kick-off came, they were all there. Old grads were
there too, hundreds of them. One man had journeyed all the way from New
York. Crimson banners and pennants fluttered in the breeze. The College
band roared, boomed and blared then settled down to, “Hail to Hillcrest!”
Ah, yes, it was to be one glorious occasion.
A fine misty rain was blowing in from the east. But what of that?
Blankets, heavy coats, and ulsters defied the weather. As for the team,
they were all pepped up for the battle. Weather meant nothing to them.
Bumps, bruises, even cuts would mean nothing to them. Nothing short of a
broken leg could stop them today.
Today was the day of days. Year after year they had gone down to defeat.
Today? Today! Just wait and see.
One thought disturbed Dave Powers as he took his place. Old Kentucky was
in his suit but his bright, new crimson jersey did not shine out from the
field. Instead it was hidden beneath a heavy gray blanket. Kentucky was
on the bench. There, shivering from the cold, excitement, and bitter
disappointment, he awaited the kick-off.
“Your rib is about healed,” the doctor had said to him. “However, if you
should go into the game, and be tackled and thrown hard, it might result
in permanent injuries.”
Well, doctor’s orders were doctor’s orders, but to Kentucky, had it not
been for his teammates, they would have meant nothing. What were a few
broken bones to the loss of the year’s game of games? It was Dynamite who
had said, “You stay out until I need you.”
“But promise me,” Kentucky pleaded, “if the battle goes against you and
if you think I can help, promise you’ll let me in.”
“Help, kid?” Dynamite had exclaimed. “Of course you could help. You and I
could lick that Naperville bunch all by our lonesomes. And will I holler
if we are getting the worst of it? You better believe I will, son!”
All the same, as Dynamite went into the game it was with a wordless
prayer that little Kentucky might not be needed.
From the very start it was a thrilling game. From the first, too,
Dynamite was to recall the words of Kentucky’s passed on by Johnny:
“Somebody’s going to drop the ball.”
Naperville led off with a great kick. Punch, who received the ball, was
tackled almost at once, on the Hillcrest thirty-yard line. On two line
plunges, Hillcrest picked up seven yards. Then, as Bud Tucker, who played
in Kentucky’s place at half, came round the left end, he was hit hard and
thrown. The ball leaped from his grasp and was recovered by a Naperville
man.
“Ha! Ha! Big joke!” one of the opponents yelled. They had heard this from
a defeated team. Now they evidently meant to use it against Hillcrest.
To have the ball in the opponent’s hands on one’s own thirty-seven-yard
line at the start of a game is no joke. The hard-hitting Naperville steam
roller crushed the Hillcrest line again and again. “First down and ten—”
and scarcely a moment later once again, “First down and ten—” From the
bleachers came a roar like the breaking of a wild sea:
“Hold that line! Hold that line! Hold that line!”
Kentucky sat like a mummy in his blanket, shuddering and mumbling to
himself.
Then, when it seemed that a touchdown was inevitable, once again,
“somebody dropped the ball.” This time it was little Artie Stark who
recovered. Hillcrest’s ball on their own thirteen-yard line. A quick
huddle, a sudden snapping of the ball, a ducking of the head by Punch
Dickman, as if to run with it, then a leaping upward like the rise of a
submarine, and a quick kick that, catching the opponents off their guard,
sent the ball rolling, all unmolested to Naperville’s ten-yard line.
“Bravo! Bravo!” Shedding his blanket as a snake sheds its skin, Kentucky
leaped into a wild Indian dance.
But wait! Again that relentless beating back. There came line buck after
line buck that Hillcrest’s slender line could not withstand. And after
that, with startling suddenness, forward passes. Naperville, too, had
learned how to invade the air.
One pass was complete, then a second. As this last pass was caught by a
Naperville end, Dynamite too far away to do more than watch, saw him go
coursing straight down the field. The ball carrier was followed by his
own left-half.
“Punch is there,” Dynamite congratulated himself. “He’ll spill him. And
how!”
He had spoken too soon. Punch did spill the runner, spilled him plenty,
but the instant before Punch struck him, the runner threw a lateral to
the man who followed him. The lateral was good, Punch went down with the
Naperville end. The trailing Naperville half went through for a touchdown
and the Naperville rooters burst the head of their big bass drum from
sheer joy.
As for Old Kentucky, he shuddered more violently than ever. “Here!” There
was a sharp, girlish voice close at hand. It was Jensie. She was holding
out a small jug filled with something piping hot. What was in the jug?
Kentucky knew and Jensie too. What did it matter about the rest? He drank
it all and shuddered no more.
The game went on. Reenforcements were sent in to the Hillcrest line. This
stiffened up the game. For the rest of that quarter and all through the
second quarter the teams took turns bucking lines, trying passes, and
punting on the fourth down. Neither team made great gains. At the end of
the half the score stood at 7-0 against Hillcrest.
“Dynamite,” the slim Kentucky boy whispered tensely as for a moment Dave
took a place beside him on the bench, “you can’t let them beat us! You
just can’t. All the old grads are here. They’re burning up for a victory.
I heard one of them say there’ll be a training-table for the team next
year if we win this game. A free training-table, Dynamite! Think what
that’ll mean to the boys who have to work! Let me come in, Dynamite. Just
let me!”
“They’d bust you in pieces,” Dynamite grumbled.
“They’ll never touch me,” Kentucky’s eyes shone with a strange light. “No
one ever has except that once and that—that was sort of an accident, you
might say.”
“They’d get you, Kentucky. Those boys are out for blood. They’d murder
you and then Doc would have me up for getting you killed.”
Kentucky made no reply. For a full moment he sat there in silence. “All
right, Dave,” he said at last. His voice was low and flat.
“This is terrible,” Dave thought to himself.
“Give us one more quarter,” he pleaded after a moment of silence. “If we
don’t score in the third quarter, you’ll go in. I swear it.
“But one thing,” he added in a low tone, “you’ll swear on the Bible you
won’t let them tackle you. You’ll throw the ball away—anything at all.”
“Swear it on a stack of Bibles,” Kentucky grinned happily.
Never had Dave worked, hoped, and prayed for a scoring punch as he did in
that third quarter. Never did the team back him up with greater
determination. Never had they attempted such dazzling plays.
“Eighty-six,” was the first order they received as they went into a
huddle.
“Eighty-six coming up,” Artie Stark gasped.
The team lined up as usual, balanced formation. Punch Dickman dropped
back as if for a punt. The ball was snapped to him. He held it for a
period of seconds. Dynamite came sweeping in close behind the line of
scrimmage. Punch shot a shovel pass to him. He dashed round right end for
a gain of five yards. As he was about to be tackled he shot it to Rabbit
Jones. In the meantime Punch had followed Dynamite around right end. As
Rabbit saw the end of his own eight-yard break for liberty, he lateralled
it back to Punch and Punch went forward for a clean twenty yards.
“Yea! Yea! Yea!” came from the bleachers. “Touchdown! Touchdown!
Touchdown!”
“Ninety-three,” Dynamite whispered. They were in a huddle and out again.
They snapped into position, five men behind the line, three a yard back
of the line, and two others one yard farther back. Punch received the
ball. Artie Stark touched the ground. He was behind the line but this
made him a technical lineman. Bud Talliver, a quarter who was also
temporarily quartered behind the line, took a short pass from Punch to
shoot around left end for a gain of twelve yards and one more first down.
“Repeat,” Dynamite whispered in the next huddle. There was a growing note
of confidence in his tone.
They did repeat and at once met with disaster. The right guard of the
enemy smelled the play. Somehow he broke through to throw Bud so hard
that the ball bounced out of his hands and was lost to the enemy.
“No good!” Dynamite muttered. “But we gotta’ score! We just gotta’
score!”
There are some things in this life that “just must” be done but, in the
end, because of circumstances beyond our control, cannot be done.
Hillcrest did not score in that quarter.
Never in all his life had Dynamite been so disappointed, and never had he
looked upon a more radiant smile than he saw on Kentucky’s face as he
approached the bench.
“We’ll get ’em,” the mountain boy promised. “Two touchdowns in the last
quarter. It’s written in the stars. I saw it in my forecast this
morning.”
“You been studying the stars?” Dynamite asked.
“It’s all written down in a book,” Kentucky was shedding his blanket. The
hot drink from Jensie’s brown jug was still coursing through his veins.
“But, Kentucky,” Dynamite remonstrated, “perhaps Doc won’t let you.”
“He’s gone,” Kentucky grinned broadly. “Somebody’s sick, an auto accident
or something. He left fifteen minutes ago.”
Dynamite was sunk. “I’d rather we lost the game,” he muttered.
By the time the whistle blew he had snapped out of that mood. Indeed he
felt more cheerful than he had at any time that day. Somehow, without
Kentucky at left half the picture had not been right. Now it was perfect.
“All the same,” he muttered, “I’ll not send him through the line. That
would be murder.”
When the hundreds of Hillcrest enthusiasts saw the slim Kentucky boy rise
from his place on the bench, throw himself through a series of wild
antics to set his blood racing, then walk quietly to his place behind the
line, a strange silence came over them. This lasted for some twenty
seconds then, like the coming of a wind storm in summer, there arose a
sound that increased second by second until at last it filled all the
sky. Speaking of it long after, Punch Dickman said it made his ears
tingle. “It was a sign,” he added. “A sure sign of victory.”
But was it? At the start things went badly. Three line-bucks failed. The
punt that followed shot straight into the air. Rabbit almost retrieved
the ball, but failed. Fighting like tigers, the Naperville boys battled
their way to Hillcrest’s twenty-yard line.
As Dynamite scanned the faces of his men, he read their dogged
determination, but something else—a note of despair. Kentucky was not
like that. He was smiling. His eyes shone. His lips were parted. He was
murmuring something. Dynamite listened. What he heard sounded strange:
“It’s a wet day. Somebody’s going to drop the ball.”
Then the thing happened. On a third down, the opposing team tried a
forward pass. It struck the receiver’s hands, seemed to rest there a
split second, then went spinning into the air. When it next came to rest,
it was in Kentucky’s hands. Like a rushing prairie fire he streaked down
the side line for the far away goal. Once again, in his own mind, he was
in old Nicodemus’ pen. It was moonlight. A shadow approached him, a
Naperville man. Flash! He was past that shadow. Another, another, and
another. Flash, flash, flash, he was past them all. Two tall, slim
shadows stood out before him—the goal posts. Flash, he was past them as
well. Then, with a deafening roar in his ears, he came to rest standing
up. A touchdown for Hillcrest. The kick was good. The score was tied.
“We can’t let it stand there,” Kentucky said tensely as Dynamite came up.
“We must not!”
“You’re wonderful, Kentucky,” his team mate whispered. “But think if only
one of them had hit you!”
“Dynamite,” the Kentucky boy whispered to his running mate, “I had three
uncles in the great war. Only one came back. Do you think they asked
themselves about machine gun bullets and shells? Football is war, Dave.
“Besides,” he added, “they can’t get me. Nobody can. Even old Nicodemus
couldn’t.”
The battle was begun once more. Enheartened, Dynamite took a chance. He
put his team through that five-men-back formation. Somehow it failed. The
tackle was thrown for a loss. Doggedly determined, he tried again. One
more loss. Third down and seventeen to go. A punt and the enemy had the
ball.
By four brilliant forward passes Naperville carried the ball back to
Hillcrest’s ten-yard line.
“Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown!” came from the right bleachers. “Hold
that line! Hold that line!” came from the left. The nerves of every
player on the field were stretched to the breaking point. Naperville
charged the line. No gain. They charged again. No gain. Flash! They shot
a pass. It never reached the receiver. With a leap that took him high in
the air, Dynamite caught the ball, then plunged head foremost into the
oncoming wall of opponents. Never had a tree been blasted, nor a mountain
exploded more perfectly than was that line torn away. Never had Dynamite
so deserved his nickname. He went through everything to their forty-yard
line. There he was downed by the opponent’s safety man.
“Dave,” the Kentucky boy whispered, when next they prepared to line up.
“One minute to go. We—we gotta’ have that touchdown. You—you know how.
Don’t think of me, Dave. Forget the bullets and shells. It’s war, Dave.
Let’s go through together.”
Dave set his teeth grimly. “It’s a go, Kentucky!”
And they went through. Throwing all the force of his marvelously
developed body in a line plunge, Dynamite blasted a hole so wide that
both he and Kentucky went through.
But Naperville had been expecting a forward pass. Her ends and half-backs
were a full twenty yards behind the line. Like a troop of wild bears,
they sprang at the onrushing pair.
“They must not hit him!” Dynamite was saying to himself. “They must not.”
Hurling himself at the first man, he sent him spinning to the right. He
tipped the second to the left. The third he missed altogether. And all
this time the slim Kentucky boy hugged the ball and sped on behind him.
Ten—twenty—thirty yards—for—
Dynamite struck something that was like a stone wall. He went down in a
heap.
But Kentucky, racing like an escaped colt, sped on to the winning
touchdown.
And then the whistle blew.
The crowd would have rushed upon the field but officers held them back.
All plays begun before the whistle must be completed. There must be a
trial for the extra point.
As the players began lining up, they missed Dynamite. Sudden
consternation seized them as they discovered him lying quite senseless on
the field.
“He’s out for good. That full-back smashed him. Take him off the field,”
a doctor ordered.
“Kentucky, you may call the play,” the coach said quietly.
“All right, boys,” Kentucky whispered in the huddle, “a line plunge. Make
it a good one.”
“A line—” Rabbit Jones who started to speak, felt a hand over his mouth.
A line plunge it was, and a good one, but not good enough. The score
stood 13 to 7 and all Hillcrest went wild—all but one, Dynamite.
They would have picked Kentucky up and carried him on their shoulders,
those Hillcrest fans, but the boy would not have it. “Dynamite,” he
shouted. “Save all that for good old Dynamite. He knew it was he or I,
and he—he took it.” There were tears in Kentucky’s eyes—and the crowd
loved him for it.
“Kentucky,” Coach Dizney dropped in beside the slim boy as the team
marched off the field, “you may ride back to Hillcrest in my car. Your
friend, Jensie Crider, rode over with us.” There was a strange, new light
of friendliness in his eye.
“I—” Kentucky hesitated, “I sort of reckoned maybe I’d ought to see about
Dynamite.”
“Dynamite is all right,” was the coach’s reply. “He’s in good hands. He’s
with Doc Owslie. He’s a fine, dependable doctor. Besides—” he was tempted
to say more but stopped at this. “The other might not be true.”
“Al—all right,” Kentucky agreed. “That will be grand!”
Johnny Thompson had somehow felt from the beginning that this was to be a
Hillcrest victory. No one in all the world would have given so much to
watch it from the sidelines. This had been impossible. There would be, he
knew right well, a grand and glorious celebration in the old home town
after the game. The team would be back. All their admirers and all the
girls of the school would be there and all the old grads. Were they to
wander from place to place down town? By no means! The old Blue Moon was
the spot for this jollification. And he should be prepared.
Having bought out an entire bakery, he had rented its ovens. Into these
ovens on great dripping pans, he thrust two legs of beef, five leg o’
lambs, three hams and a half dozen pork loins.
“We’ll have hot sandwiches for all,” he said to Aunt Mandy, his colored
cook. “Hot ones for all. And you, Aunt Mandy, all I ask of you is three
hundred little turnover pies, all mince.”
“Lands o’ livin’, child,” Aunt Mandy exclaimed. “Three hundred!”
“Three hundred.”
“All right, son, three hundred comin’ up.” And three hundred it was.
Ah yes, it was a grand and glorious feast Johnny prepared. One thing he
forgot, the big room at the Blue Moon could scarcely accommodate sixty
people standing up. And a mighty horde in trucks, busses, and private
cars, some even on bicycles was pouring toward the Blue Moon at sunset.
“Kentucky,” the coach said with a side-wise glance at the boy as their
car glided toward home, “I gave you a chance at being captain of the
team. In that last play, you could have called for a goal kick. Punch
would have sent it over for that other point. You called for a line-buck.
How come?”
“Well you see,” there was a tremor in Kentucky’s voice—he loved the coach
and feared his displeasure more than almost anything in the world, “you
see, coach, I overheard you tell Dynamite he’d played great ball this
season, which he had, and that, if he won that game you’d see that he got
the ball for himself for a keepsake. That—that I thought was swell.
“But you see, coach,” Kentucky was desperately in earnest now, “you see
there was a big crowd heading for the gate, just back of the goal. If we
tried for a goal, we’d make it all right but the ball would go into the
crowd and then—somebody’d plug a hole in that ball, let out the air and
tuck it under his coat. So-o—”
“So you passed up your chance to give Dynamite a break.”
“Yes—yes. That’s it. It was all right wasn’t it, coach? Wasn’t it now?
We—we didn’t need the point. The game was over and we—we’d won and
everything.”
“Yes, Kentucky.” There was a wide smile of approval on the coach’s face.
“It was more than all right. It was sporting! Just grand, Kentucky!”
“I—I’m glad,” Kentucky murmured. Kentucky had been worried about Dynamite
but the instant he climbed from the car he spotted him. He was standing
at the edge of the gathering crowd. Grinning a broad grin he said, “’Lo,
Kentucky. Who won the game?
“It’s all right, old Kentuck,” he laughed. “I’m not a ghost. It takes
more than a Naperville man to knock me out for keeps. That fellow rammed
his head up under my chin and put me to sleep, that’s all. When I woke
up, I felt better than ever. I’d had a good rest.” He laughed merrily.
When Johnny saw the crowd, he called loudly for help. The team responded
to a man. They carried two steaming legs of beef, five leg o’ lambs,
three hundred pies and all the rest of the feast to the big gym floor.
There everybody feasted to his heart’s content.
Who was to pay the butcher and baker? In such a jam there was neither
time nor opportunity to collect nickels, dimes, and quarters. Johnny had
been too busy to notice such a trifling detail. It was not, however,
entirely neglected.
“And now,” a big burly grad, wearing a tall paper hat exclaimed, “we
shall proceed to pass the basket.”
Seizing one handle of a huge baker’s basket, he invited a pal of other
days to join him, and together they made the rounds. The clink of silver
and the flutter of green paper was heard and seen in every corner of the
broad floor.
At last, hunting up Johnny, they set the basket before him. The leader
said:
“With the compliments of an admiring throng to the good scout who
discovered our winner, Old Kentucky.”
Then such a shout as went up from the throng. “Give and it shall be given
unto you,” Johnny thought as he tried in vain to swallow a lump in his
throat.
“Well, Kentucky, old boy,” Johnny said as they sat by the big glowing
stove in the Blue Moon sometime later, “the big war is over. All you got
to do now is study and help me here a little. All I got to do is to keep
making this place a success. The old Blue Moon,” he murmured these last
words softly.
“Yes,” the slim boy agreed, “that’s all, but somehow, Johnny, that makes
me feel like a plumb flat tire.”
“That,” said Johnny in an impressive tone, “is just the way I feel.”
Did the old Blue Moon and Hillcrest hold them both? When Johnny sat
dreaming of Panther Eye and his two strange companions of another world,
did he always succeed in dismissing them from his memory?
Your guess is as good as ours, but if you really want to know you will
have to read that other book _The Seal of Secrecy_. What was the seal and
what the secret? Read and see.
Transcriber’s Notes
--Copyright notice provided as in the original printed text—this e-text
is public domain in the country of publication.
--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and
dialect unchanged.
--In the text versions, delimited italics text in _underscores_ (the HTML
version reproduces the font form of the printed book.)