THE GRAY CARD
There was no summons from the Office that day, and Toby began to take
hope. By evening he was in quite an equable state of mind, thanks,
perhaps, to an hour and a half of hard work on the rink. There’s
nothing much better than outdoor exercise to restore a fellow’s mind to
a normal condition. And for one twenty-minute period Toby had played
goal against the second seven and for an hour before that had taken
part in a hard, brisk practice, his visit to the bench having been of a
scant ten-minute duration. Animated by the desperate resolve to wreak
vengeance on Frank Lamson by beating him out for the position of first
choice goal, Toby had worked harder than he ever had before, with the
result that his playing had been almost of the spectacular kind during
the time he had guarded the first team’s goal. Henry, who had been at
the rink looking on a bit disconsolately, had told him afterwards,
enthusiasm struggling against depression, that he had “knocked them
down in great shape, Tucker, my lad, and no bally mistake about it!”
And Toby had gone back to the gymnasium feeling a bit proud of himself
and hugging the thought that revenge against Frank Lamson was certain
and overwhelming. And then, in the upper hall, he had run plumb against
Frank!
That Arnold had said nothing to Frank of Toby’s accusation was at once
evident, for Frank hailed the younger boy almost cordially. “Great
stuff, Toby!” he said. “You and I are going to have a real race, eh? By
ginger, old scout, I didn’t know you had it in you!” The accompanying
laugh suggested, however, that he was not seriously disturbed. Toby
colored, momentarily embarrassed. The last thing he wanted from Frank
was congratulation!
“Thanks,” he said stiffly. “Glad you like it.”
“Well, don’t get grouchy about it!” exclaimed Frank. “Any one would
think I’d insulted you. Go to the dickens, will you?”
Toby passed him without response, trying hard to look haughty and
dignified. That he wasn’t particularly successful in his effort was
suggested by Frank’s amused laugh behind him. Later, on his way to the
showers, Toby encountered Arnold. It seemed, he thought as he pulled
the curtain across and turned the cold water on with more than usual
disregard of results, that he was always running into Arn! After he had
recovered from the first breath-taking shock of the shower he grumbled:
“And he looks like he thought I was a worm, too, confound him! Any one
would suppose that it was my fault! I had a perfect right to tell the
truth about Frank. He did steal that money from me, and Arn’s saying
he didn’t doesn’t alter the fact a bit. Maybe when he finds that Frank
isn’t the fine hero he thinks he is he’ll come off his high horse. But
he needn’t think I’m going to crawl, for I’m not. If he waits for me to
apologize he will wait a mighty long while!”
Coach Loring came to him while he was dressing. “Beech is going to
practice with you in the morning, Tucker,” he said. “At eleven. He will
tell you what days he’s free. Let me know when he can’t be there and
I’ll arrange with some one else――or do it myself. I noticed you used
your body more to-day in stopping shots. It’s the best plan. Keep it
up, Tucker.”
But in spite of all this encouragement Toby wasn’t really happy that
evening. Supper had been a trying affair. Of course neither he nor
Arnold had even so much as glanced at each other, much less spoken, and
he was conscious all during the meal of the amused or inquiring glances
of the other occupants of Table 14. He wondered whether he could get
himself moved to another table, but abandoned the idea the next moment.
He had done nothing and wasn’t going to run away as though he had. If
Arnold didn’t like eating with him, why, let Arnold move. He put in
an hour of study and then pressed Will Curran’s trousers, and a suit
belonging to another boy, and tried very hard to concoct a rhymed reply
to Curran’s missive. But rhyming was not Toby’s forte and he gave it up
finally and climbed into bed to lie awake a long while in the darkness,
thinking rather unhappy thoughts about life.
Grover Beech was awaiting him at the rink the next morning at a few
minutes past eleven and, after they had shooed a half-dozen preparatory
class boys from the ice, they set to work. Toby liked the long and
lank second team captain and his respect for the latter’s skating and
shooting prowess increased remarkably during that fifty minutes of
work.
“I don’t know just what the silly idea is,” Beech remarked as he
dropped the puck and circled back toward the middle of the rink with
it, “but here goes, Tucker!” Beech tore down toward goal, zig-zagging,
playing the puck first on one side and then on the other, dug his
skates when a few yards away, swept past and, at the last moment,
flicked the disk cunningly past Toby’s skates. Toby fished it out of
the net ruefully, and Beech laughed.
“Keep your eyes open, Tucker!” he called, skating backward and dragging
the puck in the crook of his blade. “Loring says he wants you to have
practice, son, and I mean to give it to you. So watch your eye, boy!”
“Let her come!” laughed Toby.
[Illustration: “LET HER COME!” LAUGHED TOBY]
And come she did, a long shot that skimmed through the air a foot
above the ice and made straight for the center of the net. Toby
silently applauded that shot even as he bent and brought his leg-guards
together. There was a _thud_ and the disk bounded yards away. Beech,
who had followed it up, tried to snap it in, but he was skating too
fast and the puck struck the side post.
“Good stop,” he applauded. “Thought I had you then.”
“It was a peach of a shot,” called Toby. “Give me some more like that,
will you? Those are the sort I want to learn to stop.”
Beech obliged, but lift shots weren’t successful for him, and presently
he went back to his first style, that of skating in close to goal
and snapping the puck so quickly to one side or the other that it
was difficult for Toby to move fast enough to block it. Once, being
caught too far to one side of the cage, he tried to stop the puck with
his stick blade and learned a lesson. For the puck jumped over the
blade and rolled to the back of the net. Three times out of a dozen
or so shots, Beech tallied in that fashion. Then Toby worked out the
solution. The next time, when Beech came swinging up――he could shoot
almost as well left-handed as right――Toby dashed out to meet him, a
proceeding so unexpected to Beech that he almost forgot to shoot. When
he did the puck bounded off Toby’s knee and skimmed off to the side of
the rink.
“Huh!” grunted Beech. “I wondered how long you’d let me do that. Just
the same, you don’t want to try that trick very often, Tucker, or
you’ll come to grief. If there’d been some one with me I’d simply have
passed, you see.”
They stopped a minute and talked that over. Beech seemed to have a good
deal of hockey sense, Toby thought, and the older boy decided that
young Tucker was a pretty brainy lad. Toward the last of the practice
Mr. Loring appeared and watched interestedly.
“Beech,” he said finally, “take some shots from about five yards away,
please. You don’t need to skate. Work right around in a half-circle
shooting from the different angles. Let’s see what Tucker’s weakest
point is.”
It developed that Toby’s principal weakness was in meeting shots made
from that arc of the circle lying to his left. In other words, as Mr.
Loring pointed out, an opposing right wing would stand a better chance
of scoring through Toby than a left wing would. “You’re right-handed,
Tucker,” he said. “You can’t afford to be. Learn to use your left hand
and the left side generally as easily and quickly as your right. Try
it again, Beech.” And then, after Toby had stopped the puck none too
cleverly, he followed with: “See what I mean, Tucker? When the puck
comes at you from your right or from the center you meet it nicely, but
when it comes to you from where Beech is shooting you have trouble. You
don’t cross as naturally from right to left as you do vice versa and
you don’t handle your body as well. To-morrow you’d better pay a good
deal of attention to shots from that side. Practice swinging across
from the right post to the left. If you keep your knee against the post
and push out with it when you want to cross you’ll get a quicker start.
Try it now. That’s pretty good. But you favor your right too much. A
good goal-tend mustn’t know one side from the other. It wouldn’t take
long for an enemy to discover your weakness, Tucker, and they’d pound
you from the right――that is, your left――till the cows come home. Look
here, what about those gloves? Didn’t you say you were going to get
some decent ones?”
“Yes, sir, but I――I haven’t had time yet.”
“Well, get at it, man! Those things aren’t fit to wear. Your fingers
would freeze numb on a cold day. Better attend to it to-day if you can.
It’s five minutes to twelve, fellows. You’d better stop now. Can you
come again to-morrow, Beech?”
“Yes, sir, to-morrow and Thursday, but not Friday; nor Saturday either.”
“Never mind about Saturday. We’ll leave Saturday out. I’ll take your
place Friday, unless I have to run back to New York that day. What I
want to do, Beech, is to make a real corking goal out of Tucker. He’s
got a sort of natural style of playing it that looks good to me. Notice
it?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Loring,” responded Beech doubtfully. “But I know
that Tucker can certainly stop them in good style. He’s had me skating
my head off, sir, before you came.”
“Stopping them when there’s only one man against you isn’t so hard,”
said Toby, tugging at the straps of his leg-guards. “It’s when three or
four are skating down on you that the trouble begins!”
“Only one of the four can shoot, Tucker. Remember that. Keep your eye
glued to the puck, my boy, and it won’t make much difference if there
are twenty at you. It’s the last man who counts.”
They walked back to the gymnasium together and there Mr. Loring left
them. As Toby and Beech hurried into their street clothes Beech said:
“Some of the fellows think Loring doesn’t know his business, but I
don’t see what their kick is. I guess he knows as much hockey as he
needs. I like him, don’t you?”
“Awfully,” agreed Toby emphatically. “They say that he was responsible
for losing the Broadwood game last year. Did you play then?”
“Not on the first, no. But there’s no sense in blaming Loring for the
loss of that game. He did the best he could, I guess. The trouble was
that Broadwood had a team that played all around us. They skated better
and shot better and checked harder. They played like a team and we
played like seven individuals. We didn’t do so badly the first half,
but after that Broadwood got a goal on a fluke――Henry kicked the puck
into his own goal――and that gave them a lead of two, and we went up in
the air and played shinney all the rest of the game. At that they only
licked us seven to three; or maybe it was eight to four; something like
that. I hope to goodness we sock it to ’em good and hard this time,
though. He evidently expects you to play goal in that game, Tucker.”
“I hope I’ll be good enough to,” replied Toby. “I――I’d like it awfully.”
“Of course you would,” laughed the other. “I’d like it myself. I’ve
been playing two years already――three, counting this――and I’ve never
got nearer the first team than I am now.”
“I don’t see why,” said Toby. “You shoot wonderfully, I think.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Beech shrugged. “I play pretty fair sometimes and
then the next day I don’t. I have pretty good fun with the second,
though, and it’s something to be captain of that. I’ve no kick coming.
We’d better beat it, Tucker. There goes twelve o’clock!”
They dashed upstairs and out the door, Toby with one shoe-lace flapping
in the breeze, and sprinted across to Oxford, Beech winning the race
with six yards to spare.
The morning practice was continued the next day and the next, and Toby
profited far more than he had dared hope to. In the afternoons he had
varying fortune, one day spending most of the playing time on the bench
and once going in for the second period against the second. It was
always Beech that Toby feared the most now, for the rivalry developed
in the morning practice moved both to extra exertions, and, while Toby
knew Beech’s attack pretty well, it was equally true that Beech knew
Toby’s weaknesses. As far as Toby could see, Crowell still favored
Frank Lamson for the position. In fact, Toby was fairly sure that if
Coach Loring hadn’t been there Crowell would have left him on the
bench most days. Frank’s playing grew neither better nor worse. He was
brilliant at times, but never what could be called steady, and he had a
bad habit of losing his temper after a tally had been scored on him and
playing in an indifferent, swashbuckling sort of fashion for minutes
afterwards. Henry was still absent from work and rumor now had it that
he had virtually given up hope of reinstatement in time for further
playing this season. Toby was sorry for him, but he wouldn’t have been
human had he mourned over-much. With Henry out of it, and only Frank
Lamson to contend with, Toby’s chance of making the coveted position in
time for the Broadwood game brightened each day.
There was no morning practice on Friday, for, although Toby went to
the rink dressed for play, Mr. Loring failed to show up. Toby took part
in a weird contest with eight preparatory class fellows and had a good
time, but he regretted wasting that hour. Later, in the afternoon, it
appeared that Mr. Loring had had to go home and would not be able to
get back until the first of the next week. Toby was sorry to hear that,
for he had secretly hoped that the coach would let him get in for a
part of the Nordham game the next afternoon, perhaps for a full period.
With Mr. Loring absent, however, Toby felt pretty certain that he would
view that contest from the bench. Later, returning to his room at dusk,
he found something that made him wonder whether he would even sit on
the bench to-morrow!
The something was a gray card, one of the printed forms used by the
Office on which only the name, day and hour were written in.
“The Principal desires to see Tobias Tucker in the School
Office Saturday at 9 A. M.
Respectfully,
J. T. THOMPSON, Secretary.”
That is what the card said.
Toby said: “_Gee!_”