QUARTER-BACK BATES
[Illustration: _That second pass was fairly high and it seemed that
Kirkendall would reach the receiver in time to spoil it_]
QUARTER-BACK
BATES
BY
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
AUTHOR OF
LEFT END EDWARDS,
LEFT TACKLE THAYER,
FULL-BACK FOSTER, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
FRANK J. RIGNEY
[Illustration]
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Publishers New York
Made in the United States of America
Copyright, 1920
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE DEPARTURE OF A HERO 1
II “WASHINGTON P. QUIGGLE” 11
III ROOM-MATES 27
IV BLASHINGTON 38
V “RUSTY” 52
VI DICK MAKES AN ENEMY 69
VII PAGING MR. BLASHINGTON 78
VIII HALDEN REPEATS 90
IX LETTERS AND RHYMES 102
X WHITEWASHED! 118
XI WARDEN ADVISES 130
XII THE PHILLIPSBURG GAME 142
XIII THE LAST QUARTER 154
XIV RUSTY BRINGS A FRIEND 166
XV CAPTAIN PETERS ENTERTAINS 177
XVI MR. BATES PROTESTS 194
XVII IN CONFERENCE 209
XVIII PUBLICITY 225
XIX ON THE SCREEN 237
XX BLASH EVENS THE SCORE 247
XXI TWO SCRAPS OF PAPER 256
XXII BLASH CONFESSES 270
XXIII KENWOOD SCORES 277
XXIV QUARTER-BACK BATES 287
ILLUSTRATIONS
That second pass was fairly high and it seemed that
Kirkendall would reach the receiver in time
to spoil it _Frontispiece_
FACING
PAGE
“Good evening,” said Rusty amiably 62
“How we love our Faculty!” 188
The pursuit had closed in now and foremost friend
and enemy were but a few yards behind 292
QUARTER-BACK BATES
CHAPTER I
THE DEPARTURE OF A HERO
It cannot be truthfully said that Dick Bates was overwhelmingly
surprised when he reached the railroad station that September morning
and found fully a score of his schoolmates assembled there. Wally
Nourse had let the cat out of the bag the day before. Wally was one
of those well-meaning but too talkative youths such as we have all
met. But Dick played the game perfectly this morning, descending
from the carriage--Mr. Bates was one of the very few persons left
in Leonardville who could afford an automobile and still drove
horses--with an expression of questioning surprise. He realized that
too much surprise would suggest that he knew the assemblage was there
to do him honour; and if, as some said, Dick was conceited, at least he
was always careful not to seem so.
Mr. Bates handed the lines to Hogan, the coachman, who had ridden in
the back seat surrounded by Dick’s luggage, and followed his son
to the platform with a satisfied smile on his seamed, good-humoured
countenance. It pleased him that this younger son of his should be
popular and sought after. To a certain extent he accepted it as a
compliment to himself. Dick was already surrounded by the little throng
of high school boys and girls--for the gentle sex was well represented,
too--and his father heard him telling them in that pleasant, rather
deep voice of his how unsuspected and undeserved it all was. Mr. Bates
wasn’t deceived, however. Dick had confided to him on the way from the
house that there might be a few of the fellows there to see him off.
Instead, he chuckled to himself. “You can’t beat him at the diplomatic
stuff,” he thought proudly. Then his smile faded. “Wonder if he isn’t
a little _too_ good at it!” Then Doris Ferguson had spied him and was
clinging to his arm and telling him how mean and horrible he was to
let Dick go away and leave them, and the other girls, seven in all,
were chiming in, and everyone was talking at once. And that pleased Mr.
Bates, too, for he liked Doris and, having no daughters of his own,
wished he had a girl just like her. He patted her hand and beamed down
at her from his six-foot height.
“Now don’t you take on so, young lady. Just you remember you’ve still
got me. Course, I can’t play one of those half-portion banjos like Dick
can, but I’m just as nice as he is other ways!”
Sumner White had drawn Dick apart. Sumner was this year’s football
captain, and the other boys, watching and trying to appear not to be,
felt that words of weight and wisdom were being exchanged over there by
the baggage-room door, and wouldn’t have interrupted for worlds. What
Sumner was saying just then may have contained wisdom, but certainly
wasn’t very weighty.
“If you run across any real good plays or wrinkles, Dick, I wish you’d
put me on, eh? I guess they play pretty near college football at
Parkinson, and you know how it is here. If Murphy ever had a new idea
he’d drop dead! Of course I wouldn’t give anything away. You can trust
me to keep mum, old chap.”
“Why, yes, I will, Sum, if I can. But I may not get near the team, you
know. I guess they have a raft of corking good players at Parkinson,
and----”
“Oh, pickles!” jeered Sumner. “I guess they won’t have so many good
quarters that you’ll be passed up! Bet you anything you’ll be playing
on the Parkinson team before you’ve been there a week! Gee, I sort of
wish you weren’t going, Dick. It’s leaving us in a beast of a hole.
Say, honest, do you think Rogers could ever learn?”
“I think Sam’s the best we--the best you’ve got, Sum. All he needs is a
whole lot of work. Of course you can try Littleton if you like, but you
know my opinion of him.”
“Ye-es, I know. But Sam’s so blamed dumb! Gee, you have to use a sledge
to knock anything into--There’s your train, I think. She whistled down
by the crossing. Well, say, Dick old scout, I sure wish you the best of
luck and everything. You’re going to make us all mighty proud of you,
or I miss my guess! We’ll all be rooting for you, you know that. Well,
guess the others’ll want to say good-bye. Wish you’d drop me a line
some time, eh? I’ll write, too, when I get a chance. But you know how
it’s going to be this fall, with a lot of new fellows to break in and
Murphy away more’n half the time, and----”
“Sure, Sum, I know, but you’ll get by all right. I wish I could be here
when you play Norristown, but I suppose I’ll be busy myself. So long!”
After that there was much confusion. Wade Jennings shoved a package
tied with blue and white ribbon, the high school colours, into Dick’s
hands and tried to make the presentation speech he had been practising
for two days. But everyone talked at once, the train came thundering
in, and his stammers were drowned in the tumult. Dick had to shake
hands all around, darting across the platform at the last moment
to say good-bye to Hogan, and then listening to his father’s final
instructions as to tickets and changing at Philadelphia. A grinning
porter took charge of his luggage and Dick followed him up the car
steps and from the platform smilingly surveyed the laughing crowd
below. Afterwards it came to him that Wally Nourse had been the only
one who had looked really sorry, that the others were merely merry and
excited! Of course he excepted his father. Poor old dad had really
looked quite down at the mouth when, pursued by the high school cheer,
the train had pulled out. Tommy Nutting, true to the last to his rôle
of school jester, had blown kisses from the summit of a baggage truck,
and Doris Ferguson had pretended to wipe tears from her eyes. The rest
was a confused memory.
Dick found his seat in the parlour car and watched the frayed and
tattered hem of Leonardville disappear: the brick-yards, the carpet
factory, the blocks of monotonous, square, lead-hued houses of the
operatives, the tumble-down quarter known as Povertyville, and then, at
last, the open country still green and smiling. His last glimpse was
of the slender steeple of the Baptist church, white above the old elms
around it. He changed his straw hat for a light-weight cap and opened a
magazine he had tossed into his bag at the last moment. Then, however,
his eyes fell on the ribboned package and he picked it up eagerly. The
next moment he remembered his neighbours up and down the aisle and
so he pretended to suppress a yawn as he struggled with the entwined
ribbons. When the covering was off he found a pair of silver-backed
military brushes hidden amidst much rustling white tissue and a folded
sheet of paper. The brushes weren’t half bad, and although he already
had a pair, he made up his mind to use them. The message read: “To
Richard Corliss Bates from his friends and fellow-members of the L. H.
S. M. C.” Then followed some thirty names, the complete roster of the
High School Musical Club, and, in a lower corner, in Wade Jennings’
uncertain writing, the further message: “There wasn’t time to have them
marked, but they’ll do it the first time you come home.”
Dick was pleased in a complacent way. The brushes were nicer, in better
taste than he had expected they would be. Of course he had known they
were coming: trust Wally for that! But even if Wally hadn’t talked,
Dick would have expected a gift of some sort. He was the sort who got
gifts, not through any effort of his, but because folks liked him and
seemed to want to do things for him. He never went out of his way to
gain popularity. He didn’t have to. But he enjoyed it thoroughly, and,
having known it for some time, had become to regard it as his right.
Today, the silver brushes pleased him not because of their value,
which, after all, wasn’t great, but because they stood as a further
tribute to his popularity.
Dick was seventeen, the right height for his age, slender in a
well-muscled, athletic way, and undeniably good-looking. His features
were regular, with a rather high forehead and a well-cut straight
nose. His eyes were brown, a warm brown that held a suggestion of red,
and matched his hair. He had a fair complexion with plenty of healthy
colour in the cheeks. It was one of the few sorrows of his life that
he didn’t tan readily, that he had to go through a beastly period of
sunburn and peeling skin before he could attain a decent shade of
brown. He seemed unaware of his personal attractions, whether he was
or not, and his smile, which was not the least of them, won where mere
good looks failed. He always stood high in his class, for he learned
easily. He had a gift for music and could play any instrument at least
passably after a surprisingly short acquaintance. He had a pleasant
speaking voice and sang an excellent tenor on the school Glee Club.
But it was perhaps in the less polite pursuits that he excelled. He
had a record of ten and two-fifths for the hundred yards and had done
the two-twenty under twenty-four. He was a fair high-jumper, usually
certain of third place in the Dual Meet. In the water he was brother
to a fish. He had played baseball one season not at all badly and
could fill in at basket ball if needed. But, when all is said, Dick’s
line was football. He had played two years on the High School Team
at quarter-back. Last year he had been offered the captaincy without
a dissenting voice and had refused it, announcing, what he had kept
a secret until then, that he was leaving at the end of the school
year, and nominating Sumner White. That Sumner was promptly elected
was a further proof of Dick’s popularity, for ordinarily Sumner would
scarcely have been thought of. As a football player Dick was really
brilliant. He had a collection of fourteen epistles, which he was not
averse to showing to close friends, from as many preparatory schools
and smaller colleges urging him to consider their advantages to a
person of his scholastic attainments. Parkinson School, however, was
not represented in that collection, perhaps because Parkinson was too
far away for his fame to have reached it. Dick had chosen Parkinson for
the completion of his preparation for college only because his brother
Stuart had graduated from there some five years before. Stuart had
talked of Parkinson so much that Dick felt that he knew the school and
that he was certain to like it. He might have entered two years ago,
but had chosen to remain at the high school until he could go to the
preparatory school with a fair chance of making the football team. He
believed now that the time had arrived. Although he had belittled his
chances in conversation with Sumner White, secretly Dick entertained
few doubts of his ability to make the Parkinson team.
He was entering the Third Class and had been assigned a room in Sohmer
Hall. Brother Stuart had advised Sohmer, since it was the newest of the
dormitory buildings, and Dick had made application the year before. To
his regret, he had not been able to get a room to himself, but the fact
didn’t trouble him greatly. In fact he recognised certain advantages
accruing from a room-mate. Who that person was to be he had not yet
learned.
His train reached Philadelphia at a few minutes before eleven and
he had just time to buy a morning paper before the New York Express
left. He didn’t waste much time on the front page of the journal, soon
turning to the football and athletic news. A hair-breadth connection
in New York put him on the last lap of his journey, and, after a
deliberative meal in the diner and the perusal of one story in the
magazine, it was time to gather his luggage together. The train slid
into Warne at three-fifty, and Dick, not a little excited under his
appearance of perfect calm, alighted.