WHITEWASHED!
Parkinson played Cumner High School the next afternoon. Cumner was
a nearby town of some eight or nine thousand inhabitants set in the
middle of a prosperous farming community. The Cumner teams were made
up largely of very hefty sons of the soil, averaging slightly older
than Parkinson’s representatives and invariably out-weighing them.
As a rule Parkinson won because of better knowledge of the game and
greater speed. She called Cumner’s players The Farmers, but she did it
with much respect and liking, knowing which Cumner took no exception
to the title. In fact, the Cumner Football Team was one of a few that
invariably received as hearty a welcome when it trotted onto Parkinson
Field as did the brown-and-white eleven. Its members were big, manly,
hard-playing chaps who took defeat gallantly and victory modestly.
Dick, of course, was not vitally interested in that game and as he
was not required to report in togs today he and Stanley and Sid
watched the contest from seats in a stand. Cumner showed up unusually
formidable during the ten or fifteen minutes of practice that preceded
the contest, and Sid, who, although a baseball man, knew football very
thoroughly, predicted trouble ahead for the Brown-and-White.
“That’s the heaviest team they’ve sent over since I’ve been here,”
commented Sid, “and they don’t look nearly as slow as they generally
do. And that black-headed giant down there hasn’t missed a goal yet,
although he’s tried some fierce angles. No, sir, Parkinson isn’t going
to have any old walk-away this afternoon.”
“Oh, we won’t pile up more than twenty points, maybe,” said Stanley.
“Sometimes we don’t.”
“Yes, and sometimes we just squeak through, as we did two years ago.
Seven-six it was that time. I remember I had heart disease when
Sinclair got ready to try that goal. And then he wouldn’t have made it
if the ball had gone six inches further to the right.”
“You don’t play football!” asked Dick. “I mean, you never have?”
“No.” Sid shook his head. “I’ve always preferred baseball. I suppose
I like it better because it gives more chance for individual work. Of
course, if you’re a backfield player in football you have more show
to work ‘on your own,’ but a lineman’s a good deal like a piece of
machinery; the more he’s like it the better he is. Now in baseball----”
“He’s off!” groaned Stanley. “You shouldn’t have got him started, Dick.
He’s good for an hour now!”
But Sid’s exposition of the advantages of baseball over the rival
game was interrupted by the referee’s whistle and the thud of “Babe”
Upton’s toe against the ball. Parkinson had put in what was to date
her strongest line-up: Furniss, Harris, Cupp, Upton, Newhall, Wendell,
Peters, Stone, Gaines, Warden and Kirkendall. Opposed to them were
eleven heavier and yet apparently rangy youths. Even the Cumner
quarter-back must have tipped the scales at a hundred and fifty, and
the ends were unusually weighty for their positions. But Cumner soon
showed that weight and speed may go together. The kick-off fell on her
twenty-yard line, was seized by a long-legged back and, with the team
closing in ahead of him, the back ran straight ahead for fifteen yards
before he was downed. Bob Peters had followed the short kick closely,
but even Bob couldn’t penetrate the close defence until three white
lines had been crossed by the runner.
Three plays took the ball out of the danger zone and Cumner opened up
with a dazzling forward-pass that put the ball well beyond the centre
of the field. After that a penalty set her back and she was forced to
punt. But three minutes later the ball was hers again, for Kirkendall,
tackled on an end run, had dropped it and a Cumner youth had fallen
on it. Again came a forward, this time far and swift, and Furniss,
watching the wrong opponent, saw the pigskin settle into the hands of
the Cumner right half. It was Stone who chased the runner out of bounds
on Parkinson’s twenty-six yards.
“What do you know about that?” marvelled Sid.
“You tell me,” said Stanley.
“Sure I will! I’ll tell you that I smell a score, sonny!”
“Oh, we’ll hold ’em off, all right. They won’t try any more forwards.
Watch them crack against our line.”
But Cumner didn’t crack. At least, she managed to make her distance
in four and arrived at the Brown-and-White’s fifteen-yard line to the
surprised dismay of the home rooters. The Parkinson left had been twice
punctured for respectable gains and twice Cumner had slashed a path
outside right tackle. Cumner had evolved a very satisfactory method for
bottling Captain Peters, using a tackle, brought across from the other
side of her line, and a back for the purpose. But, although the hundred
or more Cumner supporters yelled in triumph and a touchdown seemed
imminent, Parkinson for the time staved off a score. Two straight
plunges at the left of her centre gained only two yards, and the Cumner
right half walked back to kicking position. The angle, however, was
difficult and few looked for a bona fide attempt at a field-goal.
Consequently the short forward-pass that followed, from the Cumner
right half directly across the centre of the line, didn’t catch the
home team napping. Gaines intercepted it and went plunging back into
the mêlée and made seven yards before he was stopped. Parkinson punted
on first down and the ball was Cumner’s on her forty-six.
Stanley taunted Sid with the failure of his prediction. “Where’s that
score, you old gloom?” he demanded. “Dick, I don’t want to say anything
that might be construed into a criticism of our mutual friend, Mr.
Crocker, but I must remark that he’s a bum prophet.”
“Hold your horses,” answered Sid soberly. “That score’s coming and it’s
coming mighty soon. Those farmers have found someone to teach them
football. They know the game. Watch them for the next five minutes,
Stan, and then tell me if I’m a bum prophet.”
“I’ll tell you so now,” replied Stanley cheerfully. “I don’t have to
wait five minutes. Say what are those hayseeds up to? What sort of a
silly stunt is that?”
Cumner had stretched her line across the field in a weird formation
indeed. A horse and wagon might have easily been driven between any
two of her linemen. Quite alone stooped the centre, the quarter
eight yards behind him and the other backs apparently no longer
interested in anything he might do. To meet this scattering of forces
Parkinson likewise spread out, but she did it less whole-heartedly,
keeping her centre trio pretty close together. Her backs adopted the
“basket formation” well behind the line, for it seemed that Cumner’s
queer arrangement of her players must portend some novel type of
forward-passing. Yet, when centre lined the ball back to the quarter,
nothing extremely novel developed. The outspread line dashed forward
straight toward the opponent’s goal and the quarter, delaying a moment,
sped off at a slight angle, the ball cupped in his arm. To his support
came two backs. But Parkinson, after a brief second of hesitation,
concentrated on the oncoming trio, and, although Cumner netted six
yards on the play, the Brown-and-White’s adherents howled ironically.
That even six yards had been gained was merely because Parkinson had
refused to believe her eyes and had waited too long before going in.
Another time, jeered Stanley, they’d be lucky to get an inch!
Cumner tried her full-back against Parkinson’s right and lost two of
the six she had won. This was from ordinary formation, as was her next
attempt to skirt Bob Peter’s end. On the latter play she made a scant
yard. Then, while Parkinson rooters laughed and hooted in good-natured
derision, Cumner again broke her line apart. What followed this time,
however, was far different. When the ball was shot back to the quarter
the Parkinson centre trio made straight for that youth, bowling the
centre out of their path. The quarter seemed to the onlookers unusually
slow and even at a loss, for after a moment of hesitation he made a
tentative stride to the right, stopped, faced the attack undecidedly
and then dashed away at a surprising speed toward the right side of
the field. A back had already shot off in that direction and was some
fifteen yards beyond the quarter when the latter, deftly eluding
the Parkinson left tackle, whirled, stopped and shot the ball away
at a lateral pass. Parkinson had unconsciously drawn in toward the
quarter-back, even her left half having wandered from his position, and
when the Cumner half, catching the pass neatly, again threw the ball
forward there was none near the receiver. The latter was the Cumner
right end who had, almost unseen, trotted down the field just inside
the boundary. That second pass was fairly high and it seemed that
Kirkendall would reach the receiver in time to spoil it, but he didn’t
quite succeed. The best he could do was give chase along the edge of
the field and, at the last, defeat the effort of that speedy Cumner
right end to centre the ball behind the Parkinson goal. Stone, too, was
in the race, but, like the full-back, never reached the runner until
the line had been crossed.
Cumner’s supporters went wild with joy, and long after the pigskin
had been punted out from the corner of the gridiron to a waiting left
guard, their howls and cheers arose from across the field. Sid forebore
to say “I told you so,” but Stanley sadly apologised. “I retract what
I said, Sid,” he stated dolefully. “You’re not a bum prophet. You’re a
prophetic bum!”
Cumner kicked goal easily after the punt-out and when the ball
had again sailed through the air the first quarter ended. That
twelve-minute period, however, spelled ultimate disaster for the home
team, for although Cumner did not score again, Parkinson failed to
score at all! Twice she came near to it, once in the second quarter
and once in the third. In the second she slammed her way to Cumner’s
seven yards, lost ten yards on a penalty, and failed of a field-goal by
inches only. In the third period she reached her opponent’s four yards
only to have Kirkendall’s last effort fail by a scant six inches. That
was bitter medicine to the Brown-and-White, and after that failure all
the fight seemed to have gone out of her. In the final period, with
many substitutes in, she showed some life, to be sure, but there wasn’t
punch enough left to make her dangerous, and Cumner, still playing with
her first line-up practically intact, kicked out of danger whenever it
threatened.
Going back to the campus after Cumner, cheering and singing, had
marched triumphantly under the goals, Sid predicted a shake-up in the
team. “You can’t tell me,” he said, “that we had any right to get
licked today. That flukey play of Cumner’s that got them their score
may have been unpreventable, although I don’t think so, but where we
fell down hard was in that third period when K couldn’t get across. It
isn’t allowable for a Parkinson team to get to the four yards and not
get over. It isn’t done among the best Parkinson teams!”
“I thought,” observed Dick, “that Kirkendall should have been sent
around tackle on that last play. We’d hammered their centre three times
and they were looking for us to do it again and they’d massed their
whole secondary defence behind it. Seems to me----”
“I think so too,” agreed Sid. “Give ’em what they aren’t expecting, is
my motto. Stone ought to have kept them guessing. His idea, I suppose,
was that if he hammered the centre long enough it would weaken. Even
their backs couldn’t have stopped a score if the line had busted, Dick.
You see, we needed only a yard at the last and we’d have got it if
their centre had weakened a bit more. It’s easy to criticise from the
grand-stand, but it’s likely that Stone knew more than we did about
those fellows he was facing. He probably had good reason to think he
could smash K through there. Must have or he wouldn’t have persisted
the way he did. Well, we’ll have to do better next week or we’ll get a
good trouncing.”
“Phillipsburg?” asked Stan. “Yes, that’s so. We play them on their
grounds, too, and that makes a difference. Hang it, I wish we’d tried
a goal from the field that last time. Even three points would be
something! It looks like the dickens to have those farmers whitewash
us! We haven’t been whitewashed for ages!”
“Maybe we needed it, then,” chuckled Sid. “But you know Bob Peters well
enough to be certain he wouldn’t be satisfied with three points when
he might get seven. Not Bob! He’d want to win or tie. Just getting a
consolation prize wouldn’t appeal to him, Stan.”
“It would to me, then,” muttered Stan. “You going to Phillipsburg?”
“No, I can’t. We’ve got a sort of a game on Saturday with Warne
High School. It doesn’t amount to much; six innings and we to use
second-string pitchers; but it’s likely to be about the last chance of
the season to try some real work. You expect to go?”
“I don’t know. What about it, Dick?”
“I’d like to. Is it much of a trip?”
“No, a couple of hours. I’ll go if you do, I guess. Got any money?”
“Yes. I’ll stake you. Will many of the fellows go?”
“A lot,” answered Sid. “I think Blash intends going. Well, see you
later, fellows. We’ll be over about seven.”
“That’s right,” exclaimed Stanley joyfully. “This is movie night! Oh,
you Douglas Hart! Oh, you Bill Fairbanks! So long, Sid!”