The Half-Back Part 23

Now, didn't you?"

"But it was all in fun," protested Joel, distressedly. "I didn't suppose you meant it, you know."

"Meant it!" answered Outfield indignantly. "Of course I meant it. Don't you expect I appreciate level-headedness and sharp-wittedness and applicationousness just as much as Remsen? Why, I had it all fixed. We were to have an office fitted with cherry railings and revolving bookcases near--near--"

"A good links?" suggested Remsen smilingly.

"Well, yes," admitted Outfield, "that wouldn't be a half bad idea. But now you two have gone and spoiled it all."

"Well, I tell you, West," suggested Remsen, "you come in with us and supply the picturesque element of the business. You might look after the golf cases, you know; injuries to bald-headed gentlemen by gutties; trespa.s.sing by players; forfeiting of leases, and so forth. What do you say?"

"All right," answered Outfield cheerfully. "But it must be understood that the afternoons belong to the links and not to the law."

So Stephen Remsen and Joel March sealed their agreement by shaking hands, and Outfield grinned approval.

One afternoon a few days later Outfield pranced into the room just as dusk was falling brandis.h.i.+ng aloft a silver-plated mug, and uttering a series of loud cheers for "Me." Joel, who had returned but a moment before from a hard afternoon's practice, and was now studying in the window seat by the waning light, looked languidly curious.

"A trophy, Joel, a trophy from the links!" cried West. "Won by the great Me by two holes from Jenkins, Jenkins the Previously Great, Jenkins the Defeated and Devastated!" He tossed the mug into Joel's lap.

"I'm very glad, Out," said the latter. "Won't it help you with the team?"

"It will, my discerning friend. It will send me to New York next month to represent Harwell. And Lapham says I must go to Lakewood for the open tournament. Oh, little Outie is some pumpkins, my lad! It was quite the most wonderful young match to-day. Jenkins led all the way to the fifteenth hole. Then he foozled like a schoolboy, and I holed out in one and went on to the Cheese Box in two."

"I'm awfully glad," repeated Joel, smiling up into the flushed and triumphant face of his chum. "If you go to New York it will be after the big game, and, if you like, I'll go with you and shout." Outfield West executed a war-dance and whooped ecstatically.

"Will you, Joel? Honest Injun? Cross your heart and hope to die? Then shake hands, my lad; it's a bargain! Now, where's my chemistry?"

The days flew by and the date of the Yates game rapidly approached. The practice was secret every afternoon, and the coaches lost weight eluding the newspaper reporters. Prince disappointed Joel by returning to the Varsity with his ankle apparently as well as ever, although he was generally "played easy," and Joel often took his place in the second half of the practice games.

And at last the Thursday preceding the big game arrived, and the team and subst.i.tutes, together with the trainer and the manager and the head coach and two canine mascots, a.s.sembled in the early morning in the square and were hustled into coaches and driven into town to their train. And half the college heroically arose phenomenally early and stood in the first snow storm of the year and cheered and cheered for the team individually and collectively, for the head coach and the trainer, for the rubbers and the mascots, and, between times, for the college.

The players went to a little country town a few miles distant from the seat of Yates University, and spent the afternoon in practicing signals on the hotel grounds. The next day, Friday, was a day of rest, save for running through a few formations and trick plays after lunch and taking a long walk at dusk. The Yates Glee Club journeyed over in the evening and gave an impromptu entertainment in the parlor, a courtesy well appreciated by the Harwell team, whose nerves were now beginning to make themselves felt. And the next morning the journey was continued and the college town was reached at half past eleven.

The men were welcomed at the station by a crowd of Harwell fellows who had already arrived, and the Harwell band did its best until the team was driven off to the hotel. There for the first time the men were allowed to see the line-up for the game. It was a long list, containing the names, ages, heights, and weights of thirty-six players and subst.i.tutes, and was immediately the center of interest to all.

"Thunder!" growled Joel ruefully, as he finished reading the list over Blair's shoulder, "it's a thumpin' long ways down to _me!_"

CHAPTER XXII.

BEFORE THE BATTLE.

"Harwell, Harwell, Harwell! Rah-rah-rah, Rah-rah-rah, Rah-rah-rah, Harwell!"

The lobby grew empty on the instant, and outside on the steps and on the sidewalk the crowd spread itself. The procession had just turned the corner, the college band leading.

"The freshmen won!" cried a voice on the edge of the throng, and the news was pa.s.sed along from man to man until it swept up the steps, through the lobby and to the dining room upstairs where the football men of the Varsity team were impatiently awaiting lunch. "A good omen," said the head coach.

Below in the street admonitory thumps upon the great drum, with its college coat-of-arms on the head, were heard, and a moment later the shouts of the exuberant freshmen and their allies were drowned in the first strains of the college song. Off came the silk hats of the frock-coated graduates and the plaided golf caps of the students, and side by side there in the sun-swept street they lifted their voices in the sweet, measured strains of the dear familiar hymn. And stout, placid-faced men of fifty, with comfortable bank accounts and incipient twinges of gout, felt the unaccustomed dimming of the sight that presages tears, and boyish, carefree students, to whom the song was as much an everyday affair as D marks and unpaid bills, felt strange stirrings in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and with voices that stumbled strangely over the top notes sang louder and louder. And upstairs in the dining room many a throat grew hard and "lumpy" as the refrain came in at the open windows.

But, as the trainer muttered presently, it was only the freshmen who had won, and the real battle of the day was yet to come. And soon the band and the shouting parade wheeled away from beneath the windows and swung off up the street to make known far and wide the greatness of Harwell, her freshmen, and the grandeur of their victory over the youngsters of Yates. And, as the last cheer floated up from the procession as it disappeared around a far corner, lunch was served, and player and coach, trainer and rubber, subst.i.tute and mascot, drew up to the last meal before--what? Victory or defeat?

It was not a merry repast, that lunch before the fray. Some men could not bring themselves to eat at all until the coaches commanded with dire threats. Others, as though nothing out of the ordinary was about to take place, ate heartily, hungrily, of everything set before them. At the far end of the room Joel March played with his steak and tried to delude himself into thinking he was eating. He felt rather upset, and weak in the joints, and as for the lad's stomach it had revolted at sight of the very first egg. But luckily the last meal before a game has little effect one way or the other upon the partaker, since he is already keyed up, mentally and physically, to a certain pitch, and nothing short of cold poison can alter it.

In the streets below, for blocks in all directions, the crowds surged up and down, and shouts for Harwell and yells for Yates arose like challenges in the afternoon air. Friends met who had not done so for years, enemies accorded enemies bows of recognition ere they remembered their enmity. The deep blue and the deeper crimson pa.s.sed and counterpa.s.sed, brushed and fluttered side by side, and lighted up the little college city till it looked like a garden of roses and violets.

And everywhere, over all, was the tensity that ever reigns before a battle.

The voices of the ticket speculator and of the merchant of "Offish'l Score Cards" were heard upon every side. The street cars poked their blunt noses through the crowd which closed in again behind them like water about the stern of a s.h.i.+p. Violets blossomed or crimson chrysanthemums bloomed upon every coat and wrap, or hung pendant from the handle of cane and umbrella. The flags of Harwell and Yates, the white H and white Y, were everywhere. Shop windows were partisan to the blue, but held dashes of crimson as a sop to the demands of hospitality and welcome.

At one o'clock the exodus from town began. Along the road that leads to the football field hurried the sellers of rush cus.h.i.+ons and badges, of score cards and pencils, of blue and crimson flags and cheap canes, of peanuts and sandwiches, of soda water and sarsaparilla, bent upon securing advantageous stands about the entrance. A quarter of an hour later the spectators were on the way. The cars, filled in and out with shouting humanity, crept slowly along, a bare half block separating them. Roystering students swung arm in arm in eccentric dance from side to side across the street. Ladies with their escorts hurried along the sidewalks. Carriages, bright with fluttering flags, rolled by. Bicycles darted in and out, their riders throwing words of salutation over their shoulders to friends by the way. In the windows along the route was displayed the bravery of blue banners. A window in a college hall was piled high with great comfortable-looking pillows, each bearing a great challenging Y in white ribbon or embroidery. And overhead the sky arched a broad blue expanse from horizon to horizon.

In this manner on some fair morning, centuries ago, did all Greece wend its way to the Stadium and the Games of Olympia.

In the hotel the lunch was over and that terrible age between it and the arrival of the coaches was dragging its weary length along. Joel and Blair were standing by the window talking in voices that tried to be calm, cool and indifferent, but which were neither.

"They're offering bets of ten to nine downstairs that Yates wins,"

remarked Blair with elaborate composure.

"Are they?" responded Joel absent-mindedly, thinking the while of the signal for the second sequence. "I thought the odds were even."

"They were until the news about Chesney's shoulder got about."

"But there isn't really anything the matter with his shoulder, is there?"

"No. No one knows how the story got out. Whipple was taking all he could get a while ago."

"Some one wants to see you at the door, March," called the trainer, and Joel found Outfield West, smiling and happy, waiting there.

"How are you?" he whispered. "All right? How are the rest? Great Gobble, Joel, but these Yates Johnnies are so sure of winning that they can't keep still! There's a rumor here in the lobby that Yates's center is sick. Know anything about it?" Joel shook his head. "Well, I'll see you out at the field. We're going out now; Cooke, and Caldwell, and some of the others. So long, my valiant lad. Keep a stiff upper lip and never say die, and all that, you know. Adios!"

There was a cheer below, and Blair, at the window, announced the arrival of the conveyances. Instantly the lethargy of a minute before was turned to excited bustle and confusion. Pads and nose-guards, jerseys and coats, b.a.l.l.s and satchels were seized and laid aside and grabbed up again. Cries for missing apparel and paraphernalia were heard on every side, and only a loud, peremptory command to "Shut up!" from the head coach restored order and quietude. Then the door was thrown open and down the narrow stairs they trooped, through the crowded lobby where friends hemmed them about, patting the broad backs, shouting words of cheer into their ears, and delaying them in their pa.s.sage.

Into the coaches they hurried, and as the crowd about the hotel burst into loud, ringing cheers, the whips were cracked and the journey to the field began. The route lay along quiet, unfrequented streets where only an occasional cheer from a college window met their advent. Restraint had worn off now, and the fellows were chatting fast and furiously. Joel looked out at the handsome homes and sunny street, and was aware only of a longing to be in the fray, an impatient desire to be doing. Briscom, the subst.i.tute centre, a youth of twenty-one summers and one hundred and ninety-eight pounds, sat beside him.

"I was here two years ago with the freshman team," he was saying. "We didn't do a thing to them, we youngsters, although the Varsity was licked badly. And all during the afternoon game we sat together and cheered, until at five o'clock I couldn't speak above a whisper. That was a great game, that freshman contest! It took three hours and a half to settle it. At the beginning of the second half there were only three men on our team who had played in the first. I was one of them. I was playing left guard. Story there was another. He gave up before the game was through, though. I held out and when the whistle sounded, down I went on the gra.s.s and didn't stir for ten minutes. We had two referees that day. The first chap got hurt in a rush, and it took us half an hour to find a fellow brave enough to take his place. That _was_ a game.

Football's tame nowadays."

Across the coach Rutland, the right guard, a big bronze-haired chap of one hundred and ninety-six, was deep in a discussion with "Judge" Chase, right end, on an obscure point of ruling.

"If you're making a fair catch and a player on the other side runs against you intentionally or otherwise, you're interfered with, and the rules give your side fifteen yards," declared Rutland.

"Not if the interference is accidental and doesn't hurt your catch,"

replied Chase. "If the other fellow is running and can't stop in time--"

"Shut up, you fellows," growled Captain b.u.t.ton. "You play the game, and the referee will look after the rules for you."