Right Guard Grant

The game was over and Alton had won it, 7 to 3. Mt. Millard had staked all on that final play and lost, but there was more honor accruing from that heroic attempt than would have been hers had she secured that field-goal. Defeated but far from disheartened, the tiny quarterback summoned his teammates and cheered heartily if hoarsely for the victors. And Alton, returning the cheer with no more breath than the losers, paid homage to a gallant foe.

Slim emerged from that contest something of a hero and with his right and title to the left end position unassailable. Smedley emerged less fortunately, for he had wrenched a knee so badly that his future use to the team was more than doubtful. There were many other injuries, but none serious. Alton was joyous over having at last won a game from the enemy, but by the next day she was weighing the pros and cons and unwillingly reaching the conclusion that, on the whole, the Gray-and-Gold had a long way to go before she would be in position to face Kenly Hall with better than a one to two chance of winning. There were plenty who stated emphatically that Mt. Millard should have had that game, basing their contention on the more varied and brilliant attack of the visitor. But there were plenty of others who stoutly held that the better team had won, just as the better team does win ninety-nine times in a hundred, and that even allowing Mt. Millard less weight and a far more dazzling and puzzling offense Alton had been there with the good old straight football stuff that wins games. That Mr. Cade was satisfied with the team’s showing is very doubtful, but then coaches are like that. They never are satisfied quite. Johnny didn’t say anything to lead any one to think he was not content. That was the trouble. He said too little. Those veterans who knew him well understood perfectly that Johnny Cade was not mentally shaking hands with himself!

CHAPTER XIII

AN EVENING CALL

That evening Slim, with his hand prettily painted with iodine, had an engagement that excluded Leonard, and the latter, having no liking for a Saturday evening alone, called up Johnny McGrath on the telephone, found that that youth was to be at home and then walked over to 102 Melrose avenue.

Not only Johnny, but most of Johnny’s family was at home, and Leonard was introduced to Mrs. McGrath and Mr. McGrath and young Cullen; Johnny’s elder brother was married and lived elsewhere. Leonard liked Mr. and Mrs. McGrath instantly. They were just what they seemed – and vice versa – a thoroughly nice, warm-hearted couple, uncultured but wise and shrewd and well-mannered. Perhaps Leonard took to them the more readily because they made him see at once that they were ready and even anxious to like him. Although Leonard couldn’t know it, Johnny had spoken frequently of him, and any one approved of by Johnny was bound to be welcomed by Johnny’s parents. And, another thing that Leonard didn’t know, even if he suspected it later, very few of Johnny’s school acquaintances ever came to his home.

Leonard wasn’t filled with instant liking for Cullen, for the younger brother was at the difficult age of thirteen and was long of leg and awkward of speech and movement, a freckle-faced youngster who, knowing of the visitor’s connection with the Alton football team, viewed him with piercing intentness and at intervals broke into the general conversation with startlingly inopportune questions. Leonard wasn’t quite at his ease until, after a half-hour downstairs, Johnny conveyed him up to his room on the third floor, sternly forbidding the ready Cullen to follow.

That room was quite wonderful, Leonard thought, comparing it to his own small room at home. It was very large, fully twenty feet square, with four big windows framed in gay cretonne and white muslin, two huge closets and book-shelves that went all across one wall. Those shelves made a great hit with the visitor. They were just elbow-high and they had no pesky glass doors in front of them. You could take a book out without the least effort, and you could lay it on top of the shelves and look at it if you didn’t want to carry it to a chair. And that was just what Leonard was doing presently. Johnny had more books than the caller had ever seen outside a public library! And such books, too! A full set of the best encyclopedia, all sorts of dictionaries – not only of words, but of places and dates and phrases – and all of Stevenson and Dickens, and Green’s and Prescott’s histories, and the Badminton Library and lots and lots of other books in sets or single volumes. Leonard thought of his own scanty collection of some two-score tomes – many of them reminders of nursery days – and for a moment was very envious. Then envy passed, and he silently determined to some day have a library as big and complete as Johnny’s.

The room was plainly furnished, but everything in it was designed for both comfort and use, a fact that Leonard recognized and that caused him to realize for perhaps the first time that with furniture as with everything else real beauty was founded on usefulness, was intrinsic and not external. Everything in this room was just what it appeared to be. Not a single object masqueraded as something else. Leonard liked it all enormously and said so emphatically, and Johnny was pleased. You could see that.

“I’m glad you like it,” he answered almost gratefully. “Dad let me buy everything myself. I could have got stuff that looked a lot – well, a lot grander, do you mind; things with carved legs and all that sort of flummery; but I sort of like plainer things better.”

Leonard nodded, looking about the big, pleasantly lighted apartment. “So do I,” he agreed, although five minutes ago, had you asked him, he wouldn’t have known! “Some room, McGrath,” he went on approvingly. “And there’s a light just about everywhere, isn’t there?”

It did seem so. There was a plain brass standard by the wicker couch, two smaller hood-shaded lights atop the book-shelves, a hanging bulb over the broad chiffonier, a squat lamp on the big, round table and a funny little blue enameled affair on the stand by the head of the bed. Only the table lamp was lighted, but the soft glow radiated to every corner of the room. Leonard’s gaze went back to the many shelves opposite.

“Did you buy all those books yourself?” he asked.

“Oh, no, only maybe a third of them. The folks gave me the others. They know I’m fond of them. Joe always gives me books at Christmas and my birthday.” He saw the unuttered question in Leonard’s face and smiled as he added: “They always ask me what I want, though, first.”

Leonard got up then and prowled. He looked at the four pictures in plain dark-oak frames: “The Retreat from Moscow”; a quaint print of an elderly man standing before a second-hand bookstall on a Paris quay holding a huge umbrella overhead while, with one volume tucked under an arm, he peered near-sightedly into a second; a photograph of Hadrian’s Tomb and a Dutch etching of a whirling windmill, with bent sedges about a little pool and an old woman bending against the wind.

“I like that one a lot,” explained Johnny. “Can’t you just see – no, I mean feel the wind? I’d like to go to Holland some day. It must be fine, I’m thinking.”

Leonard had a go at the books next, Johnny pulling forth his special treasures for him. After awhile they sat down again and talked, and when, as was to be expected, football came up for discussion, the discussion became animated. Although Johnny didn’t play, he was a keen critic – and a fearless one. “There’s two or three fellows on the team,” he declared after the day’s contest had been gone over, “that would be better for a vacation, to my mind. Put them on the bench for a week, maybe, and they’d come back and earn their keep.”

Leonard wanted to know the names of the gentlemen, but wasn’t sure he ought to ask. Johnny supplied them, however, without urging. “It’s Smedley and Garrick and that big Renneker I’m thinking of,” he explained. “Take Smedley, now, sure he’s a good man, but he don’t ever spit on his hands and get to work, Grant. It’s the same way with the other two, especially Renneker. He’s asleep at the switch half the time.”

“But I thought he played a pretty good game to-day,” objected Leonard.

“He did, but what’s a ‘pretty good game’ for a fellow who’s made the All-Scholastic?” asked Johnny witheringly. “Sure, ’tis no game at all. He has the height of a camel and the weight of a whale, and does he use either intelligently? He does not! I’m no football player, Grant – or should I be calling you General? – but I can see with half an eye, and that one shut, that the lad isn’t earning his salary.”

“He doesn’t get any,” laughed Leonard.

“I know, that was a figure of speech,” answered the other. “Though, by the same token, I’ll bet he’d take the salary if it was offered.”

“You mean – ” Leonard stopped. Then he added: “Slim thinks you maybe made a mistake about Renneker that time.”

“I thought so myself,” responded Johnny. “But this afternoon I got Jimsy Carnochan to go to the game with me. Mind you, I said no word to him about Renneker or Ralston or any one else. I just wanted to see would he notice anything. Well, in the third quarter, when the play was close to where we were sitting, Jimsy said to me, ‘Who’s the big fellow there playing right guard?’ ‘On which team?’ I asked him. ‘On Alton.’ ‘His name’s Gordon Renneker.’ ‘Like fun,’ said Jimsy. ‘If it is my name’s Napoleon Bonaparte! Don’t you mind the fellow that played first base in New Haven last summer for the Maple Leaf team? I’ve forgotten his name, but ’twill come to me.’ ‘Ralston, do you mean?’ I asked him. ‘Ralston! That’s the guy! What’s he calling himself out of his name for now?’ ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘you’re mistaken. There’s a similarity, I’ll acknowledge, but this fellow is Gordon Renneker, a fine lad that got placed on the All-Scholastic Team last year.’ ‘Maybe he was placed on it, whatever it is,’ said Jimsy, ‘and he’s likewise placed in my memory, for the big piece of cheese caught me with my foot off the bag, and I’m not forgetting any guy that does that!’ Well, I told him that he couldn’t be certain, seeing that you’re always reading about people that look so much alike their own mothers can’t tell them apart, maybe; and I minded him of a moving picture play that was here no longer ago than last August where one man takes another man’s place in Parliament and no one knows any different. And finally I said to him: ‘Whatever you may be thinking, Jimsy, keep it to yourself, for if it turned out that you were mistaken you’d feel mighty small, what with getting an innocent fellow into trouble.’ So there’s no fear of Jimsy talking, General.”

Leonard looked perplexed. “It’s awfully funny,” he said finally. “Renneker isn’t at all the sort of fellow you’d think to find playing baseball for money. Look at the clothes he wears, and – and the impression he gives you. Why, he must have plenty of money, McGrath.”

“You’d think so. Still, I mind the time when I had all the good clothes I could get on my back and would have been glad of the chance of picking up a bit of money. Although,” added Johnny, “I don’t think I’d change my name to do it.”

“Well,” said Leonard, shaking his head in puzzlement, “I can’t get it. What’s troubling me, though, is this. Knowing what we do – or suspecting it, rather – ought we to tell some one? I mean Coach Cade or Rus Emerson or faculty.”

“I’m wondering that myself,” said Johnny, frowning. “Maybe it’s no business of mine, though, for I’m not connected with football – ”

“What difference does that make?” Leonard demanded. “You’re an Alton fellow, aren’t you? If what you suspect about Gordon Renneker is true he ought not to be allowed to play for Alton, and as an Alton student – ”

“Sure, that’s true enough,” agreed Johnny ruefully. “I was fearing you’d say that. I’ve said it to myself already.” He grinned across at his guest. After a moment he continued: “There’s this about it, though, General. I’ve no proof, no real proof, I mean. Like I told Jimsy Carnochan, it might be I was mislead by one of those strange resemblances that you read of.”

“Yes,” answered Leonard without conviction. “You might be. I guess you’ll just have to do as you think best.”

Johnny’s eyes twinkled. “Sure, and how about you?” he asked innocently.

“Me?”

“Yes, for I’ve told you all there is to be told. How about you speaking of it to the coach or some one?”

“Gee, I couldn’t!” Leonard protested. “I’m playing on the team, or, anyway, the squad, and it wouldn’t look very well for me to – to prefer charges against another member, now would it?”

Johnny laughed merrily. “I can’t do it because I’m not on the team, and you can’t do it because you are!” Then he sobered. “We’ll leave it as it is,” he decided. “I want to do what’s right, but I don’t know that it would be right to accuse Renneker of this with no real proof to back up the charge with. Besides, if he plays no better game than he’s been playing, ’twill work no injustice to the teams we meet, for, with him out of it, the coach might put in a fellow that would be a sight better.”

“Do you think I’d better say anything to Slim about what happened to-day?” asked Leonard.

“I wouldn’t,” said Johnny dryly. “’Twould only worry him. Slim’s all for sticking his head in the sand, like an ostrich, and there’s no call to be twitching his tail-feathers!”

Leonard had to laugh at that, and no more was said on the subject that evening. In fact, the evening was about gone. At the front door, Johnny, bidding the caller “Good night,” added a bit wistfully: “’Twas fine of you to come and see me, Grant, and I appreciate it. I’d be liking it if you’d come again some time.”

“Why, I liked it myself,” laughed Leonard from the steps. “And I surely will come again. And, say, why don’t you ever come and see Slim and me?”

“Well, I don’t know,” answered Johnny. “Maybe I might some time.”

“I wish you would,” Leonard assured him. “We’re almost always at home evenings.”

Going on down the hill, Leonard reflected that the probable reason why Johnny had never called at Number 12 Haylow was that he had never been asked.

The doors were still open when Leonard reached Haylow, but ten o’clock struck just as he was climbing the stairs. In Number 12 the light was burning and in the bed at the left Slim was fast asleep, a magazine spread open across his chest. Leonard set about preparing for slumber with stealthy movements. Perhaps he need not have taken so much trouble, though, for when he inadvertently knocked a French dictionary from the corner of the table and it fell with a slam loud enough to make him jump an inch off the floor Slim didn’t even stir. It was not until Leonard was in his pajamas that his gaze happened on a half-sheet of paper pinned squarely in the middle of his pillow. He held it to the light and read:

“If I’m asleep when you returnThen wake me up, I pray,For there is something that I yearn2 you 2 night 2 say.”

Leonard smiled and turned doubtfully toward the sleeper. It seemed too bad to awaken him. Whatever it was that he had to tell could doubtless wait for morning. Still, Slim never had any trouble getting to sleep, and so —

“Wake up, Slim!” Leonard shook him gently. Slim slumbered on. “Slim! Here, snap out of it! Hi, Slim!” Slim muttered and strove to slip away from the rough, disturbing grasp. “No, you don’t! You wanted to be waked up, and I’m going” – shake – “to wake you up” – shake – “if it takes all night!” Slim opened his eyes half an inch and observed Leonard with mild interest. Then:

“That you, General?” he muttered.

“Yes.”

“Good night.”

“Hold on! What was it you wanted to say to me, you silly coot?”

“Huh?”

“Come awake a minute. You left a note on my pillow – something you wanted to say to me – remember?”

“Yes,” answered Slim sleepily.

“Well, say it then!”

“I did. That was it.”

“What was it?”

“‘Good night.’”

Slim turned his back and pulled the clothes up over his ears.

CHAPTER XIV

MR. CADE MAKES AN ENTRY

The next afternoon when Leonard clumped down the steps of the gymnasium clad for practice a gust of cold air swept around the corner from the north-west and reminded him that November was two days old. The sky was gray and clouds sailed low overhead. Fallen leaves played prankishly along the walks and eddied into quiet harbors about the buildings. After the warm, moist air of the locker room the outdoor world felt chill indeed, and Leonard, trudging briskly toward the gridiron, rolled his hands in the edge of his old sweater. It was a day, though, that made the blood move fast and called for action. Leonard, to use his own phrase, felt full of “pep.” They couldn’t work a fellow too hard or too fast on such an afternoon.

Practice went off at a new gait, and when, routine work over, those who had played through Saturday’s game were released and Mr. Fadden’s charges romped over from the second team gridiron, every one knew that fur was going to fly. And fly it did. A fellow had to work and keep on working just to be comfortably warm, but besides that there was a quality in the harshly chill wind that would have made an oyster ambitious and put speed into a snail. The second started in with lots of ginger and smeared up Carpenter’s run-back of the kick-off, and after that held the first and made her punt from her twenty-two yards. After that it was hammer-and-tongs, the rival coaches barking out directions and criticisms and hopping about on the edge of the scrap in the most absorbed way. If every one hadn’t been too much interested with the battle the spectacle of Mr. Fadden hopping might have occasioned amusement!

The first presented a line-up of substitutes, with Gurley and Kerrison playing end, Lawrence and Cash tackle, Squibbs and Falls guard, Muller center, Carpenter quarter, Kendall and Goodwin half and Dakin full. Leonard, huddled in a blanket on the bench, forgot the cold in the cheering knowledge that sooner or later Johnny Cade would be sure to call on him. Johnny Cade did, but not until the second period. Meanwhile Lawrence and Cash took plenty of punishment from the cocky scrubs but managed to hold out. Second was certainly on her toes this afternoon, and nothing the first could do prevented her from scoring. It was only a field-goal, for the first, pushed down the field to her twenty-yard line, held gamely through three downs, but it meant three points for the scrubs and much exulting. With a strong wind almost behind him, the second’s left half could hardly have failed to boot the pigskin over.

First wrested the ball away from second a minute or so later and started a march toward the opponent’s goal. Kendall got away with a nice run of a dozen yards, and Dakin twice got half that distance through left guard. Goodwin plugged hard, but it was not his day. Carpenter tried a quarterback run and made it good for eight yards, placing the ball on second’s twenty-four. Kendall went back and faked a try-at-goal, taking the pigskin on a wide end run that netted him little but exercise. Then a forward-pass was tried, but, short as it was, the wind bore it down, and first was lucky not to lose possession of it. With two downs left, Kendall again threatened a field-goal, but passed the ball to Dakin, and the full-back smashed through the enemy left for four. On the same play Dakin added enough to make it first down on the fourteen. Then, with first already tasting success, the whistle ended the period!

The scrubs crossed the field to sit in a closely huddled group like a lot of blanketed Indians and Leonard watched Mr. Cade hopefully. But when the second period started the coach made but two changes in his line-up. Raleigh went in at right guard and Wilde at right tackle. Leonard, disappointed, looked searchingly up and down the bench. So far as he knew he was the only tackle remaining. In fact, only less than a dozen fellows were left now, and he didn’t think there was a lineman among them. He didn’t wish Lawrence any bad luck, but it did seem that he had played about long enough!

First had a streak of luck right at the start of that period, for a second team back fumbled on his forty-four and, although second recovered the ball, the next line-up was close to the twenty-five-yard line. Two punches and then a punt into the gale that carried a scant twenty yards, and the ball was first’s in scrub territory. The first attack sent Goodwin at the enemy’s center for a two-yard gain and when the warriors had disentangled themselves one form remained on the ground. Jake seized water bottle and sponge and trotted out. “That’s Raleigh,” said the fellow at Leonard’s right.

“Sure?” asked Leonard anxiously. “I thought maybe it was Lawrence. No, there’s Lawrence. You a guard?”

The neighbor shook his head sadly. “Half,” he answered.

They had Raleigh standing up now and Jake was leading him toward the bench. Coach Cade’s voice came imperatively.

“First team guard!” he called.

The trainer echoed the summons impatiently as he neared the bench. “Come on, one of you guards!”

Leonard threw off his blanket and bent mutely to the neighbor and the substitute halfback seized his sweater while Leonard pulled himself out of it. Then he dashed onto the gridiron. Jake was a dozen feet away, still supporting the scowling Raleigh.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Deaf? Didn’t you hear the coach yelling?” Then he stared harder, at Leonard’s back now, and called suddenly: “Here! You ain’t a guard!”

But Leonard paid no heed. Perhaps the wind bore the words away from him. He went on, aware, as he gained the waiting squad, of the coach’s puzzled gaze.

“I called for a guard, Grant,” said Mr. Cade.

“Yes, sir,” answered Leonard. “I’ve played guard two seasons.”

“Maybe, but you’re not a guard now. Send some one else on. Isn’t there any one there?”

“No, sir.”

Mr. Cade shrugged. “All right. You take it then. You deserve it, I’m blessed if you don’t! Come on now, First Team! Let’s get going! All right, Quarter!”

Leonard stepped in between Garrick and Cash, Carpenter chanted his signal and the lines ground together. Why, this was easy, reflected Leonard. It was just like old times. He knew what to do here. When you were a guard you were a guard and nothing else. You didn’t have to understudy your next door neighbor and go prancing around like a silly end! Of course, when a shift took you around to the other side of the line, as it was doing now —

Leonard whanged into an opponent and tipped him neatly aside as Kendall came spinning through. Three yards, easy. Maybe four. This was “pie!” He got back to his place again and grinned at his second team adversary. The scrub player answered the grin with a malignant scowl. Leonard laughed to himself. He always liked the other fellow to get good and peeved; that made it easier. Dakin was stopped short on the next play and Kendall went back. A second team back tried to sneak inside of Leonard, and Leonard gave him a welcoming shoulder. Then there was the thud of the ball and he pushed an adversary aside and sped down the field, the gale behind him helping him on. He was under the ball all the way and was hard by when Kerrison upset the scrub quarter for no gain. The pigskin was on the second’s fourteen now, and the second realized its difficulties. Kicking into that wind was a thankless job. If you kicked low your ends couldn’t cover the punt. If you kicked high you made no distance. Even a forward-pass, were you rash enough to attempt it under your own goal-posts, was doubly risky. So second tried hard to get a half-back around an end, first at Gurley’s post and then at Kerrison’s, and made but four yards altogether. It seemed then that second must punt, but she had one more trick up her sleeve. She sent an end far out to the left, shifted to the right and sent the full-back straight ahead. Well, that wasn’t so bad, for it added another four yards to her total. But it was fourth down, and the wind still blew hard against her, and punt she must at last. So punt she tried to.

That she didn’t was primarily due to the ease with which Leonard disposed of his man and went romping through the scrub line, quite alone for the instant. A half met him, and the impact, since Leonard had his hands thrown high, almost drove the breath from his body. Yet the damage was done, for the second team kicker was too hurried to punt. Instead, he tucked the ball to his elbow and shot off to the right in a desperate attempt to circle the first team’s end. But there was Gurley to be considered, and Gurley dropped his man very expeditiously and neatly for a six-yard loss. Whereupon first took the ball, lined up on the scrub’s sixteen and hammered Goodwin and Dakin over for the score.