Quarter-Back Bates

“He – he stood away from the ’phone,” Dick explained.

“Oh!” Blash was silent a moment. Then: “I suppose you two silly pups were in on it,” he accused.

“I was,” acknowledged Stanley. “Dick and I hatched it up at supper. Sid didn’t know until you’d gone out to the telephone. Rusty went to the theatre first and found out what time the big picture was coming on. We passed him on Adams Street and I was afraid you’d see him and suspect something. But I guess you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t see him. Where did he telephone from, Stan?”

“The hotel, right across the street. He said he could watch you from there while he talked!”

“Wait till I get hold of him!” said Blash. Then he laughed again. “Well, it was pretty cute, fellows. The joke was on me that time!”

CHAPTER VIII

HALDEN REPEATS

Of course the joke was too good to keep, and two days later Blash’s friends – and he had a good many – developed a disconcerting fashion of greeting him with: “Is Blashington in the house?” Blash, however, could take a joke as well as play one. Dick had secret doubts as to his right to accept credit for the conspiracy, for without Stanley it could never have been born. Still, like a great many other great ideas, it had, in a manner of speaking, fashioned itself, and perhaps Dick had had as much to do with it as Stanley.

On the following Monday Dick found himself again in charge of one of the squads in practice. He had a suspicion that Harry Warden had said a good word for him to the coach, for more than once he found the latter watching him. With this encouragement Dick buckled down and worked very hard with the somewhat discouraging material supplied him. Halden was not with him today, but there was an excellent understudy for him in the shape of a chunky youth named Davis. Davis was just as slow as Halden had been, but he didn’t gloom or grouch. He was cheerful and apologetic and really tried hard, and Dick took a good deal of trouble with him and was extremely patient. When the squads were called in and the scrimmage began Davis insinuated himself between Dick and a neighbour on the bench.

“Say, Bates, I’m mighty sorry I was so stupid. And it was white of you to let me down easy the way you did.”

“Oh, that’s all right. You tried, and that’s more than some of them did. Look here, Davis, why don’t you brush up on the signals a bit before tomorrow? You didn’t seem to remember them very well.”

“The trouble is that I can’t think quick enough, Bates. You say ‘Six! Twelve! Fourteen!’ and I know that I’m going to have the ball – ”

“No, you’re not!” laughed Dick. “Not on those signals!”

“Eh? Oh, that’s right! Well, ‘Five, twelve, fourteen, then. What I mean is, that while I’m getting the first number you call the third and then the ball is snapped and I haven’t found out where I’m going with it!”

Dick laughed. “Can’t think quick enough, eh? You’ll have practice on that then. Look here, Davis, who told you you were made for a back?”

“No one, but you see I sort of wanted to play there. You don’t think I can?”

“Oh, I don’t want to say that,” answered Dick kindly, “but I do think you’d do better work in the line. Seems to me you’d fit in pretty well at guard.”

“I guess I’m too short,” said Davis sadly. Then, brightening: “But I wouldn’t have to remember so many figures, would I?” he asked.

“Well, anyway, you’d have another second or so to think about them,” chuckled Dick. “Why don’t you tell the coach you’d like to try playing guard? You are a bit short, but you’ve got weight and you look husky. How old are you? Sixteen?”

“Seventeen. I don’t look it, do I? Say, I suppose you wouldn’t want to speak to Mr. Driscoll, would you?”

“Me? It wouldn’t do any good, my speaking to him, Davis. I’m just one of the dubs like the rest of you.”

Davis appeared to doubt that. “I thought – Well, you won’t be long. Anyone can see that you know the game. Maybe I’d better ask Bob Peters, though. I’m sort of scared of Mr. Driscoll.”

“All right, Davis, go to it. Neither of them will bite you, I guess. Were you here last year?”

Davis nodded. “And the year before. I’m in the Third.”

“Oh, are you? Well, how does Mr. Driscoll stand with the fellows?”

“Stand with them? Oh, ace-high, Bates,” answered the other earnestly. “He’s a corker! Don’t you like him?”

“I don’t know him, but it seems to me he’s sort of old for the job. And he doesn’t seem to – ” Dick stopped. “Oh, I don’t know, but he acts a bit stand-offish, and football seems so much of a business here! I guess I can’t explain just what I mean.”

Evidently he hadn’t, for Davis looked blank. “He isn’t though,” he affirmed. “Stand-offish I mean. I like him immensely. Most everyone does. And he can turn out good teams, Bates.”

“Well, that’s the main thing. I wonder if we have punting practice after the scrimmage. Who is the skinny chap that was in charge of the punters Friday?”

“Gaines. He’s playing on the further squad there. See him? At right half: the fellow with the new head-gear. He’s pretty good, too. He played right half last year. I’m no use at punting. Guess my leg’s too short.”

“That can’t be my trouble,” laughed Dick.

“Oh, you! I thought you were mighty good at it,” said Davis approvingly. “I wish I could do half as well as you did.”

“Well, I can get distance sometimes,” acknowledged Dick, “but I’m just as likely to kick to one corner of the field as the other! Direction is the hard thing.”

“I suppose so, only it’s all hard for me.” After a moment of silence he said: “Do you know, Bates, half my trouble today was that I was scared. I was afraid you’d jump me the way you did Sandy Halden the other day.”

“You weren’t on the squad that day,” answered Dick, puzzled.

“I was trailing behind. When you let Sandy go I wanted to take his place, but I was pretty sure I’d do even worse! You ought to have heard Harry Warden chuckle when you slammed Sandy.”

“Did he? Well, I had a lot of cheek to do that, because I wasn’t supposed to change the line-up. But Halden was too much for me. Has he played before this year?”

“Oh, sure! Sandy tried last year, but they dropped him to the Second and he got peeved and quit. He’s always trying something. He had the golf bug last Fall and thought he was going to do wonders. But that petered out, too. Nobody would play with him after awhile because he was always blaming things on them. If he topped a ball he said the other fellow had coughed or moved or something. He was playing with Rusty Crozier one day: Rusty’s a mighty good player: and he was fiddling over his ball on a tee when Rusty began swinging his club behind Sandy. Sandy told him he should keep still when his adversary was playing. Rusty had heard a lot of that and he got mad. ‘That so?’ he asked. ‘Let me show you something, Sandy.’ He pushed Sandy aside, and took a fine long swing at Sandy’s ball and sent it into the woods over by the old quarry. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Now you go hunt for that, Sandy, and when you find it try to swallow it. Maybe you’ll choke on it!’”

“Did he find it?” asked Dick amusedly.

“Don’t think so. Anyway, he hasn’t choked yet!”

On Wednesday Sandy Halden fell to Dick’s squad in signal drill. There had been a very strenuous twenty minutes with the tackling dummy and most of the fellows were still smarting under the gentle sarcasms of Billy Goode, and some nursed sore spots as well. Halden had failed as signally as any of that particular squad to please the trainer and had come in for his full share of disparagement, and his temper was not of the best when signal work began.

Dick resolved to have no trouble with Halden; nor any nonsense either. But Halden started off more hopefully today and managed to get through the first ten minutes of drill without a mistake. He showed Dick, however, that he was still resentful by scowling on every occasion. Davis had, it appeared, found enough courage to ask for his transfer to the line, for he was on Dick’s squad at left guard. Of course, with none to oppose him Davis managed to go through the motions satisfactorily enough, but whether he could ever be made into a good guard remained to be seen. There were five signal squads at work that afternoon, and several of them were followed by blanketed youths for whom no positions remained. Coach Driscoll and, at times, Billy Goode and Manager Whipple moved from one squad to another, the coach, however, devoting most of his time to the squad containing the more promising of the substitute material – or what seemed such at that early period. Captain Peters was at right end on the first squad, which held all of last season’s veterans: Furniss, Harris, Cupp, Upton, Newhall, Wendell, Stone, Gaines, Warden and Kirkendall. The weather had turned cold since Saturday and there was a gusty north-east wind quartering the field, and the more seasoned squads were charging up and down the gridiron with much vim.

Dick had his men pretty well warmed up at the end of ten minutes and plays were going off fairly smoothly. Then, down near the east goal, came the first serious mix-up in the back field. Showers, playing full-back, had received the ball from centre direct and was to make the wide-turn run outside his own left end, the two half-backs going ahead as interference. It was a play that had already been gone through half a dozen times that afternoon. But now for some unknown reason Halden, instead of sweeping around to the left in the wake of the other half, plunged straight ahead at the right guard-tackle hole and emerged triumphantly beyond. His triumph ceased, though, when he saw Showers and the right half-back trotting along a good fifteen yards distant. He pushed through toward Dick, who had been engaged with a mythical opposing back, scowling darkly.

“You called for a straight buck!” he challenged.

“Wrong, Halden,” replied Dick quietly. “I called for a run outside left end and you were supposed to be in advance of the ball.”

“You got your signal wrong, then!”

“I don’t think so. Everyone else understood it. We’ll try it again presently, Halden. See if you can get it right next time.”

“I got it right that time. I heard the signal, and it was – ”

“Hire a hall, Sandy,” advised a lineman. “You were all wrong.”

“I was not! Bates doesn’t give the signals so anyone can get them, anyway. He talks down in his boots!”

“Never mind that, Halden. Signals! 9 – 11 – You’re out of position, Halden. Come on, come on!”

“What’s eating you? I’m in position!”

“You are now, but you weren’t. Signals! 9 – 11 – ”

“I haven’t moved an inch!”

“Well, do it now then. Move a couple of hundred inches and get out of here.” Dick looked around for someone to take Halden’s place, but there were no followers today. Halden had turned very red and now he stepped up to Dick sputtering.

“You can’t put me off, you smart Aleck! I was put here by Driscoll and I’ll stay until he tells me to go. You think you’re the whole thing, don’t you? How do you get that way? You make me sick!”

Dick made no answer, but he watched Halden closely, for the boy was quite evidently in a fighting mood. It was Davis who came to the rescue by slipping out of his place in the line and inserting himself suddenly between Halden and Dick.

“Sure, he’s got a right to fire you, Sandy, and you’re fired! So beat it!” Davis pushed Sandy playfully away. “Bates is boss, son.”

“He is not! He’s no more on this squad than I am! Quit shoving me, Short!”

“Driscoll is looking over here,” warned Showers uneasily. “Let’s get at it, fellows.”

“Right you are,” responded Davis, jumping into his place again. “Let her go, Bates!”

“I must have another half-back,” answered Dick, looking about.

“Oh, forget it,” growled Halden. “I’m not going off.”

“I think you are,” replied Dick quietly. He left the squad and walked across to where Billy Goode was standing with Manager Whipple. “I’m short a half-back,” he announced. “Got someone, Mr. Trainer?”

“What’s the matter? Someone hurt?” asked Billy.

“No, but I’ve let Halden go. He tried to make trouble.”

Billy looked at Dick quizzically. “You let him go! What do you know about that?” He turned inquiringly to Stearns Whipple.

Whipple smiled. “Benson’s not working,” he said. “Give him Benson.”

“Would you?” Billy shot a look of mingled disapproval and respect at Dick. “Well, all right. Send Halden to me. Say, what’s your name? Gates? Oh, Bates! Well, if I was you Bates, I wouldn’t get too uppity.” Billy went off for Benson and Dick started back toward his waiting squad, followed by the amused regard of Whipple. Benson trotted out from behind a neighbouring group and joined Dick.

“Billy sent me over,” he said. “I’m a half-back.”

“Go in at left, will you? That’s all, Halden. Goode says to report to him.”

Halden walked up to Dick and spoke very softly. “I’ll get you, Bates, if it takes a year!” he said.

Dick nodded. “Come on, fellows! Signals!”

Some ten minutes later Coach Driscoll found Dick on the bench while the first and second squads were taking the field for the scrimmage. “Whipple tells me you had trouble with Halden,” he said. “What was wrong, Bates!”

“He tried to hold up work arguing whether he or I was wrong about a signal I gave.”

“Who was wrong!”

“He was, sir, but that didn’t matter. He wouldn’t work. Just wanted to chew the rag. So I let him go.”

The coach smiled faintly. “You probably did right, Bates, but perhaps in future you’d better report the matter to me first. You see some fellows might question your authority.” The coach’s smile grew. “Well, I dare say Halden won’t trouble you again.” He nodded and went off. Dick looked after him thoughtfully.

“When he smiles he doesn’t look so old,” he said to himself.

CHAPTER IX

LETTERS AND RHYMES

Dick’s home letters became shorter about this time. Life was very busy for him. He wrote the news, but he no longer indulged his pen in descriptions. Sumner White had written twice from Leonardville, rather long letters about the High School Team, with messages from Dick’s former schoolmates and questions about Parkinson football methods. Sumner’s faith in Dick remained unimpaired, although the latter had still to announce his acceptance on the Parkinson First Team. “We are all expecting big things from you, Dick old scout,” wrote Sumner in his latest epistle. “Cal Lensen is going to get the Parkinson weekly to exchange with the Argus so he can keep tabs on you. So just remember that we’re watching you, kid! Every time you make a touchdown for Parkinson the old Argus will have a full and graphic account of it in the next number. But you’d better write now and then, besides. Good luck to you, Dick, and that goes for all the ‘gang.’”

It wasn’t very easy to answer Sumner’s letters because answering involved explaining why he hadn’t made the team. But Dick did answer them. The following Sunday he wrote: “Got your letter Tuesday, but saved it for today because Sunday’s about the only day a fellow has time here for writing letters. Glad to get the news about everyone, but very sorry to hear of the Chester game. But you fellows must remember that Chester has the edge on you, anyway. Look at their coach and all the money they spend and all that! Besides, 19-6 isn’t as bad as we licked them two years ago. I guess you’ll have to find someone for Mercer’s place. Ed tries hard, but he isn’t scrappy enough for full-back. You need a fellow who isn’t afraid of a stone wall and doesn’t get hurt the way Ed did all last year. What about Cleary? He’s slow, I know, but you might speed him up this year, and he has lots of fight… Things here are humming along finely. We played Musket Hill yesterday and just walked away with them. I told you I didn’t fancy Driscoll, the coach, but I like him better, and I guess he does know how to get the stuff out of a team. Talking about full-backs, I wish you could see our man here in action. His name’s Kirkendall and he comes from Kentucky. The fellows call him ‘K of K.’, or just ‘K’ sometimes. Well, he got started yesterday in the third period on our forty and Stone (quarter) fed him the ball eight times and he landed it on N. H.’s seven yards, and he’d have taken it over, too, if Stone hadn’t acted the silly goat and switched to Warden. It took Warden and Gaines both to get it over then, but they did it. Only it seemed too bad not to let K. get the credit for the touchdown after smashing all the way for fifty yards. Stone doesn’t use his head, it seems to me. But he does play a good individual game. For all-round work, though, our captain, Bob Peters, is the star of the team. He plays right end, and he’s a wonder at it. Talk about getting down under punts! Gee, Sum, he’s under the ball from the minute it’s kicked, and he seems to always know just where it’s going, too. But he’s just as good on defence, and the way he handled the opposing tackle yesterday was a marvel. He’s a dandy captain, too, for all the fellows swear by him and would do anything he asked them to, I guess.

“I’m still pegging along on the outside, and maybe I won’t make the team this year. There are nearly five hundred students here and a lot of them are corking football players and a fellow has got to be mighty good to even get looked at by the coach. So you mustn’t be surprised if you don’t see my name in the Leader this year. Of course it’s early yet, and I might have luck, but I’m not counting on it much. I’m having a good time, though. Some of the football chaps are corkers, big fellows, you know. I mean big every way, not only in size. They’re big enough in size, though, believe me, Sum. Gee, I was certainly surprised when I saw how the team stacked up. Why, Newhall, the right guard, must weigh two hundred pounds, and Cupp isn’t any light-weight either. Another thing I was surprised at was the way they go at football here. Everything’s all arranged and cut out six months ahead and it’s the most business-like proposition I ever saw. There’s an Athletic Committee first, composed of three faculty and two students, the football and baseball managers usually. Then there’s the Head Coach, and under him the trainer and his assistant. The committee meets every week and then there’s a meeting in the coach’s room every night but Sunday and everything is threshed out and plans made for the next day. There doesn’t seem to be a moment wasted here. Just at first I thought it was too professional or something, but I guess it’s just being efficient. It works all right, anyway. Well, I must stop and go over to see a fellow in the village with Stan. I’ll tell you about that fellow some time. He’s a wonder! Remember me to everyone and think over what I wrote about Leary. I forgot to tell you the score yesterday. It was 27-3. Some game, eh?”

Dick might have written a little more truthfully that he wasn’t counting at all on making the First Team, for at the end of the first fortnight at Parkinson it was pretty evident to him that he had still some distance to go before he would reach the proficiency of fellows like Peters and Kirkendall and Warden and several more. The fact that he had loomed up as an uncommonly good quarter-back at Leonardville High School, and that the town papers had hailed him as a star of the first magnitude, didn’t mean much to him here. He saw that Parkinson and Leonardville standards were widely apart. Why, there were fellows on the Second Team here who were better than anything Leonardville had ever seen! But Dick took his disappointment philosophically. He meant to try very hard for a place on the big eleven, no matter how humble it might be, and so get in line for next year. He wondered sometimes if he wouldn’t have shown himself wiser had he gone out for the Second Team instead. There was still time for that, for very often candidates released from the First Team squad went to the Second and made good, but somehow he didn’t like the idea of trying for the moon and being satisfied with a jack-o’-lantern! No, he decided, if he failed at the First he would quit for that year and try all the harder next. Rumors of a first cut were about on the Monday following the Musket Hill game, and Dick prepared for retirement to private life. The cut didn’t come, however, until Thursday, and when it did come it passed Dick by. Why, he couldn’t make out. Fellows like Macomber and Swift and Teasdale disappeared and Dick remained. And Macomber and the others were, in Dick’s estimation, much better players than he. But he accepted his good fortune and went on trying very hard to make good, telling himself all the time that the next cut would take him, certainly.

But if Dick’s success at football was in a measure disappointing, his faculty for making friends had not deserted him. He had acquired many by the end of the first fortnight at school. Of course, they were not all close friends, but they were more than mere acquaintances. Among the close friends he counted Stanley first. Then came Blash and Sid and Rusty. His liking for Blash – and Blash’s for him – seemed to have started after the episode of the telephone call. Because Dick had fooled Blash and Blash had taken it smilingly seemed no good reason for an increase of friendship, but there it was! Blash still threatened to get even some day, and Dick was certain that he would, but that only made the mutual liking stronger. As between Sid Crocker and Rusty Crozier, Dick would have had trouble saying which he liked the better. Rusty was far more amusing, but Sid was a dependable sort of chap. In trouble, Dick would have thought first of Sid. Oddly enough, Dick’s popularity was greater amongst fellows older than he. Each of those whom he counted real friends was at least a year his senior, and Harry Warden, with whom acquaintanceship was fast warming into friendship, was nearly two years older. But the disparity in age was not greatly apparent, for Dick had the growth and manners of eighteen rather than seventeen, and one who didn’t know the truth might well have thought him as old as either Stanley or Rusty.

Of enemies, so far as he knew, Dick had made but one. Sanford Halden allowed no opportunity to remind Dick of his enmity to get past him. He had been among those dropped from the First Team squad in that first cut and it appeared that he somehow managed to hold Dick to blame for that. When they passed in hall or on campus Sandy always had a malevolent scowl for him, and once or twice Dick thought he even heard mutters! All this Dick found mildly amusing. Sandy reminded him of a villain in a cheap melodrama. A few days after the cut Dick heard that Sandy had attached himself to the Second Nine for fall practice.

Football took up a great deal of Dick’s time and much of his thought, but he managed to maintain an excellent standing in each of his courses and thus won the liking of most of the instructors with whom he came in contact. With Mr. Matthews, who was Dick’s advisor, he was soon on close terms of intimacy. The instructor was one of the younger faculty members, a man with a sympathetic understanding of boys, and tastes that included most of the things that boys liked. He had a passion for athletics and was one of the Nine’s most unflagging rooters. But for all this he was not generally liked. The younger boys, who formed most of his classes, were suspicious of his fashion of regarding them individually instead of as a whole. They declared, some of them at least, that he “crowded” them. By which, in school parlance, was meant that he tried to be too friendly. They resented his attempts to interest himself in their doings outside classes. Among the older boys, however, he was a prime favourite, and his study in Williams was the scene of Friday evening “parties” that were always well attended. Anyone was welcome. There was much talk, the subjects ranging from the value of the “spitball” in pitching to the influence of Bible study on literary style. At nine o’clock ginger ale and cookies – the latter especially made by a woman in the town and transferred each Friday from her house to the school in a laundry box by Mr. Matthews – were served. Perhaps some of the guests were present more on account of the ginger ale and molasses cookies than for any other reason, for the cookies had long since gained a wide fame, but none questioned their motives.

Stanley and Dick attended one of the parties the Friday following the Musket Hill game. There were more than a dozen fellows already in the room when they arrived, most of whom Stanley knew and a few of whom were known to Dick. All the usual seating accommodation being exhausted, the instructor had dragged his bed to the door of the adjoining room, and on the edge of that the newcomers found places, they and a spectacled youth named Timmins completely filling the doorway. Conversation was still general. Mr. Matthews, dropping a word now and then into the noisy confusion, was at his study table cutting sheets of paper into quarters with a pair of shears. He wasn’t a bit impressive, being under rather than over medium height and slight of build. He had light hair that was already thin over the forehead, bluish eyes and light lashes, all of which gave him a somewhat colourless appearance. But there was an inquiring tilt to the short nose, a humorous droop at the corners of the mouth and a very determined protrusion of the chin that lent interest to the countenance.