The New Boy at Hilltop, and Other Stories Part 28

Another ball. Then a second strike. And for a brief moment Willard's shouted hoa.r.s.ely. And then----

Then there was a sharp sound of bat meeting ball and Carpenter was on his way to first. The ball was a low fly to short center field and it was evident that it would land just a little way back of second base. Neither Carpenter nor the runners on first and second dreamed for a moment that it could be caught. The latter players raced for home as fast as their legs would take them.

Meanwhile in from center sped Satterlee, 2d. He could run hard when he tried and that's what he did now. He was almost too late--but not quite.

His hands found the ball a bare six inches above the turf. Coming fast as he was he had crossed second base before he could pull himself up.

From all sides came wild shouts, instructions, commands, entreaties, a confused medley of sounds. But Satterlee, 2d, needed no coaching. The runner from second had crossed the plate and the one from first was rounding third at a desperate pace, head down and arms and legs twinkling through the dust of his flight. Now each turned and raced frantically back, dismay written on their perspiring faces. But Satterlee, 2d, like an immovable Fate, stood in the path. The runner from first slowed down indecisively, feinted to the left and tried to slip by on the other side.

But the small youth with the ball was ready for him and had tagged him before he had pa.s.sed. Then Satterlee, 2d, stepped nimbly to second base, tapped it with his foot a moment before the other runner hurled himself upon it, tossed the ball nonchalantly toward the pitcher's box and walked toward the bench. The game was over.

But he never reached the bench that day. On the way around the field he caught once a fleeting vision of Brother Don's red, grinning countenance beaming commendation, and once a glimpse of the smiling faces of his father and mother. He strove to wave a hand toward the latter, but as it almost cost him his position on the shoulders of the shrieking fellows beneath, he gave it up. Social amenities might wait; at present he was tasting the joys of a victorious Caesar.

THE DUB

"BRIGGS, Bayard Newlyn, Hammondsport, Ill., I L, H 24."

That's the way the catalogue put it. Mostly, though, he was called "Bi"

Briggs. He was six feet and one inch tall and weighed one hundred and ninety-four pounds, and was built by an all-wise Providence to play guard.

Graduate coaches used to get together on the side line and figure out what we'd do to Yale if we had eleven men like Bi.

Then after they'd watched Bi play a while they'd want to kick him.

He got started all wrong, Bi did. He came to college from a Western university and entered the junior cla.s.s. That was his first mistake. A fellow can't b.u.t.t in at the beginning of the third year and expect to trot even with fellows who have been there two years. It takes a chap one year to get shaken down and another year to get set up. By the time Bi was writing his "life" he had just about learned the rules.

His second mistake was in joining the first society that saw his name in the catalogue. It was a poor frat, and it queered Bi right away. I guess he made other mistakes, too, but those were enough.

In his junior year Bi was let alone. He was taking about every course any of us had ever heard of--and several we hadn't--and had no time for football. We got licked for keeps that fall, and after the _Crimson_ and the _Bulletin_ and the _Graduates' Magazine_ and the newspapers had shown us just what ailed our system of coaching, we started to reorganize things.

We hadn't reorganized for two years, and it was about time. The new coach was a chap who hadn't made the Varsity when he was in college, but who was supposed to have football down to a fine point; to hear the fellows tell about the new coach made you feel real sorry for Walter Camp. Well, he started in by kidnaping every man in college who weighed over a hundred and sixty-five. Bi didn't escape. Bi had played one year in the freshwater college at left tackle and knew a touchdown from a nose-guard, and that was about all. Bi was for refusing to have anything to do with football at first; said he was head-over-ears in study and hadn't the time. But they told him all about his Duty to his College and Every Man into the Breach, and he relented. Bi was terribly good-natured. That was the main trouble with him.

The fellows who did football for the papers fell in love with him on the spot. He was a good-looker, with sort of curly brown hair, nice eyes, a romantic nose, and cheeks like a pair of twenty-four-dollar American Beauties, and his pictures looked fine and dandy in the papers. "Bayard Briggs, Harvard's new candidate for guard, of whom the coaches expect great things." That's the way they put it. And they weren't far wrong. The coaches did expect great things from Bi; so did the rest of us. When they took Bi from the second and put him in at right guard on the Varsity we all approved.

But there was trouble right away. Bi didn't seem to fit. They swapped him over to left guard, then they tried him at right tackle, then at right guard again. Then they placed him gently but firmly back on the second. And Bi was quite happy and contented and disinterested during it all. _He_ didn't mind when six coaches gathered about him and demanded to know what was the matter with him. He just shook his head and a.s.sured them good-naturedly that he didn't know; and intimated by his manner that he didn't care. When he came back to the second he seemed rather glad; I think he felt as though he had got back home after a hard trip. He stayed right with us all the rest of the season.

I think the trouble was that Bi never got it fully into his fool head that it wasn't just fun--like puss-in-the-corner or blind-man's-buff. If you talked to him about Retrieving Last Year's Overwhelming Defeat he'd smile pleasantly and come back with some silly remark about Political Economy or Government or other poppyc.o.c.k. I fancy Bi's father had told him that he was coming to college to study, and Bi believed him.

Of course, he didn't go to New Haven with us, He didn't have time. I wished afterwards that I hadn't had time myself. Yale trimmed us 23 to 6.

The papers threshed it all out again, and all the old grads who weren't too weak to hold pens wrote to the _Bulletin_ and explained where the trouble lay. It looked for a while like another reorganization, but Cooper, the new captain, was different. He didn't get hysterical. Along about Christmas time, after everyone had got tired of guessing, he announced his new coach.

His name was Hecker, and he had graduated so far back that the _Crimson_ had to look up its old files to find out who he was. He had played right half two years, it seemed, but hadn't made any special hit, and Yale had won each year. The _Herald_ said he was a successful lawyer in Tonawanda, New York. He didn't show up for spring practice; couldn't leave his work, Cooper explained. Bi didn't come out either. He couldn't leave _his_ work.

At the end of the year he graduated _summa c.u.m laude_, or something like that, and the _Crimson_ said he was coming back to the Law School and would be eligible for the team. Just as though it mattered.

We showed up a week before college began and had practice twice a day. At the end of that week we knew a whole lot about Hecker. He was about thirty-six, kind of thin, wore gla.s.ses, and was a terror for work. When we crawled back to showers after practice we'd call him every name we could think of. And half an hour later, if we met him crossing the Square, we'd be haughty and stuck-up for a week if he remembered our names. He was a little bit of all right, was Hecker. He was one of the quiet kind. He'd always say "please," and if you didn't please mighty quick you'd be sitting on the bench all nicely snuggled up in a blanket before you knew what had struck you. That's the sort of Indian Hecker was, and we loved him.

Ten days after college opened we had one hundred and twenty men on the field. If Hecker heard of a likely chap and thought well of his looks, it was all up with Mr. Chap. He was out on the gridiron biting holes in the sod before he knew it. That's what happened to Bi. One day Bi wasn't there and the next day he was.

We had two or three weeding-outs, and it got along toward the middle of October, and Bi was still with us. We were shy on plunging halfs that fall and so I got my chance at last. I had to fight hard, though, for I was up against Murray, last year's first sub. Then a provisional Varsity was formed and the Second Team began doing business with Bi at right guard again. The left guard on the Varsity was Bannen--"Slugger" Bannen. He didn't weigh within seven pounds of Bi, but he had springs inside of him and could get the jump on a flea. He was called "Slugger" because he looked like a prizefighter, but he was a gentle, harmless chap, and one of the Earnest Workers in the Christian a.s.sociation. He could stick his fist through an oak panel same as you or I would put our fingers through a sheet of paper. And he did pretty much as he pleased with Bi. I'll bet, though, that Bi could have walked all over "Slugger" if he'd really tried. But he was like an automobile and didn't know his own strength.

We disposed of the usual ruck of small teams, and by the first of November it was mighty plain that we had the best Eleven in years. But we didn't talk that way, and the general impression was that we had another one of the Beaten But Not Humiliated sort.

A week before we went to Philadelphia I had a streak of good luck and squeezed Murray out for keeps. Penn had a dandy team that year and we had to work like anything to bring the ball home. It was nip and tuck to the end of the first half, neither side scoring. Then we went back and began kicking, and Cooper had the better of the other chap ten yards on a punt.

Finally we got down to their twenty yards, and Saunders and I pulled in eight more of it. Then we took our tackles back and hammered out the only score. But that didn't send our stock up much, because folks didn't know how good Penn was. But the Eli's coaches who saw the game weren't fooled a little bit; only, as we hadn't played anything but the common or garden variety of football, they didn't get much to help them. We went back to Cambridge and began to learn the higher branches.

We were coming fast now, so fast that Hecker got scary and laid half the team off for a day at a time. And that's how Bi got his chance again, and threw it away just as he had last year. He played hard, but--oh, I don't know. Some fellow wrote once that unless you had football instinct you'd never make a real top-notcher. I think maybe that's so. Maybe Bi didn't have football instinct. Though I'll bet if some one had hammered it into his head that it was business and not a parlor entertainment, he'd have buckled down and done something. It wasn't that he was afraid of punishment; he'd take any amount and come back smiling. I came out of the Locker Building late that evening and Hecker and Cooper were just ahead of me.

"What's the matter with this man"--Hecker glanced at his notebook--"this man Briggs?" he asked.

"Briggs?" answered Cooper. "He's a dub; that's all--just a dub."

That described him pretty well, I thought. By dub we didn't mean just a man who couldn't play the game; we meant a man who knew how to play and wouldn't; a chap who couldn't be made to understand. Bi was a dub of the first water.

We didn't have much trouble with Dartmouth that year. It was before she got sa.s.sy and rude. Then there were two weeks of hard practice before the Yale game. We had a new set of signals to learn and about half a dozen new plays. The weather got nice and cold and Hecker made the most of it. We didn't have time to feel chilly. One week went by, and then--it was a Sunday morning, I remember--it came out that Corson, the Varsity right guard, had been protested by Yale. It seemed that Corson had won a prize of two dollars and fifty cents about five years before for throwing the hammer at a picnic back in Pennsylvania. Well, there was a big s.h.i.+ndy and the athletic committee got busy and considered his case. But Hecker didn't wait for the committee to get through considering. He just turned Corson out and put in Blake, the first sub. On Tuesday the committee declared Corson ineligible and Blake sprained his knee in practice! With Corson and Blake both out of it, Hecker was up against it. He tried s.h.i.+fting "Slugger"

Bannen over to right and putting the full back at left. Jordan, the Yale left guard, was the best in the world, and we needed a man that could stand up against him. But "Slugger" was simply at sea on the right side of center and so had to be put back again. After that the only thing in sight that looked the least bit like a right guard was Bayard Newlyn Briggs.

They took Bi and put him on the Varsity, and forty-'leven coaches stood over his defenseless form and hammered football into him for eight solid hours on Wednesday and Thursday. And Bi took it all like a little woolly lamb, without a bleat. But it just made you sick to think what was going to happen to Bi when Jordan got to work on him!

We had our last practice Thursday, and that night we went to the Union and heard speeches and listened to the new songs. Pretty poor they were too; but that's got nothing to do with the story. Friday we mooned around until afternoon and then had a few minutes of signal practice indoors. Bi looked a little bit worried, I thought. Maybe it was just beginning to dawn on Me that it wasn't all a lark.

What happened next morning I learned afterwards from Bi. Hecker sent for him to come to his room, put him in a nice easy-chair, and then sat down in front of him. And he talked.

"I've sent for you, Mr. Briggs," began Hecker in his quiet way, "because it has occurred to me that you don't altogether understand what we are going to do this afternoon."

Bi looked surprised.

"Play Yale, sir?"

"Incidentally; yes. But we are going to do more than play her; we are going to beat her to a standstill; we are going to give her a drubbing that she will look back upon for several years with painful emotion. It isn't often that we have an opportunity to beat Yale, and I propose to make the best of this one. So kindly disabuse your mind of the idea that we are merely going out to play a nice, exhilarating game of football. We are going to simply wipe up the earth with Yale!"

"Indeed?" murmured Bi politely.

"Quite so," answered the coach dryly, "I suppose you know that your presence on the team is a sheer accident? If you don't, allow me to tell you candidly that if there had been anyone else in the college to put in Corson's place, we would never have called on you, Mr. Briggs."

He let that soak in a minute. Then:

"Have you ever heard of this man Jordan who will play opposite you to-day?"

he asked.

"Yes, sir; a very good player, I understand."

"A good player! My dear fellow, he's the best guard on a college team in twenty years. And you are going to play opposite him. Understand that?"

"Er--certainly," answered Bi, getting a bit uneasy.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Do? Why, I shall do the best I can, Mr. Hecker. I don't suppose I am any match for Jordan, but I shall try----"