Bert Wilson on the Gridiron Part 10

And so it proved. The Dean had a warm corner in his heart for Bert, but in this matter was not to be shaken. The college, he reminded his caller, was primarily an inst.i.tution of learning and not a gymnasium.

The conditions would have to be made up before the men could play, although he hinted slyly that the examinations would not be over severe.

And with this one crumb of comfort, Bert was forced to be content. He bowed himself out and returned to report the non-success of his mission.

"What did I tell you?" said Drake.

"You're a brick anyway, Bert, for trying," acknowledged Axtell, "and perhaps it will make them go a little easier with us when we try again to show them how little we know. And now, old man," addressing Hodge, "it's up to us to make a quick sneak and get busy with those confounded conditions. Plenty of hard work and a towel dipped in ice water round our heads, with a pot of hot coffee to keep us awake, will help make up for our lack of brains. Come along, fellow-b.o.o.b," and with a grin that they tried to make cheerful, the two culprits took their departure.

The next morning the campus was buzzing with the news. It jarred the college out of the self-complacency they had begun to feel over the prospects of the team. Many were the imprecations heaped upon the heads of the hard-hearted faculty, and one of the malcontents slipped up to the cupola without detection and put the college flag at half-mast. The smile on Reddy's face was conspicuous by its absence and Hendricks chewed furiously at his cigar instead of smoking it. But when it came to the daily talk in the training quarters, he was careful not to betray any despondency. There was enough of that abroad anyway without his adding to it. Like the thoroughbred he was, he faced the situation calmly, and sought to repair the breaches made in his ranks.

"Winston will play at right guard until further notice," he announced, "and Morley will take the place of Axtell."

The two members of the scrubs thus named trotted delightedly to their places. For them it was a promotion that they hoped to make permanent.

They knew they would have to fight hard to hold the positions if Hodge and Axtell came back, but they were bent on showing that they could fill their shoes.

But although they worked like Trojans, the machine that afternoon creaked badly. The new men were unfamiliar with many of the signals and made a mess of some of the plays that the old ones whom they supplanted would have carried out with ease. This, however, was to be expected, and time would go a long way toward curing the defects.

The real trouble, however, lay with the other nine. They seemed to be working as though in a nightmare. An incubus weighed them down. Their thoughts were with their absent comrades and with the altered prospects of the team. They played without snap or dash, and the coach ground his teeth as he noted the lifeless playing so strongly in contrast with that of three days earlier.

Just before the first quarter ended, Ellis, in running down under a punt, came heavily in collision with Farrar, of the scrubs, and they went to the ground together. Farrar was up in a moment, but Ellis, after one or two trials, desisted. His comrades ran to him and lifted him to his feet. But his foot gave way under him, and his lips whitened as he sought to stifle a groan.

"It's that b.u.m ankle of mine," he said, trying to smile. "I'm afraid I've sprained it again."

They carried him into the dressing room and delivered him to Reddy. He made a careful examination and, when at last he looked up, there was a look in his eyes that betokened calamity.

"Sprained, is it," he said with a voice that he tried to render calm.

"It's broken."

"What!" cried Ellis as he realized all this meant to him.

"Are you sure, Reddy?" asked Hendricks, aghast.

"I wish I wasn't," was the answer, "but I've seen too many of them not to know."

To poor Ellis the words sounded like the knell of doom. The pain was excruciating, but in the rush of sensations it seemed nothing. The real disaster lay in the fact that it put him definitely off the football team. All his work, all his sacrifice of time and ease, all his hopes of winning honor and glory under the colors of the old college had vanished utterly. Henceforth, he could be only a looker on where he had so fondly figured himself as a contender. His face was white as ashes, and the coach shrank from the look of abject misery in his eyes.

"Come now, old man, buck up," he tried to comfort him. "We'll send for the best surgeon in New York, and he'll have you on your feet again before you know it. You may make the big games yet." But in his heart he knew that it was impossible, and so did all the pale-faced crowd of players who gathered round their injured comrade and carried him with infinite care and gentleness to his rooms.

The rest of the practice was foregone that afternoon as, under the conditions, it would have been simply a farce, and the players made their way moodily off the field, chewing the bitter cud of their reflections. Sympathy with Ellis and consternation over this new blow to their prospects filled their minds to the exclusion of everything else.

Bert and Tom and d.i.c.k--the "Three Guardsmen," as they had been jokingly called, as they were always together--walked slowly toward their rooms.

The jaunty swing and elastic step characteristic of them were utterly gone. Their hearts had been bound up in the hope of victory, and now that hope was rapidly receding and bade fair to vanish altogether.

Apart from the general loss to the team, each had his own particular grievance. Tom, as quarterback, saw with dismay the prospect of drilling the new men in the complicated system of signals, of which there were more than sixty, each of which had to be grasped with lightning rapidity. The slightest failure might throw the whole team in hopeless confusion. d.i.c.k was ruminating on the loss of Ellis, whose position in the line had been right at his elbow, and with whom he had learned to work with flawless precision on the defense. And Bert would miss sorely the swift and powerful cooperation of Axtell at right half. Those two in the back field had been an army in themselves.

"The whole team is shot to pieces," groaned Tom.

"The hoodoo is certainly working overtime," muttered d.i.c.k.

"It's a raw deal for fair," acquiesced Bert, "but we're far from being dead ones yet. We haven't got a monopoly of the jinx. Don't think that the other fellows won't get theirs before the season's over. Then, too, the new men may show up better than we think. Morley's no slouch, and there may be champions.h.i.+p timber in Winston. Besides, Axtell and Hodge may be back again in a week or two. It's simply up to every one of us to work like mad and remember that

The fellow worth while is the one who can smile When everything's going dead wrong.

"You're a heavenly optimist, all right," grumbled Tom. "You'd see a silver lining to any little old cloud. You remind me of the fellow that fell from the top of a skysc.r.a.per, shouting as he pa.s.sed the second-story window: 'I'm all right, so far.' We may be 'all right so far,' but the dull thud's coming and don't you forget it."

And during the days that followed it seemed as though Tom were a truer prophet than Bert. Storm clouds hovered in the sky, and the barometer fell steadily. On Wednesday they were scheduled to play a small college--one of the "tidewater" teams that ordinarily they would have swallowed at a mouthful. No serious resistance was looked for, and it was regarded simply as a "practice" game. But the game hadn't been played five minutes before the visitors realized that something was wrong with the "big fellows," and taking heart of hope, the plucky little team put up a game that gave the Blues all they wanted to do to win. Win they did, at the very end, but by a margin that set the coach to frothing at the mouth with rage and indignation. After the game they had a dressing down that was a gem in its way, and which for lurid rhetoric and fierce denunciation left nothing to be desired.

But despite all his efforts, the lethargy persisted. It was not that the boys did not try. They had never tried harder. But a spell seemed to have fallen upon them. They were like a lion whose spine has been grazed by a hunter's bullet so that it can barely drag its deadened body along. In vain the coach fumed and stormed, and figuratively beat his breast and tore his hair. They winced under the whip, they strained in the harness, but they couldn't pull the load. And at length "Bull"

Hendricks realized that what he had been dreading all season had come.

The team had "slumped."

There are over three hundred thousand words in the English language, and many of them are full of malignant meaning. Fever, pestilence, battle, blood, murder, death have an awful significance, but in the lexicon of the coach and trainer of a college team the most baleful word is "slump."

This plague had struck the Blues and struck them hard. It was a silent panic, a brooding fear, an inability of mind and muscle to work together. There was but one remedy, and "Bull" Hendricks knew it.

The next day a dozen telegrams whizzed over the wires. They went to every quarter of the continent, from Maine to Texas, from the Lakes to the Gulf. And the burden of all was the same:

"Team gone to pieces. Drop everything. Come."

If one had looked over the shoulder of the telegraph operator, he would have seen that every address was that of some man who in his time had been famous the country over for his prowess on the gridiron, and who on many a glorious field had worn the colors of the Blues.

One of them was delivered in the private office of a great business concern in Chicago. Mr. Thomas Ames, the president--better known in earlier and less dignified days as "Butch"--turned from the ma.s.s of papers on his desk and opened it. His eyes lighted up as he read it and saw the signature. Then the light faded.

"Swell chance," he muttered, "with this big deal on."

He turned reluctantly to his desk. Then he read the telegram again. Then he sighed and bit viciously at the end of his cigar.

"Nonsense," he growled. "There's no use being a fool. I simply can't, and that's all there is to it."

He crushed the telegram in his hand and threw it into the waste basket.

Ten minutes later he fished it out. He smoothed out the wrinkles and smiled as he noted the imperious form of the message. He was more accustomed to giving orders than obeying them, and the change had in it something piquant.

"Just like 'Bull,'" he grinned. "Arrogant old rascal. Doesn't even ask me. Just says 'come.'"

"Off his trolley this time though," he frowned. "Nothing doing."

The pile of letters on his desk remained unanswered. His stenographer waited silently. He waved her away, and she went out, closing the door behind her. He lay back in his chair, toying idly with the telegram.

The memory of the old days at college was strong upon him. A few minutes ago, engrossed in the details of a large and exacting business, nothing had been farther from his thoughts. Now it all came back to him with a rush, evoked by that crumpled bit of paper.

Days when the wine of life had filled his cup to the brim, when "the world lay all before him where to choose," when the blood ran riot in his veins, when all the future was full of promise and enchantment. Days when laughter lay so near his lips that the merest trifle called it forth, when fun and frolic held high carnival, when his unjaded senses tasted to the full the mere joy of living. Days, too, of earnest effort, of eager ambition, of brilliant achievement, of glowing hope, as he prepared himself to play his part in the great drama of the world's life. Glorious old days they had been, and although he had had more than his share of prosperity and success in the years since then, he knew that they were the happiest days of his life.

In his reverie his cigar had gone out, and he lighted it again mechanically.

The old place hadn't changed much, he supposed. That was one of its charms. World-weary men could go back to it and renew the dreams of their youth in the same old surroundings. A new dormitory, perhaps, added to the others, a larger building for the library, but, apart from these, substantially unchanged. The old gray towers covered with ivy, the green velvet of the campus, the long avenue of stately elms--these were the same as ever. He thought of the initials he had carved on the tree nearest the gate, and wondered if the bark had grown over them. And the old fence where the boys had gathered in the soft twilight of spring evenings and sung the songs that had been handed down through college generations. How the melody from hundreds of voices had swelled out into the night!

There was the old "owl wagon," where the fellows late at night, coming back from a lark in town, had stopped for a bite before going to bed.