Left Guard Gilbert Part 5

Tim, who had haled Don into the gymnasium on the way back to hall, tried his best to convince all those who would listen to him that they had played a perfectly punk game and that nothing but the veriest fluke had accounted for that score. But they called him a "sore-head" and laughed at him, and even drove him away with flicking towels, and he finally gave it up and consented to accompany Don back to Billings, limping a trifle whenever he thought no one was looking.

Don missed Tim at supper, for the training tables started that evening and Tim went off to one of them with his napkin ring and his own particular bottle of tomato catsup, leaving his chum feeling forlornly "out of it."

CHAPTER V

DON GOES TO THE SECOND

LIFE at Brimfield Academy settled down for Don into the accustomed routine. The loss of one day made no difference in the matter of lessons, for with Tim's a.s.sistance--they were both in the Fifth Form--he easily made up what had been missed. They were taking up German that year for the first time and Don found it hard going, but he managed to satisfy Mr. Daley after a fas.h.i.+on. Don was a fellow who studied hard because he had to. Tim could skim his lessons, make a good showing in cla.s.s and remember enough of what he had gone over to appear quite erudite. Don had to get right down and grapple with things. He once said enviously, and with as near an approach to an epigram as he was capable of, that whereas Tim got his lessons by inhaling them, he, Don, had to chew them up and swallow them! But when examination time came Don's method of a.s.similation showed better results.

The injured hand healed with incredible slowness, but heal it did, and at last the day came when the doctor consented to let his impatient pupil put on the padded arrangement that the ingenious Danny Moore had fas.h.i.+oned of a discarded fielder's glove and some curled hair, and Don triumphantly reported for practice. His triumph was, however, short-lived, for Coach Robey viewed him dubiously and relegated him to the second squad, from which Mr. Boutelle was then forming his second team. "Boots" was a graduate who turned up every Fall and took charge of the second or scrub team. It was an open secret that he received no remuneration. Patriotism and sheer love of the game were the inducements that caused Mr. Boutelle to donate some two months of time and labour to the cause of turning out a second team strong enough to give the first the practice it needed. And he always succeeded. "Boutelle's Babies," as someone had facetiously termed them, could invariably be depended on to give the school eleven as hard a tussle as it wanted--and sometimes a deal harder. Boots was a bit of a driver and believed in strenuous work, but his charges liked him immensely and performed miracles of labour at his command. His greeting of Don was almost as dubious as had been Coach Robey's.

"Of course I'm glad to have you, Gilbert, but the trouble is that as soon as we've got you nicely working Mr. Robey will take you away.

That's a great trick of his. He seems to think the purpose of the second team is to train players for the first. It isn't, though. He gives me what he doesn't want every year and I do my best to make a team from it, and I ought to be allowed to keep what I make. Well, never mind. You do the best you can while you're with us, Gilbert."

"Maybe he won't have me this year," said Don dejectedly. "He seems to think that being out for a couple of weeks has queered me."

"Well, you don't feel that way about it, do you?"

"No, sir, I'm perfectly all right. I've watched practice every afternoon and I've been doing a quarter to a half on the track."

"Hm. Well, you've got a little flesh that will have to come off, but it won't take long to lose it this weather. Sit down a minute." They were in front of the stand and Mr. Boutelle seated himself on the lower tier and Don followed his example. "Let me see, Gilbert. Last year you played left guard, didn't you?"

"Yes, sir."

"And if I remember aright your chief difficulty was in the matter of weight."

"I'm twelve pounds heavier this fall, air."

"Yes, but some of that'll come off, I guess. However, that doesn't matter. You were getting along pretty well at the last of the season, I remember. Who's ahead of you on the first?"

"Well, Gafferty's got the first choice, I guess. And then there's Harry Walton."

"You can beat Walton," said Boots decisively. "Walton lacks head. He can't think things out for himself. You can. What you'll have to do this year, my boy, is speed up a little. It took you until about the middle of the season to find your pace. Remember?"

"Yes, sir, I know."

"Well, you won't stay with us long, as I've said, and so I'm not going to build you into the line, Gilbert. I've got some good-looking guard material and I can't afford to work over you and get dependent on you and then have Robey s.n.a.t.c.h you away about the middle of the fall. That won't do. But I'll tell you what we will do, Gilbert. We'll use you enough to bring you around in form slowly. You'll play left guard for awhile every day. But what I want you to really do is to help with the others. You've been at it two years now and you know how the position ought to be played and you've got hard common-sense. I'll put the guard candidates in your hands. See what you can do with them. There's a couple of likely chaps in Kirkwell and Merton, and there are two or three more after positions. You take them in charge, Gilbert, and show me what you know about coaching. What do you say?"

"Why, Mr. Boutelle, I--I don't know that I can show anyone else what to do. I can play the position myself after a fas.h.i.+on, but--well, I guess it's another thing to teach, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know. It is if you go into it with the idea that it is, but don't do that. Play the position as it ought to be played, tell the others why, call them down when they make mistakes, pat them on the back when they do right. Just forget that you're trying to teach. If a fellow came to you and said: 'Gilbert, I want to play guard but I don't know how, and I wish you'd tell me how you do it,' why, you wouldn't have any trouble, would you?"

"N-no, sir, I guess not," replied Don a trifle doubtfully.

"Well, there you are. Try it, anyway. You'll get on all right. I'll be right on hand to dig the spurs in when your courage fails." Mr.

Boutelle smiled. "We're going to have a dandy second team this fall, my boy. We've got nothing to build on, only a lot of green material, and that's the best part of it. I don't care how inexperienced the material is if it's willing to learn and has the usual number of arms and legs and such things and a few ounces of grey matter in the cranium. Well, here we go. Nothing today but pa.s.sing and punting, I guess. Sure your hand's all right?"

"Yes, sir, thanks. I don't really need this contrivance; it's awfully clumsy; but Doc said I'd better wear it for a few days."

"Best to be on the safe side. I'll have you take one squad of these chaps, I guess, and I'll give the other to Lewis. You know the usual stuff, Gilbert. Rest 'em up now and then; they're soft and the weather's warm. But work 'em when they're working. Any fellow who soldiers gets bounced. All out, second squad!"

There wasn't anything that afternoon but the sort of drudgery that tries the enthusiasm of the tyro: pa.s.sing the ball in circles, falling on it, catching it on the bound and starting. Don was surprised to discover how soft he was in spite of his daily exercise on the cinders. When the hour's practice was over he was just about as thankful as any of the puffing, perspiring youths around him. Considering it afterward, Don was unable to view the material with the enthusiasm Mr. Boutelle had displayed. To him the thirty-odd boys who had reported for the second team were a hopeless lot, barring, of course, a few, not more than four in all, who had had experience last season. In another week Mr. Robey would make a cut in the first squad and the second would find itself augmented by some ten or twelve cast-offs. But just now the second squad looked to Don to be a most unlikely lot. When he confided all this to Tim that evening the latter said:

"Don't you worry, old man. Boots will make a team out of them. Why, he could make a football team out of eleven clothing store dummies!

Sometimes I think that Boots ought to be head coach instead of Robey.

I've got nothing against Robey, either. He's a bit of a 'miracle man'

himself, _but_ for building a team out of nothing Boutelle has him both shoulders to the mat!"

"I don't believe Boots would want to coach the first," replied Don.

"Why not?"

"I don't know. He's sort of--well, he kind of likes to--Oh, I don't know."

"Very clearly explained, Donald."

"Well, Boots, if he was a soldier, would be the sort that would want to lead a charge where the odds were against him. See what I mean?"

"You mean he has a hankering for the forlorn chance business? Maybe so.

That's not a bad name for the second, is it? The Forlorn Chances! I guess you've got him dead to rights, though. Boots is for the under dog every time. I guess coaching the first and having his pick of the players wouldn't make any sort of a hit with Boots. It would be too tame. Boots likes to take three discarded veterans, two crips and a handful of green youngsters and whittle them into a bunch that will make us sweat and toil to score on. And, what's more, he does it! Bet you anything, Don, this year's second will be every bit as good as last year's."

"I won't take it, because I think so myself," laughed Don. "I can't see how he's going to do it, Tim, but something tells me he will!"

"Oh, with you to coach the guards it will be no trick at all," said Tim, grinning.

Don smiled thinly. "I'll make an awful mess of it, I guess," he muttered.

"Not you, boy!" and Tim slapped him encouragingly on the back. "You'll blunder right ahead to glory, same as you always do. You'll make hard work of it and all that, but you'll get there. Don, you're exactly like the porpoise--no, the tortoise in the fable. You don't look fast, old man, but you keep on moving ahead and saying nothing and when the hares arrive you're curled up on the finish line fast asleep. Tortoises can't curl up, though, can they? And, say, what the d.i.c.kens _is_ a tortoise, anyway? I always get tortoises and porpoises mixed."

"A porpoise is a fish," replied Don gravely. "And a tortoise is a land turtle. But they're both anthropoids."

"Are they?" asked Tim vaguely. "All right. Here, what are you grinning at? Anthropoids nothing! An anthropoid is a monkey or--or something."

"You're an anthropoid yourself, Timmy."

"Meaning I'm a monkey?"

"Not at all. Here, look it up." And Don shoved a dictionary across the table. Tim accepted it suspiciously.

"All right," he said, "but if it's what I think it is you'll have to fight. Anthesis, anthropocosmic----Say, I'm glad you didn't call me that! Here it is. Now let's see. 'Anthropoid, somewhat like a human being in form or other characteristics'! Something like---- You wait till I get you in the tank again! 'Something like a human being'! For two cents I'd lay you on the bed and spank you with that tennis racket!"

"I've got two cents that say you can't do it," replied Don.

"Well, I could if there wasn't so much of you," grumbled Tim. "Now shut up and let me stuff awhile. Horace has been eyeing me in a way I don't like lately. How's your German going?"