Bert Wilson on the Gridiron

CHAPTER VIII

On the Toboggan

"MISFORTUNES never come singly," groaned Tom.

"It never rains but it pours," added Dick gloomily.

"O, cut out the croaking, you fellows," admonished Bert. "Or, if you're dead set on proverbs, remember that 'it's no use crying over spilt milk.' We're up against it good and plenty, but that's all the more reason to get together and try to kill the 'jinx.'"

There certainly was room for disquietude, if not despair, in the present condition of the football team. The "Blues" were in the throes of a "slump." And that misfortune, dreaded like the plague by all coaches and trainers, had come on them suddenly, like "a bolt from the blue." From the heights of confidence they had fallen to the depths of hopelessness. The superb machine, evolved and developed with infinite pains, now seemed headed straight for the scrap-heap.

Only the Saturday preceding they had been lined up against Dartmouth – always a fierce proposition – and to the delight of Hendricks had "run rings around them." They had played with a dash and fire that made them seem simply unbeatable. The ball had been in the enemy's territory three-fourths of the time and, after the first quarter, it was simply a question as to the size of the score. When at last the game was over, they had run up thirty-two points, and the ball had never once been within twenty yards of their own goal. The criticisms on the game in the Sunday papers had dwelt upon the impregnable defense and slashing attack of the "Blues." On the same Saturday the "Greys" and "Maroons" had also met redoubtable antagonists, and although they won, the scores were small and the playing by no means impressive. The general consensus was that on the form already shown, the "dope" favored the Blues in the great games yet to come. While admitting the wonderful work of some of the men who had starred in their positions, special stress was laid upon the smoothness and accuracy of the team work as a whole.

This of course was balm to the coach, all whose efforts had been directed toward making individual work subordinate to the development of a coherent system of team play, and he began to see the reward of the untiring labors that he had given without stint for the six weeks preceding. Reddy went about his work with a complacent smile, and the boys themselves were jubilant at the way they were rounding into form.

Then suddenly the blow fell, to be succeeded by others no less paralyzing.

"Have you heard the news?" exclaimed Drake, as he burst in upon Bert and Dick on Monday evening, as they were preparing their lessons for the following day.

"What is it?" they cried in chorus.

"Axtell and Hodge have been conditioned and forbidden to play until they get up with the rest of the class," was the answer.

"No," said Bert incredulously.

"Sure thing," affirmed Drake. "I had it straight from the boys themselves not five minutes ago. They sure are in the doleful dumps."

The three friends looked at each other in a perplexity and anxiety that they made no effort to conceal.

"But it will break up the team," cried Dick. "They're two of our very best men."

"You're right there," gloomed Drake. "There isn't a fiercer tackler than Axtell on the eleven, and Hodge is the heaviest man in the line. We haven't any too much beef at best, and man for man, the 'Greys' average five pounds heavier."

"Just when we were getting into such dandy shape, too," groaned Dick.

"Why in thunder didn't they keep up in their work," demanded Drake fiercely. "They must have known they were falling behind, and there's too much at stake for them to take any risk."

"There, there," soothed Bert. "Don't you suppose they're feeling worse about it than any one else?"

Just then there was a knock at the door and Axtell and Hodge themselves stalked in.

"I see you've heard about it," said Hodge, falling heavily into a chair. "I wish you fellows would take me out and kick me around the campus."

"Same here," echoed Axtell despondently. "I'll pay for all the shoe leather you wear out doing it."

"O, brace up, fellows," said Bert cheerily. "Things will come out all right yet. How bad is it anyway?"

"It isn't so bad with Axtell," replied Hodge. "He's only got a condition in Latin, and he can probably work that off in a week. But I'm stuck on mathematics and Greek both, and I've got about as much chance as a snowfall in June of making them up before the big games."

"I wonder if there's no chance of getting the faculty to let you put off making them up until after the games," pondered Bert thoughtfully.

"Such a chance," said Drake sardonically. "That stony-hearted crew hasn't any sporting blood. They'll insist that every t must be crossed and every i dotted before they'll take off the conditions."

"I'm not so sure of that," replied Bert. "There's Benton. He used to be a star at left end, and I don't think he's forgotten how he used to feel about such things. I can't any more than fail anyway, and I'm going to take a hack at it. You fellows stay right here and I'll run over and see him."

He found the professor at home, and received a cordial greeting.

"I see you boys trounced Dartmouth last week," he said genially. "I've seldom seen a better game."

This gave Bert his opening.

"We hope that isn't a circumstance to what we'll do to the 'Greys' and 'Maroons,'" he replied. "That is, we did hope so up to this afternoon."

The professor looked at him sharply.

"Why not now?" he asked.

And then Bert told him of the conditions of Hodge and Axtell, and the hope he entertained that some way might be found to make them up after the big games instead of before. He spoke with all the earnestness he felt, and the professor listened sympathetically.

"It's too bad," he assented. "I'm afraid, though, there's no remedy. The rules of the college are like those of the Medes and Persians, not to be broken, even" – and his eyes twinkled – "for so important a thing as a football game. Those matters anyway are in the province of the Dean. You might see him if you like, but I fear that it is a forlorn hope."

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 institution 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-boob," 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 bum 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 Dick – 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. Dick 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 coöperation 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 Dick.

"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 championship 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 skyscraper, shouting as he passed 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:

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 mass 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. There never were such delicious waffles as that fellow turned out. And there was Pietro at the chestnut stand, always good natured under the teasing of the boys, and old John, the doughnut man —

O, what was the use? He must get back to those letters.

There was the "sugar eat" in the spring. That usually came in the latter part of March. The soft wind would come up out of the south, the snow would begin to vanish and the sap stir in the trees. That was the signal for the "Hike." A scouting party would be sent out to make arrangements at some sugar camp five or six miles away. Then the next morning the fellows would "cut" recitations, and the startled professors would find their rooms deserted, while the hilarious culprits were footing it out to the camp. The farmer's wife, forewarned in advance, would have the long rough tables under the trees prepared for the hungry crew. Out from her capacious ovens would come great pans of hot puffy biscuits, while from the boiling caldrons the boys drew huge cans of bubbling maple syrup. And that sugar on those biscuits! Ambrosia, nectar, food for the gods! He had dined since then in the finest restaurants in the world, and never tasted anything to be compared to it.

What mattered the sarcastic and cutting remarks of the Profs. on the following day? They had had their fling and were willing to pay the price.

He came back to reality and the telegram that he was automatically folding and unfolding.

"Team gone to pieces." He stirred uneasily.

That was certainly tough luck. It must be serious when "Bull" talked like that. It had usually been the good fortune of Blue teams to make the other fellows go "to pieces." Now it really seemed as though the good old colors were in danger of being dimmed, if not disgraced.

They hadn't been disgraced when he wore them, he remembered. How they had wound up the season in a blaze of glory the last year he had played on the team! He saw even now, the crowded stands, the riot of colors, the frenzied roars of the Blues, when he had squirmed out of the mass piled on him, and grabbing the ball, had rushed down the field for a touchdown, with the enemy thundering at his heels. He felt still the thrill of that supreme moment when the fellows had hoisted him on their shoulders and carried him in triumph off the field.

He half rose from his chair, but sank back.

"If it wasn't for that confounded deal," he groaned.

He had been so used to Blue victories that their failure for the last two years had made him "sore." In his business associations and at his club he came in contact with many graduates from different colleges. He had usually been able to "josh" them good naturedly over the way the Blues had "done them up." But lately the shoe had been on the other foot and they had delighted in getting even.

He was not too thin skinned, and took their jibes smilingly, even though the smile was a trifle forced. They were entitled to their revenge. Sometimes, however, he winced when they flicked him "on the raw." There was Evans, for instance, an old Princeton tackle. Good fellow, Evans – corking good fellow – but after the Blues lost last fall, he had gloated a little too much. He had met him on the street and clapped him hilariously on the shoulder.