Right Tackle Todd

CHAPTER III

ON THE ICE

A few days later Clem, smashing into the boards of the outdoor rink, after a valiant effort to hook the puck from Landorf, of the scrub six, almost bumped heads with Jim Todd. It was a nippingly cold February afternoon, and Jim made one of the small audience that stamped about on chilled feet and watched the progress of the practice game. Jim, though, appeared less conscious of the cold than most of the others. He had on the old gray woolen sweater, and a cloth cap set inadequately on the back of his streaky brown locks. About him were overcoats – even one or two of fur – and unfastened overshoes rattled their buckles as their wearers kicked the wooden barrier or stamped about on the hard-trodden snow to encourage circulation. Jim wore a pair of woolen socks of a dubious shade of tan and low shoes that were ostensibly black. And he didn’t prance about a bit. Once in a while he did rub his long bony hands together, but the action seemed an indication of interest in the hockey game rather than in the temperature. As a matter of fact, this was Jim’s first glimpse of such a contest, and he was, for Jim Todd, quite excited over it.

Between the halves Clem skated over to him. “Aren’t you frozen?” he asked wonderingly.

“Me? No.” Jim shook his head slowly. “It’s right cold, though, ain’t it? A whole lot colder than we have it in Maine, I guess. Say, what’s that thing made of you’re hitting around on the ice?”

“Rubber. Haven’t you ever played hockey?”

“No. When I was a kid we used to whack a block of wood around with sticks, but it wasn’t much like this hockey. Looks like you’ve got almost as many rules as there are in football. You’re a pretty nice skater, ain’t you?”

“Not as good as some of the fellows,” replied Clem. “You skate, of course.”

Jim nodded. “That’s ’bout the only thing I can do real well,” he answered. “Don’t believe I could get around the way you do, though; dodge and turn so quick and all like that. I ain’t so bad at skating fast, but I’ve got to have plenty of room.”

“Better go into the races Saturday morning,” suggested Clem. “What’s your distance?”

“Distance?”

“Yes, what are you best at? Half-mile? Mile? Two miles?”

“Why, I don’t know. I’ve skated in a lot of races, you might say, but we didn’t ever measure them. We’d race, generally, from the old boat-house to the inlet; on Lower Pond, you know. Guess that’s about three-quarters of a mile; more or less.”

“Why don’t you enter for Saturday, then?” asked Clem. “You ought to be able to do the mile if you’ve been doing the three-quarters, Todd.”

“Well, I don’t know. Would you? Does it cost anything?”

“Not a cent,” laughed Clem. “There’s a list of the events over on the notice board in the gym. Better pick out a couple and get your name down.”

“Well – Gosh, though, I can’t! I didn’t bring my skates. I sort of had a notion there wasn’t much skating down here. I guess there wouldn’t be time to send for them, either, to-day being Tuesday.”

Clem leaned over the barrier and viewed Jim’s shoes. “No, I guess not, but I think Mart’s skates will fit you. Drop in later and we’ll see. He doesn’t use them much.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t like me to have them,” responded Jim doubtfully. “Anyway, I ain’t skated since last winter, Harland, and I guess I wouldn’t be much good. Much obliged to you, but maybe I’d better not.”

“Well, if you change your mind – ” Clem hurried away to try some shots at goal before the whistle blew again.

Just before supper-time, however, Jim wandered into Number 15. He announced that he guessed he’d take part in those races if it was all right about the skates. “There’s a two-mile race down, I see, and I guess I’d like to try that.”

“Two miles? Thought you’d been doing three-quarters,” said Clem, while Mart dug his skates out of the closet.

“Yes, but sometimes I got licked, and I’ve got a sort of notion I can do better at a longer distance. Maybe I’ll try for the mile, too. I guess there’s a lot of pretty good skaters going into it, eh?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Clem, “but you’ll have a good time. You don’t mind getting beaten, do you?”

Jim frowned slightly. “Why, yes, I guess I do,” he replied. “Every fellow does, don’t he?”

“Well, I meant to say you didn’t mind much. Of course no fellow wants to take a defeat, but he has to do it just the same sometimes, you know. And there’s a whole lot in taking it the right way.”

“The right way?” inquired Jim.

“Why, yes, Todd. Look here, are you joshing me? You know what I mean, confound you!”

“Well, I don’t know as I do,” said Jim doubtfully. “I don’t get mad when I’m licked, if that’s what you mean. Leastways, I don’t let on I’m mad. But it don’t make me feel any too good to get beat!”

“I suppose your trouble is that you’ve never been beaten often enough to get used to it, then,” answered Clem. “Getting mad doesn’t do any good, you crazy goof. You want to smile and make believe you like it.”

“What for?”

“Oh, for the love of Liberty,” wailed Clem, “take this fellow off me, Mart! He’s worse than a Philadelphia lawyer!”

Mart’s return with the skates provided a diversion. They were a size too small, but after a long and admiring appraisal of them Jim declared that they would do. “I never saw a pair just like these before,” he confided admiringly. “What they made of, Gray?”

“Aluminum, mostly. Light, aren’t they? Like them?”

“Gosh, yes, but I don’t know if I can do much with them. They don’t weigh more’n a third what mine do. I’m going to try them, just the same. I’m much obliged to you.”

“You’re welcome. Just see that you win a race with them. We’ll go down and root for you, Todd.”

“I might win the two-mile race,” replied Jim, “if I get so I can use these right. I’ll try ’em to-morrow.”

They didn’t see Jim again until the morning of the races. It was a corking day, that Saturday, with a wealth of winter sunshine flooding the world and only the mildest of northerly breezes blowing down the river. The weather and the list of events ought to have brought out a larger representation of the student body, but as a matter of fact by far the larger portion of those who had assembled at ten o’clock were contestants. Clem, yielding to the solicitations of the Committee, had entered for three races at the last moment, and it wasn’t until he had won the 220-yard senior event in hollow fashion from a field of more than a score of adversaries and been narrowly beaten in the quarter-mile race that he encountered Jim.

Jim had discarded his beloved gray sweater and was the cynosure of all eyes in a mackinaw coat of green and black plaid. The green was extremely green and the plaid was a very large one, and Jim presented an almost thrilling appearance. Under the mackinaw, his lean body was attired very simply in a white running shirt, and Clem addressed him sternly.

“Want to catch pneumonia and croak?” he demanded. “Don’t you know you can’t skate with that state’s prison offense on and that if you take it off you’ll freeze stiff? Where were you when they handed brains out, Todd?”

Jim grinned. “Hello,” he replied. “That was a nice licking you gave all those other fellows. And, say, if you’d got going quicker in that other race you’d have made it, easy.”

Clem was looking attentively at the mackinaw. Now he felt of it. “Say, that’s some coat, son. Where’d you get it?”

“Back home.”

“I’ll bet it’s warm. I never saw one made of as good stuff as that is. Any more like it where it came from?”

Jim chuckled. “I’m going to write pop to send down a couple dozen of them,” he said. “You’re about the tenth fellow that’s asked me that so far. I could sell a lot of ’em if I had ’em.”

“Joking aside, though, can I get one, Todd?”

“Sure. Pop sells them. I’ll give you the address if you want to send for one. I’ve given it to a lot of fellows already.”

“Oh, well, if the whole school’s going to come out in them I guess I’ll pass,” said Clem regretfully. “I suppose those are what the lumbermen wear, eh?”

Jim nodded. “Lots of folks wear them. They’re mighty good coats. Only six dollars, too. Better have one. Maybe pop’ll give me a commission.”

“Six dollars! I believe you’re trying to make a dollar rake-off on each one! Say, what are you down for, Todd?”

“Down for? Oh, the mile and two miles. You?”

“Just the half. I’ll get licked, too. See you later. But, honest, Todd, you oughtn’t to skate two miles in just that cotton shirt, you know.”

“Warm enough. It ain’t real cold to-day. Hope you win.”

But Clem didn’t, making rather a sorry showing in fact.

There was an obstacle race for the younger chaps next, an event that provided plenty of amusement for entrants and spectators alike, and then the contestants for the mile were called. This event was a popular one, it appeared, for sixteen youths of all ages and from all classes answered. A group of freshmen, about twenty in all, cheered lustily and unflaggingly for their favorite, a small, slim, capable appearing boy named Woodside. Jim towered over most of the lot, although his bare brown head didn’t top that of Newt Young, guard on the football team and a senior entrant. The seniors were represented by several others, but their hopes were pinned on Newt. The bunch sped away at the crack of a pistol and were soon well spread out.

Jim didn’t have much hope of capturing that race, and certainly no one who watched him could have censured him. Jim’s skating was far from graceful. He didn’t suggest the flight of a bird, for instance. Observing Jim, you were reminded chiefly of a windmill that had somehow got loose and was blowing down the ice, blowing fast, to be sure, but wasting a deal of motion. Jim’s arms did strange antics, seeming never to duplicate a single movement that was once made. And he appeared to have more than the usual number of joints in his long, thin body. He bent everywhere; at knees, waist, shoulders, neck, elbows and wrists; and some other places, too, unless sight deceived the onlookers. But at the quarter distance he was still among the first half-dozen, and when the turn was made those at the finish couldn’t determine for some moments whether he or young Woodside led.

It promised to be a close finish, in any case, for behind the two leaders sped Newt Young, showing lots of reserve, and, not yet out of the race, four others followed closely. But Jim began to fall back after the race was three-fourths over, and for a hundred yards Woodside loomed as the winner, while his enthusiastic classmates howled ecstatically. Then, however, Young edged past Jim and set off after the freshman and for the final fifty yards it was nip and tuck to the line. Young won by a bare three feet, with Woodside second and Jim a poor third.

“Well, feel mad, do you?” asked Clem as he and Mart sought Jim.

Jim scowled and then grinned sheepishly. “I could have won if I’d had my own skates,” he muttered. “These are all right, only I ain’t used to them. Bet you I could beat that big fellow if I had my own skates.”

“Newt Young?” asked Mart. “Well, Newt’s a pretty good lad, they say.”

“I could beat him,” reasserted Jim doggedly. “He gave me a jab in the nose, too.”

“What? Newt did?” Clem was incredulous. “I didn’t see it. Where was it?”

“Playing football, I mean,” answered Jim. “He was on the first squad when I was playing. He gave me a good one one day, and I don’t guess it was any accident, neither.”

“Ah,” murmured Clem sadly, “I fear yours is a vindictive nature, Todd. I am disappointed in you.”

Jim observed him doubtfully. Then he said “Huh!” Finally he grinned. “Well, he didn’t have any cause to hit me,” he added, “and I sort of wanted to beat him.”

“Maybe he’s down for the two miles,” suggested Mart cheerfully. “Do you know?”

Jim didn’t know, but Clem did. “He is,” declared the latter. “So go ahead and wreak vengeance, Todd. You have my blessing. And I guess they’re about ready for you, too.”

“Gosh, I wish I had my own skates,” muttered Jim wistfully.

“No alibis, Todd,” said Clem sternly. “Do your duty.”

CHAPTER IV

CLEM GETS A LETTER

There were only five entries for the two-mile race, all senior and junior class fellows. The course was twice around the half-mile flag, which made for slower time but enabled the audience to keep the skaters in sight. The five started briskly from the mark, but this event called for less speed than had the one-mile race, and none of the contestants seemed especially anxious to set the pace. It was, finally, Newt Young who took the lead, with a junior named Peele next and Jim Todd third. That order held to the turn and all the way back to the line. Some one clocked Young at three minutes and eighteen seconds, but in view of the final figures that timing may have been wrong. The line was well strung out when it turned again toward the distant flag, with the first three skaters at four-yard intervals and the last two close together a hundred feet back. Not until the figures had grown small in the distance once more did the order change. Then the spectators saw Jim Todd pass Peele and fall in close behind the leader. That was a signal for triumphant cheers from a small coterie of devoted sons of the Pine Tree State, to whose voices Clem and Mart added theirs. Such triumph was, however, short-lived, for when Jim, still threshing his long arms about, took the turn around the flag he tried to make it too short and the watchers had a confused vision of the white-shirted youth going over and over, with legs and arms whirling, far across the distant surface.

“That,” observed Clem dryly, “lets our Mr. Todd out of it.”

The capsized one made a really astounding recovery and was on his blades again almost before the spectators had sensed the catastrophe, but Peele had passed him by that time, and Young was well away on his last dash. The other two contestants, while still grimly pursuing, were already out of the result. The half-dozen “Maniacs,” as Clem dubbed them not very originally, refused to own defeat for their favorite and continued to howl imploringly for Jim to “Come on and win it!” It is doubtful if Jim heard that demand, for he was still a long way off and there was plenty of other shouting beside that of the Maine contingent, but it did look as if he had, quite of his own accord and without prompting, made up his stubborn mind to do that very thing! He went after Peele desperately and gradually closed the distance. Then, while the growing excitement of the onlookers became every instant more vocal, he edged past his classmate and steadily widened the ice between them. Doubtless the fast-flying Young looked horribly like the victor to Jim just then; he surely looked so to those at the line; and probably the best that Jim hoped for was a close finish. In any event, Jim came hard, desperately, arms flying all ways at once, a wild, many-jointed figure that seemed somehow to fairly eat up distance.

At the quarter-mile he was undoubtedly gaining on Young, and public sympathy, ever tending toward the under dog, veered from the senior suddenly and surprisingly, and the loyal sons of Maine found their hoarse ravings drowned under a greater volume of cheers for Jim Todd. “Come on, Todd! You can beat him!” “Skate, Skinny Boy! Come on! Come on!” “You’ve got him, Todd! Hit it up! Hit it up!” Even Mart, who was a most reticent youth when it came to public vocal demonstrations, appeared to be trying very hard to climb Clem’s back and yelling: “Todd! Todd! Todd! Todd!” in the most piercing tones about four inches from Clem’s left ear. Clem, though, failed to comment on the phenomenon at the time, being extremely busy enticing Todd to the finish with both voice and gesture!

It was somewhere about three hundred yards short of the line that Jim realized that defeat was not necessarily to be his portion, that Newt Young’s admirable grace and form were at last lacking and that that youth was probably as tired as Jim Todd was. Jim devoutly hoped he was even more tired, although he couldn’t conceive of such a thing! Any one who has taken a header in an ice race knows that it produces a most enervating effect and, for a time at least, leaves one in a painfully breathless condition. Perhaps Jim recalled that, in his opinion, superfluous tap on the nose of some three months previous, and perhaps the recollection of that painful indignity urged him to superhuman effort. That as may have been, the runaway windmill kept on closing the gap, slowly but inexorably.

The distance between the two dwindled from eight yards to half that many, from four yards to two, from two to one! They were almost stride for stride as they swept down on the finish line. Young, suddenly aware of the loss of his advantage, seemed at once incredulous and disheartened. There was a brief instant when he faltered, and in that instant Jim swept into the lead. Perhaps thirty yards still lay before the adversaries, and Young seized on his courage and determination again. But once in the lead Jim was not to be headed. Indeed, it seemed that until the instant of passing Young he had not shown what real speed was! The tall youth found in those last few yards some joints he had not suspected the possession of, made surprising use of them, swayed, bent, buckled and threshed down the ice with the lithe grace of a camel with a hundred-mile gale behind it, and gyrated across the finish line a good eight yards ahead of his adversary!

The sons of Maine went crazy, every one yelled and the official timekeeper proclaimed that the school record had been burst into infinitesimal fractions! As no one seemed to know what the Alton Academy record for the two miles was, the present time of six minutes and forty-one seconds was accepted as something to cheer for. So every one cheered again. And about that time Young pushed through to Jim Todd and shook hands with him, and Jim grinned and forgot to say anything about that incident on the gridiron, and every one went home.

But Jim Todd leaped into mild and momentary fame, and for some weeks was pointed out as “that long drink of water who beat Newt Young on the ice and broke the school record for the mile or two miles or something.” Perhaps his fame would have lived longer if, at about that time, Alton hadn’t played her final hockey game with Kenly Hall and smeared up the Cherry-and-Black to the tune of 7 goals to 3, a feat which, after last season’s defeat for Alton, was hailed with joy and loud acclaim and resulted later in the election of Clement Harland to succeed himself as captain of the team. Since Clem had been the first youth to get the hockey captaincy in his junior year in the history of that sport at Alton, he was now possessor of the unique distinction of being the only hockey captain ever serving two terms. Mart sniffed and said he hoped Clem wouldn’t get a swelled head over it, but that he probably would and so wouldn’t be fit to live with much longer!

Whether Clem was fit to live with or wasn’t, it strangely happened that Mart never had an opportunity to reach a decision in the matter, for after Spring recess Mart came back to Alton with a vast distaste for exertion and a couple of degrees of temperature that he hadn’t had when he went away. A day later he went to the infirmary and there he stayed until well into May with a case of typhoid that seemed to give much satisfaction to the doctor in charge but that failed to please Mart’s parents to any noticeable degree. It was a strange, washed-out looking Mart who rolled away one morning in an automobile for the station on his way home, and while his smile was recognizable by Clem the rest of him seemed strange and alien. Mart managed a joke before the car started off, but it was such a weak, puerile effort that Clem found it easier to cry than laugh over.

During the rest of the term Clem saw more of Jim Todd than ever, for Jim had been sincerely concerned about Mart and had offered all sorts of well-meant but impossible services during the illness, and Clem had liked the kindness and thoughtfulness shown. Besides, Clem felt a bit lonesome after Mart’s departure, and Jim was handy. On one or two occasions Clem even climbed to the upper floor and endured the presence of Bradley Judson for the sake of Jim. Judson, who shared the sloping-ceilinged room with Jim, was no treat, either, according to Clem!

At home, Mart wrote an occasional brief letter. He said he was getting along finely, but the letters didn’t sound so. Jim, however, who, it turned out, had seen typhoid fever before, reassured Clem. Typhoid, declared Jim, left you pretty low in your mind and weak in your body, and it took a long while for some folks to get back where they had been. So Clem took comfort. And then June arrived suddenly, and the school year was over.

Toward the end of July, Clem, who was leading a life of blissful ease at the Harland summer home in the Berkshires, received a letter from Jim. He didn’t know it was from Jim until he had looked at the bottom of the second sheet, for the writing was strange to him and the inscription on the envelope – “Middle Carry Camps, Blaisdell’s Mills, Me.” – failed to suggest the elongated Mr. Todd. Clem tucked his tennis racket under his arm, seated himself on the lower step of the porch and, seeking the beginning of the missive, wondered what on earth Jim was writing about. He wouldn’t have been much more surprised had the letter been from the President and summoning him to Washington to confer on the Tariff! He hadn’t seen or heard from Jim since June, and, since life had been full of a number of things, hadn’t thought of him more than a dozen times. And now Jim was writing him a two-page letter in queer up-and-down characters and faded ink on the cheap stationery of a Maine sporting camp!