The Mark of the Knife. Ernst Clayton Holt
Teeny-bits took it from Dean on the run and began to circle the right end of the line; a gap opened for an instant; he was through it like a rabbit diving through a hedge and with a thrill dashed on. He did not mean to stop until the last whitewashed line was behind him.
In front, the Wilton quarter-back was crouching tensely to intercept him. Teeny-bits shifted direction to pass him, but the quarter-back was not only wily, but swift; he was after Teeny-bits like a cat and began to force him to run diagonally across the field. Two Wilton players converged on Teeny-bits from the other side and one of them made a desperate tackle. Teeny-bits used his straight arm to ward off the attack and succeeded in slipping from the tackler's clutches, but the fraction of a second that he lost opened an opportunity to the Wilton quarter-back. Teeny-bits felt himself tackled heavily; he fell against the player who had first tackled him and to his utter dismay felt the ball knocked from his grasp and saw it go bounding over the ground. He lay sprawling, so tangled with the Wilton players that for the moment he could not rise. With horrified gaze he saw the leather oval roll free and he felt the overwhelming shame of one who has failed to be equal to the demands of a crisis. But his feeling of self-condemnation immediately gave way to an entirely different emotion, for a swiftly moving pair of legs incased in the Ridgley red and white came within the range of his vision. He glanced up and saw that it was Neil Durant. Two Wilton players were after the ball also, but the Ridgley captain was before them; he scooped it up and ran swiftly down the field. While the stands roared in a frenzy of delight, Neil crossed the goal line and circled round till he placed the ball squarely behind the posts. Tom Curwood kicked the goal, and two minutes later the game ended with the ball in mid-field and the score 13-13.
"I'm glad you dropped that ball," said Durant, joining Teeny-bits as the substitute half-back was walking off the field; "it came just right to bounce up into my hands."
"It was lucky," admitted the candidate, "but I was mighty ashamed of myself."
"Well, it was a hard tackle," said Durant. "I don't blame you for dropping the ball."
Teeny-bits was about to make a reply when he saw coming toward them a white-haired man who walked with a limp. "There's Dad," he said, "I didn't know he was coming to the game."
Old Daniel Holbrook approached them with a beaming face. "Well, well, son!" he exclaimed, "I thought maybe you'd play, so I came to see the game."
Teeny-bits introduced Durant and tried to smother a feeling of embarrassment, the source of which he would not have cared to probe.
"Your ma, Teeny-bits, wants you should come down for Sunday dinner to-morrow," said the station master, "and she's particular for you to bring a friend. I've killed two young roosters and ma's fixin' 'em up with the kind of stuffin' you like. Now if this friend of yours here would like to come down with you I'll drive up and get both of you in the morning after church. He looks as if he'd have a good appetite."
Teeny-bits expected to hear Neil Durant express courteous regret; he did not for a moment think that the son of Major-General Durant and the most popular member of Ridgley School would be interested in visiting the humble Holbrook home. He was even a little ashamed that Dad Holbrook had extended the invitation with so much genial assurance.
"I'll be mighty glad to come – if Teeny-bits wants me to," said Durant, and Teeny-bits looked at him with such a queer expression of surprise and pleasure that Neil added: "You didn't expect me to refuse an invitation like that, did you?"
At the steps of the locker building Durant left them, and Teeny-bits remained outside for a few minutes to talk to the station master. Then he said good-by and went inside to take his shower.
He found his team-mates discussing the game in detail and bestowing praise on Neil Durant.
"Well, cap'n, old scout," Ned Stillson was saying, as Teeny-bits came clamping in, "you sure were Johnny-on-the-spot."
Though there was nothing in the words to signify actual criticism of any one, Teeny-bits felt that the real meaning behind them was that when some one else had failed, Durant had saved the day. That some one else was himself, and, though the members of the team treated him as cordially as ever, he had the unpleasant feeling that they looked upon him now as one who had failed in a crisis, and he had to admit to himself that their opinion – if they held it – was justly founded. He went back to his room and for half an hour before supper sat by his window, thinking deeply. The conclusion to which he came was this: if he ever got another chance to run with the ball for Ridgley he would squeeze that leather oval so hard that the thing would be in danger of bursting. He resolved to make no apologies to Coach Murray, but to show by future deeds that he could be trusted. When he went over to Lincoln Hall for dinner he found the fellows at his table apparently unchanged in their attitude toward him. They seemed to have forgotten that he had covered himself with no glory.
While the soup was being disposed of some one who came in late brought a bit of news that spread from table to table as if by magic. It seemed to fly from one end of the room to the other and instantly it became the topic of excited conversation. Everywhere it went it created looks of dismay on the faces of the Ridgleyites, for there was a portentous quality in it that boded bitter things for "the best school in the world."
While Ridgley had been striving mightily to hold its own against Wilton and had found its opponent so redoubtable that the tie score seemed to be fully as much as it deserved – and perhaps a little more – Jefferson, the big rival of Ridgley from time immemorial, had been winning the laurels. Jefferson had trampled mercilessly upon Goodrich Academy and with seeming ease had scored touchdown after touchdown. The final score was 34-0 and herein lay the menace for Ridgley: only a week before, Goodrich had defeated Wilton 7-0. If Goodrich were better than Wilton and Wilton were as good as Ridgley, what chance did Ridgley stand against Jefferson, which had apparently toyed with the Goodrich eleven and scored at will? It was a problem that would seem to be answered correctly only by three dismal words: None at all! A buzz of talk filled the dining hall and every one knew that Ridgley was face to face with a forlorn hope.
"Well, we'll have to fight," said Mr. Stevens, who sat at the head of Teeny-bits' table, "and fight hard – it will never do to get discouraged."
But discouragement is subtle; there was good need of something to instill spirit into the Ridgley team, for in the days that followed, rumors like the fables of old began to reach the school on the hill. It was said that tacklers found it almost impossible to stop Norris, the Jefferson full-back. Half a dozen colleges were begging him to bestow honors upon them by making them his Alma Mater. He could run a hundred yards in ten and one fifth seconds and he weighed one hundred and seventy pounds stripped. In the Goodrich game time and again he had made ten yards with two or more of the Goodrich players clinging to him as unavailingly as Lilliputians clinging to a giant. No less fearsome tales were told of Whipple, the Jefferson punter, and of Phillips and Burton, the two ends.
The punter could send a wickedly twisting spiral sixty yards, and the ends had an uncanny way of catching forward passes. Through the newspapers, through word of mouth and by letters the news arrived, – and it became increasingly disconcerting. Unless Ridgley wished to be disgraced before the eyes of the world something must be done – and done soon – to bolster up the team.
CHAPTER IV
TWO VISITS AND A THEFT
True to his word, old Daniel Holbrook drove his sorrel horse up to the school at noon on Sunday and brought Neil Durant and Teeny-bits down to the little white house that had been his home for thirty years. "Ma" Holbrook was a motherly person, plump, gray-haired and smiling.
"I do hope you two are good and hungry," she said, after Teeny-bits had introduced Neil. "We'll sit right down and keep sittin' till we're full."
It came over Teeny-bits suddenly as he sat down at the oval table and faced the familiar array of thick china, glassware and inexpensive cutlery what a different life he had been leading for the past few weeks, and he glanced at Neil to see what effect this homely air of simplicity would have on the son of a major-general. But the football captain showed by neither word nor sign that he noticed anything crude or unfamiliar. Dad Holbrook whetted the carving knife briskly on a steel sharpener and stood up to attack the two roosters. He heaped a bounteous supply of white and dark meat