Only three of them had a chance to reach the Ridgley player.
A roar like the pounding of a mighty sea against a craggy shore sounded in Teeny-bits' ears, but it seemed to him distant and detached from the thing he was doing. For the moment he was a living machine of speed with only one thought in his mind,—to reach that last white line, to cross it and to plant the pigskin ball behind the padded goal posts. He did it,—and lay panting on the ground while Neil Durant came running up and slapped him on the back and said words to him which Teeny-bits never remembered.
The captain kicked the goal which tied the score while a continuous din of unorganized shouting rose from the Ridgley stands. It was no moment for organized cheering. The cheer leader himself was leaping up and down, throwing his megaphone into the air and emitting war whoops which were drowned and assimilated by the volume of shouts that echoed back and forth.
The old-timers up there in the stands now began to breathe fast; this was not merely a good game of football, it was a wonderful game, a struggle in which extraordinary playing and fine spirit and brains and courage were united to make a combat that would live long in the memory of every person who witnessed it.
Up where the red was waving aloft, a white-haired man who did not understand the plays of football very well suddenly found that he had grasped the idea of this magnificent game. He was thumping the back of some one whom he had never seen before and giving voice to such yells of delight that the motherly-looking woman who sat beside him said to herself that he must suddenly have gone out of his senses.
"Teeny-bits did something wonderful, then, didn't he?" she shouted in his ear, and old Daniel Holbrook, her husband, shouted back:
"You bet your life he did; it was Teeny-bits; he ran all the way over the home plate or whatever they call it and made a score. I dunno but he's won the game all by himself."
In another part of the stands Doctor Wells was sitting beside Mr. Stevens.
"That was a magnificent run!" exclaimed the Head. "Magnificent! I declare—well—now we're even."
"Yes, we're even!" said the English master. "And I've discovered something."
"What?"
"Well, they say that the head of this school never gets excited, but just now when Teeny-bits was running you nearly pushed me out of my seat—and I think I heard a yell that came from your direction."
"Did I shout?" asked the Head.
"'Shout' isn't the word," said the English master. "Yell with a capital Y describes it."
"Back in '86, I used to play half-back myself," said Doctor Wells. "Here we are; they're at it again."
Ridgley kicked off to Jefferson and immediately was subjected to a fierce assault that taxed the utmost powers of endurance to withstand it. The Jefferson team was fighting harder than ever and playing with machine-like smoothness. They carried the ball for twenty-five yards and then punted, and downed Neil Durant in his tracks. Ridgley fought hard to advance the ball and gained a first down, then, meeting with no further success, punted. And so the ball see-sawed back and forth until the piping whistle of the timekeeper announced the close of the third quarter.
A feeling of great happiness and determination had been filling Teeny-bits' mind during these last few minutes. At the same time a curious impression had been making itself felt upon him,—an admiration for this big captain of the Jefferson team who fought so hard and so cleanly, who rallied his men after each successful assault by the Ridgley team, and like Neil Durant, inspired them to fight harder and harder.
There was no need for talking now. In the brief interval before the last period of the game began, Neil Durant, looking at his team-mates, saw in their faces determination and confidence. Nothing that he could say or that any one could say would alter their conviction that victory must rest with the red.
That last period was a phase of the game that could justly be called a climax. It began with a steady and determined march of the Jefferson team which, starting from the twenty-yard line, carried the ball forward by line plunges, by forward passes, by end runs and by sheer, dogged determination on and on until the purple eleven was within the very shadow of the Ridgley goal posts and Jefferson seemed to have the victory within her grasp. A terrific run by the captain planted the ball on the Ridgley four-yard line for a first down, and there was no person shouting for the purple who did not believe that he was about to witness that most glorious of football events—a well-earned touchdown, after a magnificent march the length of the field.
Big Tom Curwood was battered, the guards beside him were battered and the tackles crouched low as if they would welcome a chance to lie down flat on the brown earth and rest. Neil Durant spoke a word and they stiffened, the secondary defense moved closer to the line and the whole team in one mass met the Jefferson charge. Once, twice, and three times the purple backs plunged into the red line and each time they carried the ball forward a little more than a yard.
On that third try the referee dived into the mass in a manner that suggested to the watchers that the score had been made, but when he finally got his hands on the ball it was apparent that Jefferson still needed a few inches. The signal came quickly and the two avalanches of bone and muscle plunged against each other. The pile subsided and one after another the players on the fringe drew away until the referee could see the ball. There was a moment of tense expectancy and then the official waved his arm in a direction that brought forth a vast yell of joy from the Ridgley stands. Jefferson had been held; that leather oval had failed by inches to cross the last thin smear of white.
The next event in this struggle between the red and the purple was a kick from behind the goal line by Neil Durant,—the longest punt that had ever been seen on the Ridgley field. It flew for sixty yards, went over the head of the Jefferson quarter and rolled down the field end over end. The purple player finally overtook it and attempted to recover the lost ground, but Ned Stillson checked his career and Jefferson lined up on her own thirty-yard line. She bravely attempted to repeat her heartbreaking advance and gained a first down; but the Ridgley team suddenly became an impenetrable barrier. A punt a moment later fell into the arms of Teeny-bits, who carried it back fifteen yards to his own forty-yard line.
As the teams lined up Neil Durant said, loud enough for the whole two elevens to hear, "Now comes our turn," and the fight for a decision began anew. Three substitutes came in now to bolster the Jefferson line, and Coach Murray sent in two Ridgley players to take the place of the left tackle and the right end, who were evidently pretty far gone.
In eight plays Ridgley advanced the ball thirty-five yards with Teeny-bits figuring in two, Stillson in two and Neil Durant in four. The captain then made a plunge through center and before he was stopped had planted the ball on Jefferson's eight-yard line. Teeny-bits tried to squirm through the purple line but was thrown back. Stillson gained two yards and Dean, who had reserved his captain for the final efforts, then gave the signal that called upon the full-back to carry the ball. Neil went into the line as if he had been hurled from a catapult. He dove into the opening that Tom Curwood, with a last burst of desperate strength, had made, took three steps and was astride the goal line. Norris made the tackle, but he was an instant too late; the big captain of the Ridgley team fell across the line and hugged the leather oval close to the brown earth while pandemonium reigned and the members of the red team hurled their headgears into the air.
Neil limped when he got to his feet and motioned to Tom Curwood to make the kick. Big Tom wobbled out in front of the goal posts and tried his best to add a point for the glory of Ridgley, but his foot wavered and the ball flew to the left of the goal posts. On the Scoreboard the figures remained: Ridgley 20—Jefferson 14.
The kick-off, two or three plays,—and then the timekeeper blew his piping note which brought to an end the struggle that was the true climax of all the games that had been played by the red and the purple since one school had stood on the hill above the town of Hamilton and another school had stood among the elms that sheltered the sons of Jefferson.