Warne took the ball on the run at the ten-yard line, and he carried it ten yards before Kent brought him down. So the teams lined up on Viewland’s twenty-yard line for the opening scrimmage.
Viewland was encouraged by cheers from her thirty lusty-lunged rooters.
A pause, a move, a rush, a swirl—then a mass of human beings piled up. But Viewland had made full six yards by a plunge into Fardale’s center.
Again the visiting spectators cheered, for it seemed by this that Fardale’s line was not strong enough to hold such rushes.
The signal was given as the teams lined up facing each other, crouching, alert, ready. The players of the two lines bent forward so that it seemed as if their noses must touch, and thus they glared into one another’s eyes.
Again Viewland went hard for Fardale’s center, but this time Brad Buckhart stood there like a tree rooted to the ground, and the guards on either side of him refused to be swept back. There was a shock, a straining, a break, and Buckhart had the man with the ball down, without a gain.
Now Fardale opened up with a great cheer of satisfaction.
"Didn’t do it that time!" whooped a loud-voiced cadet joyously. "Oh, I don’t know that it’s so easy!"
But Viewland was in for swift work, and the line-up was made in breathless haste, so that the two teams were at each other again in the shortest possible time.
Once more, with the best interference that could be made, the visitors hurled themselves against Buckhart. The Texan set his teeth and met the assault in the same spirit that it was made. He held it until Shannock could break through and throw the man with the ball.