When all was ready, he kicked off, driving straight to Fisher, who passed the leather quickly to Garrison. Highland’s left half-back was somewhat flustered, and he kicked the ball out of bounds at Rockspur’s thirty-yard line. Scott had it, and he announced an intention of bringing it in ten yards for a scrimmage.
Rockspur now endeavored to smash a road up the field by a series of furious plunges, making ten yards in this manner; but there the Highland line became rooted, and Sterndale was forced to punt. Murphy came to the fore again by nailing Morse on Highland’s forty-yard line.
But Highland had the ball. Apparently Walker was getting ready to punt, and that was what Rockspur expected. Then it was that the visitors gave the home team a dose of its own medicine by surprising them with a sudden rush through centre that carried the leather down the field to Rockspur’s thirty-five-yard line. Right there the rush stopped and two mad lunges failed to gain a single foot.
Then Walker gave the signal for Garrison to try for a goal from the field, knowing that the first half must terminate in a very short time. The Rockspur men saw what their opponents contemplated, and some of them laughed outright over the folly of an attempt to drop-kick a goal from such a distance. Every man of the rushers prepared to try to go through and down Garrison the moment the ball was snapped, while the Highlanders braced themselves to hold the enemy in check long enough for Phil to make a fair try of it.
Again a hush, and then a quick movement and a clash. The ball flew to Highland’s left half-back, who took it with the utmost coolness, poised it carefully, dropped it, and the moment it rose from the ground kicked it with all the force and accuracy he could command. Then some of those panting tigers came through and slammed him to the earth, but they were too late.
Away sailed the pigskin, turning over and over, rising higher and higher, a beautiful kick. There was a craning of necks and an upturning of white, anxious faces.
“It’s over!”
Over it was, fairly and beautifully. Barely had it touched the ground when the referee’s whistle told the first half was ended, and Highland had a lead of three points, the score being 6 to 9.
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE SECOND HALF.
Under the grand-stand the perspiring, blood-stained, dirt-bedaubed young heroes were being rubbed down by their admiring friends, while outside the Highland crowd sang pæans of victory.