But if the festering grievance did not "slacken," at least it seemed just now partly submerged in the great adventure of going down to the world below and becoming a collegian.
He went early in the autumn when he was seventeen, and McCalloway, who accompanied and matriculated him, came away smiling. He had felt as though he were leading a wolf-cub into a kennel of blooded hounds. But when he had watched the self-poise with which his registrant bore himself and how quickly amused smiles faded away under his level gaze, he left with a reassured confidence.
When the days began to grow crisp the uncouth scholar saw for the first time the lads in leather and moleskin tackling and punting out on the campus—in the early try-outs of the season's football practice. He looked on at first with a somewhat satirical detachment, but when the scrimmages took on the guise of actual ferocity his interest altered from tepid disapproval for "sich foolery" to a realization that it was "no gal's play-party."
Several afternoons later Boone shyly intercepted the coach as he led out the practice squads.
"Does thet thar football business belong ter a club—er somethin'," he inquired, "er kin any feller git inter hit?"
The coach looked at the roughly dressed lad with the unruly hair, who talked in barbaric phrases—and his practised eye took in the sinewy strength of the well-muscled body. He appraised the power of the broad shoulders, and the slim, agile lines of waist and legs, and gave him a chance.
From the beginning it was evident that Boone Wellver would make the scrub team. He was a tornado from the instant the ball was snapped—"an injia rubber idjit on a spree," and yet this mystifying wolf-cub from the hills came back to the coach in less than a week with an almost sullen face and announced shortly:
"I hain't goin' ter play no more football, I aims ter quit hit."
"Quit it! Why?"
"I've been studyin' hit over," the retiring candidate explained gloomily. "A man thet hain't no blood kin ter me is payin' what hit costs ter send me hyar. I hain't hardly nothin' but a charity feller, nohow—an' until he says hit's all right, I don't aim ter spend ther time he's payin' fer out hyar playin' fool games—albeit I likes hit."