The preliminaries of the play worked to perfection. At the snap of the ball Neil Durant started swiftly to the right and drew after him the major part of the Jefferson secondary defense. For the moment Teeny-bits seemed to have been forgotten: it did not occur to the purple players that, with the big captain running swiftly into position to take the pass, his smaller back-field team-mate would be the one to receive the oval.
As Dean seemed to be in the act of hurling to his captain, Teeny-bits won through to an open space; suddenly the quarter-back shifted and shot the ball, bullet-straight, into the hands of the half-back. Teeny-bits was running toward the Jefferson goal almost before he felt the hard leather touch his fingers; now or never was the instant to use every atom of his body in the one purpose of reaching the goal posts that were straight in front of him,—so near and yet so far away.
The whole Jefferson team realized in that fraction of a second when they saw the ball sail into the half-back's arms that their advantage, their prestige and their hope of glory in the annals of Jefferson football were at stake. They were after Teeny-bits like wolves on the trail of a rabbit, but only three of them had a chance to reach the Ridgley player. The first of these—the quarter-back—made the fatal mistake of underestimating Teeny-bits' speed. The half-back shifted direction slightly and eluded the grasp of the purple player. The other two were slightly in the rear and their only chance was to come up from behind and overtake the runner by superior swiftness. But they were not equal to it, and, although they tried valiantly and held their own, they did not succeed in gaining on the carrier of the ball as he crossed one white mark after another.
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.