“Fellows!” he yelled, “what we’re needing is a leader! Dixie, here, is doing his best, but it isn’t good enough. Isn’t that so, Wally?”—appealing to the big voice.
“You said a whole mouthful,” Dixon admitted, with splendid class spirit. “I’m only pinch-hittin’ for the right man. Who is he, Maxie?”
“I’ve got him right here!” Dick shouted, dragging Larry forcibly into the inner circle. “Here’s an old codger that’s handled grown men on a railroad job! Climb in, Larry, and tell us what to do!”
Of course, Larry would have backed straight out if he had been allowed to. But even at this early period a lot of the men knew Dickie Maxwell, and were perfectly willing to take his word. “Donovan! Donovan! What’s the matter with Donovan? There’s nothing the matter with Donovan! He’s all right, you BET!” the shout went up; and Larry found himself elected.
“If you will have it that way,” he yielded gruffly. “What I don’t know about such foolishness as this would fill a rain-water hogshead. But if the job’s got to be done, we’ll do it: just get that rubbed into your hides—every last one of you. We’re going to do it!”
“Bully for the Timanyoni Twin! Tell us how!” yelled the mob.
“Listen, then: we can’t buck that line solid, and get anywhere. Those fellows have been together long enough to know team play, and we haven’t. I want twenty men who can swim, and who aren’t afraid of getting wet. Volunteers come over to this side of the road. You other fellows mass across so they can’t see what we’re doing.”
He had his twenty in a half-second—and forty more on top of them. Rapidly he made his selection, with Wally Dixon for a captain. Not knowing more than a handful of the men, individually, he picked chiefly for size. Since his plan bulked large on the side of secrecy, he took the twenty apart and gave them their instructions. After which, they vanished in the darkness—not in the direction of the bridge.
“Now for a little drill work!” Larry called out, going back to the army proper. “Let me show you what a flying wedge really ought to be,” and for as much as fifteen minutes he kept them forming and re-forming in the road, the only shirker being Dickie Maxwell, who stood aside with his eyes fixed upon a certain point in the woods backgrounding the farther end of the bridge. And in the meantime, most naturally, the thus-far-victorious Sophomores were hurling all sorts of epithets across the dead-line, singing and shouting like the pack of young barbarians which, for the moment, they were.
Larry was forming his charging wedge for about the twentieth time when Dick, straining his eyes, saw a tiny match-light flare, lasting no longer than an eye-wink, on the farther bank of the river a few yards above the bridge approach. Instantly he darted across to Larry. “Six—fourteen—five!” he yelled, giving the old foot-ball signal; and Larry leaped to his place at the cutting edge of the wedge. “This time we GO!” he bellowed: “Now, then—for all you’re worth, and hang on till the last man of you is dead!”