All of this was duly announced to the stadium and the excitement was intense. I guess there were as many as two hundred Chautauqua salutes after that touchdown. Both teams had tea together and our rooters' chorus sang "Juanita," while old Professor Grubb got up, with rage printed all over his face in display type, and went home. He never went near the stadium again as long as he lived, I understand.
It was a most successful occasion up to this point, but somehow college boys always overdo a thing. The strain was telling on the two teams; for, when you come right down to it, no Siwash man loves a Kiowa man any more fervently than a bull pup loves a cat. The teams lined up again and began playing "ring-around-a-rosy" to find who should make the next touchdown, when something happened. Klingel, the two-hundred-and-ten-pound Kiowan guard, started it. He was just about as good a fellow as a white rhinoceros, and an hour of entire civilization was about all he could possibly stand. He had the beanbag and he was tired of it. Beanbags meant nothing to him. He couldn't grasp their solemn beauty. He offered it to Petey Simmons. Petey declined, with profuse thanks. Klingel insisted. Petey bowed very low and swore that rather than make another touchdown on Kiowa he would suffer wild horses to tear him into little bits. Then Klingel began to get offside.
"You hear what I say, you little shrimp!" he said politely. "If you don't take this thing and quit your yawping I'm going to make you do it."
"Listen, you overfed mountain of pork!" said Petey, with equal cordiality. "If you don't like that beanbag eat it. It would do you good. You don't know beans anyway."
Then Klingel, without further argument, hit Petey in the eye and laid him out.
"If you don't like that beanbag eat it"
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Wow! Talk about irritating a hornet convention. Klingel was a great little irritator. The whole game had been torture for our real team, cooped up among the ruffles in the stadium; and when they saw little Petey go down they gave one simultaneous roar and vaulted over the railing. It was a close race, but Ole Skjarsen beat Hogboom out by a foot. He hit Klingel first. Hogboom hit him second, third, fifth and thirty-fourth. Then the two teams closed together and for five minutes a cyclone of dust, dirt, sweaters, collars, arms, legs, hair and bright red noses swept up and down the field. The grandstand went crazy. The five hundred Kiowa rooters grabbed their canes and started in. They met about seven hundred Siwash patriots and then the whole universe exploded.
The police interfered and about half an hour later the last Siwash student was pried off the last Kiowan. It was the most disgraceful riot in the history of the college. I don't think there was a whole suit of clothes on the field when it was over; and the Siwash man who didn't have two or three knobs on his head wasn't considered loyal. The girls all cried. The Faculty went home in cabs, the mayor declared martial law and the Kiowa gang walked out of town to the crossing and took the train there to avoid further hard feelings. We were all ashamed of ourselves and I think the two schools liked each other a little better after that. Anyway, we regarded the whole affair as only logical.