Taber’s right wing, always the bulwark of the team before, now clutched his running mate’s arm, piteously.
“Lank, I can’t explain it. All I know is ... I can’t make myself go through any more. I think I can when I start out ... but when I’m right there ... I lose my nerve or something!... It’s the most terrible feeling.... It feels like I’m just about to skate into blackness...!”
Lank, watching Carl closely, nodded understandingly.
“Listen, Lank,” begged Carl, tremulously. “We’ve got to win this game. I used to break the defense and get through to take passes from you and shoot the goals. Can’t we reverse things?... You go through and I’ll pass to you!”
Lank hesitated. “I can try,” he promised. “It’s not so easy to get through that bunch. I don’t have your form, you know. You had a system all your own...!”
“I’m sorry,” Carl said. “I feel like a rotter.”
“You’ll snap into it,” Lank encouraged. “Come on—let’s go!”
Siddall skated out for the third and last period a cocky sextet headed by a carefree Whiz Deagen. True, the visitors were only leading by one goal but their defense had been impregnable and they had stopped the mighty Carl Hemmer cold even as Winston, a much lesser team, had done the week before. There was no reason why they could not add to their score or, failing in this, hold a stubbornly defensive Taber to no goals.
Lank Broderick, Taber’s left wing, true to his word, tried to crack Siddall’s defense but was repulsed. He tried again and again, being body-checked out of play. The crowd seemed to sense that he was attempting to make up in a measure for Carl’s strange loss of form and he was cheered each time he took the puck.