Something in Mack's brain went hot at the realization that his team-mates were trusting him no longer. Here was Frank, trying to take a ball away from him which was rightfully his to accept. Frank made the catch, snatching the ball practically out of Mack's arms.
"Get in front of me!" he yelled.
Mack had no other choice. Pomeroy players were sifting through Grinnell's interference as Mack shot up the field, with the fleet-footed Frank constantly urging him on to greater speed, until both got behind a wedge of their own team members who were doing an excellent job of crashing Pomeroy tacklers. At mid-field the wedge was broken up and Mack and Frank emerged from the heap on their own.
"To the right!" directed Frank, seeing that two tacklers were bearing down from the left. Mack changed directions obediently.
Grinnell supporters, wild with hope, screamed the two runners on.
"Look out from behind!" they shrieked, as a Pomeroy player, giving mad chase, was rapidly closing up the gap.
Frank looked back over his shoulder, then called to the fellow who had put his own team in the hole.
"Mack—drop back and take that guy out!"
"Okay!" answered Mack, dropping at once to the rear as Frank raced past him.
The Pomeroy tackler loomed up almost at once and Mack, whose charge down the field as Frank's interferer had been fraught with one spectacular piece of frenzied blocking after another, now completed his task by hurling himself in front of the last threat to Frank's sensational touch down dash from kick-off. Tackler and interferer went down in a thudding pile as Grinnell's star halfback crossed Pomeroy's goal line and triumphantly touched the ball down. Then the field rocked with sound.