Honest, you never saw anybody that's such a glutton for punishment! "Rus" gets sopping wet and all grass-stained and dog-tired but he keeps me throwing that football in all sorts of zig-zag bounces across the lawn till it's so dark that the street lights come on. And then he apologizes for not having traded off with me so's I could have got some of the same experience. "I'm just as well satisfied," I answers. "You don't need to feel bad about that!"
"We'll do it again, every chance we get," says "Rus," not seeming to notice my lack of enthusiasm, "I'm rotten! I missed at least half my dives. And as for scooping the ball up on the run, wasn't I pitiful? But that's what an end's got to be able to do and yours truly isn't going to make a bad muff in a game if he can help it!"
Being a friend of "Rus's" and practically a next door neighbor as well as a team-mate, I can't really turn the serious-minded bird down. Besides, I have to admit to myself that it's darn interesting watching the vim that "Rus" puts into this secret practice. Some nights it's mighty chilly and with the grass wet down it's enough to make your spinal column wriggle, but "Rus" never seems to mind.
"The most annoying part of this thing for me," says "Rus," "is 'Mom's' objection to my draping these wet togs over her radiators. She claims the house smells like a Chinese laundry every night. I tell her she must be a good sport and put up with it for the good of the team!"
Say, you'd be surprised, after a couple of weeks, to see how "Rus" improves! It gets to be marvelous the way he can tear across the lawn, reach down with those long fingers, scoop that slippery pigskin up and keep right on going toward what he imagines is the enemy's goal!
"Preparedness!" he'd smile at me. "That's one of the greatest words in the English language! I want to be ready when the fumble comes!"
Sometimes "Rus" would hit the lawn like an India rubber ball and almost seem to wrap his lean, lanky frame around the pigskin, bouncing up on his feet on the roll and untangling his legs from the knot to be streaking away almost before you could tell what was happening. Once he put so much steam behind it that he couldn't stop in time and plowed into the back fence, busting two boards loose and bruising his shoulder.
"Zowie! I ran into some real opposition that time!" he grinned.
It isn't long before all this extra practicing that "Rus" is doing begins to show up on the football field. In scrimmage he gets the reputation of being "sure-fingered" because he drags down passes, recovers fumbles and handles the ball so smoothly that it seems like he can't miss getting hold of it no matter how wild it goes. In comparison the rest of us look pretty sick, all excepting me ... and I'm a little better than average because of my experience with "Rus." Several times, while I'm playing my position at left half, there's a poor pass back from center and I have to drop on the ball. Believe me, I'm mighty thankful then for the special training I've picked up!
"This game of football is just a matter of following the ball," "Rus" airs to me one night, "I don't care what these wise birds say. There's breaks in every game that, if we could take advantage of 'em, would do more than all the fancy plays ever invented. Look at last week when we played Madison. We have 'em down on their own ten yard line and we break through and block the punt and two of our fellows dives for it. Do they get the ball? Yes, they do not! A Madison back, who knows his onions, shoots in—picks the ball up off his shoe tops after it's bounced out of our fellows' arms—and runs forty yards before he's stopped. That's what I call converting good fortune out of disaster! Either one of our boys ought to have downed the ball on Madison's eight yard line but both of 'em muffed it. On a dry field, too...! Inexcusable!"