Bert Wilson on the Gridiron

by J. W. Duffield

"Sprained, is it," he said with a voice that he tried to render calm. "It's broken."

"What!" cried Ellis as he realized all this meant to him.

"Are you sure, Reddy?" asked Hendricks, aghast.

"I wish I wasn't," was the answer, "but I've seen too many of them not to know."

To poor Ellis the words sounded like the knell of doom. The pain was excruciating, but in the rush of sensations it seemed nothing. The real disaster lay in the fact that it put him definitely off the football team. All his work, all his sacrifice of time and ease, all his hopes of winning honor and glory under the colors of the old college had vanished utterly. Henceforth, he could be only a looker on where he had so fondly figured himself as a contender. His face was white as ashes, and the coach shrank from the look of abject misery in his eyes.

"Come now, old man, buck up," he tried to comfort him. "We'll send for the best surgeon in New York, and he'll have you on your feet again before you know it. You may make the big games yet." But in his heart he knew that it was impossible, and so did all the pale-faced crowd of players who gathered round their injured comrade and carried him with infinite care and gentleness to his rooms.

The rest of the practice was foregone that afternoon as, under the conditions, it would have been simply a farce, and the players made their way moodily off the field, chewing the bitter cud of their reflections. Sympathy with Ellis and consternation over this new blow to their prospects filled their minds to the exclusion of everything else.

Bert and Tom and Dick—the "Three Guardsmen," as they had been jokingly called, as they were always together—walked slowly toward their rooms. The jaunty swing and elastic step characteristic of them were utterly gone. Their hearts had been bound up in the hope of victory, and now that hope was rapidly receding and bade fair to vanish altogether.

Apart from the general loss to the team, each had his own particular grievance. Tom, as quarterback, saw with dismay the prospect of drilling the new men in the complicated system of signals, of which there were more than sixty, each of which had to be grasped with lightning rapidity. The slightest failure might throw the whole team in hopeless confusion. Dick was ruminating on the loss of Ellis, whose position in the line had been right at his elbow, and with whom he had learned to work with flawless precision on the defense. And Bert would miss sorely the swift and powerful coöperation of Axtell at right half. Those two in the back field had been an army in themselves.

"The whole team is shot to pieces," groaned Tom.