"They will, will they?" he roared, jumping to his feet.
He pressed a button on his desk, and his confidential man came in.
"Thompson," said Ames hurriedly, "I've been called East on important business. Keep in touch with me by wire. I've just got time to catch the Twentieth Century Express."
CHAPTER IX
Hammered into Shape
LIKE a sheaf of arrows, the other telegrams sped over the country, and most of them went straight to the mark. A mining engineer in Montana got one, and pulled up stakes at once. A rising young lawyer in Minneapolis found it necessary to look up some data in the old college library. A guest on a houseboat down near Jacksonville made hurried excuses and came North by the first train. Others felt urgently the need of a brief vacation from their accustomed duties and acted promptly on the impulse. Not a week had elapsed before ten of the dozen were on the scene of action. Of the remaining two, one was up in the North Woods and could not be reached, and the other was on his honeymoon.
They had a royal welcome from the coach, who had not doubted for a moment that they would heed the call. He knew that the old war horses would "sniff the battle from afar" and come galloping to the fray. Now that they were there, he felt the lightening of the tremendous load of responsibility he had been carrying since the beginning of the season. These men were not theorists, but from actual experience knew every point of the game from start to finish. Now he could divide his men up into squads, each one presided over by an expert who could coach each individual player in the duties of his position, while Hendricks himself could exercise a general supervision of the whole.
"It was bully of you fellows to come," he said, as they gathered in his rooms, as full of life and ginger as so many two-year-old colts. "And, now that you are here, I'm going to give you plenty of work to do. Heaven knows there's enough to keep you busy if we're to have a ghost of a show to win this fall."