THEOPHILUS BETRAYS HICKS
Big Butch Brewster, a life-sized picture of despair, roosted dejectedly on
the Senior Fence, between the Gym and the Administration Building. It was
quite cold, and also the beginning of the last study-period before Butch's
final and most difficult recitation of the day, Chemistry. Yet instead
of boning in his warm room, the behemoth Senior perched on the fence and
stared gloomily into space.
As he sat, enveloped in a penumbra of gloom, the campus entrance door of
Bannister Hall, the Senior dorm., opened suddenly, and T. Haviland Hicks,
Jr., that happy-go-lucky youth, came out cautiously, after the fashion of a
second-story artist, emerging from his crib with a bundle of swag, the
last item being represented by a football tucked under Hicks' left arm.
Beholding Butch Brewster on the Senior Fence, the sunny-souled Senior
exhibited a perturbation of spirit seeming undecided whether to beat a
retreat or to advance.
"Now what's ailin' you?" demanded Butch wrathily, believing the
pestersome Hicks to be acting in that burglarious manner for effect. "Why
should you sneak out of a dorm., bearing a football like it was an auk's
egg? Why, you resemble a nigger, making his get-away after robbing a
hen-roost! Don't torment me, you accident-somewhere-on-its-way-to-happen. I
feel about as joyous as a traveling salesman who has made a town and gotten
nary a order!"
"It's awful!" soliloquized T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., perching beside the
despondent Butch on the Senior Fence. "I am not a fatalist, old man, but
it does seem that fate hasn't destined Thor to play football for old
Bannister this season! Here, after he won the Ham game, and we expected him
to waltz off with Ballard's scalp and the Championship, he has to tumble
downstairs! Oh, it's tough luck!"
It was two days before the biggest game, with Ballard—the contest that
would decide the State Intercollegiate Football Championship. Ballard, the
present champions, discounting even Hamilton's stories of Thor's prowess,
were coming to Bannister with an eleven more mighty than the one that had
crushed the Gold and Green the year before, with a heavy, stonewall line,
fast ends, and a powerful, shifty backfield. The Ballard team was confident
of victory and the pennant. Bannister, building on the awakened Thorwald,
superbly sure of his phenomenal strength and power, of his unstoppable
rushes, serenely practiced the doctrine of preparedness, and awaited the
day.
And then John Thorwald, the Prodigious Prodigy, whose gigantic frame seemed
unbattered by the terrific daily scrimmage, whom it was impossible to
hurt on the gridiron, the day before, going downstairs in Creighton Hall,
hurrying to a class, had caught his heel on the top step, and crashed to
the bottom! And now, with a broken ankle, the blond Colossus, heartbroken
at not being able to win the Championship for old Bannister, hobbled about
on crutches. Without Thor, the Gold and Green must meet the invincible
Ballard team! It was a solar-plexus blow, both to the Bannister youths,
confident in Thor's prowess, building on his Herculean bulk, and to the
big Freshman. Thorwald, awakened, striving to grasp campus tradition, to
understand college life, was eager to fling himself into the scrimmage, to
give every ounce of his mighty power, to offer that splendid body, for his
Alma Mater, and now he must hobble impotently on the side-line, watching
his team fight a desperate battle.
"If Bannister only had a sure, accurate drop-kicker!" reflected Captain
Butch hopelessly. "One who could be depended on to average eight out of ten
trials, we'd have a fighting chance with Ballard. Deke Radford is a wonder.
He can kick a forty-five-yard goal, but he's erratic! He might boot the
pigskin over when a score is needed from the forty-yard line, and again he
might miss from the twenty-yard mark. Oh, for a kicker who isn't brilliant
and spectacular, but who can methodically drop 'em over from, say, the
thirty-five-yard line! Hello, what's the row, Hicks?"
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., started to speak, changed his mind, coughed, grew
red and embarrassed, and acted in a most puzzling manner. At any other
time, big Butch would have been bewildered; but with Thor's loss weighing
on his mind, the Gold and Green captain gave his comrade only a cursory
glance.
"I—I—Oh, nothing, Butch!" stammered Hicks, to whom, being "fussed," as
Bannister termed embarrassment, was almost unknown. "I—I guess I'll
take this football over to my locker in the Gym. I ought to glance at my
Chemistry, too. So-long, Butch; see you later, old top!"