Head Coach Patrick Henry Corridan, known to toil-tortured Gold and Green
football squads from time immemorial as "the Slave-Driver," Captain Butch
Brewster, and serious Deacon Radford, the star Bannister quarter-back,
foregathered around a table in the Camp Bannister grub-shack.
It was ten-thirty of the morning whose dawn T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., had
blithesomely hailed with an impromptu musicale and saengerfest on "Lookout
There!" rock, and the football triumvirate were in togs. The squad, over in
the bunkhouse, noisily donned gridiron armor for the morning practice, and
the pestiferous Hicks was maintaining a mysterious silence, somewhere.
This football trio, on whom rested the responsibility of rounding out a
winning Bannister eleven, vastly resembled a coterie of German generals,
back of the trenches, studying a war-map. Before them was spread what
seemed to be a large checker-board. It was a miniature gridiron, with the
chalk-marks painted in white; there were thumb-tacks stuck here and there,
some with flat tops painted green and gold, others, representing the enemy,
were solid red. The former had names printed on them, Butch, Roddy,
Beef, and so on. By sticking these on the board, the three directors of
Bannister's football destiny could work out new plays, and originate
possible winning lineups.
"We've just got to win the State Championship this season, Coach!" declared
Butch, banging the table emphatically, as he stated a self-evident fact.
"It's my last year for Old Bannister, and so with Beef and Pudge. I'll give
every ounce of strength I possess In every game, to make that pennant float
over Bannister Field!"
"Bannister will win it!" vowed the behemoth Beef, his good-natured
countenance grim, and his jaw set. "Not for five years has a Gold and Green
team won the Championship—not since the year before Butch and I were
Freshmen! We've got a splendid bunch of material to build a team with,
and—"
"Our biggest problem is this," spoke Coach Corridan, as with a phenomenal
display of strength he took Beef McNaughton between thumb and forefinger
and placed him on the field. "We must strengthen both line and backfield,
for we lost by graduation Babe McCabe, Heavy Hughes, and Jack Merritt. Now,
to replace that lost power—"
Just then, from directly beneath the open window by which they had
gathered, like the midnight serenade of a romantic lover, sounded
the well-known foghorn voice of T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., as to the
plunkety-plunk of a banjo accompaniment, he warbled melodiously:
"Gone are the days—I used to spend with Car-o-li-nah!
She had the sunshine in her laughter (plunkety-plunk)
Just like that state they named her after—"
"Hicks!" announced Butch, stealthily approaching the window, and
beckoning his companions. "Easy—look at him, Deke, there he is, Hicks,
the irrepressible! We might as well attempt to stab a rhinocerous to death
with a humming-bird's feather, as to try and reform him!"
Arrayed like a lily of the field, a model of sartorial splendor, Hicks
occupied a chair beneath the window, tilted back gracefully against the
side of the grub-shack. He had decked his splinter-structure with a
dazzling Palm Beach suit, and a glorious pink silk shirt, off-set by a
lurid scarf. A Panama hat decorated his head, white Oxfords and flamboyant
hosiery adorned his feet, while the inevitable Cheshire cat grin beautified
his cherubic countenance. A latest "best seller" was propped on his knees,
and as he perused its thrilling pages, he carelessly strummed his beloved
banjo, and in stentorian tones chanted a sentimental ballad: