Ward and the rest reached the field not long after Phelps, and no time was lost in commencing practice. Tompkins was started off with the scrub, an organization composed mostly of scouts who were too small or lazy or indifferent or unskilful to make the regular eleven, together with a few outsiders who had been persuaded into lending their aid merely for the fun of the game. It was a motley crowd, and Sherman had his hands full holding them together. One or two, to be sure, were stimulated by the hope, which grew fainter with each day of practice, that they might supplant some member of the regular team in time to play in the game of the season, the struggle with the redoubtable Troop One, which would end the series and decide the championship. But the majority had no such dominating incentive. Their interest flagged continually, and it was only by a constant appeal to their scout spirit, by rebuke and ridicule, interspersed with well-timed jollying, that they could be kept to the scratch. When Dale Tompkins was given the position of right tackle, the boy whose place he had taken openly rejoiced, and not a few of his companions viewed the escape with envy.
The regulars started with the ball, and the first down netted them eight yards. The second plunge through the line was almost as successful; the third even more so. The scrub played apathetically, each fellow for himself. They lacked cohesion, and many of the individuals opposed the rushes half-heartedly and without spirit. Little Saunders, the scrub quarter, while working at full pressure himself, seemed to have grown discouraged by past failures to spur the fellows on. Occasionally he snapped out a rasping appeal for them to get together and do something, but there was a perfunctory note in his voice which told how little faith he had in their obeying.
To Ward, playing at left half on the regulars, it was an old story which had ceased, almost, to fret him. He had come to feel that the utmost he could hope for was to keep the scrub together and gain what practice was possible from their half-hearted resistance. Keeping his eye on Tompkins, he noted with approval that the boy was playing a very different sort of game. He flung himself into the fray with snap and energy, tackling well, recovering swiftly, and showing a pretty knowledge of interference. But it was soon apparent that his work failed more or less because of its very quickness. At every rush he was a foot or two ahead of the sluggish Vedder at guard or the discouraged Morris playing on his right. He might get his man and frequently did, but one player cannot do all the work of a team, and the holes in the line remained as gaping as before.
The regulars scored a touchdown and, returning to the center of the field, began the process anew. There was a sort of monotonous iteration about their advance that presently began to get a little on Sherman’s nerves. The crisp, shrill voice of Court Parker calling the signal, the thud of feet over the turf, the crash as the wedge of bodies struck the wavering line and thrust its way through it and on, on, seemingly to endless distance in spite of the plucky efforts of the boy at right tackle to stop it–it was all so cut and dried, so certain, so unvaried. Now and again would come the tired, ill-tempered snap of Saunders’s “Get into it, fellows! Wake up, for the love of Pete!” Occasionally, from left end, Ranny Phelps would make some sarcastic reference to Ward’s “great find,” to which, though it irritated him, the captain paid no heed. He was still watching critically and beginning to wonder, with a little touch of anxiety, whether Tompkins was going to be engulfed in the general slough of inertia. In this wise the play had progressed half-way toward the scrub’s goal-posts when suddenly a new note was injected into the affair.
“Steady, fellows. Let’s get together. It’s just as easy to fight back as to be walked over–and a lot more fun. Hold ’em, now!”
The voice was neither shrill nor snappish, but pitched in a sort of good-natured urgency. One guessed that the owner of it was growing weary of being eternally buffeted and flung aside. Ranny Phelps greeted the remark with a sarcastic laugh.
“Great head!” he jeered. “You must be quite an expert in the game. Why don’t you try it?”
Dale Tompkins raised his head and dashed one hand across a dripping forehead. “That’s what we’re going to do,” he smiled; “aren’t we, Morris, old man? Come ahead, Vedder; all we need is a little team-work, fellows.”
Stout Harry Vedder merely grunted breathlessly. But somehow, when the next rush came, his fat shoulders dropped a little lower and he lunged forward a shade more swiftly than he had done. Wilks, the weakest point in the opposing line, caught unexpectedly by the elephantine rush, went down, and Tompkins brought the man with the ball to earth by a nice tackle.
“That’s the stuff,” he gasped as he scrambled up. “Good boy! I knew you’d do it. Again, now!”