"Sheffield. We aren't claiming, though, that he isn't the best basketball player in Lakeville. He is, I guess. But in those last games, at least, he had more chances to score than any other player."
"Exactly!" said Bonfire. "And that is how Lakeville will beat Elkana Saturday—if it does. By teamwork, by each player's forgetting himself for the good of the machine, by feeding the ball at every opportunity to the best basket-shooter of them all—Royal Sheffield. Kiproy won't try to score, but to pass the ball to Sheffield whenever he can, and then hover under the basket for a possible miss; and so will Collins and Barrett and Turner. You four fellows might loop it in from the center of the floor, or from off to one side—sometimes! Sheffield won't miss one try out of five. Do you see what I mean?"
It was obvious that they did. There was a solemn nodding of heads. Curiously enough, slow-thinking Bi was the one to voice the thought that was taking root in the mind of each of them.
"But why," he asked, "didn't Sheffield explain his system to Bunny and S. S. and Jump and me, and have us feed the ball to him in the game?"
Bonfire answered with another question. "Why did you fellows think he had dropped you from the team for spite?" He waited a moment for the idea to grip. "Don't you see, Bi, that just as surely as you have been mistrusting him, just that surely he has been questioning your willingness to do him a good turn without hope of reward? The others are so glad to make the team that they will play as he says."
"But we would—"
"Of course, you would," Bonfire caught him up. "But Sheffield doesn't know that your good turns are not done for pay, even in applause. He doesn't know that when a Boy Scout does a good turn, he doesn't wait around for thanks; doesn't even tell anybody else he has done a good turn. I am sorry he can't understand, because I know that if you fellows only had the chance, you'd play up to him as those others never will. But—Well, let's keep that eighth law in mind; let's be cheerful and obey orders." He glanced apologetically toward Bunny. "I didn't mean to preach," he added, smiling.
Bunny smiled back understandingly. At that moment, he was thinking not only that Bonfire was a mighty good Boy Scout, but that he would make an equally satisfactory patrol leader. If the Black Eagles ever needed a new Number 1——
"Going to the game?" Specs asked Bonfire abruptly.
"No—o. I'd like to, but I can't afford to spend the money."