"All ready, Chick!" "Are you ready, Bert?" "Signal!" "What's the signal?" "Steady there." "Signal?"
The Grant City team, which seemed to have occasional spells of confused conversation, appeared all at sea as the ball was about to be put in play.
"Signal?" "Hey, signal!"
The left guard and tackle of the visitors rose from their crouch, apparently uncertain as to the play. At that instant, however, the ball was passed. Logically, with two men out of the play, Lakeville should have had no trouble in stopping the runner with the ball. But he crashed through the Lakeville line between right tackle and end, past Peter Barrett, on secondary defense, in spite of that youth's frantic dive, and so free till, some twenty-five yards distant, Bunny, who was playing back, wriggled through the interference and plumped the runner to earth.
On the side lines, Substitute Rodman Cree dug his finger nails into his palms. "It's a trick play," he muttered. "They don't seem to understand it themselves, but they gain every time they try it. What's the secret?"
"Three minutes of the half left!" Horace Hibbs, acting as official timer, squinted inquiringly at the two teams. "If our boys don't stop that maneuver, Grant is going to score, sure as shooting."
"It's the third time, too," Rodman put in, "but they always gain their distance—and more. I wish I could figure it out."
Following his resolution of the morning, he had come to the game without hope of playing, but with the fixed intent to do everything in his power for the team. So far, he felt he had failed.
True, before the game started, his quick eye had noted that the cord used by the linesmen for measuring downs was almost a yard short. This fact he had pointed out to Mr. Sefton, acting linesman for Lakeville, and the mistake had been corrected. It was Rodman, too, who before the game had discovered and levered away a small boulder, hidden near one of the goal posts. In the case of Bennett, the substitute halfback, who squatted on the side lines and followed each play with the movements of his body, thus wearing himself out before he was put in the game, Rodman had induced the boy, by a joking remark or two, to stretch out and relax until he was wanted. But he felt that these aids were really nothing at all. Wasn't it impossible, after all, to do anything worth while for the team when you weren't the coach, and couldn't play, and when everybody had lost faith in you?
But, at least for the moment, he forgot his difficult task in the smash of the play that was bringing the first half to an end. The ball had touched Lakeville's thirty-yard line, when Jump intercepted a forward pass and ran it back a third of that distance. A sturdy drive by Barrett brought fifteen more; a forward pass netted another substantial gain; three line plunges left Lakeville but twenty-five yards to go.