Buck sat up presently. He was unhurt, except as to pride. "Trying to lay me out?" he blazed. "You needn't half kill a fellow to bring him down."
The look he gave Bunny made some of the other substitutes shake their heads wisely. The little quarter had offended his captain. It wasn't exactly diplomatic, and—Well, they guessed he wouldn't try it again.
But a few minutes later, when exactly the same situation arose, they wondered what he would do. Again Buck took the ball on a straight line plunge; again his interference swept aside the other tacklers of the secondary defense, leaving only the shunted Bunny as a possible danger.
Runner and tackler met. The two came together with a crash. Buck staggered forward blindly, tottered, caught himself once, and then fell heavily. Bunny rebounded from the shock, but he did not plunge to the ground. Instead, a very remarkable thing happened.
In the very twinkling of an eye, so sudden was the transformation, Bunny ceased to be a tackler and became a runner. In some mysterious manner, the ball that Buck had been carrying, snuggled in the crook of his arm, was now the other's.
There appeared to be no tardy recognition of the shift on Bunny's part. Even as Buck was falling, the quarterback started racing down the field toward his goal. The point of the ball was tucked into his armpit. His hand clasped the other end. The biceps of his arm pressed hard against the rough surface.
Bunny could run like a deer. Before the astonished scrubs could recover their wits, he was flashing past, dodging now and then, circling some more alert tackler, pushing off another with a moist palm, but always sprinting over the white lines that marked the field.
But the surprising play was not yet done. Without any apparent reason, the runner slowed to a trot and finally stopped altogether. Specs rushed up and tackled him apologetically.
A certain touchdown had been sacrificed by Bunny on some mad impulse.
The little crowd of rooters that fringed the field babbled its consternation and disgust. The scrubs smiled knowingly at each other. Coach Leland plucked off the players who had piled on the boy with the ball, and then yanked the youngster to his feet with a practiced hand.