To his credit, be it said that Buck charged with the others. The Belden line sagged, tautened, broke for an instant. The players eddied and tossed, and were sucked into the human whirlpool. Somewhere at the bottom, Buck heard the long pipe of the official's whistle. Then, as daylight reached him, he discerned the smeared white goal line directly beneath him, and on it—no, a good inch beyond!—the soiled yellow ball. It was over. The touchdown had been made.
The balance of the game was like a vague dream. Somebody kicked the goal and added another point. Somebody kicked off. The teams lined up once more before a whistle ended the game. Lakeville was interscholastic champion of the State.
Bunny slapped his captain on the back. "We beat 'em, Buck!" he yelled. "We beat 'em, didn't we?"
"Yes," said Buck Claxton distinctly, "we beat them, you little sneak!"
The team cheered Belden then; and Belden came back with a pretty poor apology of the formula that runs, "What's the matter with Lakeville? They're all right!" And then Belden, sad, defeated, yearning for seclusion, shucked out of its football suits and into street clothes, and went away from there just as fast as it could.
Before the game, the Scouts had invited the Lakeville squad to the Black Eagle Patrol clubhouse for supper. When the invitation had been extended, Buck, Barrett, Sheffield and Co. had looked blank, neither accepting nor declining. But at six o'clock they were there, appearing awkward and embarrassed, but altogether too happy over the result of the game to bear any resentment. That is to say, all of them looked that way except Buck, who stared straight ahead during the meal, and wouldn't talk, and didn't appear to be listening to the jokes and jests that were bandied back and forth.
But when the meal was done, and Bunny, as toastmaster, with clenched hands under the table, where nobody could see them, and a forced smile on his face, which everybody could see, rose and said easily, "I guess we'd all like to hear from the captain," Buck met the issue squarely.
"I'm not much of a speech maker," he began slowly (and rapidly proved that the literary and debating society had taught him to be a very good one, indeed), "but there's something that must be said, and I'm going to ask you fellows to listen while I say it. This last week has been a hard one for all of us, I guess, but I think the one who's felt the hurts most is Quarterback Bunny Payton."
They all looked at Bunny, of course, and the boy felt his face go white. What was the captain of the football team going to say about him?
"Back a while," Buck went on doggedly, "I thought Bunny was no good. I guess a lot of you saw what happened during practice—you know, when I was sore at him, and he tackled me and got hold of the ball, and then wouldn't make a touchdown because he thought he had committed a foul. He was—was in pretty bad, because it looked as if he had a streak of yellow and was afraid of—well—me. I thought so. But I was—was way off. It was just plain nerve that made him stop when he had the ball.