Danforth Plays the Game: Stories for Boys Little and Big

by Ralph Henry Barbour

It was hardly fair to call him pretty, although his fresh complexion, yellow-brown hair and rather finely cut features made him strikingly good-looking. He was fairly tall for his age, which was fifteen, well made and carried himself with a lithe grace emphasized by the new suit of football togs he wore. The khaki trousers were quite immaculate, and so were the red stockings, and so was the red jersey. Even his shoes were unscuffed, and altogether he looked very much as though he had but a moment before stepped from the pictured advertisement of some dealer in athletic supplies. Possibly it was the fashion-plate suggestion that had prompted the group near by to ridicule.

At first Harry Danforth had not associated the remarks with himself and had looked around out of sheer curiosity. When he understood that he was the butt of their humor the blood flooded into his cheeks and he faced hurriedly away. Like many boys with fair complexions, he blushed on slight provocation, and he was always ashamed of it. He walked slowly away in an effort to evade his tormentors, but their voices still reached him.

“Oh, see the blush of modesty upon the face of the pretty little boy! How beautiful is modesty!”

There was more, but Harry didn’t hear it. Taking refuge at the edge of a group of waiting candidates, he sought to forget his burning cheeks. But as, at his advent, many of the fellows turned to observe him, his embarrassment continued.

“See the study in red,” whispered one youth laughingly to his companion, and although he had not meant the strange boy to hear him, the latter did hear, and felt the blood surging harder than before into his face. He was heartily glad when, at that instant, the coach summoned them on to the field.

There were fully sixty candidates on hand that first afternoon of football practice at Barnstead Academy. Some few of them were members of the last season’s eleven, more were second-string players of the year before, and the balance were, like Harry, new candidates. Mr. Worden, the head coach, a finely built, pleasant-faced man of about thirty, took the names of all who had reported. In this task he was assisted by a boy of eighteen or so whose name Harry later learned was Phillips. Phillips was manager of the team. Harry gave his name, age, class, weight and details of former football experience to Phillips and was promptly sent to the awkward squad, or Squad Z, as the school facetiously termed it. There he was one of a group of some twenty youths whose ages ranged from thirteen to sixteen and who, in the course of the hour’s instruction that followed, exhibited every phase of football inexperience. The awkward squad was in charge of a large boy whom the coach addressed as Barrett. Barrett looked to be about seventeen and wore a vastly bored expression all the time that he labored with the beginners. If his features lighted at all during that period it was when Harry showed by his handling of the pigskin that he at least might possibly have the makings of a player. Barrett watched him speculatively, almost interestedly, at intervals, and once even vouchsafed a grunt of satisfaction as Harry fell neatly on a wabbling ball and snuggled it under his chest.

Meanwhile the more advanced candidates were punting and catching or trotting about the field behind a shrill-voiced quarterback. Harry, in the intervals between his own duties, had time to watch, and what he saw he found a little bit discouraging. Where he had come from, quite a ways beyond the New England hills that closed this pleasant valley at the west, he had been looked on as something of a player. On his high school team he had made a reputation for himself that was quite remarkable considering his age, and when, in the Spring, he had announced his impending departure for preparatory school his schoolmates had set up a veritable howl of despair. Once reconciled, however, they had pictured in gorgeous colors Harry’s football future. Of course he would make the school team at Barnstead at once, would do wonderful things there and then go up to college far-famed and glorious. Pete Wilkinson, avid reader of romance, had drawn Harry aside and begged him not to accept the first offer he received from college scouts.

“Just hold back on them and they’ll give you anything you want, Harry. Wait till you get all the offers and then choose the best. Why, the big colleges will do most anything for fellows who can play the game the way you can!”

Harry had gravely promised to be discreet in the matter, not considering it worth while to point out to the sanguine Pete that even if the colleges clamored and fought for him, which he didn’t in the least consider likely, he had already made up his mind where to go and that all the bribes in the world would not change his mind. But while he was a person of some note at Hillston High School, he felt himself a very small and unimportant atom here at Barnstead. He had come quite unheralded and his fame had not preceded him. Here he was just one more kid to be hammered into shape or, found wanting, to be tossed aside with the other discards in the yearly game of making a football team. And watching the play of the experienced fellows, Harry saw that there was quite a difference between Hillston standards and Barnstead! The team here was evidently made up of fellows much older than he, for one thing. His roommate, a chap named Colgan, whose athletic interests stopped at an occasional set of tennis, had told him that Coach Worden showed a partiality for the younger candidates and that Harry’s youthfulness would not be a disadvantage if he could play the game. But this afternoon, with so many older fellows in sight, Harry felt that if he made the school team inside the next two years he would be lucky. But in spite of discouraging thoughts he paid flattering attention to Barrett’s instructions, performed as well as he knew how and proved a shining example to the other members of Squad Z.