“Oh, all right.” Stuart was silent a moment. Then he added: “It’s easy enough for you chaps, but—but I’m captain! Hang it, what’s the good of having a captain if he hasn’t any more authority than a third string substitute? Since the season started I haven’t had a voice in one single decision that’s been made! I’m sick of it, I tell you! For two cents I’d throw it up! I would, by gosh!”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t,” said Jack soothingly. “You’re not the sort to desert under fire, old man. Come on and I’ll play you fifty points at billiards before math.”
Stuart allowed himself to be dragged to Meigs where, perhaps not without some connivance on Jack’s part, he ran out twelve points to the good.
After three weeks of trial, the plan of doing without the training table appeared to be a success. At first some of the new candidates took advantage of their freedom and ate not wisely but too well, but they soon discovered that it didn’t work. The Laird had an eagle’s eye for physical condition, and when a warning wasn’t sufficient a day or two on the bench—and a four-lap jog of the track—brought the offender around. Even Stuart was obliged to confess that the new plan was working satisfactorily, although he made the confession without great enthusiasm and only to The Laird. He and The Laird were very close friends, and he could make admissions of this sort to him.
A week of hard practice followed the Walsenburg game and then Manning met Forest Hill School and won decisively, 27 to 3, and the season was half over.
CHAPTER VII
THE ATH. FAC. TAKES A HAND
Before the Forest Hill game was a thing of the past, however, the dissensions between coach and captain had produced the inevitable result. There was a feeling of disquiet and apprehension among the players that showed itself in little but unmistakable ways and, while as yet it showed no apparent effect on their work, threatened to impair their morale sooner or later. There was a good deal of talk, a good deal of discussion, and the fellows began to take sides. Five or six of the veterans honestly considered that Mr. Haynes had been and still was conducting the affairs of the team in a high-handed manner, and while they credited him with the best of intentions they still held that Stuart was “getting a raw deal.” To these faithful supporters were added a few others who, caring little about the merits of the case, loved a scrap for its own sake. To be fair to Stuart it should be said that, if he did little to prevent this situation, he at least did nothing intentionally to produce it. When he found that the players were actually beginning to take sides he saw the danger and, not hypocritically, declared that “Haynes was boss and it was up to them all to obey orders and not shoot off their mouths.” That, though, only brought knowing looks. Of course Stuart would talk like that: he would feel that he had to!
The other side hinted disagreeably that the captain had a swelled head; that he always had had and that it was bigger than ever since he had been made captain: and that any fellow who couldn’t get along with a chap like Mr. Haynes was a natural-born grouch. Stuart found support and sympathy in an unsuspected quarter in the shape of manager Fred Locker. Locker had nothing against the coach personally, but he had spent three years at Manning and had seen things done differently, and, while he had nothing to say publicly, he let Stuart know his sentiments. He talked to Jack one evening, too, but he quickly agreed with the latter that, whoever was in the right, Stuart mustn’t be allowed to “mess things up and make a fool of himself.” The main thing, of course, was to lick Pearsall and it was every fellow’s duty to work for that result.