Guarding His Goal - Ralph Henry Barbour

And come she did, a long shot that skimmed through the air a foot above the ice and made straight for the center of the net. Toby silently applauded that shot even as he bent and brought his leg-guards together. There was a thud and the disk bounded yards away. Beech, who had followed it up, tried to snap it in, but he was skating too fast and the puck struck the side post.

“Good stop,” he applauded. “Thought I had you then.”

“It was a peach of a shot,” called Toby. “Give me some more like that, will you? Those are the sort I want to learn to stop.”

Beech obliged, but lift shots weren’t successful for him, and presently he went back to his first style, that of skating in close to goal and snapping the puck so quickly to one side or the other that it was difficult for Toby to move fast enough to block it. Once, being caught too far to one side of the cage, he tried to stop the puck with his stick blade and learned a lesson. For the puck jumped over the blade and rolled to the back of the net. Three times out of a dozen or so shots, Beech tallied in that fashion. Then Toby worked out the solution. The next time, when Beech came swinging up—he could shoot almost as well left-handed as right—Toby dashed out to meet him, a proceeding so unexpected to Beech that he almost forgot to shoot. When he did the puck bounded off Toby’s knee and skimmed off to the side of the rink.

“Huh!” grunted Beech. “I wondered how long you’d let me do that. Just the same, you don’t want to try that trick very often, Tucker, or you’ll come to grief. If there’d been some one with me I’d simply have passed, you see.”

They stopped a minute and talked that over. Beech seemed to have a good deal of hockey sense, Toby thought, and the older boy decided that young Tucker was a pretty brainy lad. Toward the last of the practice Mr. Loring appeared and watched interestedly.