Guarding His Goal

by Ralph Henry Barbour

“What’s the good of having them charged if I can’t pay for them?” asked Toby morosely. “Anyway, I wouldn’t dare to. When you win a scholarship you have to be mighty careful, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” laughed Arnold. “I never won one yet. Well, cheer up, old man. You’ll run across that money when you aren’t expecting to. Come along up to Cambridge and play pool.”

“I don’t know how, thanks. You go ahead.”

“Well, come and watch me beat Frank then.”

But Toby refused and presently Arnold hurried away to keep his appointment, leaving Toby staring disappointedly after him. “He’d rather play pool with Frank than help me find my money,” he told himself. Considering that Arnold had put in a good ten minutes of searching, that was rather unjust, but Toby was in no mood to judge persons or things fairly just now. “If it had been he who lost it,” Toby muttered resentfully, “I’d have stayed around and helped him find it. I wish I’d asked him to tell Frank to bring around that dollar and five cents!”

Presently he set to work restoring the room to its wonted tidiness, always hoping that the Hockey Fund would turn up. But it didn’t, and when things were once more in place he banged the door behind him and went downstairs and loafed disconsolately around the Prospect until dinner time. It was much too cold for comfort, but Toby found satisfaction in being miserable and cold.

He didn’t see Arnold at dinner, for he went into commons early, and Arnold, staying late at the pool table in the Cambridge Club—one of the two rival social and debating clubs of which the other was known as Oxford—didn’t arrive until he had gone out. Toby cleaned young Lingard’s clothes after dinner, filling Number 22 with the odor of benzine, and then hung the garments on their hangers by an open window. By that time it was nearly three and Toby went over to the gymnasium and joining the throng in the locker-room, changed into hockey togs. When he reached the rink Warren Hall was already hard at work, a dozen sturdy-looking youths with black-and-yellow stockings, sweaters and toques. Warren yielded the ice to Yardley, Toby and Frank skated to the goals and ten minutes of practice followed. To-day Toby’s heart was not in his work and about every other shot went past him into the cage. It seemed to him that he spent most of his time hooking the puck out with the blade of his stick. But he didn’t care. What Frank had said last night was probably quite true, anyway. No matter how hard he tried they’d never let him be more than a substitute this year. Even if Frank failed to make good Crowell would probably take Warren from the second to fill his place. The world was very unjust, and—

“Wake up, Tucker! Get onto your job!” cried Flagg at this point in his reflections. “I can’t play point and goal too, you know!”

So Toby tapped his stick on the ice, crouched and gave a very good imitation of a goal-tend with his mind on the game. The machinations of the forwards were foiled, Toby stopping the waist-high shot with his body and whisking the puck out of the way before Gladwin could reach it. But the next charge was more successful, although the shot was an easy one, and possibly it was well for Toby’s reputation as a coming goal-tend that the referee, a Greenburg High School teacher, blew his whistle about that time. Toby and the other substitutes skated to the boards, climbed over, donned their coats and ranged themselves on the benches. The two teams assembled about the referee and listened to his warnings and the rival captains watched the fall of the coin. Warren Hall, winning the toss, took the south goal. The players skated to position. For Yardley, Frank Lamson was at goal, Framer at point, Halliday at cover point, Crumbie at right center, Captain Crowell at left center, Arnold Deering at right end and Rose at left end. Jim Rose’s return to the first line-up was accepted on the bench as evidence that he had proved his right to hold the position for the rest of the season. Crowell and a tall black-and-yellow stockinged youth faced off, the whistles blew and the game began.

Warren Hall started a march toward the Yardley goal at the outset, but the right center was so slow on his skates that the rest of the forward line were all offside before the middle of the rink was reached. The puck was stopped, but Warren again secured it and her big cover point once more started down the center toward the opponent’s cage. Captain Crowell intercepted him, however, and took the puck away, and then, keeping a straight course with his team-mates abreast, he skated down to the black-and-yellow goal and shot through the outer defense for the first tally. Crowell had made no attempt to fool the defenders and his success was due to the fact that the Warren Hall goal-tend had the puck hidden from him by his skates. Some three minutes later Yardley caged the disk again after a very pretty exhibition of team work by Captain Crowell and Jim Rose. Crowell carried the puck down the ice and passed it to Rose near the Warren Hall goal. Rose slid it back to Crowell and the latter snapped it in. Yardley’s cheers, however, were quickly stilled, for a forward pass had been detected and the tally was not allowed.