Gowen shrugged. “You most always are. When you run eighty yards at that pace you don’t have much breath left to cheer with. You’ll be feeling fine tomorrow. Better go over to the gym in the morning, though, and get Davy to give you a good rubbing.”
That run didn’t make a hero of Monty, probably because the score wasn’t needed and little depended on its success. But it had been sufficiently thrilling for awhile to partly atone for that, and it did send Monty’s stock up considerably. From a practically unknown substitute he emerged a player of promise, one of whom something equally brilliant might be expected again. Members of the team nodded or spoke more familiarly to him when he met them and others who had before never noticed him were now careful to claim recognition. But the feat didn’t alter his standing on the squad so far as he could see, and it certainly didn’t cause his removal to the training table. After all, as he told himself, luck had played a big part in the performance. Luck had caused the ball to bound toward him instead of in another direction and luck had guided him through the ranks of the enemy. All he had done was run like the dickens! And one doesn’t get promotion for doing merely what is natural and instructive.
Leon, however, and Jimmy and Dud as well, insisted that he was a hero. Leon was quite incensed because Coach Bonner didn’t oust Gowen and put Monty in his place. Monty had been, he warmly maintained, the star of the game. Monty grinned. “A little piece of luck, Leon,” he said. “I might not do it again if I played football twenty years. I’m not half the player that Pete Gowen is, and I don’t believe I ever shall be.”
Jimmy’s comment was—well, more Jimmyish! “It’s only Bonner’s pig-headedness that keeps him from yanking you off the bench,” he declared. “Bonner hates to acknowledge that he’s made a mistake. All coaches do. You might as well hand in your resignation tomorrow, Monty. No matter what stupendous stunts you pull off now, you won’t get your deserts. They just won’t see them. I know, for I tried football myself once. I did things that no other football player ever even attempted, old dear, and did I get a kind word and an invitation to dinner with the coach? I did not. I got fired! There’s gratitude and appreciation for you! I guess—” Jimmy half closed his eyes and shook his head sadly—“I guess I’d have been captain by now.”
The effect on Alvin Standart of Monty’s touchdown in the Middleton game was peculiar. Alvin appeared to take it as a personal insult. He was quite depressed over it all Sunday, and never lost a chance to comment on it disagreeably. “I suppose you think you’re a regular hero now,” he sneered. “Trotted all the way down the field with the ball, didn’t you? I guess if the ball hadn’t jumped into your arms and someone hadn’t given you a shove you’d be standing around there yet. You’re waiting for Bert Winslow to step out and give you the captaincy, I dare say. When are they going to take you to training table? Have you and Bonner planned next week’s game yet?”
Most of Alvin’s wit, though, went unheeded. Monty had acquired an ability to let his roommate talk on and on without hearing him, a fortunate acquirement since otherwise Monty would have been tired or angry half the time. Life with Alvin Standart was not a bed of roses nowadays and almost anyone but Monty would have either dropped Alvin out a window or run away in self-defence. Sometimes Monty was tempted to do one or the other of those things, but he always managed to summon his sense of humor to his aid. After all, he reasoned, Alvin’s mouthings and meannesses were too silly to be taken seriously. One might much better laugh at them. But that Sunday afternoon, when Alvin had begun his nagging for the twentieth time since the game, Monty’s patience and sense of humor gave out. He was trying to compose one of his monthly letters to Mr. Holman, his guardian, and Alvin’s rasping voice was too much for him. So at last he arose and, not without trouble, put the objectionable roommate outside and locked the door on him. Alvin kicked and hammered and shouted until the others assembled en masse and read the riot act to him. After that he disappeared until supper time and Monty, making the most of the unaccustomed tranquillity, wrote a full seven pages to his guardian.
Of course he told about yesterday’s game and his part in it. He assured Mr. Holman several times that his contribution to the final total of twenty-two points was of no importance and had been entirely due to a piece of luck, but he dwelt on the event to the extent of two pages. Then he reported a slight betterment in class standing and subsequently gave a quite dispassionate account of the affair of the missing keys, and ended with:
So maybe they’ll get me some fine day and I’ll have to pull my freight. If I do I guess I’ll go home until January. I might try that school I started for, only they don’t think much of it here, you see. I guess some place out our way would do just as well. I’ll be kind of sorry if they do give me the gate because I like this outfit mighty well. Maybe you had better send me some money in case I leave hurriedly. I’m about down to the core of that roll I fetched away with me. There might be a fine to pay, too, because if Standart shoots off his mouth to the faculty I’m sure going to treat him brutal.
The next afternoon Monty found a surprise awaiting him at the field. After tackling practice, at which Monty had developed more than a fair degree of proficiency, he was on his way to join the third squad for signal work when Coach Bonner summoned him back.