“Left?” inquired Monty.
“Always when you take a pass from center to run right or left, Crail, because the ball goes under your arm. If you’re going straight ahead or nearly straight, so you carry the ball against your stomach, start naturally with your right foot. Now then, you’re running the left end. Ready, Willard!”
Once or twice there came a poor pass which Monty failed to get or, getting, mishandled, and once he fumbled a perfectly clean throw. But his catching was good, on the whole. After awhile he was moved closer to Willard and at one side and took the ball at an oblique pass. “The play’s a shift,” explained Manson, “with you three backs strung out in a line. At the ‘Hep!’ your quarter falls back and the ball shoots to you and you slide off their guard on the opposite side. Willard, you step forward as though you were breaking through. Your play is square over the spot Willard stands now, Crail. That’s that ‘44, 44’ shift, with ball to right half or fullback. I want you to get that pat.”
After a half-hour or so—Monty knew that it was about that time because the teams were back on the benches when he had time to look—Manson called a halt. “That’ll do for this time. Much obliged, Willard. Now, Crail, I’m going to talk a little while.” He limped back around the grandstand and sank onto a seat away from the bench. “Sit down and get your breath. Bonner may be wanting you in the next quarter. Crail, you strike me as a chap who was intended to play fullback and play it well. What I don’t understand is how you got into the line in the first place. Didn’t you ever think you’d like to play behind?”
“Never thought much about it,” answered Monty. “All the playing I’ve ever done was last fall at the military school out in Indiana. I didn’t know anything about football when I struck there and only went out because they got after me. They stuck me at tackle and I didn’t set the world on fire so you’d notice it.”
“Well, tackle wouldn’t be a bad place for you on a team that played a hard running game, Crail, but you’d be a misfit in that place with a team that played the plunging game. No, I think you’re meant for a fullback. Now I’m going to tell you something, and I don’t want you to breathe it to anyone before the Mount Morris game. That a bargain?”
“Yes, of course, Manson.”
“Well, I’m out of it for this season. I might play, I suppose. Doc says I may and Bonner thinks I’m going to. But I’m not. I’ve only got one knee on that leg, Crail, and next fall I’ll be at Dartmouth. My brother made a name for himself at Dartmouth and I’m expected to follow his example. Well, if I do I’m not going to do it with a bum knee. No, sir, that knee is going to have a rest from now until next fall. It may sound as though I was going back on the school, Crail, but I don’t figure it like that. I know well enough that I could go into the Mount Morris game and play for awhile. Maybe I’d last the game through. But if I did play this knee of mine would never be any real good again. I know that. Doc’s as good as said so. I want Grafton to win, you bet, but I’m not flattering myself enough to think that she can’t win without me. She can. Caner can play well enough, and there’s Fenton and you. If I take care of this old leg I’ll have four years of football at college. If I don’t I’ll have to get my letter on the Chess Team. Not only that: I might have a weak knee all my life, and that’s too much of a price to pay. Now, what do you say? Think I’m a squealer?”
“No, I don’t think so,” answered Monty thoughtfully. “I think you’re sensible, more sensible than most fellows would be about it. And I have a hunch that it’s a lot harder for you to give up playing the rest of the season than you’re letting on.”
“It is,” acknowledged Manson wryly. “It—well, it sort of hurts, Crail!” He was silent a moment. Then: “Sometimes I think I’ll take a chance,” he muttered. “I might get through all right. With a good pad—” His voice dwindled into silence again. Then: “Well, what I was getting at was that you’ve got a pretty fair chance to make a killing, Crail, if you buckle down and learn the—the fine points. It isn’t likely that Caner would play the Mount Morris game through. That bunch play hard and a back is likely to be pretty well used up by the end of the third period, if not before. Fenton’s all right, but he doesn’t carry enough weight for the job; or, rather, his weight isn’t low enough; he doesn’t keep his feet very well. So you’d probably get in if Caner came out. That’s something to work for, Crail, because you’d get your letter, if you didn’t do any more, and getting your G in your lower middle year is quite a feat. I’m telling you this because I want you to make good. I’ll do everything I can to help you along. I owe it to the team and the school to find a good substitute if I—desert them.”