CHAPTER XXII
HOLLYWOOD SPRINGS A SURPRISE
Monty was back under Manson’s tuition again the next afternoon. There was another fifteen minutes of taking direct passes from the center, during which Monty showed that he had profited reasonably by his lesson the day before, and then Manson began to teach him to throw the ball overhand. “If you can start forward-passes, Crail,” he explained, “it’s going to make you just that much more valuable. I’m not saying you can learn to do it awfully well in the time we’ve got left, but I intend to start you right, anyway. Now peg to Peet over there. Whoa, boy! You’re not putting the shot! Easy does it. Get your arm well stretched— Hold on, though. You’ve got to get a better grip on the ball than that. All your fingers against it, and the end against the palm. If you want to hold it in the middle, all right, but try this way first. You get more distance. Now get your arm well up and back. That’s the ticket, Crail. Keep your eyes on the goal; that is, Peet. You’ll never get the ball where you want it to go by looking somewhere else. Now throw your arm over easy and let go when— Not bad, but don’t run with it. Look here. Like this. One step’s enough. Get it? Peet, you come in nearer, please. We’ll try some short heaves first. No use trying for distance until you’ve got direction.”
Monty threw until his right arm began to tire and then Manson hauled him to the grandstand and seated him there and went on with his instruction verbally. Manson had the ability to put thoughts into words very clearly, and Monty found that he was learning many things he had never even considered. Finally Coach Bonner summoned him to take Caner’s place and there was a rather slow and frequently interrupted quarter-hour of scrimmaging with the second. Mistakes shown in yesterday’s game were recalled to the memories of the offenders and, altogether, this afternoon’s practice was distinctly onerous. Monty hardly knew whether he performed well or ill, so frequently was the game stopped for the correction of some fault, and he was glad when the whistle blew and released them. Manson fell in with him at the side line and kept him company to the field house, pointing out in his turn such errors as he had observed. Manson had abandoned his cane, but still walked with a noticeable limp, and Monty was forced to slacken his pace to that of his companion. Manson was very earnest, and although his pupil would gladly have postponed any more instruction to the next day he listened patiently, gratefully to Manson for the latter’s interest; Manson ended the criticism with an antidote of encouragement outside the field house door.
“Don’t get the idea that everything you did was all wrong, Crail,” he said, smiling. “It wasn’t. Fact is you showed up very well. You’re playing rather a decent game. But I want you to be better than just good, Crail; I want you to be a crack-a-jack. And you can be, too, if you make up your mind to it. I wish you could get more practice on throwing; it would help a lot. Couldn’t you find a half-hour or so in the morning? If you could get a ball and come over here and put in even twenty minutes every day it would be fine. Could you, do you think?”
“Yes, I think so. I haven’t a ball, but——”
“I’ll find one for you. Suppose you took a certain spot and tried to see how close you could come to it from different distances, eh? Put your sweater down and throw at that. Take plenty of time at first. Later you can speed up. Accuracy is the main thing, though. Try that, Crail, will you? I’ll dig up an old ball and leave it at your room tonight. You’ve got a full two weeks before the Mount Morris game and you ought to be able to improve your forward passing a lot in that time.”
Manson was as good as his word, and when Monty returned to his room late that evening the football was reposing on his bed and Alvin Standart was eyeing it curiously and distastefully. But he refrained from questions, although Monty could see that he was aching to know why Manson had walked all the way from Lothrop to leave a scarred and decrepit-looking pigskin. Silence was Alvin’s long suit now. He seldom addressed Monty unless in reply to the latter’s question, and such speech as he indulged in was strangely devoid of offense. At first Monty congratulated himself that Alvin had decided to mend his ways, but presently the latter’s unnatural silence and more unnatural politeness came to have for him something sinister. Often he looked up to surprise a brooding, ominous gaze from Alvin, a gaze that made Monty feel absolutely squirmish along his spine. “He stares at me like a snake,” he told Leon one day. “It gives me the creeps. I’ll bet he’s up to something slimy.”
“Oh, he isn’t worth bothering about, Monty,” Leon reassured him. “First thing you know he’ll get on your nerves and you won’t be able to play football.”
“He’s there already, I guess,” answered the other. “Maybe that’s his game. All the time I’m studying or reading I feel that he’s staring at me like a—one of those things.”