Hitting the line

by Ralph Henry Barbour

The second week in October witnessed the final cut in the football squad and left just twenty-nine players extant. Of these eighteen constituted the regulars and enjoyed the distinction of eating at training table, while the remaining eleven substitutes got along as best they might with the assistance of a diet list, which, I fear, was seldom regarded. The second team also went to a training table. The second took itself very seriously and, under the care of Mr. Crowley, fast developed into a formidable aggregation. Monty survived the final cut, but still could figure himself no better than a third substitute. Starling Meyer terminated his connection with football, being too haughty to go out for his class team after being rejected by Coach Bonner. Doubtless it peeved him not a little to see that the boy whose amazing innocence he had laughed at had survived where he had failed!

Monty didn’t go with the team when it traveled away from home to play the Rotan College freshmen. He wasn’t included in the list of those to be taken along, and, while he would have liked to have gone with the half-hundred rooters who accompanied the team, a falling-out with Mr. Rumford prohibited. Jimmy thought it better for Monty to remain at school and labor on an English 2 composition. Last year Rotan had beaten Grafton on Lothrop Field by the score of 20 to 6, and Grafton wanted revenge. That she obtained it was due principally to Manson’s good right foot, for he barely managed to convert Grafton’s single touchdown into seven points, while the freshmen, after smashing out a touchdown in the first ten minutes of the contest, failed to kick goal. The score of 7 to 6 was not decisive, but it constituted a victory, and Grafton, team and rooters, returned home in triumph.

Grafton met her first defeat the following Saturday at the hands—or possibly it would be more proper to say the feet—of St. James Academy. The game was on Lothrop Field. St. James was unable to do much with the home team’s line and, after the two elevens had played each other to a stand-still for two periods, she opened up her bag of tricks and showed that both the Grafton ends were far from impregnable. When Foster Tray gave place to Milford, gains around the Scarlet-and-Gray’s right became less frequent, but Mann, who succeeded to Derry’s place, was no improvement. St. James worked forward-passes with fair success and used a split attack from kick formation in which quarterback took the ball outside tackle that made many gains until Grafton finally solved and smothered it. Grafton’s attack seemed very weak that day, but the truth was that her rival had a strong line that played low and hard. Once Hobo Ordway got loose for thirty-odd yards, and several times Brunswick, who went in for Captain Winslow in the third quarter, snaked through for gains of from three to six. But invariably St. James tightened inside her thirty-yard line and four times Grafton lost the ball on downs almost under the shadow of the opponent’s goal. Twice she might have tried field-goals and didn’t. It was explained later that Coach Bonner had forbidden them. St. James, with no such prohibition governing her attack, landed two drop-kicks over the bar and took the game home with her. As heretofore Grafton had always won, that 6 to 0 victory was a surprise to the Scarlet-and-Gray, and an unpleasant one. Monty played nearly the whole of the fourth period at right guard and handled himself well even if he created no sensation. He sustained an honorable injury in the form of a black eye, of which he was secretly very proud while it lasted.

By this time Monty’s circle of acquaintances had widened. That he had increased the number of his friends is doubtful, however. Acquaintanceship and friendship are different craft. He felt no need of more friends, though, for Leon and he were inseparable chums, while Jimmy and Dud were a good deal more than mere acquaintances. In a casual way he came to know half the fellows in the football squad, some quite well; Pete Gordon, the substitute center, Tom Hanrihan, the big tackle, Nick Blake, the innocent-visaged, mischievous quarter, “Hobo” Ordway, who played right half and who, so rumor had it, was an English Earl when he was at home! Bert Winslow, the captain, Monty counted as an acquaintance, too, but Bert was too busy and absorbed in his tasks to pay much attention to the substitute guard. And there were others: Foster Tray, who played right end, Gus Weston, the chap who was so earnestly striving to oust Blake from the quarterback position, Oscar Milford, a second-string end and Paige Burgess, the team’s manager. At Morris House, Monty knew his companions even more intimately and had revised his opinion of several. Joe Mullins, for instance, was not at all the “Indian” Monty had dubbed him, but a very decent fellow indeed who occupied the unofficial position of house captain and ruled them all with a light but firm hand. And there was, of course, Alvin Standart. And very often Monty wished heartily that there wasn’t.

In short, Monty was finding his place by degrees and enjoying himself in the meanwhile. He sometimes missed his beloved mountains and sometimes felt a bit lonesome for no reason that he could discover, but as time went on he took more kindly to the tranquil, well-kept country around him and the lonesome spells became less and less frequent. He often wondered what would have happened had he not pitched into that bullying newsboy in New York. In that case Jimmy Logan wouldn’t have spoken to him and he would have gone on to Mount Morris, as he had first intended. Probably he would have liked the Greenbank school quite as well as he now liked Grafton, but he wouldn’t have met Leon Desmarais. He concluded that Fate had treated him well, for he had grown very fond of Leon and couldn’t imagine an existence that didn’t include him. Of course they quarreled now and then. Leon had a temper like a spring-trap. It always went off suddenly and unexpectedly. When thoroughly angry he was, to use Monty’s metaphor, “a regular bob-cat.” But Leon’s rages soon burned out and, since it took a lot to make Monty lose his temper, their quarrels were usually rather one-sided and speedily over, and left no scars. Leon was inclined to be a bit snobbish in the matter of birth, something that Monty was quite indifferent to. Monty had once remarked that it didn’t seem to him to matter much who one’s great-grandfather was, and Leon had been quite scandalized.

“Do you mean that birth doesn’t count?” he had exclaimed incredulously.

“What do you mean, birth?” Monty had asked. “My father was a perfectly respectable American and my mother was a French woman. Neither of ’em was ever in jail.”

“Don’t be a silly ass! Anybody could tell that you come of good family, Monty. The west is full of families from the south and east, of course. But do you mean to tell me that generations of breeding and culture don’t count? If your grandfather had been a rag-picker—What are you laughing at?”