The day after McNatt’s first appearance with the team was the day of the Hillsport game. Hillsport School was a much smaller institution than Alton Academy, but it made up for lack of numbers by self-esteem and aggressiveness. It had held a place on Alton’s football schedule for four years, during which time it had met with one defeat, had played one tie and had won one victory.
The victory had come to it last year, on Alton Field, and in the ecstasy of triumph the Hillsport supporters had tarried in town long enough to record that triumph for posterity. Loyal Altonians on their way to church Sunday morning found to their horror and indignant surprise that the legend: “H. S. 14, A. A. 6,” appeared in large green characters on a dozen hitherto blank walls and boardings! The worst of it was that the insulting inscriptions were there to stay. Perhaps the elements would, in the course of years, subdue, perhaps obliterate, those vivid brush streaks, but today they looked as glaring as they had on that first calm Sabbath morning. Alton had viewed and exclaimed and muttered vengefully for some days, but as time passed familiarity bred indifference, and now it was only when a visiting relative innocently asked the meaning of the cryptic signs that indignation and a thirst for revenge welled again in the Alton breast.
Last year’s defeat and those insulting green painted symbols of disgrace combined to form a mad desire for revenge this fall in the heart of every Alton fellow. There were some whose outraged sensibilities even induced the opinion that a victory over Hillsport was more to be desired than a triumph over that arch-enemy, Kenly Hall. This, however, was an extreme view held by only a few, although among the few were several representative minds: as, for instance, Mr. Robert Wallace Newhall and Mr. Calvin Grainger. Mr. Newhall stated distinctly and with much feeling, in the presence of Mr. Grainger, Mr. Myers, Mr. Proctor and Mr. Harmon, that if “we don’t lick the tar out of those fresh mutts tomorrow I won’t come back here!” Mr. Grainger, who had earnestly striven the preceding spring to wreak revenge on Hillsport on the baseball diamond, and had failed, applauded the sentiment, but others, frivolous-minded persons like Martin Proctor and Joe Myers, expressed only derision.
“What would you do, Bob?” asked Martin. “Stay over in Hillsport and blow up the school buildings?”
“He knows blamed well,” laughed Joe, “that he’s safe. With old Felix McNutt tearing holes in the line, Hillsport’s got about the same chance to escape a walloping as Bob has to get to heaven!”
“I hope you’re right,” said Cal Grainger. “I’d feel disgraced if those fresh guys licked us again.”
“They won’t,” Joe assured him. “Not this year. Boy, we’ve got a team now! With McNutt in there, that’s a mighty pretty backfield, and Kenly’s going to know it three weeks from tomorrow!”
“Three weeks!” exclaimed Willard. “Not really?”
“Why not?”
“But—but that’s so soon! Gee, I thought the Kenly game was lots further off!”