“That comes of trying to do something you don’t know how to do. This fellow Smiths here came around to my shack the other day and said the class wanted me to play football because I weigh some. Well, ginger! I didn’t know anything about the thing, and I told him so. But he would have it that I must play. And look what happens! I make a measly show of myself right out there on the range in front of the whole outfit!”
“No harm done,” said Hal. “You did what you tried to.”
“No, I didn’t. There was a little cuss there in a Derby hat wouldn’t let me. I was going to take that half-backed fellow down to the other end and throw him over the line. That’s what I was going to do. They didn’t tell me I had to slap him on the chest and butt him with my head.”
“But, you see,” explained Allan, “he called ‘Down’ just when you began to lug him off.”
“That’s what they said. I was supposed to let go of him when he said that, but I just thought he was throwing up the sponge and wanted me to let him down. If I’d known he could have spoiled it by yelling ‘Down,’ I’d have held his mouth shut.”
This summoned laughter, and Burley glanced around at the others in wide surprise. Allan felt surprise, too. Was Burley really quite so unsophisticated as he seemed, he wondered, or— His glance met Burley’s. The big fellow’s right eyelid dropped slowly in a portentous wink. Allan smiled. His question was answered. While the others entered into an explanation and discussion of the rules and ethics of football, Allan studied the Westerner.
Peter Burley looked to be, and was, twenty years of age. In form he was remarkably large; he was an inch over six feet tall, and weighed 203 pounds. Nowhere about him was there evidence of unnecessary fat, but he was deep of chest and wide of shoulder and hips. His hands and feet were large, and the latter were encased in enormously heavy shoes.
When it came to features, Burley was undeniably good-looking in a certain breezy, unconventional way. (Allan soon found that Burley’s breeziness and absence of convention were not confined to his looks.) Burley’s hair was brown, of no particular shade, and his eyes matched his hair. His nose was big and straight and his mouth well shaped. His cheeks were deeply tanned, but showed little color beneath. His usual expression was one of careless, whimsical good nature, but there was an earnest and kindly gleam in the brown eyes that lent character to the face. He talked with a drawl, and pronounced many words in a way quite novel to Allan. But—and this Allan discovered later—when occasion required, he was capable of delivering his remarks in a sharp, incisive way that made the words sound like rifle-shots. At the present moment he was talking with almost exaggerated deliberateness.
“Sweet says you and he went to a preparatory school together,” he said, turning to Allan. “I wish my old man had sent me to one of those things. What was your school like?”