“Well, I can get distance sometimes,” acknowledged Dick, “but I’m just as likely to kick to one corner of the field as the other! Direction is the hard thing.”
“I suppose so, only it’s all hard for me.” After a moment of silence he said: “Do you know, Bates, half my trouble today was that I was scared. I was afraid you’d jump me the way you did Sandy Halden the other day.”
“You weren’t on the squad that day,” answered Dick, puzzled.
“I was trailing behind. When you let Sandy go I wanted to take his place, but I was pretty sure I’d do even worse! You ought to have heard Harry Warden chuckle when you slammed Sandy.”
“Did he? Well, I had a lot of cheek to do that, because I wasn’t supposed to change the line-up. But Halden was too much for me. Has he played before this year?”
“Oh, sure! Sandy tried last year, but they dropped him to the Second and he got peeved and quit. He’s always trying something. He had the golf bug last Fall and thought he was going to do wonders. But that petered out, too. Nobody would play with him after awhile because he was always blaming things on them. If he topped a ball he said the other fellow had coughed or moved or something. He was playing with Rusty Crozier one day: Rusty’s a mighty good player: and he was fiddling over his ball on a tee when Rusty began swinging his club behind Sandy. Sandy told him he should keep still when his adversary was playing. Rusty had heard a lot of that and he got mad. ‘That so?’ he asked. ‘Let me show you something, Sandy.’ He pushed Sandy aside, and took a fine long swing at Sandy’s ball and sent it into the woods over by the old quarry. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Now you go hunt for that, Sandy, and when you find it try to swallow it. Maybe you’ll choke on it!’”
“Did he find it?” asked Dick amusedly.
“Don’t think so. Anyway, he hasn’t choked yet!”
On Wednesday Sandy Halden fell to Dick’s squad in signal drill. There had been a very strenuous twenty minutes with the tackling dummy and most of the fellows were still smarting under the gentle sarcasms of Billy Goode, and some nursed sore spots as well. Halden had failed as signally as any of that particular squad to please the trainer and had come in for his full share of disparagement, and his temper was not of the best when signal work began.
Dick resolved to have no trouble with Halden; nor any nonsense either. But Halden started off more hopefully today and managed to get through the first ten minutes of drill without a mistake. He showed Dick, however, that he was still resentful by scowling on every occasion. Davis had, it appeared, found enough courage to ask for his transfer to the line, for he was on Dick’s squad at left guard. Of course, with none to oppose him Davis managed to go through the motions satisfactorily enough, but whether he could ever be made into a good guard remained to be seen. There were five signal squads at work that afternoon, and several of them were followed by blanketed youths for whom no positions remained. Coach Driscoll and, at times, Billy Goode and Manager Whipple moved from one squad to another, the coach, however, devoting most of his time to the squad containing the more promising of the substitute material—or what seemed such at that early period. Captain Peters was at right end on the first squad, which held all of last season’s veterans: Furniss, Harris, Cupp, Upton, Newhall, Wendell, Stone, Gaines, Warden and Kirkendall. The weather had turned cold since Saturday and there was a gusty north-east wind quartering the field, and the more seasoned squads were charging up and down the gridiron with much vim.