But Cumner didn’t crack. At least, she managed to make her distance in four and arrived at the Brown-and-White’s fifteen-yard line to the surprised dismay of the home rooters. The Parkinson left had been twice punctured for respectable gains and twice Cumner had slashed a path outside right tackle. Cumner had evolved a very satisfactory method for bottling Captain Peters, using a tackle, brought across from the other side of her line, and a back for the purpose. But, although the hundred or more Cumner supporters yelled in triumph and a touchdown seemed imminent, Parkinson for the time staved off a score. Two straight plunges at the left of her centre gained only two yards, and the Cumner right half walked back to kicking position. The angle, however, was difficult and few looked for a bona fide attempt at a field-goal. Consequently the short forward-pass that followed, from the Cumner right half directly across the centre of the line, didn’t catch the home team napping. Gaines intercepted it and went plunging back into the mêlée and made seven yards before he was stopped. Parkinson punted on first down and the ball was Cumner’s on her forty-six.
Stanley taunted Sid with the failure of his prediction. “Where’s that score, you old gloom?” he demanded. “Dick, I don’t want to say anything that might be construed into a criticism of our mutual friend, Mr. Crocker, but I must remark that he’s a bum prophet.”
“Hold your horses,” answered Sid soberly. “That score’s coming and it’s coming mighty soon. Those farmers have found someone to teach them football. They know the game. Watch them for the next five minutes, Stan, and then tell me if I’m a bum prophet.”
“I’ll tell you so now,” replied Stanley cheerfully. “I don’t have to wait five minutes. Say what are those hayseeds up to? What sort of a silly stunt is that?”
Cumner had stretched her line across the field in a weird formation indeed. A horse and wagon might have easily been driven between any two of her linemen. Quite alone stooped the centre, the quarter eight yards behind him and the other backs apparently no longer interested in anything he might do. To meet this scattering of forces Parkinson likewise spread out, but she did it less whole-heartedly, keeping her centre trio pretty close together. Her backs adopted the “basket formation” well behind the line, for it seemed that Cumner’s queer arrangement of her players must portend some novel type of forward-passing. Yet, when centre lined the ball back to the quarter, nothing extremely novel developed. The outspread line dashed forward straight toward the opponent’s goal and the quarter, delaying a moment, sped off at a slight angle, the ball cupped in his arm. To his support came two backs. But Parkinson, after a brief second of hesitation, concentrated on the oncoming trio, and, although Cumner netted six yards on the play, the Brown-and-White’s adherents howled ironically. That even six yards had been gained was merely because Parkinson had refused to believe her eyes and had waited too long before going in. Another time, jeered Stanley, they’d be lucky to get an inch!
Cumner tried her full-back against Parkinson’s right and lost two of the six she had won. This was from ordinary formation, as was her next attempt to skirt Bob Peter’s end. On the latter play she made a scant yard. Then, while Parkinson rooters laughed and hooted in good-natured derision, Cumner again broke her line apart. What followed this time, however, was far different. When the ball was shot back to the quarter the Parkinson centre trio made straight for that youth, bowling the centre out of their path. The quarter seemed to the onlookers unusually slow and even at a loss, for after a moment of hesitation he made a tentative stride to the right, stopped, faced the attack undecidedly and then dashed away at a surprising speed toward the right side of the field. A back had already shot off in that direction and was some fifteen yards beyond the quarter when the latter, deftly eluding the Parkinson left tackle, whirled, stopped and shot the ball away at a lateral pass. Parkinson had unconsciously drawn in toward the quarter-back, even her left half having wandered from his position, and when the Cumner half, catching the pass neatly, again threw the ball forward there was none near the receiver. The latter was the Cumner right end who had, almost unseen, trotted down the field just inside the boundary. [That second pass was fairly high and it seemed that Kirkendall would reach the receiver in time to spoil it], but he didn’t quite succeed. The best he could do was give chase along the edge of the field and, at the last, defeat the effort of that speedy Cumner right end to centre the ball behind the Parkinson goal. Stone, too, was in the race, but, like the full-back, never reached the runner until the line had been crossed.
Cumner’s supporters went wild with joy, and long after the pigskin had been punted out from the corner of the gridiron to a waiting left guard, their howls and cheers arose from across the field. Sid forebore to say “I told you so,” but Stanley sadly apologised. “I retract what I said, Sid,” he stated dolefully. “You’re not a bum prophet. You’re a prophetic bum!”
Cumner kicked goal easily after the punt-out and when the ball had again sailed through the air the first quarter ended. That twelve-minute period, however, spelled ultimate disaster for the home team, for although Cumner did not score again, Parkinson failed to score at all! Twice she came near to it, once in the second quarter and once in the third. In the second she slammed her way to Cumner’s seven yards, lost ten yards on a penalty, and failed of a field-goal by inches only. In the third period she reached her opponent’s four yards only to have Kirkendall’s last effort fail by a scant six inches. That was bitter medicine to the Brown-and-White, and after that failure all the fight seemed to have gone out of her. In the final period, with many substitutes in, she showed some life, to be sure, but there wasn’t punch enough left to make her dangerous, and Cumner, still playing with her first line-up practically intact, kicked out of danger whenever it threatened.
Going back to the campus after Cumner, cheering and singing, had marched triumphantly under the goals, Sid predicted a shake-up in the team. “You can’t tell me,” he said, “that we had any right to get licked today. That flukey play of Cumner’s that got them their score may have been unpreventable, although I don’t think so, but where we fell down hard was in that third period when K couldn’t get across. It isn’t allowable for a Parkinson team to get to the four yards and not get over. It isn’t done among the best Parkinson teams!”
“I thought,” observed Dick, “that Kirkendall should have been sent around tackle on that last play. We’d hammered their centre three times and they were looking for us to do it again and they’d massed their whole secondary defence behind it. Seems to me——”