You mustn’t think that Leonard played through some ten minutes without receiving his share of censure from the coach and the quarterback, for nothing like that happened. Mr. Cade showed little partiality, and every one came in for criticism or rebuke. What Carpenter said worried Leonard very little. Quarterbacks are always nagging a fellow. But he did wish, toward the last, that Mr. Cade would stop barking at him. Of course he knew that he didn’t play the position perfectly, but he was doing his best, gosh ding it, and no one was making any gains through him! If only he was a little bigger and had more beef he’d show Johnny some real playing!
As it was, though, he was doing so well that the coach was secretly marvelling. Mr. Cade viewed Leonard’s height and his none too broad shoulders and then glanced at the big Garrick on one side and the rangy Cash on the other and wondered. “When,” reflected the coach, “he told me he was a guard he knew what he was talking about!” Much of Leonard’s success this afternoon was due to following Billy Wells’ advice. Leonard looked his man in the eye and discovered that, in some strange fashion, he could tell what the chap was going to do a fraction of a second before he started to do it. It was almost like mind-reading, Leonard thought. And he profited, too, by the other tips that Billy had given him. He couldn’t adopt Billy’s stance thoroughly, but he did try a modified form of it and found that it gave him a quicker start. And to-day no one drove his head back and made him see whole constellations of wonderful stars! No, sir, the old chin was right in against the neck!
First didn’t succeed in scoring again, but she did throw a scare into the adversary in the final minute of play. By that time Leonard’s original opponent had been replaced by a fresher but, as it was soon proved, no more formidable youth, and Mr. Fadden had made other substitutions in his array of talent. So, too, had Mr. Cade, although the latter’s resources were nearly exhausted. Cruikshank went in for Carpenter, and a new half-back appeared. Cruikshank brought a little more “pep” to the first, and she got the pigskin down to second’s twenty-eight yards. There, however, the enemy stiffened and tightened and took the ball away on downs. Wisely, she elected to punt on first down, but there was a poor pass, and the ball was missed entirely by the kicker. It hit him somewhere around the feet and bounded to one side. Instantly twenty-two youths made for it. Some four or five reached it more or less simultaneously. Of the number was the first team right guard. How that happened was a subject of official investigation later by Mr. Fadden. However, the second team’s troubles are not ours. What interests us is the fact that not only was Leonard the first man through the second team line but he was the first man to lay hand on the ball. He accomplished the latter feat by diving between two hesitant adversaries and, being doubtless favored by luck, capturing the erratic pigskin during one brief instant of quiescence. A fraction of a second later that ball would have toppled this way or that, or jumped into the air, eluding Leonard’s grasp just as it had eluded others’, but at the instant it had presumably paused for breath. Anyhow, Leonard reached it and pulled it under him and tucked his head out of the way. Then half a dozen of the opponents sat on him more or less violently or tried to get covetous hands on the prize. The whistle blew and finally he breathed again. Having been pulled to his feet, his breathing was again disturbed by emphatic blows on his back or shoulders accompanied by brief but hearty expression of commendation. He was still fighting for breath when Cruikshank piped his signal, and Dakin drove harmlessly into the second team line. Then, to the intense disgust of the first and the vast relief of the second, with the ball on the seventeen yards and a score as sure as shooting, some idiot blew a whistle!
There was almost a scrap about that. Up in the locker room Dakin accused Winship, the assistant manager who had acted as timekeeper, of having cheated the first of a score. “Time,” answered Winship coldly, “was up when the whistle blew.” “Yah,” responded Dakin impolitely. “You’re crazy! You didn’t see straight! Bet you there was a good thirty seconds left!” “There was not! If anything, you had a second more than was coming to you, for the whistle didn’t blow until I’d called to Tenney twice. No use being sore at me, Dakin. Much better have done something when you had the ball that time!” “Is that so?” snarled the full-back. “How’d I know you were going to cheat us out of—” “Don’t you say I cheated!” “Well, what do you call it, you fathead? Step up to the gym with me if you’re looking for trouble!”
But some of the others stepped in just there, and hostilities were prevented, and somewhat later Dakin, having been cooled by an icy shower-bath, apologized handsomely and the entente cordiale was reëstablished.
That evening, his briar pipe drawing nicely and his feet comfortably elevated, Coach Cade turned the pages of his little memorandum book and made marks here and there. Once he reversed his pencil and, using the rubber-tipped end of it, expunged a name entirely. The last thing he did was to draw a black mark through the words “Grant, Leonard” and through half a dozen mysterious hieroglyphics that followed them and then, turning a page, enter the same words again very carefully in his small characters. At the top of the latter page was the inscription “Guards.”
[CHAPTER XV]
A TIP FROM MCGRATH
Leonard regretted that Slim hadn’t been at the field during scrimmage that afternoon, for he wanted Slim to know that he had—well, done not so badly. All he told the other, though, when they met before supper was that Johnny had run out of guards and that he had played at right for awhile.