[CHAPTER III]
AN HUMBLE MEMBER
Chick—his full name, by the way, was Charles Sumner Burton—concluded on Monday that Coach Cade’s preoccupation in the matter of getting to the station in time for his train Saturday night had kept him from realizing the other’s offense. Of course, being a trifle late into bed was no hanging matter, but Johnny had been more than usually strict during the ten days or so of school, and Chick had no wish to be called down. Johnny was mild-mannered and soft-spoken enough when things went right, but when they didn’t he could be decidedly caustic. He was about thirty years of age, a short, solidly-built, broad-shouldered and deep-chested man with the blackest of black hair that reminded one of the bristles on a shoe-brush. His countenance presented the not unusual contrast of a smiling mouth and a fighting chin. Tradition had it that some ten years before Johnny Cade had been a very difficult man to stop when he had the ball in his arms and his head down! Chick believed it, and it was far from his plan to interpose any sort of opposition between Johnny and his desires.
Besides, Chick liked Mr. Cade a whole lot. In a way of speaking, Johnny had made a football player of Chick during the last two years. Of course Chick didn’t give all the credit to the coach; he felt that he himself had contributed largely to the result; but he did acknowledge a considerable obligation and was correspondingly grateful. Chick liked him for other reasons, too, which were the reasons that swayed most of those who knew Johnny. The coach was acknowledgedly square, quite as prompt and generous with praise as with blame; if he worked his charges hard, he set the pace himself; he was easy of approach, liked a joke and never took advantage of his authority, which was that of a faculty member. In short, he was, in school parlance, a “white man.” He had been in charge of the Alton teams for a number of years and had turned out winning elevens in most of them. There was a rumor current this fall to the effect that the end of the present season would likewise be the end of Johnny’s coaching career, but the report lacked official confirmation and the School hoped it wasn’t correct.
That Monday afternoon was largely given over to the first principles of football, which was one way of informing those who had taken part in the Southport game that their labors had not been wholly satisfactory. About sixty fellows had reported since the beginning of the term and these were divided into three squads at present: Squad A, which consisted of nineteen players who had served on the First Team last year; Squad B, which contained the members of the former Second Eleven and a few fellows who had shown promise on the various scrub teams, and Squad C, composed of those whose ambition excelled their experience and a half-dozen or so who had entered school this fall and who were as yet unknown quantities. But to-day, whether you were a Squad A or a Squad C man, you tackled the dummy until you were thoroughly covered, even impregnated, with the still-damp loam of the pit, passed and caught and fell on the ball in the most rudimentary manner and, if you happened to be a candidate for a line position, duck-waddled and, with your head and shoulders thrust into the charging harness, did your best to drag two restraining youths with you over the slippery turf. If you happened to have to set your heart on holding down a backfield position you were spared the harness but worked just as hard at starting and at various other tasks cunningly devised to teach celerity, accuracy and the rest of the football virtues.
There are always those who resent what, in class room, would be termed review work. To a fellow who had played against Kenly Hall for two seasons, being returned to the drudgery of kindergarten stuff was a ridiculous imposition in the judgment of several of the Squad A members. Chick was among those who resented the imposition, but he showed his resentment less than most of the others. He had a hunch that it might be just as well not to court the limelight this afternoon, that if he could survive practice without coming to the notice of the coach he would not be likely to awaken memories, memories dating back to Saturday night at some four minutes to ten o’clock! So Chick, albeit his soul revolted, ground his face into the dirt and filled his ears with it at tackling practice and maintained a cheerful countenance, abstaining, even when at the end of the waiting line farthest from Mr. Cade, from joining in the grumbles and sarcasms delivered in guarded tones.
To an unbiased onlooker it might have appeared that the smiling, shock-haired man in the faded and torn sweater and the old khaki trousers had some reason for trundling the stuffed effigy along the wire for the benefit of Squad A, because, after all, quite a few members of that coterie performed extremely poorly at the task of wrapping their arms about the dummy and dragging it to earth, and not much better at throwing their bodies in front of it in blocking. In fact, those who appeared to have really mastered these sciences were to be counted on the fingers of two hands, omitting the thumbs! Even Captain Jonas Lowe, who, with Andy Dozier, left tackle, towered inches above all the others and looked the perfect football lineman, failed to win commendation to-day; a fact which aided Chick considerably to endure the indignity put upon him. Chick had not yet forgiven Jonas for winning the captaincy over his head, something which, of course, Jonas wasn’t in the least to blame for, although if you had charged Chick with harboring resentment at this late day he would have denied the allegation indignantly. He would probably have felt rather insulted. Certainly he would have reminded you that he had himself put the motion to make Jonas’s election unanimous, and he would have pointed out that he and the new captain were the best of friends. The latter assertion would, however, have been only negatively true. That is to say, he and Jonas were friends merely to the extent of never being unfriendly, which constitutes a relationship somewhat different from that implied by Chick. Whether Jonas realized that Chick still begrudged him the leadership of the team, would have been hard to say, but it was perfectly apparent that if he did realize it he was not in the least troubled about it. There was something rather Jovian about the big, cumbersome, placid Jonas. You got the impression of one gazing calmly down from Olympus, untroubled by petty mortals and their affairs.
Of those who did win a word of praise from Johnny Cade this afternoon one was Bert Hollins. There were quite a few things in the line of football essentials that Bert was good at, and tackling, whether of the dummy or a hard-running enemy, was one of them. Bert’s relation to the team was somewhat peculiar. Last season, after trying very hard to make the Second until well into October, he had succeeded only in getting hurt in his third scrimmage. He had attended practice with a crutch under his left arm for a week and watched it from the bench for nearly a week more. Then, almost before he had limbered that injured knee up again, there had come a demand from the First for a light, fast backfield man and Mr. McFadden, coach of the Scrubs, had sent Bert across on approval. That had been a big moment in the boy’s life, that sudden elevation to the First Team, and he had tried desperately hard to make good. In a manner he had succeeded, for he had shown about everything except weight and experience. One without the other might have served, but together they kept him in the background. He played in two of the late-season contests and won good words, and, as a reward, was sent in by the coach near the end of the big game to earn his letter. There had been no opportunity for a signal display of brilliancy. He had not seized the ball and dashed sixty or seventy or eighty yards down the field for a touchdown and consequent victory.