“Suppose you fellows put your minds to work along the lines suggested this evening. Start with the fact that, no matter what else we have when we meet Kenly, we’re going to have speed, and lots of it. Then try to think of the best way to use that speed on attack. I’ll take care of using it for defense. Figure out a—let us call it an all-purpose formation, a formation from which we can hit the line, run the ends, punt and pass. It’s possible. I’m not certain that the Princeton formation doesn’t come pretty close to it except as to punting. Anyhow, put your minds to work, fellows, and see what comes of it. We’ll get together again Wednesday evening here, and we’ll try to get more of the team on hand. Remind me about that, Mister Manager, and I’ll tell you who I want here that evening.”
“Shucks,” said Charley Levering, “I never could dope out plays. On paper, I mean.”
“As long as you dope them out on the field we’ll be satisfied,” replied Mr. Cade. “I’m not looking for plays from you, Levering. We can find plenty of those when we’re ready for them. What I want is ideas. You know the team and you know pretty well what its merits are and what its faults are. Credit it with speed. You can do that fairly enough, for I’ll say frankly that you fellows look mighty good to me at that angle. Then try to think up the sort of game we can best play to make full use of that speed. Never mind trick plays and all that sort of thing. Those will come later. Consider the Kenly game as a campaign and decide how, if you were the General in command of our Army, you’d conduct it. Not as to detail. A General can’t foresee the skirmishes, sometimes not even the battles. The best he can do is plan. I’m hoping that some of you will bring ideas that will help in determining our campaign. Two heads are better than one, you know, and so eight ought to be still better. Now, if any one likes Swiss cheese, made in Wisconsin, and pilot bread and ginger ale, we’ll blow the whistle!”
[CHAPTER X]
JIM ASKS A LOAN
On Tuesday all but one of the Alton football squad reported for practice, the exception being Greenough, a substitute end, who had sustained a badly wrenched ankle in the Southport game. To be exact, there were twenty-nine khaki-trousered youths on hand when three o’clock struck. Of this number, nineteen were linemen, one of them a second team fellow named Cooper who had that day been snatched to the first as a substitute guard, that Fillmore might go to the backfield to understudy Tennyson. To-day new emphasis was laid on throwing and catching, end, tackle and backfield candidates to the number of seventeen being put through a long drill. Subsequently, during signal work, forward passes were more frequent than usual. Jim’s knee bothered him at first, but he speedily forgot about it, and when the afternoon’s session was at an end it seemed just as good as ever. The second was cocky that day and twice held the first inside her five-yard line, and, since Coach Cade had ruled out field-goals, there was no scoring until, just before the end of the second period—two halves of fifteen minutes constituted the practice game—Plant, at right half for Billy Frost, got away on his own twenty-four and raced some seventy-six yards for a touch-down.
Jim played through all of the last half and pleased himself thoroughly. Those second-team fellows weren’t so hard to handle to-day. He had three men opposed to him while he was in and none outplayed him in his opinion. To be sure, no one stopped proceedings to tell him he was doing well, but Jim had learned that praise, even commendation, was dealt out sparingly, and that so long as a player got along without being scolded it could be assumed that he was performing very creditably. Although he had been at training table but two days he found things not a little different on the field. He was no more a part of the squad than before, but it seemed that being taken to the table had served as an initiation that had admitted him to an inner sanctuary. Fellows who had never recognized him three days ago now hailed him as “Slim”—possibly without always knowing his last name—quite in the off-hand manner of age-old acquaintances. At first it embarrassed him greatly, but he liked it even then. He felt of importance for the first time since he had begun to play. He was, at last, somebody in the football world of Alton! Before, he had thought of himself as being there on sufferance; now he belonged. The sense of camaraderie helped a lot, too. Somehow, now when Pep Kinsey or Latham or Barnhart, playing quarter, yelped at him for playing too far in or too far out or, as once happened, starting before the signal, he didn’t take it to heart. The quarter was just one of his own crowd!
It was still light when Jim got back to Haylow that afternoon, and Clem was sprawled on the window-seat, reading, his book held close to the pane. “There’s been a gentleman here to see you, Jim,” he announced. There was faint emphasis on the word “gentleman,” and Jim’s brows contracted as he turned to the closet to hang up his cap. “Said he’d be back again.”
“What did he look like?” asked Jim soberly.