‘Grafton! Grafton! Rah, rah, rah!’
Victory today is for us!”
Finally, “Nine long ‘Graftons,’ fellows, and put some pep into it!” and then the exodus, with much scraping of settees and laughing and whistling. And afterwards, for Nick and Guy Murtha and Harry Keyes and Hugh, a Welsh rarebit in Nick’s room, made over an alcohol lamp and extremely hot with cayenne pepper!
Southlake Academy was the visitor the next afternoon. Southlake had played Mount Morris earlier in the season and had been soundly drubbed by the score of 19 to 0. But Grafton did not hope to make so good a showing. Nor did she. Southlake was a better team that day than she had been when the Green-and-White had vanquished her, and she soon proved the fact. Coach Bonner started with two substitutes in the line, Hanrihan for Captain Trafford and Willard for Musgrave at center. But Musgrave was hurried in before the game was five minutes old and, although Captain Ted stayed out of the conflict until the third period began, he, too, had to be sent to the relief. The back-field was Blake, Winslow, Vail and Keyes during the first half. Then Weston took Nick’s place, Siedhof went in for Vail, and Leddy played full. Hugh was half sorry and half glad that he was being kept out. He wanted to play hard enough, but he feared that if he did go in it would be in place of Bert, and their relations were strained enough as it was. Bert had hardly spoken a word, civil or otherwise, to his roommate since yesterday’s practice!
There was no scoring on either side until the second period was ten minutes along. Then a lucky fluke gave Grafton the ball on Southlake’s twenty-two yards and she took it over in seven smashing attacks on the center. Keyes missed goal. After that Southlake sprang some open plays which, if they didn’t gain very much ground, considerably worried and exasperated the enemy, who, for a while, didn’t know how to meet them. Still, the nearest Southlake came to a score was getting down to Grafton’s seventeen yards, where she was held for downs, and Keyes kicked out of danger.
Hugh watched the work of the half-backs attentively. Vail was covering himself with glory and Bert was doing considerably better on attack than he had been doing of late, but was frightfully weak on defence. Time after time he was outside the play entirely, while, when he did get into it, he was quite as likely to miss his tackle as make it. Even Hugh, who was desperately anxious to make the best of Bert’s performance, could not fail to see that he was trying the patience of his team-mates and, probably, of Mr. Bonner as well.
Southlake tried two forward passes in the third period and again got within scoring distance. She faked a drop-kick and sent a back on a wide run around Roy Dresser’s end and Roy, for once, was neatly boxed. Bert was the man to stop the runner and Bert made a miserable failure of the attempt, getting his man and then losing him again. Just how Yetter got into the affair was a mystery, but it was the left guard who pulled the Southlake runner down just short of the goal line.
Franklin had been showing distress for some time and now Parker was sent in to play left tackle. At the same time Keyes was put back again, and it was perhaps the big full-back’s presence which stopped the enemy’s advance. Two tries lost her a yard and then she tried a drop-kick and it was Keyes who leaped into the path of the ball and beat it down. Southlake recovered on the fifteen, but she fumbled a minute or two later and the pigskin was Grafton’s.
It was then that the Scarlet-and-Gray showed real form. From her own fifteen-yard line to the middle of the field she went in five plays, Keyes and Roy Dresser bringing off a forward pass that covered more than half the distance, and Vail and Siedhof, and once Keyes, plunging through the line for the balance. A second attempt at a forward pass grounded, but Vail got away outside the Southlake right tackle and reeled off fifteen yards, and from there down to the sixteen Grafton plugged relentlessly. There was a mistake in signals then and some four yards was lost, and Weston elected to try a goal from the field and Captain Trafford went back. But the line weakened somewhere and Ted had no chance to kick and Weston, holding the ball for him near the thirty-yard line, could only snuggle it beneath him and yell, “Down!”
It was then that Coach Bonner beckoned Hugh from the bench. “Go ahead,” he said, “and see what you can do. Tell Weston to use Number 17, Ordway.”