“No, he hasn’t. All I know is——” Hugh hesitated a moment. “I don’t know anything, but this morning when I got the mail and took it up there was a letter for Bert from his father—I know the postmark and the writing, you see—and one from Needham, and he didn’t like either of them.”
“That isn’t much of a clue. He doesn’t like anything just at present. He doesn’t even like his fodder; doesn’t eat enough to keep alive. Oh, well, it will blow over, I guess. And I’ve got enough to worry about as it is, with a left side of the line that’s letting everything pile through it. Saturday’s game is going to be a slaughter of the innocents, Duke, you take it from me.”
Hugh, like Nick, had his own troubles during the next few days, for Coach Crowley tried him out at right end on the second, and as an end Hugh had much to learn. Just why, after the first ten-minute fiasco, Mr. Crowley sent him back again Hugh couldn’t understand. Hugh was boxed time after time, while the first team backs romped past, allowed himself to be drawn out of the play by the cunning Dresser until that youth laughed when he caught Hugh’s anxious regard, and twice overran the ball on kicks and felt like forty kinds of a fool. But Crowley yanked him hither and thither, bellowed things that he couldn’t more than half understand, threatened him with the bench regularly every second play—and kept him at it. Hugh told himself Thursday afternoon, as he made his way tiredly out of the field house and back to Lothrop, that he had forever settled his chances with the second and that he was not half sorry. But later, when he had eaten ravenously and rested, he decided that he was sorry, awfully sorry, and he neglected his next day’s Greek and mathematics while he frowningly studied a chapter entitled “How to Play the End Positions” in a book on football. After a half-hour of it he sighed and closed the volume.
“The chap who wrote that may know all about it, but he doesn’t play Dinny’s kind of football,” he reflected. “What I want is a book that will tell me how to keep Roy and Franklin from making me look like a guy! Still, I fancy Crowley won’t try me there again unless both Forbes and Bellows and that other chap get killed.”
But Hugh was wrong. The next day he was again back at the right end of the line and again Ayer yelped at him and Coach Crowley bellowed and Captain Myatt barked. But he did a little better today, just enough, probably, to keep Mr. Crowley from having him instantly drawn and quartered or immersed in boiling oil. Roy Dresser, who played left end on the first, found it harder to entice his opponent away from the play, and Franklin, at left tackle, discovered that he couldn’t always fool him. Still, Hugh missed an easy tackle on one occasion and let Nick slip past for a long gain while he ruefully picked himself from the ground and scraped the mud from his face. Mr. Crowley almost ate him for that and Neil Ayer evinced every desire to officiate with the vinegar and salt. That was a bad day for the second, on the whole, for the first ran up five scores in the twenty minutes of scrimmaging. What troubled Hugh quite as much as his own defects was the sorry performance put up by Bert on the enemy team. Bert fumbled miserably twice, and, while he usually gained when he had the ball, played in such a half-hearted manner that Coach Bonner was “on his neck” half the time. In the last of the second period, when substitutions on each team were numerous, Bert went out in favor of Siedhof. Hugh, too, severed his connection with the game then, and Forbes got back to his own.
On the bench, dragging the sleeves of his sweater across his chest, Hugh ventured a remark to Bert, but the result was not encouraging. Bert only growled. After that Hugh watched Forbes and earnestly tried not to indulge in uncharitable thoughts. But he couldn’t help feeling exultant when Vail and Bert swept around their left end, Vail carrying the pigskin, and spurned the recumbent form of Forbes underfoot. That was encouraging to Hugh. Even Forbes, it seemed, was by no means beyond the cunning wiles of the enemy. Then Davy Richards, the trainer, who had been up the field administering to a dislocated finger, hurried indignantly back to the bench and sent them scurrying to the showers.
That evening Hugh went back to the football book and discovered a trifle more of sense in what he read. After all, he concluded, perhaps the writer might last five minutes at end under Crowley. There was no work for the first team regulars on Friday, but the second-string players were lined up against the second for one twelve-minute period and barely saved their bacon by slipping Derry across the field unnoticed for a forward pass that brought a touchdown. Hugh congratulated himself that that play took place on the other side and that it was Bellows and not he who had to face the irate Mr. Crowley. Three minutes later, on the second’s thirty-five, first team tried the same trick on the other side and Hugh was fortunate enough to knock the ball down before the opposing left end could get it. For that he got a slap on the back from Myatt, a grin from Quarterback Ayer, and a grunt from Coach Crowley. Not much in the way of reward, perhaps, after all the scoldings he had suffered, but quite sufficient in Hugh’s estimation. Even though he was informed a minute later that he was the worst end that had ever donned canvas he refused to be dejected. “That,” he told himself hearteningly as he watched the opposing tackle and waited for the signal, “isn’t so. If I were as bad as that I wouldn’t be here.” Then he was trying to block off a big tackle, while Ayer’s voice shrilled “In! In!” and everything was excitedly confused and glorious. After another moment Hauser yanked him to his feet at the risk of dislocating his arm and Myatt shoved him into position again, and Quinn was crying: “Third down! Four to go!” and Ayer was barking his signals: “Manson back! 47—35—16!”
The game ended when Manson’s punt had dropped into the arms of a first-team back, and, muddy and warm and panting, they trotted up to the field house. It was worth all the hard knocks and harder words to feel the tingling rain of the hissing shower on naked body, and afterwards, Hugh, deliciously weary, slowly pulled his clothes on and went half asleep in the task of tying a shoelace and heard the babel of voices as in a dream until Ben Myatt, scantily wrapped in a monstrous bath towel, sank to the bench beside him with a deep sigh and murmured: “They didn’t do much with our wing today, Ordway, did they?”
And Hugh, emerging from his luxurious drowse, shook his head proudly and answered: “Rather not!” After which, with a supreme effort of the will, he finished tying that lace and got to his feet. Encountering the eyes of Forbes he smiled kindly but pityingly. It was too bad that Forbes was out of it. He was sorry for Forbes. But as events proved he need not have been.
He found Bert lying on the window-seat scribbling on a scratch-pad when he got back to Lothrop. Perhaps the afternoon’s rest had benefited the first-team player, for he was undeniably in better humor.