The Half-Back: A Story of School, Football, and Golf

by Ralph Henry Barbour

And what a cheer that was! The little building shook, the men stood on their toes; the head coach cheered himself off the bench; and Joel yelled so desperately that his breath gave out at the last "Rah!" and didn't come back until the little door was burst open and he found himself leaping the fence into the gridiron.

And what a burst of sound greeted their reappearance! The west stand shook from end to end. Crimson banners broke out on the breeze, every one was on his feet, hats waved, umbrellas clashed, canes swirled. A youth in a plaid ulster went purple in the face at the small end of a five-foot horn; and for all the sound it seemed to make it might as well have been a penny whistle. The ushers waved their arms, but to no purpose, since the seats heeded them not at all, but shouted as their hearts dictated and as their throats and lungs allowed.

Joel, gazing about him from the field, felt a shiver of emotion pass through him. They were cheering him! He was one of the little band in honor of which the flags waved, the voices shouted, and the songs were sung! He felt a lump growing in his throat, and to keep down the tears that for some reason were creeping into his eyes, he let drive at a ball that came bumping toward him and kicked it so hard that Selkirk had to chase it half down the field.

"Rah-rah-rah, Rah-rah-rah, Rah-rah-rah, Harwell! Harwell! Harwell! Rah-rah-rah, Rah-rah-rah, Rah-rah-rah, Harwell!"

The leaders of the cheering had again gotten control of their sections, and the long, deliberate cheer, majestic in its intensity of sound, crashed across the space, rebounded from the opposite stand, and went echoing upward into the clear afternoon air.

"Harwell!" muttered Joel. "You Bet!" Then he gathered with the others about Dutton to listen to that leader's last instructions. And at the same moment the east stand broke into cheers as the gallant sons of Yates bounded on to the grass. Back and forth rolled the mighty torrents of sound, meeting in midair, breaking and crashing back in fainter reverberations. They were singing the college songs now, and the merits and virtues of both colleges were being chanted defiantly to the tunes of popular airs. Thousands of feet "tramp-tramped," keeping time against the stands. The Yates band and the Harwell band were striving, from opposite ends of the field, to drown each other's strains. And the blue and crimson fluttered and waved, the sun sank lower toward the western horizon, and the shadows crept along the ground.

"There will be just one more score," predicted the knowing ones as they buttoned their ulsters and overcoats up at the throat and crouched along the side lines, like so many toads. "But who will make it I'm blessed if I know!"

Then Harwell lined up along the fifty-five-yard line, with the ball in their possession, and the south goal behind them. And Yates scattered down the field in front. And the linesmen placed their canes in the turf, the referee and the umpire walked into the field, and the stands grew silent save for the shrill voice of a little freshman on the west stand who had fallen two bars behind in "This is Harwell's Day," and needs must finish out while his breath lasted.

"Are you all ready?" asked the referee. There was no reply. Only here and there a foot moved uneasily as weights were thrown forward, and there was a general, almost imperceptible, tightening of nerves and muscles.

And then the whistle blew.