The New Boy at Hilltop, and Other Stories

by Ralph Henry Barbour

I think the trouble was that Bi never got it fully into his fool head that it wasn't just fun—like puss-in-the-corner or blind-man's-buff. If you talked to him about Retrieving Last Year's Overwhelming Defeat he'd smile pleasantly and come back with some silly remark about Political Economy or Government or other poppycock. I fancy Bi's father had told him that he was coming to college to study, and Bi believed him.

Of course, he didn't go to New Haven with us, He didn't have time. I wished afterwards that I hadn't had time myself. Yale trimmed us 23 to 6.

The papers threshed it all out again, and all the old grads who weren't too weak to hold pens wrote to the Bulletin and explained where the trouble lay. It looked for a while like another reorganization, but Cooper, the new captain, was different. He didn't get hysterical. Along about Christmas time, after everyone had got tired of guessing, he announced his new coach. His name was Hecker, and he had graduated so far back that the Crimson had to look up its old files to find out who he was. He had played right half two years, it seemed, but hadn't made any special hit, and Yale had won each year. The Herald said he was a successful lawyer in Tonawanda, New York. He didn't show up for spring practice; couldn't leave his work, Cooper explained. Bi didn't come out either. He couldn't leave his work. At the end of the year he graduated summa cum laude, or something like that, and the Crimson said he was coming back to the Law School and would be eligible for the team. Just as though it mattered.

We showed up a week before college began and had practice twice a day. At the end of that week we knew a whole lot about Hecker. He was about thirty-six, kind of thin, wore glasses, and was a terror for work. When we crawled back to showers after practice we'd call him every name we could think of. And half an hour later, if we met him crossing the Square, we'd be haughty and stuck-up for a week if he remembered our names. He was a little bit of all right, was Hecker. He was one of the quiet kind. He'd always say "please," and if you didn't please mighty quick you'd be sitting on the bench all nicely snuggled up in a blanket before you knew what had struck you. That's the sort of Indian Hecker was, and we loved him.

Ten days after college opened we had one hundred and twenty men on the field. If Hecker heard of a likely chap and thought well of his looks, it was all up with Mr. Chap. He was out on the gridiron biting holes in the sod before he knew it. That's what happened to Bi. One day Bi wasn't there and the next day he was.

We had two or three weeding-outs, and it got along toward the middle of October, and Bi was still with us. We were shy on plunging halfs that fall and so I got my chance at last. I had to fight hard, though, for I was up against Murray, last year's first sub. Then a provisional Varsity was formed and the Second Team began doing business with Bi at right guard again. The left guard on the Varsity was Bannen—"Slugger" Bannen. He didn't weigh within seven pounds of Bi, but he had springs inside of him and could get the jump on a flea. He was called "Slugger" because he looked like a prizefighter, but he was a gentle, harmless chap, and one of the Earnest Workers in the Christian Association. He could stick his fist through an oak panel same as you or I would put our fingers through a sheet of paper. And he did pretty much as he pleased with Bi. I'll bet, though, that Bi could have walked all over "Slugger" if he'd really tried. But he was like an automobile and didn't know his own strength.

We disposed of the usual ruck of small teams, and by the first of November it was mighty plain that we had the best Eleven in years. But we didn't talk that way, and the general impression was that we had another one of the Beaten But Not Humiliated sort.

A week before we went to Philadelphia I had a streak of good luck and squeezed Murray out for keeps. Penn had a dandy team that year and we had to work like anything to bring the ball home. It was nip and tuck to the end of the first half, neither side scoring. Then we went back and began kicking, and Cooper had the better of the other chap ten yards on a punt. Finally we got down to their twenty yards, and Saunders and I pulled in eight more of it. Then we took our tackles back and hammered out the only score. But that didn't send our stock up much, because folks didn't know how good Penn was. But the Eli's coaches who saw the game weren't fooled a little bit; only, as we hadn't played anything but the common or garden variety of football, they didn't get much to help them. We went back to Cambridge and began to learn the higher branches.

We were coming fast now, so fast that Hecker got scary and laid half the team off for a day at a time. And that's how Bi got his chance again, and threw it away just as he had last year. He played hard, but—oh, I don't know. Some fellow wrote once that unless you had football instinct you'd never make a real top-notcher. I think maybe that's so. Maybe Bi didn't have football instinct. Though I'll bet if some one had hammered it into his head that it was business and not a parlor entertainment, he'd have buckled down and done something. It wasn't that he was afraid of punishment; he'd take any amount and come back smiling. I came out of the Locker Building late that evening and Hecker and Cooper were just ahead of me.

"What's the matter with this man"—Hecker glanced at his notebook—"this man Briggs?" he asked.