“I don’t believe those things are absolutely necessary,” answered the coach, with a smile. “Take a block of paper and a pencil. After you’ve doped something out, study it hard. See if it’s against the rules and whether it’s calculated to deceive the enemy. Remember that the one big rule is to bunch your strength at the opponent’s weakest point. No matter how you do it, that’s the thing, Fudge. Start with that in mind and work from it. When you’ve got anything that looks good to you on paper bring it along and I’ll see what it looks like to me. If it seems promising we’ll try it out in practice. What do you say?”
“Sure! I don’t mind. I’ll do some to-night. That story can wait a while, I guess. Anyhow, it—it’s getting sort of hard to write. I dare say it will go easier if I rest-off a bit. The trouble with these detective stories is that they’re—they’re complicated! Take this Socialist business, Dick. A fellow has to study up a lot, you know. That’s one reason I thought of having them Nihilists instead. A Nihilist——”
“Why don’t you call them Anarchists, Fudge?”
“Gee! That’s it!” Fudge smote his knee delightedly. “That’s what I had in mind all the time, but I couldn’t think of the word! Anarchists! That’s what they were! You don’t have to study about them, either. Every fellow knows what they are. But Socialists——”
The gong announcing the termination of recess broke in on Fudge’s remarks and the two got up from the coping and hurried back to school.
“Tell you what you do, Fudge,” said Dick, with a smile. “You make believe that the other team are the Anarchists and that this ‘Young Sleuth’ is the quarterback on your eleven. That’ll lend a certain romantic interest to the thing, and I guess you have to have that to bring out your best efforts.”
“That’s a good idea,” commended Fudge interestedly. “I’ll bet you if ‘Young Sleuth’ had been a quarterback he’d have shown some slick work!”
It was the last day of October, and but two games remained on Clearfield’s schedule before the final contest; that with Lesterville four days hence and one with Weston Academy a week later. The High School graduates had failed to get a team together and George Cotner had fortunately secured Weston for the date. Weston, the team which Lanny and Chester Cottrell had seen in action at Springdale, promised to give Clearfield just the sort of a battle needed in its final stage of preparation, one which, while not too strenuous, would thoroughly test out its defensive strength against open plays. Weston, too, had been left without a game on the eleventh of November, and was very glad to accept Cotner’s offer of the date.
Secret practice began the following day and Clearfield was set the task of learning a new formation and a number of plays from it. Dick now considered that the team was well enough versed in the fundamentals, although more than once in the ensuing two weeks of practice fellows were sent back to the dummy or drilled in other rudimentary branches when they showed signs of forgetting their a, b, c’s. Dick had not yet attempted to develop the attack beyond what might be required of it from week to week. He had spent the first six weeks of the season in grounding the players in elementary football, in developing what he called the wits of the fellows—by which he meant the ability to think quickly in all sorts of situations and act accordingly—and in securing coherence. There had been a period when every fellow played for himself, a later period when the line and the backfield played as though they were in no way related, and now there had come a third stage of development in which the entire team of eleven men played together. Absolute perfection of team-play was still lacking, and Dick was satisfied that it should be, for he was convinced that no football team ever reached the top-notch of excellence and stayed there twenty-four hours. Dick believed that the team which attained the height of its season’s form to-day began to go back to-morrow, and his biggest fear was that Clearfield High School would reach the zenith of development too early. His ambition, in short, was to trot the Purple on to the field on the eighteenth of November ready to play as it had not played all the Fall and as it could not play the day after. How nearly he would succeed in realizing that ambition remained to be seen.
While he had not yet paid much attention to offense, an offense had developed naturally on the groundwork he had prepared, an offense which, found wanting in several contests, had come into its own in the Benton game. With the defense, however, Dick had started early, since, when all is said, a good defense is harder to construct than a good attack. Consequently the team’s offense was a full fortnight behind its defense, and offensively and defensively both it was far more backward than Springdale. Dick, though, was not worrying about that. It was his theory that Springdale had been developed too early and was likely to reach its top form at least a week before its principal game.