“Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown!” came from the right bleachers. “Hold that line! Hold that line!” came from the left. The nerves of every player on the field were stretched to the breaking point. Naperville charged the line. No gain. They charged again. No gain. Flash! They shot a pass. It never reached the receiver. With a leap that took him high in the air, Dynamite caught the ball, then plunged head foremost into the oncoming wall of opponents. Never had a tree been blasted, nor a mountain exploded more perfectly than was that line torn away. Never had Dynamite so deserved his nickname. He went through everything to their forty-yard line. There he was downed by the opponent’s safety man.
“Dave,” the Kentucky boy whispered, when next they prepared to line up. “One minute to go. We—we gotta’ have that touchdown. You—you know how. Don’t think of me, Dave. Forget the bullets and shells. It’s war, Dave. Let’s go through together.”
Dave set his teeth grimly. “It’s a go, Kentucky!”
And they went through. Throwing all the force of his marvelously developed body in a line plunge, Dynamite blasted a hole so wide that both he and Kentucky went through.
But Naperville had been expecting a forward pass. Her ends and half-backs were a full twenty yards behind the line. Like a troop of wild bears, they sprang at the onrushing pair.
“They must not hit him!” Dynamite was saying to himself. “They must not.” Hurling himself at the first man, he sent him spinning to the right. He tipped the second to the left. The third he missed altogether. And all this time the slim Kentucky boy hugged the ball and sped on behind him. Ten—twenty—thirty yards—for—
Dynamite struck something that was like a stone wall. He went down in a heap.
But Kentucky, racing like an escaped colt, sped on to the winning touchdown.
And then the whistle blew.
The crowd would have rushed upon the field but officers held them back. All plays begun before the whistle must be completed. There must be a trial for the extra point.