Less than two minutes to play and sixteen yards to a touchdown. Hillcrest lost heart. Four downs and only four yards gained. Naperville took the ball. They booted it down the field. The whistle blew. The game was over.
“Only a tie,” came a murmur from the bleachers. “Only a tie and we might have won.”
“Only a tie and we might have won,” the words were taken up by more than one player. But Ballard, Old Kentucky as they had lovingly called him, such a short time before, did not hear. He was not there. He was far away, how far no one seemed to know.
CHAPTER XI
A RIDE IN THE NIGHT
An hour later Johnny Thompson found the Kentucky boy sitting in a chair beside the range in the cook room of the Blue Moon. He was all crumpled up like a rag doll and still shaking like a leaf in the wind. Once, when Johnny was in Central American jungles, he saw a monkey caught in a wire trap. He too had been all crumpled up and trembling. Ballard was like that. A great wave of remorse swept over him. “Shouldn’t have brought him up here,” he told himself savagely. “Belongs down there in the mountains, he does, down there where men are free as squirrels or woodchucks.”
And yet, as he paused for sober thought, he could not be sure. What should be done?
“Boy, why did you do it?” he asked in a voice that vibrated with kindness.
“Can’t nobody call me no name like that,” the Kentucky boy grumbled without looking up. “Just can’t nobody at all.”
“So that sneering guard called him a vile name!” Johnny thought to himself. “There’s a penalty for that too, but Kentucky didn’t know. Too bad! No good to tell him now.”
What should be done? He was seized with a sudden inspiration.