“There is no one.” The tone of the speaker carried conviction. “In summer, yes. In winter, no. We are here alone.”
“Then,” said the girl, “I shall stay here until summer comes. Winter will soon be here. And ‘if winter comes,’” she quoted, “‘can spring be far behind?’”
“Very far.”
There was a quiet cadence in the speaker’s tone that sent chills coursing up Red Rodger’s spine. At the same time he hardly suppressed a desire to shout: “Bravo!” to the girl.
The closing of a door some seconds later told him that this was a cabin of at least two rooms and, strangely enough, between these rooms was no connecting door.
CHAPTER II
WHISPERS IN THE NIGHT
As Red Rodgers stretched his feet out before the tiny stove in his narrow room, his brow wrinkled. Here was a situation for you! A football game to be played to-morrow four or five hundred miles away. He laughed a silent, mirthless laugh.
“Football,” he whispered. He was surprised to find within his being a certain feeling of relief. He relaxed to the very tips of his toes. “Football.” He had seen a lot of it. Too much. This was his first year on the varsity. Almost without willing it, or even realizing it, he had become the central attraction of his team. He was the hub about which the offense circled. His had been the power and the glory, the power to dash and beat, weave and wind his way to many a touchdown, the glory of the victor.
“The power and the glory.” Little enough Red cared for glory. But power? Ah, yes! All his life he had striven for power, physical power for the most part. But he meant in the end to go forward, to succeed in life.
Born and raised in a city of mills, he had, from the age of fourteen, played his little part in the making of steel. For three summers and at every other available hour he had toiled at steel. Bare to the waist, brown, heat-burned, perspiring, he had dragged at long bars, raking away at steel bars, but recently formed by rushing, crashing rollers, that were still smoking hot. Other hours he had spent on the gridiron. The one helped the other. Struggling with steel, he had become like steel himself, hard, elastic, resisting. As he went down the field men were repelled from his Robot-like body as they might had he been a thing of white-hot metal.