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Title: Garry Grayson at Lenox High
or, The champions of the football league
Author: Edward Stratemeyer
Illustrator: Walter S. Rogers
Release date: March 30, 2025 [eBook #75746]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1926
Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GARRY GRAYSON AT LENOX HIGH ***
GARRY GRAYSON AT LENOX HIGH
OR
The Champions of the Football League
BY ELMER A. DAWSON
AUTHOR OF "GARRY GRAYSON'S HILL STREET ELEVEN,"
"GARRY GRAYSON SHOWING HIS SPEED,"
ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED BY_
WALTER S. ROGERS
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
Copyright, 1926, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Garry Grayson at Lenox High
[Illustration: "GET IN THERE, GRAYSON!" HE DIRECTED.]
CONTENTS
I STRAIGHT FOR THE ROCKS
II A GALLANT RESCUE
III THE MUDDY FOOTBALL
IV AN AWKWARD ENCOUNTER
V CONSTERNATION
VI FACING THE BULLY
VII TROMPET SHRUGG
VIII ON THE ANXIOUS SEAT
IX COUNTING THEIR CHANCES
X INTO THE FRAY
XI STRUGGLING AGAINST ODDS
XII TESTING THEIR METTLE
XIII IN THE LAST PERIOD
XIV GETTING A REPRIMAND
XV AN UNEXPECTED ALLY
XVI FIGHTING MAD
XVII WINNING HIS SPURS
XVIII LIKE A THUNDERBOLT
XIX GARRY GETS A SHOCK
XX HARD LUCK
XXI PLUNGING THROUGH
XXII FORGING AHEAD
XXIII JERRY INTERVENES
XXIV IN THE THICK OF THE FIGHT
XXV VICTORY
GARRY GRAYSON AT LENOX HIGH
CHAPTER I
STRAIGHT FOR THE ROCKS
"Wonder if we'll be able to make the football eleven when we go to
Lenox High."
Rooster Long stopped drawing pictures in the dust with the toe of his
shoe and looked up at his companion inquiringly.
Garry Grayson, former captain and quarterback of the Hill Street
eleven, shook his head doubtfully.
"I don't think we have a Chinaman's chance of making the team our first
year in high," he replied. "Lenox will have plenty of material, good
seasoned material, to draw on from the three upper classes. No reason
why they should turn to the freshmen for recruits."
"Except that there are going to be some mighty good players among the
freshmen this year," chimed in another boy, who emerged from the house
at that moment and sat down on the step near which Garry was standing.
"Maybe I'm speaking out of my turn, and there are some who won't agree
with me--so much the worse for them--but I certainly think we turned
out some pretty good players last year, if you should ask me."
The speaker was Bill Sherwood, a tall, well-developed lad who had
played center on the Hill Street grammar school eleven, and was
affectionately known to his mates as "Big Bill."
"You said it," agreed Nick Danter, a rather rangy, well-knit youth who
lay stretched out at full length on the porch. "I'd go far enough to
say that some of them could give the high school fellows a pretty nifty
tussle at this minute."
"That goes not only for our Hill Street boys, but for some of the
fellows of the Cherry and Webster Street schools," put in Ted
Dillingham, stocky and muscular, as he leaned lazily against the
finishing post of the porch railing. "Look at Pete Maddern and Tom
Allison! They're no slouches when it comes to playing football, and I
hear they're going to high this fall."
The boys were gathered about and on the porch of the Sherwood summer
bungalow on the shores of picturesque Bass Lake, to which Garry
Grayson, Rooster Long, Nick Danter and Ted Dillingham had been invited
for a two week's stay, an invitation that they had gladly accepted, as
they were the warmest and most congenial of friends.
All of them had graduated from the Hill Street grammar school of Lenox
the preceding term, and were planning to enter the high school in the
fall. The summer was nearly at an end, and they were looking forward
eagerly to the new experience in store for them. Books, however, were
not foremost in their thoughts at the moment.
All of them were football players, loved the great game, and had
acquitted themselves well on the Hill Street football team that had won
the grammar school championship the preceding season from their rivals
of the Cherry and Webster Street schools. Garry Grayson especially had
proved himself a remarkable player for a boy of his age.
But, good as they had been on a grammar school eleven, they knew that
the high school was a different matter--all the difference, as Nick
Danter had at one time expressed it, that there was "between being big
frogs in a little puddle and little frogs in a big puddle."
But despite the cold water thrown on his hopes by his chums, Rooster
Long still held tenaciously to his ambition.
"I don't see why we can't make a try for the team, anyway," he
persisted, with a long face. "Just because we're freshmen doesn't say
we have to be dumbbells and sit back and take just whatever is handed
to us."
"Of course not," Garry agreed, with a touch of irony. "There's nothing
to prevent our making a noise and trying to draw the attention of the
upper classes to our humble position at the foot of the throne. Though,
of course, there's just a chance," he admitted, his eyes kindling,
"that our victories over Cherry and Webster may give us Hill Streeters
a little boost even with the high and mighty Lenox fellows."
"Gee, I sure would like to be on that team!" said Rooster, with a
yearning shake of his head. "They're just one degree below the college
teams."
"Come out of your trance!" admonished Bill Sherwood. "We won't have a
look in."
"I'm afraid you're right," agreed Garry. "If we get even as far as the
scrub this year we'll be lucky. Maybe they'll let us be doormats for
the regulars."
"Gee, you fellows are about as cheerful as a funeral!" cried Rooster,
giving a vicious kick to an unoffending stone. "You give me the
jim-jams. I've got to do something to get my mind off my troubles."
Bill Sherwood laughed lazily.
"Nothing to get so het up about, Rooster," he drawled. "We won't be the
only freshmen at Lenox High this fall, you know. There will be plenty
of others biting their nails on the sidelines and telling any one who
will listen that they could do a mighty sight better than those boobs
of regulars."
"They say that misery loves company, but that doesn't cut any ice with
me," and Rooster frowned mightily. "I'd rather dodge Lenox altogether
than to stand on the sidelines and watch the other fellows play."
"He's getting wild," observed the grinning Garry. He yawned and raised
his arms above his head in a luxurious stretch. "What do you say we go
in for a swim, Bill? That may help cool him off."
"Just what I was going to suggest, nothing else but," replied Bill,
rising with alacrity. "Come on, let's jump into our bathing suits."
This formality was accomplished in a very short time, and the boys were
soon out of the house and making a dash through the woods toward the
shimmering waters of Bass Lake.
The Sherwood bungalow boasted a private dock from which the lads often
went fishing and swimming. Bill had a canoe and also a cranky little
motorboat that usually spoke out of its turn.
"It goes when you think the motor's dead," Bill had said, when
describing the eccentric craft to his chums, "and it stops without the
sign of a reason just when everything seems in fine working order. The
only thing that has any effect on it is a good talking to, for it knows
its master's voice."
He threw out his chest pompously as he spoke, but doubled up promptly
when Garry poked him in the stomach.
"What do you think I am, a punching bag?" he demanded in an injured
tone.
"Oh, did I hit you?" asked Garry in mock contrition. "My hand must have
slipped."
At the moment the boys had no use for either craft, for on that
particular afternoon they intended to be in the water and not on it.
They sat for a time on the edge of the dock, basking enjoyably in the
sun, knowing that the warmer they got the more enjoyable would be the
plunge into the cool waters of the lake.
It was a pretty sheet of water, with numerous miniature bays and
jutting points to break the monotony of the shore line. There were many
summer bungalows like the Sherwoods' cuddled among the trees near the
shore of the lake, and on the north side was a fairly pretentious hotel.
On such a bright afternoon the lake was bound to be studded with the
boats of pleasure seekers. Canoes slipped with graceful, gliding
motion from one inlet to another, while motorboats of all descriptions
chugged busily over the gleaming surface.
"All this will soon be over," remarked Garry, with a shade of regret in
his voice. "I hate to see winter come."
"But before winter comes fall, and in the fall comes football," chanted
Bill.
Rooster Long gave his chum an injured look.
"I thought we came here to get our minds off of football for a while,"
he complained. "You fellows can do what you like, but I'm going in
swimming."
"You bet you are!" declared Garry, and gave Rooster a push that landed
him splashing and sputtering in the seven feet of water at the edge of
the dock.
Shaking the water from his eyes, Rooster shook a fist at the grinning
Garry.
"Come down here and try that again," he cried.
"Come up here and I will," retorted Garry.
He raised his hands above his head, bent his body in the form of a bow,
and clove the water with as clean and pretty a dive as one could wish
to see.
Coming to the surface, puffing and blowing, he found himself entwined
in a pair of strong arms that he discovered a moment later belonged to
Rooster.
Then ensued a hilarious, aquatic wrestling match, in which each of them
swallowed a good deal of water.
Bill stood on the end of the dock, rooting now for one, now for the
other of his guests, until in the excitement he lost his balance and
fell among them throwing the combatants into temporary confusion.
"He's busting up the fight!" gurgled Rooster. "Let's put him under."
And so, as often happens to the innocent bystander, Bill was set upon
by both Garry and Rooster and finally was forced to duck and swim some
distance under water to elude his tormentors.
"You had to run," called out Garry gleefully, and Bill shook a wet fist
at him.
"I didn't run, I swam," he returned, grinning. "I can lick you one at a
time, but two together are too many for me."
Ted Dillingham and Nick Danter had by this time come in with a splash,
but they had scarcely touched the water when Garry's muscles suddenly
became taut and he stared at an object out on the lake.
"Look at that motorboat!" he cried, as the other boys followed the
direction of his gaze. "Must be going fifty miles an hour."
"Some fool driving," remarked Bill carelessly.
"I'll say that he's a fool!" cried Garry excitedly. "Look, fellows,
he's heading straight for those rocks on the south shore!"
It was a moment before the other lads took in the seriousness of the
situation.
Then with a yell Bill Sherwood started swimming for the dock.
Garry guessed his intention, and reached there at the same moment, the
other boys close behind their comrades.
Bill jumped into his own eccentric motorboat, Garry tumbling in after
him. By the time he had loosened the rope that tied the boat to the
dock all five were on board.
For once the engine worked without protest. Bill, who was a master hand
at working the craft urged the cranky motor to its limit and headed the
nose of the boat toward the south shore.
The drivers of the strange motorboat were steering crazily, and those
in the small craft who found themselves in the way turned tail and
scuttled for cover.
"Why don't they turn out?" exclaimed Garry, in a frenzy of anxiety.
"Are they blind? Can't they see that they're heading right for the
rocks?"
"They're either idiots or they don't know how to run a boat," muttered
Bill, as he bent himself to the task of getting out of his engine all
the speed possible.
"Or else they've lost their heads and are too scared to try to steer at
all," commented Rooster. "Gee, but that was a close shave!" he added,
as the strange craft barely missed running down a canoe.
Bill's boat was now whizzing along like a comet, and the distance
between it and the other craft was rapidly diminishing. The boys could
now see quite clearly the inmates of the runaway vessel.
There were but two of them, boys apparently of about the age of Garry
and his chums, and they seemed to be arguing about the possession of
the wheel.
Garry made a megaphone of his hands and shouted:
"Turn out! You're heading for the rocks. Turn out!"
Even as he spoke there came a flash of fire, a sharp report, and the
motorboat crashed against the rocks!
CHAPTER II
A GALLANT RESCUE
The occupants of the ill-fated craft were thrown clear of it just as
the wreck broke into a mass of flames.
"They went down over there, Bill!" cried Garry, pointing to the spot
where the strangers had disappeared. "Better slow down and I'll dive
for them."
"I'm with you," declared Rooster, who was almost as expert a swimmer as
Garry Grayson.
Bill nodded and brought the boat sharply about. Garry poised on the
edge of the deck for a moment and then dived into the transparent
water, closely followed by Rooster Long.
As Garry came up he saw one of the victims of the wreck struggling in
the water and trying to keep his head above the surface.
The owner of the head was evidently in a frenzy of fear.
"Save me! Help! I'm drowning!"
The words came in sputtering yelps, and Garry struck out for the
imperiled youth. In a moment he was at the boy's side.
"Put your hand on my shoulder," he directed. "Easy now. You're all
right. We've got a boat right here."
What was Garry's surprise to feel the arms of the other boy close about
him in a grip that seemed to be made of steel!
Garry's arms were pinioned close to his sides. He was powerless to
make a move to save either himself or the fear-crazed lad who seemed
determined to drown them both.
Garry heard a cry from Bill Sherwood and knew by the sound that the
motorboat was being turned around and headed toward the spot where
he struggled vainly to rid himself of that iron clutch around his
shoulders.
Garry Grayson had been born and brought up in the thriving town of
Lenox, a place of about fifteen thousand inhabitants, situated on the
Sheldon River about two miles from Bass Lake. He was now about thirteen
years old, a frank, likable, courageous boy, a leader in the sports of
his age, and extremely popular with his mates.
His father was Joseph Grayson, a prominent lawyer of the town and
active in its civic life. His mother was a refined, gracious woman,
to whom her son was devoted. Garry had a twin sister, Ella, a pretty,
merry girl, who teased her brother unmercifully, though in fact she
was very fond and proud of him.
Among Garry's closest friends were Ted Dillingham and Nick Danter,
whose fathers were partners in the largest department store in town.
Others with whom he was on the most friendly terms included Tom Long,
otherwise Rooster, and Bill Sherwood. All of them had been on the
football team of the Hill Street grammar school, which had won the
championship from similar schools in the town, and their enthusiasm
for the game had still further cemented their friendship. Now they had
graduated from the intermediate school and were preparing to enter the
Lenox high school in the fall.
They had found the road to the championship no easy one. There had
been traitors in their own school who had done their best to have Hill
Street lose. Chief among these had been Chatwood Johns and Bud Warding
who were disgruntled and envious because they had been put off the
scrub team for playing dirty football. There was, too, another enemy,
Sandy Podder, a vicious, dissipated pupil of the Lenox high school, who
had caused Garry and his chums no end of trouble.
How Garry Grayson and his teammates overcame all obstacles; how, with
the aid of a gypsy girl, they exposed a mystifying conspiracy--these
and other exciting incidents are narrated in the first volume of this
series, entitled: "Garry Grayson's Hill Street Eleven; or, The Football
Boys of Lenox."
And now to return to Garry in his desperate plight as he was seeking
to rescue the boy who had been thrown into the lake from the wrecked
motorboat.
As the water closed over Garry's head he put all his strength into a
straining, outward movement of his imprisoned arms. He felt the grip of
his companion relax a little. He tried again with still better results.
He kicked downward desperately with his feet to bring them both to the
surface for the air his lungs demanded. He felt the grip of the other
boy definitely relax. The latter had either fainted from fright or had
drawn so much water into his lungs as to become unconscious.
With a feeling of immense thankfulness, Garry drew his arms free,
seized the boy by the hair and brought him to the surface.
Garry was terribly weak himself by this time from muscular and mental
strain. He gulped in the air, the while treading water. He shifted his
grip to the strange boy's shoulders, keeping his head well above the
surface.
"Safe, old boy? I was beginning to get mighty scared."
It was Bill Sherwood's voice, and, looking up, Garry saw the motorboat
looming above him.
"Take this fellow, will you, Bill?" he gasped. "I'm all in."
It was the work of a moment for the boys in the boat to relieve Garry
of his unconscious burden, then reach a hand to their chum and help him
scramble over the side of the boat.
Rooster had reached the dripping deck only a moment before with the
second inmate of the wrecked craft. He had had no such close call as
Garry, however, for the other lad, though temporarily dazed, could
himself swim and required only a little of Rooster's assistance.
The second boy shook the water from his clothes and regarded his
unconscious friend without much concern.
"Seems pretty well done up," he remarked unemotionally. "Seems as
though he'd tried to get the whole lake down his windpipe."
"He has got a good part of it, and it's up to us to get it out of him
in a hurry," replied Bill. "Pitch in, you fellows, and take turns in
doing as I do."
Bill Sherwood knelt down by the side of the pallid-faced youth and,
with the help of some of his comrades, began to work the unconscious
lad's arms over his head and back again and apply other first aid
principles with which they were all familiar.
The wreck of the motorboat had been witnessed by many others on the
lake, and various craft gathered quickly at the scene of the disaster,
some from mere curiosity, others with a laudable desire to extend help,
should help be needed.
Some of them were of service in extinguishing the flames of the wrecked
vessel before it was wholly destroyed. Most of the upper part was
burned, but there was still enough of the hull left to warrant the
belief that the boat might be rebuilt.
One boat that swung alongside happened to have a doctor aboard.
"Can I be of any help?" the doctor called out.
"You might come aboard and take a look at him, though I think he's
coming to all right," replied Garry.
"Right you are," pronounced the doctor, after a brief examination.
"He's opening his eyes now. Luckily, he missed the rocks and only hit
the water. And you fellows have done a good job in getting that out of
him. All he needs is rest, but it will be just as well to get him home
as soon as possible."
"We'll do that," promised Bill, and with a friendly wave of his hand to
the doctor stepped again into his own boat and departed.
The prostrate lad opened his eyes and looked around with a frown on his
face. He did not speak, nor did the Lenox boys urge him to, but waited
for him to get his strength back.
The other lad from the wrecked craft had watched their efforts with
more or less interest, but had not volunteered to take part in them.
There was evidently no love lost between him and his companion.
There had been a gleam of recognition in Bill's eyes when the less
injured lad had scrambled on board, and now that Bill had a moment of
respite he introduced the newcomer to his companions.
"This is Jerry Cox, fellows," Bill said informally. "My brother Frank
knows him. Jerry, let me introduce Garry Grayson, Rooster Long, Ted
Dillingham and Nick Danter. Perhaps you know some of them already."
"Only by name," returned Jerry Cox, as he seated himself on a box near
by with a cheerful grin on his face. "Garry Grayson sure led a wicked
team for Hill Street last year and Rooster Long did some classy work as
back. Gee, I wish I could play the kind of football you fellows put up!"
Both Garry and Rooster warmed to the genuine enthusiasm of their
new acquaintance. Here was a football fan like themselves. Garry
wondered at the dislike that was evident in Bill's tone as he made the
introductions, and made a mental note that he would ask him about it
the first time he had an opportunity.
"I should think you would be satisfied with your own special game,"
Bill said now in the same cold, unfriendly tone. "I hear from Frank
that you play a wicked game of pool."
"Wicked is right," agreed Jerry amiably. "I don't need much advice when
I have a cue in my hand."
They were interrupted by a fretful voice.
"Why are you keeping me out here?" queried Jerry's companion. "Why
don't you take me to shore?"
"We'll do that in a jiffy," responded Bill, with a cheerful grin. "I
guess this old bus can get us that far."
The eyes of the rescued boy turned toward him, and the frown on his
face deepened.
Garry and his chums had a chance to study that face now, and what they
saw did not appeal to them. It was a good-looking face in a rather weak
way, but the forehead looked as though it had the habit of scowling
and the mouth had a peevish, downward droop that seemed to indicate an
habitually sullen state of mind.
The uninvited guest proceeded to act in such a way as to leave little
doubt in his auditors' minds that they had judged correctly.
"Take it easy," counseled Garry, as he put his arm beneath the other's
shoulder. "Better rest until you get your breath and feel stronger."
The young fellow brushed away Garry's arm impatiently, and after a
brief struggle managed to lift himself to a sitting posture. His sullen
eyes swept the lake.
"Where's my motorboat?" he asked sharply.
"Gone, Lent," Jerry answered, with an airy snap of his fingers. "Burned
up."
"Burned up?" said the other boy, looking incredulously at Jerry. "Why,
the boat was brand new! I just bought it. Burned up! I don't believe
it!"
"I don't suppose it makes much difference whether you believe it or
not," Jerry replied. "There's a fragment of it left, as you can see by
looking on the other side. Maybe it can be rebuilt and maybe not. For
myself, I should say it wasn't worth towing home. Sorry, but you can't
get away from facts."
Garry, who had been listening to the dialogue with interest, now spoke.
"Your boat struck a rock and something exploded," he explained. "We saw
that you were in trouble and came as quickly as we could. But the boat
burned fast, and, as your friend says, there isn't much of it left."
"Grayson seems to have left out the most important part of it," Jerry
put in at this point. "He saved your life, Lent, which ought to mean
at least as much to you as the loss of your motorboat."
He spoke with a touch of irony which seemed to be lost altogether on
his companion.
The boy addressed as Lent looked at Garry with a gleam of interest for
a moment.
"You're the Grayson that played quarterback on the Hill Street eleven
last year, are you? You made me lose a lot of money that I bet on the
Webster Street team."
It was a queer way of expressing gratitude, and Garry was irritated for
a moment.
"You ought to have used better judgment in picking the team to bet on,"
he answered curtly.
But Lent Stewart was not listening. He dragged himself to his feet and,
steadying himself, gripped the rail and stared out frowningly over the
water.
Then he turned savagely on Jerry Cox, ignoring the other boys.
"If my new motorboat's wrecked it's all your fault, Jerry Cox!" he
snarled. "If you hadn't grabbed my arm, I'd have steered clear of the
rocks all right."
"Yes, you would!" jeered Jerry. "If I hadn't done my best to stop your
crazy piloting, we'd have been at the bottom long before. I warned you
that you were going straight into danger, but you wouldn't listen. You
always think you know it all."
"It would be queer if I didn't know more about a boat than you do,"
retorted his companion. "You as much as wrecked that new boat, and you
ought to pay for it."
"Watch me," returned Jerry derisively, and there followed what promised
to be a long drawn out and acrimonious dispute had not Garry intervened.
"Let's take these boys where they want to go and get back to the house,
Bill," he suggested, a glint in his eye. "I'm hungry, and something
tells me that I'm going to be hungrier soon. You wouldn't let me die of
starvation, would you?"
Bill looked uncertainly at Garry and the others, opened his mouth as
though to speak, then shut it again with a look of determination and
turned his attention to his engine.
Big Bill was hospitable, as were his father and mother. The obvious and
natural thing for him to do under the circumstances would have been to
ask the derelicts up to his house, which was not far away, give them
dry clothes of some sort, invite them to partake of an early supper,
and then send them home in the family car.
Nine times out of ten he would have acted in just that way. But this
time he conquered his instinct toward hospitality without apparent
effort. Looking at Jerry Cox and Lent Stewart with an expressionless
face, he said in a cold voice that caused his chums to look at each
other with inquiring glances:
"If you'll tell me where you want to go, I'll see that you get there as
soon as possible."
"We came from Lenox," Lent Stewart answered, sullenly enough. "I have a
boathouse there and I can get a change of clothes. My father is rich,
and he'll see that you get a--"
He was evidently going to add "reward," but the color that came into
Garry's face and the flash that came from his eyes daunted him, and he
murmured something that was unintelligible.
"I guess I can get you there all right," said Bill, as he coaxed the
engine into life. "It's all up to the old tub. We'll hope she's in a
good humor."
It appeared that the "old tub" was in exceptionally good humor; so they
made the two-mile trip up the Sheldon river in excellent time. Bill had
fastened the hull of the wrecked boat to his own craft with a rope and
pulled it along after him.
Lent Stewart's evil humor persisted throughout the trip. Not a word of
thanks came from his lips. He sat sullenly, looking gloweringly at the
wreck of his boat, varied only by the ugly glances he cast at Jerry.
When they reached the boathouse landing, Stewart stepped off, and with
a mumbled word that might have been interpreted as reluctant thanks,
directed to no one in particular, made for the boathouse. Jerry, on the
contrary, thanked the other lads heartily. Then he turned to go to the
boathouse, only to be stopped by Stewart.
"You clear out of this!" he growled. "You wrecked my boat and I don't
want anything more to do with you."
"All right, you doughhead, that suits me," retorted Jerry Cox, and
strode off to the shore, whistling, with his hands in his pockets.
Garry and his friends, who had not yet gotten out of earshot, heard the
interchange and grinned. They had all of them taken a strong dislike to
Lent Stewart. They heartily hoped that they would never see him again.
On the contrary, they rather liked Jerry Cox. He was a cheerful young
fellow, so different from Stewart that they wondered what had brought
them together.
"Cute little sunshine, that Lent Stewart," chuckled Garry, as the
cranky little motorboat widened the distance from the dock. "He ought
to be a pal of Sandy Podder's. Probably each of them could give the
other points on how to make himself a general nuisance."
Rooster laughed.
"I don't know about that," he said. "Sandy Podder's in a class by
himself. I liked that Jerry Cox, though," he added. "He seems to be a
good fellow."
"Good fellow nothing!" grunted Bill, giving the wheel of the motorboat
a savage twist that turned it half about. "He's nothing but a
bum--that's what he is!"
CHAPTER III
THE MUDDY FOOTBALL
Such an outburst from good-natured Bill Sherwood was startling. His
companions looked at him with surprise. On the face of it, his wrath
against Jerry Cox seemed unfounded. This then was the explanation of
Bill's coldness and lack of hospitality.
"What's the deep, dark secret, Bill?" asked Garry, voicing the desire
to know that all were feeling. "The way you talk about Jerry Cox would
make one think you were his best enemy."
"I am," growled Bill.
"What do you know against him?" queried Nick Danter.
"I came to know about him through my brother Frank," replied Bill.
"Jerry Cox is one of that fast poolroom bunch. He hangs about Mooney's
place all the time with Sandy Podder, Lent Stewart and that gang. He
used to be all right before he got in with that lot. Now he's as bad as
the rest of them."
"Well, I don't see that that's any of our funeral," put in Ted. "I'm
mighty sure I'm not losing any sleep over that poolroom bunch. As long
as we don't have to mix with 'em, why should we worry?"
"It's all right for you fellows to talk," returned Bill moodily. "But
this Jerry Cox--"
He broke off and looked frowningly straight ahead, while his comrades
regarded him curiously.
"Well, he's a friend of my brother Frank's," Bill burst forth, "and
he's doing his best to keep Frank in with that rotten poolroom crowd.
Do you wonder that I'm sore at him?"
"Not a bit, if that's the case," replied Garry promptly. "I'd feel the
same way myself. I'm sorry if Frank has got into that gang. Let's see,
Frank is a good deal older than you, isn't he?"
"About five years," answered Bill. "He finished his course in the high
school last year, and now he's had a year in college. He'll be in the
sophomore class in the fall. He's planning, you know, to be a doctor."
"I've heard it said he was a mighty smart scholar in the high,"
remarked Ted.
"So he was," replied Bill. "Walked away with most of the prizes. I wish
I were as good a scholar as he was. Used to love his books. But now
that he's got in with that gang he's neglecting his work and has fallen
'way behind in his studies. The folks have talked to him about it, but
it doesn't seem to do any good. As for me, he treats me like a kid."
"It's too bad," said Nick sympathetically.
"Take the time you fellows have been up here, for instance," continued
Bill. "How many times have you seen Frank at the bungalow?"
"Just once," replied Garry thoughtfully. "And then he seemed in an
all-fired hurry to get back to town," he added.
"Where does he stay at night in Lenox?" Booster asked.
"Oh, at the house of one or other of the gang. Usually he pals with
Jerry Cox," Bill explained. "Do you wonder," he added, with another
vicious twist of the wheel, "that I could barely bring myself to be
decent to the fellow?"
"It's enough to make any one sore," admitted Garry, who felt that
he knew now why Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood had often seemed so sad and
abstracted during the visit of the boys to the bungalow.
They were entering Bass Lake now, almost at the place where Lent
Stewart's motorboat had met with disaster. They stared at the fatal
rock reminiscently.
"It's a wonder that Lent Stewart wouldn't learn to pilot a motorboat
before he took it out for a spin," commented Ted. "The end sure came
fast and furious."
"Shouldn't wonder if he had been drinking," remarked Nick. "I caught
sight of a bottle in the bottom of the boat."
"Of course you can't blame him for feeling pretty sore," conceded
Garry. "It must be pretty tough to lose a new boat like that. It must
have cost a lot of money."
"You can blame him for showing that he was sore, though," declared Bill
disgustedly. "The ungrateful goof never even thanked you for saving his
life, Garry."
"I was thankful enough for saving my own life," returned Garry, and
then told them of the panic-stricken way in which Stewart had clutched
him and drawn them both under water.
"Sounds just like him," Bill said contemptuously. "That whole poolroom
gang is rotten. That's why it makes me mad enough to bite nails to
think of Frank being in with them."
All his friends sympathized heartily with Bill. Having come in contact
with that fast, dissipated crowd through Sandy Podder, who was one of
the bunch, they knew how worthless it was. They knew, too, that Bill
had always looked up to his older brother as a model of everything that
was intelligent and fine. There had been a strong bond between the two
lads. Small wonder that Bill had found it hard to be polite to Jerry
Cox!
"Guess we'd better get over to the house and jump into our clothes,"
remarked Bill after a silence. "Supper will be just about ready when we
get there."
The boys agreed, and after making the motorboat fast to the dock
hurried to the house.
That evening at the table the guests were able to read a new meaning
into Mrs. Sherwood's anxious glances toward the door and in the
conscious effort that Mr. Sherwood made to be companionable and
cheerful.
"They are hoping Frank will come home to supper," thought Garry. "I
suppose he's having eats with some of the gang and planning a full
evening at the poolroom."
Rooster, thinking on the subject, wondered how he could ever have felt
a liking for Jerry Cox.
Two days later the visit at the bungalow came to an end.
"Hate to leave, Bill," said Garry. "We've had a mighty slick time while
we've been here."
The other boys expressed themselves in similar fashion.
"I hate just as much to have you go," replied Bill. "But I sha'n't be
long behind you. The folks are going to close the bungalow earlier
this year than usual."
He did not say why, but Garry surmised that this was because they
wanted to get back to town so as the better to keep their eye on Frank
and try to get him under control.
With warm thanks to their host and hostess, the boys made their way
back to their homes at Lenox, hiking it by preference, though Mr.
Sherwood offered to send them in the car.
At the corner of Maple and Cherry Streets, they met Dick Randolph and
Con Riley, who greeted them like long lost brothers.
"You old deserters!" exclaimed Dick. "We thought you weren't coming
back till the first day of school."
"We've been having some fine practice in that open lot back of your
house, Garry," said Con. "Dick's developed a great punt, and our
forward passing hasn't been so worse."
"I'll have to get in with you," replied Garry. "My hands are itching
for the feel of the good old pigskin."
As they reached the front of Garry's home, Mrs. Grayson came hurrying
out to meet her son. After a warm greeting to the wanderer, she turned
to his chums.
"Come in with Garry, boys," she said smilingly. "Hannah's just putting
lunch on the table."
The lads made some objections as a matter of form, but they did not
require much urging. Mrs. Grayson was used to having Garry's friends in
her house at all hours of the day and at any meal.
She liked to have them, and it might be observed that Hannah, the maid,
though she often grumbled over the necessity of setting extra plates at
the table, always served the boys with the best there was and looked on
with beaming approval as the fruits of her labors disappeared.
The boys' appetites were keen after their hike, and they did full
justice to the appetizing lunch spread before them. While they ate
they recurred to the ever fascinating topic of their chances to play
football at Lenox High during the coming fall.
"You knew, of course; that Pete Maddern and Tom Allison were entering
high, didn't you?" Dick asked Garry.
"Yes," replied Garry, as he passed his plate for a second piece of pie.
"I'm glad of it, too. They're both of them good fellows and mighty fine
football players."
"I can see where we'll have some tall old scrambling to make the team,"
said Dick lugubriously, "with three husky captains of grammar school
elevens fighting for a berth."
"And none of 'em getting it," predicted Ted Dillingham.
"Maybe. But meantime there's nothing to keep us from kicking the ball
around," said Garry cheerfully. "Who's with me? That is, if you fellows
are all through."
"If we're not, we ought to be," laughed Rooster, pushing back his chair
after Mrs. Grayson had given the signal, an example followed by the
others. "Lead on, Garry. Get that pigskin. What we'll do to it will be
a sin and a shame."
They ran around to the barn at the back of Garry's home, that had
been fitted up as a gymnasium, and there Garry possessed himself of
the football that had been given him on his last birthday and which,
despite rough usage, was still serviceable.
"Make believe it doesn't feel good to get hold of this old football
again," he murmured, hugging the ball lovingly in the crook of his arm
as he trotted with the other boys to the open field back of the house.
"I wish some of the other fellows were here," he added. "We might get
in some good practice."
As though in answer to his wish, a group of boys who had also played
on the Hill Street eleven appeared at that juncture, coming up Maple
Street.
"There's Sizz Snider and Si Rowe!" yelled Rooster Long.
"And Carl Zukor and Sloppy Hume," added Nick. "Hooray! Now we'll have
some fun."
The other boys came running, and there were some jubilant greetings.
"If Bill were here now, it would seem like old times!" exclaimed Ted.
Garry nodded assent.
"Almost a full eleven here now," he said. "Too bad that we haven't got
another team to play against. But we can get some good group practice
anyway at punting, kicking, and forward passing. We'll have five on
each side, and we'll try to play as hard as though we were in a regular
game."
They divided up accordingly, with Garry's group in possession of the
ball.
"Now, fellows, snap into it!" called Garry. "Let's see if you still
have some of your old stuff."
He called out a signal, received the ball from Carl Zukor, who acted as
center, straightened with a swift movement, and threw the ball to Nick
Danter at right half.
Nick turned and threw the ball to Ted, who legged it down the field at
a great rate amid the encouraging shouts of his comrades.
He was downed at last by Dick Randolph, who made a rattling tackle.
"Good for forty yards, I bet," sang out Rooster.
"Easy enough to make a long run when there are not many in front of
you," laughed Garry. "Bring it back, Ted, and we'll try another."
There had been a fairly heavy rain the night before, and the field was
slippery. Also there were small depressions here and there filled with
muddy water, into which a runner was apt to fall unless he watched his
step.
One of these proved the undoing of Rooster after he in his turn had
received the ball and started to run. He had gone about fifteen yards
when his feet found one of those mud-filled pockets in the ground.
Down he went in one grand splash, while his mates gathered round to
gibe at his downfall.
The ball fell under him, and when Rooster struggled to his feet it was
hard to tell which was muddier, the ball or himself.
"Is that what you call making a touchdown?" asked Dick Randolph, with a
grin.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" crowed Ted.
Rooster regarded his tormentors with a sour expression of countenance.
"You're a great bunch, you are!" he grumbled. "The next one that grins
will get this pigskin right on the end of his nose. Now laugh that
off."
Before this formidable threat the boys scattered, still jeering, though
at a safe distance from Rooster and his weapon.
Garry, laughing, held out his hands.
"Chuck it," he invited. "I'll give it a punt that will shake some of
the mud off of it."
Rooster complied, and Garry received the ball gingerly, holding it at
either end with the palms of his hands only.
Then he opened his hands. The ball dropped, met his foot squarely, and
went whizzing through the air.
At the same moment a tall, thin, preoccupied gentleman turned from the
street into the lot.
Ball and man came together with a plop.
"Oof!" exclaimed the man explosively.
CHAPTER IV
AN AWKWARD ENCOUNTER
The tall thin gentleman had been struck squarely in the face.
The shock and the hurt must have been considerable. But apart from
this, insult was added to injury by the mud on the ball that spattered
over the man's immaculate shirt front and vest.
Garry, in dismay at what he had unintentionally done, ran swiftly
across the field in pursuit of the offending pigskin, intent upon
making his peace with the victim of the accident.
Peace, however, was the last thing in the thoughts of the stranger, who
had taken out his handkerchief and was busily engaged in wiping the mud
from his face and clothes.
He stared angrily at Garry when the boy approached, out of breath and
full of apologies.
"I didn't see you coming," Garry panted, genuinely penitent. "I'm
awfully sorry, sir. I hope it didn't hurt you much. It was only an
accident."
"Accident!" sneered the man in a voice trembling with rage. "Quite an
unfortunate accident, young man. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
"I'm dreadfully sorry," repeated Garry. "I wouldn't have done it for
the world!"
"I suppose it was an accident, too," the stranger went on, as though
Garry had not spoken, "that you happen to be playing football in a
vacant lot close to a fairly populous thoroughfare. Any passerby is in
danger of being assaulted as I have been."
Garry stared at the man helplessly, hardly knowing what answer to make
to the stilted, pedantic speech.
"Perhaps you had better come into our house," the boy suggested, still
anxious to make amends. "You can wash there and have your clothes
cleaned."
"I'm not in need of any suggestions from you," replied the man, giving
Garry a look out of his cold gray eyes that made the lad think of a
snake. "All you can do is to make me an abject apology."
"I've already said that I am sorry," replied Garry, growing a bit red
in the face at the stranger's implacable tone, "and I am--_very_ sorry."
"People don't usually cross this lot," Nick broke in, coming to Garry's
relief; "and you came around that corner so suddenly that we didn't
see you till after the punt was made."
"I was taking a short cut to Mr. Elliny's house," the man rejoined,
turning his cold gaze from Garry to Nick. "Not that I feel called on
to offer an explanation, since the lot was not fenced in," he added
loftily. "It's an outrage for you boys to practice with that filthy
football within the town limits," with a glance of distaste at his
muddy waistcoat. "I ought to report this affair to the authorities."
With this the outraged stranger swept the group with an icy stare,
scowled fiercely at Garry, and continued on his way with a dignity that
refused to be marred by the consciousness that his immaculate clothes
had suffered sadly.
Nick whistled softly.
"Going to Mr. Elliny's house," he repeated thoughtfully. "Isn't Elliny
the head of the Board of Education?"
"Great Scott! So he is," cried Garry, beginning to see whither Nick's
question led. "I bet that tall, thin guy is a teacher!"
"Well, you did it that time, Garry!" crowed Rooster. "Sure, that old
boy is a teacher. You could tell it by the look of him."
"By the look in his eyes he'll never forgive you, Garry," predicted
Nick. "You hurt his dignity."
"Anyway you got some dirt off der ball," said Carl Zukor, who had not
yet shaken off his German accent.
"Yeah. Think of that and cheer up, old boy," said elephantine Sloppy
Hume, clapping Garry on the shoulder. "It wasn't your fault, anyway.
Don't let it faze you."
"Just the same, I'm mighty sorry it happened," replied Garry, as he
resumed his position in the field. "I don't suppose it's any fun to
have a muddy football smack into you. You can't blame the man for
feeling sore."
"You can't blame him for being an old crab, either," said Nick
cheerfully. "But you don't exactly love him for it. If he'd been a
regular fellow, he'd have accepted your apology and let it go at that."
"Well, come on, play ball," called Garry, and in a few moments practice
was in full swing again.
But though he entered heartily into the sport, Garry could not shake
off a feeling of regret that the accident had occurred. There had been
a look of bitter animosity in the look the man had turned on him, and
he had a feeling that he would hear of the matter further.
The afternoon wore on, and the boys were at length forced to call an
end to the practice. As they reluctantly dispersed to their homes Garry
carefully deposited his precious football in the barn "gym" and entered
the house.
There he found that his mother had an errand for him that must be
attended to at once.
Garry was muddy and hot and needed a bath badly. Nevertheless, he
started off without protest, thinking that perhaps he could work in a
shower when he returned.
At the first corner, as luck would have it, he ran into his sister Ella
with two of her girl chums. One was Jane Danter, Nick Danter's pretty
sister, and the other an out-of-town girl whom Garry did not know.
Since Ella rarely missed an opportunity to tease her brother, she could
not resist the opportunity his rather unkempt appearance gave her.
"Garry Grayson! who's been throwing mud at you? Or have you been making
mud pies? Of all things! I shouldn't have recognized you if it weren't
for your walk. You look like something the cat dragged in."
"Is zat so?" was the only retort Garry in his confusion was capable of
making. He felt it was not a very effective one, and his peace of mind
was not increased by the sound of the girls' giggles as he passed on
with what dignity he could muster.
He realized ruefully that he ought to have taken a moment to wash
himself and brush off his clothes. Handling a muddy football during an
afternoon of hard practice was not conducive to a good appearance.
"I sure look like a tramp," he thought to himself. "I suppose I'll run
into every one I know just because I've got mud all over me."
The first person he saw when he entered the store on his mother's
errand was Sandy Podder, who looked Garry over disdainfully from head
to foot.
After the first look that passed between them, Garry ignored Sandy and
stood with his back toward him while he waited for his order to be
filled.
But Sandy was evidently in no mood to be ignored. He started a
conversation with the storekeeper in a loud tone that was clearly
intended to reach Garry's ears.
"Lot of fellows I know entering Lenox High this fall," remarked Sandy.
"That so?" inquired the storekeeper, without a great deal of interest.
"Sure," continued Sandy. "Some crack football players too, from Webster
and Cherry Street schools."
"Some from Hill Street too, if what I hear is true," remarked the man,
giving Garry a friendly wink.
"Oh, that bunch! They think they're players, of course." Sandy Podder's
scorn was immense. "But they won't have a chance against such fellows
as Pete Maddern and Tom Allison. Those two are what I call real
football players."
Thinking that Sandy had not recognized Garry as the former captain of
the Hill Street team, the well disposed storekeeper tried to give him a
hint.
He pointed towards Garry's still averted back and said in a low tone:
"Gently! Gently! That's Garry Grayson himself."
"Well, what of it?" Sandy laughed and snapped his fingers flippantly.
"Do you think I'm afraid of him?"
"You bet your life you are!" Garry whirled on him so swiftly that
Sandy, though much the bigger of the two, shrank back in alarm. "You
stow that kind of talk, Sandy Podder, if you know what's good for you."
Sandy recovered himself enough to bluster:
"Who's going to make me, I'd like to know?"
Garry took a step forward, his eyes blazing. But here the storekeeper
intervened.
"Easy, boys, easy," he admonished. "Don't let's have any trouble in
here."
Garry drew back at the words and Sandy sneered openly, thinking that he
had an ally, if only a negative one.
"You think you're going to make the team at Lenox High, I suppose,"
continued the trouble-maker. "Well, let me tell you that you haven't
the ghost of a chance with Allison and Maddern in the field against
you."
Garry was holding himself in with a great effort. When he spoke it was
in a deceptively quiet voice.
"You seem to forget that as captain of the Hill Street team I've met
both Pete Maddern and Tom Allison--"
"And licked them too," interposed the storekeeper, rubbing his hands
with enjoyment. "My boy was there at both those games, and he said they
were the prettiest he ever saw."
"Just luck!" sneered Sandy again with that offensive snap of his
fingers. "I was there--and I know."
"Oh, you know, do you?" Garry's voice was still calm, but there was
something in it that warned Sandy Podder he had gone too far. "Since
you know so much, perhaps you can tell me what became of that money
that Mr. Long gave you for your father and that your father never got?"
CHAPTER V
CONSTERNATION
At the words that fell from Garry Grayson's lips Sandy Podder's face
became as white as ashes.
"Now, now--" he stammered, all his aggressiveness gone. "Just let that
drop. I don't want to talk about that."
"I thought not," replied Garry, with a touch of sarcasm. "Then if you
don't want me to spill the whole story, beat it out of here and keep
going. And more than that," he added, as Sandy turned hurriedly toward
the door, "if you try giving anybody else the same line of chatter
you've just handed me, I'll make Lenox a mighty uncomfortable place for
you. Just get that."
The door slammed after Sandy Podder, and Garry turned toward the
grinning storekeeper.
"I'll have that package now," he said, with an answering smile.
"You sure handed that young whippersnapper a hot one that time," said
the man, as he pushed Garry's package across to him and received his
money in exchange. "I must say, I was glad to see you do it. That
fellow needs taking down a peg or two. But say," he lowered his voice
to a confidential murmur and leaned eagerly across the counter, "what
did you mean about that money and Sandy Podder's old man? You let out
just enough to make me interested."
Garry shook his head, gathered the package under one arm, and turned to
go.
"How do you know that I wasn't just working a bluff?" he answered.
But after the door had closed behind the lad the storekeeper remained
in his place behind the counter for a long minute, perplexity written
on his face.
"Bluffing, eh?" he repeated, half aloud. "Well, all I've got to say
'twas a pretty good bluff to make Sandy Podder turn white in the face
and hurry out of the shop as though a ghost was at his heels. Looks
like Sandy Podder had some trouble with his father about money and that
Garry Grayson knows about it. It's no wonder, the way he runs with that
poolroom crowd. No boy of mine could keep company with that bunch and
live under the same roof with me. That poolroom ought to be closed up,
and I'd like to be the one to do it."
Meanwhile, Garry made his way homeward as quickly as he could.
He was irritated by his encounter with Sandy Podder, and half angry
with himself because of the slip of the tongue that had almost revealed
the shameful facts concerning that young reprobate and the missing
three thousand dollars.
Sandy had apparently gotten out of that scrape a good deal more easily
than he deserved. For a time after the occurrence he had seemed
subdued. But the improvement had lasted only a short time, and now he
was as bad--worse, some thought--as ever.
"He hates us fellows for the part we took in showing him up," murmured
Garry to himself, "and now that we're entering the same high school
where he's been studying, he'll do his best to get even with us. Well,
let him try," with an unconscious clenching of the fists. "I guess
we'll be a match for him. We've beaten him before, and we can probably
do it again."
It was not long before the great day came--great, at least, from
Garry's viewpoint--the day on which he was to enter Lenox High.
Mrs. Grayson had spent a few days before the opening in shopping for
Garry and Ella, for the latter was to enter the high school on the same
day as her twin brother.
There had been a spirited race during the years of grammar school
between the brother and sister.
When Garry skipped from 3A to 4A, Ella had put on her working cap and
skipped also. When in the higher grades Ella made a brilliant spurt and
skipped again, Garry had urged himself to greater effort and in the
next grade caught up to her.
Now, as they were about to step on a higher rung of the ladder of
learning, they were still side by side.
As they faced each other over the breakfast table, Ella radiant with
excitement and bubbling over with good spirits, Garry a bit sheepish
and acutely conscious of the handsome new suit that had been bought for
him to celebrate the occasion, it would have been hard to find in the
whole of Lenox a more wholesome or promising pair of youngsters.
At least Mrs. Grayson thought so, and it is safe to say that Mr.
Grayson agreed with her.
"My, how spick and span my famous brother looks!" remarked Ella, as
she helped herself to some omelet and a crisp slice of bacon. "You and
Tom Allison and that good-looking Pete Maddern will have the spotlight
turned upon you to-day, I reckon. The girls call you the 'Three
Captains,' and there's a lot of interest as to which of you will make
the Lenox football team first."
"So Tom and Maddern's boy are entering to-day too," observed Mr.
Grayson, eyeing his son thoughtfully. "They're fine fellows, both of
them."
"I'll say they are," Garry rejoined heartily. "Off the gridiron I like
them first-rate. But on the field," he added, with a grin, "they're
just a couple of fellows to lick."
"Well, go in and lick them, son," said Mr. Grayson, with a smile.
"They're a pair of sporting enemies, all right, and if you beat them,
it will be in a fair fight."
"I've got more than Pete and Tom to lick, Dad," said Garry. "It's not
likely any of us freshmen will make the team. And it's going to be
pretty hard to stand on the outside and watch the regulars work."
"Hard on your sporting instincts, but perhaps good for your
scholarship," returned Mr. Grayson. "There's just one thing I want to
say to you, Garry, before you start out this morning. This goes for you
too, Ella, since your mother tells me you are going to try to make the
girls' hockey team."
Garry shot an inquiring glance at his sister, but Ella's merry eyes
were fixed demurely on her plate.
"All during your work in grammar school," went on Mr. Grayson, "you
have been governed by the rule that your studies must come before
anything else. You've both done well and we're proud of you. Aren't we,
Sadie?"
Mrs. Grayson nodded, smiling.
"We haven't anything to complain of," she agreed.
"And I just want you to remember," Mr. Grayson concluded his brief
lecture, "that the same rule holds good in high school. Studies first
and sports in what time you have left."
"Sure thing, Dad," assented Garry. He had just caught a glimpse through
the window of Nick, Bill, Rooster, and Ted coming up the street. He
pushed back his chair hastily, for the boys had promised to call for
him. On his way to the door he paused for a moment at his father's
side. "That rule is a pretty strict one at Lenox High," he said.
"You've got to reach a certain mark in scholarship before you're even
eligible to try for a team. I say, El," he added, as he playfully
tweaked his sister's ear in passing, "what's this I hear about hockey?"
Ella smiled, as she also pushed back her chair from the table.
"You didn't think I was going to let my brother carry off all the
sporting honors of the family, did you?" she returned. Then she ran off
for her hat as Garry called a good-bye from the door and joined his
friends on the porch.
"Gee, you sure look swell, Garry!" Rooster greeted him. "That is some
outfit."
Ted staggered as though he were about to swoon.
"Hold me up," he pleaded. "Am I seeing things?"
"Cut it," commanded Garry, as he made a pass at Ted. "What are you
trying to do, pull a fight?"
As they walked on toward the school, it was noticeable that Bill
Sherwood was unusually silent. When Garry finally commented on this,
Bill roused himself with an effort from his abstraction.
"There was a row at home about Frank's going with that poolroom crowd,"
he explained. "Gee, I wish I could find some way to sidetrack him!
They're sure a rough gang, and I never thought that a brother of mine
would be running around with them."
"Oh, don't worry!" Rooster tried to cheer his chum up. "Frank will
tumble to them himself if you give him time. Just leave him alone till
he comes to his senses."
"Yeah, that's just what I am doing," said Bill mournfully. "He won't
let me do anything else."
The chums reached the grounds of the high school a short time later,
and found the campus already crowded with students. As the boys
mingled with these on their way to the building they caught sight of
Sandy Podder talking to Lent Stewart.
As Sandy's eyes lighted on Garry, an angry look came into them. He said
something in a low voice to his companion, and then the boys saw him
slip off into the crowd.
"Up to some dirty scheme, you can bet," said Rooster Long, with a
contemptuous twirl of his books. "That Sandy Podder sure has it in for
us."
"And he was talking to Lent Stewart," remarked Garry thoughtfully. "The
two seem to be pals."
"Thick as thieves. They're two of a kind, from all I've seen of them,"
said Bill.
They entered the big building now and looked about them with interest
as they proceeded down the corridor.
The school was an old one, the ceilings high, the woodwork dark. But
despite the dingy aspect of the place there was an air of dignity, an
atmosphere of learning, that impressed the boys just admitted within
its portals.
They passed an open door and had the temerity to look in.
"Gee, that's an office!" breathed Ted, with a touch of awe.
"Where they send the naughty freshmen, maybe," put in Nick Danter, with
a chuckle. "Bet you'll be the first to make it, Ted, at that."
Ted's retort was cut short by an unexpected incident.
They had reached the end of the corridor and were about to turn the
corner to the room assigned to them when Garry leaped back suddenly,
almost knocking over Rooster and Bill, who were directly behind him.
A cup of dirty water thrown by an invisible hand had narrowly missed
landing squarely on the front of his new coat!
CHAPTER VI
FACING THE BULLY
Surprise on Garry Grayson's part was quickly followed by anger. Whoever
had thrown that cup of water had done it with deliberate and malicious
intent.
While Nick, who had caught most of the water, was wiping it from his
sleeve, Garry leaped around the corner. There, as he had more than half
expected, he encountered the grinning face of Sandy Podder.
Sandy was trying to slip into a room the door of which stood ajar. But
Garry was too quick for him and caught him by the shoulder.
As Sandy wriggled out of the clutch a look of feigned innocence came
into his face.
"Oh, hello!" he remarked, with an air of specious friendliness. "When
did you get here?"
"You know as well as I do," replied Garry angrily. "What did you mean
by trying to throw that cup of dirty water over me?"
"I?" replied Sandy, while in his furtive eyes lurked a grin of
enjoyment. "You must be crazy. I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh, don't you?"
With a swift motion Garry bent forward, seized Podder's wrist and gave
it a sharp twist. With a cry of surprise and pain Sandy's fingers
unclosed and something tinkled on the floor of the corridor.
Garry pounced upon it and picked it up. The object was a collapsible
tin cup that can be folded in a small compass and put in the pocket for
convenience' sake.
Garry held out the cup, contempt on his face.
"Didn't know anything about it?" he said. "With this cup hidden in your
hand and still wet from the water you tried to throw on me!"
"I tell you I didn't try to throw water on you," reiterated Sandy, a
little of his assurance gone.
A crowd of boys had gathered, sensing a quarrel, hoping probably,
boylike, for a real fight.
Nick Danter nudged Garry's arm.
"Don't start anything, Garry," he urged in an undertone. "This isn't
the place or time."
Garry appeared not to have heard him. He unfolded the collapsible cup
until it had assumed its full shape and size. There were a few drops of
water still clinging to it.
"Give me that cup," demanded Sandy, beginning to bluster. "You're
altogether too fresh. Give me back my property."
Garry looked at the few drops of water in the bottom of the cup. These
he tossed coolly into the flaming face of Sandy Podder, while some of
the boys in the fast-increasing throng laughed gleefully.
"Say you--you four-flusher," cried Sandy, fairly stuttering with wrath.
"You give me back my cup or I'll--I'll--"
"Yes," replied Garry, stepping forward to meet him, hands clenched.
"Just what will you do?"
Bill Sherwood came up to Garry and whispered in his ear:
"Don't spoil your entrance, Garry. There's nothing Sandy Podder would
like better than to see you get in Dutch with the faculty."
Garry nodded. Crushing the cup in his hand he flung it at the feet of
its owner.
"There's your cup," he said curtly.
Leaving the red-faced Podder to pick up the cup sheepishly, to the
amusement of the spectators, Garry and his friends hurried down the
corridor toward what they had been told would be their classroom.
Luckily, the numbers were clearly marked on the doors. They found their
number, seventeen, without difficulty and slipped inside.
They were none too soon, for as Garry cast a glance behind he saw one
of the teachers approach the group around Sandy Podder, inquiry in his
eye.
"Gee, I'm glad you're well out of that, Garry!" said Rooster, with a
sigh of relief. "It would be a bad thing to get into a fight your first
day in the high school."
"Podder may peach, anyhow," Garry pointed out, but Bill Sherwood
scoffed at this.
"Not much! There are too many witnesses to testify that he started the
row. He'll want to keep his own skirts clean."
"Besides, his own part in it wasn't over-heroic," chuckled Rooster.
"He'd hardly want to brag about it."
"You sure got him mad when you chucked those drops of water at him,"
grinned Ted. "I wanted to crow."
"The low coward!" exclaimed Garry, his hands clenching again at the
memory. "I suppose that's the kind of thing we've got to look out for
now. But if Sandy Podder's looking for trouble, he'll get all he wants!
I can tell him that."
"He got some this morning," replied the grinning Nick. "Cheer up,
Garry. You handed that sneak one bitter dose of medicine, judging from
the look on his face when he gulped it down."
Some more of their classmates were coming in then, and as the time for
the opening exercises was almost at hand they had no time for further
conversation.
Now that Garry had somewhat cooled down, he was glad that he had
listened to Bill's warning and not let his anger run away with
him. There would be other ways of dealing with the fellow and more
appropriate places for that purpose.
The principal of the school, Mr. Allen, gave the students a little talk
in the assembly room before they scattered to their respective classes.
It was a genial, kindly talk, and the new boys, as Bill later expressed
it, "cottoned to him at once." He emphasized the necessity for hard
study and the rewards that might be expected to come from it. Then
he touched on the sports of the school, with which he was in hearty
sympathy, though he warned them that scholarship must come first and
that none would be allowed on any of the school teams whose work was
not satisfactory to their teachers.
In the absorbing round of new classes, new subjects, and new teachers,
Garry soon forgot all about Sandy Podder.
Not much work was expected of any one on that first day. It was more a
matter of becoming acquainted with classmates and instructors, learning
the rules, and the giving out of the books for the various studies of
the term.
It was the first period of the afternoon that brought a surprise to
Garry Grayson. It was not a pleasant surprise, and served, together
with the scrap with Sandy in the morning, to shadow considerably his
first day in school.
As Garry entered the classroom devoted to the study of English
literature with the rest of his classmates, the tall, thin figure
at the desk impressed him as being in some way familiar, and as the
teacher turned his face toward the entering pupils Garry received a
distinct shock.
The face belonged to the stranger whose immaculate clothing Garry had
soiled with the muddy football on that unfortunate day of practice!
CHAPTER VII
TROMPET SHRUGG
The recognition appeared to be mutual. As the teacher's cold glance met
Garry's questioning one the eyes of the former hardened with a gleam of
antagonism.
The interchange lasted only a second, but it was long enough to assure
Garry that it would be a difficult task to erase from the mind of
Trompet Shrugg, teacher of English, the memory of that muddy football
and the indignity to which the incident had subjected him.
"I'm in Dutch, all right," the boy thought ruefully, as he took a seat
between Nick Danter and Bill Sherwood. "That old boy looked as though
he could hold a grudge forever. Just my luck that I have to be under
him during my first term in Lenox High!"
Garry glanced at Nick and noticed that he, too, was eyeing the teacher
with interest. Evidently Nick remembered that fateful day in the lot
and was connecting the instructor with the tall, stiff man who had been
on his way to "Mr. Elliny's house."
Catching Garry's glance, Nick winked dolefully, while his lips framed
the words: "Tough luck."
Garry nodded and would have telegraphed an answer, had not a peculiar
expression in the eyes of his chum warned him to watch the teacher.
Glancing toward the desk, Garry found the eyes of Trompet Shrugg fixed
upon him in a disapproving stare. Garry met the stare steadily though
respectfully, and in a moment the English teacher turned away to speak
to one of the other boys.
"All set to pick on me," said Garry to himself resentfully. "He seems
to think I kicked the pigskin at him on purpose. It begins to look as
though I'd have to watch my step while I'm in this class, anyway."
The English period dragged interminably, with Professor Shrugg
addressing the boys in his painfully precise English, outlining the
course for the term, and declaring in no uncertain manner what would be
expected of the boys in his classes.
There was a sigh of genuine relief when the bell sounded through the
hall announcing the end of that period and the commencement of the next.
When finally the work of the day was over and the boys were strapping
their new books together, his chums expressed their solicitude over
the outlook for Garry.
"Gee, Garry, that sure is hard luck about old Shrugg," condoled Ted
Dillingham.
"It is, for a fact," agreed Garry. "That old boy has it in for me, all
right. I could tell it by the way he looked at me."
"I see where you'll have to be a model for all the rest of us
roughnecks," grinned Nick. "You will have to be so very, very good that
Shrugg will stop suspecting you of secret plots against his health and
happiness."
"And shirt front," added Rooster. "I guess from the look of him, we'll
all have to walk as though we were treading on eggs. That guy has an
eye like a snake's."
"I bet he'll be about as popular as one, too," predicted Bill.
The prophecy proved to be not far from the truth. Trompet Shrugg was
a scholar, a highly educated man. But to his students he was stern,
abrupt, sometimes insultingly sarcastic.
A large part of this sarcasm was directed at Garry in the days that
followed. But the more Shrugg picked on him, the greater was Garry's
popularity among his schoolmates. Nick and Rooster had been careful
to circulate the story of the muddy football and the martinet of a
teacher. This delighted the boys and made Garry into something of a
hero, while much secret fun was poked at the stiff, pedantic Trompet
Shrugg.
Garry, however, found nothing amusing in the dislike the teacher of
English had for him. He was subjected almost daily to numerous small
slights and subtle bits of sarcasm, which he found it difficult to
laugh off. He knew himself constantly watched, and his very eagerness
to make no mistakes sometimes tripped him up.
Garry had his worries outside the classroom as well as in. After the
run-in between him and Sandy Podder the latter's enmity against the
former captain of the Hill Street eleven grew, if possible, still more
active.
Podder and his cronies lost no opportunity to annoy and exasperate the
lad. Sly winks and sneering glances passed between them when Garry was
present, though their respect for his courage and strength prevented
them from deliberately provoking him to hostilities.
Strangely enough, Lent Stewart, the constant companion of Sandy during
those first days at school, seemed to share the latter's enmity for
Garry.
"Though the only thing you ever did to that chump was to save his
life," Ted said one day when they had chanced to overhear an insulting
remark of Lent Stewart's directed covertly at Garry. "That's a fine
thing to hold a grudge about."
Things were very much in the same state when about a week later Garry
and his friends entered the hall of the school to find an excited crowd
about the bulletin board.
"Something's up!" cried Garry. "Let's have a look!"
As he and his friends pushed forward, some of those nearest stepped
back so that the newcomers could have a good look at the board.
At the same moment that Garry recognized Sandy Podder and Lent Stewart
in the crowd he came face to face with quite another type of boy, Pete
Maddern, the former captain of the Cherry Street football team.
"Hello, Grayson!" Pete greeted Garry in a hearty voice. "Here's good
news. First call for the gridiron."
Garry's heart leaped and enthusiasm showed in his tone as he answered
his "friendly enemy" in the same spirit.
"Something doing at last, is there?" he said. "Suppose you're going to
try for the team?"
"Am I? You bet!"
"And it's a team worth trying for, I tell you," came another voice.
Garry turned to see Tom Allison at his elbow.
Many who had witnessed the redhot games between the three grammar
schools during the previous season watched the reunion of the trio with
interest.
It was evident from their faces that these boys who had been deadly
enemies on the gridiron, striving against each other with all that was
in them, were the best of friends now that they were off the field,
each admiring the good qualities of the others.
The worth-while boys in the group about the bulletin board that day
recognized good sportsmanship when they saw it, and the popularity of
the three, already marked, grew in consequence.
"Lenox has always stood well," Garry said, in answer to Tom's
observation. "It's up to the boys this year to get the championship
back again."
Garry referred to the fact that the year before Lenox High had lost the
championship in the league of six high schools which for the two years
preceding that it had held against all comers. Naturally, all Lenoxites
were eager to wipe out the loss of the year before by a smashing
victory during the present season. So at Garry's words there was an
eager murmur of assent from the boys and cries of:
"That's the stuff!"
"Lenox forever!"
"We'll rip the league wide open this fall!"
Then from the outside of the crowd came Sandy Podder's sneering voice:
"Sounds fine. Grayson's got it all mapped out. Now that he's here,
Lenox is all right."
An angry murmur arose, and Pete Maddern swung on his heel and regarded
the speaker coldly.
"Say, you'd better sing small, Sandy Podder," he said. "What have you
ever done for football, I'd like to know? When you've captained a
champion team like Grayson here you can begin to talk."
There was a laugh at Sandy's expense. As Garry walked off with Tom
Allison, Pete Maddern and his other and older friends, eagerly
discussing the prospects of the team, Podder turned with a scowl to
Lent Stewart.
"Let's get out of here," he growled. "That Garry Grayson's got a worse
swelled head than ever. He makes me sick. The whole bunch of 'em make
me sick. I don't see why they want to let freshmen on the team, anyhow.
Colleges don't do it."
"Don't worry," replied his companion. "Wait till Grayson tries to
make the team--Allison and Maddern too, for that matter. They'll find
they're up against a mighty tough undertaking. Kicking the pigskin on a
high school gridiron is a different thing entirely from grammar school
games. When they find that they can't make the team, maybe they'll be
the ones to sing small."
"Let's hope they will," muttered Sandy, and grinned maliciously at the
thought.
Meanwhile Garry and his friends had forgotten Sandy's outburst and his
consequent discomfiture in their excitement over the call for gridiron
recruits.
Would they answer the call? Would a bee buzz?
"See you this afternoon in the gym," Garry said, as Tom and Pete parted
from him in the hall.
"Gee, how are we going to stick it out till two-thirty?" exclaimed Ted
Dillingham.
"Anyway, we'll soon know the worst," remarked Nick.
"Or the best," added Rooster, a little more optimistically.
It looked at one time in the afternoon as though Garry would have to
"stick it out" a good deal longer than two-thirty. The trouble was in
Mr. Shrugg's class, as usual. Following his policy of hectoring Garry,
the teacher called him to book on the charge that he was skylarking
with the boys back of him, thus wasting the time that should have been
spent in writing a short essay.
Possibly the teacher was honest enough in this case. He was
nearsighted, and may have failed to see that the trouble was with the
two boys seated directly behind Garry, who, in fact, was attending
strictly to business.
If, however, it was persecution that prompted the teacher's action, it
failed of its object, for the two boys at fault at once shouldered the
blame and declared that Garry had taken no part in the disturbance.
Still Shrugg appeared to be, or really was, unconvinced. He was one of
the small minds that hate to confess to a mistake.
"In that event," he said in his dry voice, "perhaps Grayson will read
to us the result of his concentrated effort. Come out to the front of
the room, if you please, so that we may hear you better."
As Garry, red and wrathful, made his way to the front of the room he
saw the eyes of his friends fixed upon him sympathetically. If Shrugg
should think the composition not up to the mark--and he would seize
upon the slightest pretext for thinking so--then Garry would probably
be kept after school to write another and could not attend the meeting
of football candidates.
No wonder the eyes of his chums followed him fearfully. No wonder,
either, that Garry's lips were set as he came to the front of the room
and met the satirical glance of the teacher.
"Now read, if you please," directed the latter.
Garry detected a gleam of pleasant anticipation in the fishy eyes fixed
upon him, and his resentment against the narrow-minded man grew hotter.
It happened fortunately that the topic given out by Mr. Shrugg for
the essay was one that especially appealed to Garry. Always good in
English, with an ability to express his thoughts clearly and concisely,
the composition Garry read to the class that day under the supercilious
stare of the teacher was an example of the boy's best work.
Even the boys were interested, and when Garry finished and looked at
the teacher there was an involuntary murmur of applause.
There was the proof that Garry was not guilty of the fault of which
he had been accused. He could not have written so much in so short a
time and with such evident concentration on his subject if he had been
involved in the mischief-making imputed to him.
Mr. Shrugg's comment was curt.
"That will do, Grayson. You can return to your seat."
Not a word of appreciation of the really excellent work! Not a
generous admission that he had been wrong!
Garry returned to his seat, glad that he had vindicated himself, but
more resentful than ever of the small-minded ways of his instructor.
"Gee, Garry, that was a close call!" remarked Nick Danter at the end of
the period when the boys were in the hall passing from one classroom to
another.
"Thought you were a goner that time for sure," put in Rooster.
"But say, wasn't Shrugg sore? And wasn't that a classy spiel that Garry
gave us in his essay?" exclaimed Bill Sherwood, giving Garry a thump
between the shoulders. "I begin to think this young feller's wasting
his time on football. Ought to be an orator."
Garry grinned cheerfully. His anger against Trompet Shrugg was
beginning to evaporate and he was beginning to appreciate more his
lucky escape from the pedantic tyrant.
"Wouldn't be half so much fun," he said in response to Bill.
CHAPTER VIII
ON THE ANXIOUS SEAT
The clock seemed to lag dreadfully as the hands made their way to
two-thirty, but they got there at last, and then the eager Garry and
his chums made a dash for the gymnasium where they found that a large
number of their classmates had already gathered.
The Lenox High first team had been rather severely crippled by the
graduation of some of its best players the preceding June. There were
several important positions to be filled, and the scrubs of last season
were on tiptoe as they figured their chances of selection.
Greb, in the position of left half, had been one of the most reliable
ground gainers of the eleven. Now he was gone, together with several
other scarcely less important players.
Both tackle positions would have to be filled, as well as that of right
end.
Garry and his friends, following the fortunes of Lenox High in a
general way during the preceding fall, had heard rumors that the scrubs
were pressing the regulars hard. Some of the boys brought in from the
bench during tight games had done remarkably good work, as good, some
said, as the first string players themselves.
But here was an unfortunate fact for Lenox. Graduation had taken toll
not only of some of the best regulars but of some of the finest players
on the scrubs as well, the boys who had worked their heads off in the
effort to secure places on the first team, only to leave school with
their ambitions ungratified.
This, while hard for Lenox, was fortunate for the aspiring boys just
entering the high school and eager to make the eleven. Since so much
new material was needed, there was more chance for the freshmen than
would ordinarily have been the case.
Still the captain, Ralph Wynn, was not particularly encouraging on
that point. While they were waiting for the coming of the coach, Wynn
talked to the would-be players on the subject that was of the intensest
interest to the freshmen at that moment.
"Some of you fellows may be first-rate material to work with," he
said, addressing the freshmen, who had grouped themselves together as
though for moral support. "In fact, we know some of you are from your
records on the grammar school elevens. But of course," he added, just
as some of the freshmen were beginning to throw out their chests a
little, "the old players have the first call. That's only fair. It's
common sense too. In the first place, they have had more experience and
training. It takes some time to break in raw material to new rules and
methods and trick plays.
"Then too, as a rule, the upper classmen are older and bigger and
heavier. They furnish more of the beef that is needed in hard games.
Lots of you boys are husky specimens, but you haven't filled out
as much as you will in a year or two. You'll all be pounds heavier
and inches taller next year, and therefore worth that much more to
the team. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and where
newcomers show themselves quick to learn," he added, as the coach
entered the gymnasium, "they have a chance. But it takes a pretty good
fellow to get on the team the first year."
This was not particularly encouraging to Garry and his friends. Still
it left a loophole, and they looked with a gleam of hope at the coach
as he entered the room.
The coach was a tall, rangy young man named Al Garwin. He had a sleepy
manner and a drawling voice, which the boys soon came to find were only
a cloak for the fiery energy he possessed. He was one that mixed praise
and blame with a liberal hand. He could raise a player to the heights
one moment and drop him to the depths the next with no more personal
feeling than if the subject had been a puppet pulled by a string.
There was a sparkle in his half-closed eyes as he approached the boys,
regulars and aspirants, who looked at him with a touch of misgiving as
the arbiter of their fate.
"Hello, fellows," he greeted. "Going to pull Lenox up to the
championship again this year?"
There was a roar of assent that brought a smile to the lips of the
coach.
"All right," he said. "Now let's see who's going to do it."
A murmur of excitement ran through the group of aspirants. At last they
were to get a line on their chances.
But this was not to come in a hurry. Coach Garwin seated himself in
a convenient chair, crossed one long leg over the other in leisurely
fashion and ran his eye over a lengthy list that had been furnished him
by Ralph Wynn.
On this paper was a list of all the aspirants for the team with a brief
statement of the experience they had had--if any--on the gridiron.
The coach took so long at this that the boys fidgeted about uneasily.
"I should think he could have done that just as well before he came
here," Rooster whispered in Garry's ear. "I wish he'd hurry up and
make a choice and get the agony over with."
"Maybe after he's made the choice we'll wish he hadn't," replied Garry.
At last Coach Garwin straightened up, uncrossed his legs, and regarded
the boys intently.
"I'll have to ask you to answer to your names," he said. "I want to get
a good look at you fellows."
Something in his voice told the boys that he was interested. Each one
asked himself if the interest related to him. The prospect of action
made them eagerly alert.
As the coach called them each by name the boys stepped forward,
answering the brisk, keen questions fired at them as clearly as they
could.
Bill Sherwood was called and stood modestly before the coach, face red,
as Mr. Garwin looked him over.
"You played center on the Hill Street team," remarked the coach,
referring to his list. "I attended a couple of those games and noted
your work, Sherwood. You certainly have the beef. All right. I've got
my eye on you."
Rooster was also given a word of commendation for his record on the
gridiron, and Nick and Ted were each commended for his work on the Hill
Street eleven.
Tom Allison and Pete Maddern were each given a word of approbation.
"It's part of my work to keep my eye on the up and coming grammar
school elevens," Al Garwin drawled; "especially those that are apt to
graduate their members into Lenox High. It isn't often," he added with
a smile, "that we enter three ex-captains of grammar school teams at
the same time."
By this remark Garry knew that his own name and record had not been
overlooked. This was made a certainty a moment later when the coach
called his name and looked him over with quizzically uplifted eyebrows.
"Rather a swift worker, aren't you, Grayson?" he asked. "Worked your
raw team up to winning pitch in a single season. Not such a bad record."
"We had mighty good material to work with," said Garry loyally. "And if
anybody deserves credit for the work of our team, it's Mr. Phillips,
our teacher in English. He coached us and taught us all we knew."
"Which seems to be considerable," soliloquized the coach, looking Garry
over with more minute attention. His glance wandered to Tom Allison and
Pete Maddern and then back again to Garry.
"You three boys good friends?" Garwin asked.
"I hope so!" Garry's reply was instant and hearty.
"Off the gridiron you can bet we are!" exclaimed Pete, and Tom Allison
added a hearty assent.
"That's lucky. Because you'll probably have some work to do together.
But this time you'll be fighting alongside and not against each other."
As the coach bent frowningly over his list the three ex-captains
exchanged elated glances.
"Looks like business," Garry telegraphed in dumb show, and the others
nodded.
Mr. Garwin made some hurried notations on his paper and then rose
purposefully from his seat, calling the boys around him.
"I've filled in the positions on the first and second teams," he
declared, waving the slip toward them. "Roughly, of course. You boys
have got to work your heads off to show me that you are capable of
filling the positions I have marked out for you and to keep them
once you've got them. My selection has been guided of course by the
records of you fellows. But those I don't name to-day need feel no
discouragement, because there's a chance for you all. As I said, this
list is tentative."
"Gee!" whispered Rooster, "I'm tingling all over."
Then utter silence fell on the gymnasium as Al Garwin spoke again.
"Of course our first team--that is, the vacancies on it--will all be
filled by our scrubs of last year," he began.
Garry, who had cherished a wild hope of getting a position on the
regulars--any position--felt his heart sink. A swift glance at his
friends told him that they were equally disappointed.
"As our quarterback and captain," the coach continued, "we shall still
have Ralph Wynn."
There was a spontaneous cheer from the boys, for besides being a
brilliant player on the gridiron Ralph was an all-round good fellow and
was firmly established in the esteem and affection of his schoolmates.
Coach Garwin held up his hand, and again silence descended upon the
boys before him.
"We lost two of our linemen by graduation," the coach went on, "Jim
Cooney and Tom Andrews, and we've never had a better guard or tackle on
the Lenox team."
There was a disconsolate murmur from those who had known the missing
players, and Nick Danter grinned at Garry.
"Sounds as if they'd died instead of just graduating," Nick remarked.
"Mournful enough," assented Garry, and again turned his attention to
the coach.
"We will fill these positions from last year's second team," Coach
Garwin continued. "McCarty, you will play right guard, and Payne, you
will take Andrews' position at left tackle. Those shoes will be hard
to fill and I don't want you to rattle around in them. See that you
justify my choice."
The two boys, grinning from ear to ear with glee, promised to do their
best.
"Lucky dogs!" muttered Ted. "But there doesn't seem to be much
nourishment for us in all this."
"I'm going to move Fred Walker up to center," stated Garwin. "Painter,
from the scrubs, will take his place. Now there remains just one
position to be filled, and since that's an important one I'm going to
lend it--not give it, get that?--to a player whose work on the scrubs
last year was worthy of the first string."
"Benny Knapp!" came from the old players in chorus.
"Come up, Benny, old boy, and stop your blushing," called a wag from
the throng.
Benny Knapp, a rangy, muscular lad with red hair and a great quantity
of freckles, looked hesitantly at Coach Garwin.
"You mean me, sir?" he queried.
"Sure, I mean you, Benny," replied the coach, his eyes twinkling. "Why
so modest all of a sudden? Think you can fill Freddie Greb's place?"
"Gee, nobody could!"
The compliment to Greb was so spontaneous and so honest that the boys
broke into fresh cheering, mingled with laughter.
"Well then," amended the coach, "will you try to fill Greb's place?"
"You bet your life, Mr. Garwin!" the boy replied enthusiastically. "I'm
only too glad to get the chance."
"All right, then. Benny Knapp at left half. Now we've got our first
team--that is, if they make good. Suppose you line up, boys, and let's
have a look at you."
The fortunate members on whom the choice had fallen lined up for
inspection.
"All right," pronounced the coach, turning from what appeared to be a
satisfactory inspection of his new team. "Now we can turn our attention
to the scrubs. And don't let any of us forget that the scrub of to-day
may be the regular of to-morrow."
Garry saw Rooster, Ted, Nick and Bill stiffen as the glance of the
coach swept over them. He had a sudden realization of what it would
mean should any of his friends fail to make the second team, now that
they had failed of the first.
"I'd about as soon be dropped myself as to have one of the gang left
out," he said to himself, and then listened with an almost painful
attention as the coach began to name the boys for the vacancies on the
scrubs.
Bill Sherwood was the first to be called.
"Our center graduated in June and I'm going to put you in that
position, Sherwood, because you're one of the biggest fellows that we
have left to choose from," said Garwin.
Bill's chest swelled visibly. Coach Garwin went on rapidly.
"We are minus ends, and I'm going to give those positions to two boys
who made a good record for themselves on the Hill Street team. Nick
Danter, you will take right end and you, Ted Dillingham, will go to
left."
Garry began to breathe more easily. Here were three of his chums
accounted for anyway. Of the five of them only Rooster and himself had
not been called.
And then a sudden thought came to him that threw him into a cold sweat.
Suppose of all his chums they should be the only ones not chosen!
CHAPTER IX
COUNTING THEIR CHANCES
Tom Allison was called next, to fill the post of fullback, and Pete
Maddern went in at right tackle. Then the coach shifted about some of
the old players on the scrub team and completed his line formation with
Hick Dabney.
Only two positions remained unfilled--quarterback and right half.
Garry and Rooster exchanged gloomy glances. Their chances seemed to be
vanishing into mist.
"For the position of right halfback," Mr. Garwin went on, through a
silence tense with expectation, "I've chosen a boy who has had some
experience in the backfield and who, from the look of him, ought to be
a pretty good punter. Yes, I mean you, Long. Don't look as though the
moon had dropped into your lap."
Rooster grew red as a chorus of laughter greeted this sally. He tried
to stammer something, but stopped short in the middle of a sentence,
gulping.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!" shrilled Ted Dillingham, and there was more
laughter.
"Good old Rooster," said Garry to himself. "At right half he'll have a
chance to show his stuff."
All but him! All but him! Was he going to be left out?
Coach Garwin was looking at him, a twinkle in his eye.
"Thought I'd forgotten you, Grayson?" asked the coach, while Garry
thrilled with a sudden, fierce excitement. "Well, you'll be apologizing
to me for that in just a minute. I've got to have a quarterback. Think
you'll do?"
Garry took a quick step forward. His face glowed.
"I'll do my best," he said earnestly.
Coach Garwin looked at him steadily for a moment, then nodded as though
satisfied.
"Yes, I think you will," he said. "Now, second team, line up."
They shaped up considerably lighter than the regulars. But there was a
look in their eyes that warned the haughty first string players that
they would have to watch their step.
The coach now addressed both teams, including in his remarks also the
crestfallen boys who had failed to make either.
"You boys," he said, "understand of course that the positions I have
assigned you to-day are by no means my final selection. Each one
of you has got to work to keep his place and work hard. I play no
favorites. If I see a boy isn't doing his best, or perhaps is not
qualified to hold the position, he will have to surrender it to some
one else. Lenox High has held the championship before, and this year we
are going to win it again."
A spontaneous cheer broke from the boys, and the coach smiled.
"But to get that championship," he went on, "we've got to work
hard--not only each boy for himself in his own position but each boy
for the team in every position. We've got to develop a love for the
team and a loyalty to the team that goes beyond all personal ambition.
If a fellow is dropped for the good of the team, he must take his
medicine smiling and cheer the boy who takes his place with all his
heart--for the good of the team. That's all that counts. Each one
of the eleven players is only a cog in the machine where everything
depends on each cog doing its best. Forget personal ambition in
ambition for your team, think and act to the limit of your ability, be
ready to fill not only your own position but any position on the field,
if necessary, and we'll have a Lenox team this year that will sweep all
before it.
"What do you say? Are you with me? Are you going to play that kind of
football?"
The answer was a great shout that rose to the very roof of the
gymnasium and seemed to crash against it. There was no doubt that the
coach had caught the boys' imagination and aroused their enthusiasm.
They crowded about him, already itching for the feel of the pigskin,
impatient to get out on the field.
"Too late to-day for any real practice," he said. "Meet here to-morrow
afternoon after classes and have your suits with you. I'll assign
each of you a locker then, and we'll get some real practice that will
tell me how right or how wrong I've been in picking you out. And you
fellows," he called after the group of rejected aspirants who were
making their way more or less dejectedly out of the gymnasium, "be on
hand too. It's likely enough that I'll want to make some changes after
I've seen the teams in action, and that's where your chance will come
in. Don't give up too soon. The season's just commenced and anything is
liable to happen."
"Sounds almost like a threat for the rest of us," remarked Garry, as,
with his friends, he made his exit from the gymnasium.
"A tip to us to be on our good behavior if we don't want to be
bounced," agreed Nick.
"I have an idea we'll have to play like all possessed to keep on the
right side of Coach Garwin," put in Ted. "He'd just as soon drop a
fellow from the team as he would an ash from a cigar."
"All the more reason for us to work like beavers," cried Garry, tossing
his cap in the air as they reached the street and freedom. "We may not
be on the regulars, but that's all the more reason why we've got to
make Mr. Garwin sit up and take notice. Say, fellows--" He paused and
the others looked at him expectantly.
"What's on your mind?" queried Rooster.
"Or what you call your mind," chaffed Ted.
"I may be a nut, probably I am," said Garry. "But I have an idea that
we may get a chance to play on the first team yet."
"Come off the perch!" admonished Bill.
"How do you get that way?" asked Nick.
"Oh, let him rave," counseled Ted.
"All right, you gloom hounds," retorted Garry. "Just watch and see
who's right. My hunch tells me that I'm going to have the last laugh."
It was hardly correct to apply the term "gloom hounds" to Garry's
friends, for on the whole they were considerably elated.
Though they had had a faint hope that one of them at least might make
the first team, their judgment had told them that anything like that
was wholly improbable.
Then, later, in the gymnasium when they had sensed the possibility
that they might not be chosen either for regulars or scrubs, a place
even on the second team had seemed highly desirable.
This, however, they had achieved. They were in the running. So by
the time they had reached home they had practically forgotten their
original vaulting ambition and were almost as jubilant as though they
had made the regular team.
Ella was in the library reading. She looked up as Garry entered, with
an expression of lively interest.
"I saw the football call on the board," was her greeting to him. "I've
been staying at home purposely this afternoon to get the news at first
hand. Any luck?"
Garry flung his cap on the table and stretched out luxuriously in a
deep leather chair. He grinned at Ella.
"Made the team," he said.
"The first? Why, Garry--"
"Hold on. I didn't say the first, did I? Old Shrugg says that the habit
of jumping at conclusions is the sign of an inferior mind--"
"Say, listen, Garry Grayson, leave my mind alone! It belongs to me, and
I like it anyhow. Go on and talk football. If you didn't make the first
team, what did you make?"
"Mud pies," grinned Garry. Then as Ella flopped about indignantly in
her chair and picked up her book again he condescended to explain.
"There are two teams, sis. I thought you knew that--first and second. I
made the second."
Ella looked at him with interest.
"What position?"
"Quarterback."
"That's good, Garry! I didn't think a freshman would have much of a
chance to make either team. That's what they were all saying up at the
school."
"They don't very often. Not but what a fellow always has an idea that
he may be the exception," he added. "Of course, on the second team I'm
only a doormat for the regulars to wipe their feet on."
"What a horrid way to put it!" ejaculated Ella. "All the same, I'd be
willing to bet something right now."
"What's that?"
"That you won't be a doormat, as you call it, very long, and that
before the end of the term you'll be on the regulars."
"Thanks for them kind words," returned Garry. "Gee, sis, I wish you
were right." He shook his head dubiously. "Seems a pretty tough
problem though, this getting on the first team when you're only a poor
downtrodden freshman. But you can better believe I'm going to do my
best."
"How about Pete Maddern and Tom Allison?" asked Ella.
"They're on the scrubs too," replied Garry.
"I'd like to see you boys take the conceit out of the regulars by
beating them!" exclaimed Ella.
"You said it," replied Garry. "Swell chance though. Still we'll muss
their hair a little, if I'm any judge. And I'll bet that more than once
this season we'll throw a scare into them."
The next morning Garry called for Bill at the Sherwood home, which lay
between his own house and the high school.
As he stepped up on the porch he noticed that the front door was ajar.
As the boys were accustomed to have the run of each other's houses,
Garry did not ring but pushed the door open and stepped into the hall
ready to sound his halloo for Bill.
The moment he found himself inside he was sorry. In the room just off
the hall that served as a library he heard the sound of voices.
If they had been the voices used in ordinary conversation, Garry, so
much at home in the household, would have tapped on the door and made
his presence known. But the voices were angry and high-pitched, and
Garry knew at once that the subject must be a private one, not to be
intruded upon by any one outside the Sherwood family.
While Garry stood hesitatingly, hardly knowing whether to advance and
make his presence known or to back hurriedly to the porch and ring the
bell, he could not avoid hearing a sentence that gave him the key to
the trouble.
"I tell you, Frank," came from Bill, in a voice tense with excitement,
"you've got to lay off that poolroom crowd before it's too late!"
CHAPTER X
INTO THE FRAY
"Oh, you make me sick," came in another voice, lower-toned but angry,
the voice of Bill's older brother, Frank. "Do you think I'm going to
have a kid like you bossing me? The crowd's all right. They make a
lot of noise, that's all, and all the old crabs in town take turns in
picking on them."
As Garry backed out on the porch and was pulling the door shut behind
him he heard Bill say:
"That sounds just like Sandy Podder or Lent Stewart. You can think I'm
a crab all you like, Frank, but I'm telling you that if you don't leave
that bunch alone they'll get you in Dutch some day. That's as sure as
my name's Bill Sherwood."
Garry, once outside, pressed his finger on the bell button.
Bill himself answered the ring a moment later, his face wearing an
angry frown.
"Hello!" he said, his face clearing as he saw Garry. "Why didn't you
come right in? I left the door open on purpose."
Garry did not tell Bill that he had overheard part of the conversation
between him and Frank. But he thought of it a good deal during the day
and wished there were some way in which he might add his warning to
Bill's.
Ugly rumors of dirty work about Mooney's poolroom had been circulating
ever since the trouble over Mr. Podder's three thousand dollars that
had so mysteriously disappeared while in Sandy Podder's possession.
Garry's father was a lawyer, and Garry had heard at the home table of
many things unknown to his mates. A movement was taking form among the
better citizens of the town to have the poolroom wiped out as a public
nuisance. Garry felt with Bill that if Frank did not break with the
fast crowd that hung out at the resort he might soon find himself in
trouble, involved in some ugly scandal that might prove a bad blot on
his reputation.
However, in the days that followed Garry had a great deal to think
about besides Frank Sherwood's recklessness.
For football was in the air and engrossed all the time of the players
that could be spared from their studies.
On the day after the appointments for the two teams had been made, the
boys met in the gymnasium to don the suits they had brought with them,
eager for the feel of the gridiron under their feet and the pigskin in
their hands.
Coach Garwin was there, eyes alert and keen behind their half-closed
lids.
He assigned each boy a locker and directed them curtly to get into
their togs as soon as possible.
"That guy means business to-day," said Rooster to Garry, as he pulled
on his cleated shoes. "He'll make us work for our positions even on the
scrubs, let me tell you."
"And past reputations won't cut any ice with him," affirmed Nick.
"It matters not what once you were, it's what you are to-day," chanted
Ted.
"Well, we weren't so bad last year, and we ought to be better now,"
remarked Garry.
"To hear us tell it, yes," declared Nick. "But Coach Garwin's the
doctor now, and he may take a different view of the case."
Out on the gridiron in the crisp air and the bright sunshine the boys
found that Coach Garwin was a hard taskmaster. But they liked him and
worked beneath his forceful driving as they never had worked before.
"We'll have practice in punting, blocking, passing, and tackling
to-day," he announced. "Also we'll have a short scrimmage between the
two teams. But we'll postpone the real games until we've warmed to our
work a bit more. Now then, you fellows, I want you to show your stuff."
The boys went to work with a will. Under Mr. Garwin's direction they
broke up into groups of three and four, some blocking, some tackling,
others trying to place kick and punt.
The coach watched their work with a critical eye and caustic tongue. He
abused them far more liberally than he praised and for that reason the
boys worked like mad to get even the crumbs of his approbation.
Bill Sherwood was one of the first to be rasped by the rough edge of Al
Garwin's tongue.
Bill, while endeavoring with another boy to tackle a runner, made a
great leap for the flying knees, only to fall flat on his face in the
dust as the runner dodged. The miss was by only a fraction of an inch,
but still it was a miss.
The coach's scorn was scathing.
"That's one of the best examples of tackling I ever saw," he remarked,
as Bill picked himself up, red and sheepish. "Suppose that had been a
member of an opposing team legging it for the goal! You'd have let him
get by, wouldn't you, Sherwood? You'd have lost the game perhaps for
your team. Tackling! That's a joke. You've got to do better than that."
Bill's face became scarlet. His hands clenched at his sides. He was
fighting mad.
"My foot slipped," he said in self-defense. "I'd have got him if it
hadn't."
"Maybe," replied the coach, his keen eyes mercilessly raking Bill's
dusty figure, "with a couple of men to help you. Ploughing up the
gridiron never saved a goal yet."
"I don't need a couple," declared Bill. "That fellow wouldn't get away
from me another time! Give me another chance at him!"
Coach Garwin wheeled.
"Dittler," he called curtly to one of the regulars. "Take the ball and
start running from the forty-yard line. There's your chance, Sherwood.
Let's see you stop him."
Dittler picked up the ball with a grin and started off like a hound
slipped from the leash. Bill started to meet him with equal speed and
vigor. His blood was up. His resentment lashed him on toward the flying
figure. To reach him, tackle him, and bring him to earth was at that
moment the great object of his life.
Dittler was one of the best runners on the first team. The coach for
that very purpose had chosen him in order to test Bill's mettle.
Long and thin as a greyhound, Dittler was flying across the field in a
long, diagonal slant, trusting to his agility and his dodging powers to
evade the figure bearing down upon him.
The boys were shouting, the regulars urging Dittler on, the scrubs
yelling for Bill.
The eyes of Coach Garwin narrowed as the opponents neared each other.
Just as Bill was within a few feet of him, Dittler halted, swerved and
was off like a flash at another angle.
But Bill had sensed the strategy and himself had turned so that Dittler
found him right in his path.
Dittler dodged, squirmed, tried to run around his adversary. For a
moment it looked as though he would get past those outstretched arms.
"Get him, Bill! Get him!" cried Garry, wild with excitement.
"Come on, you Dittler!" came from the throats of the regulars.
With muscles as tense as whipcord, jaw set, the blood pounding in his
ears, Bill put all his strength in one magnificent leap. His arms
closed joyfully about the legs of his opponent. Tackler and tackled
came to the ground in a cloud of dust.
"Another Indian bit the dust!" crowed Rooster.
"I'll say that Bill is poor!" chuckled Ted.
Dittler, wiping the grime from his eyes, looked up grinningly at the
coach as he approached.
"This boy sure can tackle, coach," he said generously. "I thought a
house fell on me. You've sure got to hand it to him."
"So it seems," drawled Garwin. "You've redeemed yourself, Sherwood. Any
one who can bring Dittler to earth is good."
As a climax to the afternoon's practice, the coach lined the two teams
up against each other in a series of short scrimmages. In these, as was
to be expected, the regulars had the advantage, owing to their weight
and experience. But all the same the scrubs gave them plenty to do. It
was a hot, pell-mell, ding-dong fight. The regulars were out to show
that the coach was right when he picked them. The scrubs were equally
determined to show that the coach had made a mistake in not putting
them on the first team.
In this the scrubs did not quite succeed. But they did at least give
Al Garwin food for thought. Those sleepy-looking eyes of his missed
nothing that took place. Oftenest, perhaps, they were fixed on Garry
Grayson.
For that young man was nothing less than a wildcat that afternoon. He
fought for every advantage, was quick as a flash, as cold and hard as
steel. He was here, there, and everywhere, instilling his own fighting
spirit into his team. Twice he himself got through for what would have
been a sure touchdown in a regular game.
Tom Allison and Pete Maddern played finely. Ted, Rooster, Nick and Bill
gave a good account of themselves. But it was Garry who shone as the
bright particular star of the scrubs.
When at last Al Garwin called it a day's work the coach walked off the
field with a smile of satisfaction on his face, which, however, he was
careful to conceal from the boys.
"It looks as though I had two good teams instead of one," he mused.
In the gymnasium, as the boys shed their dusty togs, got under showers,
and slipped into their street clothes, there was a babble of excited
conversation between Garry and his friends.
"Old Hill Street didn't show up so badly this afternoon," chuckled Bill.
"That tackle of Dittler was a peach, Bill," observed Nick Danter.
"And the way Garry broke through their defense has given the regulars
something to think about. Gee, Garry, you just ran rings around those
fellows."
"Oh, I don't know," said Garry modestly. "I had some lucky breaks. But
one swallow doesn't make a drink, you know, and we may stub our toes
the next time out. We've just got to keep working like the mischief
all the time."
On their way home the boys passed Trompet Shrugg, who gave them a stiff
nod in response to their salutations and glanced disdainfully at the
football that Garry carried under his arm. Then the cold dislike in his
eyes shifted to Garry's face.
"He just loves you, Garry," chuckled Ted.
"Yes," grinned Garry, "as he loves poison ivy!"
CHAPTER XI
STRUGGLING AGAINST ODDS
"Trompet Shrugg's after your scalp and won't be satisfied until he gets
it, Garry," warned Nick Danter.
"He hasn't lifted it yet," returned Garry carelessly. "He tried to
yesterday, but he didn't get away with it."
"All the same he'll bear watching," surmised Bill. "He's one of the
kind that never forgives and never forgets."
"I never had a teacher that I disliked so much," declared Ted
Dillingham fervently.
"He may be a boon to his family, but he's only a baboon to me!" sang
Rooster.
"Rooster, I'm ashamed of you," said Garry, with mock sternness. "Is
that the way to speak of our dear teacher? It is not!"
But in the days that followed there were many times when Garry was
inclined to believe that Rooster had struck it right. Trompet Shrugg
certainly "had it in" for Garry, and lost no opportunity of annoying
and humiliating him.
In his position of authority this was comparatively easy. Garry was
well up in the studies of his grade, in fact was one of the very best
scholars of the class. Any fair, legitimate question that came within
the scope of what he was supposed to know he could answer clearly and
promptly.
But Mr. Shrugg had a habit when it came to Garry of suddenly shooting
at him some difficult question more appropriate for a college than
a high school class, something that was away over Garry's head and
clearly intended to be so. And when the boy had to confess ignorance,
Trompet Shrugg would appear disgusted and get off some bit of the
sarcasm in which he was an adept. Then Garry would take his seat,
flushed and irritated, with his heart full of resentment against his
tormentor.
He was in a position where he could not answer back, any more than a
private in the army can give back talk to his captain. Mr. Shrugg had
the whip hand, and he knew it. His petty nature delighted in punishing
the lad who had unwittingly affronted his dignity.
It is probable that Garry might have had some redress had he appealed
to Mr. Allen, the principal, and laid the matter before him. He could
have easily been backed up by the testimony of his fellow classmates,
who shared his indignation at the way he was treated.
"It's a shame the way that fellow is treating you," snorted Bill on one
occasion when Trompet Shrugg had been especially tyrannical "He isn't
fit to be a teacher. He ought to be thrown out of the school on his
head."
"I wish that football had been filled with pig iron when it struck
him!" declared Ted, with a vicious gritting of his teeth.
"You ought to carry the matter up to Mr. Allen," suggested Rooster.
"Nothing like that," returned Garry gloomily. "I won't peach on him.
But I wish that he was a fellow of my size and age so that I could get
a crack at him."
Trompet Shrugg learned that Garry had been chosen a member of the
scrub football team. This was his opportunity. He had not a drop of
sporting blood in his veins anyway, and regarded athletic games as a
waste of time. He had an especial antipathy to football, which had been
strengthened by his experience on that fateful day in the open lot.
He knew that the practice took place after the lessons of the day were
ended. Then the boys were off with a whoop that was discord to his
ears. What could be a sweeter morsel under his tongue than to keep
Garry from the game in which he delighted?
So when he had caused Garry to fail on some unfair question he did not
content himself with a sarcastic remark, but gave the boy as a penalty
long compositions to write that detained him in the building after
hours. He knew that he could not do this too often without bringing on
an investigation of his methods. But he did it as often as he dared,
and on several occasions Garry sat within toiling and listening to the
shouts that came from his companions on the field.
More than once Garry was goaded to such desperation that he came almost
to the point of open defiance. But by a great effort he mastered his
anger. A flare-up would do him more injury than benefit. He knew that
in such cases the teacher was supposed to be right and the pupil wrong.
The discipline of the school had to be maintained at all hazards. For
the time he was the under dog. But even at that he comforted himself by
the adage that every dog has his day. When would his day come?
When he did get out on the field after some such exasperating session
he would find the practice half over or nearing its end. His place
would have been taken by some one else, and at times he could not get
into the game at all.
But there were many days when even Trompet Shrugg could find no excuse
for detaining him, and then Garry made up for what he had lost in the
way of practice. As a matter of fact, the persecution to which he had
been subjected had its compensations. For with the blood boiling in his
veins from the sense of injustice he was all the more formidable on the
field. He tackled his opponents as though he were tackling the English
teacher, and when he went through the line it was with the force of a
catapult.
Coach Garwin watched him with those sleepy eyes that seemed to see
little, but in reality noted everything. But he was puzzled at his
frequent absence from practice. He had questioned the lad about it and
Garry had simply told him the truth, that he had been made to do work
after school for having failed in his recitation. Garry was too proud
to explain further. If he hated anything, it was a telltale.
"Too bad, Wynn," Coach Garwin remarked to the captain of the regulars,
"that young Grayson isn't keeping up in his scholarship. He's the most
promising young player I've seen in years, almost good enough for the
regulars, if he weren't a freshman."
"Quite good enough, I should say," returned Ralph, with a wry smile.
"I'm sore yet from the way he tackled me a few minutes ago. He goes
into a fellow like a battering ram. But what do you mean about his
scholarship? I thought he was one of the brightest young fellows in
the school. He stood at the head of his class in Hill Street."
"Seems a clever lad," said Garwin, "but he's told me himself that
he's had to stay after school several times because he failed in his
recitations."
"Do you know why?" came a voice from behind them.
They turned to see Bill Sherwood, who had come up in time to hear part
of this conversation.
"I'll tell you why," went on Bill, his voice shaking with indignation.
"It's because Mr. Shrugg has it in for him! He's riding him all the
time! There isn't a fellow in the class that he treats as he does
Garry! In every other class in the school Garry's right up at the top.
Why isn't he in the English class? Because Mr. Shrugg won't let him. He
asks him questions no one in the class is expected to know, things away
beyond the grade. He takes delight in flunking him."
Coach Garwin and Ralph Wynn exchanged amazed glances.
"That's very strange," said Ralph. "I know Mr. Shrugg is rather
eccentric and not very popular with any of the boys. But it doesn't
seem as if any teacher could be as small as that. I know that Mr. Allen
wouldn't stand it for a minute if he knew. Are you sure that he's
riding Grayson deliberately?"
"There isn't any doubt of it," replied Bill. "Ask any fellow in the
class. They're all talking about it."
"Grayson didn't tell me anything about that," remarked Mr. Garwin.
"That's just because he's a thoroughbred and won't tell tales,"
declared Bill. "He takes his medicine and lets it go at that. But I'm
giving you a straight story. Garry's getting it in the neck."
"What do you suppose the reason is?" asked Ralph, a frown of perplexity
on his brow.
"Oh, I know the reason all right," explained Bill. "A bunch of the
fellows were practicing in an open lot near Garry's house and Garry
let go a punt just as Mr. Shrugg came around a corner into the lot.
The ball was muddy and it caught him in the face. He was a sight, I
must confess. Of course it was all an accident. Garry was mighty sorry,
apologized to him, and wanted him to go into his house and clean up.
But Mr. Shrugg was as sore as a boil. He's never forgotten that muddy
football, and ever since school began he's been making Garry sweat for
it."
"It's a bad thing for Lenox High to have a teacher of that kind in it,"
said Ralph in disgust. "The sooner it gets rid of him the better."
"And as for keeping Garry after school," went on Bill, "Mr. Shrugg does
that for two reasons. He knows Garry is on the scrubs and is crazy
about football. So he keeps him away from practice all he can. Then,
too, when the question of scholarship comes up, he'll be able to point
to the many times he's had to keep him in, and that will give him a
chance to say that Garry doesn't stand high enough to be permitted to
play. Oh, he's a foxy guy, that Trompet Shrugg!"
"I'm glad that you told me all this, Sherwood," said Coach Garwin. "It
explains a lot of things that have puzzled me. And I think all the more
of the lad for not making excuses. He's the right stuff."
"And don't let the question of Garry's scholarship keeping him out of
the game worry you," put in Ralph Wynn. "If that thing ever comes to an
issue, I'll see that the truth is told. I think the amiable Mr. Shrugg
will find that he has overreached himself."
All of this was balm to Garry Grayson's troubled heart when Bill
narrated the conversation to him on the way home. He had been standing
up under Mr. Shrugg's persecution without a whimper. But it had galled
him horribly, especially the fear that he might not be allowed to
play on account of the marks that the teacher of English was giving
him. Loyal Bill Sherwood had done for him what his own pride would not
permit him to do for himself.
"It was mighty good of you, old boy," he said to Bill gratefully.
The next day, Mr. Garwin told the boys that on the following Saturday
there would be a real game between the first and second teams.
"I haven't hurried to bring you boys along," he said. "I wanted to get
you limbered up and get some of the kinks out of your muscles. Then,
too, I've wanted to size you up. But now I think you're in shape for a
regular game."
There was a murmur of assent from the eager boys who wanted nothing
better than to show the stuff of which they were made.
"I want each team to play against the other as hard as though they
were tackling Pawling or Wimbledon," went on the coach, referring to
rival teams in the High School League. "If there's any let-down I'll be
on hand to see it. You regulars have got to try to walk all over the
scrubs--"
"Swell chance," piped up Ted Dillingham, and there was a general laugh
from his comrades on the scrubs. Mr. Garwin smiled quizzically.
"That's the spirit I like to see," he said. "I was just going on to
urge the scrubs to take some of the conceit out of the regulars."
On the following Saturday the two teams faced each other, each full of
determination to show the other up.
"Now, fellows," said Garry, as he gathered his scrubs about him just
before the game began, "those fellows think we are easy meat. They
think they're going to walk all over us, beat us to a frazzle, throw us
to the lions. It's up to us to show them that they have another guess
coming. How about it? Are you with me?"
CHAPTER XII
TESTING THEIR METTLE
There was a cheer from Garry Grayson's mates as they crowded closer to
their leader.
"We'll show that team where it gets off," promised Bill Sherwood, as he
flexed his muscles.
"We'll eat 'em up," declared Ted.
Practically all of the Lenox High students were on the field that
day, reinforced by a sprinkling of boys from the grammar schools who
had come to see how their old-time favorites performed. These latter,
together with the freshmen, were about the only ones who were rooting
for the scrubs. The upper classmen were partisans of the regulars and
looked for nothing less than a sound beating for the scrubs. And they
greeted the latter with unflattering comments as they came out on the
field.
"Lambs coming to the slaughter!"
"What the regulars won't do to them!"
"Call for the ambulance to carry them home!"
Sandy Podder and Lent Stewart were foremost among those who sent these
and other contemptuous gibes at the second string team.
"Here's where that false alarm, Garry Grayson, gets his," Sandy
remarked to Lent. "Now he's playing against a real team. That swelled
head of his will be a mighty sight smaller when he gets through."
"There won't be anything left of him but a grease spot at the end of
the game," predicted Lent.
It had been arranged that the periods would be for twelve minutes each
instead of the usual fifteen, as the coach did not want to take too
much out of the boys at the start of the season.
Garry won the toss and elected to kick off. The teams lined up on the
scrubs' forty-yard line and Rooster Long sent the ball hurtling down
the field for thirty yards. Dittler gobbled the ball and ran it back
for five yards before he was downed by Nick.
The ball was in the possession of the regulars on their thirty-five
yard line. Ralph Wynn passed the ball to Knapp, who plunged through the
line for four yards. Another try netted him only one additional yard.
Dittler found a hole between tackle and guard that was good for three
yards more, and on the fourth down Wynn himself got through for three.
The regulars had made their distance and still retained possession of
the ball.
"What did I tell you!" chuckled Sandy.
"Ye-e-s," admitted Lent hesitatingly. "But after all they had only a
yard to spare."
"I tell you it will be a massacre," declared Sandy, who now settled
down comfortably to watch the fulfillment of his prediction.
"Brace up, fellows," Garry panted to his companions. "They're not such
a much. We nearly held them that time. Next time we'll get the ball."
But the regulars had already awakened to the fact that the scrubs were
not going to be such a "pudding" as had been anticipated, and they
summoned all their energy to make the next four downs yield a more
impressive result.
It seemed as though they were going to do it, too, for on the first try
Dittler plunged through a hole between guard and tackle for six yards.
That was so good that he tried again, but Pete Maddern tackled him
savagely and threw him back for three yards.
Wynn himself took the ball for the next play, but though he launched
himself at the line like a thunderbolt he made only two yards.
With five yards to go on the fourth down and such a stiff defense
to combat, Wynn tried a forward pass to Minter. But Minter, usually
reliable, fumbled it and the ball fell to the ground.
Garry pounced on it like a flash and, tucking it securely under his
arm, skirted the right end, running like a deer.
He was nearly forced out of bounds by Thomas, but dodged adroitly to
the left, and with Ted and Rooster running as his interference sped
down the field.
The action had been so quick and unexpected that the regulars were
taken completely by surprise. Knapp made a dash for Garry, but Rooster
gave him a stiff shoulder block that rolled him over and over. Dittler
made for him, but Garry straight-armed him and kept on.
But now the whole team of the regulars was on his trail like a pack of
wolves. On he went like the wind, the cheers of the crowd sounding in
his ears, his eyes on the goal posts.
Twenty yards away! Fifteen! Ten!
Wynn himself now was close on his heels. He was a fast runner and was
desperate to prevent the threatened touchdown.
Five yards, and Garry felt rather than saw that Wynn's outstretched
arms were reaching for him. With one last tremendous effort he threw
himself toward the line and went over it, still holding the ball a foot
in advance of him.
Wynn had hurled himself at him and came down on top of him. But he was
too late. The touchdown had been made, and the score was 6 to 0 in
favor of the scrubs!
Garry rose from the ground, panting, bruised, all in, but radiantly
happy.
"Well run, Grayson!" said Wynn generously, as he clapped the boy on the
shoulder.
"You almost got me though," returned Garry. "It was a mighty close
call."
Rooster kicked the goal, adding one more point to the score of the
scrubs.
The latter were jubilant, while the regulars looked sheepish and
discomfited.
Sandy Podder rubbed his eyes as though he could not believe what he saw.
"He wouldn't have made that if Minter hadn't fumbled," he said. "Any
one can pick up a ball when somebody else muffs it."
"You've got to admit that he was the only one who did pick it up though
there were twenty-one others who might have done it," said Stewart. "I
suppose now he'll have a bigger swelled head than ever."
"He'll get his just the same before the game's over," prophesied Sandy.
"It was just a bit of beginner's luck."
Thompson kicked off to Dittler, who caught the ball on his ten-yard
line and ran it back twenty-four yards before he was tackled so hard
by Maddern that he was knocked breathless. The ball was recovered by
Payne and it was the regulars' ball on the scrubs' thirty-three yard
line. Knapp broke through the scrub line for a twelve-yard gain and
a first down on the scrubs' twenty-one yard line. Not satisfied with
that, he made a further gain of three yards between left and tackle. A
forward pass failed, but on the fourth down Wynn dropped back and made
a drop-kick that sailed over the bar like a bird, scoring three points
for the regulars.
This was equalled five minutes later when Nick also kicked a field goal.
Both sides were fighting hard now, and the ball went back and forth,
mostly in the territory of the scrubs, till the period ended with the
score 10 to 3 in favor of the despised scrubs.
There was plenty of cheering from the freshmen and the grammar school
boys, while the upper classmen were for the most part glum and silent.
The face of Coach Garwin was as inscrutable as that of the Sphinx.
But he was not averse to seeing the regulars take their medicine--it
would be a good thing to have some of their overconfidence knocked out
of them--and it pleased him to see the kind of material he had on the
scrubs. The time might come when he would need it all.
In the minute of rest between the first and second period Wynn passed
among his men, spurring them on to avoid the disgrace that threatened
of being beaten by the scrubs.
Garry, too, improved the opportunity to give his jubilant mates a word
of warning.
"Don't get too chesty, fellows," he admonished. "We've just started to
fight. The hardest part is yet to come. Seven points to the good is
seven points, but the game is young yet. They're more dangerous now
than they were before, because they know they've got to work to beat
us. Keep it up, fellows, keep it up!"
The first period had ended with the ball only twenty yards away from
the scrubs' goal line and in the possession of the regulars.
The latter started off with a savage rush that almost swept the scrubs
off their feet. Evidently Wynn's exhortations had had their effect.
Knapp went through for seven yards on the first down. Dittler tried
next but was thrown back for a loss of two. Knapp was called on again
to carry the ball, and justified the choice by getting through for
three more with the whole of the scrub team on his back. With only two
to go Wynn made a gain of four, the regulars thus holding possession of
the ball on the scrubs' eight-yard line.
Garry called on his team mates desperately to brace. But the regulars
were too close now to be denied. Dittler plunged through for three,
added two more on the second try, and on the third Payne crossed the
coveted line for a touchdown. Thomas was called on to kick the goal,
but the ball hit one of the posts and was deflected. But the regulars
had added six points to their score and were only one behind the total
of the scrubs.
For the rest of the period the fighting was fast and furious. At one
time the scrubs came dangerously near scoring when Rooster, who was
carrying the ball, was downed within ten yards of the regulars' goal.
But Payne kicked the ball out of danger, and the period ended without
further scoring, with the pigskin in the middle of the field.
The twelve minutes of rest between the second and the third periods was
welcomed by both teams. They had been playing at the top of their speed
and were thoroughly winded.
On the whole, honors had been even. Both teams had played good ball
considering that it was the first real game of the season. Fumbles
had been few and only two of them had been costly. Coach Garwin was
secretly elated, though his sleepy-lidded eyes betrayed little of his
real emotions.
The scrubs sprawled out on the gymnasium floor, more exhausted perhaps
than the bigger and older boys on the regulars. But what they lacked
in breath they made up in exultation. They had held the regulars down!
They were a point ahead!
"How dared we do it?" grinned Ted.
"Mighty impudent of us, if you ask me," replied Rooster.
"Did you see Sandy Podder biting his nails?" asked Nick. "Gee, I'd like
to win if for nothing else than to make that boob sore."
"Lent Stewart seemed just about as grouchy," added Bill.
"Let's make them grouchier yet," urged Garry. "Let's go in and lick the
tar out of the regulars. All we've got to do is to hold them safe and
the game is ours. That one little point we have looks to me as big as a
house."
It looked that big to the regulars, too, though from a different angle,
and they started to wipe it out from the very beginning of the third
period.
Thompson kicked off to Knapp, who returned twenty-two yards. Dittler
shot around the scrubs' right end for nine yards. A forward pass made
the yard that gave the regulars their distance. McCarty made a yard,
but Knapp lost ground on an attempted end run. Dittler shot through
the scrubs' right side for a five-yard gain. Knapp then punted to the
scrubs' twenty-five yard line, Rooster signaling for a fair catch.
The scrubs failed to gain, and Rooster dropped back for a punt. The
regulars' linesmen hurried the kick, and the ball went up almost
straight in the air, netting the scrubs only ten yards and giving the
regulars the ball on the scrubs' twenty-nine yard line. On two plays
Wynn gained five yards. Then he broke loose and got the ball through to
the scrubs' fifteen-yard line.
This was dangerously close, and the scrubs braced desperately. Dittler
failed to gain around the right end. Knapp lost ground on an attempted
run around left.
It was third down with eleven yards to gain. Then Dittler went back to
try a forward pass. He was smeared, however, and the scrubs took the
ball on downs on their own twenty-five yard line.
Tom Allison lost eight yards on an end run. Then he punted to Knapp,
who was downed in his tracks by Rooster before he could make a move.
Garry, aided by splendid interference by Bill, who bowled over his
opponents one after the other, made a run of thirty-eight yards,
bringing the ball well down in the enemy's territory.
The scrubs gained only two yards on the first two downs. Then they were
penalized five yards for off-side play. An attempted forward pass was
incompleted and on the fourth down they made only two yards, the ball
going to the regulars.
Then the latter began a steady march down the field. They were fighting
like mad to make a touchdown before the period ended. They wanted
to smother that one point lead to which the scrubs clung with such
desperate tenacity.
Twice in succession the regulars made their distance, aided by a
splendid run of Benny Knapp's, who ran twenty-two yards before Bill
Sherwood downed him.
Closer and closer they came to the scrubs' goal. The superior beef of
the older and better trained boys was beginning to tell. Their lighter
opponents fought frantically to hold them back. What they were fighting
for now was time.
Twenty yards! Ten yards! And the regulars still held the ball!
"Hold 'em, fellows, hold 'em!" gasped Garry, whose nose was bleeding
while one of his eyes was closing from the furious mix-ups in which he
had ever been foremost. "For the love of Pete, hold 'em!"
CHAPTER XIII
IN THE LAST PERIOD
With victory so near, the regulars declined to be held. Dittler plunged
through between right end and tackle for four yards. Wynn took the
ball--
And just then the referee's whistle blew! The period had ended!
"The score's still 10 to 9 in our favor! Gee, that's great!" gasped
Rooster, as he threw himself down on the ground to rest.
Garry was too winded to say anything. He had almost reached the limit
of his endurance. That whistle seemed to him the sweetest music he had
ever heard.
"We're still ahead," Nick agreed with Rooster, but with well-founded
anxiety in his tone. "But look where they'll be when the next period
begins. Only six yards to go and three downs to do it in."
"We'll make that six yards look like six miles," declared Ted, with a
confidence in his tone that, however, he was far from feeling.
On the bleacher seats Sandy Podder and Lent Stewart looked on with
eyes smouldering with discontent and apprehension.
"Gee, I'd give fifty dollars to see the regulars knock 'em cold,"
muttered Lent gloomily. "Lenox won't hold those scrubs if they down the
first string team."
"That fellow Grayson certainly has luck," growled Sandy. "If he lost a
time-table, they'd give him the railroad."
But the disgruntled soreheads had an opportunity to cheer within two
minutes after the fourth period began, for the regulars came out with a
fierce determination to make that six yards that alone separated them
from a touchdown. It would not do to throw away that chance in the very
shadow of the enemy's goal posts.
For this desperate effort they chose their best material, Wynn, Knapp
and Dittler.
Dittler came first, and, lowering his head, he plunged like a bull in
a hole made for him between guard and tackle. The play netted three
yards. Knapp came next, but Bill Sherwood threw him back for the loss
of a yard. Then Wynn took the ball and made two yards more.
"Brace, fellows! Brace!" yelled Garry.
The line stiffened. Dittler bucked it with all his might. There was a
furious mix-up, but when the mass was disentangled Dittler was over the
line with a yard to spare.
There was frantic cheering from the upper classmen, which deepened in
volume when Wynn kicked the goal.
16 to 10 in favor of the regulars and the final period well on its way!
Now superior weight and age and condition began to tell. The scrubs
had almost shot their bolt. Their strength was ebbing, although their
courage still remained.
Encouraged by having regained the lead, the regulars now put into play
all that they possessed. Almost from the kick-off the ball was in their
possession. They started down the field in a triumphal march. Time
after time they made their distance, and when they had come within
striking distance of the goal by a series of mass plays, a brilliant
run about the right end by Benny Knapp carried the ball over the goal
for another touchdown. Dittler kicked the goal and the score was 23 to
10 in favor of the regulars.
"I guess they've got us," mourned Rooster.
"Snap out of it!" returned Garry. "The game isn't over till the whistle
blows."
One of Garry's eyes was closed now, but he made the other do the work
of two. When he got the ball a moment later he broke through for a
first down on the scrubs' forty-yard line. Nick added two yards and
Garry again made his way through for twelve yards taking the ball
beyond mid-field. Here, however, the scrubs were penalized fifteen
yards for holding, and Garry saw his gain go for nothing--less than
nothing.
But this, far from discouraging him, only added to the fierce energy
of which he felt himself possessed. Grimy, bleeding, half blind,
again he got through the middle for fourteen yards. Tom Allison made
four yards on the first down. Then Garry shot around the left end
for a seventeen-yard gain. He was downed by Dittler on the regulars'
thirty-yard line. A moment later he again broke away for another first
down placing the ball on the regulars' eighteen-yard line.
Nothing could hold him now. He was practically the whole team, though
Tom Allison and Pete Maddern gave him royal support. In two more tries
he made nine yards more. Here his team was penalized five yards for
holding.
But in his present mood, fourteen yards counted for little to Garry
Grayson. Once more he plunged through the bewildered line of the
regulars and by a superb effort hurled himself over the goal line for a
touchdown. Nick kicked the goal.
Just then the whistle sounded. The game was over and the regulars had
won by a score of twenty-three to seventeen!
"Gee, but you gave us a battle!" laughed Ralph Wynn, as he helped
Garry with his bruised eye.
Coach Garwin came up and grinned as he looked at Garry.
"Somewhat disfigured, but still in the ring, I see, Grayson," he said.
"You played a good game and ran your team well. You've certainly given
the regulars something to think about. In this last quarter you did
about all the ground-gaining. They found you hard to stop. Keep it up!
Keep it up!"
It was high praise from Al Garwin, who was usually chary of
words--especially words of praise--and Garry found enough in them to
compensate him for all his efforts.
By this time the bleachers were empty and the crowd was spread over the
field, the freshmen and grammar school lads clustering about Garry and
his team, whom they cheered to the echo. Even some of the haughty upper
classmen condescended to clap Garry on the shoulder and congratulate
him on his showing.
"Well, we had a moral victory anyway," Ted Dillingham comforted
himself, as the scrubs were slipping into their street clothes. "We
were beaten, but not disgraced."
"If we'd had five periods instead of four, I bet we would have beaten
them anyway," declared Rooster. "That is," he added, "if Garry could
have kept up the pace he was going in the fourth. Gee, Garry, you were
as slippery as an eel!"
"I had dandy interference, or I couldn't have made it," replied Garry.
"All you fellows were on your toes. But the score stands, and we're
licked. But one thing is certain. Those upper class fellows will never
hold us cheap again."
CHAPTER XIV
GETTING A REPRIMAND
Ella Grayson gave a little squeal as Garry came into the living room
that afternoon. She had of course seen the game, as had every other
high school girl, but this was her first close view of her brother.
"Garry Grayson!" she exclaimed. "Of all things! Mother, just look at
him!"
Mrs. Grayson looked, and hurried with an exclamation to her son's side.
"Oh, Garry, what has happened? Your nose! That eye! Have you been in an
accident?"
Garry laughed as he flung his cap into a chair.
"Don't worry, Mother," he said giving her an affectionate hug. "I never
felt better or happier in my life. Is dinner nearly ready? Gee, but I'm
hungry."
"But, Garry, you haven't told me--"
"Just been in a football game, Mother," Garry explained. "And I got my
share of the hard knocks. But it was a peach of a game. We scrubs sure
gave the regulars a tough fight. At one time it looked as though we
had them licked."
"I suppose the next thing you'll have is a cauliflower ear," remarked
Ella, as their mother hurried off to find a soothing lotion with which
to dress the boy's hurts.
"I heard something about your football game on my way home," remarked
Mr. Grayson, who entered the house a few minutes later. "I heard,
too, who made the touchdowns for the scrubs. Seems to me his name was
Grayson or something like that."
Garry flushed and Ella giggled.
"I think Garry's cut out for an editor," she said. "He's always saying
'we' when it ought to be 'I'."
"The other fellows played as hard as I did," declared Garry. "If it
hadn't been for the interference I had, I wouldn't have made the
touchdowns. The whole team fought like tigers."
"Well, I'm glad you made a good showing," said his father. "It's fine
to win, of course: but, after all, the main thing is to play the game,
play it honorably, squarely and with all your might. And from all I've
heard that's the way you played it to-day."
"But look at his nose and his eye!" said Mrs. Grayson.
"I guess his injuries won't be fatal," laughed Mr. Grayson.
"I'm going to take a snapshot of him and show it to the girls," said
Ella, making a dive for her camera.
"Not on your life you won't!" returned Garry, as he forestalled her and
held the instrument out of her reach until she promised to be good.
On Monday morning the school was agog with interest over the result
of the Saturday game. The stock of Lenox High football went up with a
bound. Up to that time there had been a good deal of pessimism as to
the standing of Lenox in the High School League, owing to the loss of
Greb and other stars. But now it began to look as though Lenox would
have a good store of reserve material to draw on for the hot contests
that were promised in the future.
There were six teams in the High School League of which Lenox was a
member. All of them were within a radius of thirty miles, so that there
was not much traveling to be done, and almost the entire membership of
the schools that were playing on any particular day could be depended
on to be on hand to cheer their favorites. The rivalry between the
different teams was intense, and feeling ran high whenever the teams
clashed.
Besides Lenox, there were the Wimbledon, Pawling, Bass Lake, Greenfield
and Thomaston high schools represented in the league. Of these,
Greenfield was the most to be feared, and they had always given Lenox
the hardest opposition. After Greenfield came Pawling. The others also
were, as Ralph Wynn said, "not to be sneezed at," and no game was
counted as surely in Lenox's hands until the referee's whistle blew.
Just now Coach Garwin was "pointing" the team for the Greenfield game.
Of course, he wanted as many of the others too as his team could win,
but he recognized Greenfield as his strongest opponent. Reports that
had come to him indicated that Greenfield had retained most of its
former stars, and in addition had added a fullback who was said to be a
wonder.
So, with this struggle in view, it was no wonder that the coach was
elated by the showing made by his scrubs. He knew now that, in case of
injury to any of his regulars, he had a second line to draw from that
would be almost or quite as good as the boys they replaced.
He smiled pleasantly at Garry as he met the lad on the school steps,
but made no reference to the Saturday game. No one under his control
was going to get a swelled head if he knew it.
Garry's nose was still swollen, and his eye had a purple ring around
it.
"Gee, but you wouldn't take a beauty prize just now," chuckled Ted.
Trompet Shrugg eyed Garry sourly as the lad entered his room. He seemed
about to speak, but for the moment restrained himself.
During the first quarter of an hour lessons went on as usual. But it
was noticeable that the teacher was fidgeting and most of the time kept
his eye on Garry's disfigured face. At last he seemed to have reached a
resolution and rapped on the desk for attention.
"It is of course my chief duty to teach you English," he said to the
expectant boys, who sensed that something unusual was coming. "But it
is also my duty, as I conceive it, to oversee your conduct. And from
that duty I shall not flinch. I am surprised--perhaps I should say I
am disgusted--that one of your number should have been engaged in an
unseemly brawl. It would seem to me to be only common decency that he
should not intrude his presence here until the shameful evidence of
that brawl has disappeared."
He paused and fixed his eyes on Garry.
CHAPTER XV
AN UNEXPECTED ALLY
Garry Grayson flushed to the ears. The attack was so venomous, so
unwarranted, that he was hardly able to believe that he had heard
aright. His eyes blazed as they encountered Trompet Shrugg's.
His comrades were equally amazed. Their impulse was that of
indignation. The second was to laugh. Knowing the real reason for
Garry's disfigured appearance, the mistake of Mr. Shrugg in attributing
it to a brawl seemed to them comical.
"This is no laughing matter," said the teacher sternly, as a ripple of
amusement ran around the class. "Rowdyism is a thing to be condemned
severely."
Garry by a great effort had gained a measure of self-control.
"I suppose you are referring to me, Mr. Shrugg," he said, rising and
trying to speak respectfully.
"I am mentioning no names," said Trompet Shrugg primly. "Any one that
the shoe fits can put it on."
"But I think that you must have meant me," persisted Garry, "because I
am the only one in the class that has a swelled nose and a black eye."
"Well, you are correct in assuming that you were the boy I had in
mind," snapped the teacher. "And I do not hesitate to say again that
such conduct is disgraceful."
"What conduct?" asked Garry.
"Fighting," replied Shrugg.
"What makes you think that I have been fighting?" asked Garry.
"Your appearance shows it. And what is more, I want no impudence from
you, Grayson. I am not here to be subjected to cross examination."
"I am not impudent," replied Garry. "I only want to say that you
are mistaken. I have not been fighting. I got these injuries in the
football game on Saturday."
Trompet Shrugg was so taken aback that for a moment he did not know
what to say. He looked so discomfited, so disconcerted at the way his
spite had proved a boomerang that a roar of laughter that could not be
quelled rose from the class.
The teacher rapped angrily on his desk for order.
"If that be true," he said, "it simply confirms the opinion I have
always entertained of the brutality of football. It is nothing less
than organized fighting, and it's unworthy of our civilization. That
will do, Grayson. You may take your seat."
At this moment the door opened and Mr. Allen, the principal, entered on
his daily tour of inspection of the classes. He was a genial man and
very popular with the boys. He was also a great friend of Mr. Grayson's
and often visited at his home.
His eye lighted on Garry, who was just taking his seat.
"Hello, Garry," he said quizzically. "You look as though you had been
through the wars."
"I got roughed up a little in the football game on Saturday," replied
Garry, grinning.
Mr. Allen threw back his head and laughed.
"Well, they're honorable scars," he remarked. "I saw part of that game,
and was especially struck by the way you made that last touchdown.
It was splendid work, and I hope you'll keep it up. I want to say to
all you boys that football is a great game. Any one with red blood in
his veins can't help liking it. It develops courage, self-reliance,
discipline and quick thinking--all the qualities that go into the
making of the best type of manhood. I am sure that Mr. Shrugg will
agree with me in this. Of course you must not let it interfere with
your studies. Scholarship comes first. But as long as you maintain a
good rank in your studies you can't do anything better in the hours
devoted to pastime than to play good hard football, the harder the
better. An occasional black eye won't do you any harm. It's a badge of
honor, as in Garry's case."
During this talk, Trompet Shrugg's face was a study. Chagrin,
embarrassment, consternation chased themselves across his features. As
for the boys, they nearly choked in restraining their mirth.
Of course, had Mr. Allen had any idea of what had preceded his
entrance, he would have foregone his eulogy on football for the sake
of discipline and to spare the feelings of the teacher. But, wholly
unaware of the situation, he made one or two more routine inquiries and
left the room.
Study was resumed, but the work of the rest of that hour did not amount
to much. Mr. Shrugg's face was as red as a peony. His pettiness had met
with a just reward. The persecution he had heaped on Garry had returned
to plague him. Never had the teacher felt such relief as when the gong
sounded the signal of dismissal.
The boys poured out into the hall and then for the first time dared
to give vent to their emotions. Peals of laughter echoed through the
corridors, and the sound of it penetrated to the room in which Trompet
Shrugg sat.
"Did you ever see such a face?" gurgled Ted Dillingham.
"And to think Mr. Allen should have come in just at that minute!"
rejoiced Rooster. "Garry, you old rascal, I'll bet you had it all
cooked up in advance!"
"Not guilty," declared Garry with a grin. "But it sure was a bit of
good luck for me."
"I guess that ends Shrugg's riding you," conjectured Pete Maddern. "He
won't dare rag you any more."
"Things were getting to such a pass that I'd just about made up my mind
to draw up a round robin to Mr. Allen and get all the fellows to sign
it," put in Tom Allison.
The story spread like wildfire through the school, and was greeted
everywhere hilariously, for Trompet Shrugg had succeeded in making
himself intensely unpopular. That Mr. Allen himself eventually heard
of the incident no one knew for a certainty, but events that followed
shortly afterward indicated that he had.
The first game of the league season--that with Wimbledon--was now
rapidly approaching and the boys were looking forward to it eagerly.
That team had usually put up a stiff fight, and the year before Lenox
had beaten it only by a lucky field goal as the last quarter was
nearing its end.
Coach Garwin did not hold it cheaply--indeed, he never made that often
fatal error in regard to any games on the schedule--and he drove his
boys on remorselessly in practice. By this time they had become pretty
well seasoned, and the coach had no hesitation in making them go the
limit.
He compelled the scrubs, too, to be on their toes all the while. Not
that the second string men needed any urging. The close call they had
given the regulars in the first game was ever present with them, and
they were frantically eager to win a game from their opponents.
Victory, however, never came as close to them as it had in that first
game. The regulars then had been over confident and had come near
paying the penalty. Now that they knew the stuff the scrubs were made
of, the regulars went in every time expecting a stiff struggle, and
their superior weight carried them through to triumph.
"Looks less likely than ever that we'll get on the first team this
year," mourned Rooster.
"You never can tell," replied Garry, with his unconquerable optimism.
"I don't wish the regulars any bad luck, but accidents are likely to
happen at any time. Sometimes three or four fellows are knocked out in
a single quarter, and then our chance may come. All we've got to do is
to keep on plugging with all our might."
There was no doubt that Garry himself was putting that principle in
practice. He was out almost every day on the field working to his
utmost. He was among the first to get on the playing oval and among the
last to leave. And very frequently he and some of the Hill Street bunch
would get together after supper and practice in the lot back of his
house until darkness forced them in.
He was happier now than he had been at any other time since school
opened. His persecution by Trompet Shrugg had greatly diminished. Ted
conjectured that some one had "put a flea in the old boy's ear," as he
disrespectfully phrased it. More likely it was the recollection of the
humiliation he had suffered when Mr. Allen had unwittingly spiked his
guns that made the teacher of English more careful in his dealings with
Garry.
On the day set for the Wimbledon game Garry was as hard as nails and
ready for the call, if the call should come.
The game was to be played at Lenox, which gave a slight edge to the
home team. They were on familiar ground, and the larger part of the
crowd would be rooting for them.
But Wimbledon was only eight miles away, and practically the whole
school came over to encourage their football team, most of them
bringing horns and cowbells along with which they were prepared to make
a din whenever the occasion required.
Garry, with his comrades of the scrubs, was on the side lines with a
blanket thrown over his shoulders. As the Wimbledon boys romped out on
the field for practice, he had a good chance to size them up.
What he saw made him a trifle uneasy, for the visitors were a husky
bunch and showed up extremely well in their ten minutes of practice. To
his eyes they seemed trained to the minute and to have somewhat more
"beef" in their line than the Lenox boys.
Lenox won the toss and elected to kick off. The teams lined up on the
home forty-yard line, and Wynn sent the ball hurtling down the field
for thirty-five yards. Beebe, the red-headed fullback of Wimbledon, ran
the ball back for five yards before he was downed, and the game was on.
The teams lined up for the scrimmage, with Wimbledon having the ball.
Johnston, their left halfback, plunged through left guard and tackle
for a gain of four yards. Beebe tried the other side and made two more,
and on the next down went through for five, making the distance with a
down to spare.
It was an auspicious beginning for the visitors, and the yells and
cowbells of their rooters drowned all other sounds.
"First blood for Wimbledon!"
"Show these fellows where they get off."
"Wimbledon, Wimbledon! Our team weighs a ton!" they chanted in chorus.
But their yells died down a moment later when Wynn intercepted a
forward pass and made a pretty run of twenty-two yards around the
Wimbledon right end.
Now the Lenox backs got in their work. Dittler bucked the line for two
yards. Wynn went through for three. Knapp was good for two more, and
then Dittler again took up the Lenox burden for four more.
Lenox had made the distance and still had the ball, with the Wimbledon
goal only about nine yards away.
This time the Lenox rooters had their turn at yelling, and it made that
of the Wimbledon partisans seem weak in comparison.
But now the staying qualities of the visitors was put to the test, and
they responded gamely. With their goal in danger, they put up a furious
resistance. Dittler, on the first down, was thrown back for a loss of
three yards. Knapp was good for only two. Wynn duplicated this with
two more.
With eight yards to go on the fourth down, Lenox tried a forward pass.
But a magnificent leap of Beebe's intercepted it and the prospect of a
touchdown went glimmering.
Beebe dropped back and kicked the ball nearly to the middle of the
field. Knapp ran it back for eight yards, and the teams lined up for
the scrimmage, with Lenox in possession of the ball.
CHAPTER XVI
FIGHTING MAD
For the rest of that first period it was a case of seesaw, first one
and then the other of the teams getting the ball, but neither being
able to make any notable advance. The referee's whistle ended the
period with the ball in the middle of the field. The quarter had
demonstrated nothing more than that the teams were unusually well
matched.
"Doesn't look like a walkover for either one," remarked Rooster to
Garry, while the panting warriors tried to get their breath in the
brief minute of space between the first and second periods.
"Righto," responded Garry. "Our boys have got their work cut out for
them, if they expect to win. That red-headed Beebe is a terror. He's as
good as any two of their other men."
"He's there with the goods all right," admitted Nick. "But he isn't a
bit better than Dittler, although I think he's a trifle heavier."
"It's a mighty good scrap so far," observed Bill. "May the best team
win. Provided, of course," he added with a grin, "that team is Lenox."
"That goes without saying," agreed Garry.
In the next quarter Wimbledon resorted to an aerial game and relied
more on forward passes than mass play. It was soon evident that they
had been well coached in this feature of the game, and for a time they
gained ground consistently.
Steadily they advanced the ball down the field until they got within
striking distance of the home team's goal. Then Lenox gained possession
of the ball and showed that they too could do some forward passing
themselves.
Wynn took the ball for a brilliant run of twenty yards about right end,
very narrowly escaping being forced out of bounds. Dittler, not to be
outdone, made eighteen more yards around left. Twice following this,
Lenox, by hard line smashing, made their distance on downs.
It was classy work, and it set the Lenox rooters to yelling
vociferously in the stands. A moment later the noise became pandemonium
when Benny Knapp dropped back and kicked a field goal, scoring the
first three points of the game.
"Here's where we get them!" yelled Bill Sherwood bringing his big hand
down with a resounding slap on Garry's knee.
"For the love of Pete, keep that big ham off me!" ejaculated Garry, as
he rubbed the spot. "Do you want to cripple me! Yes, it does look good,
but the game is young yet. Those Wimbledon guys will take a lot of
beating."
That Bill had been premature in his exultation was shown a few moments
later when Beebe, his red head shining in the sun, intercepted a
forward pass and by a superb exhibition of running carried it for forty
yards across the Lenox line for a touchdown.
Johnston kicked the goal and the score was 7 to 3 in favor of
Wimbledon. And now the horns and cowbells set up a din that could be
heard a mile away.
"Tough luck!" groaned Rooster.
"Luck, nothing!" returned Nick. "That red-headed rascal earned every
inch he covered. His mates gave him good interference, too! We've got
to hand it to them, much as we hate to. That was good football, and
nothing else."
Wimbledon seemed to have taken on a new lease of life, now that they
had the lead. As though to show that there was nothing like a fluke
in the first touchdown, they made another in the last minute of the
quarter, Johnston this time being the happy warrior to scoop up the
ball when Knapp fumbled and scamper like a jack rabbit over the goal
line.
Marsden's try for goal failed, but the Wimbledon rooters made little of
that. Six more points had been safely stowed away and they were wild
with enthusiasm. The Lenox partisans, glum and silent, breathed sighs
of relief as the whistle blew.
"Ten points ahead and the game half over!" muttered Ted disconsolately.
"They're outplaying us," growled Nick. "They were like wild men in that
quarter. We'll be lucky if they leave us our shirts."
"Snap out of it," admonished Garry. "There's plenty of time left to
win."
"I wonder what Coach Garwin's saying to the boys," remarked Bill, as he
looked toward the gymnasium where Wynn's battered warriors were resting
and wondering what had hit them.
"What he's saying is plenty," returned Nick. "He's got the finest
command of language of any one I know. He's got the boys raw and
bleeding by this time."
That Al Garwin had been doing something of the kind was evident when
the Lenox team trotted out for the third quarter. The players' faces
were red and the glint of rage was in their eyes.
"I can almost hear them gnashing their teeth," commented Bill.
"So much the better," remarked Garry. "The coach has told them they
were dubs. They're going to show him that he didn't know what he was
talking about."
That Al Garwin's tongue had rasped the boys to the quick was made
evident from the start. Beebe kicked off for thirty yards and Dittler
signaled for a fair catch. He made it and the ball was in the
possession of Lenox on their own thirty-yard line.
Then the home team commenced a triumphal march down the field. Their
line smashing was irresistible. Again and again they made their
distance, despite the frantic opposition put up by Wimbledon. And
seeing the spirit and power that animated his boys, Wynn kept to the
bucking game.
Through they went, now on the left and again on the right side. All the
players of the opposition looked alike to them. The Lenox boys plunged,
smashed, bored their way through, while their rooters in the bleachers
went mad.
On their ten-yard line Wimbledon braced desperately. But it was of no
use. Dittler went through for three, Knapp for four more, and Minter
capped the plays when he tore through guard and left tackle for a
touchdown.
Garry and his fellow scrubs were pounding each other and babbling
incoherently.
"I guess our boys are poor!" chortled Garry. "Oh, yes, they're poor!
Did you ever see such line bucking?"
"If they only keep that up, it will be a massacre," rejoiced Bill
Sherwood. "They'll simply snow them under."
But joy was of short duration. Out once more in the middle of the
field, Wynn passed the ball to Knapp, who started off to skirt right
end, but slipped as he dodged to evade a tackler and fell heavily, the
ball shooting out from his arm with the impact.
The irrepressible Beebe, who had so often that day blighted the hopes
of Lenox, was on the ball like a hawk and scooted down the field for
a magnificent run of forty-two yards for Wimbledon's third touchdown.
Johnston kicked the goal and the score was 20 to 10 in favor of the
visitors.
"They have all the breaks," groaned Rooster, though his voice could
scarcely be heard in the terrific din that rose from the Wimbledon
section of the stands.
"That fellow Beebe must have a rabbit's foot in his pocket," gloomed
Nick.
"He's got brains in his head, you mean," amended Garry, "to say nothing
of speed in his feet. That fellow can ran rings around a streak of
lightning."
For the rest of that period the fighting was furious on both sides, but
neither made an additional score.
When their brief breathing spell ended, Lenox came out determined to
do or die. That they were more likely to die than do was indicated by
the score. But they were a fighting bunch and at least would sell their
lives dearly.
Wimbledon, fairly content with what she had gained and confident that
her lead could not be overcome in the short time remaining for play,
resorted to a defensive game that was more cagey than sportsmanlike.
All that she had to do was to prevent any further scoring by Lenox and
the game was hers.
But Lenox, on the other hand, threw caution to the winds and battered
furiously at the enemy's line. Again and again she threw herself
against that line and would not be denied. The first time the Lenox
boys got possession of the ball they made their distance on downs with
two yards to spare.
Again they lined up for the scrimmage and the ball was passed to
Dittler for a plunge between left end and tackle. He went through like
a bull for four yards before he went down with almost all the Wimbledon
team on top of him.
When the pile was disentangled, Dittler did not rise, and after he
had been helped to his feet it was found that his right ankle had
been so severely strained that he could hardly bear his weight on it.
Consternation reigned in the Lenox ranks, for Dittler was one of the
pillars of the team.
"There goes the game!" mourned Nick.
"They had little enough chance before," groaned Ted. "They haven't any
at all now."
"Just when the boys were going like a house afire!" grumbled Rooster.
Time was called while Dittler was assisted from the field amid the
sympathetic applause of the rooters, not excluding those from Wimbledon
who knew a good sportsman when they saw one.
"I wonder whom they'll put in his place," murmured Tom Allison.
"Search me," replied Pete Maddern. "He'll have to be good to fill
Dittler's shoes."
Coach Garwin walked over to the group.
"Get in there, Grayson," he directed.
CHAPTER XVII
WINNING HIS SPURS
Like a flash Garry Grayson threw off his blanket and sped out into the
field. His heart was beating like a triphammer. He was really playing
on the first team! He was playing in the place of Dittler, a star!
Could he really fill the position? Or would he fall down on the job?
A shout of encouragement went up from the Lenox rooters as he took his
place.
"Grayson! Grayson! Go to it! Eat 'em up! Turn 'em inside out! Lenox
forever!"
Two voices were lacking in this chorus. Sandy Podder and Lent Stewart
fumed and growled when they saw who had been chosen as a substitute.
"That four-flusher!" snapped Sandy. "Now the game's gone for fair."
"Garwin must be off his nut," declared Stewart. "Picking out a freshman
when he's got lots of better material."
For the second down Knapp was chosen to carry the ball. But the
Wimbledon line, more certain of victory than ever now that such a
formidable enemy as Dittler had been removed, threw Benny back for a
loss of two yards.
On the next snapback Wynn passed the ball to Garry, and, lowering his
head, the recruit from the scrubs went through like a catapult. He was
fresh while his adversaries were panting, and he hit the line with such
force that he made seven yards before he was downed.
With fourth down and only one yard to make for the distance, Wynn again
gave the ball to Garry, and this time he made four yards with almost
the whole Wimbledon team piled up on him.
Cheers went up from the Lenox rooters and the cowbells of the Wimbledon
men remained silent.
"Fool's luck!" growled Sandy.
"The Wimbledon fellows thought so little of him that they didn't try
hard enough to stop him," returned Lent. "He'll get his the next time
he tries it."
Again the teams lined up for the scrimmage. Minter made two yards
between right guard and tackle. Knapp went through for one more. The
Wimbledon line had braced and Wynn signaled for a forward pass.
The ball was snapped back to him and he made the throw to Garry, who
was running at full speed toward the right of the line. The pass was
beautifully timed and Garry gathered it in on the run and, with Minter
and Knapp as his interference, ran like a deer down the field.
Red-headed Beebe made a rush for him, but Garry straight-armed him and
ran on. Minter blocked Johnston neatly just as he was on the point of
diving for the runner.
On, on, Garry went, squirming, dodging, twisting, slipping through the
ranks of his enemies like a ghost. Out of the corner of his eye he saw
Beebe, who was at his left, launch himself at him. At the same moment
Garry hurled himself through the air, and, evading Beebe's outstretched
arms, came down with a thump just across the line for a touchdown.
A thunder of yells from the Lenox rooters swept across the field as
Garry, flushed and panting, rose to his feet.
Minter kicked the goal, and the score was 20 to 17 in favor of the
visitors.
A field goal by Lenox would tie the score. A touchdown would win,
provided they kept Wimbledon from increasing its tally.
But the time was now perilously short.
Both teams were wound up to the highest fighting pitch. Every inch
that was gained had to be fought for. Again and again attempts to buck
the line by either team proved unavailing, and the ball changed hands
repeatedly.
With only three minutes left for play, Johnston fumbled the ball and
Garry pounced on it and ran for a gain of twenty-three yards, bringing
the ball within eight yards of the Wimbledon goal.
But with victory almost in sight and the Lenox fans shouting like mad,
the referee ordered the ball brought back and in addition penalized the
Lenox team. One of their team had been off-side, and the run went for
nothing--even less than nothing.
Lenox's case was almost desperate then, but still the team fought on.
With but one minute left for play, Wynn tried for a goal from the
Wimbledon thirty-five yard line.
The ball soared through the air like a bird, and for one breathless
minute it seemed as though it were going over the bar. But it struck
the right goal post and bounded back in the field where Beebe fell upon
it, and before it could again be put in play the referee's whistle blew
and the game was over.
Wimbledon had conquered by a score of 20 to 17!
The Lenox boys were game, and lined up and gave three cheers for the
victors. Wimbledon, who knew that they had been in a fight, responded
with three more cheers, and then the teams retired to their respective
quarters.
Sandy Podder was jubilant, though he did not dare show it.
"Gosh, I would have been sore if that kid had made another touchdown!"
he whispered to Lent.
"Y-e-e-s," responded Lent dubiously. "But it would have won for Lenox."
"Lenox be hanged!" replied Sandy, "I'd rather she'd lose than have
Grayson win it for her."
Garry's chums crowded around him, patting him, thumping him until he
was sore.
"Gee, but you were wonderful, Garry!" exclaimed Ted.
"Those runs of yours were peaches," put in Rooster.
"If that game had only lasted ten minutes longer!" groaned Nick.
Others now came forward to congratulate the scrub player.
"You did dandy work, Grayson," was Ralph Wynn's tribute.
"Well played, my boy," Coach Garwin contented himself with saying,
at the same time placing his hand on the boy's shoulder. "I made no
mistake in sending you in."
"But we lost the game," mourned Garry, as, later on, he was walking
home with his chums. "The first game of the league season, too! I was
hoping we'd get the jump on them."
"It was too bad," agreed Bill. "But if Lenox was beaten she was not
disgraced. The boys played great football in the last half."
"There'll be a different story to tell next time," predicted Rooster.
"Too bad Dittler was hurt though," said Tom Allison. "He's one of the
best men on the team."
"As it happened, though, he wasn't missed," declared Pete Maddern.
"Garry more than made up for him."
"That's because I was fresh while he was tired," protested Garry. "He
can run rings all around me."
"You're the only fellow in Lenox that thinks so then," put in the loyal
Ted.
The coach had a heart to heart talk with the members of the team the
next school-day afternoon. He went over the game in detail, pointing
out a mistake here, giving full credit for a good play there, and
making the boys wonder how on earth he had managed to see so many
things with those sleepy eyes of his.
"On the whole you played a fair game of ball," he summed up. "But
no game is really good unless it's good enough to win. Don't kid
yourselves into thinking that the other fellows had the breaks of the
game. That's the excuse of faint hearts. You had as many breaks as they
did. They won the game on its merits. That's the way I want you to win
the next one. And every one of you fellows has got to work like the
mischief if you want to hold your jobs."
Garry was not present at this gathering, and for a sufficient reason.
Trompet Shrugg had been in an execrable humor that day. He was usually
grumpy, but now he was ferocious. For some reason, which the boys
could not fathom, he had apparently thrown discretion to the winds. He
distributed stings and sarcasms with a liberal hand--or rather, tongue.
"The old boy's as full of poison as a rattlesnake," whispered Ted to
Garry.
"And seems as if he was in a hurry to get rid of it all at once,"
replied Garry.
The teacher caught the motion of Garry's lips.
"Talking again in class, Grayson?" he snapped. "You'll stay and write a
composition of fifteen hundred words this afternoon."
"Stung!" Garry muttered forlornly to himself.
So it was that he rejoined his chums only as they were coming from the
gymnasium after the talk by Mr. Garwin.
"So the old crab got you, did he?" said Bill consolingly, as he threw
his arm around Garry's shoulder. "But don't care, old-timer. It's the
last time."
"No such luck," returned Garry moodily. "He'll ride me till the end of
the term."
"I said it was the last time," repeated Bill.
Something in his voice made Garry look at him quickly.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Trompet Shrugg leaves to-morrow," replied Bill.
CHAPTER XVIII
LIKE A THUNDERBOLT
Garry Grayson stared at Bill as though he could not believe his ears.
"Wh-h-at?" he stammered.
"Don't roll your eyes like a dying fish," admonished Bill "Trust old
Doc Sherwood. He knows. And if you feel like crying, you can weep on my
shoulder."
"Bill knows what he's talking about," broke in Ted, who, with a number
of other boys, had been watching Garry's face with amusement as the
news was imparted to him. "It's straight goods. This is old Shrugg's
last day in Lenox."
"Glory, hallelujah!" cried Garry, throwing his bundle of books in the
air and catching it dexterously on its return. "That's the best news
I've heard since school opened! It seems too good to be true! How did
you find it out?"
"Just got the tip from Ralph Wynn," replied Nick. "And it came straight
to him from Mr. Allen, too! Oh, it's true all right! That's the reason
that Shrugg was so full of gall to-day. It was his last chance to work
it off."
"Where's he going?" asked Garry.
"He's got a position away off in the upper part of the State," put in
Rooster. "It seems that this thing's been brewing for some time. Mr.
Allen and the school board have heard so many complaints of Shrugg's
tyrannical methods that they decided to get rid of him, though they let
him stay until he could get himself fixed. But now we're through with
him."
"I feel sorry for the poor dubs that will be under him," put in
Rooster. "Our gain will be their loss."
"Oh well," returned Nick, "why should we have to take all the bad
medicine?"
"I wonder whom we'll get in his place," conjectured Garry. "Though it
doesn't much matter. Any change is bound to be for the better."
Garry's chums looked grinningly at each other.
"Shall we tell him!" asked Rooster.
"Better go slow," admonished Ted.
"He oughtn't to have two shocks in one day," added Nick.
"Let me see," said Bill, assuming a professional air and feeling
Garry's pulse. "Hum! Hum! A little fast, but not dangerously so. Yes, I
think it will be safe to tell him. Trust old Doc Sherwood. He knows."
Garry made a pass at him, and Bill ducked with a loss of his
professional dignity.
"Quit your kidding," demanded Garry. "Spill it. Who's coming in
Shrugg's place?"
"Mr. Phillips," replied Ted.
Garry's heart gave a bound and his face became radiant.
"Not our Mr. Phillips of the Hill Street school?" he exclaimed.
"That's the one," Nick assured him. "You'll see him at the desk when we
go into the English class to-morrow morning. Shrugg shakes the dust of
Lenox from his shoes to-night."
"What a change it will be to have a regular fellow for a teacher!"
exulted Garry.
"And as good a scholar as Shrugg ever was," put in Rooster. "I
understand he was a star in his classes at Amherst, as well as on the
football team."
"I'm glad, too, for Mr. Phillips's own sake as well as ours," remarked
Ted. "It will be promotion for him to come from a grammar school to a
high school. He'll be a professor in a big college before he's through."
"Let's hope that won't be until we get out of high," put in Garry.
"Gee, I feel as though some one had given me a million dollars!"
"We sha'n't hear any more about the brutality of football," laughed
Bill. "You've got through being a disgraceful brawler, Garry."
"You can intrude yourself now into the society of gentlemen without
feeling out of place," added Rooster, grinning.
The boys were early in their places in the English class the following
morning, and when Mr. Phillips entered there was a ripple of applause
that swelled in volume as other pupils followed the lead of the former
Hill Street boys. It was a sincere tribute, and Mr. Phillips flushed
with pleasure as he bowed and took his seat.
He made no formal speech, simply expressed his thanks at the welcome
and his hope that he and the boys would enjoy their studies together
and that his pupils would feel free to come to him with any of their
problems, whether bearing on the lessons or not. There was no stiffness
nor pedantry about him, and coming after the primness of Trompet
Shrugg, the contrast was refreshing. In that little two-minute talk he
got close to all the boys in the class, and it was evident that the
English class, instead of being dreaded as before, was to be looked
forward to with pleasure.
At the close of the hour he held an impromptu reception as the former
Hill Street boys crowded around him.
"Gee, but we're glad to see you here, Mr. Phillips," said Garry, his
face shining with pleasure, and his comrades expressed themselves with
equal warmth.
"You can be sure that I am very glad, too, to have so many of my old
pupils in the class," responded Mr. Phillips warmly, as he shook hands
with each. "I could see from the work you did this morning that all of
you have kept well up in your studies. That's fine. You look, too, as
though you were in fine physical condition. I suppose with some of you
a part of that is due to football."
"We fellows who play are at the game whenever we get a chance," replied
Garry, with a smile.
"I've kept track of you in that to some extent," said Mr. Phillips. "I
saw that game with Wimbledon, and I was proud of the way you played,
Garry, when you were called on to take the place of Dittler. And I saw
you boys when you came so near to taking a game from the regulars. You
all did good work."
"That's because we had such a good coach when we were in Hill Street,"
declared Garry.
"Oh, I don't know about that," laughed Mr. Phillips. "What little I did
wouldn't have amounted to much if I hadn't had such good material to
work with."
"But after all we're only on the scrubs," put in Rooster, with a wry
face.
"That's a great deal in itself," replied Mr. Phillips. "You're right
in line for promotion to the regulars. Of course you couldn't expect to
make the regulars the first year, no matter how well you played. That's
a tradition of high school and college that's very strong and seldom
broken. But I look for all of you to be first string boys before you
finish your course."
"Here's hoping," said Garry, and after a little further talk on general
matters the boys took their leave.
The next morning, as Garry Grayson was eating breakfast, he heard a
startled exclamation from his father, who was glancing over the morning
paper.
"What's the matter, Dad?" asked Garry, laying down his knife and fork.
"Matter enough," replied Mr. Grayson gravely. "Frank Sherwood has been
arrested!"
CHAPTER XIX
GARRY GETS A SHOCK
At his father's announcement Garry Grayson was startled and horrified.
"Frank Sherwood, Bill Sherwood's brother?" he gasped.
"That's the one," replied Mr. Grayson.
"What was he arrested for?" asked Garry. "Speeding?"
"Far worse than that," was the answer.
"Worse?"
"He's charged with theft."
"What?" fairly shouted Garry. "Theft? Frank Sherwood a thief? Oh, Dad,
he can't be! He's been wild and has been running around with that
poolroom gang, but he'd never do anything like stealing!"
"I hate to believe it myself," replied his father. "I used to like
Frank a lot. And of course a charge isn't proof. But he's been arrested
just the same. He's to have a preliminary examination in the police
court this morning."
"Poor Mr. and Mrs. Sherwood!" exclaimed Mrs. Grayson. "Their hearts
will be broken over this."
"And poor Bill," mourned Garry. "He won't be able to hold his head up.
He thinks the world of Frank."
"I'm heartily sorry," declared Garry's father. "The Sherwoods are among
the best people of the town. It's too bad Frank ever got in with that
poolroom gang. You can't keep bad company and stay clean. Mooney's
place ought to be closed up," he added, with a grim tightening of his
lips. "I'm going to get the decent people of the town together and see
if it can't be done. Mooney is an unprincipled scoundrel."
"What is it they say Frank stole?" asked Garry, whose appetite for
breakfast had vanished utterly.
"The paper doesn't give many details," replied his father. "Those
will probably come out in the hearing this morning. The case concerns
the disappearance of that three thousand dollars or thereabouts that
belonged to Mr. Podder."
"Mr. Podder!" exclaimed Garry. "Why, I know something about that
matter, Dad! And so do you! Rooster told me about it last fall. Mr.
Long gave the money to Sandy to take to his father in pay for some
horses Mr. Long had bought of Mr. Podder. Sandy says he stopped at the
poolroom on his way home, hung up the coat containing the envelope with
the money in it while he shot a game or two at pool, and when he put on
his coat again he found only the empty envelope, with the money gone.
He was scared, and told his father that Mr. Long hadn't given him the
money.
"I don't know whether his father believed him or not, but at any rate
he tried to get the money again from Mr. Long and said he'd sue him
if it wasn't paid. But as luck would have it, Mr. Long had a witness
in Rudolph, the gypsy, that he'd paid the money to Sandy, and so the
matter ended. Or I thought it had ended."
"Amos Podder isn't the kind to pocket a loss of that sort if he can
help it," replied Mr. Grayson thoughtfully. "He's probably been
investigating, and at last he's fixed the thing on Frank Sherwood."
"I don't believe that Frank had anything to do with it!" declared
Garry heatedly. "I'll bet the Podders are charging Frank with it just
because they know the Sherwoods are well off and will pay the money to
get Frank out of trouble. I wouldn't trust either of those Podders any
further than I could see them."
"I don't know that I would myself," responded Mr. Grayson. "I hope
you're right and that Frank is innocent. We'll know more about it
after the examination this morning."
Garry's heart was heavy when he met his chums on the way to school that
morning. A quick glance told him that Bill was not among them.
The rest of the bunch had learned of the matter too, and were as much
upset over it as Garry himself.
"I don't believe a word of it," said Nick Danter.
"Nor I, either," echoed Rooster. "Frank may have been wild, but he's no
thief."
"That dirty crook, Sandy Podder, is at the bottom of this!" pronounced
Ted.
"Anything he's connected with smells bad," declared Garry. "Probably
the chase was getting hot and he picked on Frank as the goat. I'd like
to wring his neck!"
Garry went through his work mechanically that morning, and the sight of
Bill's empty seat sent a stab through his heart every time he looked at
it.
He knew that his father had planned to attend the examination that
morning, and he could hardly wait till evening for his return. The
moment Mr. Grayson entered the house Garry opened a fire of questions
on him.
"What about that matter of Frank Sherwood, Dad?"
Mr. Grayson shook his head.
"It doesn't look good," he replied, as he hung his hat on the rack and
came into the living room.
Garry's heart sank.
"You don't mean that they proved anything against him?"
"Not proved as yet," was the reply. "But there was enough evidence to
justify the judge in holding Frank for trial. Of course, this was only
a preliminary examination, and the evidence may be disproved when the
real trial comes."
"Just what did they say against him?" asked Garry.
"Well," replied Mr. Grayson, "two witnesses testified that they had
seen Frank take an envelope from Sandy's coat, open it, transfer
something from it, and put the envelope back again."
"Who said that?" asked Garry.
"Gyp Mooney, the proprietor of the poolroom, and Piker Anson, as I
believe he is called," replied Mr. Grayson.
"Those bums!" exclaimed Garry hotly. "I wouldn't hang a yellow dog on
anything they might say."
"They've got an evil reputation, right enough," admitted Garry's
father. "But when a theft takes place in a resort like Mooney's that's
about the only kind of witnesses you expect to have. Unless it's
refuted, their testimony goes for what the jury thinks it's worth.
Then, too, there was Sandy Podder--"
"Oh, that sneak testified against him too, did he?" sneered Garry.
"Yes," replied Mr. Grayson. "But he was very cautious in his testimony.
He said he remembered seeing Frank hovering about the place where the
coat was hanging, but thought nothing of it at the time. All he really
knew, he admitted, was that the money was in the envelope when he hung
the coat up and wasn't there when he put it on again. Sandy impressed
me all through as knowing more about the matter than he cared to tell."
"You bet he does!" declared Garry. "He's yellow right down to the
ground. But what did Frank have to say to all this?"
"Denied the theft utterly," replied Mr. Grayson. "Said he knew nothing
at all about it. He admitted that he was in the poolroom that night.
Also admitted that Sandy was in his shirt sleeves, so that his coat
must have been hanging somewhere. But he denied emphatically that he
had taken the money."
"Well, why, then, didn't the judge let him go?" asked Mrs. Grayson.
"His testimony ought to be as good as that of those worthless fellows."
"You forget, my dear, that a man charged with crime will almost always
deny it," replied her husband. "Against the direct testimony of two
men, however worthless, who swore they saw him take the money, and the
indirect testimony of still another witness who remembered that he
had acted suspiciously, the judge had no recourse but to hold Frank.
And that's what he did. Mr. Sherwood furnished bail, and the boy was
released from custody. His trial comes up a few weeks from now."
There was a sad silence in the Grayson living room. All were thinking
of the terrible heartache that must be the lot of the Sherwood family.
Garry especially was thinking of poor Bill.
It was Garry who broke the silence.
"What did you think of it, Dad?" asked Garry. "You've seen a lot of
accused people on the witness stand. Did Frank act to you as if he were
guilty or innocent?"
Mr. Grayson for once relaxed his usual lawyer's caution.
"Innocent," he stated emphatically. "His face, his actions, his talk,
all impressed me that way. I think he's the victim of a conspiracy. I'm
going to try to prove it, too, for Mr. Sherwood has put the case in my
hands."
"Hooray!" shouted Garry, who had unbounded faith in his father's
ability. "Then you'll get Frank off sure!"
"I hope to," replied Mr. Grayson, smiling at his son's enthusiasm. "But
one never knows what a jury may do," he added soberly. "I'll do my best
to establish Frank's innocence, and I hope enough will develop in the
course of the trial to put those poolroom rats out of business."
CHAPTER XX
HARD LUCK
Bill Sherwood turned up the next morning, his face drawn and pale, his
steps lagging and dispirited.
His chums gathered eagerly around him and gave him the warmest of
welcomes.
"Still willing to speak to me, eh?" he said, looking at them
shamefacedly and with a wan attempt at a smile.
"Look here, Bill Sherwood!" exclaimed Garry, as he threw an arm over
his friend's shoulder. "If you ever say a thing like that again, I'll
slug you, big as you are. You're the best old pal that ever lived, and
we're with you till the cows come home. Aren't we, fellows?"
"You bet we are!" came from the group in chorus.
"Snap out of it, old boy," admonished Nick affectionately. "Everything
will turn out all right."
"We know that they're trying to frame Frank," put in Ted. "They might
do that to any one of us."
"It's all that sneaking Sandy Podder and his crowd!" declared Rooster.
"I know what they are! They tried to cheat my father last fall, but
they didn't get away with it. And they won't get away with this,
either."
"Not on your life they won't!" exclaimed Garry. "And now, Bill, forget
all about it. We're not going to think of it or speak of it. Before
this thing's over we'll get that Sandy Podder by the nape of the neck
and shake the truth out of him. Trust my dad for that."
Such a welcome as this was balm to poor Bill's wounded feelings and
heartened him immensely. From that time on the subject was avoided, and
the bunch settled down to their lessons and their football practice.
Although they did well in the former, the latter was foremost in their
thoughts, for the game with the Bass Lake high school was coming on
apace and the Lenox boys were consumed with a frantic desire to win.
The loss of the Wimbledon game rankled. It had been a blot on their
escutcheon. It must be wiped out, and they had determined to do this by
making Bass Lake their victims.
But here hard luck intervened and threatened for a time to do all the
victimizing.
An epidemic both of measles and mumps broke out in Lenox. As a rule,
these attacked the younger pupils in the schools, but they became so
virulent in the Cherry Street school that the whole institution was
closed for a couple of weeks.
Most of the high school students were immune because they had already
had these diseases in earlier years. Still, there was a comparatively
large number there that suffered, and the classes were considerably
reduced in size.
Mumps and measles rarely have a serious result, and are regarded
more as nuisances than as real afflictions. Garry and his especial
chums viewed the matter lightly enough until the football teams were
threatened. Then indeed their faces grew long and they were affected
with something akin to panic.
Bass Lake had no such visitation, and their boys were going along
strongly in practice. But in Lenox Hick Dabney, right guard of the
scrubs, was taken down with the mumps and Pete Maddern had an attack
of measles. Tom Allison, too, had one or the other coming on and was
compelled to stay at home.
Substitutes were found for their places, but none so good as those they
replaced, and the scrub line was seriously weakened. Still this would
not have mattered greatly had the regulars remained intact.
Dittler had recovered from his sprained ankle and was as good as ever.
But Walker, the heavy center, and Minter, the right halfback, were out
of the game temporarily, the one by mumps and the other by measles,
and even if they recovered in time for the game they would be in too
weakened a condition to play.
This left two big holes in the team that Coach Garwin plugged up with
Rankin and Bellows, two boys of the junior class who had played well on
the last year's team but had left the preceding June, not expecting to
return. Their plans had been changed, however, and they had returned
several weeks after the term opened to complete their course. They were
good players, but had lost several weeks of practice, and even at their
best were not as good as Walker and Minter.
But the schedule had to be met regardless of mumps and measles, and
when the appointed day came the coach took his weakened team over to
Bass Lake where the game was to be played. The distance was not far,
and almost the whole pupil body of Lenox High went over to cheer their
favorites.
The Bass Lake boys showed up full of pep and ginger in practice, and it
was apparent to the visitors that a hard game was in prospect.
But they buckled to the task with determination, and for the first
quarter held their opponents even. Lenox seemed once on the verge of
scoring, when by repeated rushes down the field she had come within
twelve yards of the Bass Lake goal line. But on the next down a fumble
by Rankin gave the ball to Houston of the home team, who promptly
kicked it out of danger, and the period ended scoreless for either
team. The second quarter told a different story. For ten minutes of
play the battling lines swayed back and forth with neither having a
pronounced advantage. Then with the quickness of a kaleidoscope things
changed.
Bartlett, the right half of the Bass Lake team, emerged with a rush
from the mass of grappling combatants, skirted the right end, and with
a magnificent run of forty-two yards carried the ball over the Lenox
line for a touchdown amid the terrific cheering of his mates. Ashley
kicked the goal and seven big juicy points went up on the Bass Lake
score!
CHAPTER XXI
PLUNGING THROUGH
"Gee, but that's tough!" muttered Garry Grayson, as he sat on the side
lines muffled in his blanket and looking at the score just marked up
for Bass Lake.
"The team surely misses Walker and Minter," grumbled Nick.
"Right you are," agreed Ted Dillingham. "If Rankin hadn't made that
fumble, we'd have scored, sure. And if Bellows had made the right kind
of a tackle, he could have downed Bartlett."
"Stop your grouching and look at that!" cried Rooster Long excitedly.
"Go it, old boy, go it!"
The yell was directed at Dittler, who had made a superb leap in the
air and intercepted a forward pass. Now he was legging it down the
field like a jack rabbit, aided by splendid interference on the part
of Knapp and Wynn. Bartlett made a dive for Dittler, but the latter
straight-armed him and, dodging Ashley on the other side, made a
touchdown. Wynn kicked the goal and the score was tied!
The Lenox rooters made the welkin ring, and the subs on the sidelines
performed an Indian snake dance.
"That, Abe, is something else again!" chortled Garry. "What a pair of
legs that boy has!"
"He didn't run, he flew," exulted Rooster. "It would have taken an
airplane to catch him."
Neither side scored in the remaining minutes of play, and when the
teams trotted off to the clubhouse for the rest between halves honors
were even.
Coach Garwin had been doing some hard thinking during that second
quarter. He knew that there were two weak spots in his team that needed
to be plugged, center and right halfback. In addition to the faults
that the boys on the side lines had noted, he had detected others that
they had failed to see.
Rankin at center had been too inaccurate in passing and too slow in
charging. Moreover, he was excited, and several times had lost his head
at critical moments.
Bellows at halfback had lacked speed in getting down field under a punt
in the second or third wave. Also he hesitated at times when he should
have been off like a shot.
"No, they won't do. Not in this game, at least. They are short on
practice," decided the coach.
He looked over the bunch of subs. There was big Bill Sherwood, a bit
heavier than Rankin and experienced in playing center. He would take a
chance on him.
For right halfback he hesitated for a moment between Garry Grayson
and Rooster Long. He had more confidence in the former, and had the
game been at a critical stage would have chosen him. But it was a tie,
with two quarters yet to play. Besides, he wanted to see how Rooster
would bear himself in a regular league game. Garry had already proved
himself. Rooster was an unknown quantity. He would try him, anyway,
and if he failed to make good, there was Garry ready to jump into the
breach.
So he called on Bill and Rooster to go in at center and right half
respectively, and they galloped joyously into the fray.
In that third quarter they justified Al Garwin's choice. They were
fresh, ambitious, eager. Here was the chance for which they had hardly
dared to hope, and now that they had it they were determined to make
the most of it.
Bill snapped the ball accurately and was like a bull on the charge and
on defense. Rooster's nimble feet made him a great ground gainer. The
rest of the team, feeling that the weak places had been plugged, took
on a new lease of life.
Steadily, against fierce opposition, they advanced down the field until
they were within eighteen yards of the Bass Lake goal. Then, on a
delayed pass that bewildered their opponents for a moment, Rooster got
the ball and skirted the left end for a touchdown.
A burst of frenzied cheering from the Lenox rooters greeted the feat.
"That's going some!"
"Oh, you Rooster!"
"Cock-a-doodle-doo!"
Knapp missed kicking the goal by the merest fraction of an inch, and
the score was 13 to 7 in favor of Lenox.
But the Bass Lake boys were far from beaten, and before the period
closed they had evened the score and more, for an unfortunate fumble by
Payne enabled Ellis to scoop up the ball on the run and make a splendid
run of twenty-two yards that carried him over the Lenox goal line.
The try for goal was successful, and Bass Lake was ahead by the scant
margin of one point, and the period ended with that score unchanged.
"Not so good," muttered Garry, who had been in the seventh heaven of
delight when Rooster had made his touchdown.
"Only one point ahead, but that means an awful lot at this stage of
the game," mourned Nick Danter.
After a brief minute of rest the opposing warriors were at it again.
For a time it looked as though neither team could gain. The ball passed
from one side to the other repeatedly, and most of the time remained
near the middle of the field.
Then it seemed as though Lenox's hopes had indeed gone, for Wynn was
so badly knocked out in a collision with Bartlett that time had to be
called while he was assisted off the field.
"That's curtains for us," muttered Ted.
"And only six minutes left to play!" moaned Nick.
"Get in there, Grayson," called the coach.
Off went Garry's blanket, and he sped out into the field.
A strange feeling came over the lad as he took Wynn's place. He was at
quarterback, his old position, the one in which he had led the Hill
Street school to the championship. The position fitted him like a glove.
The confidence he showed in every move put new life into the Lenox
team. Bill at center was passing the ball to him, and they worked
together like the two blades of a shears.
Lenox had the ball, and Rooster plunged through for four yards. Knapp
was good for two more. Dittler was thrown for no gain, but on the
fourth down Garry himself went through for four, just making the
distance.
Now Lenox was within thirty yards of the enemy's goal. But the Bass
Lake boys had braced grimly and desperately. Knapp made but one yard on
the first down. Dittler gained three more, but on the next try he was
halted in his tracks.
The time was growing perilously short. With six yards to go on the
fourth down against the stiffened resistance of the foe, Garry took a
desperate chance.
Bill snapped the ball to him. Garry dropped back and kicked.
The ball sped toward the Bass Lake goal twenty-eight yards away. At
first it looked as though it might go under the bar. But it rose as it
progressed and just cleared the bar.
A field goal! Three points! Before the ball could again be put into
play the referee's whistle blew and the game was over with Lenox two
points to the good!
CHAPTER XXII
FORGING AHEAD
The air resounded with cheers from the frantic Lenox rooters as they
poured down over the field, hoisted Garry on their shoulders, despite
his laughing protests, and carried him to the clubhouse. Their joy was
all the greater because their case had looked so hopeless that they had
resigned themselves to defeat.
"A narrow squeak," commented Garry happily, as he was getting into his
street clothes.
"But you made it!" exulted Nick. "And Rooster here and Bill covered
themselves with glory. Old Hill Street was in it to-day with both feet."
It was a triumphal return that the Lenox boys made to their home town,
and their delight in the victory was increased when they learned
that Wimbledon had been defeated on the same day by Pawling, while
Greenfield, their most feared opponent, had had to lower its colors to
Thomaston. The first especially was balm to their spirits, as it seemed
a sort of vicarious revenge for the defeat that Wimbledon had handed to
Lenox.
On the following Monday their high spirits took a sudden drop when they
learned that Mr. Garwin had suddenly been summoned out of town. There
was serious illness in his family, and it was impossible to predict
when he would be back.
Gloom settled over the teams like a pall. But though his heart, equally
with others, was filled with consternation, Garry Grayson was the first
to see that the cloud had a silver lining.
"Mr. Garwin was a crackajack coach," he said to his chums, as they were
excitedly discussing the matter. "No mistake about that. But what's the
matter with Mr. Phillips! They don't come any better than he is."
"He's there with the goods, all right," agreed Nick.
"But perhaps he won't be willing," came from Ted.
"Trust him to do anything he can for the school," said Garry
confidently. "And he's a fiend for football. He doesn't think it's a
brutal game unfit for gentlemen."
There was a general laugh at this reminder of the unlamented Trompet
Shrugg.
"Of course we're only freshmen and we can't butt in," added Garry.
"Perhaps Mr. Garwin has already made arrangements for some one to take
his place. If he hasn't it's up to Ralph Wynn to take the first step."
"Who's taking my name in vain!" said a jocular voice behind them, and
they looked up to see Ralph himself.
"I'm the guilty wretch," answered Garry, smiling. "We were wondering
who was going to coach the team now that Mr. Garwin has gone."
"Mr. Garwin arranged for that before he left," replied Ralph. "He
pressed an old friend of yours into the service."
"You don't mean Mr. Phillips?" cried Garry eagerly.
"No one else," answered Ralph, with a smile.
Mr. Phillips took up the reins that same afternoon, when he gathered
the first and second teams together in the gymnasium. He gave them
a little talk full of hard sense and inspiration, paying a graceful
tribute to Mr. Garwin, whose shoes he said modestly he could not hope
to fill. It was a genial talk, but firm, and his hearers readily
guessed that there was an iron hand in the velvet glove. No one could
shirk and get away with it while he was at the helm.
That the boys were going to support the new coach royally was evident
from the very start. They were full of pep and ginger in practice. The
two league games they had already played had gotten them into their
stride. Now many weaknesses were eliminated, many new plays perfected.
So when the day came for their match with Pawling they were at the top
of their form.
From the first it was a battle of rush lines, and the aerial attack
seldom figured. Lenox proved to have the heavier, the more aggressive,
and the best-trained line. Pawling was very generally outplayed and
outrushed. Time and again the Lenox forwards would break through on
plays and repeatedly spoiled the Pawling cut-in dashes of its fast
backs whose end sweeps were blocked because of the Lenox drive into the
interference.
Lenox gained the lead in the first quarter, when after about five
minutes of play, it staged a steady march down the field for a
touchdown, aided by two beautiful end runs by Dittler. Knapp kicked the
goal, and the home boys had got off to a flying start.
That was all the scoring done in that period, but shortly after the
beginning of the second the visitors threw a scare into the home team
by advancing the ball as far as the Lenox eighteen-yard line. There
Lenox got possession of it, and although Knapp's kick was blocked the
visitors could not rush it over the line. A little later a fine run
back by Wynn put the ball on the Pawling fifteen-yard line, where the
visitors put up a stubborn defense and were finally saved when a
forward pass was incompleted in the zone.
It was not until the third that Pawling scored. A Lenox pass was
intercepted, and the Pawling fullback drove ahead to the Lenox
twenty-yard line. Then Abbott, the visitors' quarterback, tossed a
forward pass over to the left and Wilson, sweeping in on the ball just
beyond the scrimmage, carried it over the line for a touchdown, tying
the score, and with the tally still unchanged the period ended.
Knapp was limping when he came in for the minute's rest between
periods, and it developed that he had strained a tendon in the last
mix-up.
Mr. Phillips's eye swept the line of substitutes on the bench and he
beckoned to Garry.
"You take Knapp's place," he directed. "Remember that I'm depending on
you to break that tie."
"I'll do my best," promised Garry, as he hurried out with the rest of
the team.
Though the boy threw himself heart and soul into the struggle, no
special opportunity came to him until ten minutes of the period had
passed. Then Wynn threw a wide diagonal forward pass from his own
nineteen-yard line and well beyond scrimmage. The ball went off into
the open where Garry was uncovered and in the midst of several of his
own teammates. Garry received the ball on his own forty-one yard
line and streaked down the field on a gallop for a sixty-yard run,
outstripping Abbott by a hairbreadth and plunged over the line for a
touchdown. Wynn missed kicking the goal. But now the score was 13 to 7
and only three minutes left for play.
The Pawling boys were determined to die, if die they must, in the last
ditch. After several line plunges had failed to gain distance Wilson
made a gallant run of twenty-two yards where he was downed by Dittler.
Before the ball could be put in play the whistle sounded, and a second
victory was chalked up for Lenox.
The fans went wild, and Garry had to make a run for the shelter of the
gymnasium to escape the mauling and pounding of the enthusiasts.
"Johnny-on-the-spot as usual!" exulted Ted.
"A bit of luck," said Garry modestly. "Most of the Pawlings were on the
other side, and I had almost a clear field."
"They simply can't keep you off the regular team, if you keep on
playing that way," declared Rooster.
"Oh, yes, they can for this first year, I'm afraid," answered Garry.
"That freshman tradition is mighty strong at Lenox. We're lowly scrubs
to be used in a pinch, but not good enough for the first string.
Gee, but I'd be glad of a chance to play in a full game from start to
finish!"
"I'm afraid our chances are worse than ever now," put in Nick Danter
thoughtfully. "You see, Mr. Phillips may be especially leary in using
any of us on the regulars, because, since we were members of the old
Hill Street team, it might be thought a bit of favoritism."
"That is, you think Mr. Phillips will stand up so straight that he'll
fall over backwards," said Garry. "Well, I don't. I think he'll do
just what he thinks is best for the team, no matter what any one says.
That's the kind of man he is."
A few days later, as Bill and Garry were going along a rather secluded
street in the outskirts of the town, they saw, a little way ahead of
them, Sandy Podder and Lent Stewart, together with a crony of theirs
of the same stripe, Garry's old enemy, Chat Johns. Sandy turned at
the sound of footsteps, saw Garry and Bill, and then held a low but
animated discussion with his companions.
"Let's get ahead of them," suggested Garry. "The very sight of them
makes me sick."
"Same here," agreed Bill, and the two boys quickened their steps.
As they passed the three cronies, Sandy remarked to Lent:
"Aren't you glad you're not a thief, Lent?"
"I sure am," was the reply. "I've no ambition to get behind the bars."
"I'd hate even to have a thief in the family," put in Chat, with an
evil grin.
The slur was so evidently directed at Frank Sherwood and was so wanton
and deliberate that Garry's blood boiled. Bill turned around like a
flash and approached the group, his eyes blazing.
"You're a bunch of curs," he said hotly.
"And that goes double," chimed in Garry, at a white heat.
An ugly look came into the faces of the young rascals. They were not
only three to two, but, with the exception of Chat, were older and
heavier than either Bill or Garry.
"I'll make you eat those words, Garry Grayson," threatened Sandy Podder.
For answer Garry's fist shot out and caught Sandy full in the jaw.
CHAPTER XXIII
JERRY INTERVENES
At the same moment that Garry struck Sandy Podder, Bill tackled Lent
Stewart and gave him a blow that sent him staggering.
The bullies recovered themselves in a moment, and, with Chat, were
about to rush on their opponents when a voice close at hand startled
them.
"Three to two," said the voice of Jerry Cox, who had come around a
corner. "That doesn't seem exactly square. Count me in on this."
"You keep out of this, Jerry Cox," snarled Sandy.
"It's none of your funeral," growled Lent, sourly.
"Seems to me that there'd have been flowers at your funeral, Lent
Stewart, if Garry Grayson hadn't saved your life," returned Jerry
coolly. "And now here you are trying to beat him up. Nothing doing,
Lent. You know I can lick you and perhaps help a bit in licking your
pals. So come along if you're ready."
But the bullies were not at all ready. What had seemed easy had
suddenly become hard. They stood growling and disconcerted for a
moment, and then decided to move on.
"I'll get square with you yet, Garry Grayson," called back Sandy.
"Any time you like," replied Garry quickly. "Put a bit of arnica on
that jaw of yours. It sometimes helps."
Jerry looked at Garry and Bill with a broad grin.
"They're yellow clear through," he remarked. "Didn't like the game at
all when the chances were even. What was the trouble, anyway!"
"Oh, they made a dirty crack and we came back at them," replied Garry
evasively. "It was mighty good of you to pitch in on our side."
"I thought they were friends of yours," said Bill, though with less of
coldness in his tone than he had previously used in speaking to Jerry.
"I've cut 'em out," replied Jerry soberly. "No more of that poolroom
gang for me. I was a fool for playing around with them as long as I
did. But I've got the right slant on things now and I'm hunting for a
real job, and when I get it, you bet I'm going to stick to it."
"Anything special in view?" asked Garry cordially.
"Not yet," answered Jerry. "But I'm looking for it with both eyes.
I need it badly, too, because there's been sickness at home and my
father's out of work. Well, so long, fellows, and good luck."
He went away with a friendly wave of the hand. Garry and Bill looked at
each other.
"Seems to have the right stuff in him, after all," admitted Bill.
"Glad he's cut loose from that bunch," said Garry. "He sure proved a
friend in need just now, and I think it's up to us to find him and his
father jobs. I'll put it up to my dad and you speak to your father
about it. They know almost everybody in town, and they ought to be able
to help Jerry if any one can."
Bill agreed to do this and later both fathers promised to do what
they could. The consequence was that within a week Jerry's father had
secured a position in Mr. Sherwood's large manufacturing establishment,
while Mr. Grayson got Jerry himself a place in a lumber concern down on
the river front.
The young fellow was immensely grateful, and from that time on Garry
had no firmer friend in Lenox, outside of his own immediate chums.
Lenox now had played three games on its football schedule and had but
two remaining, those with Thomaston and Greenfield, which were to be
played in that order. Like Lenox, the Greenfield team had lost but one
game, and its victories had been by scores much more impressive than
Lenox had been able to muster.
Lenox therefore feared Thomaston much less. It was a good team--in
spots. And it also played well--in spots. It was an in-and-outer,
sometimes rising to great heights and again playing football far below
the high school standard.
None the less, Mr. Phillips drove his team hard for the Thomaston game,
which was to be played on the enemy's grounds, and Lenox was in fine
fettle when it went over, determined to bring back the scalps of the
foe and fasten them on the Lenox wigwam.
It proved to be the only game of the season in which Lenox did not have
to work hard to win. It was not a game. It was, rather, a massacre. The
Thomaston boys had one of their bad days and played like a lot of dubs.
Their passing was wild, their line bucking weak, their fumbles frequent.
Lenox scored almost at will, making two touchdowns in the first period
and a touchdown and field goal in the second, while Thomaston never
came within striking distance of the Lenox goal.
With the game securely stowed away, Mr. Phillips in the third period
took out his first string men with the exception of Wynn, Dittler, and
Knapp, and sent in substitutes from the scrubs.
Pete, Tom, Nick, Ted, Rooster, Bill, Hick Dabney, and Garry were those
chosen, and they made the most of the opportunity. It was the first
time that so many of them had been used in any one game, and they went
in to play their heads off.
The first string men resting on the side lines looked on patronizingly.
They told themselves that they had really won the game and it would do
no harm to let the scrubs take up the burden. Of course, they would not
do much, but it would give them exercise.
Garry sensed their feeling and caught their condescending smiles.
"Now, fellows," he exhorted, "let's show those first string boobs where
they get off. They've made twenty-four points. They're counting on
us to do not much more than hold Thomaston even. Let's give them the
surprise of their lives."
This they promptly proceeded to do. They ran wild. Nothing could stop
them. Under the delighted eyes of Mr. Phillips and the now sober looks
of the first string men, they piled up touchdown after touchdown until,
when the last period ended, they had added thirty-five points to the
twenty-four already scored, making the final tally 59 to 0. It was the
worst Waterloo that Thomaston had ever encountered.
The Lenox boys were filled with joy, and none more so than the
once-despised scrubs.
"Just doormats, are we?" laughed Pete.
"We've given them something to think of," chortled Tom Allison. "Did
you see their long faces while we were piling up the score?"
"We put a dent in that freshman tradition, anyway!" exulted Nick.
"And now for Greenfield!" exclaimed Garry, turning from the present to
the future. "That's the only obstacle left. If we hurdle that, we win
the championship."
"And it will take some hurdling," predicted Nick. "They won't be the
pudding that Thomaston was to-day."
That seemed more likely than ever when the boys learned that on that
same afternoon Greenfield had fairly smothered Bass Lake, the same team
that Lenox had beaten by only a scanty margin.
The contest for the league pennant was now clearly defined. Lenox and
Greenfield had each won three games and lost one. The other teams
were out of the running. The Lenox-Greenfield game would decide the
championship.
In the meantime Mr. Grayson was busy preparing to defend Frank
Sherwood in his trial for theft, which had been put on the docket for
an early date. The more the lawyer delved into it the more confident he
felt that Frank was innocent. Yet there was the definite evidence of
Mooney and Anson, each corroborating that of the other, and despite the
bad character of the men there was no knowing what effect it might have
on the jury.
Jerry Cox had several times met Garry on the street, but each time the
latter had been accompanied by friends, so that Jerry had just spoken
to him and passed on.
But one afternoon toward dusk Garry happened to be alone as he
encountered Jerry at the intersection of two streets.
"Hello, Garry," Jerry greeted him. "How's tricks?"
"Everything fine," replied Garry. "How are things going with you?"
"Dandy," responded Jerry. "I like my work and the boss seems to like
the way I do it. At least, he hasn't fired me yet," he added, with a
grin.
"My dad saw your boss the other day, and he said you were doing good
work," said Garry.
"I'm doing my best," declared Jerry, "and I'm tickled to death to
get away from the poolroom gang. By the way, Garry, speaking of
poolrooms--" He hesitated.
"Yes," said Garry encouragingly.
"It's about that Frank Sherwood matter," went on Jerry slowly. "I've
been meaning to speak to you about it for some time, but have never
been able to catch you alone."
Garry was all alert in an instant.
"Do you know anything about that case?" he asked eagerly.
"I know that Frank Sherwood didn't steal that money, and I can't stand
by and see a fellow framed for something he didn't do," replied Jerry.
Jerry's words had the effect on Garry of an electric shock.
"What's that?" he cried excitedly. "Tell me all you know! For the love
of Pete, Jerry, spill it! I was sure that Frank didn't take the money.
But do you know who did take it?"
"Yes," replied Jerry. "It was Gyp Mooney himself."
"Gyp Mooney!" exclaimed Garry. "The dirty crook! But are you sure? How
do you know?"
"Well," said Jerry, "it was this way. I saw Mooney hanging around
Sandy's coat, but thought nothing of it. It was late and most of the
fellows had gone. I was leaving myself when I saw Sandy put on his
coat, feel in the pocket and turn pale. Then he called Mooney outside.
I was taking a short cut through the lot where there were plenty of
bushes, and it was dark. Sandy and Mooney were walking in the same
direction. They were arguing so angrily I thought there might be a
scrap coming, and I slowed up to see what might happen.
"They stopped nearly opposite me, but didn't see me. Sandy was accusing
Mooney of having robbed him. Said he'd seen him taking something from
his coat. Mooney denied it, but Sandy insisted. Then Mooney turned
ugly. Seems he had a hold on Sandy. He knew of a barn that Sandy had
set fire to. Mooney said he'd have Sandy sent to jail for that if he
didn't keep quiet. Told Sandy that all he'd have to do would be to tell
his father Mr. Long hadn't put the money in the envelope. Then Mr. Long
would have to pay over again. Anyway, Podder was rich and could stand
it. If Sandy kept his mouth shut, Mooney would see that Sandy would get
a bit of the money for himself. If not, he'd tell about that barn fire
and Sandy'd go to jail.
"So it ended that way. Sandy caved in. Mooney admitted he had taken
the money and that just as soon as it was safe he'd see that Sandy had
his bit. They went on then and I didn't hear anything further, but I
suppose Sandy told his father the story that Mooney had coached him to
tell."
"I know he did!" cried Garry. "But Podder didn't get the money again
from Mr. Long! I suppose he's been trying to find out where the money
went, and the thing got so hot that Mooney got scared and cooked up
this thing about Frank Sherwood.
"That's it, as sure as shooting," went on Garry. "They picked on Frank
as the goat, and Mooney got Piker Anson to back him up. That skunk
would swear to anything for ten dollars!
"But come right along with me, Jerry, and see my father. He's in charge
of Frank's case, you know. Gee, but I'm glad I met you!"
Jerry went along willingly. There was a long conference in the Grayson
home that night. At its conclusion Jerry Cox went away with a strong
injunction to keep tight-lipped till the trial.
And Mr. Grayson's face was beaming.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN THE THICK OF THE FIGHT
"I understand we have a great little detective among us," remarked
Ella, as Garry came down to breakfast the next morning.
"Well, I got the clue, didn't I?" replied Garry, throwing out his chest
a little.
"Yes, when the clue marched right up to you and asked to be taken in,"
chaffed Ella.
"Stop your scrapping, you two," commanded Mr. Grayson, with a
smile. "The fact is that what Garry found out yesterday is of great
importance. I'm sure that Jerry Cox is telling the truth. I tested him
in every possible way, turned him inside out, so to speak, and I'm sure
that his story will stand up under any cross examination. But I want
to warn you youngsters not on any account to let a syllable of this
get out. Mooney or Anson or any of that crowd mustn't get an inkling
of it. I want not only to clear Frank but to put those perjurers and
scoundrels where they belong. And that pest of a poolroom is going to
be put out of business."
"Of course, I suppose you've let Frank and the Sherwoods know all about
it," remarked Garry.
"Certainly," reported his father. "I went over there last night. You
can imagine the reception I got with such news to take them. I tell you
there is a happy family to-day."
"Good old Bill!" exclaimed Garry. "It will be a new lease of life for
him."
He met Bill that morning as he came along with the rest of the bunch.
It was indeed a transformed Bill, jolly, laughing, full of the highest
spirits. The rest of the boys noticed the change and wondered. But Bill
and Garry alone knew the secret of the change, and, though their lips
were sealed by promise, the look that passed between them spoke volumes.
Football practice went on under a full head of steam. It was made all
the harder by Mr. Phillips because he feared that the easy victory
over Thomaston might give rise to false overconfidence and prompt a
let-down. So he drove the two teams ruthlessly until, when the day
arrived for the great game with Greenfield, the game that was to decide
the championship of the High School League, the Lenox boys were as hard
as nails.
All but Ralph Wynn, their captain, quarterback, and main reliance, the
brains of the team!
Ralph had been feeling under the weather for a day or two, and on the
fateful Saturday on which the game was to be played Lenox was stricken
with consternation by the news that Ralph had taken the mumps and was
confined to his bed.
The school staggered under the shock. The team without Wynn was
like a ship without a rudder. It looked as though Greenfield would
have a walkover. She would have been hard to beat under the best
circumstances. Now her victory seemed certain.
But the panic that shook the team did not extend to their coach. Not
that Mr. Phillips was not seriously disturbed, but he had been watching
the practice very closely for the past two weeks and felt that the
predicament was not a hopeless one.
The teams were to gather that morning at ten o'clock for a brief
practice, just to run through the signals and limber up for the
afternoon game.
They came together, regulars and scrubs, their hearts heavy and their
faces anxious. Mr. Phillips wasted no time in preliminaries and went
straight to the point.
"Grayson," he said abruptly, "you play at quarterback this afternoon."
Garry caught his breath and a murmur of surprise ran through the group
of players.
"I'm as much a stickler for school tradition as any of you," Mr.
Phillips went on. "But there come times when tradition must go down
before common sense. Grayson is a freshman. But he knows football and
knows how to run a team. I want you regulars to give him as loyal
support as you have given to Wynn. Wynn himself would be the first to
ask it if he were here. I want you to whip Greenfield this afternoon.
That's all that counts. Will you do it?"
The shout of assent that went up showed the spirit of the boys, and the
coach smiled.
"I knew I could count on you," he said. "Now go in and win."
The half hour of practice that followed was spirited and snappy. Garry,
his head in a whirl at first, soon got his bearings and ran the team in
a way that brought a glint of satisfaction to the eyes of the coach.
That afternoon the Greenfield team came over chock full of confidence,
bringing a brass band with them to celebrate the expected victory. They
had heard that Ralph Wynn was out of the game and that a freshman was
to run the team.
"A freshman! It is to laugh!" shouted one of Greenfield's rooters.
"Lenox must indeed be hard up! It's only a question now of the score
that Greenfield will run up! It'll be like taking candy from a baby!"
And with this many agreed, not all of them Greenfield rooters, either.
But before the game had been long in progress it became evident that
the baby was quite a lusty youngster after all.
Greenfield won the toss and elected to kick off. Kearny kicked to
Knapp, who came back eleven yards to the Lenox thirty-yard line.
Dittler made a yard through the Greenfield line. A forward pass by
Minter was grounded. Knapp kicked for forty-nine yards and the ball was
grounded on the Greenfield forty-yard line without a return.
Two passes by Greenfield were knocked down. Wallace, the enemy
quarterback, kicked twenty-five yards, and Knapp was downed on the
Lenox forty-five yard line before he could take a step. Dittler cut
through left tackle and got away for forty-two yards before he was
driven out of bounds by Holcomb on Greenfield's thirteen-yard line.
Here, with their goal threatened, Greenfield took a mighty brace, and
three successive line plunges failed to gain an inch. On the fourth
down Payne tried for a field goal but his drop-kick was short. But
Garry recovered the ball on the Greenfield nine-yard line.
Again Greenfield braced and two line smashes gained only two yards.
On the third down, Minter plunged between right guard and tackle but
was met so furiously that he was thrown back for a four-yard loss. On
the fourth down Lenox tried a forward pass but it was intercepted by
Rogers, who ran to the Greenfield thirty-yard line.
Bush made two through the line and Wallace punted forty-five yards,
Garry being downed in his tracks on the Lenox twenty-two yard line.
Knapp made three yards in two line smashes. Garry punted for
thirty-seven yards and Holcomb came back fifteen yards before he was
downed. He fumbled as he was tackled, and Lenox recovered on its
thirty-eight yard line.
Again Lenox plunged at the Greenfield line, Dittler going through for
three yards. A forward pass from Minter was grounded. Knapp found a
hole at left tackle and slid through for four. On the fourth down Garry
himself took the ball and went through for five yards, making the
distance and still keeping possession of the ball.
On a crisscross play Dittler was thrown for a loss of three yards.
And just then the whistle blew and the period ended with the ball in
Lenox's keeping near mid-field.
It had been a furious struggle, with honors about even. If anything,
Lenox had a slight edge, as most of the time the ball had been in the
enemy's territory and twice she had come within striking distance of
the Greenfield goal.
The "baby" had come up to scratch, and roars of frenzied applause went
up from the Lenox rooters, led by their cheer leaders, who, dressed in
white, went through all sorts of acrobatic antics before the stands.
Answering roars went up from the Greenfield section and their brass
band added to the tumult as the players, panting and breathless, took
their minute of rest, sprawled out on the turf.
Garry was covered with dust, his nose bleeding, his hands scratched,
his chest heaving from his exertions.
"Oh, look at Garry!" squealed Ella. "He's hurt!"
"Hurt nothing!" retorted Jane Danter, her face flushed with excitement.
"He's as happy as a clam. Go it, Garry!" she called in her shrill
treble. "We're all rooting for you!"
Garry looked at her and grinned. Jane sure was a nice girl.
When play was resumed Lenox still had the ball and Garry punted fifteen
yards, the kick being partially blocked and Greenfield recovering the
ball on its own forty-five yard line. Lenox was off-side, and the
five-yard penalty brought the ball to the middle of the field. Wallace
knifed off tackle for ten yards for first down. A long pass, Bush to
Rogers, was completed for a thirty-yard gain, giving Greenfield first
down on the Lenox ten-yard line.
Rogers went through for three yards. Bush added three more through
right guard. Holcomb smashed the line hard, but Lenox had braced
desperately and he gained only a yard. On the fourth down, Sayles
dropped back to the thirteen-yard line, and though the angle made the
feat seem impossible, sent the ball over the bar between the posts for
a field goal for the first three points of the game.
Greenfield had drawn first blood and her rooters went crazy while their
band struck up "See, the Conquering Hero Comes!"
"Let them cheer," called Garry to his mates, by no means dismayed.
"It's the last chance they'll have."
In the Lenox stands there were downcast looks and heavy hearts.
Probably there were but two exceptions, Lent Stewart and Chat Johns.
There would have been three, but Sandy Podder was attending the trial
of Frank Sherwood, which was in progress that day.
"Here's where that four-flusher gets his," muttered Lent, his eyes
glowing with ill-concealed elation.
Kearny kicked off to Knapp, who fumbled and then came back for eleven
yards to the Lenox twenty-six yard line. Two line plays gained seven
yards, and on third down Garry broke through for twelve yards, with the
whole Greenfield line piled on his back.
Having made its distance and more, Lenox again had the ball for first
down on its own forty-five yard line. Dittler went through tackle
for three yards and Knapp added four more through a big hole in the
Greenfield line. On a fake plunge and a pass, Dittler to Minter, Lenox
got within thirty yards of the Greenfield goal.
Minter plowed through for four yards and Knapp added one more, but a
penalty for unnecessary roughness cost Lenox fifteen yards and pushed
it back to Greenfield's forty-yard line. Minter's pass over the center
of the line fell to earth untouched. Another long heave was battered
down by Bush.
For the rest of that period the game was fast and furious, with first
one side and then the other having possession of the ball, and when the
first half of the game was over the score still remained at 3 to 0 in
favor of the invaders.
CHAPTER XXV
VICTORY
Though on the wrong side of the ledger, Garry still retained his
indomitable spirit.
"Are we down-hearted?" he cried to his mates as they trotted off to
their quarters for the rest between halves.
"No!" came in a roar from his comrades.
"You bet we're not!" returned Garry. "We've just begun to fight!"
The bruising battle had not been without its casualties. Knapp in
the last mix-up had twisted his leg and could barely more than limp.
Painter at right guard was badly winded. So Mr. Phillips picked Nick
Danter to take the place of Knapp and Rooster Long to fill the vacancy
at guard.
The Greenfield ball carriers were unchanged, though two changes had
been made in the line.
"Now, boys," was Mr. Phillips's last injunction after a short but
inspiring talk, "go out and eat those fellows up. They haven't a thing
you fellows haven't. I've watched their play, and I know. Get after
them and bring home the bacon."
Garry kicked off to Bush, who came back eighteen yards to Greenfield's
thirty-three yard line. Rogers broke through the right side of the
Lenox line and ran twenty-four yards to Lenox's forty-three yard line
before he was downed. Greenfield failed to gain through the line and
Wallace was stopped without an advance on an attempted end run. Bush
punted to the Lenox twenty-yard line.
Lenox made an ineffectual try on a line plunge by Dittler. Nick gained
a yard off tackle. Then he made a superb punt of forty-five yards, Bush
being thrown without a return. Rogers made a yard on a plunge, but a
pass from Wallace was intercepted by Garry on the Lenox forty-five yard
line.
Dittler threw a pass into the ground. Minter fumbled on a line plunge
and Bush recovered for Greenfield on the Lenox forty-yard line. Wallace
failed to gain through the line. Bush swung wide around the end for a
five-yard gain. A Greenfield pass was battered down by Rooster. Another
Greenfield pass was completed, but Garry threw Wallace for the loss of
a yard and Lenox took the ball on its own thirty-six yard line.
Two stabs at the line gained four yards for Lenox. Garry plowed through
the line for fifteen yards. An attempt by Dittler was stopped without
a gain and Lenox was penalized five yards for off-side play. Nick
gained three yards on a wide end run. While trying to get away a punt
Dittler slipped and Greenfield recovered the ball.
Rogers was thrown for a four-yard loss by Rooster. A Greenfield
pass was grounded. Garry intercepted the next toss and reached the
Greenfield fourteen-yard line before he was downed.
The visitors braced doggedly to defend their goal. Nick went through
center for two yards. Dittler made three more off tackle. A third
attempt by Minter resulted in no gain, and Garry dropped back for a
kick.
The ball sailed through the air in a beautiful spiral and came down on
the other side of the bar, while pandemonium broke out in the Lenox
stands.
Three points and the score was tied! Before the ball could be put again
in play the referee's whistle sounded the end of the quarter.
While the stands fairly rocked with applause, Lent Stewart and Chat
Johns sat glum and silent.
"If that fellow fell overboard, he'd come up with a fish in his mouth,"
grumbled Lent.
"The town won't hold him if he wins this game," growled Chat. "Gee, I
wish he'd break a leg," he added viciously.
Ella and Jane fairly hugged each other, radiant with delight. And the
other girls who lent a splash of color to the Lenox stands were quite
as jubilant as the male rooters.
"Now, fellows," adjured Garry, as his team again took the field, "on
your toes! That quarter we tied them. This quarter is where we lick
them."
Rooster kicked off, Rogers returning the ball to Greenfield's
forty-yard line. Bush threw a pass to Holcomb for a fifteen-yard gain
and first down on Lenox's forty-five yard line. Rogers battered his way
through the line for five yards. He gained two more off tackle, but
Wallace was halted without a gain. A long Greenfield pass was grounded
and Lenox took the ball on its own thirty-eight yard line.
Nick slid off tackle for two yards and then swung wide around the end
for two more. Dittler gained three off tackle and then Garry punted
the ball for twenty-six yards, the ball being downed on Greenfield's
thirty-five yard line.
Rogers was driven out of bounds after gaining seven yards on a wide end
run. Wallace failed to advance and Bush was thrown back for the loss of
a yard. Rooster broke through and blocked Bush's kick, regaining the
ball for Lenox on the Greenfield twenty-nine yard line.
Nick made four yards through tackle. Dittler was halted in his tracks.
A pass from Garry to Nick was completed for a five-yard gain. But
Nick's next attempt was thrown back for a loss of two yards.
Greenfield got the ball then and, fighting desperately, made their
distance twice on downs, advancing the ball to their own forty-five
yard line while their rooters cheered their encouragement and the band
broke out in tumultuous strains.
"Hold 'em, fellows!" panted Garry. "Hold 'em, for the love of Pete!
They mustn't get past! We've got to win for Lenox!"
But Greenfield was now frantic for victory and put up a bitter fight.
Rogers plunged through tackle and end for three yards. But Bush was
thrown back for the loss of a yard and on his next try made but two.
With fourth down and six yards to make the distance, Greenfield tried a
forward pass, Wallace to Rogers. But Garry leaped high in the air and
intercepted the ball. He tucked it under his arm and scurried down the
field, with Rooster, Nick and Dittler acting as his interference.
How he ran! His feet seemed to have wings. The wind fairly whistled in
his ears.
Rogers dived at him, but Garry straight-armed him and ran on. Nick
blocked off Wallace on the right while Rooster gave Bush a similar dose
on the left. And Garry kept on, on, his eyes fixed on the goal, while
the whole Greenfield team thundered behind him.
And now Holcomb was the only one who stood between him and that coveted
line. The husky fullback darted toward him on a slant with arms
outstretched. He dived for Garry, but the latter dodged, and with one
last summoning-up of all his speed and strength hurled himself over the
Greenfield line for a touchdown!
Then rose such yells as the Lenox field had never known. The home
rooters went mad. The boys shouted, the girls screamed with delight.
Caps were thrown in the air, some never to be recovered by their
frenzied owners. But that did not matter. Lenox had scored a touchdown!
A moment later Rooster kicked the goal and the yells were repeated.
With barely a minute left for play the game was cinched. The ball
passed back and forth a few times and the whistle blew.
The score was 10 to 3, and Lenox had won the championship of the High
School League!
The crowd swarmed over the field, and Garry was fairly smothered by his
admirers, all seeking an opportunity to touch and hug their idol.
Finally, in the safety of the gymnasium, his mates surrounded him, and
there was a scene of enthusiasm that had never been paralleled in the
history of Lenox High.
"What's the matter with Garry Grayson?"
"He's all right!" came back in thundering chorus.
Garry himself, though he bore his honors modestly, was elated beyond
words. Would he ever again find triumph so sweet? How that unspoken
question was answered will be told in the next book of this series,
entitled: "Garry Grayson's Football Rivals; or, The Secret of the
Stolen Signals."
If there was any fly in the ointment of that great victory to Garry's
mind it was that Bill Sherwood had not been present to see the game and
rejoice in the triumph. Bill, of course, had been at Frank's trial.
But that his chum was quite as happy as himself was evident to Garry
when Bill rushed to meet him as he was on his way home.
"He's free!" cried Bill. "He's free! We've won! Frank's acquitted!"
"Glory hallelujah!" shouted Garry, as he grasped Bill's hand so tightly
that the other winced. "That's bully, Bill! Bully! I knew Frank was
innocent. Tell me all about it."
"You ought to have been there," cried Bill. "Gee, Garry, your father
was splendid. The way he tied Gyp Mooney and Piker Anson up in knots!
Jerry told his story and the other side couldn't make a dent in it.
Then Sandy broke down under cross examination and gave the whole thing
away. The jury freed Frank without leaving their seats. The judge
held Mooney and Anson for theft and perjury, and Sandy is held as a
material witness. Gee, Garry, I'm so happy that I don't know whether
I'm standing on my head or my heels!"
"You're on your own big feet all right," laughed Garry. "Gee, this
news is all I needed to make it a perfect day! And now for the big
celebration to-night! The boys are going to have a blow-out that will
make Lenox howl!"
THE END
* * * * *
GARRY GRAYSON
FOOTBALL STORIES
By ELMER A. DAWSON
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
GARRY GRAYSON'S HILL STREET ELEVEN
OR THE FOOTBALL BOYS OF LENOX
GARRY GRAYSON AT LENOX HIGH
OR THE CHAMPIONS OF THE FOOTBALL LEAGUE
GARRY GRAYSON'S FOOTBALL RIVALS
OR THE SECRET OF THE STOLEN SIGNALS
GARRY GRAYSON SHOWING HIS SPEED
OR A DARING RUN ON THE GRIDIRON
GARRY GRAYSON AT STANLEY PREP
OR THE FOOTBALL RIVALS OF RIVERVIEW
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GARRY GRAYSON AT LENOX HIGH ***
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