Part 14 (2/2)

the submaster a.s.sured the young second captain. ”Of course, with Prescott at center, and yourself jumping around as quarter-back the team would be stronger. But in Prescott's enforced absence, I don't see how you can play any point of the line more forcefully than you've been doing.”

But Dave, instead of looking puffed up, replied half dejectedly:

”I was in hopes you could both show me where I'm weak.”

”You're not weak,” insisted Coach Morton.

”That throws me back on thinking hard for myself,” muttered Darrin.

Where a weaker man would have been pleased with such direct praise Dave felt that he was not doing his duty because he had not been able to lead as brilliantly as d.i.c.k had done in earlier games.

”Brute strength isn't any good against these Hallam fellows,”

Darrin told himself, as he returned to the field. ”They're all A-1 athletes. Even if Gridley played a slugging game, it wouldn't bear these Hallam boys down. As to speed and scientific points, they seem to be our masters. Whatever we do against them, it must be something seldom heard of on the gridiron something that will be so brand new that they can't get by it.”

Yet twice in the half that followed Gridley barely escaped having to make a safety to save their goal line. Each time, however, Dave wriggled out of it.

When there were but seven minutes left neither team had scored.

Gridley now had the ball for snap-back at its own twenty-five-yard line.

The most that home boosters were hoping for now was that Gridley would be able to hold down the game to no score.

Dave had been thinking deeply. He had just found a chance to mutter orders swiftly.

Fenton, little, wiry and swift, was to-day playing at left end, the position that d.i.c.k himself had made famous in the year before.

”Eighteen---three--eleven---seven---nine!” called Tom Reade, crisply.

The first four figures called off the play that Gridley was to make, or to pretend to make. But that nine, capping all at the end, caused a swift flutter in Gridley hearts. For that nine, at the end of the signal, called for a fake play.

Yet the instant that the whistle trilled out its command every Gridley player unlimbered and dashed to the position ordered.

Only three men on the team understood what was contemplated.

Coach Morton, from the side lines, had looked puzzled from the moment that he heard the signal.

d.i.c.k Prescott, eager for his chum's success, as well as the team's, stood as erect as he could beside Mr. Morton, trying to take in the whole field with one wide, sweeping glance.

As Tom Reade caught the ball on its backward snap, he straightened up, tucking the ball under his left arm and making a dash for Gridley's right end.

Immediately, of course, Hallam rushed its men toward that point.

Yet the movements of Gridley's right wing puzzled the visitors.

For all of Dave's right flankers dashed forward, making an effective interference.

Surely, reasoned Captain Forsythe, Tom Reade didn't mean to try to break through by himself with the pigskin.

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