CHAPTER X

  NEIL MAKES THE VARSITY

  On the 12th of October, Woodby College sent a team of light but veryfast football players to Erskine with full determination to bring backthe pigskin. And it very nearly succeeded. It was the first game of theseason for Erskine, but Woodby had already played two, and wasconsequently rather more hardened. The first half ended with the score 6to 6, and the spectators, fully three hundred supporters of the Purple,looked glum. Neil and Paul were given their chance in the second half,taking the places of Gillam and Smith. Many other changes were made,among them one which installed the newly discovered Browning at leftguard vice Carey, removed to the bench.

  There was no use in attempting to disguise the fact that Woodbyliterally played all around the home team. Her backs gained almost atwill on end runs, and her punting was immeasurably superior. Foster, theErskine quarter-back, sent kick after kick high into the air, and twentyyards was his best performance. On defense Woodby was almost equallystrong, and had Erskine not outweighted her in the line some five poundsper man, would have forced her to kick every time. As it was, thepurple-clad backs made but small and infrequent gains through the line,and very shortly found that runs outside of tackle or end were her bestcards, even though, as was several times the case, her runners werenailed back of her line for losses.

  Team play was as yet utterly lacking in the Erskine eleven, and thoughthe men were as a rule individually brilliant or decidedly promising,Woodby had far the best of it there. Fumbles were many on both sides,but Erskine's were the most costly. Stone's fumble of a free kick soonafter the second half began gave Woodby her second touch-down, fromwhich, luckily, she failed to kick goal. The veterans on the team,Tucker at left tackle, Graham at center, Cowan at right-guard, Foster atquarter, and Devoe at right end, played well with the glaring exceptionof Cowan, whose work in the second half especially was so slipshod thatMills, with wrath in his eye, took him out and put in Bell, a secondeleven man.

  With the score 11 to 6 against her, Erskine braced up and foughtdoggedly to score. Neil proved the best ground-gainer, and made severalfive-and ten-yard runs around right end. Once, with the ball on Woodby'stwelve yards and the audience shouting vehemently for a touch-down,Foster called on Paul for a plunge through right tackle. Paul made twoyards, but in some manner lost the ball, a fumble that put Erskine backon her fifty-yard line and that sent her hopes of tying the scoredown to zero.

  The second half was to be but fifteen minutes long, and fully ten of thefifteen had gone by when Erskine took up her journey toward Woodby'sgoal again. Mason, the full-back, and Neil were sent plunging, bucking,hurdling at the enemy's breastworks, and time after time just managed togain their distance in the three downs. Fortune was favoring Erskine,and Woodby's lighter men were slower and slower in finding theirpositions after each pile-up. Then, with the pigskin on Woodby'stwenty-eight yards, Neil was given the ball for a try outside of righttackle, and by brilliantly leaving his interference, which had becomebadly tangled up, got safely away and staggered over the line just atthe corner. The punt-out was a success and Devoe kicked goal, making thescore 12 to 11 in Erskine's favor. For the rest of the half the hometeam was satisfied to keep Woodby away from its goal, and made no effortto score. Woodby left the field after the fashion of victors, which,practically, they were, while the Erskine players trotted subduedly backto the locker-house with unpleasant anticipations of what was beforethem--anticipations fully justified by subsequent events. For Mills torethem up very eloquently, and promised them that if they were scored onby the second eleven before the game with Harvard he'd send every manof them to the benches and take the second to Cambridge.

  Neil walked back to college beside Sydney Burr, insisting that thatyouth should take his hands from the levers and be pushed. Paul had gotinto the habit of always accompanying Cowan on his return from thefield, and as Neil liked the big sophomore less and less the more he sawof him, he usually fell back on either Ted Foster or Sydney Burr forcompany. To-day it was Sydney. On the way that youth surprised Neil byhis intelligent discussion and criticism of the game he hadjust watched.

  "How on earth did you get to know so much about football?" asked Neil."You talk like a varsity coach."

  "Do I?" said Sydney, flushing with pleasure. "I--I always liked thegame, and I've studied it quite a bit and watched it all I could. Ofcourse, I can never play, but I get a good deal of enjoyment out of it.Sometimes"--his shyness returned momentarily and he hesitated--"sometimesI make believe that I'm playing, you know; put myself, in imagination,in the place of one of the team. To-day I--to-day I was you," he addedwith a deprecatory laugh.

  "You don't say?" cried Neil. Then the pathos of it struck him and he wassilent a moment. The cripple's love and longing for sport in which hecould never hope to join seemed terribly sad and gave him a chokingsensation in his throat.

  "If I had been--like other fellows," continued Sydney, quite cheerfully,"I should have played everything--football, baseball, hockey,tennis--everything! I'd give--anything I've got--if I could just runfrom here to the corner." He was silent a minute, looking before himwith eyes from which the usual brightness was gone. Then, "My, it mustbe good to run and walk and jump around just as you want to," he sighed.

  "Yes," muttered Neil, "but--but that was a good little run you madeto-day." Sydney looked puzzled, then laughed.

  "In the game, you mean? Yes, wasn't it? And I made a touch-down and wonthe game. I was awfully afraid at one time that that Woodby quarter-backwas going to nab me; that's why I made for the corner of the fieldlike that."

  "I fancied that was the reason," answered Neil gravely. Then their eyesmet and they laughed together.

  "Your friend Gale didn't play so well to-day," said Sydney presently.Neil shook his head with a troubled air.

  "No, he played rotten ball, and that's a fact. I don't know what's gotinto him of late. He doesn't seem to care whether he pleases Mills ornot. I think it's that chap Cowan. He tells Paul that Mills and Devoeare imposing on him and that he isn't getting a fair show and all thatsort of stuff. Know Cowan?"

  "Only by sight. I don't think I'd care to know him; he looks a good deallike--like--"

  "Just so," laughed Neil. "That's the way he strikes me."

  After dinner that evening Paul bewailed what he called his ill luck.Neil listened patiently for a while; then--

  "Look here, Paul," he said, "don't talk such rot. Luck had nothing to dowith it, and you know it. The trouble was that you weren't in shape;you've been shilly-shallying around of late and just doing good enoughwork to keep Mills from dropping you to the scrub. It's that miserableidiot Tom Cowan that's to blame; he's been filling your head withnonsense; telling you that you are so good that you don't have topractise, and that Mills doesn't dare drop you, and lots of poppycock ofthat kind. Now, I'll tell you, chum, that the best thing to do is to gohonestly to work and do your best."

  Paul was deeply insulted by this plain speaking, and very promptly tookhimself off up-stairs to Cowan's room. Of late he spent a good deal ofhis time there and Neil was getting worried. For Cowan was notably anidler, and the wonder was how he managed to keep himself in college eventhough he was taking but a partial course. To be sure, Cowan's fatedidn't bother Neil a bit, but he was greatly afraid that his examplewould be followed by his roommate, who, at the best, was none too fondof study. Neil sat long that evening over an unopened book, striving tothink of some method of weakening Cowan's hold on Paul--a hold that wasdaily growing stronger and which threatened to work ill to the latter.In the end Neil sighed, tossed down the volume, and made ready for bedwithout having found a solution of the problem.

  The following Monday Neil was rewarded for his good showing in theWoodby game by being taken on to the varsity. Paul remained on thesecond team, and Cowan, greatly to that gentleman's bewilderment andwrath, joined him there. The two teams, with their substitutes, went totraining-table that day in Pearson's boarding-house on Elm Street, andpreparation for the game with Harv
ard, now but nine days distant, beganin earnest.