Part 13

But Dink heard nothing; he sat in his corner, clasping and unclasping his hands, suffering with the moments that separated him from the fray. Then all at once he was back on the field, catching the force of the wind that blew the hair about his temples, hearing the half-hearted welcome that went up from the school.

"Hear that cheer!" said Garry Cockrell bitterly.

From Butcher Stevens' boot the ball went twisting and veering down the field. Stover went down, dodging instinctively, hardly knowing what he did. Then as he started to spring at the runner an interferer from behind flung himself on him and sent him sprawling, but not until one arm had caught and checked his man.

McCarty had stopped the runner, when Dink sprang to his feet, wild with the rage of having missed his tackle.

"Steady!" cried the voice of his captain.

He lined up hurriedly, seeing red. The interference started for him, he flung himself at it blindly and was buried under the body of the red-haired half. Powerless to move, humiliatingly held under the sturdy body, the passion of fighting rose in him again. He tried to throw him off, doubling up his fist, waiting until his arm was free.

"Why, you're easy, kid," said a mocking voice. "We'll come again."

The taunt suddenly chilled him. Without knowing how it happened, he laughed.

"That's the last time you get me, old rooster," he said, in a voice that did not belong to him.

He glanced back. Andover had gained fifteen yards.

"That comes from losing my head," he said quietly. "That's over."

It had come, the cold consciousness of which Cockrell had spoken, strange as the second wind that surprises the distressed runner.

"I've got to teach that red-haired coot a lesson," he said. "He's a little too confident. I'll shake him up a bit."

The opportunity came on the third play, with another attack on his end. He ran forward a few steps and stood still, leaning a little forward, waiting for the red-haired back who came plunging at him. Suddenly Dink dropped to his knees, the interferer went violently over his back, something struck Stover in the shoulder and his arms closed with the fierce thrill of holding his man.

"Second down, seven yards to gain," came the welcome sound.

Time was taken out for the red-haired half-back, who had had the wind knocked out of him.

"Now he'll be more respectful," said Dink, and as soon as he caught his eye he grinned. "Red hair--I'll see if I can't get his temper."

Thus checked and to use the advantage of the wind Andover elected to kick. The ball went twisting, and, changing its course in the strengthening wind, escaped the clutches of Macnooder and went bounding toward the goal where Charlie DeSoto saved it on the twenty-five-yard line. In an instant the overwhelming disparity of the sides was apparent.

A return kick at best could gain but twenty-five or thirty yards. From now on they would be on the defensive.

Dink came in to support his traditional enemy, Tough McCarty. The quick, nervous voice of Charlie DeSoto rose in a shriek: "Now, Lawrenceville, get into this, 7--52--3."

Dink swept around for a smash on the opposite tackle, head down, eyes fastened on the back before him, feeling the shock of resistance and the yielding response as he thrust forward, pushing, heaving on, until everything piled up before him. Four yards gained.

A second time they repeated the play, making the first down.

"Time to spring a quick one through us," he thought.

But again DeSoto elected the same play.

"What's he trying to do?" said Dink. "Why don't he vary it?"

Some one hauled him out of the tangled pile. It was Tough McCarty.

"Say, our tackle's a stiff one," he said, with his mouth to Stover's ear. "You take his knees; I'll take him above this time."

Their signal came at last. Dink dove, trying to meet the shifting knees and throw him off his balance. The next moment a powerful arm caught him as he left the ground and swept him aside.

"Any gain?" he asked anxiously as he came up.

"Only a yard," said McCarty. "He got through and smeered the play."

"I know how to get him next time," said Dink.

The play was repeated. This time Stover made a feint and then dove successfully after the big arm had swept fruitlessly past. Flash Condit, darting through the line, was tackled by Goodhue and fell forward for a gain.

"How much?" said Stover, rising joyfully.

"They're measuring."

The distance was tried and found to be two feet short of the necessary five yards. The risk was too great, a kick was signaled and the ball was Andover's, just inside the center of the field.

"Now, Lawrenceville," cried the captain, "show what you're made of."

The test came quickly, a plunge between McCarty and Lentz yielded three yards, a second four. The Andover attack, with the same precision as before, struck anywhere between the tackles and found holes. Dink, at the bottom of almost every pile, raged at Tough McCarty.

"He's doing nothing, he isn't fighting," he said angrily. "He doesn't know what it is to fight. Why doesn't he break up that interference for me?"

When the attack struck his end now it turned in, slicing off tackle, the runner well screened by close interference that held him up when Stover tackled, dragging him on for the precious yards. Three and four yards at a time, the blue advance rolled its way irresistibly toward the red and black goal. They were inside the twenty-yard line now.

Cockrell was pleading with them. Little Charlie DeSoto was running along the line, slapping their backs, calling frantically on them to throw the blue back.

And gradually the line did stiffen, slowly but perceptibly the advance was cut down. Enmities were forgotten with the shadow of the goalposts looming at their backs. Waladoo and Turkey Reiter were fighting side by side, calling to each other. Tough McCarty was hauling Stover out of desperate scrimmages, patting him on the back and calling him "good old Dink." The fighting blood that Garry Cockrell had called upon was at last there--the line had closed and fought together.

And yet they were borne back to their fifteen-yard line, two yards at a time, just losing the fourth down.

Stover at end was trembling like a blooded terrier, on edge for each play, shrieking:

"Oh, Tough, get through--you must get through!"

He was playing by intuition now, no time to plan. He knew just who had the ball and where it was going. Out or in, the attack was concentrating on his end--only McCarty and he could stop it. He was getting his man, but they were dragging him on, fighting now for inches.

"Third down, one yard to gain!"

"Watch my end," he shouted to Flash Condit, and hurling himself forward at the starting backs dove under the knees, and grabbing the legs about him went down buried under the mass he had upset.

It seemed hours before the crushing bodies were pulled off and some one's arm brought him to his feet and some one hugged him, shouting in his ear:

"You saved it, Dink, you saved it!"

Some one rushed up with a sponge and began dabbing his face.

"What the deuce are they doing that for?" he said angrily.

Then he noticed that an arm was under his and he turned curiously to the face near him. It was Tough McCarty's.

"Whose ball is it?" he said.

"Ours."

He looked to the other side. Garry Cockrell was supporting him.

"What's the matter?" he said, trying to draw his head away from the sponge that was dripping water down his throat.

"Just a little wind knocked out, youngster--coming to?"

"I'm all right."

He walked a few steps alone and then took his place. Things were in a daze on the horizon, but not there in the field. Everything else was shut out except his duty there.

Charlie DeSoto's voice rose shrill:

"Now, Lawrenceville, up the field with it. This team's just begun to play. We've got together, boys. Let her rip!"

No longer scattered, but a unit, all differences forgot, fighting for the same idea, the team rose up and crashed through the Andover line, every man in the play, ten--fifteen yards ahead.

"Again!" came the strident cry.

Without a pause the line sprang into place, formed and swept forward. It was a privilege to be in such a game, to feel the common frenzy, the awakened glance of battle that showed down the line. Dink, side by side with Tough McCarty, thrilled with the same thrill, plunging ahead with the same motion, fighting the same fight; no longer alone and desperate, but nerved with the consciousness of a partner whose gameness matched his own.

For thirty yards they carried the ball down the field, before the stronger Andover team, thrown off its feet by the unexpected frenzy, could rally and stand them off. Then an exchange of punts once more drove them back to their twenty-five-yard line.

A second time the Andover advance set out from the fifty-yard line and slowly fought its way to surrender the ball in the shadow of the goalposts.

Stover played on in a daze, remembering nothing of the confused shock of bodies that had gone before, wondering how much longer he could hold out--to last out the game as the captain had told him. He was groggy, from time to time he felt the sponge's cold touch on his face or heard the voice of Tough McCarty in his ear.

"Good old Dink, die game!"

How he loved McCarty fighting there by his side, whispering to him:

"You and I, Dink! What if he is an old elephant, we'll put him out the play."

Still, flesh and blood could not last forever. The half must be nearly up.

"Two minutes more time."

"What was that?" he said groggily to Flash Condit.

"Two minutes more. Hold 'em now!"

It was Andover's ball. He glanced around. They were down near the twenty-five-yard line somewhere. He looked at McCarty, whose frantic head showed against the sky.

"Break it up, Tough," he said, and struggled toward him.

A cry went up, the play was halted.

"He's groggy," he heard voices say, and then came the welcome splash of the sponge.

Slowly his vision cleared to the anxious faces around him.

"Can you last?" said the captain.

"I'm all right," he said gruffly.

"Things cleared up now?"

"Fine!"

McCarty put his arm about him and walked with him.

"Oh, Dink, you will last, won't you?"

"You bet I will, Tough!"

"It's the last stand, old boy!"

"The last."

"Only two minutes more we've got to hold 'em! The last ditch, Dink."

"I'll last."

He looked up and saw the school crouching along the line--tense drawn faces. For the first time he realized they were there, calling on him to stand steadfast.

He went back, meeting the rush that came his way, half-knocked aside, half-getting his man, dragged again until assistance came. DeSoto's stinging hand slapped his back and the sting was good, clearing his brain.

Things came into clear outline once more. He saw down the line and to the end where Garry Cockrell stood.

"Good old captain," he said. "They'll not get by me, not now."

He was in every play it seemed to him, wondering why Andover was always keeping the ball, always coming at his end. Suddenly he had a shock. Over his shoulder were the goalposts, the line he stood on was the line of his own goal.

He gave a hoarse cry and went forward like a madman, parting the interference. Some one else was through; Tough was through; the whole line was through flinging back the runner. He went down clinging to Goodhue, buried under a mass of his own tacklers. Then, through the frenzy, he heard the shrill call of time.

He struggled to his feet. The ball lay scarcely four yards away from the glorious goalposts. Then, before the school could sweep them up; panting, exhausted, they gathered in a circle with incredulous, delirious faces, and leaning heavily, wearily on one another gave the cheer for Andover. And the touch of Stover's arm on McCarty's shoulder was like an embrace.

XIX

At nine o'clock that night Stover eluded Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan and the Tennessee Shad and went across the dusky campus, faintly lit by the low-hanging moon. Past him hundreds of gnomelike figures were scurrying, carrying shadowy planks and barrels, while gleeful voices crossed and recrossed.

"There's a whole pile back of Appleby's."

"We've got an oil barrel."

"Burn every fence in the county!"

"Who cares!"

"Where did you get that plank?"

"Up by the Rouse."

"Gee, we'll have a bonfire bigger'n the chapel!"

"More wood, Freshmen!"

"Rotten lot, those Freshmen!"

"Hold up your end, Skinny. Do you think I'm a pack mule?"

Dink pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes and slunk away, not to be recognized. He went in a roundabout way past the chapel. He had just one desire, to stand under the goalposts they had defended and to feel again the thrill.

"Who's that?" The voice was Tough McCarty's.

"It's me. It's Dink," said Stover.

"I came down here," said McCarty, appearing from under the goalposts and hesitating a little, "well, just to feel how it felt again."

"So did I."

Dink stood by the posts, taking one affectionately in his hand, and said curiously: "They tell me, Tough, we held 'em four times inside the ten-yard line."

"Four times, old boy."

"Funny I don't remember but two. Guess I was groggy."

"You didn't show it."

"It was you pulled me through, Tough."

"Rats!"

"It was. There at the last, I remember when you gripped me." As this was perilously near sentiment he stopped. "I say, how many of us tackled that fellow the last time?"

"The whole bunch. I say, Dink."

"Yes?"

"Stand out here--that's it, knee to knee. Can't you just feel it behind you?"

"Yes," said Dink, surprised that in the big body there was an imagination akin to his own. Then he said abruptly:

"Tough, I guess there won't be any fight."

"No--not after this."

"What the deuce did we get a grudge for, anyway?"

"I always liked you, Dink, but you wouldn't have it."

"I was a mean little varmint!"

"Rats! I say, Dink, we've got two years more on the old team. There's nothing going to get around our end, is there, old boy?"

"You bet there isn't!"

All at once a flame ran up the towering bonfire and belched toward the sky.

"Are you going to let them get you?" said McCarty.

"Me? Oh, Lord, no--I can't make a speech!"

"Neither can I!" said Tough mendaciously. "I wouldn't go back there for the world!"

The thin posts stood out against the sheet of flame, gaunt, rigid, imbued with a certain grandeur.

"I say, Dink," said McCarty.

"Yes?"

"I say, we're going to have some great old fights together. But, do you know, I sort of feel after all, this will be the best."

Then a chorus of thin shrieks rose about them. They started half-heartedly to run, pretending fury. A swarm of determined boyhood rushed over them and flung them kicking, struggling into the air.

"Tough McCarty and Dink Stover!"

"We've got 'em!"

"On to the bonfire!"

"They're ours!"

"Hurray!"

"Help!"

"Help! We've got McCarty and Stover!"

Boys by the score came tearing out. The little knot under Dink became a thick, black shadow, rushing forward with hilarious, triumphant shouts. Then all at once he landed all-fours on a cart before the flaming stack, greeted by fishhorns and rattles, his name shrieked out in a wild acclaim.

"Three cheers for good old Dink!"

"Three cheers for honest John Stover!"

"Three cheers for the little cuss!"

He drew himself up, fumbling at his cap, terrified at the multiplied faces that danced before his eyes.

"I say, fellows----"

"Hurray!"

"Good boy!"

"Orator!"

"I say, fellows, I don't see why you've got me up here."

"You don't!"

"We'll show you!"

"Dink, you're the finest ever!"

"You're the stuff!"

"Three cheers for good old Rinky Dink!"

"Fellows, I'm no silver-tongued orator----"

"Don't believe it!"

"You are!"

"Fellows, I haven't got anything to say----"

"That's the stuff!"

"Hurray!"

"Keep it up!"

"Oh, you bulldog!"

"Fellows, they were good----"

A derisive shout went up.

"Fellows, they were very good----"

"Yes, they were!"

"Fellows, they were re-markably good--but _they didn't beat the old school team_! That's all."

He dove headlong into the crowd, unaware that he had repeated for the sixth time the stock oration of the evening.

"Good old Dink! Good old Rinky Dink!"

The cry stuck in his memory all through the jubilant night and long after, when in his delicious bed he tossed and worried over the tackles he had missed.

"It's a bully nickname--bully!" he repeated drowsily, again and again. "It sounds as though they liked you! And Tough McCarty, what a bully chap--bully! We're going to be friends--pals--what a bully fellow! Everything is bully--everything!"

* * * * *

With the close of the football season and the advent of December, with its scurries of snow and sleet, what might be termed the open season for masters began.

A school of four hundred fellows is a good deal like a shaky monarchy: the football and baseball seasons akin to foreign wars; so long as they last the tranquillity of the state is secure, but with the return of peace a state of fermentation and unrest is due.

The three weeks that lead to the Christmas vacation are too filled with anticipation to be dangerous. It is the long reaches after January fifth, the period of arctic night that settles down until the passing of the muddy month of March, that tries the souls of the keepers of these caged menageries.

Since those days a humane direction has built a gymnasium to lighten the condition of servitude, preserve the health and prolong the lives of the Faculty. But at this time, with the shutting of the door on the treadmills of exercise, the young assistant master arranged his warm wrapper and slippers at the side of his bed and went to sleep with one ear raised.

Dink Stover entered this season of mischief with all the ardor and intensity of his nature, the more so because, owing to his weeks of strict training and his virtual isolation of the year before, it was all strange to him. And at that period what is forbidden, dangerous and, above all, untried, must be attempted at least once.

Now, owing to the foresight of a wise father, Dink had never been forbidden to smoke. Of a consequence when, at an early age, he practiced upon an old corncob pipe and found it violently disagreed with him, the desire abruptly ceased and, as the athletic ardor came, he consecrated his years to the duty of growing, with not the slightest regret.

But between smoking under permission and squeezing close to a cold-air ventilator, stealthily, in the pin-drop silences of the night, with frightful risks of detection, was all the difference in the world. One was a disagreeable, thoroughly unsympathetic exercise; the other was a romantic, mediaeval adventure.

So when Slops Barnett, who roomed below and was the proprietor of a model air flue with direct, perpendicular draught, said to him with an air of mannish _insouciance_:

"I say, old man, I've got a fat box of 'Gyptians. Glad to have you drop in to-night if you like the weed."

Dink answered with blase familiarity:

"Why, thankee, I've been aching for just a good old coffin-nail."

He slipped down the creaking, nervous stairs, and found Slops luxuriously reclining before the ventilator, on a mattress re-enforced by yellow and green sofa pillows, that gave the whole somewhat of the devilishly dissipated effect of the scenes from Oriental lands that fascinated him on the covers of cigarette boxes.

Slops made him a sign in the deaf-and-dumb language to extinguish the light and creep to his side.

"Comfy?" said Slops, whispering from the darkness.

"Out of sight!"

"Here's the filthy weed."

"Thanks."

"Always keep the cig in front of the ventilator," said Slops, applying his lips to Dink's ear. "Get a light from mine. Talk in whispers."

Stover filled his cheeks cautiously and blew out after a sufficient period.

"You inhale?"

"Sure."

"Inhale a cigar?"

"Always."

"It's awful the way I inhale," said Slops with a melancholy sigh. "I'm undermining my constitution. Ever see my hand? Shakes worse'n jelly. Can't help it, though; can't live without the weed. I'm a regular cig fiend!"

Stover, holding his cigarette gingerly, keeping the sickly smoke at the end of his tongue, looked over at Slops' stupid little face, flashing out of the darkness at each puff. He was no longer the useless Slops Barnett, good only to fetch and carry the sweaters of the team, but Barnett, man of the world, versed in deadly practices.

"I say, Slops----"

"Hist--lower."

"I say, Slops, what would they do if they caught us?"

"Bounce us."

"For good?"

"Sure! P. D. Q."

The cigarette suddenly had a new delight to Dink. He was even tempted to inhale a small, very small puff, but immediately conquered this enthusiastic impulse.

"Isn't this the gay life, though?" said Slops carelessly.

"You bet," said Dink.

From down the flue came three distinct taps.

"That's the Gutter Pup signaling," said Slops, putting his finger over Dink's mouth. "Bundy is snooping around. Mum's the word."

Presently, as Dink sat there in the darkness, trying desperately to breathe noiselessly, the sound of slipping footsteps was heard in the hall. Slops' hand closed over his. The steps stopped directly outside their door, waited a long moment and went on.

"Bundy?" said Dink in a whisper.

"Yes."

"Why did he stop?"

"He's got me spotted. He's seen the nicotine on my finger," said Slops, showing a finger under a sudden glow of his cigarette.

A half-hour later when Dink crept up the stairs, homeward bound, he swelled with a new sensation. Yesterday was months away; then he was a boy, now that he had smoked up a cold-air ventilator, with Bundy outwitted by the door, he had aged with a jump--he must be at last a man.

The next week he added to his stature by going to P. Lentz's room for a midnight session of the national game, where, after a titanic struggle of three hours, he won the colossal sum of forty-eight cents.

Having sunk to these depths he began to listen to the Sunday sermons with a thrill of personal delight--there being not the slightest doubt that they were directly launched at him. Sometimes he wondered how the Doctor and The Roman could remain ignorant of the extent of his debauches, his transgressions were so daring and so complete. He stood shivering up the Trenton road, under the shadow of an icy trunk, of Sunday mornings, and met Blinky, the one-eyed purveyor of illicit cigarettes and the forbidden Sunday newspapers, which had to be wrapped around his body and smuggled under a sweater.

Secretly he rubbed iodine on his fingers to simulate the vicious stain of nicotine that was such a precious ornament to Slops' squat fingers. Only one thing distressed him, and that was his invincible dislike for the cigarette itself.

Being now a celebrity, many doors were thrown invitingly open to him, invitations that flattered him, without his making a distinction. He went over to the Upper at times and into rooms where he had no business, immensely proud that he was called in to share the delights and liberties of the lords of the school.