CHAPTER I

COACH AND PLAYER

Clif Bingham paused in the doorway, clicked his heels together and gave a military salute.

“Reporting by order, sir.”

“No, Bingham, by request.” The football coach arose and strode across the floor, hand outstretched. “I can’t issue orders until the term starts. Well, how are you?”

“Fine and dandy, Mr. Otis. Don’t I look so?”

“Mm, a bit pudgy, I’d say. But we’ll work that off you. Sit here. Except Hanbury you’re the first of the gang to report. Couldn’t keep away any longer, I presume.”

“Something of the sort, sir,” answered the boy, smiling. “But the whole truth is that it was so plaguey hot in Providence yesterday that I made up my mind to take the first train I could get this morning and reach here without sizzling. How have you been, sir?”

“Oh, pretty fit, thanks. As you remarked, don’t I look so?”

He did, and Clif said so. The coach was tanned to the color of saddle leather and the hair on the top――well, more properly on the back and sides――of his round head looked more faded than ever in comparison with his skin. Mr. George Gray Otis, popularly known as “G. G.” wasn’t handsome. In fact he was fairly homely, for his sturdy body lacked proportionate height and his somewhat bulletlike head seemed a size or so too large. He had keen brown eyes, a fighting chin, a mouth that could close to a thin straight line on occasion and a nose that was far too short and broad for beauty. In age he was a year or so under thirty, and while it is doubtless possible to experience much trouble in thirty years, “G. G.” didn’t look like one who had carried a burden of it sufficient to account for the pronounced bow of his legs. (There was a legend to the effect that Mr. Babcock, Physical Director at Wyndham, had once enticed Mr. Otis to the links to play golf and that there, casting one horrified look at the coach in knickerbockers, he had fled the scene!) You are not, however, to picture “G. G.” as a ludicrous figure, nor even an unattractive one, for in spite of such physical incongruities as I have mentioned he compelled respect and liking. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that he was distinctly popular at Wyndham, and this in spite of a hard hand and a harsh tongue. On the field “G. G.” was pretty much the despot. Off it he was a kindly chap with a deep, hearty voice and a ready chuckle for a joke. Tradition had it that while at Wyndham School he had not won distinction at football although he had played on two of the teams. His only bid for fame had been made throwing the hammer, and at that feat he had excelled. However, at college he had come into his own as a brilliant plunging half-back, and the team he had captained in his senior year was still being used as a standard by which to measure all subsequent elevens.

“You’ve got a corking tan,” Clif added in envious tones.

“Good Lord, I’m fairly black!” protested the coach. “I had to appear in dinner clothes a couple of evenings ago, and when I had a look at myself in the mirror I almost got cold feet and stayed away from the party. The white shirt made me look like an Indian! You see, it wasn’t so apparent as long as I was in sea togs, but once ashore――” He shook his head ruefully.

“That’s a sea tan, then,” said Clif.

“Yes, a Long Island Sound tan, Bingham. I spent two whole months in dungaree, and particularly disreputable dungaree, too. We slipped into Providence once to get out of a blow, and I’d have looked you up if I’d known where you lived. Well, I could have found that out, I guess. The real reason I didn’t look in on you was that I was too lazy to shave and clean up!”

“When was that, sir?”

“Oh, about ten days ago; maybe the nineteenth or twentieth.”

“You wouldn’t have found me, Mr. Otis. We didn’t get back from the other side until the twenty-second.”

“Oh, abroad, eh? Lucky dog!”

“Father and I went over in July. We had a sort of reunion in Paris in August. You remember Loring Deane, sir?”

“Deane? Yes, indeed. You met him over there?”

“Yes, sir, he and his folks; and Wattles, of course! We all went to Switzerland together and found Tom Kemble and his father at Neuchatel. It was a sort of a date we’d made in the spring. We were all over the shop together, sir, and had a grand time. Tom was more fun than a goat. It was his first trip across, and, of course, he’d never seen the Alps. But you simply couldn’t get him to enthuse. Oh, he was all tied up in a knot with it, but he wouldn’t let on once! The best you could get out of him was that the Jungfrau reminded him of Orange Mountain, whatever that is, and that Lake Lucerne wasn’t in it with Hopatcong, or some such place. I forgot to say that Tom comes from New Jersey!”

“It wasn’t necessary,” chuckled the coach. “Did Kemble come up with you?”

“This morning? No, sir, he didn’t, and he’ll probably be fit to be tied, when he gets to the junction and doesn’t find me there according to agreement. He’s coming up on the train that gets here at one-something. I just couldn’t face the trip in such heat as we had yesterday. It was fairly cold in England when we left, and cool coming back, and this weather is awful!”

“Yes, it is hot. Guess we won’t do more than limber up this afternoon. You’d better go pretty slow, my boy, if you’re feeling the heat so. By the way, that reminds me of something I want to talk to you about, Bingham.” Mr. Otis took a leather-covered memorandum book from the table beside him, opened and glanced at it briefly and then gently ruffled the leaves while he went on. “You’ve put on several pounds since last fall, haven’t you? Seven? Is that so? Well, you’ll lose some of it, and――”

“I was seven pounds heavier in July, sir,” explained Clif. “I’m a lot more than that now, of course, for I haven’t done anything for a month but sleep and eat. I guess those seven will stick by me.”

“All the better. Fact is, Bingham, I’ve been wondering how you’d shape as a tackle.”

“Tackle!” exclaimed Clif.

“Yes. You see, we’re going to need tackles more than ends this fall. I was counting on Raiford, but he’s quit school, I hear. So there’s only Weldon, Cotter, Coles and Longwell to start with. Well, there’s McMurtry, too, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the backfield.”

“I guess ‘Blondy’ would make a good back,” said Clif reflectively. “Gosh, I’m willing to try, of course, if you want me to, sir, but I don’t know much about the position. It’s a lot different from end, I suppose.”

“Yes, but you can learn it, Bingham. Anyhow, I’d like to try you out at tackle. Of course, if you don’t take to it, all right. I certainly don’t intend to lose a good end to secure a second-rate tackle. We’re sort of long on end material: Drayton, Couch, Adams, Williams, two or three others besides. None of them except Drayton what you’d call top-notchers, maybe, but Couch did well last fall. This is only tentative, you understand. I wanted to hear what you thought of it.”

“Why, I’m willing enough, sir. It’s up to you, of course. If you think I can make good I’ll have a shot at it. Funny, though, that I’d been thinking of myself as a fellow who could never be anything but an end.”

“Well, we’ll see. You’ve got the general build and weight for a tackle, Bingham, and you’re fast and you use your head. Hang it, give me a chap who knows his business and has two feet and a pair of hands and I’ll chance him anywhere in the line or back of it! Do you know what makes a good tackle or a good center or a good anything, Bingham?”

“I don’t know any _one_ thing, Mr. Otis.”

“I’ll tell you, then.” The coach’s lips set themselves straight and tight for an instant. “Practice, my boy! Hard practice and plenty of it. I’ll guarantee to take any fellow in school and, if he is willing to work and do as I tell him, make a football player of him――_if_ I can have enough time! It’s lack of time, Bingham, that makes hard sledding for a football coach. Think of it! I get hold of you chaps two months, almost to a day, before I have to trot you into the big game! It’s not so bad when you’ve played a couple of years, but when you haven’t, when it’s all practically new stuff to you, why, man alive, it’s work! That’s what puts white hairs in a coach’s locks. Or――” he ran a brown hand over his head and grinned――“takes ’em out altogether!”

“It isn’t much time, is it?” reflected Clif.

“It isn’t half enough. And that’s why college coaches get their men together a month beforehand――six weeks, sometimes――and get the preliminary stuff out of the way before the term starts. But that will be done away with before long, I guess. There’s a growing sentiment in favor of starting all teams off the mark together. Fair enough, too. Well, two months is all I have, Bingham, and I’ve got to make the most of it. That’s one reason I wrote and asked all you chaps to be on hand to-day. Even one day counts when there’s only about fifty of them in all! I’ve been looking over the schedule. Where’d I put it? Here it is. We’re down for a hard game two weeks from Saturday, I guess.”

“Jordan, sir?”

“Highland. Jordan comes the week after. Here, look it over.”

Clif took the typewritten sheet and read:

Oct. 4, Freeburg High School, at Home Oct. 11, Highland School, at Highland Oct. 18, Jordan Academy, at Home Oct. 25, Cupples Institute, at Cupples Nov. 1, Minster High School, at Home Nov. 8, Horner Academy, at Horner Nov. 15, Toll’s Academy, at Home Nov. 22, Wolcott Academy, at Home

“What’s this Jordan Academy, sir?” Clif asked, returning the schedule. “Is she supposed to be good?”

“I don’t know much about those fellows yet. We dropped High Point to make room for them because, as I understand it, one of the instructors at Jordan used to teach here and he’s been after Dr. Wyndham for two or three seasons to get a date with us. There’s politics, you see, even in football schedules! Highland, though, held us to nine points last year, Bingham, and I have an idea that they’re out to win this time. Of course the loss of an early-season game isn’t important; no loss is if you learn by it; but every coach has a sort of secret longing to get through a season with a clean score, even if he knows that the thing’s quite impossible, and losing an early game shatters his dream right off the bat. So I’d rather like to come through safe with Highland.”

“I hope we do, sir. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we did get through this season with a clean slate? You say it’s impossible, Mr. Otis, but you don’t really mean it, do you? That is, it _could_ be done if――well, if we proved good enough!”

“Why, no, it isn’t impossible, Bingham. Let’s say extremely improbable, instead. We did about as well last season as we can hope to do this. We won seven out of eight games. Of course, it’s an easy matter to say that we should have won all eight, that if we had prepared a bit more for Horner, scouted her and got a line on some of those tricky plays she used, we’d have beaten her; tied her at the least. But somewhere in your schedule, at some moment during your season, you let up just a little. It’s natural. It’s like target shooting. You make nine bull’s-eyes and then at the tenth, when one more good shot will give you a perfect score, you miss. You don’t know any reason for it, either. You held just as steadily, aimed as before, but you missed. I guess it’s the old law of probability getting in its fine work, Bingham. Well, maybe we shouldn’t kick if we come through this season as well as we did last. And, after all, the big prize is the Wolcott game.”

“Yes, sir, of course. But――gosh, Mr. Otis, it would be a wonderful stunt to get through without a defeat! Maybe we can, too. We’ve got a pretty good start, don’t you think? We’ve got six or seven fellows who started the Wolcott game last year back again, and a raft of second-string players; and Jeff Ogden will make a corking captain, sir.”

“Yes,” answered Mr. Otis, “it looks promising. There’s not a bit of harm in setting out with a good big ambition, Bingham, either. The more you ask for, the more you generally get! So you and I, at least, can treasure the hope of an undefeated team. Going?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll have to beat it, I guess. I’ve got some stuff to get in the village. Then I’ll have to be at the station when Tom arrives or he’ll never speak to me again!”

Mr. Otis smiled. “Are you together in dormitory?” he asked.

“Yes, we are this year. We’ve got Number 40 in West. It’s a corking room. Tom was with Billy Desmond last year and I roomed with a chap named Treat, but we thought we’d like to get together for this year and next.”

“I hope Kemble is going to show up finely this season,” said the coach. “He looked promising last fall. Well, three-thirty, Bingham. By the way, if you run across Owens send him to me, will you? He’s here somewhere, for he called me up from the school half an hour ago.”

“Yes, I will. Well, see you at the field, sir.”

Clif descended the stairway and passed through the empty lobby of the Freeburg Inn. On the wide veranda, well above the elm-shaded sidewalk, he paused and searched for the list he had made an hour ago. A locust in a near-by tree gave an imitation of a mowing machine, reminding Clif of the heat, and he tilted his straw hat back from his forehead and sighed as he found the scrap of paper. A green-painted rocking chair spread inviting arms toward him, but, after an instant of hesitation, he shook his head virtuously and proceeded on his mission.