Chapter 9 No.9

Hammered into Shape

LIKE a sheaf of arrows, the other telegrams sped over the country, and most of them went straight to the mark. A mining engineer in Montana got one, and pulled up stakes at once. A rising young lawyer in Minneapolis found it necessary to look up some data in the old college library. A guest on a houseboat down near Jacksonville made hurried excuses and came North by the first train. Others felt urgently the need of a brief vacation from their accustomed duties and acted promptly on the impulse. Not a week had elapsed before ten of the dozen were on the scene of action. Of the remaining two, one was up in the North Woods and could not be reached, and the other was on his honeymoon.

They had a royal welcome from the coach, who had not doubted for a moment that they would heed the call. He knew that the old war horses would "sniff the battle from afar" and come galloping to the fray. Now that they were there, he felt the lightening of the tremendous load of responsibility he had been carrying since the beginning of the season. These men were not theorists, but from actual experience knew every point of the game from start to finish. Now he could divide his men up into squads, each one presided over by an expert who could coach each individual player in the duties of his position, while Hendricks himself could exercise a general supervision of the whole.

"It was bully of you fellows to come," he said, as they gathered in his rooms, as full of life and ginger as so many two-year-old colts. "And, now that you are here, I'm going to give you plenty of work to do. Heaven knows there's enough to keep you busy if we're to have a ghost of a show to win this fall."

"What's the seat of the trouble?" asked Ames. "Are they shirking? Are they too light? Many accidents? Come, get it off your chest. Tell us the sad story of your life."

"It wasn't so sad until lately," grinned "Bull," "and up to a week ago I didn't feel the necessity of weeping on any one's shoulder. In fact, I was beginning to think that the team was the real goods. They walked all over the Army, and what they did to Dartmouth was a sin and a shame. Then somebody must have wished a hoodoo on us and things began to happen."

And he narrated in detail the unexpected way in which three of his best men had been whisked off the team, and the results that followed.

"The fellows simply got in the doldrums," he went on, "and, with a few exceptions, have played like a lot of schoolboys. They seem to have forgotten all that they ever knew. Now you fellows know as well as I do that when a team slumps in that fashion there's only one thing to do. We've got to have new blood, new faces, new tactics. That's the reason I sent for you fellows. The boys know you by reputation. They've heard of the big things you did when in college, they look up to you as heroes--"

"Spare our blushes!" exclaimed Hadley.

"And it will give them a new inspiration," went on the coach, not heeding the interruption. "They'll forget their troubles and play like fiends to justify your good opinion, and to show you that the honor of the old college is safe in their hands. I want you to teach them all you ever knew, and then some.

"I'm not asking you to make bricks without straw," he continued. "The stuff is there for a crackerjack team. We're a bit short on beef, and I'd like to have an average of five pounds more in the line. But I've got the finest back field in the country, bar none. Wilson at full is simply chain lightning, and the whole country will be talking of him by November. Axtell is one of the most savage tacklers I've ever seen, and if he can only get his conditions worked off soon, we won't have to worry about right half. Morley, the man I put in his place, is a dandy, but doesn't come up to Axtell. Henderson at quarter is as quick as a cat and as cunning as a fox. Trent at center and Drake at right end are as good as they make 'em. Those fellows I've named are stars. The rest are good, but I've seen as good and better on many a Blue team.

"Now that's the way I size them up, and I want you fellows to go to it. There are just about enough of us to take a man apiece. Do what you like with them. I'll stand for anything short of murder. Work them till their tongues hang out. Knock it into them if you have to use an axe. Every day counts now. Do you realize that the game with the 'Maroons' is only three weeks off? If it were to-morrow they wouldn't leave anything of us but a grease-spot. And the 'Greys' wouldn't leave even that."

"Leave it to us," answered Ames, grimly voicing the general sentiment. "We'll give 'em medicine in allopathic doses, and it will be a case of 'kill or cure.'"

And promptly the next afternoon they proceeded to make good their threat. They went at their men hammer and tongs from the start. And the boys responded at once to this drastic treatment. There was a general brace all along the line. A new factor had been injected into the situation. The listlessness of a few days back gave place to animation, and before half an hour had passed the coach was delighted at the way his plan was working.

In order that the newcomers might get a line on their style of play, the whole team was put through the fundamentals. The tackling dummy was brought out, and the players in turn launched themselves against it to the accompaniment of stimulating cries:

"Harder."

"You're too low."

"That was a love tap."

"Batter it."

"Above the knees."

"Slam the life out of it."

"Too ladylike."

"Once more."

"Murder it."

And there was no let up until the tackling was as savage as even the most exacting of the visitors demanded.

Then followed practice in falling on the ball in such a way as to shelter it with hands and knees, while avoiding having one's breath knocked out by the fall; running with it tucked under the arm so securely that no grab of the enemy can dislodge it; getting down under kicks fast enough to take advantage of any fumble by the enemy in trying for a "fair catch;" getting a quick start the moment the ball was snapped back, and a dozen other elemental features that constitute the alphabet of the game. The boys had practiced these things a hundred times before, but they can never be done too often or too well; and to-day under the new stimulus they outdid themselves. Each tried to surpass his fellows and worked as he had never worked before.

After an hour of this, they were lined up for two ten-minute sessions with the scrubs. The play was sharp and snappy and every move was followed by keen and critical eyes that nothing, however trivial, escaped. By the time the team had rolled up twenty points and held their opponents scoreless, the volunteer coaches knew pretty well the defects that would have to be corrected, and just what work was cut out for them.

The coach was immensely pleased. Once more he saw daylight ahead.

"What do you think of them, Butch, now that you've clapped your eyes on them?" he asked, as they strolled off the field.

"All to the good," said Ames, sententiously. "Of course it's far from being a finished team as yet, but you've got some first-class material to work on. You're a little weak at the end of the line, and right tackle can stand a lot of improvement. But all the fellows seem willing, and that goes a long way. I didn't see one that appeared to be holding back."

"That fullback of yours is a peach," broke in Hadley. "He comes pretty near to being a team in himself. If he once gets a start, there's nothing that can ever catch him."

"He's the fastest man in college," replied Hendricks. "He's the fellow that carried off the Marathon at the Olympic Games in Berlin. And he's as game as he is speedy. You ought to have seen the way he stood McAlpin on his head when we played the Army. That fellow was as big as a house and as full of grit as a gravel path, but he wasn't one-two-three with Wilson. If all the boys were like him I'd have the championship won right now."

"What made a hit with me," commented Lawrence, "was that classy bit of dodging when he went down the field for sixty yards toward the end of the game. At least six of them tried to stop him, but he slipped by them like a ghost. And yet he ran almost in a straight line. All the dodging was done by the swaying of his hips and shoulders. A man that can do that comes pretty near to being the king of them all."

"You haven't any kick coming on your center and quarterback either," broke in Allen. "Jove, they're a pair of dandies. They work together like a well-oiled machine. They're playing with their heads as well their feet all the time. They've got the snap-back and the forward pass down to perfection. And they're a stone wall when it comes to the defense."

"Two of my very best," assented Hendricks, "and as sandy as the Sahara desert. It's around those three that I've had to build up my team."

"Those three," all unknowing of the comments that were being made on their work, were at the moment engaged in getting their bath and rubdown, never more grateful than just now after their strenuous labors of the afternoon.

"That was a course of sprouts for fair," remarked Tom when they were putting on their clothes.

"They certainly put us through our paces," assented Dick. "I haven't been so tired since the Army game."

"Just what we dubs needed," affirmed Bert. "Did you notice the snap and pepper in the team? It's the first time for a week that we've known we were alive. We're going to be a real football team after all. 'The cat came back,' and why shouldn't we?"

"I suppose it was due to that lot of 'old grads' looking on," surmised Tom. "Gee, when I thought of all those fellows leaving their work and traveling hundreds of miles for the sake of the old college, it made me ashamed of myself. I felt like going through a knot hole and drawing the hole in after me."

"Same here," said Dick. "And they can bully-rag me all they like. There'll be never a squeal from me. I'll work my head off to show them that we're fit to wear the Blue."

"Hear! hear!" exclaimed Bert. "That's the real tobasco. And I'll bet there isn't a fellow on the team that doesn't feel the same way."

They were still stirred by this feeling of elation when, after a hearty supper, they reached their rooms. What was their surprise on opening the door to find Axtell sprawled out in a chair, his feet upon the window sill. He grinned affably.

"Come right in and make yourself at home," he greeted.

"What are you doing here, you old flunker?" laughed Bert.

"Take back them cruel woids," demanded Axtell. "Flunker," he went on meditatively, "it hath a right knavish sound. Beshrew me, if I fling it not back in the teeth of any caitiff knight that dare put such shame upon me."

A great light dawned upon them.

"What!" cried Dick. "You old rascal. You don't mean to say that you've worked off your conditions?"

"You speak sooth," was the reply, "albeit your wonder at the same pleasureth my pride but little. For less than that my sword hath ofttimes drunk the blood of churls."

They fell upon him and pounded him till he was out of breath.

"Glory hallelujah!" shouted Tom.

"The best news I've heard since Hector was a pup," declared Dick.

"Now we've got a fighting chance," exulted Bert. "By Jove, old scout, you don't know how the team has missed you."

Axtell flushed with pleasure.

"Maybe I won't be glad to get back with the gang again," he ejaculated. "Gee, for the last two weeks I've felt like a sneak. I can't forgive myself for getting in such a fix, just when we were in such good shape and going like a house afire. You bet that from now on my record will be as clean as a hound's tooth."

"Bully!" said Bert. "I think you've done wonders though, to get rid of the conditions so soon. You must have worked like a horse."

"I've worked all right," said Axtell grimly. "It was the least I could do, heaven knows. Some nights I haven't gone to bed at all. Even at that, I felt a little skittish when I went up for my exam. But I was desperate and went in largely on my nerve. When the Prof. looked over my papers I thought I heard him mutter to himself something that sounded like: 'All Gaul is divided into three parts and you've got two of them.' But that may simply have been my guilty conscience. At any rate I got away with it, and the old sport gave me a clean bill of health."

"It's like getting money from home," affirmed Dick. "Maybe 'Bull' Hendricks won't be tickled to death. He'll kill the fatted calf if he can find one straying loose around the training quarters."

"O, he'll fall on my neck all right-with a club," remarked Axtell drily. "When it comes to disguising his joy, 'Bull' is a dandy actor."

"Don't you believe it," said Bert. "But how about your accomplice in crime?"

"O, Hodge will be coming along soon," was the reassuring reply. "He's been working just as hard as I have or harder. But he's had two to make up, where I had only one. He's hired a tutor to coach him and is cramming away like mad. He told me this morning he thought he'd be ready to go into the torture chamber by the end of this week."

"That'll be all to the merry," jubilated Tom. "Honest, Axtell, we've been all at sea since you fellows have been away. Winston has done fairly well at tackle, but he can't seem to start quickly enough when it comes to blocking. 'Bull' has been trying out Chamberlain in place of Ellis, but he gets mixed on the signals. He plugs away like a beaver, but finds it hard to get them straight. Morley is doing fine work at half, but he can't fill your shoes when it comes to tackling. Of course I don't know what 'Bull' will do, but I have a hunch that he'll take Chamberlain out and put Morley there permanently, as there isn't a chance in the world for Ellis to come back in time."

"Poor old Ellis," mourned Bert. "Game to the core, that boy. It nearly broke his heart when his ankle went back on him, but he never whimpers. He hopes to be out on crutches in time to see the big games. Told me yesterday, when I dropped in to see him, that when it came to yelling for the boys we'd find his voice was all right even if his leg was on the blink."

"Plucky old scout," agreed Axtell, "and one of the best men we had. But now I must be going. I'll toddle over and give 'Bull' a chance to welcome back the prodigal son. It'll be an affecting greeting," he grinned.

But if he had expected to be "skinned alive" for his shortcomings, he was agreeably disappointed. The coach was too delighted at the strengthening of the team to dwell too much or too sternly on the defection that had thrown it out of gear. He gave him a fatherly talk, pointed out the necessity of keeping his studies up to the mark from that time on, and put it up to him to "play the game" both in the classroom and on the field for all it was worth. Then he dismissed him with an injunction to turn up early for practice the following day.

The reinstated halfback went away with his eyes shining and his heart elate. Once more "his foot was on his native heath." And the dignified "Bull," after a cautious glance around to make sure that no one was looking, indulged himself in the luxury of an impromptu Highland fling.

* * *