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“No matter what I said,” retorted Joe wildly. “It’s off!”
“But – but you promised me a place on the team, Myers! You can’t go back on that!”
“Can’t I?” asked Joe grimly. “You told me you were Gordon Harmon – ”
“I beg your pardon,” denied Willard firmly. “I didn’t tell you that. You – you must have seen that label on my bag!”
“Never mind! I thought you were Gordon Harmon. We all did. That’s why we wanted you here. That’s why we thought Kenly had made promises and why we offered to see you through the half-year. Now, by gosh, you aren’t Harmon at all!”
“But it wasn’t my fault you made the mistake! And awhile back when I said that maybe I wasn’t as much of a football player as you thought I was you said you’d risk it. Why, my main reason for agreeing to stay here was your promising me I could play football!”
“That’s right, Joe,” said Martin. “You did promise him that.”
Joe turned scowlingly and found Martin’s face red with repressed laughter. “What’s the matter with you?” he growled. “Hang it, it’s no laughing matter! If this chump thinks I’m going to stick him on the team – ”
“Oh, take a tumble, Joe!” gurgled Martin. “Can’t you see Harmon’s stringing you? Oh, gee!” And Martin gave way to uncontrolled laughter.
Joe looked at Willard searchingly, a somewhat forced smile on his face. “That’s right?” he asked doubtfully.
Willard nodded, his gray-blue eyes twinkling merrily.
“I hope you choke!” said Joe. But the wish was followed by a deep sigh of relief.
“Doesn’t it seem fair enough,” laughed Willard, “for me to have my joke after you’ve had yours?”
“Sure!” agreed Martin. “He who laughs last laughs best!”
“What I want to know,” declared Bob earnestly, “is where that brother of yours is! Has Kenly got him?”
“No, he’s entered the Navy. I told you, didn’t I? He has always wanted to, but dad wouldn’t stand for it. And a couple of months ago Gordon just lit out. He meant to go to Kenly, if he went anywhere, and that’s why I decided on Kenly. I thought one of us might as well go there!”
“Well,” said Joe, “I guess the laugh’s on us, all right! I – I suppose you mean to stay here?”
“Surely! I’m entered now, you know. Besides, I like the place very well, probably quite as well as I’d have liked Kenly. And then being sure of a place on the football team here – ”
“Have a heart!” groaned Joe. “Look here, have you ever played football at all?”
“A little. I got into a couple of games last year.”
“Where did you play?” asked Joe.
“Left half.”
Joe shook his head. “No good,” he muttered. “We’ve got more half-backs than we can use. What we need is a corking good full-back; and a couple of linemen.” He viewed Willard despondently. “I thought you looked pretty light for a full-back.”
“Me, too,” sighed Bob. “I couldn’t quite picture you smashing through a line like Gordon Harmon did!”
“No, Gordon’s four inches bigger all around than I am, and he weighs nearly thirty pounds more.”
“Too bad for a fellow like that to waste himself in the Navy,” mourned Joe. “Look here, Harmon, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I can’t promise you a place, old man: you must see that yourself: but I’ll see that you get every chance to make good.”
Willard laughed softly. “Well, I won’t hold you to the agreement, Myers, under the circumstances. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t show me any favor. I’ll probably have a stab at the team, but I shan’t be heartbroken if I don’t make it. In any case, I’d rather stand on my own feet. Much obliged, just the same.”
“Well, that’s decent of you,” muttered Joe relievedly. “But of course I want to do anything I can to help. Guess we got you here under false pretenses, sort of, and it’s up to us to – to – ”
“Oh, no, you didn’t,” Willard assured him. “I saw what was up before I consented. At first I thought you were all just crazy. Then I remembered how you had asked my name and if I’d come from Schuyler High and understood. You chaps pulled a neat trick down there at the station. I’ll say that. I didn’t even suspect that you meant me to lose that train.”
Joe nodded joylessly. “That was Bob’s idea. The poor simp saw the name on your bag and fell for it!”
“So did you when I told you,” retorted Bob resentfully. “Any fellow would have been fooled!”
“Seems to me,” said Martin, “it’s up to us to apologize to Harmon. If anyone has a right to be peeved it’s he.”
“Guess that’s right, too,” replied Joe. “I’m sorry, Harmon. Hope you’ll – er – overlook the way we treated you and – and everything.”
“Same here,” said Bob. “Of course, we didn’t know – ”
“I’ll apologize, too, for my part in the affair,” said Martin, “but I’m not going to pretend that I’m sorry, for I’m not. It was a lot of fun while it lasted, and even if we didn’t capture a football star we did Kenly out of a mighty decent sort of a chap!”
“Hear! Hear!” laughed Joe. “Mart’s right. Harmon, we welcome you to our midst, and we trust that you will never regret your decision to – er – to – ”
“Join the gang,” ended Martin, jumping up. “Fellows, the occasion demands a celebration!” He went to his partly unpacked trunk and dug out a tin cracker box which he placed triumphantly on the table. “And here’s the wherewithal!” A generous section of a chocolate layer-cake and many doughnuts came to light and were hailed with acclaim.
“Wait a sec!” said Bob. “We’ve got some ginger-ale. I’ll fetch it. Keep ’em off the cake till I get back, Mart!”
“I’ll do my best,” Martin assured him, “but you’d better hurry. I know that gleam in Joe’s eye of old!”
Bob made what was probably a record trip to Lykes Hall and return, arriving anxious and breathless and laden with four bottles of ginger-ale. Then Martin cut the cake in four equal wedges, doled out the doughnuts and bade them “Go to it!” For a minute or two conversation was taboo, and then Bob held his bottle aloft and, speaking somewhat thickly, offered a toast.
“Gentlemen, I give you Mr. Willard Harmon, the brand plucked from the burning, the lamb saved from the slaughter, the – the – ”
“The innocent victim of a deep-dyed plot!” supplied Martin.
“The full-back who was only a half!” cried Joe.
“The gold brick!” laughed Willard.
“Charge your glasses, gentlemen! To the – the Brand!” And Bob drank deeply, with mellow gurgles.
“The Brand!” chanted Joe and Martin, and followed the example.
Afterwards they reviewed the afternoon’s events in the utmost good humor and with frequent laughter. Martin’s account of sitting on the step outside the door and reading choice bits of the school catalogue to the prisoner was especially amusing, and Willard revived the laughter when he supplemented gravely: “It was that bit about the open plumbing in the gymnasium that decided me! I couldn’t resist that!”
When, finally, Bob and Joe had taken themselves off and the roommates were preparing for bed, Martin said: “Look here, what about your trunk?”
Willard shook his head ruefully. “It’s at Lakeville by now, I suppose, and I’m likely to run short of shirts before I get it. I’ve got only one in my bag.”
“You can wear mine, I guess,” answered Martin. “Better telephone to the station the first thing in the morning and get the agent to have them send it back.”
“Maybe the quickest way would be to go over and get it myself,” suggested the other.
“No you don’t! You stay right here! We went to too much trouble to get you to let you go over there and forget to come back!”
“No fear,” laughed Willard. “I’ve paid my money here and I’ll have to stick now! Honest, Proctor, is Alton a better school than Kenly?”
Martin paused in the act of disrobing and looked gravely judicial. “Well, we like to say it is,” he answered cautiously.
“Is it bigger?”
“Not much. They usually have a few less students.”
“But the faculty here is better?”
“Hm: well, I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that. Maybe it used to be, but Kenly enlarged hers a couple of years ago.”
“I see. How about athletics: football and baseball and so on? Do we usually beat Kenly?”
“Oh, I reckon it’s about a stand-off. One year we win at football and she wins at baseball. Or we win at both and she gets the track championship and the hockey series. Call it fifty-fifty.”
“Well, then, what about the – the buildings and location and all that?”
“No comparison as to location.”
“Oh, Alton’s got the best of it there, eh?”
“Alton?” said Martin contemptuously. “I should say not! Why, this place is stuck right down in the village, you might say. Kenly’s got about thirty acres of land on the side of a hill: trees and brooks and fields – why, say, she’s got four gridirons and four diamonds and a quarter-mile running track and a regular flock of tennis courts!”
“Sounds good,” commented Willard. “What about the buildings over there?”
“They’re all right, too. Guess they’re as good as ours, anyway. There are more of them. She’s got a corking gymnasium. It would make two of ours!”
Willard sighed discouragedly. “But you fellows kept telling me how much better Alton was than Kenly!”
Martin grinned slowly. “Sure! Why not? That’s patriotism. Every fellow’s got to think his school better than the other school!”
“Oh! Then Alton isn’t really any better than Kenly?”
“Of course it is!”
“In what way?” urged Willard hopefully.
“Well,” began the other reflectively, holding his pajama jacket together with one hand and rubbing a touseled head with the other. “Well – ”
“Better class of fellows?” suggested Willard.
“N-no, they’re about the same. Some pretty decent chaps go to Kenly. It isn’t that. It – it – well, Alton’s just better, if you see what I mean!”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” laughed Willard.
Martin grinned. “You will when you’ve been here awhile,” he said encouragingly. “The switch is at the left of the door when you’re ready.”
“All right. I say, though, I’ve changed my mind about the beds. I’d rather have the other.”
“Honest? Well – ” Martin hesitated. “You’d better stick to the one you picked out, old man. That one’s got curvature of the spine. The spring lets you down in the middle.”
“I don’t mind,” laughed Willard. “I only chose the other because I saw it was yours.”
“Oh, that was it! Well, say, if you make a kick at the Office they’ll put a new spring on for you. Logan was always threatening to do it, but he never did. He was in here with me last year.”
Willard turned the switch and felt his way to the bed. “I don’t call this very bad,” he declared when he had experimented. “Anyway, it won’t keep me awake tonight!”
“That’s good. I hope it won’t. Good night – Brand!”
“Good night, Mart!”
CHAPTER VI
FIRST DAYS AT ALTON
Willard’s trunk arrived two days later, as though, by its delay, protesting against the change of plan, and by that time its owner was going about in one of Martin’s shirts. Those two days witnessed the shaking down of Willard into the manners and customs of Alton Academy. It wasn’t hard, for Martin was there to serve as a very willing counselor and guide. Willard became a member of the Junior Class on the strength of his high school certificate, and, since that was also Martin’s class, the latter was able to render assistance during the first difficult days. Fortunately the two boys took to each other at once and life in Number 16 Haylow promised to move pleasantly.
The term began on Thursday, and on Friday the football candidates gathered for the first practice. Alton Academy’s registration was well over four hundred, as the catalogue later announced, and of that number nearly one-fourth reported on the gridiron as candidates for the school team. Willard, viewing the throng, thought little of his chances of securing a place.
Coach Cade made much the same sort of a speech as coaches generally make on such occasions, and promised a successful season in return for cheerful obedience and hard work; and looked unutterably relieved when the more or less attentive audience dispersed. Mr. Cade was a short, thick-set man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight years, with black hair that stood up on his head much like the bristles of a blacking brush, a square face that looked at least one size too large for the rest of him, small features which included two very piercing dark eyes, a button nose and a broad mouth and, to cap the climax, a very gentle voice. Not a handsome chap, Willard thought, but certainly a very capable looking one. Later, he learned from Martin that John Cade had played with Alton Academy for three years and then for as many more on the Lafayette teams, making a remarkable reputation, first as a school quarter-back and then as a college guard. Willard found it difficult to imagine Coach Cade as a quarter. Probably, he concluded, in those days the coach lacked the breadth and heaviness he showed now, a conclusion proved to be correct when Willard came across an old photograph of an Alton eleven in the gymnasium some weeks later. In the picture John Cade was a short, not over-heavy and very alert boy of seventeen, his dark eyes darting defiance and his black hair bristling a challenge. He was familiarly known among the fellows of present-day Alton as Johnny, but none had ever been heard to address him so!
Practice this first afternoon wasn’t a serious ordeal, for much time was given to verbal instruction, and at half-past four the squads were dismissed. Willard, walking back to the gymnasium with Martin and Bob, said that it ought to be easy to get a good team with such a raft of candidates to choose from, and Bob snorted derisively.
“You’re wrong, Brand,” he said. “If we had half as many we’d get on better. It takes three weeks, nearly, to find out who’s good and to weed out the others, and that’s just so much time lost. Johnny’s dippy on the subject of having every fellow who ever heard of football come out, and it’s a sad mess for the first fortnight. Of course it sometimes happens that he finds a player that way who mightn’t show up if he wasn’t urged to, but, gee, I think it’s piffle! Give me last year’s first and second teams, or what’s left of ’em, and a dozen chaps who have made names where they come from and I’ll turn out as good a team as any. Must have been a hundred fellows out there this afternoon, and I’ll bet you fifty of them never played a game of football in their lives!”
“Sure,” agreed Martin, “but some of them are capable of playing, you poor fish, and it’s just those that Johnny wants to find. If they don’t make good this year, he’s got them started for next. Your plan might work all right this year, Bob, but you’d run short of material next year. You’ve got to plan ahead, old son, and that’s what Johnny does.”
“Are there many of last season’s fellows left?” asked Willard.
“Six first-string chaps,” answered Bob. “Joe, Stacey Ross, Jack Macon, Gil Tarver, Arn Lake and myself. There is quite a bunch of good last year subs and second team fellows, though. And then there’s Mart!”
“Yes, and Mart’s going to try for something besides guard position this year,” remarked that youth. “With you and Joe holding down each side of center there’s no hope for me. Last season I lived in hope that Joe would get killed or that you’d be fired, but nothing happened. This thing of waiting around for dead men’s shoes is dull work!”
“What are you going after?” laughed Bob.
“I don’t know,” replied Martin discouragedly. “How’d I do as a full-back?”
“Great! Say, Mart, do something for me, will you? Go and tell Johnny to let you play full-back!”
“Oh, dry up, you big ape! I could play full-back as well as Steve Browne can.”
“Steve hasn’t a chance!”
“Who, then?”
