BASES FULL!

BY

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

AUTHOR OF “THE FIGHTING SCRUB,” “INFIELD RIVALS,” ETC.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK :: 1925 :: LONDON

COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CHAPTER I THE WINNING GOAL

“Shoot! Shoot!”

The Wyndham forwards had swept down the rink, successfully eluding Wolcott’s defense, and now Captain Cooper slid the puck gently to the left as the enemy point checked desperately, and from the audience, for the moment forgetting chilled feet and numbed fingers, the shout came exultantly, imploringly:

“Shoot! Shoot!”

Ogden took the pass, but a Wolcott wing slashed wildly at his stick and the defending cover point dashed back to the beleaguered goal and the chance was gone. Ogden did shoot, but the puck struck the end of the net and a Wolcott skater hooked it to him and, pursued by Ogden, swept behind the goal. A fracas in the further corner followed and then a brown-legged player was off down the rink and Wyndham hastened to cover.

It was the last period and only a few minutes remained. The score was still a tie at 6 to 6. The [2]visiting team had started the game in whirlwind fashion, scoring twice before the Blue had found its pace. Then Wyndham had tallied on a lift from near the center of the rink by Raiford, and that lucky shot had nerved the home team to faster play. Wolcott had scored a third tally from a furious mix-up in front of goal when the rubber had slid from some one’s skate and edged past a corner of the net. At 3 to 1 the game had stayed until, close to the end of the period, Wyndham, using a five-man attack, had overwhelmed the adversary and netted a clean shot from directly in front of the goal. Captain Cooper, Wyndham’s right wing, had put that in.

After the intermission Wolcott had again forced the fighting, and Craigie, goal keeper for the home team, had been fairly battered with the puck until at last it got by him for Wolcott’s fourth score. Coach Hilliard had substituted Cowden for Jensen at cover point then, and subsequently the enemy had experienced more difficulty in reaching shooting distance. Cowden had proved himself more alert than his predecessor on attack, as well, and Wyndham’s next tally was a result of his “get away” followed by a quick backward pass to Raiford and a sizzling shot from a hard angle. Wyndham had again scored less than a minute later when Captain Cooper had taken the puck into enemy territory, skating along the boards, and, after bowling over the outer defense, passed to Raiford in front of point and then, when [3]the center slid it back to him, slipped it craftily past the goal keeper’s feet with a mere flick of his stick.

From 4 to 4 the score had leaped quickly to 6 to 6, each team winning alternate goals. Couch, Wyndham’s point, had been sent off for illegal checking and a Wolcott forward for loafing off-side. Jeff Adams, who had taken Couch’s position, had proved an improvement, for, although light, he had broken up several attacks. Still later Coles had relieved Cragie at goal. Now, with the score still even and only a handful of minutes to play, all indications pointed toward an extra period. Wyndham wanted to win to-day’s contest, for it was the deciding test in the three-game series with her old rival—Wolcott Academy. Wyndham had lost the first, played on her home rink, but had romped off with the second, played at Cotterville. So far this school year the Dark Blue had proved supreme in football and had been defeated in basket ball; the deciding contest of the latter sport was still only a week old. A victory in hockey would atone for the basket ball repulse; indeed, more than atone, since at both Wyndham and Wolcott hockey was a major sport and basket ball a minor. Besides,

Wolcott had carried off the hockey palm last winter, and while that fact might be forgotten by many of the onlookers it was well remembered by the players.

Sitting on the bench, sweatered and blanketed, [4]Clifton Bingham cast increasingly anxious glances toward the coach. Clif was only a substitute left wing; whether a first or second substitute he had never been able to determine; but he had taken his place in four of the eleven games played since ice had formed on the little pond and hadn’t done so badly. That was Clif’s opinion, at least. It was also the opinion, perhaps, not wholly unprejudiced, of Messrs. Kemble and Deane, who, with Clif, constituted what they themselves termed “The Triumvirate,” an offensive and defensive coalition of a month’s standing. It was undoubtedly natural that Messrs. Kemble and Deane should think well of their comrade’s hockey and that they should say so, and it was just as natural that Clif who, in spite of inherent modesty, liked to think well of himself and his deeds, should be impressed by their judgment. But what bothered Clif sometimes was that admiration for his hockey playing seemed not to extend to the coach. The coach was “Pinky” Hilliard,

instructor in modern languages and Junior English. “Pinky” was new at this job. As an assistant football coach he had made good for several years, but not until last December had he been selected by a puzzled Athletic Committee to take charge of the hockey team. Good hockey coaches, unlike football or baseball coaches, don’t grow on every bush! But Mr. Hilliard had done well. There was no doubt as to that. After a poor start, the team had entered the [5]third week in January and a winning streak simultaneously, and since the Lovell game, the third consecutive defeat, had come triumphantly through seven contests, losing only the first game with Wolcott. Just the same, in Clif’s opinion at least, Pinky was handicapped by one fault: he was blind—or perhaps near-sighted—to the abilities of Clifton Cobb Bingham, Third Class. Not that Pinky hadn’t used Clif, for he had; there had been the Horner game in which Clif had, miraculously as it seemed to him, shot a clean goal from a forty-degree angle just before the enemy point had sent him rolling over

on the ice. And two or three other games, as well, in one of which he had also scored, although less spectacularly. But here it was the last contest of the year, the biggest game of the big games, and the time was almost up! And Ogden was still playing left wing and Clif Bingham was still huddling on the bench with his skates in a snowbank and his stick clasped by gloved but slowly congealing fingers. Clif, hazarding another glance at the coach’s rapt but calm countenance, reflected that the other two members of the Triumvirate were going to be seriously displeased with Pinky if he didn’t soon recall the existence of a certain substitute!

Play stopped while the Wolcott cover point and captain recovered from the effects of a violent collision with the boards and the Wyndham team gathered panting about Captain Cooper and indulged [6]in hurried, low-voiced conversation. Clif watched and speculated and hoped that Cooper would notice him; and then, lest he might seem to be courting recognition, relapsed against the back of the bench, partly obscuring himself behind Joe Hanbury’s broad bulk. Some one further along the bench asked about the time and Mr. McKnight, timekeeper, responded callously with “Four minutes and twenty seconds!” Gee only four minutes! Clif leaned forward again into sight. So did at least five other youths. This was no time for reticence! Captain Cooper pushed from the group and skated toward the barrier. Planting his stick in the bank of snow beyond it, he leaned forward and spoke to Pinky. Clif couldn’t hear what he said, but when the captain’s eyes swept along the huddled, blanketed line on the bench he met them squarely. Perhaps Cooper had been seeking some one beyond Clif, but his gaze

stopped. For an instant he stared back at Clif, still talking. Then he smiled very suddenly and nodded. Ever after that Clif insisted that Cooper had the most wonderful smile in all the world! Coach Hilliard leaned forward and his gaze, too, rested on Clif. Then he said something else to Cooper and waved a hand, and Clif, arising suddenly, tripped over his stick and fell across the barrier. Both Cooper and Pinky were grinning when Clif reached them, although they pretended they weren’t.

“Left wing, Bingham,” said the coach. “Watch [7]Houston and cover him close every minute. Go in and see if you can beat him. Don’t be afraid of smashing into him. He can’t hurt you. All right, Ogden! That’s enough!”

Clif was over the boards in record time, shorn of his blanket but still battling with a reluctant sweater. A kind-hearted schoolmate reached across the barrier and helped him out of it; Clif panted “Thanks!” and swung off, tapping his stick, trying hard to get his cold muscles limbered up in the brief moments remaining. Afraid of Houston! Where did Pinky get that stuff, he wondered. He wasn’t afraid of the whole Wolcott team. Of course they might be better than he; skate better, handle their sticks better, shoot better; but they couldn’t any of them try harder!

The Wolcott captain, once more on his skates, ambled groggily about, watched anxiously by his team mates, and at last signified his desire to continue hostilities. The referee skated away from the boards and lifted his whistle. Players hurried to positions. There was a shrill twe-e-et and the battle went on. Wolcott snared the puck from the face-off and shot along the ice, forming quick formation. Cover point went over to the left, tried desperately to stop the hurtling disk and found himself passed. The attack swept into goal. Clif hovered about Houston, but the puck went across to the other side and there was a quick shot. Coles slipped to the [8]right and the disk bounded away from a leg guard. Clif pushed toward it, but Raiford swung past and hooked it. A Wolcott player challenged him and Raiford fed the puck down the rink. Skates ground and clanged as the teams sped in pursuit. The audience, mostly home-team sympathizers, yelled continuously. The puck shot hither and yon, back and forth, banged against the boards, flew through the air, skimmed the ice, yet remained safely away

from both nets. Precious moments sped. Time and again overeagerness brought the shrill whistle for off-side. Both Blue and Brown were striving desperately now, sacrificing science for main force. The playing grew more and more ragged as it became harder. Teamwork almost disappeared, in spite of the captains’ frantic appeals, and individual effort, save for brief flashes of cohesion, took the place of formation play. One minute passed and another. The period entered its final two and still the game was undecided and, from all indications, likely to remain so until an extra “sudden-death” period arrived.

Clif had followed instructions implicitly, holding to the tall, fast-skating and elusive Houston like a limpet. The big brown-hosed right wing had more than once showed impatience and more than once vented his wrath by ungentle administrations of his stick against Clif’s legs. But Clif didn’t feel the blows; at least not then. He continued to dog [9]Houston’s every move, and such covering, while it mitigated against Clif’s usefulness as an attacking player, certainly mitigated quite as much against Houston’s value in a similar capacity. Twice at least Clif was able to tell himself with grim satisfaction that his close attention to the big Wolcott chap had prevented a shot.

Captain Cooper stole the puck close to the Wolcott goal and set off with it, alone for the moment and unaided, while shrill shouts and yells of triumph hailed his progress. Dodging right and left, skating from side to side of the rink, he eluded the enemy defenders until, at last, he had an unchallenged shot. Just before a Wolcott man plunged at him he slammed the puck viciously at the net. But the Brown’s goal keeper threw himself in front of it and it rebounded, and before a second Wyndham player could reach it the Wolcott point had whipped the disk to the boards and another attempt had failed.

There was a frantic struggle for possession in the corner and then the disk went flying back up the rink to be knocked down by Cowden who, in spite of a hundred protests, fed it back to the forwards. It was Houston who tried for the puck, touched but missed it and put Clif on-side. Clif hooked the rubber from just in front of Houston’s reaching blade, slid it to the right for a team mate to take, saw to his consternation that no team mate was there and so went after it again himself. Houston was [10]beside him, very free with his stick, but Clif only blinked when the blows met his shin guards, and pulled the puck toward him.

What happened after that will always remain a great mystery to Clif. To his surprise the puck was in front of him, traveling right, left, straight ahead, at the direction of his stick. But surprise lasted only an instant. Then came chaos. He was threatened in front and from the right, forced to the boards, forced away from them, half checked once. Yet by some marvelous chance the little hard-rubber disk lay always right at the tip of his stick. Somehow he kept his feet, he who had so often fallen ingloriously with far less excuse, and somehow he wormed and dodged and battered his way to the Wolcott goal. At the last moment, when cries from Cooper and from Raiford imploringly urged him to pass, he slid the puck a yard to the left, staggered under the impact of the point’s desperate check, whirled precariously around on one skate and, the goal keeper’s scowling countenance looming large and close, made a despairing sweep with his stick. After that he crashed against an iron of the net, rebounded, and slid across the ice in a sitting position until

brought up by the boards. But the goal umpire had flung up a hand, Wyndham was shrieking like mad and to Clif, still dazed, came the sweet knowledge that the puck had been caged and that the Dark Blue team had won!

[11]

CHAPTER II THE TRIUMVIRATE

As though realizing that, with the end of the hockey schedule, his services were no longer needed, King Frost retired three days after the Wolcott game. Wyndham awoke to find a warm sun in full command and the earth exceedingly moist and squishy. Little rills flowed along the edges of the paths, water dripped from the roofs, and from all sides, if one listened, came the chuckling murmur of awakening spring. That evening, after supper, the Triumvirate assembled in a first floor room of East Hall. There was nothing unusual in this, however, since the Triumvirate did the same thing almost every evening. There was a full attendance, not a member being absent. Had the secretary—supposing there was one—called the roll it would have gone like this:

“Clifton Cobb Bingham.”

“Here!”

“Loring Deane.”

“Here!”

“Thomas Ackerman Kemble.”

“Uh-huh!”

But there wasn’t any secretary. Nor any other [12]officers. Nor, for that matter, any organization. One evening shortly after the holidays, Tom, commenting on the unfailing regularity with which he and Clif adjourned from Dining Hall to Loring’s room, added: “Anybody would think this was a sewing circle or a club or something.”

“Let’s have it a club,” suggested Clif. “The East Hall Literary and Recreation Club.”

“I’d like to know what’s literary about it,” Tom objected.

“I am. You and Loring play chess and I read his books. Well, if you don’t like that, how about making it a secret organization? Call it the D. K. B.”

“What’s that stand for?” asked Tom suspiciously. “Don’t Kome Back or—”

“Those are our initials, dumb-bell.”

“Oh! Well, that sounds all right, but—”

“We might call it the Club of Three,” offered Loring. “Or—wait a minute! What’s the word for three? Trio? No, tri—triumvirate! The Triumvirate! What’s wrong with that?”

“Great! It sounds important,” said Tom. “Only, before I accept membership I want to ask one simple question. Are there any dues?”

“No dues, no initiation fee! A strictly fraternal, non-partisan, offensive and defensive alliance! ‘One for all and all for one!’”

“That’s in The Three Muskeneers,” said Tom.

[13]

“The Three—what?” asked Clif.

Tom repeated the information. “You know, the story about the three guys—only there were four of ’em—who—”

“The Three Guardsmen,” interrupted Loring gravely.

“Well, I’ve always heard it called The Three Muskeneers. A fellow named Dumas wrote it. That the same one?”

“Quite,” said Loring, and Clif said: “I like your title better, though, Tom.”

“What’s the matter with it? If you’re so smart I can show you the book in the library. I’ve got it at home, too. I guess I know!”

“Sure it isn’t ‘Musketeers’ instead of ‘Muskeneers’?”

“Huh? Is it? Heck, I always did wonder what a muskeneer was! Well—” Tom leaned back, grinning—“I never was much on literature! If you don’t believe me, ask Mr. Wyatt!”

So that is how the Triumvirate started. It was a sonorous, mouth-filling word, and they liked it. Of course, it was only a joke, yet after a week or two they began to sort of believe in it and lost the habit of smiling when they spoke of it. In some manner it came to be accepted that the borrowed slogan of “One for all, all for one!” meant what it said, and while no opportunity had yet presented that called on them metaphorically to draw swords from scabbards [14]and stand shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy, still the spirit was there.

This evening, which, to be quite exact, was the evening of the twenty-sixth day of February, Tom, noting that the chessboard had not been set out, looked an inquiry and Loring smiled apologetically. “Let’s not play to-night, Tom,” he said, “if you don’t mind. Wattles beat me just before supper, and now I’d rather do something I’ve got a show at; such as talk. You know they say that conversation is fast becoming a lost art.”

“Heck,” said Tom, “I haven’t noticed it. And you wouldn’t think so if you’d heard ‘Alick’ chewing the rag to me this afternoon. Gosh, I’ll bet that guy invented conversation! He knows more words than the dictionary, and he sure can string them together!”

“What,” inquired Clif, smiling, “was the subject of Mr. Wyatt’s talk?”

“Aw, shut up,” growled Tom. “Say, honest, fellows, what’s the good of learning about a lot of queers that died a hundred years ago? This Washington Irving, for one. What did he ever do for the Republican Party?”

“Don’t you like his stuff?” asked Clif maliciously. “Why, I’m getting an awful kick out of it!”

Tom said “Humph!” disgustedly and Loring chuckled. “Tom’s what you might call a Modernist,” said the latter. “He prefers his literature fresh, [15]like his rolls. He finds no pleasure in stale bread.”

“I’ll say I don’t,” concurred Tom heartily. “Of course some of the old-timers weren’t so punk. That guy Dumas, for instance. And Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s stuff has a lot of punch generally, but you’ve got to buckle down to it. Gosh, they must have had a heap of time in those days, the way they spread the words around!”

“Probably got paid by the word,” suggested Clif.

“Some of them must have made a pile of dough, then! Alick would have been rich, too, if he’d lived in Shakespeare’s time. I’ll bet that, at five cents a word, he touched me for a hundred dollars this afternoon!”

“Why don’t you study your English Lit,” asked Clif, “and not have to listen to Mr. Wyatt’s homilies?”

“Study! Heck, I do study! I read all the stuff he tells us to, but it doesn’t mean anything. I had a hunch the first time I set eyes on that chap that I wasn’t going to like him.”

“That’s a whopper,” said Clif. “You do like him, Tom. What you don’t like is his line.”