RIVALS FOR THE TEAM

A STORY OF SCHOOL LIFE AND FOOTBALL

BY

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

AUTHOR OF “DANFORTH PLAYS THE GAME,” “THE PURPLE PENNANT,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY C. M. RELYEA

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON 1916

Copyright, 1916, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Printed in the United States of America

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[1]

RIVALS FOR THE TEAM

CHAPTER I AFTER PRACTICE

“I’d hate to live up here in summer, Bert,” said Ted Trafford, carefully easing his five feet and ten inches of tired, aching body to the window-seat and turning a perspiring face to the faint breeze that entered. “It must be hotter than Tophet.”

“Well, it’s up high enough to get the air, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s high enough, all right! If I had to climb those three flights of stairs a dozen times a day——”

“Wonder why slate stairs seem harder than others,” said Nick Blake, fanning himself with a magazine.

“Because they are harder, naturally.” Ted looked about the study. “It isn’t so bad, though, when you get here. And I dare say it’ll be fine in winter. You haven’t an open fireplace, though.”

[2]

“I had one last year in 19. It was only a bother. If I had a fire the ashes got all over the shop. Besides, it was always so warm in the room that when I wanted one I had to keep all the windows open. There’s dandy steam heat in Lothrop.”

“There is in Trow, but——”

“Oh, get out, Ted!” interrupted Nick. “I’ve been in your study when the thermometer wasn’t over fifty! Everyone knows that Trow’s a regular barn in cold weather.”

“Well, some days, when the wind’s a certain way——”

“Trow’s older than this, isn’t it?” asked Bert Winslow. He had yielded the window-seat to his visitors and was stretched out on the leather cushions of a Morris chair, the back of which he had lowered to the last notch. It was very warm in Number 29, for the study was on the top floor of the building and overhead the September sun had been shining all day on the slate roof. Then, too, since the Fall Term did not begin for two days yet, all but a few of the rooms were closed and what little breeze there was found scant circulation. Bert had opened the door and windows of 32, across the corridor, and that helped to some extent, but Lothrop Hall seemed to have caught all the heat of the past[3] summer and to be bent on hoarding it on the top floor.

“Why, yes,” Ted was replying. “Trow was the first of the new buildings. It’s been built about twelve years, I think. I dare say the heating is better here and in Manning. Still, I never have any trouble keeping warm. You chaps over here are a pampered lot, anyway, with your common room and your library and your recreation room and—and your shower baths and all the rest of it! Sybarites, that’s what you are!”

“Don’t judge us all, Ted, by this palatial suite,” begged Nick. “Some of us live in monastic simplicity, in one bare little room.”

“I’ve seen your bare little room,” replied Ted, smiling. “You’re a lot of mollycoddles, the bunch of you. What time is it?”

Nick, stretched at the other end of the seat, his cheek on the windowsill and his gaze fixed on the shadowed stretches of the campus below, moved his hand toward his fob only to let it fall idly again.

“Look yourself, you lazy beggar,” he murmured.

“Seventeen to five,” said Bert, dropping his watch back with a sigh. Ted digested the information in silence for several minutes. Nick continued his somnolent regard of the campus and[4] Bert thoughtfully tapped together the toes of his rubber-soled shoes.

“More than an hour to supper,” said Ted finally. “Not that I’m particularly hungry, though. It’s too hot to eat. Honest, fellows, I believe it’s hotter up here than it is in New York! If this last week is a sample of New England summer weather I don’t see why folks come here the way they do.”

“It’s the fine, pure air,” muttered Nick.

“Air! That’s the trouble. There isn’t any. This place is hotter than Broadway on the Fourth of July!”

“There’s a breeze now,” said Nick. “Get it?”

“Sure; it almost blew out the door,” replied Ted sarcastically. “Come on over to my place. It’s a heap cooler, I’ll bet.”

“I’m too tired to move,” protested his host. “We can go downstairs, if you like. I dare say it’s cooler in the common room.”

“Who’s with you this year?” asked Ted, his gaze traveling to the open door of the bedroom at the left.

“Fellow by the name of Ordway, or something. Comes from Maryland. Upper middler, I think.”

“How’d you happen to go in with him? Thought you liked rooming alone.”

[5]

“So I do, but I’ve had my eye on this suite ever since I came over from Manning. Gus Livingstone and I had it all fixed to take it together and applied last fall for it. Then, when Gus didn’t come back after winter vacation, I tried to get Nick to come in with me, and——”

“I wanted to hard enough,” said Nick, without turning, “but my dad kicked like a steer. He said seven hundred was too much for his pocket.”

“Wow!” exclaimed Ted. “Is that what this stands you? Seven hundred each?”

Bert nodded. “Yes, it’s high in price and elevation too.”

“What do you pay downstairs, Nick?”

“Three hundred. That’s what you pay, isn’t it?”

“Two-fifty. Seven hundred for room and board, a hundred and fifty for tuition and a couple of hundred for incidentals; total, ten hundred and fifty a year! Say, Bert, I’ll bet your old man will be mighty glad when you’re through here!”

“Then it’ll be college,” answered Bert, “and I guess that won’t be much cheaper. We do cost our folks a lot of money, though, don’t we?”

“We’re worth it, though,” said Nick. “At least, some of us are.”

[6]

Ted Trafford laughed. “I’m worth two-fifty and you’re worth three, eh? And Bert’s worth seven. Well, it’s a peach of a suite, all right, Bert, but I’d just as lief have my dive. Besides, I’ve got it to myself. When you have another chap with you he always wants to cut up when you want to plug. Not for mine, thanks!”

“Single blessedness for me, too,” murmured Nick. “When I was in Manning in junior year I roomed with young Fessenden and we nearly got fired because we were always scrapping. He was a quarrelsome little brute!”

“What happened to him? Did you kill him finally?”

“No, but I wanted to lots of times. He quit the next year. Went to some school in Pennsylvania. His folks wanted him nearer home, he said. I don’t see why they should!”

“Hope you like your new chum, Bert,” said Ted. “Broadway’s a funny name, though, eh?”

“Ordway,” Bert corrected. “I dare say we’ll get along. I have a nice disposition.”

Nick giggled and Bert gazed across at him speculatively. “Of course everyone knows why Nick rooms alone,” he added. “He’s too mean to live with.”

Nick raised his head to answer, but thought better of it. A vagrant breeze crept through the[7] windows and the boys said, “A-ah!” in ecstatic chorus.

“Listen,” said Nick, suddenly propping himself up on the cushions. “I’ve got a good scheme!”

“Shoot!” replied Ted, yawning widely.

“After supper we’ll beat it down to the pool and go in! Will you?”

“Ugh! Mud and frogs!” said Bert.

“Mud and frogs your eye! It’s dandy if you don’t go to wading around. We don’t have to stay in the pool, anyway. Rules don’t apply before term begins. We can go in the river. No one will see us.”

“Safest thing,” said Ted, “is to find a canoe and upset, the way we did a couple of years ago. Pete used to go crazy and threaten to report us, but he couldn’t prove it wasn’t an accident.”

“Aren’t any canoes out yet, I guess,” said Bert. “And the boat house is locked.”

“Never mind your old canoes,” said Nick. “That’s an underhand scheme, anyway. Fair and open’s my motto! Oh, say, but that water’s going to feel good!”

“That isn’t such an awfully rotten idea,” said Ted. “I’m blessed if I know where to look for my trunks, though.”

[8]

“You don’t need ’em. It’ll be dark by half-past seven.”

“Not with a moon shining, you silly chump,” said Bert. “You can take a pair of running trunks of mine, Ted. Only, worse luck, I’ll have to unpack that box over there.” He pulled himself from the chair with a sigh of resignation and kicked experimentally at the lid of the packing case. “Wonder where I can find a hatchet,” he muttered. “Got anything I can bust this lid off with, Nick?”

“Got a screwdriver I use on my typewriter,” responded Nick helpfully.

“What time is it?” inquired Ted again.

“Find out, you lazy beast,” replied Bert. “Tell me how to get this thing open, you chaps.”

“Pick it up and drop it on the floor a few times,” said Ted.

“Bore a hole and put a dynamite cartridge in,” suggested Nick.

“Oh, all right, then you go without the trunks,” said Bert, returning to his chair. “I’d like to know why I pounded a million dollars’ worth of nails into it, anyway.” There was no solution forthcoming, it seemed. Nick had returned to his study of the world outside and Ted had picked up the discarded magazine and was idly looking at the pictures. Bert sighed again and stretched[9] his arms overhead. Then he said “Ouch!” suddenly and loudly and ruefully rubbed a shoulder. Ted looked over and grinned.

“Sore?” he asked.

“Sore as a boil! You wouldn’t think a fellow would get so soft in summer, swimming and playing tennis and everything. I wish Bonner would let us off tomorrow. I think he might. It wouldn’t hurt him to give us a day’s rest.”

“He’s going to give us the afternoon off,” replied Ted. “Only morning practice tomorrow. You can thank me for it, Bert. It was my pretty little thought.”

“He wouldn’t have seen me on the field tomorrow, anyway,” remarked Nick. “I’m going down to the junction to meet Guy at three-something. Come on with me.”

“I wouldn’t make that trip in this weather for the King of England, much less Guy Murtha,” responded Bert impressively.

“I’ll buy you ice cream,” tempted Nick. Bert shook his head.

“Will you come, Ted?” asked Nick.

“I will—not! I love Guy like a brother, but——”

“Oh, you fellows make me weary!” sighed Nick. “No sporting blood at all! No——”

“Is that your idea of sporting?” jeered Ted.[10] “Get on a hot, stuffy little one-horse train and dawdle down to Needham Junction, four miles away, in something like half an hour? I’ve made that trip once this fall and, Fortune aiding me, I shan’t make it again!”

“Come on to supper,” said Bert. “It’s almost a quarter of. It will be cooler over there on the steps than it is here, too.”

“Just when I was beginning to get comfortable,” mourned Nick. “Say, Ted, did you do this last year?”

“Sure! Do what?”

“Come up for early practice.”

“I did. And we had ten days of it last fall instead of only a week. You fellows needn’t kick!”

“I do kick, though, Teddy, old scout! Look here, you! I gave up a whole week of the best sort of fun at Deal Beach to come up here and frizzle and fry in my juices and chase a contemptible football over a sun-smitten cow-pasture! Needn’t kick, eh? Why, man, back there there’s a nice cool breeze off the ocean and a band playing moosics and piles of eats and—and nothing to do but play around! And just because I’m—I’m patriotic enough and unselfish enough to leave all that you lie there like a ton of bricks and tell me I needn’t kick! I do kick! I’m kicking!”

[11]

“I hear you,” murmured Ted. “Go on kicking. Nobody’s going to miss you if you go back to Deal Beach tomorrow. We could have got on well enough without you, anyhow. You were simply asked because we thought you’d feel hurt if you weren’t.”

“I like your nerve!” gasped Nick. “My word! Who’s been doing the work for five days out there? Trying to get drive into you chaps is like pulling teeth! Why, you miserable sandy-haired——”

“Oh, come on,” begged Bert. “I’m getting hungry. Anyone want to wash up? Come along if you do. You’ll have to wipe your hands on your handkerchiefs, though. They haven’t given us any towels yet.”

“What’s the good of washing if we’re going in swimming later?” asked Nick, sprawling off the window-seat.

“Because for once, old son, you’re dining with gentlemen,” Ted answered, gripping the smaller youth by the shoulders and propelling him towards the door in the wake of Bert.

“Honest?” wailed Nick. “I’d much rather dine with you, Ted!”

[12]

CHAPTER II PLAYERS AND COACH

A few minutes later the three boys were crossing the campus unhurriedly and with an impressive disregard of “Keep Off the Grass” signs. And three good-looking, healthy, well-set-up youths they were. Their bare heads—there wasn’t a hat among them—showed three distinctly different colors. Ted Trafford’s hair was sandy, Bert Winslow’s black, Nick Blake’s reddish-brown. Between sandy hair and brown lay a matter of four inches in height, with black hair halving the difference. In build the trio were again at variance. Ted was a big, broad-bodied chap, Bert was slenderer, without being thin, and Nick was at once short and slight. Although Nick was only five months Bert’s junior—and Bert was seventeen—his smallness made him appear much younger. He had a thin face, deeply tanned, and gray eyes. Nick’s usual expression was one of intense, even somber, thoughtfulness. He had, in fact, the appearance of a boy with a deep and secret sorrow. But in his case appearances[13] were deceptive, or, if he had a sorrow, it was merely that there are only a certain number

of ways to create mischief and that he had pretty well exhausted them all.

Bert Winslow was a very normal-looking fellow with good features, a healthy color under his tan and a pair of eyes so darkly blue that they seemed black. Ted’s features were more rugged, like his body, and, if such a thing is possible, his complexion was as sandy as his hair. He had a wealth of freckles and two rather sleepy-looking brown eyes very far apart. Ted’s countenance expressed good nature first, and after that a sort of quiet purposefulness. One wouldn’t have expected brilliant mental feats of Ted, but one would have expected him to succeed where physical strength and dogged determination were demanded. Ted thought slowly, reached conclusions only after some effort, and then stuck immovably to his conclusions. He had been three years at Grafton School and during that time his great ambition had been to captain the football team in his senior year. He had attained that ambition and had now substituted another, which was, to put it in his own words, “Knock the tar out of Mt. Morris in November!” Having accomplished or failed in that, Ted would undoubtedly

drag another ambition from the recesses of his[14] mind. But at present that was enough. With Ted it was always “one thing at a time.”

Between them, the three boys loitering across the grass represented just three-elevenths of the Grafton School Football Team. Captain Trafford played right tackle, Bert Winslow was left half-back and Nick Blake was quarter. Ted had played on the School Team ever since he had entered the lower middle class, which meant two years. Bert, who was now an upper-middler, had made his position only last season, beating out Siedhof in the final contests. Nick had been second-string quarter-back last year and now, owing to the graduation of Balch, had automatically succeeded to the position. Barring unforeseen and unexpected accidents, each of the trio was certain of playing the coming season through as first-choice.

At Grafton the school buildings stood in a row midway across the campus, a three-acre expanse of level turf intersected by gravel paths shaded by elms and surrounded by an ancient fence of granite posts and squared timbers, the latter thoughtlessly set with an angle uppermost. In shape the campus was a square with one corner rounded off where Crumbie Street changed its mind about continuing northward and swung westward to River Street and, a half mile beyond[15] that, the station. River Street marked the westerly limits of the school property all the way to the river, which, in its turn, formed the southerly boundary. The campus proper ended at School Street, but successive purchases had added many more acres between it and the Needham River, so that now the school property extended in an unbroken strip some two blocks wide from Needham Street, at the back, all the way down to the river. What was virtually a continuation of the campus lay to the south of School Street, but, since it was of later acquisition, it was, for some unknown reason, called “the green.” A tree-bordered

path led through the middle of the green to Front Street, and, across that quiet road, an ornamental gateway of old brick and sandstone and lacy ironwork. Set in the right-hand pillar was a bronze tablet bearing the inscription: “Lothrop Field. In Memory of Charles Parkinson Lothrop, Class of 1911.”

Beyond the gateway the land sloped gently to the river, and here was the Field House, near at hand as one entered, the tennis courts to the right, the diamond beyond them, the running track to the left of the gate, with the School Team gridiron inclosed in the blue-gray ribbon, and, further toward the river, the practice field. Beyond that again, near where Crumbie Street crossed by an[16] old covered bridge on its way to Needham, stood the boat house.

But we are too far afield, for our present destination is that of the three boys whom we left crossing the campus. At one corner of the green, where River and School Streets intersect, stood two old-fashioned white dwelling houses. The one nearer River Street had been just there when the land was bought by the School, but the second had stood at the other end of the green and had been moved to its present location to make room for tennis courts. When, however, a few years later, Lothrop Field had been presented to the School the tennis courts were transferred thither and now, save for the two white-clapboarded, many-dormered houses, the green was only a pleasant, shady expanse of close-cropped sward. The old houses, used now as dormitories since the buildings in the campus failed to meet the requirements of the ever-increasing student body, still retained the names of their former owners. The larger one, nearer the side street, was known as Morris House, the other as Fuller.

At a few minutes before six this afternoon the front steps and the adjacent turf—there was no such thing as a porch or piazza on either dwelling—were sprinkled with boys. There seemed to be at least two dozen of them. As a matter of[17] fact, until Ted, Bert and Nick joined them, they numbered exactly seventeen. In age they varied from sixteen to twenty, although only one of them, John Driver, commonly known as “Pop,” had attained the latter age. Pop was, as he laughingly explained it, “doing the four-year course in six.” That was a slight exaggeration, for Pop had been at Grafton only four years, was now a senior and would undoubtedly be graduated next June whether he was willing or not! He was big and slow; slow to move, slow to speak and slow to anger. He played right guard in a steady, highly-satisfactory if not brilliant fashion.