He gave a little laugh and held out his hand to Hunter.
“Good night, Jim,” he said.
“Why—good night,” said Hunter, surprised at the laugh and the unnecessary handshake.
But the hand had been offered in challenge, and the laugh marked the final deliberate acceptance of all that Le Baron had logically exposed to him.
“I’ll play the game, and I’ll play it better than they will,” he said, setting his lips. “I’ve got my eyes open, and I’m not going to throw away a single chance. We’ll see who’ll lead!”
VIII
The intensity and seriousness of the football season abetted Stover in his new attitude of Napoleonic seclusion by leaving him little time for the lighter side of college pleasures. Every hour was taken up with the effort of mastering his lessons, which he then regarded, in common with the majority of his class, as a laborious task, a sort of necessary evil, the price to be paid for the privilege of passing four years in pleasant places with congenial companions.
After supper he returned immediately to his rooms, where presently a succession of visiting sophomores, members of the society campaign committees, took up the first hours. These inquisitorial delegations, formal, stiff, and conducted on a basis of superior investigation, embarrassed him at first. But this feeling soon wore off with the consciousness that he was a subject of dispute; and, secure in the opportunity that would come to him with the opening of the winter-term period of elections, his interest was directed only to the probable selection among his classmates.
By the middle of October the situation at Yale field had become critical. The earlier games had demonstrated what had been foreseen—the weakness and inexperience of the raw material in hand. Serious errors in policy were committed by Captain Dana, who, in the effort to find some combination which would bolster up the weak backfield, began a constant shifting of the positions in order to experiment with heavier men behind the line. A succession of minor injuries arrived to further the disorganization. The nervousness of the captain communicated itself to the team, harassed and driven in the effort for accomplishment. That there was serious opposition among the coaches to these new groping policies every man saw plainly; yet, to Stover’s amazement, the knowledge remained within the team, impregnated with the spirit of loyalty and discipline.
After three weeks of brilliancy at his natural position of end, buoyed up by the zest of confidence and success, he was abruptly called to one side.
“Stover, you’ve played behind the line, haven’t you?” said Dana.
“A couple of games at school, sir,” he answered hastily, “just as a makeshift.”
“I’m going to try you at fullback.”
“At fullback?”
“Get into it and see if you can make good.”
“Yes, sir.”
He went without spirit, sure of the impossibility of the thing, feeling only the humiliation and failure that all at once flung itself like a storm-cloud across his ambition. A coach took charge of him, running over with him the elementary principles of blocking and plunging.
When he lined up, it was with half of the coaching force at his back.
“Come on, Stover; get into it!”
“Wake up!”
“Get your head down!”
“Keep a-going!”
“Ram into it!”
“Knock that man over!”
“Knock him over!”
He went into the line blindly, frantically, feeling for the first time that last exhausting, lunging expenditure of strength that is called forth with the effort to fall forward when tackled. Nothing he did satisfied. It was a constant storm of criticism, behind his back, in his ears, shrieked to his face:
“Keep your feet—oh, keep your feet!”
“Smash open that line!”
“Rip open that line!”
“Hit it—hit it!”
“Hard—harder!”
“Go on—don’t stop!”
A dozen times he flung his meager weight against the ponderous bodies of the center men, crushed by the impact in front, smothered by the surging support of his own line behind, helpless in the grinding contention, turned and twisted, going down in a heap amid the shock of bodies, thinking always:
“Well, the darn fools will find out just about how much use I am here!”
When the practise ended, at last, Dana called on Tompkins.
“Joe, take Stover and give him a line on the punting, will you?”
“I say, he’s been worked pretty hard,” said the coach with a glance.
“How about it?” said Dana quickly.
“All right,” said Stover, lying gloriously. At that moment, aching in every joint, he would have given everything to have spoken his mind. Instead he brought forth a smile distinguished for its eagerness, and said, “I’d like to get right at it, sir.”
“Fullback’s the big problem,” said Tompkins, as they started across the field. “Bangs can fill in at end, but we’ve got to get a fullback that can catch punts, and with nerve enough to get off his kicks in the face of that Princeton line.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” said Stover, with a sinking feeling.
For twenty minutes, against the rebellion of his body, he went through a rigorous lesson, improving a little in the length of his punts, and succeeding fairly well in holding the ball, which came spinning end over end to him from the region of the clouds.
“That’ll do,” said Tompkins, at last.
“That’s all?” said Stover stoically, picking up his sweater.
“That’s all.” Tompkins, watching him for a moment, said suddenly: “Stover, I don’t know whether Dana’ll keep you at full or not, but I guess you’ll have to get ready to fill in. Come over to the gym lot every morning for about half an hour, and we’ll see if we can’t work up those punts.”
“Yes, sir.”
They walked out together.
“Stover, look here,” said Tompkins abruptly, “I’m going to speak straight to you, because I think you’ll keep your mouth shut. We’re in a desperate condition here, and you know it. There’s only one man in charge at Yale, now and always, and that’s the captain. That’s our system, and we stand or fall by it; and in order that we can follow him four times out of five to victory, we’ve got
