She was from St. Louis and the best-lookin’ girl I ever saw, bar one. Her family were well fixed and the boys had a license to envy Joe. At that, he wasn’t gettin’ any the better of the bargain, ’cause he was a handsome kid and good-natured as they make ’em, besides bein’ so smart that it was a cinch he’d get somewhere.
Joe and the girl were together all the time he wasn’t in the classroom or gym. In the vacation before his senior year he went down to St. Louis to meet her folks and made a big hit. They didn’t think anybody was quite good enough for her, but Joe came as close as any boy they could hope to find. She was a year behind Joe in school, but she was figurin’ on passin’ up her senior year so they could be married as soon as Joe got through.
Joe came from Cedarville, a little burg in Iowa. He’d played football in the high school and he tried out for our Freshmen team in his first year at Leighton. He made the team at quarterback and I was tickled to death to see him there, ’cause I figured I could use him to good advantage the followin’ fall. It didn’t take a stop watch to tell you how fast he was. In the practice against my bunch and the scrubs he got away often and there was no catchin’ him in a clear field. Course I had McGill for quarter at that time and he was only a second-year man; so I was plannin’ to make a halfback out of Joe. But one night the kid broke his arm scrimmagin’ with the scrubs, and the Freshmen had to go along without him the rest of the season.
That winter Joe showed Murphy, our track coach, what he could do in the sprints and hurdles, and the Freshmen bunch cleaned up in every meet they had. He went outdoors in the spring and did even better than Murphy expected. He could run the 100 backward in .10 flat, and he went over the sticks so fast you thought he was flyin’.
Well, I went up to Leighton in June to see how many of the good-lookin’ Freshmen I could count on for that fall. Almost the first fella I ran into was Murphy. I started kiddin’ him about his varsity track team, which had finished sixth in the intercollegiate.
“Wait till next year,” said Murph. “If I don’t land second or better my name’s Goldstein.”
“What’s up your sleeve?” I asked him.
“The most consistent sprinter I ever saw,” said Murph. “I can tell you to a fifth of a second what his time’s goin’ to be before he ever starts runnin’. He can go the 100 in .10 five times a day durin’ the week and as many times as he has to on Saturday. What’s more, the boy’s good enough to beat the world in the 220 and the high sticks.”
“You kept him pretty well under cover in the big meet,” I said.
“He’s a Freshman,” answered Murph.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Joe Draper,” said Murph.
“Oh, I know him,” I said. “He was quarter on the All-Fresh.”
“Yes, till he broke an arm,” said Murph; “but he’s through with football now.”
“What do you mean—through with football?” said I. “You’ll find him playin’ halfback for me this fall. I’ve been countin’ on him all winter.”
“I’m sorry you’ve been countin’ on him,” said Murph; “but I might as well break the news to you. He’s promised me to stick to track and pass up everything else. I’m not goin’ to have that baby spoiled; so you can just keep your hands off him. It won’t do you any good to meddle anyway. I’ve got his promise and that means something to a boy like him.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve!” I said. “I s’pose everybody’s got to step out of the way to make room for your rotten old track team.”
“Be decent!” said Murph. “You know very well I’m not hurtin’ you any. You’ve got McGill at quarter for two more years and you’ve got two halfbacks that anybody’d be glad to have, now that Bixby’s eligible. What you need is big tackles; and if young Draper could help you out there I’d let you have him, and welcome.”
Well, he made me own up that I wasn’t exactly starvin’ to death for lack of good backs and I finally promised him I’d leave Draper alone. Maybe one reason I promised was because I knew it wouldn’t do me any good not to.
McGill was pretty near a perfect quarterback for my style of game. He could use his head as well as his legs and his right foot. I b’lieve that with him in the back field alone, I could have scored on anybody; but he had a good supportin’ company too. Bixby, who’d been on the All-Fresh, could run and grab passes with the best of ’em; and when the other side spraddled their defense all over the field to stop my open game, I had Conrad and Meeks to shoot through the holes.
In the next two seasons we were scored on just twice and nobody came near tyin’ us. You remember what we did to Pelham in 1911. We licked ’em 27 to 0 and that was the worst beatin’ they got in fifteen years. But 1911 was McGill’s last year, and Conrad’s and Meeks’ too. The Pelham papers all came out after the season and said our days of glory were about over; that losin’ McGill and Conrad and Meeks, besides some of the linemen, would leave us up against it, and Pelham, which had all their good ones comin’ back, would probably get plenty of revenge the followin’ fall.
I figured this
