Читать книгу The Secret Play - Ralph Henry Barbour - Страница 7

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Something very much in the nature of an indignation meeting was held on the High School steps on Monday at recess. There were no prepared addresses, nor did parliamentary rules govern the meeting, but free speech was in order and liberally indulged in. Lanny was not present, but the football element was well represented, and it was Morris Brent, for once holding views coincident with popular sentiment, who most heartily condemned the Athletic Committee for their decision regarding the employment of a salaried football coach. Morris, munching an apple on the top step, proclaimed indignantly that the Athletic Committee of the Clearfield High School didn’t care a bone button whether the team got beaten or not.

“What kind of a team do they think we can turn out without a coach?” he demanded, addressing the throng in general but frowningly regarding Toby Sears, Senior Class President. “Who’s going to look after the physical condition of the fellows? Why, along about the middle of the season we’ll have a hospital list as long as my arm! The trouble with that Committee is that they’re a lot of old grannies!”

Sears shrugged his shoulders and replied a bit resentfully: “Well, you needn’t blame me for it! I’m not on the Committee. Tell it to Wayland and Scott and those who are.”

“You can’t blame them for it, either,” said Pete Farrar. “They were outvoted. Will Scott told me so. Wayland couldn’t go to the meeting because he was sick. And, anyhow, with only three undergraduates against four grads and faculties, what can you do?”

“That’s so,” said someone else. “We ought to be better represented. It would be fairer to have as many undergrads as grads.”

“Don’t see as it makes much difference, anyhow,” observed Sears. “Lanny White told me Saturday that some man he was after had turned us down and that he didn’t know where to look next. So, even if the Committee hadn’t decided against a coach, it wouldn’t have made any difference. There isn’t anyone to get.”

“Well, we’ve got to have someone,” insisted Morris, aiming his apple-core at the rubbish barrel and missing it badly, “even if he’s not much of a coach. Lanny can’t run the First Team and the Scrub and look after the new fellows too. No one could. Besides, who ever heard of a football team without a coach?”

“It seems to me,” said Pete Robey, “that there ought to be some grad who could do it.”

“That’s what I say,” agreed Sears. “There must be, too, if we’d look for him. Of course he might not know a lot of football, but he’d be better than nothing, I dare say.”

“It’s Grayson’s fault,” said Bingham, a tall, bespectacled sophomore. And Bingham, as unpopular a boy as there was in school, for once found support.

“I’ll bet it is,” muttered another, between mouthfuls of sandwich. “He’s always been down on football.”

“And everything else we’ve ever tried to do,” supplemented Bingham with a vindictive glare through his thick lenses. “And here we are asked to subscribe——”

“Shut up!” growled Pete Robey. “Can’t you keep your silly mouth shut when you’re told to?”

Bingham subsided, muttering peevishly, and George Cotner arrived at the foot of the steps just as Morris began again: “I say what we ought to do is stand up for our rights,” he declared with dignity. “If we just told the Committee that we had to have a football coach and meant to have one they’d come off their high horse. After all, whose money is it they’re so careful of? Isn’t it as much ours as theirs?”

“Of course it is,” said Pete Farrar. “We earned it!”

“How much did you earn?” asked Manager Cotner sarcastically as he approached the storm center.

“Well, that doesn’t matter,” replied Farrar. “I mean that we fellows earned the money at baseball and football and things. And I dare say I earned as much of it as you did, Cotner.”

“Which is none at all,” answered George calmly. “You fellows are making a heap of noise about nothing, if you only knew it.”

“How is that?” asked Sears.

“We’ve found a coach,” replied the manager coolly.

Exclamations of surprise and curiosity came from the gathering. “Who is he?” “Where’d we get him?” “Who said so?” “Bet you’re fooling, George!”

“Not at liberty to tell you just yet,” replied Cotner, enjoying the sensation. “In fact, the matter is not absolutely settled——”

“Thought so! Knew you were lying!”

“—But it will be this afternoon. Then you’ll hear all about it.”

“Where’s he come from?” demanded Morris.

George hesitated, and then, “Right here,” he answered.

“Clearfield? Do we know him?”

“Yes.”

“Is he a graduate?”

“No.”

“Then it’s Mr. Cochran, of the Y.M.C.A.”

“Get out!” said Morris. “He wouldn’t leave a job like the one he’s got to coach us.”

“He could do it without giving up his job, couldn’t he? Isn’t it Cochran, George?”

“It is—not.”

“Then who——”

“I told you I couldn’t tell you, didn’t I? So don’t ask. You’ll know this afternoon—or to-morrow.”

“I’ll bet he’s a frost, whoever he is,” Morris Brent grumbled.

“Who found him? Lanny?”

“Er—no, not exactly.” George Cotner smiled. “I don’t know who found him, exactly, although I think I was the first one to suggest him. Oh, you’ll be surprised all right, fellows!” He chuckled at the bewildered expressions on the faces of the others. “I’ll tell you one thing, though, just to keep you interested; he’s never played a game of football in his life!”

A howl of derision went up. “Now we know you’re lying, George!” declared Sears.

“Maybe it’s Mr. Grayson,” sneered Bingham, and a laugh went up at that and the gathering broke up in better humor as the gong summoned them back to work.

As a matter of fact, the school at large did not learn the identity of the new coach that afternoon, for at nine o’clock that evening the candidate for the honor was still holding off. He sat in the little parlor of his home on E Street, a pair of crutches beside him, and listened doubtfully to the insistence of Lanny White, George Cotner and Gordon Merrick.

“There’s no use in your saying you can’t do it, Dick,” declared Lanny, “because you can. We understand that you don’t know football as well as Joe Farrell does, and of course you’ve never played it, but you do know a lot about it theoretically and you’ve followed the game for years. What we want is someone in authority, even if he doesn’t know everything and can’t get into togs himself, and you’re just the fellow, Dick. Every chap on the team would be tickled to death to take orders from you. Look at the way you had us crawling around on our tummies last summer when you managed the nine! Hang it, Dick, you’ve just got to do it! There’s no one else, I tell you!”

“Lanny’s right,” said George earnestly. “What we need is a fellow who can sort of sit up aloft, as it were, and see how things are going and tell us when we’re making mistakes. And we need to get up a plan of battle, too, work out a campaign. Why, as it is now, we’re just going along from game to game and trusting to luck. Lanny can’t play football and coach too.”

“Be a good fellow, Dick,” urged Gordon.

“I won’t deny,” replied Dick, “that I’d like to try it. As you say, I’ve never played the game, but I have watched it and I do know the rules and I have got theories. And—and maybe I could get the fellows to do what I say. But—well, look here, now; suppose I did take hold and my ideas of coaching a team proved all wrong and we came an awful cropper at the end of the season? After all, I’ve never done it and it would be a risky sort of an experiment, Lanny. My football may not be the sort that succeeds, you see.”

“We’ll risk it, Dick. And we’ll promise that whether we lick Springdale or get beaten we’ll never make a whimper.”

“But what about the other fellows?” asked Dick, with a smile.

“The other fellows?”

“Yes. They’d want to mob me.”

“Nonsense! Why, look here, even Farrell can’t turn out a winning team for us every year, Dick. I’m not saying you’re the finest football coach in the country, but, by George, you’re the only chap I know of to-day I’d be satisfied to work under! Now what do you say, Dick?”

“And, look here, Dickums,” said Gordon, “you want to remember that we can’t hire a coach if we can find one. It’s up to you!”

“Where would I find time to study or do any work?” asked Dick irresolutely. “If I went into this I’d want to go in with both feet.”

“Of course you would!” responded George encouragingly. “But a couple of hours in the afternoons from now to the eighteenth of November wouldn’t matter.”

“Do you think two hours a day was all that Joe Farrell gave to football?” asked Dick grimly.

“Well——”

“Say, Lanny, who put this into your head?”

Lanny grinned sheepishly. “Louise Brent,” he answered. “But she said she was surprised I hadn’t thought of it myself, and, by Jove, Dick, so I am!”

“I thought of it a week ago, didn’t I, Dick?” asked George eagerly. “Remember that first afternoon of practice? I asked you then——”

“No post-mortems, George,” said Lanny. “That’s settled then, eh, Dick?”

Dick smiled ruefully and gazed a moment at his crutches. “How would I look,” he asked, “driving a team on those things?”

“You’d look fine!” declared Lanny. “And you could do it!”

“Perhaps,” laughed Gordon, “you could follow the team in Eli!”

Dick smiled, and then asked: “There’s no money in this, is there?”

“I’m afraid not,” replied Lanny. “The Committee——”

“That’s the way I’d want it. I wouldn’t dare take any money for doing it, fellows. If I made a mess of it I’d feel bad enough if I was doing it for nothing, but if I was getting paid for it I’d feel as if I’d cheated you. Now, one more thing, Lanny. If I do—er—coach, it’s got to be understood that I am coach.”

“You mean that——”

“That I’m in authority. That what I say goes. It may sound cheeky, considering that I’m a greenhorn, but it’s the only way for me to have any show at making good.”

“That’s all right, Dick. You say the word and you’re It from this moment. And if the way I play doesn’t suit you you can put me on the bench to-morrow. Is it a bargain?”

“Fellows, I’m an awful fool, I suppose, but—” he paused again.

“Say it, Dick!” exclaimed George, with a grin.

“I want you to know that—that I appreciate your confidence in me,” went on Dick, “and I’ll do the best I know how.”

“Good boy!” cried Lanny, seizing Dick’s hand and pumping it enthusiastically. “Now I feel as if I could play some football! Honest, Dick, I’ve been too worried to even try!”

“Do I—do I begin my duties now?” asked Dick soberly.

“Of course! I suppose the Committee will have to approve, but they’ll do that, all right.”

“Then,” said Dick, “I’ll issue my first order.”

“Shoot!” laughed Lanny.

“Very well. The First Squad is disbanded.”

“Eh?” gasped Lanny.

“What?” exclaimed George.

“Also the Sub Team and the Third Squad,” continued Dick calmly. “To-morrow at three o’clock all candidates will report to me on the field dressed to play.”

“What—what’s the idea?” asked Gordon.

“We’re going to start over,” returned Dick quietly, “and any fellow who wants a place on the team has got to work for it!”