Ralph Barbour - Left Half Harmon

“I’m afraid I don’t,” laughed Willard.

Martin grinned. “You will when you’ve been here awhile,” he said encouragingly. “The switch is at the left of the door when you’re ready.”

“All right. I say, though, I’ve changed my mind about the beds. I’d rather have the other.”

“Honest? Well – ” Martin hesitated. “You’d better stick to the one you picked out, old man. That one’s got curvature of the spine. The spring lets you down in the middle.”

“I don’t mind,” laughed Willard. “I only chose the other because I saw it was yours.”

“Oh, that was it! Well, say, if you make a kick at the Office they’ll put a new spring on for you. Logan was always threatening to do it, but he never did. He was in here with me last year.”

Willard turned the switch and felt his way to the bed. “I don’t call this very bad,” he declared when he had experimented. “Anyway, it won’t keep me awake tonight!”

“That’s good. I hope it won’t. Good night – Brand!”

“Good night, Mart!”

Willard’s trunk arrived two days later, as though, by its delay, protesting against the change of plan, and by that time its owner was going about in one of Martin’s shirts. Those two days witnessed the shaking down of Willard into the manners and customs of Alton Academy. It wasn’t hard, for Martin was there to serve as a very willing counselor and guide. Willard became a member of the Junior Class on the strength of his high school certificate, and, since that was also Martin’s class, the latter was able to render assistance during the first difficult days. Fortunately the two boys took to each other at once and life in Number 16 Haylow promised to move pleasantly.

The term began on Thursday, and on Friday the football candidates gathered for the first practice. Alton Academy’s registration was well over four hundred, as the catalogue later announced, and of that number nearly one-fourth reported on the gridiron as candidates for the school team. Willard, viewing the throng, thought little of his chances of securing a place.

Coach Cade made much the same sort of a speech as coaches generally make on such occasions, and promised a successful season in return for cheerful obedience and hard work; and looked unutterably relieved when the more or less attentive audience dispersed. Mr. Cade was a short, thick-set man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight years, with black hair that stood up on his head much like the bristles of a blacking brush, a square face that looked at least one size too large for the rest of him, small features which included two very piercing dark eyes, a button nose and a broad mouth and, to cap the climax, a very gentle voice. Not a handsome chap, Willard thought, but certainly a very capable looking one. Later, he learned from Martin that John Cade had played with Alton Academy for three years and then for as many more on the Lafayette teams, making a remarkable reputation, first as a school quarter-back and then as a college guard. Willard found it difficult to imagine Coach Cade as a quarter. Probably, he concluded, in those days the coach lacked the breadth and heaviness he showed now, a conclusion proved to be correct when Willard came across an old photograph of an Alton eleven in the gymnasium some weeks later. In the picture John Cade was a short, not over-heavy and very alert boy of seventeen, his dark eyes darting defiance and his black hair bristling a challenge. He was familiarly known among the fellows of present-day Alton as Johnny, but none had ever been heard to address him so!

Practice this first afternoon wasn’t a serious ordeal, for much time was given to verbal instruction, and at half-past four the squads were dismissed. Willard, walking back to the gymnasium with Martin and Bob, said that it ought to be easy to get a good team with such a raft of candidates to choose from, and Bob snorted derisively.

“You’re wrong, Brand,” he said. “If we had half as many we’d get on better. It takes three weeks, nearly, to find out who’s good and to weed out the others, and that’s just so much time lost. Johnny’s dippy on the subject of having every fellow who ever heard of football come out, and it’s a sad mess for the first fortnight. Of course it sometimes happens that he finds a player that way who mightn’t show up if he wasn’t urged to, but, gee, I think it’s piffle! Give me last year’s first and second teams, or what’s left of ’em, and a dozen chaps who have made names where they come from and I’ll turn out as good a team as any. Must have been a hundred fellows out there this afternoon, and I’ll bet you fifty of them never played a game of football in their lives!”

“Sure,” agreed Martin, “but some of them are capable of playing, you poor fish, and it’s just those that Johnny wants to find. If they don’t make good this year, he’s got them started for next. Your plan might work all right this year, Bob, but you’d run short of material next year. You’ve got to plan ahead, old son, and that’s what Johnny does.”

“Are there many of last season’s fellows left?” asked Willard.

“Six first-string chaps,” answered Bob. “Joe, Stacey Ross, Jack Macon, Gil Tarver, Arn Lake and myself. There is quite a bunch of good last year subs and second team fellows, though. And then there’s Mart!”

“Yes, and Mart’s going to try for something besides guard position this year,” remarked that youth. “With you and Joe holding down each side of center there’s no hope for me. Last season I lived in hope that Joe would get killed or that you’d be fired, but nothing happened. This thing of waiting around for dead men’s shoes is dull work!”

“What are you going after?” laughed Bob.

“I don’t know,” replied Martin discouragedly. “How’d I do as a full-back?”

“Great! Say, Mart, do something for me, will you? Go and tell Johnny to let you play full-back!”

“Oh, dry up, you big ape! I could play full-back as well as Steve Browne can.”

“Steve hasn’t a chance!”

“Who, then?”

“Search me! We’ve got to find someone. Steve’s a good chap, but he hasn’t the weight, speed, or fight for full-back. If we could buy Brand’s brother out of the Navy, now – ”

“Well, you did your best,” laughed Martin. “You got the right bag, but the wrong boy! Look here, Brand – ”

“I refuse to answer to that name,” said Willard haughtily.

“What’s the matter with it? It’s a perfectly good name. What I was about to say when so rudely interrupted – ”

“What I was about to say,” interjected Bob, “is that it would be a good plan to hurry up a bit and get ahead of some of this mob. If we don’t we’ll be waiting around until supper time for a shower!”

“Come on, then: stir your stumps, slow poke! I was going to say, Brand, that it’s your duty to either fill the full-back position yourself or find someone to fill it. You were – admitted to Alton on your representation that you were a full-back – ”

“‘Admitted’ is good!” jeered Willard.

“And you aren’t,” Martin proceeded, unheeding the interruption. “Fellows are asking Joe where Gordon Harmon is and Joe’s having an awful time explaining how the deal fell through. He’s told four quite different stories so far and is working on a fifth! You could save Joe a lot of mental worry, Brand, if you turned yourself into a star full-back.”

“I’m afraid I’m a bit light,” laughed Willard. “Maybe I could find a full-back for you, though, if the reward was big enough.”

“You’ll receive the undying gratitude of Joe and the key of the city.”

“Huh, I’ve seen the city!” said Willard.