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It was a clean catch.

BY

LAWRENCE PERRY

ILLUSTRATED

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK :::::::::: 1916

Published October, 1916

OCT 25 I9IS

TO MY SON

GLENTWORTH PERRY

THIS BOOK

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

Preface

In writing this book the author had no one university in mind. Many colleges and universities are merged in a composite picture. In this medley the geographical position of one university has been employed, the social system of another, and the customs of several. As for Tom Kerry, he was a real boy of the author’s acquaintance.

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Contents

CHAPTER page

I. Kerry of Annandale High ... i 11 . Annandale versus Pulver .... i6

III. A Bid from Three Colleges . • . 37

CHAPTER I W ELL, Tom, the rest of the day is yours.”

Timothy Kerry looked at the clock lazily ticking above a pile of dusty five and ten cent novels and then, reaching upward to a shelf, took down a package of tobacco and his pipe. This he slowly filled and lighted, his face meanwhile turned toward his son, who was preparing to leave the store. In his blue eyes was a soft twinkle; in his face an expression of tenderness that had first come when Tom Kerry lay in his mother’s arms, a babe. From that time to this it had never been missing when Timothy Kerry looked upon his boy.

Now, Tom was twice as big as his father. His limbs were long, muscular, and lithe; they came together at the ankles in the slightest sort of a bow. Already there was an impressive depth of chest and breadth of shoulder. And as his body I was suggestive of physical power, so in his face were to be read hints of character and strong personality, which, if adequately developed, were certainly destined to carry him far beyond the confines of his father’s little news-depot. His features were chiselled in square lines. His eyes were blue like his father’s, the brows broad and rather heavy; his blond hair, crinkling at the sides, completed an impression which one of his teachers had appositely defined when she remarked to the principal:

‘‘He makes me think of some immature Greek god.;’

His poise was resilient, alert, and yet withal there was a patent suggestion of dignity. He was not yet nineteen, but at the corners of his eyes were a few faint lines which betokened a welldeveloped sense of quiet humor. His father had these lines.

He was not a great talker — was, in fact, of the thinking type of boy — but when he did speak it was crisply, distinctly, and to the point.

“Father,” he said, tossing his head in a manner which always characterized his serious moods, “you’ve been saying all season you were going to get some one to take charge of the store some Saturday and come over and see the team play.

Now we’ve got a good game to-day; the Pulver School eleven is coming over ”

“Tom/' was the reply, “this is Saturday — my busy day, the worst day in the week to get away "

“I know," rejoined Tom, “and that's just why I hate to go off and play football, thinking of you "

“Go away, you young towhead!" interrupted the father. “The time to enjoy yourself is when you're young; I had my day, never fear. Go on now and get away with you. Go home and have your lunch, lie down for an hour, and then go on over to the field. I may be able to be there for fifteen minutes or so." He seized a chair, drawing it toward the front of the store. “Just now I'm going to have my pipe out — and I don't want to be bothered."

Tom hesitated, smiling. Then, tapping his father gently on the back, he went out of the store and strode away up the street.

“Tom!" A choking thrill rose in the little man's throat. He paced the floor for a few minutes, and then, with copious clouds issuing from his pipe, he seized his chair, carried it into the sunlight in front of the store, and sat down. Always after his return from luncheon he did 3 this, except in the hot and cold months and in inclement weather. Long ago the habit had fixed itself among the traditional functions of village life.

Across the “square,’’ with its old white fence, its faded grass, and bordering elms and maples, children were playing among the dead leaves in front of the old “First Church,” and at each breath of wind more leaves fell — purple, crimson, yellow, and brown; all were bathed in mellow gold.

It was all very beautiful to Timothy Kerry. There was a vague tradition in the village that he had once been a race-horse trainer. If that were true, he had lived it down. He had a kindly nature and a kindly face — seamed, drawn, and wrinkled. Yes, there had been more strenuous days for Timothy Kerry — but they were far away. He was content they should be. His life held now no disagreeable philosophy. Such problems as he had once known had long been solved or cast into the limbo of things insoluble. He loved the routine he had hit upon — the noonday and evening pipe, the gossip of the villagers, all the minor happenings of communal existence. He never talked much, but he listened well, puffing contemplative clouds from his pipe the while, his blue eyes twinkling.

Tom and he lived in a little cottage on the outskirts of the community, and here, sitting upon the veranda, they could gaze through the vines which the wife and mother had planted to the little hillside cemetery where she now lay.

Presently, glancing up and down the street half-guiltily, Kerry took from his pocket a clipping from a Blainesville newspaper, which contained a cut of a rangy, blond-haired youngster in football garb. He had read the accompanying paragraph a score of times, but there was all the old surging of blood as the salient sentences, ‘‘one of the most promising secondary-school backs in Ohio,” “a boy for whom half a dozen universities are gunning,” passed under his eyes. He could have repeated them all by heart, but it was so much more satisfactory to read them.

Returning the clipping to his pocket, he was about to relight his pipe when a great touring-car purred up to the curb and stopped in front of Kerry’s store. Two men alighted, one of them very stocky and broad-shouldered, with pronounced suggestion of executive authority in his face and bearing; the other a big, hulking fellow with shoulders slightly stooped and the face of a scholar. They were Enoch Chase and his friend Warburton. Both of them advanced to Timothy Kerry, who looked up inquiringly.

^‘This is Mr. Kerry, isn’t it?” asked Chase, glancing at the sign over the door. ‘‘I am Mr. Chase” — he abstracted a card from his case and handed it to the man, ‘‘and this is my friend, Mr. Warburton. Both of us played football at Haledon — in the East; perhaps you’ve heard of the college ”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Chase,” smiled Kerry, arising. “I’ve heard of Haledon and I’ve heard of you; at least I used to read about you and Mr. Warburton. You see, when I lived in New York, years ago, I used to go to Manhattan Field to all the football games. Of course,” he added, “that’s ahead of your time, but I always kept reading about the teams and the games.”

“I see.” Chase nodded, and then, being by nature blunt, he came directly to the point. “I understand you have a boy in the high school who is playing great football ”

“I suppose you read about him in the Blainesville paper,” interrupted Kerry, producing his clipping with some show of diffidence. Chase glanced over it, handing it on to his friend and shaking his head.

“No, I’m afraid I don’t follow football as closely as I should like to. I heard of your boy in another way. So we thought we’d motor out here 6 and see him in action. He will be graduated from the high school next June, won’t he Have you any idea of sending him to college?”

Kerry looked at the speaker a moment, blinking.

“I had that idea,” he began. ‘‘Mother and I had saved money for it from the time he was born. But she, mother, got sick, and before — before she died, we had spent about all of it.”

“Yes.” Chase nodded. “This clipping speaks of several universities bidding for Tom’s services. Is that true ?”

“Well,” grinned Kerry, “it was news to me, and to Tom, until yesterday, when two men came in town, one from Moline University — that’s a bit farther west — and one from Cokedale College, which is in Pennsylvania somewhere, I think.” Kerry laughed. “They met in the store here and they didn’t seem glad to see each other at all.”

“Where are they now?” asked Warburton.

“They’re in the hotel,” replied Kerry, “and they’re going out to the game this afternoon — the boys play the Pulver Military Institute team.”

“Phew!” Warburton whistled. “That Moline chap is ‘Pal’ Adams ”

“Adams is the name,” interjected Kerry.

“Adams!” Chase’s brows wrinkled. “I remember him as the dirtiest football player I ever stacked up against. Let’s see; when I last heard of him he was coaching the Pendleton eleven.”

‘‘Even Pendleton couldn’t stand him long,” said Warburton. “He lost that college her two best games of the season — ^with Aurora, and Mason and Dixon. Then he went to Moline, whose team, according to Adams’s boast, costs twenty-five thousand a year.”

“Who’s the Cokedale man.?” asked Chase.

“His name is Wiley,” returned Kerry.

“And his nature is wily,” chuckled Warburton. “That’s ‘Bud’ Wiley, Enoch; of our university, I’m sorry to say. He was a back there about six years ago ”

“Oh, I know him,” rejoined Chase. “Now, Mr. Kerry, look here; this may all sound like a game of knocking to you. But it isn’t. I’ll be frank; after we see your boy play this afternoon we may want him to come to Haledon University — -if he’s going anywhere. But we want him to come only under the proper conditions, under conditions that will be honorable for your boy and for our college. That is the only sort Haledon wants. Understand?”

“I think I do, sir,” returned Kerry.

“Good enough. Now, I want you to let Adams 8 and Wiley talk to you after the game, and then — I suppose you can’t leave your store until late in the evening, and that until that time you’ll be too busy to give us your undivided attention.”

“That is true, sir,” smiled Kerry.

“Very well. What time do you usually close up.?”

“Never later than ten o’clock,” said Kerry.

“Then, at that hour we can see you here and be undisturbed — see you and your son, I mean .? ”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right.” Chase turned away. “We’ll see this game, and then Mr. Warburton and I will drive out to a road-house where we had luncheon, and shortly after ten o’clock we’ll return here — and we’ll find you and the boy waiting?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you very much.” Chase came back and shook the man’s hand, and after Warburton had done the same they entered the motor-car. “Drive around the town for a while,” Chase said to the chauffeur; then he leaned back in the tonneau seat.

“Warry,” he said, “I had my doubts about this boy until I saw the father. He’s a wistful sort of a chap, with only one thing in his life — his 9 son. Vm almost afraid to see him play football; because he’s probably a fair sort of a rube player with no future so far as a big university team is concerned. Adams and Wiley will size him up in a flash and break the old man’s heart, and then — did you see his face lighten when I mentioned Haledon — and then we’ll have to break further sad news. Can’t you see the look that will come into those blue eyes of his when we — hang it all, Warry, I’m too busy a man to be roaming around capping for Haledon against a couple of crooks who ought to be on a chain-gang, and worrying about hurting a fond father by telling him his son can’t play on a big college team.”

Now, the fact is, that Enoch Chase need not have worried one bit on this score, as he was destined soon to learn.

Enoch Chase had been out of college a few months over ten years. He was now the secretary and treasurer of the Western Aluminium Products Company, at Columbus, and was a very busy and a very efficient young man. He and Warburton, his classmate, had played at halfback and tackle, respectively, upon a football eleven which had gained for Haledon University about all the gridiron laurels that one seat of learning could well digest. But after their graduation, as is the case with most good football players, the two had left the game to undergraduates, and had settled down earnestly to making careers for themselves. Warburton, who had taken the scientific course at the university, had been summoned west by Chase and placed in charge of the technical department of the Aluminium Company, where he had established himself as invaluable.

The previous day Chase had received an urgent letter from a classmate in New York requesting him to run out to Annandale and look over a young high-school fullback named Kerry, of whom great things had been predicted.

‘‘Jiggs Holcomb, who is travelling for the Harvester people,’’ ran the letter, “saw the chap play at Annandale last September, and he says he’s a wonder. I know you’re a busy man — you must be, you and Warry, to have missed our decennial reunion last June — but you owe it to Haledon to run out there and shunt this kid to Haledon — if he’s going to college. The future promises a shortage of good backs at the university and Baliol and Shelburne (Haledon’s timehonored rivals in all sports) appear to be getting about all the good Western boys that the Middle

II

Western colleges miss. Now, please, like a good chap, do this little job for us.’’

Chase, his desk piled with papers, had growled that he would see Spike McClure — the writer of the letter — hanged before he would motor fifty miles to kowtow to a cub fullback. But Warburton, more with the idea of inducing his overworked friend to spend a day in the open than anything else, had urged him to make the trip.

“The trouble with you, Enoch,” he said, when all other arguments had failed, “is that you are not a good Haledon man ”

“What’s that!” Chase had shouted, glaring over the top of his desk. “How much money do you think I send to Haledon every year?”

“It isn’t money,” Warburton had persisted. “It’s spirit. Here you are working yourself to death, with no thought of anything but business. Your hair is getting thin and you’re overweight. A little dose of Haledon spirit once in a while would keep you young — if you want to put it on a purely selfish basis. Haledon needs something else besides money.”

“Selfish 1” Chase had scowled, and then, swinging around in his chair, had nodded his head vigorously. “Spirit all gone, eh 1 Well, we’ll see. What time can you start to-morrow?”

Seven o’clock,” had come the prompt reply. And seven o’clock it had been. Now they were drifting about the little village of Annandale waiting for the beginning of a game of football between two secondary-school elevens of which until yesterday they had never heard.

Apparently Annandale was very proud of its eleven, for within the hour the streets leading to the athletic field in back of a comely brick school building were alive with villagers. And farmers from the outlying districts were coming into town in their dusty motor-cars of every make and vintage and in family carryalls, which were laden with boys and girls dressed as though for a holiday, and carrying blue banners bearing, in white letters, the name Annandale.

“Seems to be plenty of enthusiasm,” grunted Chase as the car came to a stop at a point along the road directly opposite the centre of the gridiron. “I guess that’s the Pulver crowd now,” he added, jerking his shoulder toward a large open motor-truck whose occupants made a vivid picture in their red sweaters and football togs, and in the natty blue uniforms worn by those who had accompanied the team to cheer it on to victory.

The truck stopped directly behind Chase’s automobile and was instantly the centre of a curious group of Annandale youngsters, who appeared tremendously impressed not alone by the completeness of Pulver’s football equipment but by the bright uniforms and soldierly bearing of the team’s supporters.

“They’re snappy,” said Chase, regarding the team with interest. “They act as though they took themselves very seriously. Look at them now, bunched about their coach — it’s the real stuff, Warry. Gee, I’m old ! It seems a hundred years since I rolled into a town as a member of a prep-school team.”

Warburton didn’t reply. In his face was a strange, wistful expression, as though he knew all the emotions that were thrilling the minds of these young athletes — as though he were yearning to share in them, to live once more an experience which never again would be his. Chase caught the mood, and down his arms and along his legs certain muscles began to tingle, and his jaws set until they bulged at the corners. He leaned out of the car and addressed a player who stood near by.

“Would you mind letting me see that ball a moment The boy smiled and tossed it into the tonneau. Chase caught it deftly and sat fondling it, smiling vacantly at his friend.

‘‘Isn’t it beautiful, Warry ! Isn’t it wonderful ! George, I’d like to kick it from here to Haledon ! Here — ” He tossed it back to the player with a sigh. “Such things are not for old men — they’re too exciting, might cause a bursted blood vessel ”

“Oh, shut up,” growled Warburton. “You make me tired with your senile assumptions. I — ” He paused as the eleven scampered out on the field and lined up near the forty-yard line, “There they go. Say, Chase, look at that diagonal formation of the backs. That team knows football ”

Chase watched with sparkling eyes as the quarter stepped hastily aside and the ball went on a direct pass to the back farthest from the line, the whole team then swinging into a dash around the end.

“You bet it does,” he murmured. “I wonder where they pick it all up ? Warry,” he added, “the score will be fifty or so to nothing, and our fullback wonder will be lost in the shuffle. Here comes Annandale now, and they’re a scraggy bunch.”

Chapter II

ELL/’ replied Warburton, they’re not exactly scraggy; they’re ill-assorted, as with most country high-school teams. There’s our man, Kerry, I guess; the rangy blond chap over there with the blue sweater.”

‘‘Sure,” said Chase, “no doubt about that. He’s a well-set-up boy — reminds me something of Blondy Gray, the Baliol back. Oh, say, there are our two friends at last — Adams and Wiley. See them Now they’re coming up to Kerry.”

“Yes, I see them,” was the sour response. “They act as though they already had a mortgage on him. We ought to put this thing through, Enoch, and butt in. I hate to see kidnapping going on right under my eyes.” Warburton arose in his seat. “Come on; let’s go down and introduce ourselves.”

“You sit down and behave yourself, Warry.” Chase put out a restraining hand. “We’ll do this thing decently and in order, if at all. Besides I don’t want Wiley and Adams to know who we are.

i6

“They’re being very officious,” Warburton went on, settling back into the tonneau. ‘‘Adams is pointing out the weakness of Pulver’s fake kick formation ’’

“I should think Kerry could see it for himself,’’ returned Chase. “Now Annandale is going out to run through signals. Look at ’em — fifty to nothing, did I say It’ll be a hundred to nothing ! That line charges like a set of relay racers — one man at a time. . . . Kerry takes the ball. Good wood ! Did you ever see a big man run so low.? Well,” Chase leaned forward in his seat and lighted a cigarette, “come on. I’m ready for the game.”

Adams and Wiley had apparently been chosen as umpire and referee, for they had moved onto the field and were conferring with the two captains, of which Tom Kerry was one. The Pulver leader struck Chase and Warburton as somewhat supercilious in his demeanor toward the Annandale player. He shook Tom Kerry’s hand in a manner indicating extreme boredom and neglected to return either the welcoming smile or the word of greeting. Chase, a keen student of human nature, saw Kerry stiffen, saw his face grow stern. When finally it was necessary for the Pulver boy to address the rival captain concerning a point brought up by the officials, Chase noted that Kerry tacitly avoided the visitor and addressed his reply exclusively to the referee.

‘‘He’s high strung and sensitive,” was Chase’s mental comment, adding aloud that to his way of thinking Tom Kerry was one of those wonderful creatures, a nobleman by nature and a gentleman by instinct. “Another Jim Coogan, Warry,” he muttered, thinking reverently of a very great player and a still greater man, who had recently been called from a world in which he had just begun to establish a reputation no less great than that which in Chase’s day had marked his career in the world of intercollegiate athletics.

“If he is,” responded Warburton solemnly, “we want him in Haledon, whether he can play football or not. There are too few Jim Coogans on this fair earth.”

“Right.” Chase nodded and then turned his eyes to the field, where the teams were arranging themselves for the kick-off. Pulver had won the toss, and had elected to receive the ball. Kerry was placing the ovoid upon a mound of earth on the forty-yard line and the cohorts of Annandale were cheering and waving their flags. There were no stands, and the spectators, who numbered perhaps twelve hundred men, women, boys,

i8 girls, and children, stood or sat behind a rope which extended along the opposite side of the field. Chase and Warburton thus had an unobstructed view of events on the gridiron.

Just as the whistle blew for play to begin a motor-car came to a stop directly in front of Chase’s automobile. It was a great touring-car, and contained a party of four. From one side a Pulver pennant hung, while from the other depended the flag of Annandale.

At the wheel was a large man of about sixty, rather distinguished in appearance; a boy of perhaps ten was standing up at his side viewing the proceedings on the field with every manifestation of interest. His mother sat in the tonneau and by her was a girl of eighteen, whose gray eyes and brown hair and slim, graceful figure were so attractive that the two men in the other car, football veterans though they were, transferred their gaze from the tense scene on the field to her.

‘‘That’s a fine family group,” muttered Chase, who, incidentally, was just starting one of his own.

Warburton, similarly fortunate, nodded sympathetically.

“Annandale people, I guess; though they seem to be divided in their sympathy.”

‘‘I suppose,” returned Chase, ‘‘that they have a boy in Pulver. It’s only about twenty-five miles from here; you remember, we passed through it.”

The correctness of this surmise was demonstrated an instant later when the boy on the front seat spoke excitedly, his voice accompanying the dull thud of the pigskin and the beating of feet on the hard turf. “Oh, look! Tom Kerry has kicked off and the ball is going straight to brother Hal.”

The eyes of the two men turned to the field, where the clean, yellow ball was describing a beautiful parabola, falling rapidly toward the outstretched arms of a stocky young man standing on Pulver’s five-yard line. The defense was picking off the charging high-school players with a precision which bespoke good coaching, and so many players were sprawled upon the field by the time the ball had settled into the back’s arms that this player was able to choose his course up the field with a great deal of certainty.

He followed his interference for about ten yards, and then, seeing a lane to his right, suddenly broke away and pursued a course leading diagonally toward the side-lines.

“Foolish boy,” commented Chase, shaking his 20 head. ^‘He had better have stuck to his interference. Kerry’s after him. Just look at those two chaps go, Warry!”

It was indeed a pretty sight. The Pulver back had a clear field except for Tom, whom the runner was trying to skirt. But in attempting this his course was becoming more and more lateral, so that unless he could distance the tackier he would either be thrown or forced out of bounds. The man with the ball was running with the fast, short steps of the stocky type of player, while Kerry’s stride was the long, graceful, undulating motion of the antelope.

‘‘Go on, Hal!” screamed the boy in the automobile. “Tackle him, Tom!”

There was a general laugh at this outburst.

“I’m afraid,” said the father, turning and smiling at Chase, “that my son is hopelessly neutral.”

Chase nodded, and then glanced at the girl who was now standing, her eyes fixed upon the flying pair, her lips shut.

Then just before the side-lines were reached the runner turned sharply. Kerry launched himself forward; there was a crash of bodies, and both tackier and tackled rolled out of bounds. But the Pulver cohorts were cheering; the ball had Zl been returned twenty yards. The teams quickly lined up> and the pigskin was passed direct to Pulver’s boorish captain, who was playing at full.

The attack was directed between the guard and tackle, and the offensive linesmen opened a hole very neatly. Through this the runner plunged and was nailed back of the line by Kerry.

‘‘That was pretty secondary defense,^’ observed Warburton. “You see they sent their interference to the right and then shot this fellow through left; but Kerry diagnosed it to the dot. He tackles like a pile-driver, too; that chap won’t feel like carrying a ball again for two or three plays.”

As a matter of fact, the runner was getting up slowly, as though the effort were laborious. In succeeding plays, Tom Kerry’s genius in divining the enemy’s manoeuvres was exemplified in high degree. He was constantly blocking holes everywhere, not only on plays between tackle and tackle but in smashing interference and downing the runner on end plays.

But where it is necessary for the defense to employ a secondary resistance consistently, the result is a series of short gains which eventually 22 lead to the goal-line. It was so with Pulver. In straight rushes they carried the ball to Annand ale’s five-yard line, and on the next play sent a man swinging wide for a touch-down. And this was largely the story of the game.

Annandale’s line was weak and Kerry, singlehanded, could do little beyond delaying the inevitable score. Four times, when the local team had the ball, Kerry threw forward passes for distances ranging from ten to twenty yards in three instances — the ball whistling like a bullet and bounding from the chest of the receiver — and in the other, a long throw which went fully thirty-five yards down the field, cleanly and gracefully as an air-ship. It was out of this throw that Annandale made her lone touch-down, the receiver taking the ball with no one near him.

Such gains as Kerry made through the line or around the ends — and he made several beautiful runs — were due solely to his own effort; for the interference which his men provided was of the most desultory and haphazard sort.

‘‘He’ll do,” nodded Chase when the first half was ended. “He’s a natural football player, if I ever saw one. His team doesn’t look as though it had had any special coaching, but Kerry does the right thing by instinct.”

“Yes/’ agreed Warburton, “he gives every sign of being one of the greatest backs I ever saw.” He paused. “And that’s saying something, let me tell you. For,” he added, smiling, “I’ve seen, among others, Enoch Chase.”

“Oh, shut up,” grunted Chase. “Here comes Kerry now. He is certainly a fine-looking athlete — and handsome as the deuce, too.”

Kerry, in fact, was approaching the other automobile in company with the stocky, raven-haired Pulver player. Both were talking and smiling. Warburton and Chase watched them curiously. Evidently the son of this proud Annandale family had none of the compunctions which seemed to have afflicted his captain when he was talking to Tom before the game began.

The Pulver boy leaped into the tonneau and embraced his mother, then placed his hand upon his father’s arm. The smaller brother had jumped to the ground and was now seated proudly upon Tom Kerry’s shoulder.