“Fourth down!” panted the referee. “About ten to go!”
Second howled raucous derision, taunted as it dug its cleats again. But first team had shot its bolt. A field-goal or a forward pass alone remained to her, and she tried the latter. It was Russell who took that pass five yards behind his goal-line and under the nose of the desperate Crocker, and it was Russell who sank gently down on the sward and, with the ball carefully beneath him, stifled a groan. For the disappointed Crocker had signified his feelings by a quick, hard blow to Russell’s already damaged nose.
In the tense excitement of the instant the blow had gone unseen, or unrealized, by most. But Wells had seen it and Wells acted quickly. Billy Crocker measured his length beside the goal-post, while first and second players rushed up, expostulating, threatening, eager for trouble. For the moment none remembered Russell, and that youth presently crawled to his feet with the ball, dabbed ineffectually at his bleeding nose and became aware of the fact that internecine strife was threatening a few yards away. But the coaches and the managers and the captains and one or two other exponents of peace dug their way into the group and begged and commanded and threatened, pushing and shoving here and there, and war was averted. Above all other voices could be heard the strident tones of the indignant and blood-thirsty Wells.
“He poked Emerson square in the nose, the dirty bounder! I saw him do it! Let him come over here and try it on me! Yah, you’d better get him away, Mart!”
Then Coach Cade and one or two more were questioning Russell and Russell was shaking his head negatively. “I’m sure it was an accident,” he asserted. “I’m satisfied.”
“He’s lying!” shouted the irrepressible Wells, struggling between his captors. “He’s lying!”
Russell didn’t go over to the Sign of the Football that afternoon when he left the gymnasium. Jake had rendered first aid to his swollen and extremely painful nose, but Russell didn’t quite fancy parading that disfigured feature in public. Stick appeared slightly peeved when he got back to the room, but a glimpse of his friend’s countenance seemed to restore his good humor, or so, at any rate, Russell thought. Stick received a brief and bald narrative of the affair, voiced as much sympathy as he ever voiced over the misfortunes of any one but himself and put the matter aside.