Eight of us were in Pete Rankin’s room that night, all freshies and all candidates for the ’21 football team, unless you except this fellow Harold Peck that I’m telling you about. Jim Phelan had brought him along, because, he said, he looked lonesome. Jim had planned to room with a chap he had chummed with at Hollins, but he had failed in exams and faculty had stung him with Peck. That’s one drawback to rooming in the yard at Erskine: you can’t always choose your roommate. Peck was sort of finely cut, with small, well-made features, dark hair and eyes and a good deal of color in his face. And he was a swell little dresser. Rather an attractive kid, on the whole, and maybe a year younger than most of us there. He didn’t make much of a splash that night, though, for he just sat quiet on Pete’s trunk and looked interested and polite. Being polite was Peck’s specialty. I never knew a chap with more different ways of thanking you or begging your pardon.
We were mostly Hollins or Enwright fellows, and we were there to get the freshman football team started. Dave Walker, the Varsity captain, dropped in for a few minutes and helped us out; and after he had gone again we got to talking about our chances of turning out a good enough eleven to beat the Robinson freshies, and who would play where, and one thing and another, and presently Bob Saunders, who had played half for Enwright last year, asked: “What have we got for quarterback material, fellows?”
Trask, another Enwright chap, said: “Kingsley,” but no one enthused. Tom Kingsley had been a second choice quarter on Trask’s team and had been fairly punk, we Hollins crowd thought. Pete Rankin yawned and said he guessed we’d find a couple of decent quarters all right, and Jim Phelan said, sure, you can always catch a quarter when he was young and train him.
“I think I’d like to try that job,” I said. “I guess it’s easier than playing tackle. You don’t have to exert yourself. You just shove the ball to someone else. It’s a cinch!”
“You’d make a swell little quarterback,” laughed Pete. “You’re just built for it, Joe.”
“Well, I’m down to a hundred and eighty-one and a half——”
“I don’t think I ever saw a crackerjack quarter,” Jim Phelan butted in, “who wasn’t sort of small. Did you, Pete? Remember Warner, of two years ago? He was my notion of a properly built lad for the quarter. Wasn’t he a wonder?” Pete said yes, and “Toots” Hanscom, who will take either end of any argument you can start, tried to prove Jim all wrong, and then everyone took a hand. But Jim is stubborn, and he hung out for the small kind. “Take a chap like—well, like Peck there. If he knows the game he will play all around your heavy man or your tall one.”
Everyone turned to size Peck up, and he looked embarrassed, and Toots sniffed and asked him his weight.
“About a hundred and forty-two, I think,” said Peck.
“Thought so. He’d have a swell chance, Jim, against those husky Robinson freshies!”
“Sure he would,” answered Jim, stoutly. “I don’t say he’d be a marvel at plugging the line, but I do say that if Peck was a football man a good coach could take hold of him and make a rattling good quarter of him. It isn’t beef that counts in a quarter, Toots. It’s brains and pep and knowledge of football.”
“Piffle! Peck wouldn’t last five minutes!”
“Better induce Mr. Peck to come out,” suggested Monty Fellows. “Then we can see who’s right.”
Jim started to hedge. “I didn’t say Peck was the man. I said a fellow of his size and build. Peck isn’t a football player, and so it wouldn’t prove anything if he tried it.”
“Haven’t you ever played at all, Mr. Peck?” asked Pete.
“Oh, yes, thanks,” replied Peck. “We had a rather good football team at my school and I—er—I tried for it year before last. But, of course, I was pretty light, you see——”
“You could soon beef up, I’d say,” said Pete. “Maybe you’d have better luck this time. Had you thought of it?”
“Why—why, I did mention it to Phelan, but he thought I’d better wait until I was a bit heavier——”
Everyone laughed at Jim then, and Jim tried to explain that he hadn’t thought of Peck as a quarter. “Just the same,” he said stoutly, “I wish he would come out and try for the position. I’ll risk it! I’ll bet he will make good! Come on, now, what price Peck?”
“Oh, really,” began Peck, “you mustn’t hope much of me, Phelan! You see——”
“That’s all right! You agree to try for the quarterback position and do as you’re told and work hard and——”
“And grow a few inches,” said Toots slyly.
“And I’ll guarantee that you’ll be third-string quarter or better by the end of the season! What do you say?”
“Why, it’s very flattering,” answered Peck, looking around and smiling deprecatingly. He had a nice smile, had Peck. “But I’d be awfully afraid of disappointing you.”
“I’ll risk that,” said Jim. “You show up to-morrow at three-thirty, then.”
Peck murmured something that sounded like consent and Jimmy Sortwell asked: “Where is your home, Mr. Peck?”
“Winstead, Maryland.”
“Oh,” said Jimmy. “I asked because I wondered if you were any relation to the Peck who played on the Elm Park High School team last year.”
“What is his first name, please?” asked Peck.
“I don’t know that I ever heard it. I never met him, but the team came on from Chicago last December and played a post season game with one of the Boston teams and licked the stuffing out of them. This fellow Peck was quarter, and he was a wonder. Don’t you fellows remember reading about him? Some of the papers in the East here made him All-Scholastic quarter, and that’s going some, for they hate to name anyone west of Albany!”
“Seems to me I remember something about a remarkable quarter on some Western team that played around here last year,” agreed Pete. “Don’t recall his name, though.”
“It was probably this fellow I’m telling of. He wasn’t much bigger than you, either, Peck, I’d say. Perhaps a little heavier, eight or ten pounds. He was a stunning player, though, a regular marvel. And that sort of helps out your contention, Jim.”
“I don’t believe I have any relatives in the West,” said Peck. “Of course, there might be some distant ones——”
“Well, if you take after your namesake,” laughed Burton Alley, “we won’t kick a mite!”
“Thanks,” said Peck, “but, of course, you mustn’t expect much of me. There’s a great deal to learn about football.”
“Well, there’s more to it than croquet,” said Toots dryly, “but don’t let that scare you. With Jim looking after you you ought to get along fine!”
“Really, do you think so?” asked Peck, gratefully. “Thank you ever so much!”
We had a whooping big freshman class that year and didn’t expect much trouble in finding all the material we needed. But we had reckoned without the war. A lot of fellows were so full of it that they couldn’t see football. There was talk of introducing military training at Erskine, too, and although that didn’t come until later, there was a lot of excitement over it. Of course, we were all strong for the military stuff, but some of us couldn’t see the necessity for making the world safe for Democracy before we had knocked the tar out of the Robinson freshmen. It was more than a week after college had started when we finally got four full squads together. The Athletic Committee assigned us a Graduate School chap named Goss as coach. He had played tackle for Erskine three years before. We didn’t cheer for him much at first, but he turned out fine. He wasn’t much on the up-to-the-minute stuff, but he was a corking tactician and hard as nails when it came to discipline. And he was so set on teaching the rudiments before the frills that we were soon calling him “Old Rudy.”
Faculty held us down to a six-game schedule, which was a shame, for we could have licked any team of our weight in New England. Besides, the Varsity was all shot to pieces, because so many last year men had enlisted, and was a sort of a joke, and we always took the crowds away from her. We were really the big noise that Fall and should have been allowed a decent schedule. Of course, every good team has its troubles, and ours began after the Connellsville game. We beat her, all right, but she laid up two of our best linesmen and proved that neither Kingsley nor Walker was the right man for quarter. We had two other candidates for the position in Ramsey and Peck. There wasn’t much to choose between them, it looked; only Peck had a good press agent and Ramsey hadn’t. Jim Phelan was still backing his roommate strong. Toots Hanscom told us that Jim was coaching Peck for an hour every evening. Said he dropped into their room in McLean one night and found Jim holding the book on Harold and putting him through a regular exam! Anyhow, Peck was certainly coming all the time, and when we met the Taylor freshies the next Saturday he had his chance in the third period. He got mixed a couple of times, but I couldn’t see any signs of nervousness, and he surely made us hump ourselves. And he played his position mighty well besides. Jim certainly had no kick coming against his pupil, for Peck played good football that day, barring those two mistakes in signals, and ended up in the last three or four minutes with as pretty a forward pass to Trask as you’d want to see. Trask didn’t quite make the goal line, though, and so we accepted our first defeat, Taylor nosing out 12 to 11. But we’d played good ball, and we knew it, and the school knew it. And you can bet that Taylor knew it, too, for she was just about all in when the whistle sounded.
Peck got quite a lot of kind words that day, and Jim Phelan went around saying “What did I tell you?” and making himself generally obnoxious. But that didn’t win Peck the quarterback position, for Kingsley was still the better man, especially when he was going well, and young Peck went back to the second squad Monday, and Jim spoke darkly of “bonehead coaches.” More trouble developed that week: Wednesday, I think it was. Pete Rankin—I forgot to say that we’d elected him captain without much opposition from the Enwright crowd—hurt his knee in a scrimmage and had to lay off. And one or two other chaps went wunky and so Townsend Tech didn’t have much trouble with us, three days later. Kingsley started at quarter and Peck didn’t get a show until the last of the third period. Then he played the same nice game he’d played the week before and speeded us up so that we managed to score our second touchdown. And, considering that we had six second- or third-string fellows in the line-up by that time, that wasn’t so poor. And 11 to 20 didn’t sound as bad as 7 to 20, either. So Peck got the glad hand in the locker room afterwards and old Rudy stopped him on his way to the showers and spoke kind words.
By that time the college was beginning to sit up and take notice of Peck. Fellows asked where he’d played before, what school he’d come from and so on. No one seemed to know, and when you asked Peck himself he was sort of vague, and so blamed polite that you didn’t have the crust to keep on asking. But I made out that he’d skipped around between two or three schools down Maryland way, and I believed it until two things came off simultaneously. The first was Peck’s sudden “arrival” in football. It occurred the Thursday after the Townsend fracas. Kingsley was suffering from shell shock by reason of having been slammed around by big Sanford, the Townsend fullback, in the third quarter, and old Rudy started Peck when the scrimmage began. Well, I don’t know what had got into little Harold that day; or I didn’t know then. Afterward I thought I had an inkling. Anyway, he was a revelation. Pete Rankin said awedly that Peck was a composite reincarnation of Eckersall and Daly. So far as I know, those two old-timers are still alive and kicking, but you get Pete’s idea. He meant that Peck was a peach of a quarter that day; and that goes double with me. We went up against the Varsity scrubs, and they were a heavy, scrappy bunch, even if they didn’t have much team play. Peck seemed to sense just the sort of medicine that would do ’em the most good, and he proceeded to dose it out to them right from the kick-off. He used Saunders and Hanscom for play after play until we were down to the scrub’s twenty-yard line, bringing Hanscom around from right end and busting him through left tackle. He and Saunders were light and quick, and they got the distance in three plays regularly. Then, down on the twenty, he switched to his other backs, Fellows and Curtis, and piled ’em through to the two yards. The scrubs pulled themselves together then, and two tries failed and Peck gave the pass to Curtis for an overhead heave to Saunders. But Bob was spilled in his tracks and, with three to go and one down left, Peck faked a try at goal and kited around his left end with the pigskin cuddled under his elbow and slipped across the line near the corner very nicely.
Four minutes later we scored again. The scrub’s kick-off was short and I wrapped myself around it and busted along for nearly twenty yards and landed the ball on the forty. Then Saunders slipped up for the first time and Peck tried a forward to Hanscom that grounded. Curtis smashed through for four and then Peck took the law into his own hands again and, faking a pass to Saunders, hid the ball until the scrubs were coming through. Then he found his hole, slipped right through the middle of the line, ducked and squirmed past the secondary defense and raced off straight for the goal. And believe me, that kid could run! The scrub quarter was the only man with any license to stop him, and Peck fooled him near the thirty yards, and went right on and placed old Mister Pigskin squarely between the posts.
I’d got sort of roughly handled by the big mutts when they stopped me after I’d caught the kick-off and Old Rudy yanked me out, and so I didn’t see any more of the scrimmage. But they said that Peck kept it up right to the end, making another corking run from near the scrub’s forty to her five, and handling the team like a veteran. Monty Fellows, who could spill language that would gag you or me, said that Peck was inspired and that he had “indubitably vindicated Phelan’s contention.” I thought so, too, though not in just those words, and so when I ran across Jim on the way to College Hall after dinner that evening I started to hand him a few bouquets. But he only grunted and looked peeved, and I eased up and asked: “What’s jangling your heart strings, Jim? I should think you’d be pleased to see little Harold vindicating your—er—whatyoucallems.” He sometimes called him Harold to annoy Jim.
“You would, eh?” growled Jim.
“Sure I would! Haven’t you toiled with the kid all Fall and taught him all he knows and everything?”
“I thought so,” said Jim significantly.
“What do you mean, thought so? Who else is responsible? Of course, I’m not saying Peck wouldn’t have learned football after a fashion even if you hadn’t——”
Jim laughed harshly, like a villain in a play. “Say, Joe, you do a lot of talking with your mouth sometimes, but maybe you can keep a secret. Can you?”
“Secrecy’s my middle name. Shoot!”
And after a minute Jim shot. “He fooled me, all right,” he began ruefully. “I thought he was as green as grass and even when he’d learn a thing too blamed quick to be natural I didn’t suspect. I said, ‘It’s just natural football instinct he’s got. You can’t explain it any other way.’ Wasn’t I the bonehead?”
“Sure! But what——”
“Listen. This morning I wanted a collar stud. Mine had rolled under the bed or somewhere and it was late. So I pulled open Harold’s top drawer. I knew he had a little fancy-colored box there where he kept studs and things and as he had gone to breakfast I thought I’d just help myself to one. What do you suppose was the first thing I saw when I lifted the lid?”
“Great big snake?”
“Cut the comedy! One of these little gold footballs you wear on your watch chain!”
“Well?” I asked, not catching the idea.
“There was engraving on it and I read what it said. ‘E. P. H. S., 1917,’ Joe! What do you know about that?”
“Still I don’t get you. What’s E. P. S. stand for?”
“E. P. H. S., you dummy! Elm Park High School! Don’t you remember Sortwell telling about a fellow named Peck who’d played with Elm Park and asking Harold if he was any relation?”
“Oh!” said I. “Now I savvy! But, look here, Jim, you don’t think Harold’s this Elm Park star! Why, didn’t he say——”
“No, he didn’t,” answered Jim sourly. “He was mighty careful not to. He said maybe Peck was a distant relative or something. And he let me teach him how to play quarterback! Must have had lots of good laughs at me, eh? If I hadn’t been an utter idiot I’d have tumbled to the truth long ago. Why, no one could pick up the game the way he has! Look at the way he played to-day! He fooled the whole bunch of us, anyway. I wasn’t the only come-on. Only, why? What did he do it for?”
“Search me! But look here, what does he say? Has he fessed up?”
“He hasn’t said anything because I haven’t. How can I? Borrowing a chum’s collar stud is all right, but when you run across something you’re not supposed to know about you keep your mouth shut. If I told him I was helping myself to a stud and happened to see that gold football, what would he think? He’d think I’d been snooping, of course. But I don’t need to ask him. It’s as plain as a pike-staff. That football is one of those given to the members of last year’s victorious Elm Park team. I looked up the record. They played eleven games and won all but two. And Harold was quarterback and was a regular James H. Dandy. And now you know why I’m a trifle peeved, Joe. Wouldn’t it set you back some to find that you’d been teaching the fine points of football to last season’s All-Scholastic quarterback?”
I said it would. Then I asked Jim what he was going to do about it and he said glumly:
“I’m going to keep my mouth shut, and so are you. What he wants is for us to find out we’ve been fooled, so he can have the laugh on us. Nothing doing! If he wants to come out as the Great Peck he can do his own announcing. Then I’ll tell him I knew it all along, and the laugh will be on him, hang him!”
We chinned some more and then I left him. In a way, thought I, it was sort of mean of Peck to put it over on Jim like that, but at the same time it was funny, and I had to chuckle a bit now and then for the rest of the evening. It was a shame not to tell the other fellows, too, but Jim had made me promise to keep quiet and so I couldn’t. But I got some fun out of it, for the next afternoon I overhauled Harold going over to the field and I said to him:
“It’s funny, but you remind me an awful lot of that chap who played quarter for Elm Park last year. You look a lot like him around the eyes. And the lower part of his face, too. His name was the same as yours, you know.”
“Really?” he asked, most polite. “Elm Park is out near Chicago, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but the team came East last Fall for a post-season game. You said you weren’t related to him, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think I said just that,” replied the fox. “I’d hardly dare to. As a matter of fact, our family has relations in the West, although I’ve never heard that any of them lived in Chicago.”
I didn’t want to give the snap away, so I shut up then, but I couldn’t help admiring the way he carried it off. Never batted an eyelash! Some boy, Harold!
They made him first choice quarter then and he was never headed all the rest of the season, although Kingsley and Ramsey tried their hardest to overhaul him, and he kept getting better and better right up to the Robinson game, running the team for all that was in it and never letting a game go by without pulling off a few fancy stunts on his own. I could see that there was a coolness between him and Jim Phelan, but it seemed to me that Peck was still unsuspecting that his secret was discovered. So I guess he often wondered why Jim had stopped giving him pointers and being chummy. Of course they were still friendly and all that, but Jim couldn’t forget that Harold had put one over on him. And so things stood when we faced the Robinson freshmen in the final game.
As the fellow said about the war, we had a good day for it: cold and snappy, with almost no wind. Robinson brought over a big bunch of rooters and a good many of our own old boys came up for the game. And there was a sprinkling of khaki, too, for some of the grads were in service; and even the Navy was represented by a Reserve lieutenant. He was a corking looking chap, and when I ran across him just after lunch he reminded me so much of Harold Peck that for a minute I thought it was Harold got up that way for a joke. But he was bigger than Harold, and a couple of years older, I guess, and when I’d had a second look at him the resemblance wasn’t so strong. Still, it was there, and when he stopped and asked me which was McLean Hall his voice sort of sounded like Harold’s. Anyway, he was a corking, clever-looking lad, and I got to wondering how one of those blue uniforms would look on yours truly.
I’m not going to bore you with the game in detail. It was some game, but you’ve watched many better ones. Robinson got the jump on us at the start and scored a goal from our twenty-eight yards. I guess we had stage fright or something, for we sure played like a lot of kids in that first period. Even Pete Rankin got temperamental and fell over his own feet time and again, and young Peck tried hard to show how not to play quarterback. But Robinson’s score was just what we needed, for in the second period we pulled ourselves together and inched along for the goal line and finally pushed Curtis over for a touchdown. We were pretty well started on the way to a second when time was called for the half. As Toots Hanscom had missed goal, the score was 6–3 when we crawled back to the gym. We thought we’d done pretty well until Old Rudy started at us. Then we realized that we weren’t much better than a gang of Huns. He certainly did take the skin off! According to him Robinson should never have scored and we should have had twenty-one points tucked away. At that, he wasn’t so far wrong, for we had surely pulled a lot of dub plays in that first fifteen minutes. Anyhow, when he’d got through with us we were ready to go back and bite holes in the Robbies!
The third quarter gave us another touchdown, and this time Toots booted it over. But Robinson wasn’t dead yet, and she put a scare into us when she sprang a new formation and began to circle our ends for six and eight yards at a try. Pete was put out of it and Gannet, who took his place, was pretty punk. We lost two or three other first-string men in that third period, and so when Robinson worked down to our fifteen-yard line we couldn’t stop her. We did smear her line attacks, but she heaved a forward and got away with it, and kicked the goal a minute later. That made the score 11 to 10, and the world didn’t look so bright for us. And then, when the last quarter was about five minutes old, Saunders, who was playing back with Peck, let a punt go over his head and they had us with our heels to the wall. Curtis punted on second down and the ball went crazy and slanted out at our forty-yard line. Robinson tried her kicks again and came back slowly. Pete Rankin put himself back in the game and that helped some. About that time when the enemy was near our twenty-five, Peck got a kick on the head and had to have time out. Old Rudy started Kingsley to warming up on the side line, but Peck, although sort of groggy, insisted on staying in, and Pete let him.
They edged along to our twenty and then struck a snag and that’s when I stopped taking much interest in events, for I was the snag. When I came around I was lying on a nice bank of hay, with every bone in my head aching, and Prentiss was playing my position. So what happened subsequently was seen by little Joe from afar. Robinson put another field goal over and added three points to her score and we saw the game going glimmering. There was still five minutes left, however, and an optimist next to me on the hay pile said we could do it yet. I didn’t think we could, but I liked to hear him rave.
The five minutes dwindled to four and then to three. We had the ball in the middle of the field and were trying every play in our bag of tricks. But our end runs didn’t get off, our forward passes were spoiled and we were plainly up against it. Young Peck’s voice got shriller and shriller and Pete’s hoarser and hoarser, and the rooters were making noises like a lot of frogs. And then the timekeeper said one minute and it looked as though there was nothing left but the shouting.
We still had the pigskin and had crossed the center line two plays back, and Pete and Peck were rubbing heads while the Robbies jeered. Then something broke loose, and after I’d got a good look at it I saw that it was Peck.
I don’t know how he got away, for it looked as if he had sort of pulled a miracle, but there he was, dodging and streaking with the mob at his heels and a quarter and a half laying for him up the field. The optimist guy almost broke his hand off pounding my sore shoulder and I let him pound, for the pain helped me yell. Pete and Trask trailed along behind Peck and it was Pete who dished the waiting halfback. After that Peck had a free field and it was only a question of his staying on his feet, for you could see that the kid was all in. He got to wobbling badly at about the fifteen yards and I thought sure a Robinson chap had him, but the Robbie wasn’t much better off and they finally went across, staggering, with Peck just out of reach, and toppled over the line together. Then bedlam broke loose.
I must have forgotten my bum ankle, for the next thing I knew I was down at the goal line with half the college, and the Naval Reserve lieutenant had Peck’s head on his knees and was telling Tracy, the trainer, what to do for him. Tracy sputtered indignantly and swashed his sponge and Toots missed another goal and the game was over. The crowd got some of the team but I was near the gate and made my getaway. And so did Peck, thanks to the lieutenant chap, and we were halfway to the gym before the fellows missed him. We fought them off then right up to the gym door and dodged inside, and Peck, who was all right now except for being short of breath, said: “Thanks, West. I want you to know my brother.”
“Your brother!” I gasped. The Navy chap laughed and shook hands.
“And proud of it,” he said. “The kid played good ball for a fellow who couldn’t make the team last year, didn’t he?”
“Couldn’t make—Say, what’s the idea?” I gibbered. “Didn’t he play quarter for Elm Park?”
“Why, no,” said the Navy guy, “that was me! Harold never played any to speak of until this fall. He tells me that a roommate of his taught him about all he knows. I want to meet that fellow!”
“Oh!” said I, still sort of dazed. “Well, I guess he will be mighty glad to meet you, too. You see, he got it into his head that your brother was the great Peck, and——”
“But I never told him anything like that!” exclaimed Harold. “Why, I even pretended I’d never heard of you, Herb, for fear they might think I was—well, trading on your reputation, don’t you see! I don’t understand how Jim could have got that idea!”
“Oh, he gets crazy notions sometimes,” said I. “At that, though, he wasn’t so far off, because if you’re not a Great Peck you’re a mighty good eight quarts!”
Which wasn’t so poor for a fellow with half his teeth loose! Now was it?