Stewart Sterling

The Fumbling Phantom

I

“Going in at right end, replacing Loftis,” droned the undergraduate spotter, “Number Eighty-one, Cady.”

Baldheaded Tim Murfree kept his eyes on the screen of the control set, but cupped his hand over the mike. “Who’s Yehudi?” he inquired out of the corner of his mouth. “Another of those scholarship sensations Snub Garret snagged by offering plenty of pocket moo?”

“Guess so.” The spotter shrugged. “Hope this Cady’s better’n the rest of those free-mealing footballers, though. He’s a soph. Transfer from Redlands. Dope on him in the program.”

Murf signaled his alternate announcer to take over, took his eyes off the black-and-white figures on the video screen to glance through the windows of the telebooth at the bright colors and hot shadows down there under the California sun.

Toward the group of Stallion players kneeling or lying face-down on the vividly green turf, loped a tall, rangy youngster with a cautious gliding gait.

The new wingman’s height was emphasized by his narrow shoulders, the startling effect of thinness was increased by the absence of any regulation shoulder-harness. Apparently there was no more padding under the golden jersey with the big white 81 than would ordinarily be sewn into a fifth grader’s ‘premium’ uniform.

Guy doesn’t look as if he’d be able to keep his feet against a stiff wind, let alone the rough-’em-up stuff of those USC linemen, thought the sportcaster, flipping the pages of his program until he found the explanatory paragraph about Cady, Wm.

Murf’s eyes narrowed with surprise as he skimmed past the statistics to the wing-man’s football background. He wigwagged to his alternate. When the commercial was finished, Murf leaned close to the mike:

“While USC is taking time out, we’ll grab a few seconds to tell you something about this flankman Snub Garret’s sending in for his side.

“Bill Cady’s a tall stick of timber, as you can see... six-two-and-a-half. Weighs a solid one-eighty. Nineteen years old. A sophomore from Banning, down near Palm Springs. Last season he was on the freshman team at Redlands University, where he set up a pretty sweet mark as a pass receiver.”

Pretty sweet, hell! he said to himself. If that isn’t a misprint — that 21 touchdowns — then it’s damn near incredible! That’s close to three scores a game for an eight game schedule. And the guy’s an end!

The spotter said: “Here we go.”

Muff squinted at the screen, raised his voice to the shrill pitch of play-by-play:

“Time’s up. Stallions are bunching in the huddle. They may kick. It’s third and six, on their own forty-five, here in the closing minutes of the third period, and though Snub Garret’s outfit is still on the short end of that 14 to 7 score they may decide it’s safer to punt and pray for a break than to try and make headway against a line they haven’t been able to dent all afternoon. Now they’re in the T. The ball goes back...”

“Zomby”, grunted the spotter without taking the binoculars from his eyes.

“Zombrorowski back. Punt formation.” Murf lifted his shrillness a notch higher. “He’s going to boot, takes two strides. No! It’s a pass... a long one... wa-a-a-y down the field... intended for Cady... but he’s nowhere near... WAIT! He got it!!! Cady GOT IT!!!”

Murf shook his head in disbelief as he stared at the dancing images on the face of the bulb, as if he was unable to accept the action on the glass as having reproduced the events on the field faithfully. There was no need for artificial pitching of his voice now. Murf was as keyed up as any of the forty thousand howling spectators who sent up a thunderous roar to rattle the windows of the booth:

“If you didn’t get that clearly on your set, we’ll try to picture that play for you. It looked as if Cady, the new end Garret just rushed in, was going to miss that long looper by at least five yards.

“Zombrorowski threw it ’way over Cady’s head over toward the west sideline; it just didn’t seem humanly possible for him to get that ball. Besides, the Trojan safety man, Chuck Berry, was between Cady and the rocketing leather.

“But this sub wingman zoomed past Berry like a motorcycle passing a trailer on a steep hill; he went up in the air as if he was wearing pogo sticks instead of cleats. Somehow he got under that ball. Then Berry dropped him.

“So now it’s first and ten again for the Golden Stallions... and for the first time in two periods, Snub Garret’s Rampaging Remuda is close to the Trojan goal.”

The spotter did a couple of jubilant tap steps. “What a deal! What a dilly of a deal! Most of these so-called ‘stars’ who’re supposed to shine on athletic scholarships turn out to be very dim bulbs. But show me the joe who’s going to squawk about putting out dough for this Cady kid!”

The camerman on the west unit trailed Cady with his finder. On the screen in front of Murf the lanky wingman didn’t seem winded by his spectacular effort.

Nor did his broad, amiable face, with the high, prominent cheekbones the bony, jutting nose and the wide, humorous mouth, — show any reaction to the wild thumpings on the back and slaps on the stem with which his teammates congratulated him. He remained perfectly expressionless.

A smug lug, Murf decided, pretending a circus catch like that was no more’n what might be expected of him! Probably a one-shot wonder, — getting away with a down-the-field pass like that, the first time, because of its unexpectedness. Wait till he tries that again. Those Trojans will toss him up for grabs.

A moment later Murf made a swift revision. On first down, Hustling Mike Agaro, the Stallion’s bouncy little signal-caller, shot Dit Zombrorowski off right tackle on a tricky spinner.

Cady was key lineman; he had to handle the Trojan left tackle single-handed while his own guard and tackle ganged up on the USC guard. With the passback, Cady drove fiercely into the bulky Trojan tackle, rode him out wide. Zombrowski went for six.

“Begins to look as if the Stallions might stampede to a touchdown,” Murf informed his audience, excitedly. “Up to a few minutes ago, it seemed as though Snub Garret’s boys were merely battling to prevent the Trojans from piling up first downs and rolling along to more scores. But now all of a sudden, they’ve got some zing!”

Resist that impulse to dramatise, he warned himself. Just because the Stallions started to go places soon’s this new boy came in the lineup, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the spark that jolted the plug, does it? There are twenty-one other guys down there, doing their stuff, in addition to this comet, Cady!

But there wasn’t any doubt the Stallions; were rearing to go now. A few minutes ago they hadn’t had any more fire than a soggy cigarette. Murf called the shots with rising excitement.

Agaro stabbing through guard on a sneak, made the first down.

Zombrorowski, sledgehammered through for five on a deep reverse.

O’Doul, fumbling on a spinner, recovered for an eight-yard loss.

Third and thirteen. Murf called it as he saw it. “The Stallions’ chances of a score are hanging in the balance here, on Agaro’s next decision.”

“Zomby,” said the spotter.

Murf forgot the screen, stood up, shielding his eyes from the sun. The men at the video camera might miss this one. Murf couldn’t take that chance.

“Agaro hands it off to Zombrorowski. He’s starting wide around right end. He’s cutting back tossing a long lateral out to his left... to O’Doul... O’Doul juggles it, has it. He’s shooting a high one, clear into the end zone. Cady’s down there, but he can’t — he’ll never— Oh, oh! It looks as if he stole that ball right smack out of Chuck Berry’s hands! It’s hard to tell what’s going on there. We may have to wait a few seconds for the officials to—”

He looked away from the tight cluster of players beside the goal posts, glanced at the telescreen. There it was. The north cameraman had it.

The picture was as clear as if Murf was peering over the referee’s shoulder. Cady’s figure was doubled over in the middle of a crush of surrounding white jerseys.

“It’s Cady’s ball! The ref flings his hands up over his head! It’s a touchdown! CADY DID IT AGAIN!! Just listen to that crowd... go... crazy!!”

II

The clock said three minutes to go in the fourth stanza. The scoreboard said USC 14 VISITORS 20, ball on the USC 30, second and seven. In the huddle, Hustling Mike grunted, “They’ll be laying for you if you try it again kid.”

Cady deadpanned: “Okay. Let ’em lay. Gimme this one short, huh, Zomby? At my shoe-laces, huh?”

The quarter smacked his palms together. “A thirty-two to Cady! Take care that right half Bob! Ev’body blocks! Yet’s go!”

Cady came up to the line; crouched; set his cleats.

Opposite him, the huge Trojan tackle growled:

“Here you go, Cady! Flat on your can!”

At Cady’s left, Sam Hardin snarled at the Trojan, “Pull anything out of line, Humpty Dumpty, an’ you know what it’ll take to put you together again!”

Cady said tightly: “I can handle it, Sam.”

Telfer rammed the ball back between his legs to Mike. Cady feinted a check-block, pulled the tackle off balance, sidestepped, drifted into the secondary with that deceptive loping stride.

The Trojan center flung himself in a desperate, rolling block. Cady went up and over him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Trojan right end flatten O’Doul. There wouldn’t be anyone down in time to take care of that right half, then.

Cady revved it up, sprinting parallel to the line of scrimmage. The halfback breathed down his neck. They raced side by side for a dozen yards. Like a photo finish, Cady grinned to himself. Only the winner wouldn’t be the one in front.

The ball came whipping from Zomby’s outflung arm. Cady took one extra long stride, braked, bounced back as if he’d hit an invisible clothesline, chest high and spun as he recoiled.

He dived back toward the melee of charging linemen, felt the oval smack his palms as the back of his fingers touched grass. He scooped up the leather, tucked it under his right arm, used the left to piston his hand into a Trojan helmet.

Arms grabbed his hips from behind. He kept his legs churning, twisting and turning, hobbling and hopping. The arms slipped to his knees, his ankles, and then were gone.

Chuck Berry raced across pinning him against the sidelines. Cady slowed, dodged, let the safety man come to him. The end did a conga hip-swing, slewed away.

Tacklers came at him out of the ground; he danced the tight rope along that sideline, fox-trotting down to the ten, the five — over.

His face showed nothing as he touched the ball down behind the goal. But there was a fierce surge of elation inside him that matched the tremendous tumult in the stadium.

In his heart, there’d never been any doubt he could make the grade here, with the Class A boys, as Snub Garret had predicted. Still he had his own very special reasons for getting a terrific kick out of this mad pandemonium in the Stallion stands.

The screaming approval of twenty-five thousand frantic fans would have meant a lot to anybody, he knew that. But to William R. Cady, formerly of Banning High and more recently ex Redlands U, those cheers were going to mean a hell of a lot more than they would have to most members of the Stallion Squad.

They were eventually to mean figures in a nice, fat checking account. Dough in the sock. Bonds in the safe deposit.

He, Bill Cady would damn well see to it that the yells and cow-bells and the thumpings of the big bass drum were translated into cold, hard, spendable cash.

He’d had precisely that in mind ever since he discovered his peculiar ability to grab leather out of the air and hold onto it and jack-rabbit with it.

Plenty of other big-time pigskinners had traded line bucks for bucks in the bank. He could do it too... and he meant to do it, or bust a few guts trying.

He tossed the ball to the ref, trotted calmly back to the try-for-point huddle. He had an idea. A cockeyed idea, but one that might help along his private payoff program.

He told Hustling Mike about it:

“Just for laughs, huh, Mike? Were twelve points ahead and there’s only a minute or two left.”

The quarterback scratched his nose dubiously. True they’d come from behind, and there couldn’t be a living soul who’d deny this galloping beanpole had been responsible for two of the scores and for setting up the other one, still...

Zombrorowski growled: “Go on, Mike. Give you three to two th’ kid makes it!”

Mike nodded, barked signals, clapped his hands.

They snapped out of it into the kick formation. The ball came back to Mike, kneeling.

He poised it, faked a touch to the ground, flipped it backward. Zomby caught it shot it like a shortstop pegging to first. Cady drifting casually across the line, reached up, pulled the oval down.

Up in the telebooth Murf chattered: “Call that grandstand stuff, if you want to. Say this new Catch-and-Carry-Kid Snub Garret’s come up with is something of a show-off, making the conversion point the hard way. Still, the crowd ate it up.”

There were only seconds left in the game.

Cady half expected Snub to pull him out of the lineup. It was customary to let a standout performer come off the field by himself wasn’t it, so the crowd could have a chance to howl its head off?

He looked toward the bench. The white-haired coach was worrying the unlighted cigar from one side of his bear-trap mouth to the other, but he wasn’t making any move to rush in a replacement.

So when the gun went off, fifteen seconds later, and Cady linked arms with the rest of the team to give the short yell for USC and jogged off to the sidelines. He wasn’t in the best frame of mind for a quickie interview.

But the Number Three mobile unit was set up right beside the ramp leading down to the field house and Tim Murfree had hurried down from the control booth to make a request of the Lineman of the Hour:

“Hi, Cady... Hey, there, — Bill Cady...”

Cady said, “Howdy”.

Without Murf knowing it the control man up in the booth cut in the Number Three camera.

“How’s it feel,” Murf asked smilingly, “to score a couple times against a great team like the Trojans, your first time in a Stallion game?”

“Feels swell,” Cady started to back down the ramp, unaware he was facing half a million people in bars, restaurants, clubs, homes and hotels all over Southern California. “Only don’t forget it takes a man on both ends of a pass to make it click. That Zomby, now—”

“That’s right.” Murf caught the cameraman’s signal; Keep on, this is great. “Say, Bill, how’d you like to come down to the studio some night and talk about forward passing on our Sportlight program?”

Cady blinked.

“What,” he asked blandly, “is in it for me?”

For the first time in a dozen years of interviewing, Tim Murfree was stopped.

His jaw dropped. His mouth hung open foolishly. What could you say to a creep like this, who asked you what he was going to get out of a radio appearance... when all you were trying to do was give him a great big hand?!

“Why... uh... why, publicity,” he blurted out finally. “That’s all. Publicity. What did you expect?”

By then, the control man had recovered enough to switch to the Number One unit, which had its camera pointed at the crowd, pouring triumphantly out onto the field.

But it didn’t make any difference. Because Bill Cady was giving Murf the cool brushoff anyway:

“Some other time maybe. I got a date tonight, anyhow. Call me up and we’ll talk it over, huh?” He turned and clattered down the runway.

What Murf said wouldn’t have been allowed on the air, in any case.

III

The locker-room echoed to wild howls of victory and rocked with the deafening tempo beaten out by an extemporaneous be-bop band perched on the rubbing table.

Dit Zombrorowski ducked a helmet hurled by one of his celebrating teammates; glanced up at Bill Cady’s sweaty torso:

“What the hell made you crack back at Old Murf like that, you bug brain!”

“The bird with the microphone?” Bill Cady peeled off a wet sock. “Asking him what was in it for me? Why shouldn’t I, you horse’s hacienda!”

“For one thing,” the Stallions’ All-Coast back retorted, “if you did take dough from those broadcast boys to go on a show, it’d wreck your amateur status... disqualify you for the team.”

“I didn’t expect him to wave a wad of bills in my puss. But they could always fix it so I’d win one of those new convertibles or a trip to Honolulu on one of these giveaway programs, couldn’t they? Something I could swap for greenies afterwards?”

Zombie scowled. “Whatsamatter with you! All this yatada yatada about money! You in a jam with a dame or something? That why you need dough so bad?”

“Uh, uh!” Bill wagged his head vigorously. “Not me. Does a guy have to have some special reason around here for wanting to latch onto a quick buck?”

“There’s a general supposition,” the threatback laid the sarcasm on with a trowel, “that any member of this football team is here at the university for the primary purpose of collecting an education — not an annuity!”

“Horseshoes!” said Bill genially. “Show me one member of th’ squad who’ll refuse candy in the nice green wrappers when it’s passed around. And then send him to have his head examined.”

Zomby wrapped a towel around his navel. “Somebody oughta explain the facts of life to you, Buster. You go ’round shooting off your face like that an’ some of these newspapermen’ll hear you. Then there’ll be a stink about the university subsidizing strong backs and overlooking weak minds. An’ that, Snub Garret wouldn’t like!”

“He could like it or lump it, far’s I’m concerned.” Bill padded along behind Zomby toward the shower. “I don’t see why a coach should make twenty-five thou a year, while the guys who do all the work for him out on the field have to scrape along on a free meal-ticket and a pat on the back.”

He edged past a couple of men by the shower-room door, found himself chest to chest with the head coach.

Under his shock of crisp, white hair, Johnny ‘Snub’ Garret had cold, blue eyes set in a pink glass face.

Bill couldn’t tell from the cold eyes whether Garret had heard his question. Evidently the coach had caught the last part of it, at least, because the blue eyes glinted like ice cubes:

“You want a pat on the back? I’ll give you a pat on the back.” He did. “You looked good out there today, Cady.”

Is that all you got to say? Bill remembered that Garret hadn’t let him solo off the field, there at the end of the game, and the slow burn began to sting:

“Nothing to it, coach. Zomby pushed ’em in there so I couldn’t miss.”

“Sure.” Garret nodded. “Only it takes a man on both ends of a pass to make it click.” The ice-cube eyes held Bill’s for a moment before the coach moved away to talk to Hustling Mike.

All right. So what? Suppose the coach had heard everything he said to Murf and to Zomby. Nothing wrong in that, was there?

Bill wouldn’t be here at the University now, if Garret hadn’t wanted him to come after watching him try out with the freshmen, if the coach hadn’t okayed that athletic scholarship.

They weren’t paying his board and tuition because they liked his profile; he was getting those checks because he could go downfield like a scared coyote and go up in the air like a kangaroo. Why make any bones about it? There wasn’t any reason to be ashamed of it. Plainly, he was getting paid for his football skibility, and like any other good workman, he was entitled to as much as he could get, wasn’t he?

He soaped up and joined Zomby under the needlespray.

“Snub answer your question, fella?” The threatback turned on the cold water before Bill was prepared for it.

“In a pig’s whisker.” He levered the handle back to ‘Hot’ and Zomby yelped. “He’d been talking to that Murf guy, I think.”

“Let that be a lesson to you, Willyum. Never pass up a chance to give your coach a boost... especially on the radio.”

“Ah...” Bill wiped the sweat out of his eyes, “I couldn’t have gone to the studio tonight. I got a heavy deal on with the slickest chick this side of M.G.M. No kiddin’...”

“You could have taken her to the studio with you.”

“Oh, yeah? Then nobody’d have paid any attention to me. You get one peek at this pretty, you’d see why.”

Zomby nodded slowly, solemnly and skeptically. “You got a lock on her?”

“Huh? Oh, y’mean engaged?” Bill laughed. “Nah, nah. None of that starry-eyed stuff. Lou Ann’s strictly a knockout but it’s just palsy-walsy with us.”

Zomby smiled with superior wisdom.

“That’s what you think. Wait’ll she makes up your mind for you, bud.”

“Don’t kid yourself. When I get married, — it’s going to be to some chick with checks appeal. One of those five-hundred-a-week starlets, — somebody like that.”

Zomby turned his head sideways and looked at Bill out of the corners of his eyes:

“You’re really hellbent to get up there in the big bucks, aren’t you, screwball?”

“Why not? Aren’t you?”

The big halfback regarded him, thoughtfully. “Well, yes. I guess I am, in a way. But maybe not in the same way you are.”

“Horseshoes,” Bill grinned. “Unless you got a million bucks, already, or your old man has...?”

“My old man,” Zomby said mildly, “is a big oil man. One of the biggest. He weighs close to three hundred... and he’s about the best drill-rig man in the business. He’d be able to put me through the university in fine style, except mom’s been sick for three years and what with the doc and the hospital an’ all, I have to put myself through and send a few bills home every now and then out of what I make tutoring.”

“Oh.” Bill flushed with embarrassment; he hadn’t meant to rib his team-mate about money matters; it was the last thing in the world he’d have wanted to do, because he knew how it was to be part of a family that was forever fighting the uphill battle of unpaid bills. “Well, then prob’ly you’re like me, like everybody else... restless as a worm in hot ashes, trying to get a pile together.”

Zombrorowski accepted the implied apology with a lightly hooked fist to Bill’s short ribs. “I’d pick up a nickle if it was in a pile of manure. Still and all, there are some things I wouldn’t do to make a dollar.”

“Yeah,” Bill agreed, uncomfortably. “That’s about it. Say, you want a lift anywhere?”

“You got a car?”

“Not even a scooter. But Lou Ann has. She works in one of those swanky Beverly Hills stores. I guess she earns pretty good dough, to buy herself a convert like that. She’s meeting me outside the field house. Come on. Climb into those fancy pants. We’ll drop you anywhere you want.”

He wondered why Zomby looked at him so queerly, for such a long time, before accepting the offer.

IV

The horn of the maroon convertible gave out with an OH! oh! The girl behind the wheel gave out with a “Hi, butch...” and a very slow grin.

Lou Ann Walch might not have been as photogenic as some of the film lovelies. Her nose might have been a fraction too short and her mouth a shade too wide for screen closeups. But in technicolor, Bill told himself for the hundredth time, she’d be fabulous.

Her hair was the palest, shiny, straw blonde, in startling contrast to the copper-bronze tan which glowed in the rays of the low-hanging sun as if there was some inner radiance beneath it which she could turn on or off at will. And her eyes — Bill had spent some earnest moments trying to find the word to describe her eyes. Gray, with just a touch of lilac in them; but that didn’t do them justice. Nothing did them justice...

Bill slid in beside her, Zomby crowded in, shook hands.

“I’m tickled silly to see you,” she included them both in her welcome, “but don’t expect me to talk to you. I lost my voice back in that fourth period. That screeching like a wildcat gone lunatic — that was me.”

Zomby offered frank admiration. “If I’d known, I’d have taken time out to look.”

“That would have been a break for USC. Those guys would have let you two have the rest of the afternoon off, any time you’d asked for it. You really ruined ’em! You were wonderful!”

Bill draped an arm around her shoulders. “We had to work at it, shugie. Now you, you’re wonderful without making any effort.” He put a hand over hers, on the rim of the wheel. “Want to drive Zomby over to the Beverly Wilshire before he throws me out of the car so he can have you all to himself?”

She crinkled up the corners of her eyes and made a face at him. “It can’t be a new sensation to Mister Zombrorowski... being a football hero, I mean. But it must give you a kick, Billyum.”

Zomby came through. “That was his game, Lou Ann, — and nobody else’s, — and never let anybody tell you different. He stood out like a love seat in a locker room. I’ve been pitching leather to all kinds of assorted ends and backs for two seasons... and Bill’s the best I’ve ever seen or hope to see.”

Bill said: “Put that on record. Some time when I flub one we need real bad, I’ll have you play it back to me.”

They sped along the Million Dollar Mile, stopped at the big hotel.

Lou Ann said: “If it isn’t a very special somebody you’re going to see tonight, Mister Zombrorowski, why don’t you call it off and come to dinner with us? I hate to be the cause of splitting up a pair the whole Trojan team couldn’t break up all afternoon!”

Zomby took a deep breath, looking at her. Took his time about answering, too. Bill thought the threatback was going to take her up on it, but Zomby glanced swiftly at Bill, shook his head:

“Take a raincheck on that. Don’t think I won’t, now.” He got out, waved at them, strode away.

“Great boy,” said Bill.

“Nice boy.” Lou Ann watched Zomby’s big shoulders disappear in the crowd, before she pulled away from the curb.

“Where’ll we tie on the feedbag, shugie?”

“Jose’s?”

“Yup.” That was another thing he liked about Lou Ann; when you asked her what she wanted to do, or where she wanted to go, she didn’t stall around the way girls generally did. She just up and told you what she liked, bang. No nonsense about her. Being with Lou Ann was just like being with another guy... yet of course it was a hell of a lot better.

If you had a flock of stocks and bonds, if you could afford to marry any dame you liked, you wouldn’t wait a single minute before asking her if she’d go to wed with you, now would you, Bill?

Lou Ann was humming an old tune. He only remembered part of it...

I’m no millionaire

But I’m not the type to care

’Cause I’ve got

A pocketful of dreams

Dreams. Yeah. He had a barrelful of those. But the trouble was, they weren’t even worth a dime a dozen. You couldn’t pay a dinner check with them... or tip a waiter.

Else they’d be heading for Bublichki... or the Players or The Mocambo right now... one of those uppercrust spots along the Strip where you rubbed elbows with big shots, or sat at the next table to a famous movie star.

Plenty of places Bill would like to take Lou Ann. Maybe at some of those exclusive joints they’d even recognize Bill, from the goings-on at the stadium, might even snap those Sash bulbs at him, sitting beside her. Dreams. Sure. About places he’d like to take her instead of to Jose’s.

Jose’s was all right. A fish house, close to the pier at Santa Monica. Red-checked tablecloths. Pink-shaded lamps. Grease-spotted menus.

They’d been there before at Lou Ann’s suggestion. But a man ought to have enough jack to buy his girl the kind of dinner she deserved. It all came back to that old dollar sign, didn’t it?

Over the crabmeat and the albacore steaks, they talked about the game. Lou Ann knew football; she had the keen eyes of a scout for strong line play and weak defensive formations, for strategy and timing. Mostly, though, she listened with shining eyes full of pride and possibly something more.

Bill had more sense than to brag to her. But he did let her see how tremendously much his first success with the Stallions meant to him:

“ ’Course, it’s only the first crack out of the box. I’ll have to keep it up, if I’m going to build up the kind of rep that pays off.”

“Pays off how, Billyum?”

“Renewal of scholarship, until I graduate. Maybe a coaching job, afterwards. Or broadcasting games. Pro ball, if they come up with a good enough contract.”

She leaned back so her face was in the shadow, but he could see the little pucker of perplexity between her eyes.

“Which do you want?”

“I don’t know, shugie.”

“Don’t you know what you intend to do when you leave the University?”

“Yeah,” he grinned confidently. “Get rich.”

She lit a cigarette. Smoke veiled her expression for a moment. “That’s actually why you’re interested in gridiron glory? Because it may lead to... to making a lot of money?”

“Why, sure.” He was sufficiently sensitive to realize she was displeased, but he couldn’t for the life of him understand why. “Can you think of a better reason?”

She ought to understand; a salesgirl who was earning her own living and had been for a year or so, as she’d told him. She ought to know what a dollar was worth. Maybe she wouldn’t understand about his family; probably her people had never had to scrape along from one crop to the next, the way his had, though she’d never mentioned anything about her father or mother.

But surely she’d get the picture if he told her about his town:

“I guess the Cadys were just about the poorest people in Banning. It’s a great little town. Cherry capitol of the Coast, they call it. Throw a big Cherry Festival there every year when the Bings are ripe. Parades, floats, fireworks, bands, — even a Cherry Queen.” What a Festival Queen Lou Ann would make!

She propped her elbows on the checked tablecloth, cupped her chin in her hand... and listened, serious, bothered about something.

“But that fiesta stuff is just to whoop up roadside sales. The other side of cherry ranching is getting up at three o’clock in the morning to spray the trees before the sun warms the leaves too much.

“Pruning branches in the fall until your arms are ready to drop off... picking in the spring until you wish they had dropped off. Digging irrigating ditches.

“Fighting beetles and bugs. Culling and packing until cherry juice gets sticky in your hair and runs out of your ears and your blind tired... and then seeing your crop go to the association for just enough to cover your loan at the bank.”

“You’ve done all that, Bill.” She didn’t make it a question.

“Damn right. I’ve done it. And my father did it until it finished him. And I’ve seen my mother do it until it wore her out... and I’m damned if I ever want to do it again. It’s all right for the boys with the big orchards and the mechanized equipment and lots of reserve to meet a bad dry spell or whatever. But me... I’m sick of being poor folks. Sick of big, beautiful, luscious Bing cherries. I aim to get my hands on a chunk of important money somehow... in a hurry.”

“But still,” she persisted, “you don’t know what you want to do?”

He reached across the table, took her hand. “Yeah, boy. I sure do. I know what I want to do right now. But I can’t kiss you in here. Let’s go for a buzz in your buggy, huh?”

She smiled and nodded and the shining radiance was there in the lustrous eyes again.

But the little worried pucker remained on her forehead... and it took him a while, after the convertible had been parked on Malibu Drive, to erase it.

V

Bill slouched on the back of his spine, arm over the back of the folding chair. He was bored stiff. This was the third of these Monday afternoon skull sessions in the gym; he was fed up to here with Snub Garret’s weekly de-pep talks.

The head coach was going into his act now, standing between the portable picture-screen and the blackboard with the orange chalk lettering: You Can’t Beat Washington With Press Clippings!

“So now you’ve all spent the weekend reading how good you are, we can come down to earth and face it. We won a game last Saturday that we might have lost a dozen times if the Trojans had taken advantage of our weaknesses. Next Saturday it’ll be different.” Snub got a hand signal from ‘Jersey’ Joslin, his keg-chested, bull-necked line coach, standing at the table behind the rows of chairs; the first reel was ready on the projector.

“Those Huskies are going to be hep to our weaknesses. Get that right. They’ve been scouting us. They’ll have studied the prints of this same film we’re going to look at now. They’ll be tougher to whip than a pan of skim milk.

“Now, we’ve an attack to polish up; defense formations to patch up. We can’t afford time to fidoodle around with men who muff fundamentals. So we’re going to freeze the film here when we spot something that has to be corrected. After that, it’ll be up to each man to drill himself on sloppy blocking or lousy timing or whatever it is he’s been doing wrong. Spin her, Jersey.”

Joslin switched off the overheads, cut in the projector.

A figure raced across the screen, the lens following its swift movement with a sweeping pan shot.

Bill recognized O’Doul, streaking down-field with that opening kickoff.

The camera picked up a Stallion tackle making a half-hearted block.

“Hardin,” the head coach commented acidly, “blocks as if he’s shoving a baby buggy. If you want to practice that, Sam, do it on your own time.”

The squad sniggered.

Bill pulled up one corner of his mouth, scornfully. These caustic comments were a lot of mahaha, anyhow, a chance for the coach to demonstrate his superior football savvy, prove he was worth the big salary voted him by the Athletic Council.

But there wouldn’t be much opportunity for Snub to exercise his talent for sarcasm at Bill’s expense on the basis of what he’d done in those last two periods, that was a cinch!

And it was just as well, considering the black mood Bill was in. He was in no frame of mind to take any verbal dressing-down, not after those aggravating phone calls yesterday and today.

Not that Lou Ann had told him off, exactly. She just hadn’t told him anything, when he’d asked her for the usual Sunday date. But for the first time since he’d met her, she hadn’t agreed to spend the afternoon with him.

She hadn’t explained why she wouldn’t; hadn’t in point of fact, explained anything.

He’d tried again today, calling her at the store right after she’d come back from lunch. No, she couldn’t see him tonight. She was terribly sorry... and quite uncommunicative about what she did intend to do, tonight.

Would she see him later in the week? Oh, she supposed maybe. She hoped so. But it was difficult to make plans ahead...

He’d kept his temper, at any rate. All he’d said was that it was okay with him, if that was the way she wanted it... but he did tell her it seemed like sort of a crummy trick to put the chill on him that way without giving some reason.

Lou Ann had answered there wasn’t any reason, because there wasn’t any chill. She just had something else to do. After all, she was a working gal, with her own career to think about, he’d have to realize that.

The film whirred on. The head coach’s rapier thrusts pierced at Bill’s consciousness hardly at all until he heard Snub saying:

“Any pass attack depends on deception. If you tip your opponents off to the eventual receiver, it cuts your chances of completion down by about seventy-five percent.

“Now Cady must be rehearsing to be an emcee on one of these giveaway programs, because he gives himself away three times on this next play.”

Ah! cut that bull! Bill retorted silently. You don’t have to work on me, to keep me from getting the fat head. I’m not getting overconfident just because we shot the moon and got away with it!

“First tipoff,” Snub touched his pointer to the screen where Bill was crouching at right flank, “he cleans his cleats off, to make sure they aren’t clogged with grass, every time his signal’s been called.”

All right, a-l-l- right! Bill glowered in the semi-darkness. I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t slip. If that told the Trojans anything, still they didn’t stop me, did they?

“Second,” Snub went on, “he rubs his right hand on the leg of his pants, to wipe off the sweat. But Cady doesn’t do it on every play, only when he knows the ball’s going to come downfield to him.

“Third, he looks around to spot blockers coming through to clean up the secondary. If Washington gets wise to that habit of yours, Cady, we’re liable to have a flock of interceptions Saturday.”

“What you want me to do?” Bill blurted, “go down with my eyes shut?!” He hadn’t meant to say it out loud, — it came without any premeditation whatever, and in the ten seconds of stony silence which followed, he swore savagely at himself for popping off like that.

“No,” came Snub’s frosty answer, “all we want you to do is get rid of those reflex habits that label you as the receiver, that notify the defense to forget about the decoys and concentrate on you.”

The film flickered on. But the satisfaction Bill anticipated out of watching himself in action, had vanished.

He’d boobed it up, no doubt about it. Probably Snub would retaliate by sticking him back in the second squad, — running Loftis in the A team.

He was wrong.

When they trooped out on the field, Jersey read off his name at right flank in the first string as unceremoniously as if Bill had kept his mouth clam-tight back there in the gym.

Nobody mentioned his having spoken out of turn, — or acted as if he had. By the time they’d run through deep reverses and off-tackle spinners a score of times and taken two around the track, Bill was convinced he’d built up his crackback at the coach to needless proportions; apparently it was just one of those dopey remarks to which nobody paid any serious attention.

But when they were getting dressed in the locker-room, Zomby brought it up. The big halfback watched Bill climb into a pair of sand-tone slacks.

“You want to sell those, keed? Or you givin’ ’em away?”

Bill looked at Zomby’s pants; crisp tweed and very doggy indeed. Then he caught on. “I get it. Think I’m getting too big for my britches?”

“You’re a smart hombre. Too smart to chatter back to the coaching staff. You’re off to one hell of a start with this team, an’ let me be the first to predict you’ll go a hell of a long way. But don’t slow yourself down by letting well-meant advice get under your skin.”

“Check, chum.” Bill made light of it, with an effort. His first instinct had been to tell Zomby to stuff his own moose-heads, but the flamboyant new sport shirt the halfback was tucking into the top of the tweeds reminded Bill of the matter that really was getting under his skin. “Speakin’ of britches, what are you getting so flossied up for? Big deal tonight?”

Zomby slipped on a checkerboard sports coat without looking at Bill. “Sort of... yeah.”

“Who’s the lucky mouse? Anybody I know?” Bill wondered whether the collar of the new sports shirt was a trifle too tight, or whether the halfback had another reason for getting red-necked as a turkey.

“Any time I have to get your okay on a babe before I take her out to dinner!” Zomby waved.

He ducked, Bill thought. He wouldn’t have, unless it was Lou Arm. That’s why she wouldn’t see me tonight! She’s seeing him! “Well, give her a slight snuggle for me.” He managed a phoney grin.

“Yeah,” Zomby stalked along the row of lockers without looking back. “I’ll remember to do that.”

VI

Bill slid into his clothes fast. He pulled on his camels-hair jacket as he ran up the stairs to the trophy hall. Through the plate glass doors he could see Zomby, across the street, climbing onto a Culver City bus.

The bus pulled away from the curb before Bill got out to the sidewalk. He flagged a cruising taxi.

“Chase that bus, bud,” he told the hackie, “but don’t catch up with it. Guy on it... I want to see where he’s heading.”

The driver raised his eyebrows, pulled down the corners of his mouth. “Sherlock Holmes stuff?”

“Uh, uh. Nothing like that.” Bill sat forward on the edge of the seat, so he could watch the bus at the stops.

It was ten minutes and three miles later when he saw Zomby hop out.

“Hold it.” He paid off the taxi, kept his eyes on Zomby, hurrying toward a neon sign proclaiming:

THE KITCHEN KEY

Bill had heard about this place, not exactly a club, just one of those superdupe joints where there was no parking attendant and no doorman. You had to have a key to the door to even get in the restaurant. If you went there with other ‘members’ and the proprietor liked your looks, he might come around and ask if you would like a key.

If you did, you paid a buck, and from then on could get in whenever you wanted.

Bill was sure Zomby wouldn’t have access to a setup like this. And when he got to the parking lot he saw Lou Ann’s convertible, empty, he knew his, hunch had been right. Zomby was inside there with her now!

Bill marched across the parking lot, pounded on the door. Nothing happened. Nobody came. Evidently the management prided itself on never letting anyone in.

He started to circle the building. A station wagon rolled up. A party of six spilled out, made for the locked door.

Bill sauntered over, joined the group. At an inquiring look from one of the men, Bill grinned:

“My gal’s inside. I came out to see a man about a Saint Bernard and went through the wrong door.”

They laughed; he went in with them.

A checkroom, but no attendant. A long, low grille room with bare oak tables scattered in a wide semicircle before a stone fireplace with logs blazing brightly under a gleaming brass kettle. At one of the tables... Lou Ann and Zomby.

He went over to their table:

“Hiya, you criss-crossin’ louse.”

Lou Ann said quietly: “Hello, Bill. Pull up a smile and sit down. We were just talking about you.”

Bill eyed Zomby. “I bet you were! About how neatly you’d sidetracked me!”

Zomby said: “Don’t be a fathead.” He pushed out a chair; the gesture might have been taken as an invitation but it also put the chair between Bill and his teammate.

Lou Ann grabbed Bill’s sleeve. “I asked Zomby to meet me here!”

“Sure,” Bill said tightly. “That makes everything jake, I suppose!” He pulled away from her. “I’m asking him to step outside with me.”

Zomby scowled. “Either sit down and talk sensible, or shut up, Bill.”

Bill reached out, got his fingers into the cloth of the checkered sports jacket, yanked Zomby to his feet.

Lou Ann jumped up tried to get between them.

One of the women at the next table screamed.

Zomby struck at the hand holding his coat. Bill jabed a left. Zomby swung a right. Bill ducked, threw a fist at Zomby’s chin.

They clinched, fell against the table, tipped it over. Glass shattered, crockery splintered on the hearth. A white-aproned waiter came running.

Men from other tables grabbed Bill. Knuckles banged at his mouth, his nose. Somebody tripped him.

“Bill! Bill!” That was Lou Ann, terrified. “Stop it!”

It was too late, now. Even if he’d wanted to, which he didn’t. He felt a savage satisfaction in butting the top of his head at Zomby’s face, even though he was taking more than a little punishment in return.

On one knee, he got his arms around two pairs of legs, straightened up, tottered toward a window. Something smashed him in the pit of the stomach, knocked the wind out of him. A blow caught him on the Adam’s apple. He gasped convulsively for breath.

Black specks gyrated in front of his eyes. The room tilted on edge. He felt himself being dragged, helplessly.

A hard voice said: “You want to come along nice, fella? Or do I have to put twisters on you?”

Dimly, Bill realized there must have been a cop out in the kitchen or some other part of the establishment; he was under arrest.

He tried to wrench around, in the policeman’s grasp, to see if Lou Ann was all right. The officer jammed Bill’s right wrist up in back of his neck until it felt as if the shoulder was going to jump right out of its socket.

He went quietly. To the corner call-box. To the station house at Culver City.

The sergeant studied him with a bored air:

“D and D?” he asked.

The officer shrugged. “He don’t have any smell of liquor on him. Maybe he’s drunk on miggles or some other kind of hop. Anyway, he was disorderly enough.”

“Name?” inquired the sergeant.

“Zombrorowski,” Bill answered, sourly.

The sergeant frowned. “Don’t gimme no wise yoks, now. Spell it.”

Bill did. If there was going to be anything in the papers, at least it wouldn’t be about Bill Cady. He gave a phoney address but admitted he was a student at the university.

They put him in a four by six with a pine bunk and a lot of Kilroy scribbling on the walls.

He sat on the edge of the bunk and held his head in his hands.

He’d really cooked himself. With Lou Ann, certainly. With the University, too, because this would be all over the campus by morning... and voom! — his scholarship would be taken away. And for what? He banged his fist against the foot of the bunk.

They brought him supper on a paper plate; he passed it up.

At ten o’clock, a disinterested jailer came, unlocked the door: “You can go.”

“Yeah?” Bill was stupefied. “When do I... when am I supposed to come back?”

“It’ll be oke if we never see you again, bub.”

“Mean I don’t have to go to court... or anything?”

“Nah. Somebody came around and got the captain to squash the complaint. They squared up for the damage you did, over at that Kitchen Key... so you’re not even on the blotter.” The jailer squinted at him. “You want a little advice, go home an’ sleep it off.”

VII

All next morning, Bill waited for someone in the classrooms to mention the fracas at the Key. There hadn’t been anything about it in the papers, as far as he could find out. Nobody seemed to be wise.

That meant Zomby had kept quiet; it didn’t necessarily mean he’d let the whole thing drop, though. Maybe there’d be a flareup when Bill walked into the locker-room to dress for practice.

There wasn’t a word. Zomby was already in uniform, when Bill got there. The big back looked up nonchalantly, grunted: “Hi, guy”, and went on lacing up his shoes.

Bill drew a deep breath. “About that thing last night...”

Zomby glanced up guilelessly. “You have a big time last night? Where’d you go?”

“All right,” Bill nodded. “Forgetsis. Except... I thought maybe I owed somebody something.”

“Not me,” Zomby stood up and stamped his cleats on the cement; there was a purplish mouse under his right eye, where Bill had socked him. “You don’t owe me a thing. Maybe somebody else... not me.”

That was all. No rehash. As far as Bill could tell, no resentment. Not on the field, certainly.

He and Zomby worked together on the long shots like Friedman-to-Oosterban. Everything clicked... yet things weren’t as they had been. Bill missed the back-thumpings in the huddles, the rough-housing in the locker-room, after practice.

Of course there were other things he missed even more, but he’d resolutely put Lou Ann out of his mind. If she was that kind of a girl, if she’d two-time him once, he was well rid of her...

He told himself that a hundred times a day, but he never could seem to make it ring true...

The squad noticed the new air of restraint between the star passer and the phenom end. Bill knew they noticed, and it began to get him down.

By the time they got on the train to go up to Washington. Bill was in the deep glooms.

Staring glumly out of the club car, as the streamliner zoomed through the big redwoods, he called himself a dirty name. It sort of balanced things up; all week the sport scribes had been pouring on the praise. Praise he felt as if he didn’t deserve. Or wouldn’t be able to justify.

The papers had run photos of him leaping high to spear a pass; cartoons showing him heaving a nag labeled Stallions over the heads of Trojans, White Indians and Huskies... smack into the Rose Bowl. Yet he didn’t feel good about it.

He ought to feel like a million; he was riding the rainbow toward that pot of gold, wasn’t he? Still, he gloomed down the car at his team-mates, and out the windows at the sequoias giving way to tiers of spruce and ponderosa climbing the foothills... and life seemed very nokay.

The steak he’d just put away in the dining-car had tasted like drippings from an umbrella stand. Bob O’Doul’s imitation of Snub watching an opponent score on the Stallions had seemed too corny.

Being so upset over Lou Ann didn’t make sense. But there it was... and he couldn’t get rid of it. He was well on Westwood, but he’d never taken her home so badly... and still he was as dissatisfied as a skinny girl in a bathing suit.

He’d called her up at the store, to apologize, the day after that ruckus at The Kitchen Key, and they’d told him she’d quit her job. Hadn’t said where she’d be going. Or left any forwarding address.

He knew she roomed somewhere in Westwood, but he’d never taken her home on account of her driving the convertible and always having dropped him off, after their dates.

The one time he’d asked her for her home phone, Lou Ann had put him off by saying that she was staying with elderly people; it’d be better if he stuck to calling her at the store.

It was ridiculous, knowing a girl as well as he’d known Lou Ann, all right, as well as he’d thought he’d known her... and having her drop out of his life like this!

He was pretty sure she hadn’t dropped out of Zomby’s...

He gave it up, climbed into his upper. Woke to find the Washington landscape veiled by a slanting rain, whipped against the car windows by a lashing wind.

That rain was bad. It would mean less passing, more dependence on power. And those Huskies had power to spare, with weight to back it.

By game time, the gridiron was practically awash. There were pools at mid-field, in the end zones.

The rain had turned into a drizzling mist, but the wind gusting down from the high rim of the stadium drove Zomby’s practice punts out of bounds after twenty yards.

Snub’s briefing was brusque. Stay on the ground. Keep out of the air. Don’t try to hold the ball inside the Stallion thirty. Kick on third up to midfield. Hammer the tackles.

Bill had to admit the wisdom of the tactics. A wet ball was tough to toss accurately. A soggy one was practically impossible to fling forty yards downfield for the long-gainers the Stallions had been perfecting all week.

Slippery pigskin was mean to hang onto, too. Still, if they were going to beat a team with as bone-crushing an offensive as this Washington outfit, they’d have to take some chances, overhead, wouldn’t they?

Bill’s ideas on the subject were beside the point, anyhow. Midway in the first quarter, with the Huskies sliding and skidding through the slime down to the Stallion thirty-five on straight bulldozer bucks, Snub sent Loftis in to replace him.

Loftis was a defensive wingman; there couldn’t be any argument about the situation, out there in that sea of mire, being strictly defensive.

So Bill sat on the bench in a wet blanket, watched the Huskies punch out first downs, ram through to the ten, the six.

The Stallions reared up, fought for inches. Held one smash to a scant yard. Gave a half a yard of ground on a quarterback knifethrough.

Washington gambled on a lateral, lost the ball when Zomby tackled the runner so hard he spattered slime for ten feet in every direction when he lit on the back of his neck. The ball skittered into a sheet of water, Telfer fell on it.

The Stallions started back upfield, got nowhere, booted. Zomby’s kick only traveled twenty-five in the air, but the williewaw blew it out of the safety man’s clutch. It roled almost to midfield before a Huskie slapped his belly pads on it.

Washington lost the greased pig on the first play. Loftis recovered.

Hustling Mike sent Zomby caroming off left tackle. The Stallion halfback slipped, lost his balance, staggered through the slot with nobody laying a flipper on him.

He recovered, stiffarmed the Huskie center, ran all the way to the fifteen before they smeared him.

O’Doul took it around right end for the score. Hustling Mike foozled the pass for placement. Zomby’s kick for conversion never got off the ground.

By half time the Stallion’s 6 points looked as big as a blimp. The Huskies hadn’t been able to get their powerhouse rolling.

In the Visitors locker-room, Snub didn’t say much:

“They’ll open up on you, this half. When they do, rush that passer. Tenth of a second can make a lot of difference to a man trying to get a throwing grip on a greasy egg.”

Jersey Joslin said: “Don’t try to get under those guards and tackles. They’re too big. Let ’em skid around in their own mud puddles. Keep ’em off balance, that’s all you got to do.”

You’ll probably park your pants on that hardwood again all this half, Bill noted sourly. Fine way to grab yourself a hunk of headline!

But Snub started him. Maybe Loftis was tiring. Or it might be Snub thought Bill would have a better chance to hurry the passer, on account of his height.

At any rate, he hadn’t been sent in to snag long shots. Hustling Mike ran a couple of line smashes after receiving the kickoff, punted to the enemy forty.

Maybe Zomby had something to do with that decision. Once when the Huskie secondary was pulled in too close, Mike suggested a pass, but Zomby shook His head.

So Mike called for a punt.

Bill went down, tackled the Huskie right half. “Here’s mud in your eye, bud,” he growled.

The stands were full, in spite of the rain. These Washingtonians didn’t let a little thing like weather stop them.

But it stopped the Huskies, for all of the third period and part of the fourth.

They tried spot passes, over-the-line quickies, buttonhooks out past the ends. They completed a few but by the time the receiver had his hands on the ball, the Stallions spread him horizontal.

Both long down-the-field tosses they attempted were incomplete. The second miscue gave the ball to the Stallions on downs on their own thirty.

Mike called for a smash at guard. Zomby got up to the line of scrimmage, got hit by the Huskie center. No gain.

Some Stallion fan who’d journeyed north to yell for the Rampaging Remuda, proceeded to do so in a voice reinforced by ample draughts of cough medicines:

“Cady... We wan’ Cady!”

Mike grinned, looked at Bill, shook his head, said to Zomby: “Boot it, boy. Watcha blocks, ev’body.”

Zomby got it away. High and short. Wobbling in the wind. Curving in the wind.

Bill was down under it fast. There were two Huskie receivers. Left half and quarter. One to block, one to catch.

The quarter circled ahead, under the ball, calling: “Got it, Andy...”

Bill drove at him racing in past the halfback.

The quarter struck out his left arm, scooped in the ball. Bill hit him at the knees. The safety man tossed the leather, underhand, backward. The half caught it on the dead run. He swung wide, lit out for the sideline, went scooting toward the Stallion goal, with nobody near him.

Bill let go of the quarterback, let out an expletive. He’d committed the flank-man’s unpardonable sin. Letting the ball-carrier get outside him!

Bob O’Doul caught the Huskie on the five, but the Washingtonian bulled and staggered and skidded over for six points.

It helped some that Bill, cursing himself with well-remembered GI obscenities, raged in at the snapback, — flung himself desperately at the place kicker, — blocked the extra point with his outstretched fingertips.

But it didn’t help enough. Not from Bill’s point of view. They hadn’t lost. But they could have won... and didn’t.

Nobody to blame but himself, he realized, trooping wearily off the field with the other wet rats at the final gun. He couldn’t pin that on Zomby.

But the feeling persisted that it was the trouble over Lou Ann that had thrown him off stride. So when Zomby muttered, as he stripped off his muddy socks,—

“That was one dilly of a block, Buster,” — Bill didn’t take it with good grace.

“Go climb a cactus,” he snapped. “I played it as if I had my head under water!”

Zomby looked at him queerly without answering.

VIII

The train-ride back to Los Angeles was a dismal business; the Sunday papers picked up at San Francisco on the way down disspelled none of the gloom.

Stallions Stave Off Defeat was the Times head. Huskies Come From Behind To Tie said the Examiner.

Tim Murfree started off his column in the News:

The flashy attach which the Stallions uncovered last week against USC seems to have been just a flash in the pan...

Bill slit the papers disgustedly, stuck the clippings in his pocket. There was scarcely a mention of him in any of the stories, — merely a reference to Cady’s blocking the try for conversion.

Nobody’d dished out any blame to him, not even Jersey Joslin. But there was no ducking it; — an end who let a punt receiver get around him, to go for a score, was no bargain.

When he got back to his room and found the note from Lou Ann slipped under his door, he would have sold out very cheaply indeed. It was just addressed: Bill.

I expect you’re thinking some pretty bitter things about me; I wouldn’t blame you. I can’t stop you from thinking what you want to, — but I’m just as sorry as I can be, — honestly, I am, deep-down sorry, Bill. Because I think you’re such a swell guy... and I wouldn’t want to hurt you, ever.

That’s why I thought it would be better just to let things ride the way they were, before either of us did get hurt. Sooner or later, we both would have, — because, — though we do like a lot of the same things, — we don’t really have the same ideas about which are the important things.

I’d never blame you for wanting to make a pile of money; I hope with all my heart you do. Most of all I hope, that when you do get it, it’ll still be the thing that’s most important to you.

To a lot of people it isn’t. Among others, it isn’t, to—

Lou Ann.

He started to tear the note up and chuck it in the wastebasket as something which was just what might have been expected from a dizzy dame. But the more he mulled it over, the sorer he got.

She was trying to put hint in the wrong. Not a line about how she’d said goodbye for half an hour one night and treated him like a stranger the next morning and from then on! Never a word about taking up with Zomby!

He’d set her straight on a few things.

It took him a while to corner Zomby, over at the Beta Psi house. Zomby was down cellar at the ping pong table. “Where’s Lou Ann live?”

Zomby’s lips tightened. “Somewhere in Westwood. Why?”

“Do I have to clout it out of you?”

“Think you can?”

For a few seconds they stood toe to toe, glaring. A couple of Zomby’s fraternity brothers made elaborate pretense of not noticing anything.

Bill said: “I’m going to have a try at it, unless you tell me first.”

“What you want to see her for?”

“I’ve got something I want to tell her. After I get it off my chest, that’ll be all I want to see of her, don’t worry.”

Zomby shrugged. “Up to you, I guess, if that’s how you feel. She lives at 29 Marview Terrace. You want her phone? It’s not in the book.”

“No. I want to see her.”

“You might get a surprise.”

Bill’s forehead puckered. “Such as for instance?”

Zomby went to the ping pong table, picked up his paddle. “Skip it. Just ribbing. Have fun.”

“Thanks. I’ll leave that to you.”

He went away, asked directions at the drugstore, walked the two miles to Marview Terrace.

The houses here seemed to be bigger than those near the University, fancier, too. Set further apart, further back from the street. Bigger lawns. More elaborate shrubbery. High iron fences.

Queer place for a working girl to be living. Number 27 was a mansion of Moorish stucco that appeared to cover half a block; Number 29 wasn’t quite as large, but it was solid gray stone with huge picture windows looking out over a rolling lawn that might have been part of a golf links.

Must be some mistake. Zomby’d given him a bum steer.

A couple of bobby-soxers strolled past.

“Hey,” he called, “who lives in the stone shanty?”

The girls chorused: “That’s Mister Walch’s place...”

“Walch?” he had to find out.

“Harrison Walch. Feller who owns all those snauzy Savile stores... whole chain of ’em... New York, Palm Beach. You know.”

“Yeah,” Bill nodded. He knew, all right.

The Savile Store in Beverly Hills was where Lou Ann was supposed to have been ‘working’ when he first met her! Where she’d pretended to ‘quit’ her job!

For Pete’s sake, her old man really must be rolling in it. Bill took a long, slow burn at the recollection of telling her how he meant to get rich. No wonder money didn’t mean so much to her; she’d probably never known what it was not to have all she wanted.

His first impulse was to walk on past. Why humiliate himself by going in there and letting her laugh at him? Then he realized that if she wanted to be amused, she’d had plenty of occasion long before this.

Zomby’d known all about this, obviously. Probably she’d invited Zomby over here. Well, Bill hadn’t been invited, but he was going in, anyhow.

He marched up the winding walk, crossed a porch as wide as a street, used the bronze knocker.

A stout, moon-faced man in a monkey jacket opened the door.

“Miss Walch?”

“She’s not at home, sir,” the servant cocked his head on one side. “May I ask if she was expecting you?”

“No,” Bill said. “Some other time...”

A tall, spare man with silver-white hair and a long, leathery face came out into the hall.

“Hello.”

Bill backed away. “Howdy.”

“You’re Bill Cady, aren’t you?”

Bill nodded.

“I’m Lou Ann’s father.”

“Glad to know you, sir.” Bill felt his face getting red; he wished to hell he’d never come.

“Not quite sure whether I can say the same or not.” Harrison Walch wasn’t holding out his hand to take Bill’s. He was indicating a chair on the porch. “My acquaintance with you began under fairly unpleasant circumstances.”

Bill didn’t know what to say. “Yeah? How was that?”

“I had the dubious pleasure of quashing a complaint against you over in the Culver City hoosegow, a week or so ago.”

“Oh... it was you! I’m much obliged.”

“No reason to be. I didn’t do it on your account, I assure you. Purely to keep Lou Ann out of a mess.” The tycoon sat on the stone ledge of the porch, examining Bill with sharp, bright eyes. “I know very little about you, Mister Cady, — except what I’ve seen on the football field.”

“Oh!” Bill felt stupid, repeating that ‘Oh!’ every half minute, “You come to the games.”

“As an interested alumus,” the eyes puckered at the corners, “and since I was honored with an apointment to the Alumni Council a few years ago, I haven’t missed a game.”

So her father was on the council which had awarded Bill his athletic scholarship!

Walch went on: “I’ve seen you in our home games, — and I’m frank to say I think you’re outstanding... outstanding is the only word for it.”

“Thanks.”

“Tell me.” The magnate leaned forward earnestly. “What do you think of our Head Coach? You may speak candidly. Whatever you tell me will go no further, I assure you.”

“Snub? Mister Garret? He’s great. He’s strictly tops.”

“Do you genuinely believe that?” Walch watched him narrowly. “I’ve heard there’s a certain dissatisfaction among members of the squad. Been some talk of bringing in new blood, hasn’t there...?”

Why, the old buzzard! Bill raged inwardly. He’s one of these alumni big-shots who’re always gunning for the Coach whenever the team doesn’t wind up with a win? The snipers!

“Listen, Mister Walch,” he forgot completely he was talking to Lou Ann’s father, “far’s I’m concerned Snub is the greatest coach in the game. Never was any better. Never will be. Just because we drop a game we should have won, some people blame him, when they should know better. I happen to know better, about that Washington game Saturday. Snub would have come back with a win, instead of a tie, if it hadn’t been for a dumb lineman... named Cady.”

Walch raised one eyebrow, delicately. “Indeed?”

“Yes, indeed!” Bill stuck his head forward, belligerently. “And if you don’t mind my saying so, or even if you do, I think it’s a hell of a thing for Alumni Council members to go stirring up trouble for Snub behind his back! He has enough on his hands, without bucking you, too!” Bill turned away.

Walch called after him: “I’ll tell Lou Ann you called.”

Bill said: “Never mind,” without turning his head.

He didn’t have to have any weegee board to figure out what Lou Ann’s father would tell her about him.

IX

The Monday skull session was omitted, after out-of-town games. Tuesday, Snub only sent them through light signal drills. Wednesday was the first scrimmage. On Wednesday Bill put on a show.

He ran wild against the B’s, with Zomby pitching, — with Hustling Mike hurling ’em, long and short. Bill never missed a single completion.

He scored five times; twice, after the catch, weaving his way through a trio of second-string tacklers for twenty-five or better, to tote into pay territory.

Snub even went so far as to warn him:

“Don’t know how much of that stuff you’ve got, Cady. But don’t burn it all up. We’ll need some of it against Idaho. They have a ram-jet overhead attack themselves.”

Bill said, solemn-faced: “Plenty more where that came from Coach.”

Garret called the shot on Idaho; the Vandals came into the Stallion’s stadium with a dazzling display of lateral-forwards from the double-wing, a brace of very slippery receivers and a passer who looked like Otto Graham when the Clevelander was at his hottest.

The Vandals scored, early in the second period, to take a 7 point lead. But less than two minutes later Bill took a looping thirty-yarder from Hustling Mike at mid-field, outraced the Idaho safety man to the pay stripe.

The stadium began to whoop it up. The cheering section began unison chirping: “Cadydidit!.. Cadydidit!.. Cadydidit!”

He did it twice more in the second half. Once on a cross-over Thirty-two, with Zombie pitching, — once on an impossible interception that he couldn’t ever have made without the freedom of movement allowed him by the absence of those cumbersome shoulder-pads.

It wound up a comparative walkover, 36–13 for the Stallions, — and next morning Bill’s appetite for headlines began to be satisfied again.

The fat, black type with CADY CARRIES OVER TWICE and CADY-ZOMBROROWSKI COMBO HITS 8 OUT OF 11 began to appear in his clipping envelope more regularly.

The press notices didn’t exactly compensate for some of the other things he was missing, — but they helped. Anyhow, he’d completely given up any idea of hearing from Lou Ann, — after that collision with Walch, senior.

Why her old man had taken the occasion of that single, brief, uninvited appearance Bill had made at Lou Ann’s home to make such broad insinuations against Snub, — that Bill couldn’t dope out. The old boy must be smart, to run all those ritzy shops and latch onto all that jack, — yet the way he’d come at Bill about Snub hadn’t been smart at all.

If there was any undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the Stallion’s Head Coach, it was kept far beneath the surface by the Vandal’s defeat and the neat beating the Rampaging Remuda handed out to Montana’s mighty eleven.

On his Intimate Interviews With Sports Stars, Murf made a veiled prediction that one of the contestants in the Pasadena Punch-Bowl on New Year’s Day would be the wonder team that was horsing around with the Coast Conference competition.

A couple of sportscribes came right out flat and said the Stallions were as good as in. After Bill and Zomby pulled the California game out of the fire with a fourth period rescue act that scored two TDs in nine minutes via five completions out of ten, — the campus really started to seeth.

Stanford was the big road-block the Stallions would have to hurdle. And Stanford, on the record, was terrific times two.

An irreverent soul daubed Scalp Those Injuns on the bronze statue of the University’s famous founder. Co-eds clustered on sorority steps, chanting One More River To Cross, — with ribald lyrics referring to Palo Alto.

Thursday night, before the great Clash, as the papers were calling it, they held a giant rally in the Student’s Union. The band lifted the roof, everybody sang, everybody cheered Snub and Jersey and the other coaches. Before Snub made his fight talk, the team trooped across the stage of the auditorium, one by one.

When the cheer-leader called out, over the P.A. system, — “Bill Cady, right end,” — when Bill walked the twenty feet from one side of the platform to the other and the crowd jam-packing the smoky hall roared and whistled and stamped and clapped... something in Bill’s insides did nipups.

His heart crawled up in his throat and stuck there. He couldn’t have spoken a syllable if he’d been offered a thousand bucks a word. He couldn’t see very well in all that smoke, somehow. He stumbled over Telfer’s feet.

This queer, quivery sensation he couldn’t understand at all. Butterflies in the belly before the whistle, — they were something you got used to at the start of a game when you were tauter than a fiddle-string. But this getting all choked up just because a bunch of the boys were shouting themselves hoarse to tell him they thought he was a great guy... it was downright disconcerting. Made him wonder whether there might be something that could give you a bigger belt than having your wallet swollen with big bills.

It disrupted his whole scheme of things...

X

He was still bothered about it on Friday afternoon when Snub stopped him on his way out of the gym.

“Doing anything special tonight, Bill?”

“Uh, uh.” He wondered if Snub knew why he wasn’t doing anything most evenings.

“Like to pick up a little extra change?”

“Yea-man.”

The cold eyes smiled. “Gent’s suckered me into writing a book. On how to play football. Needs photos to illustrate it. Player throwing a roll block, check block. Stuff like that. Need a couple boys to let a cameraman experiment with shots. If you’d drop around to the house after supper... we could chew it over.”

Bill said he’d be on the deck. It would be kind of a relief to have something to do besides wondering how Lou Ann was spending the evening. Probably with Zombie, — though there’d been no mention of her in the restricted conversations he’d had with his passing-partner since that afternoon at the fraternity house.

When Bill got around to the Head Coach’s house, he was astonished to find it wasn’t much bigger than his folk’s tenant-bungalow down in the cherry orchards of Banning.

No Spanish ranch-house magnificence or cut-stone grandeur here. Just a small, white stucco one-story. Not even a real patio.

A living-room not much larger than the one Bill had been brought up in, — though better furnished. Still, — no swank. Was this the way a top-notch coach had to live?

Bill, could have mentioned one member of the Athletic Counsel who came in that category, but he didn’t bring up Walch’s name.

Snub sensed the question, answered it indirectly. Mentioned that a football coach’s salary isn’t all velvet by a long shot. Man had to spend a lot on entertaining, on travel, — going to see tycoons with checkbooks that might open to provide scholarship funds. Old grads who always thought they knew ‘what was wrong with the team.’ Especially, Snub added, during the week before the climax game.

Snub said: “Let you in on something that’s no great secret. If we beat Stanford tomorrow, it means a whole big lot to me. Means we get the Rose Bowl bid... and I get a contract to coach here for another five years... at a two thousand increase. Not a fortune. About the same dough a guy could make running a fair-sized gas station. But... I could pay off part of the mortgage that’s making the roof sag. On the other hand,” he looked up at the ceiling, “if we lose, I’ll be moving on to some other college. Have to sell this place.

“That’s the tough part of making a business of football, Bill. Coach never knows from one season to the next how long he’s going to be getting his salary. Have a good year, you’re solid. Bad one the next season, — you’re out on your tail. It’s no way to make a living... but its still a swell way to live, providing you like football better than anything else except your wife.”

Bill said: “We got a good chance to take Stanford.”

“Sure. And the head coach at Palo Alto is probably saying the same thing, right about now.” Snub smiled. “You clamp onto those Thirty-twos... I’ll tackle the alumni quarterbacks.”

The man who’d induced Snub to write the manual came in. He held out his hand to Bill.

“Still want to know what’s in it for you, Cady?”

Bill shook hands with Tim Murfree. “See my agent.” He pointed to Snub. “Makes all deals.”

Murf caressed a couple of stray hairs on his billiard-ball skull. “Maybe I could make a deal to get you down to the studio tomorrow night, after the game. Special roundup program.”

Snub asked: “What’s the setup?”

The sportscaster made an extravagant gesture.

“In-tro-duc-ing the pair that beat the Stanford straight, Bill Cady, the West Coast’s own Catch-and-Carry Kid... and the greatest of all Pass Masters, Dit Zombrorowski.”

Snub Garrett smeared a hand over his face, wearily. “Better have an alternate wording... just in case.”

XI

The locker room was hospital-quiet.

Snub walked back and forth in front of the rubbing tables a few times, while they waited and the tension grew until you could feel it on your face, like cobwebs.

Finally he stopped short. “Right here is the spot I’m supposed to hypnotize you or give you an injection of adrenalin or a whiff of oxygen to- stimulate you to go out and do great deeds. I can’t pull that stuff. I never have. I don’t know how.

“But this I can do for you. I can tell you something you don’t know. This: you’re a great team. The greatest, I think, I’ve ever worked with. But you haven’t hit your peak yet. You’ve never played as well as you could. Some of you, individually, in certain games, yes. All of you, in one game, no. Not yet.

“If you hit that peak all together, now, this afternoon, — you’ll win a ball game. The Coast Title. The Bowl Bid. I know you can do it. What I want to know is, will you?”

They made the locker doors rattle with their “Yea-a-a-a!”

“Go on out and show me.”

They piled up the ramp, out into the enormous bowl in the hot, bright sun.

Bill looked up at the sea of faces, searching for one. She’d be here for this game. Sure. And her eyes would be on Zomby, every minute, every yard.

He put her out of his mind. Stanford won the toss, elected to receive.

They lined up, strung out across the field. The White Indians looked bigger than any team the Stallions had faced. There were two All-Coast linemen in there. Their T-quarter Ettan was being compared to Johnny Lujack. The Thirty-two’s might not go so easy...

They didn’t. The first time Mike called for one Ettan intercepted. Bill didn’t blame himself; he hadn’t given the play away. Ettan was just too fast. Zomby would have to poosh ’em up a little further, to keep the ball away from that safety man.

They battled up and down between the thirties. Three tries at a first... a boot and start all over.

Halfway through the second period, Mike called the thirty-two again. “Long,” Bill grunted. “Five feet beyond where you think I can get it.”

They snapped out of the huddle, built up the T. O’Doul crept across, catlike. Telfer banged it back. Bill faked a check, shifted into high, floating into the secondary with that deceptive gliding gait that could so easily be misjudged.

He went to the Stanford forty before he turned, — and Ettan was a shadow at his side.

Bill took that extra, braking stride, but used it as a takeoff for a jump. Ettan went up after him. But the ball beat the safety man by inches. Bill touched, bobbled it, held it.

The stands began to boil. First and ten on the enemy 37.

Mike switched to spinners and deep reverses. The line caught fire, got that split-second timing into its blocks. O’Doul knifed through a door that slammed shut an instant later. Seven yards.

They marched to the twenty. They bogged down. Stanford bogged them down. But solid.

Hustling Mike begged them to make a thirty-four good just this one single time for gossake.

Thirty-four was the longie out of the lateral. Zomby to Bill.

Bill went toward the goal line like a sprint man closing in the hundred. He swerved, cut behind Ettan, leaped, and lunged hopelessly at an oval twelve feet above his head. That was the first really bad one Zomby’d chucked at him.

It flashed into his mind a few minutes later when Stanford punted out on the Stallion’s thirty-five and Mike had pistoled a buttonhook to O’Doul on the forty. The quarter called for a thirty-two on the next play. “Low,” Bill looked at Zomby. “Shorten this one.”

It went sweet and sure. As Bill stopped on his dime and spun, the leather came lancing in at waist level. All he had to do was scoop it in, stiffarm Ettan and set out for score-dirt. They murdered him on the Indian’s fifteen, but the Stallion’s were pounding at the gate.

They crashed the line, got nowhere in two plunges. Once more Mike pleaded with them to make the thirty-four good. And again, Zomby heaved the oval ten feet above Bill’s head.

Back in the huddle, Zomby tried to explain: “That right tackle’s coming through, hurrying me, Bill. I have to bang it down there before I can gauge your distance.”

All Bill said was “Yeah?” But since he said it with a rising inflection and a question-mark at the end Zomby’s neck reddened as it had that night Bill had first been suspicious of Lou Ann.

The half ended with no score on either side of the board.

In the field-house, Snub confined his get-in-there-and-win talk to individuals. Bill noted the Head Coach spent quite a few minutes with Zomby, and when Snub got around to him, all he said was: “Don’t put up your mitt and adjust your helmet every time you’re supposed to take a pass. That quarterback of theirs is hep to the habit.”

“Check, coach.” So he had been giving away the plays. Maybe that had something to do with Zomby’s overthrowing. If the halfback saw Ettan riding close herd on Bill, the pass might very well be too long, in an attempt to avoid interception!

Bill was on the point of going over to Zomby and admitting as much, but just then a thin, silver-haired individual sauntered into the locker room and waved languidly at Zomby. Walch! Bill gawked. He hadn’t supposed anybody — even one of the Athletic Council big-wigs — was permitted in the locker-room between halves!

But there was Zomby, talking to the old geezer. Probably about Snub! Sure, that must have been the ticket. Lou Ann’s father had met Zomby on the night of the shambles at the Kitchen Key. That would have been where the old boy picked up his gossip about dissatisfaction with Snub!

Walch only stayed a minute. He flicked that languid paw in Bill’s direction before he departed. Bill nodded curtly.

On the way up the ramp, he couldn’t help needling Zomby: “Who was your pal?”

Zomby didn’t smile. “He brought Lou Ann to the game.”

“That what he was gabbing to you about? Little celebration after the game, in case we win?” Bill laid it on with a trowel.

Zomby fiddled with his chin strap. “You sure do see everything cockeyed, don’t you? He was talking about what he should say on the program, tonight.”

“What program?” Bill knew, before he asked.

“Television. Murf’s show. You’re on it, too, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” But I didn’t know he was gonna be on it. It complicated things. If Walch was going to be there, Lou Ann would be there also, probably. And with Zomby in the studio, there might be the makings of another fracas...

Maybe Zomby had the same notion, because he was saying, “I’d like to beat some sense into that bird-brain of yours.”

“Any time.”

“See what I mean. You’ve still got that one-track idea I’m trying to cross you up with Lou Ann. When all the time, the only damn reason she’s wanted to see me at all, was to ask if I knew what really made you tick. You and your git-gat-giddle about dough, dough, dough! An’ you’re such a fat-headed stupe, you can’t even...”

Snub called sharply, “Pour it on ’em fast now. They’ll be figuring on getting the jump on you. Mike, you...”

Bill didn’t hear the rest of it. He was concentrating on the seats near midfield on the Stallion’s side, looking for a pale, straw blonde that would be sitting next a silver-white head of hair.

XII

He played the first few minutes of that second half in a daze, too. A lot of memories came flooding back at him.

She had said she’d asked Zomby to dinner at the Key. That note that had made Bill so mad. It sort of backed up what Zomby’d just told him. Maybe he’d been wrong about her all this time. Maybe she wasn’t just a two-timer after all.

But what difference did it make? He’d done practically everything he could do to insult her, embarrass her, antagonize her. And after that run-in with her old man, Bill would stand about as much chance of patching things up as a kid with a busted vase!

He came out of his fog when Stanford scored on a tricky bootleg pass that shook Ettan loose at the Stallions forty, let him thread his way down to the five before Mike murdered him. The Indians battered over on the next play. They converted. The score: 7–0!

Snub rushed in replacements. The Stallions received. They battled up from the fifteen to the Palo Alto twenty. Then lost the ball on an incomplete. It was Zomby to O’Doul, and it was overthrown as the others had been. And for the same reason; the passer was being hurried.

Stanford roared downfield. They lost possession on an interception by Telfer. The Rampaging Remuda hammered back, punted, went on the defensive again. Every time they got inside that Indian thirty, it was like working in hip-deep mud; they just couldn’t get going.

Two minutes before the quarter ended, Mike gambled on third down, deep in their own territory. Called for the thirty-two.

Bill looked at Zomby. “Sideline it, keed. Shoot it for that bench.”

Zomby smacked his hands together. “Wildo. Roger.”

With the snap-back, Bill streaked straight downfield. He’d been careful not to wipe his hands on his pants, or monkey with his helmet, but Ettan was covering him like a blanket just the same.

Bill looked over his shoulder without slowing. Zomby’s arm went back. The ball came up. Bill cut sharply to the left, threw Ettan off balance swerved to the right.

Zomby’d put too much steam in his throw. The leather was so high Bill would have to go out of bounds to get it. But he might! And he did! He went up, snagged the ball, came down with his feet a foot inside the sideline.

Then Ettan hit him, from behind, knocked him over the white stripe, into a couple of Stanford substitutes. A sharp pain stabbed at Bill’s left shoulder. He got his knees under him, feeling dizzy.

The Indian trainer ran over. “All right, Cady?”

Bill wiped sweat off his face with the jersey of his right arm. “Sure.”

Probably was, at that. He’d cracked into one of those subs hard enough to loosen his back teeth. That red-hot knife jabbing into his shoulder was most likely a bone bruise.

He knew better, by the time he’d lined up on the Stanford forty-five. He rested his weight on his right arm, cringed involuntarily when Zomby pounded him on the back in, congratulation. Something was busted up there. Shoulder-blade. Or collarbone.

Zomby noticed something was wrong. In the next huddle, he asked: “You hurt, keed?”

Bill thought fast. If he said ‘Yes,’ they’d take him out. If they took him out, they’d lose the threat of having a long pass go for a TD... and even if he wasn’t going to be able to grab those long ones with that agony in his shoulder, still the ground attack would go better if the threat remained. He said, “No. I’m jake. Jarred me some, is all.”

Zomby’s forehead wrinkled in disbelief, but he let it go at that. On the play, he went through guard for seven. That fear of having Cady get loose for a long shot was opening up the secondary for those power smashes.

Bill finished the quarter in a haze. He walked slowly to the other end of the field remained standing on the enemy twenty-eight because it was less painful than to lie down and get up again.

Three plays after the fourth period began, Mike called for a thirty-four. Bill shook his head. “Gimme a breather. Got jolted up there a little.”

Hustling Mike scowled. “Okay. Thirty-eight.” He glanced toward the bench to see if Snub had noticed anything wrong with Bill. Snub gave no sign.

The thirty-eight was a wide pass to Mike himself, after a fake sweep. It went sweet and Mike zigged and zagged and hip-slipped down to the four before they rode him into the ground. Zomby smashed it over. Zomby booted it over, too, for the extra.

What’s the difference who made the score? Bill gritted his teeth and forced himself to jog back to the kickoff as if nothing was the matter with him. What’s the difference, long’s we tied ’em?

But, though his mind was dazed with the effort of maintaining a normal appearance, he had a grim feeling there was a difference. He might have taken that ball over, on a thirty-two. They might have been yelling “Cadydidit! Cadydidit” now, instead of “Agaro! Agaro!”

Vaguely he realized that his chief regret was on account of Lou Ann, there in the stands somewhere. Not on account of the headlines, or what they might mean to his football future.

He fought in a fog, while Mike stormed and raged at them to break up those Stanford off-tackle smashes. They went clear down to the Stallions’ six, before Telfer batted down a fourth down pass.

In the first huddle, Zomby asked him again if he was okay.

“Hell, yes,” he snarled.

Mike called for a thirty-two on their own twenty-five, Bill bobbed his head. “Short,” he told Zomby. “Shoelaces.” That way he wouldn’t have to run so hard, jolt himself with that final jump.

He doubted if he could make it anyway. But this was it. If he couldn’t complete this, Snub would sense there was something wrong, and yank him for sure.

Not that Loftis couldn’t hold up his end. But without the decoy value of Zombrorowski — to — Cady, Bill knew he wasn’t kidding himself about it, — the Stallions scoring punch would be weakened.

He got off fast, let Ettan think he was loafing along in preparation for that final spurt. When the ball came, he pivoted, — and a cleaver cut at his shoulder. He took two steps back toward the line of scrimmage and fell on his knees. He fell on his face, too, after he had the ball in his belly pads.

They picked up twenty good yards on that. O’Doul added four more. Mike sneaked through for a bare six and the first. Zomby slammed into guard for three.

“Thirty-four,” barked Mike in the huddle. “Can do?”

The faces of the men in the huddle swam hazily before Bill’s eyes. “Way down yonder, Zombo,” his voice sounded faint and faraway in his own ears. It would have to be this time, or else. He wasn’t going to be able to stick it out much longer. But maybe he could ring up one more before he closed up shop.

He got away with all the speed he could find, but he couldn’t tell whether it was fast enough. He’d lost that fine edge of judging pace somewhere in the sea of racking pain. He came down to Ettan, and it seemed as if he had weights in his shoes. He glanced over his shoulder. Zomby was still retreating, still feinting.

Bill cut right, braked, came back a stride, and Ettan streaked in front of him, to interecept a low one. Bill spun, raced toward the Stanford goal. The ball loped up... high... a long, long shot. Five, maybe seven yards ahead.

Bill put the last sliver of effort into those next six steps. Ettan sprinted up beside him! They went in the air as if they’d been welded together.

Bill made a convulsive stab above him, not really seeing the ball, but feeling it. Feeling, too, a shattering, blasting shock.

That was all he did feel.

They had to pry the ball out of his fingers when they lifted him off the goal-line and slid him onto the stretcher.

XIII

There were fifty people milling around the television studio. Bill let Snub steer him through the maze of cameras and reflectors so nobody would bang against the sling that held up his left arm.

Zomby saw him first. He plowed a path for Lou Ann and her father. “Ready to look pretty for the people, Bill?”

Bill said: “Hi, shugie.”

She touched the sling with her fingertips, “Hurt bad, Billyum?”

“Not now. Not any more. I’ve been looking for a nice nurse, though.”

“I’m a nice nurse,” Lou Ann said.

Walch, senior, held out a thin hand. “Unbelievable. Altogether incredible. That a man should play an entire quarter with a broken shoulder blade: And to top it off, catch a fifty-five yard pass for the touchdown that beat Stanford.”

Bill bobbed his head at Snub. “Took more than one catch to win a Coast conference. There’s the guy ought to take bows.”

Lou Ann’s father beamed. “Quite so, Cady. As a matter of fact he’s going to take more than that, on Mister Murfree’s program, here in a few minutes. He’s going to take a new five year contract!”

Murf called, “Makeup, Mister Garret. You’ll look like something they fished out of the sewer unless we doll you up.”

Walch and Snub went toward the makeup man.

Bill slid an arm around Lou Ann. “Just shows. You never can tell. I had your old man figured out all wrong. Thought he was gunning for Snub’s hide.”

She laughed. “That business about dissatisfaction among the team? That was a put-up job, Billyum.”

“Putup?” He felt foolish again.

“I’d told dad about you, and the way you felt about — well, money. He didn’t want me to have anything to do with you, naturally, — because he assumed you were just interested in his money. I tried to tell him you didn’t even know I was anything but a shop girl. He couldn’t believe that. So he was trying you out. Trying to find out if there was anything you were more interested in than the pursuit of a buck.” She grinned and wrinkled her nose at him. “He found out all right. I wish I’d been there to hear it.”

Zomby cut in. “Where were you, anyway? I tried to get you on the phone, to warn you Bill was coming over with blood in his eye. Your father said you were down on your farm. I didn’t even know you had a farm.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” She pretended surprise. “Oh, yes. I had a little money of my own saved up. I bought me a couple hundred acres of cherry orchard. Down near Banning.”

“Banning?” Bill cursed himself for that parrot business again. “You bought a farm near Banning?”

“Sure,” she grinned. “So I can learn something about fruit ranching before I get married and settle down to cherries as a business. If it is a business,” she finished doubtfully. “Some people think it’s not so hot...”

Bill pulled her close with his good arm. “Shugie,” he said, “You might not make a million at it. But on you, it’ll look swell.”

Content

Stewart Sterling
The Fumbling Phantom

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