Boarding schools -- Juvenile fiction; Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Football -- Juvenile fiction; Football stories
Well, there’s no use making a long story any longer. Joe had speed, if
he didn’t know much football. Baseball had taught him that; and it had
taught him to be quick on the getaway, too, and it was quickness on the
getaway that got him through the Mills’ lines. After that the quarter
was the only thing between him and the goal. I guess there wasn’t one
of the Mills bunch that could have run him down from behind. That
quarter tried to get Joe near the twenty-yard line, but it looked to me
like he was too certain, for Joe sort of skidded on one foot, twisted
his body and was off on the other foot, and I don’t believe the quarter
even touched him. Two long-legged Mills guys chased him over the line,
squarely between the posts, but it wasn’t until Joe was lying on the
ball that they reached him.
After the ball was brought out Brill tried to make those six points
into seven, but he missed the goal worse than Pete Swanson had. No one
cared much for 6 to 2 was good enough, and after Mills had kicked off
again and we had piled into their line a couple of times the game was
over.
I happened to be in front of Routledge about half an hour later, when
Joe’s folks were getting ready to go home, and I could see that Joe had
made an awful hit with the whole bunch. Old man Morris was as proud
as anything, and so was Joe’s mother, while that uncle of his, with
his trick mustaches, was so haughty that he bumped his head getting
into the car. I guess the girl was tickled, too, but you couldn’t
tell by her looks. Joe was mighty modest, too, I’ll say that for him.
You wouldn’t have guessed he was a hero, just by looking at him. I
helped Aunty into the car, and she smiled and thanked me and said, as
she shook hands: “I think you did just beautifully, Mr. Billings, but
wasn’t Joseph wonderful?”
“Wonderful,” I said without cracking a smile, “isn’t the word for it!”
When Rusty got back and heard about the game he looked sort of
disgusted, and then he laughed and finally he looked surprised.
“Kenton?” he said, frowning. “How come, Newt? We dropped Kenton two
weeks ago!”
“No, you didn’t, Coach,” said Newt. “Maybe you meant to, but you
didn’t.”
“That so? Must have forgot it then. H-m. Well, it looks like it was a
fortunate thing I did forget it, seeing Kenton was the only one of you
with enough pep to make a score!”
That evening we were talking it over in Number 11, four or five of
us. Joe didn’t show up, being so modest, I suppose. Finally Newt said:
“Well, we can laugh all we want to, but we’ve got to hand it to Joe
Kenton for one thing. He’s the only fellow I ever heard of who played
in a football game, in which both sides scored, and made all the
points!”
When the Munson game was over, all but forty seconds of it, and we had
them beaten, 19 to 7, Rusty beckoned Joe from the bench. “Kenton,” he
said, “I’m going to put you in so you can get your letter. Go on in at
right half, son, but――listen here――no matter what happens _don’t you
touch that ball_!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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