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Updated: June 21, 2025
Thus Dick, though suffering at that time from injuries, and forbidden to play, had been forced out onto the field to help win the great game of the season. Of course a kicker like Drayne did not like Prescott. Dick worried but little on that account. "There! they are coming back," Greg announced. "They are grinning at us again."
"Here, what's this?" called a voice, and a heavy hand seized Dick by the collar behind, pulling him back. It was Heathcote Drayne, Phin's father, a powerful man, who now held Prescott. Phin was quickly upon his feet and start forward. From across the street sounded a warning cry, followed by footsteps. "Now, I've got you!" cried Phin exultantly. He struck, and landed, on Dick's cheek.
Dick bent over, holding the ball for the snapback, while his battle front formed on each side of him. Dave Darrin, quarter-back, raced back a few steps, then halted, looking keenly, swiftly over the field. Phin Drayne drew his breath sharply. Then his heart almost stopped beating as he listened. "Thirty-eight -nine -eleven -four!" sounded Darrin's voice, sharp and clear.
Those who had not been picked for either team lined up at the sides. There was a chance that some of them might be called out as subs, though practice in signal work was hardly likely to result in any of the players being injured. Drayne did not appear to take his mild snub very seriously.
It drove him to fever heat, now, to see how easily the captain of the football team repulsed him. "I'll get your wind going, and then I'll hammer you for fair!" snarled Drayne. "Mistake there, somewhere," retorted Dick coolly. But Drayne was coming in, harder and harder. Dick simply had to do something.
To them there was really little in life that did not come through the government military academies. Phin Drayne, lounging about purposely, with the shambling gait, often saw these happy chums, and scowled after them. "Everything seems to come to them!" growled Phin. "What rot it is to say that this is a square world, and that everyone has the same chance! Why doesn't something good come my way?"
And there the matter dropped, for the time. Had Dick & Co. and some other High School fellows but known it, however, Drayne would have borne close watching. Putting the Tag on the Sneak Anything that Dick Prescott had charge of went along at leaps and bounds. Hence the football eleven was in good shape ten days earlier than Coach Morton could remember to have happened before.
"I was talking, for the moment, as an outsider," replied Phin Drayne, flushing. "Change around then, Mr. Drayne, and consider yourself, like every other student of this school, as an insider wherever the Gridley interests are involved." Drayne moved away, a half-sneer on his face. "I don't like that young man," muttered Mr. Morton confidentially to the young captain of the team.
For, almost instantly after Reade had called out, some of the military students around Drayne had demanded of him whether there was a shadow of truth in what Reade had said. Phin Drayne's "brass" had deserted him. He knew, anyway, that these comrades could dig up his past record at Gridley very quickly. Drayne knew that his days at Fordham were over.
"I knew some wouldn't, but I thought the whole affair would make such a row that Prescott would never be quite able to hold up his head in Gridley again," declared Drayne huskily. "But I thought that it would stop his thinking of going to West Point, anyway." "Instead of which," muttered Simmons dryly, "you'll get four years -or more, Drayne at some place that won't be West Point."
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