Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/125

 "We had now gained twenty yards and still retained the ball. 'Play a saloon game,' begged Tib, prancing up and down behind Rudolph and studying the field.

"The visitors, still failing to appreciate that they had been working the wrong combination, now drew back long enough to toss up a few orisons to their tribal deity, and then came smash against our centre before we could budge. Dear, dear! how foolish of them, sir, when they could have run the ends!

"‘Boom-a-lacka! boom-a-lacka!' I howled, recalling a fragment of the old yell, while Tib spoiled an off-side play with his club and called on the left end again to lead off.

"But it was Rudolph's turn to score, and every bear knew it, and Maude wouldn't stir a peg. But they fought where they were just the same, and as each bear was now heavily laden with venomous activity, there was enough heathen fur clothing spoiled to keep a city's worthy poor as warm as toast all winter. Inside of six seconds twice as many of the foe were sent ricocheting in a variety of directions; and in sixty seconds we were pushing the whole crowd away. But they did not get clear before Rudolph, angry at missing his turn, got it through his thick noodle that the other side was behaving like river-drivers. And in one off-side play he gathered four of the vermin in his generous arms,