Page:The fighting scrub, (IA fightingscrub00barb).pdf/110

 Sim turned, looked and panted: "Take it!" Clif whirled, stood and held his hands out. Never before in a contest had he ever attempted a long catch of a forward-pass, and he wished devoutly that the ball had gone to Sim. Without seeing he knew that the whole field of players was converging on him. Then the ball struck his hands, and by some miracle, as it seemed to him, stuck! Turning quickly, he had a blurred vision of Sim crashing into an opponent. The background of the brief picture was a confusion of moving bodies, looming larger with each instant.

Then he dug out, the ball tucked firmly between arm and body, his right hand outstretched for action. He could run, could Clif, and he ran now, but there was the First Team quarter bearing diagonally across to intercept him, and the fleet Jensen was close behind. It seemed to Clif that he had taken but a dozen strides when Jensen shot for him, and, despite his plunge to the right, caught him, and brought him crashing down, and yet when he was pulled, breathless, to his feet a moment later, there was the fifty-yard line behind the ball! Somehow he had successfully caught a thirty-yard pass, and carried it seventeen yards further! The Scrub assailed him as one man, and did him painful honor!

The First was disgruntled, and Mr. Otis's disgusted observations did little to soothe it. Tom, smiting Clif mightily between his shoulders and depriving him momentarily of what little breath he had left after being thumped to earth by Stoddard, and sat on by Jensen,