owa men looked a little dazed, but they didn't have time to
comment. The toss-up was rushed through and the two teams lined up, our
team with the ball. It would have done your eyes good to see Rearick
adjust it carefully on a small doily in the exact center of the field,
mince up to it and kick it like an old lady urging a setting hen off the
nest. A Kiowa halfback caught it and started up the field. Right at him
came Birdie Andrews, hat in hand, and when the halfback arrived he bowed
and asked him to stop. The runner declined. McMurty was right behind and
he also begged the runner to stop. Boggs tried to buttonhole him.
Skeeter Wilson, who was as fast as a trolley car, ran along with him for
twenty-five yards, pleading with him to listen to reason and consent to
be downed. It was no use. The halfback went over the goal line. The
Kiowa delegation didn't know whether to go crazy with joy or disgust.
Our end of the grandstand clapped its hands pleasantly. Down in the
Faculty box one or two of the professors, who hadn't forgotten
everything this side of the Fall of Rome, wiggled uneasily and got a
little bit red behind the ears.

The teams changed goals and Rearick kicked off again. This time he
washed the ball carefully and changed his necktie, which had become
slightly soiled. The other Kiowa half caught the ball this time; he
plowed into our boys so hard that McMurty couldn't get out of the way
and was knocked over. Our whole team held up their hands in horror and
rushed to his aid. They picked him up, washed his face, rearranged his
clothes and powdered his nose. He cried a little and wanted them to
telegraph his mother to come, but a big nurse with ribbons in her
cap--it was Maxwell--came out and comforted him and gave him a stick of
candy half as large as a barber-pole.

By this time you could tell the Faculty a mile off. It was a bright red
glow. Every root-digger in the bunch had caught on except Sillcocks. He
was intensely interested and extremely grieved because the Kiowa men did
not enter into the spirit of the occasion. As for the rest of the crowd,
it sounded like drowning men gasping for breath. Such shrieks of pure
unadulterated joy hadn't been heard on the campus in years. When the
teams lined up again Kiowa had got thoroughly wise. They had held a
five-minute session together, had taken off their shin, nose and ear
guards, had combed their hair and had put on their hats. The result was
what you might call