CHAPTER XIII
APRON STRINGS
"It's an outrage!" declared S. S. Zane, banging an indignant fist onthe table in the Scouts' clubhouse. "Yes, sir, an outrage; that's whatit is!"
The subject under discussion was a bulletin that had been posted thatday on the board in the high-school hall. It read:
NOTICE!
The following basketball players will report at 12:30 Saturday afternoon, ready for the trip to Elkana:
_Left Forward_ Kiproy _Right Forward_ Barrett _Center_ Sheffield _Left Guard_ Collins _Right Guard_ Turner
_Substitutes_ Payton, Jones, Henderson, Zane
(Signed) ROYAL SHEFFIELD, _Captain_.
"Spite-work, I tell you!" chimed in Specs. "You know who picked theplayers as well as I do, with Professor Leland home sick in bed.Sheffield did. He's captain of the team, president of the athleticassociation, and--and enemy of the Boy Scouts, isn't he? Well!"
"Sheffield's all right himself," Bi admitted slowly, "but"--he lookedup defiantly--"but the others aren't any better than we Scouts who havebeen playing."
"We were on the regular team when we beat Elkana that first game, Iguess!" blazed Jump. "It was the other way around then, with Kiproy,Barrett, Collins and Turner as the substitutes. Right after that,Sheffield began to sack us, one at a time. There were three Scouts onthe team that beat Grant City, then two in the Charles City mix-up, andfinally only Bunny against Deerfield. Now there isn't a single one ofus on the regular five. It's a wonder we are still in the running forthe pennant."
"Well, we won't be," prophesied S. S.; "not after this Elkana game. Youjust wait and see!"
"They certainly buried us the last time," said Bunny, making a wryface. "But so did Grant, and you all know we nosed them out in therubber. I wonder--Bonfire, what's wrong? What does this new line-upmean, anyhow?"
Number 8 of the Black Eagle Patrol stopped tapping the table with hispencil and looked up. "Want the truth?" he asked, with a smile.
There was a sheeplike nodding of heads. One and all, the Scouts hadbeen won to the uncanny results of Bonfire's powers of observation.
"Well," began the tenderfoot slowly, "I have an idea Sheffield istrying to face Elkana with the strongest team he can put together;he'll have to if he expects to win, because Elkana has easily thebest team, with the possible exception of our own, in the high-schoolleague. I don't think he has dropped you Scouts because of spite."
Bi bristled. "You mean that those other four are better players than weare?"
"No." Bonfire considered the case judicially. "No, you fellows arebetter than they are--individually."
"But--"
"Wait a minute, Bi. I think I can make you understand what I mean.Basketball, you see, isn't like football, where the quarter calls asignal that tells some player what to do; nor like baseball, where youfield a certain position, or bat yourself on base, or try to bringanother fellow home. No, basketball is different, a lot different.When the ball comes to you, maybe you dribble it along and pass it tosomebody else, and maybe you try for a basket yourself."
"I don't see--"
"You won the first Elkana game," Bonfire interrupted placidly, "bypure luck. You lost the second because you were outplayed at everyturn. You'll lose the third and deciding one, too, if Sheffield startsthe same team again, playing the same kind of game."
"But you just said we were better players than Barrett and Kiproy andCollins and Turner."
Bonfire looked him squarely in the face. "Better individually, I said.The trouble with you fellows is that you are too good. You can shootbaskets so accurately that you forget there is more to the game thanmerely looping the ball for a goal every time you get hold of it. Lookhere, Bunny, who shot the most baskets in the game we won from Elkana?"
"Sheffield," the patrol leader admitted readily.
"And in the Grant game? And the Deerfield game?"
"Sheffield. We aren't claiming, though, that he isn't the bestbasketball player in Lakeville. He is, I guess. But in those lastgames, at least, he had more chances to score than any other player."
"Exactly!" said Bonfire. "And that is how Lakeville will beat ElkanaSaturday--if it does. By teamwork, by each player's forgetting himselffor the good of the machine, by feeding the ball at every opportunityto the best basket-shooter of them all--Royal Sheffield. Kiproy won'ttry to score, but to pass the ball to Sheffield whenever he can, andthen hover under the basket for a possible miss; and so will Collinsand Barrett and Turner. You four fellows might loop it in from thecenter of the floor, or from off to one side--sometimes! Sheffieldwon't miss one try out of five. Do you see what I mean?"
It was obvious that they did. There was a solemn nodding of heads.Curiously enough, slow-thinking Bi was the one to voice the thoughtthat was taking root in the mind of each of them.
"But why," he asked, "didn't Sheffield explain his system to Bunny andS. S. and Jump and me, and have us feed the ball to him in the game?"
Bonfire answered with another question. "Why did you fellows thinkhe had dropped you from the team for spite?" He waited a moment forthe idea to grip. "Don't you see, Bi, that just as surely as you havebeen mistrusting him, just that surely he has been questioning yourwillingness to do him a good turn without hope of reward? The othersare so glad to make the team that they will play as he says."
"But we would--"
"Of course, you would," Bonfire caught him up. "But Sheffield doesn'tknow that your good turns are not done for pay, even in applause.He doesn't know that when a Boy Scout does a good turn, he doesn'twait around for thanks; doesn't even tell anybody else he has done agood turn. I am sorry he can't understand, because I know that if youfellows only had the chance, you'd play up to him as those others neverwill. But--Well, let's keep that eighth law in mind; let's be cheerfuland obey orders." He glanced apologetically toward Bunny. "I didn'tmean to preach," he added, smiling.
Bunny smiled back understandingly. At that moment, he was thinking notonly that Bonfire was a mighty good Boy Scout, but that he would makean equally satisfactory patrol leader. If the Black Eagles ever neededa new Number 1----
"Going to the game?" Specs asked Bonfire abruptly.
"No--o. I'd like to, but I can't afford to spend the money."
Bonfire did not mention the ninth law, about thrift, but Bunny knew theboy had it in mind. "Yes, sir," he told himself, "he'd make a dandypatrol leader. Wish he was going to Elkana with us; he helps win moregames than any player."
If Bunny had known of the problem he was to face at seven-thirty thenext Saturday evening, between halves, he would have put that wish instronger words; for he was to need Bonfire's advice and help more thanever before.
At two-ten on the afternoon of the fateful day, the manager of theElkana Athletic Association met them as they stepped from the train.
"Good news!" he greeted. "We have arranged to play the game thisevening in the Hallworth College gymnasium. Come on; I'll take youright over."
And a little later:
"This is the dressing room. You can put your clothes in this biglocker while you play. Yonder are the shower baths. Now, if you like,you can use the main floor upstairs to practice till three-thirty; sortof give you the feel of the place, anyhow. Well, good-by and good luckto-night--only not too much of that last!"
Captain Sheffield elected to take advantage of the invitation to puthis five through a short, brisk practice. Ten minutes proved ample,not only to satisfy him that the team was on edge, but to bathe it inperspiration.
"Call it a day!" said Sheffield at last. "Now get your baths and meetme here about six, to go out to supper together."
Bunny noticed that he left them free to do as they pleased the balanceof the afternoon. It worried him a little. If he had been captain ofthe team, he would have warned the boys, at least, to loaf and rest asmuch as possible, that they might be fresh for th
e game. But, afterall, Sheffield was in charge, not he; and Bunny knew Royal well enoughto realize that youth's contempt for "tying anybody to his apronstrings", as he had once put it.
But the tiny unrest would not down. Ten minutes later, his body glowingpink after a shower and a brisk rub with a great Turkish towel, Jumpfed new fuel to the worry.
"Bunny," he said carelessly, "you don't mind if we go swimming, do you?There's a big tank in there, with the water so clear you can see thebottom all over."
"Sorry, Jump," the patrol leader decided, "but it wouldn't do. You'dtire yourself out in no time."
"The other fellows are swimming right now," Jump protested.
Bunny clenched his hands. "The Scouts, you mean?"
"No, Kiproy and Collins and Turner and Barrett. Bi said we ought to getyour permission before we went in."
"Not now," Bunny told him. "After the game, maybe, but not now." Hewatched Jump slouch dejectedly away. "I wish," he told himself, "thatSheffield had stayed around and told those others not to go swimming.It won't help their speed any in the basketball game."
But at supper that evening, when they were guests of the Elkana team,the four boys who had been in the tank looked so fresh and fit forbattle that Bunny decided no harm had been done. The business of eatinga delicious meal, and of getting acquainted with their opponents, andof bandying challenges and promises and good-natured threats back andforth apparently galloped the hands of the clock on the wall; andit seemed no time at all before they were piling upstairs from thegymnasium dressing quarters into a room flooded with brilliant lightand banked on all sides by a large and noisy gathering.
Some official tossed a coin for choice of baskets, and Sheffield said"Heads." He laughed when he won.
"I don't see any advantage either way," he told the Elkana captain."Pick your side, please."
From the substitutes' bench, Bunny nodded his appreciation of this finesportsmanship. After all, Sheffield had his good points. He watchedeagerly as the Lakeville captain and a tall, rangy Elkana boy facedeach other in the middle of the floor. Then the referee tossed the ballhigh into the air between them, piped a shrill blast on his whistle asit reached its top limit, and the game was on.
What followed was so rapid that Bunny could hardly follow the play.Sheffield leaped and whacked the ball to the right, straight for theside. But Turner was there to make the catch. He dribbled it, dodged arushing opponent, dribbled it another yard, and suddenly shot it, witha long underhand pass, across the floor to Collins, far on the left.Like ants, the players swarmed toward him; the whole playing court,indeed, was curiously like an ant hill. Collins bounced the ball justonce before he shot it to Barrett, on the opposite side. Barrett spunit through an open space to Kiproy, who was in a corner of the greatquadrangle. By this time, Sheffield had raced down the center to a spotjust in front of the basket. Here he took a perfect throw, balanced theball in his hands, and then looped it upward for the net, scoring thefirst two points of the game in exactly twenty-seven seconds.
"Oh, boy!" gasped Jump on the bench, "I guess that's teamwork." And theother three Lakeville substitutes agreed that it certainly was.
But one basket in the first half-minute does not spell victory. Evenbefore Lakeville had scored again, by an intricate triangular shootingcombination that evolved a forward crisscross, Bunny fancied he coulddetect a laggard movement here and there; not enough, in any oneinstance, to interfere with rapid and accurate passing, but still ahint of possible future trouble.
After that, while Elkana was looping its first basket and Lakevillecountering with its third, Bunny saw more and more clearly that onlySheffield was maintaining the dashing pace the team had set in thebeginning. Barrett was puffing hard and running with a slight effort;Collins and Turner were slowing perceptibly; Kiproy was making passesan instant before they were necessary. In another five minutes of hardplay, with the ball rushed from one end of the court to the other adozen times, the lessening of snap and rush on Lakeville's part wasbecoming hideously apparent. Elkana had scored twice more, making thecount six all.
Bunny knew the turn of the tide was at hand. The Elkana cheerers knewit, too, and yelled and tooted horns and rang bells and swung into amighty rhythmical roar of, "One, two, will do!" It was a silly thing,Bunny thought; but it wasn't half as bad as the tag of, "Three, four,five, six; all scored on tricks!" when the goals reached that figure;nor the jubilant, "Seven, eight; just you wait!" when the Elkana teamadded another basket. Lakeville's total was still six.
With the first half nearly over, the visiting team was playing withits back against the wall, strictly on the defensive. Sheffield wasstill alert and dangerous, but he could not shoot goals when the otherplayers failed to feed him the ball. A dozen times, it seemed toBunny, the captain broke up threatening formations of Elkana's almostsingle-handed; and once, just at the end, he shot a clean basket fromnear the center of the floor, looping the ball upward in a great arcand dropping it like a plummet within the iron ring that supported thenet. But Elkana scored again, too; and when the pistol shot signaledthe end of the half, the blackboard showed: Lakeville, 8; Elkana, 10.
It meant defeat, Bunny knew, inglorious defeat. Lakeville was slowingand weakening; Elkana was only warming to the final onslaught. In away, too, his conscience told him, the fault was his; he might havegone straight to the tank that afternoon and begged the fellows to comeout before they tired themselves. He wished now that he had.
Between halves, while the four exhausted players lay stretched onbenches, Sheffield wandered down the aisle between the rows of lockersfor a glass of water. Bunny took quick advantage of his absence.
"Bring a drink of water for each of them, won't you?" he saidquerulously to the three substitutes. He waited till they were out ofearshot. "Look here, you fellows!" he began grimly, spreading his legsand leaning toward them in his earnestness. "You're ready to drop,every last one of you, because of that long swim this afternoon. DoesSheffield know about it?"
"Didn't mention it to him," said Kiproy carelessly. "Why?"
"Somebody should!" snapped Bunny. "Not one of you is fit to playanother minute, and he ought to know the reason."
Collins sat up. "Are you going to snitch?"
"No, I'm not. I'm no tattletale. But I'm going to ask you not to startthis next half."
"So the substitutes can go in, eh?" It was Turner's slur.
"Maybe they can't hold that Elkana five," flashed Bunny, "but they'refresh, anyhow, and not half dead. Will you drop out, Kiproy?"
"No, I won't!"
"You, Collins? Turner? Barrett?"
In each case, the reply was a curt refusal. Barrett added doubtfully,"We'll be in shape by the time play starts again."
"After swimming in the tank for nearly an hour!" Bunny criedscornfully. "You know better than that, all of you. Once more--"
"Time's up! Come on!" It was Sheffield's cool voice. The captain stoodat the end of the long bench.
With a sigh, Bunny brought his feet together and straightened up. "Ican't do a single thing," he told himself bitterly. "I won't snitch,and I can't force them to quit playing. We're beaten, that's all."
Up the winding stairway marched the five members of the team; upand through the doorway at the top, and out upon the main floorof the gymnasium, to certain, inevitable defeat. On the bottomstep, unconscious that he was blocking the way for the other threesubstitutes, Bunny watched till the last foot lifted and disappeared.
Boy Scouts of Lakeville High Page 14