"But of course he does!" he muttered an instant later. "Isn't he always after them to get together, though sometimes it seems as if he might go for them a little harder? I--I hope they do--before it's too late."
But somehow he could not bring himself to be very confident. To pull together a team that has been playing "every man for himself" is one of the hardest things in the world. Defeat will often do it more thoroughly than anything, but, in their case, defeat would mean the loss of all they had been striving for. It would have been better had they been up against any other team to-day. Pushed hard and forced to fight for a slender victory, they might have realized something of their weakness. But the very ease with which goal after goal was scored brought self-confidence and cock-sureness instead of wisdom.
"I guess we'll grab that little old pennant, all right," Dale heard more than one declare in the dressing-room. "Why, those dubs actually scored a goal on Troop One!"
The boy wanted to remind them that this was at the very beginning of the season, and since then two of their best men had left Troop Six for boarding-school. But from a raw tenderfoot and inconsidered member of the scrub any such comment would savor of cheekiness, so he kept silent.
On Monday the practice started out in such a casual, perfunctory manner that Sherman suddenly stopped the play and lashed out, sparing nobody. He was white-hot, and not hesitating to mention names, he told them just what he thought of their smug complaisance, their careless, unfounded confidence.
"You fellows seem to think all you have to do is to show up on the field Saturday and the other crowd are going to take to cover!" he snapped. "You walk through the plays without an idea of team-work, or mutual support, or anything. That isn't football; it's just plain foolishness! Why, the lines are as full of holes as a colander--and you don't even know it! I tell you, unless we get together and stop those gaps and work for the team _right_, that game Saturday will be a joke."
He hesitated an instant, striving for self-control. When he went on, his tone was slightly moderated. "Come ahead, now, fellows; let's get into it and do the thing the way it should be done. We can if we only will."