“No good!” Dynamite muttered. “But we gotta’ score! We just gotta’ score!”
There are some things in this life that “just must” be done but, in the end, because of circumstances beyond our control, cannot be done. Hillcrest did not score in that quarter.
Never in all his life had Dynamite been so disappointed, and never had he looked upon a more radiant smile than he saw on Kentucky’s face as he approached the bench.
“We’ll get ’em,” the mountain boy promised. “Two touchdowns in the last quarter. It’s written in the stars. I saw it in my forecast this morning.”
“You been studying the stars?” Dynamite asked.
“It’s all written down in a book,” Kentucky was shedding his blanket. The hot drink from Jensie’s brown jug was still coursing through his veins.
“But, Kentucky,” Dynamite remonstrated, “perhaps Doc won’t let you.”
“He’s gone,” Kentucky grinned broadly. “Somebody’s sick, an auto accident or something. He left fifteen minutes ago.”
Dynamite was sunk. “I’d rather we lost the game,” he muttered.
By the time the whistle blew he had snapped out of that mood. Indeed he felt more cheerful than he had at any time that day. Somehow, without Kentucky at left half the picture had not been right. Now it was perfect. “All the same,” he muttered, “I’ll not send him through the line. That would be murder.”
When the hundreds of Hillcrest enthusiasts saw the slim Kentucky boy rise from his place on the bench, throw himself through a series of wild antics to set his blood racing, then walk quietly to his place behind the line, a strange silence came over them. This lasted for some twenty seconds then, like the coming of a wind storm in summer, there arose a sound that increased second by second until at last it filled all the sky. Speaking of it long after, Punch Dickman said it made his ears tingle. “It was a sign,” he added. “A sure sign of victory.”
But was it? At the start things went badly. Three line-bucks failed. The punt that followed shot straight into the air. Rabbit almost retrieved the ball, but failed. Fighting like tigers, the Naperville boys battled their way to Hillcrest’s twenty-yard line.
As Dynamite scanned the faces of his men, he read their dogged determination, but something else—a note of despair. Kentucky was not like that. He was smiling. His eyes shone. His lips were parted. He was murmuring something. Dynamite listened. What he heard sounded strange: “It’s a wet day. Somebody’s going to drop the ball.”