“Are you following me?” He did not wait for a reply. “When the quarter gets the ball he immediately faces left and the left end comes round like an end-around play. The quarter fakes giving him the ball but hugs it tightly to his noble breast. When the Pitt line has swung round after our left end, the quarter leaps to position and laterals the ball to Old Kentucky.”
“And Old Kentucky goes racing forward to a touchdown,” Rabbit Jones the right half breathed. “How sweet!”
“It’s a keen play,” Red Dynamite exclaimed. “If we only know it well enough.”
“You’re going to know it well enough!” the coach struck the table with his fist. “That one and two or three more as hard to learn and as swell to play, if only you know how. Will you do it?”
“We’ve just got to do it!” Stagger said with solemn emphasis.
“And now the next play,” the coach wiped the board clean, drew more circles then started explaining a second trick performance.
All that week, sweating and toiling, working the old beans overtime, the team went through the business of acting out plays that in the beginning were confusing but in the end as natural and clear as the bright light of day.
More than once, during those gruelling hours as Johnny stood beside him watching, the coach turned to him with a smile to exclaim low:
“Good boy, Johnny! You sure found us a player. I never saw anything like the way that Kentucky boy takes in those new plays. Quick as a whip too! I suppose it’s his Kentucky breeding.”
“Sure is,” Johnny grinned. “There are times down there in the mountains when there are just two classes of people. The quick and the dead. The quick one gets his gun out from under his coat, the other just naturally goes to the cemetery. Kentucky’s grandfather was killed in a feud. His father had a silk handkerchief drawn through his chest once, where a bullet had gone first.”
“Whew!” the coach whistled, “No wonder he’s quick!”
Strangely enough, despite the coach’s warning, apparently disregarding all their trick plays, Dynamite, who was captain and called the plays, started the game with a series of forward passes. The first two were blocked. The third, almost a lateral pass, was good for a gain of five yards.
They punted, held the opposing team to a single first down, then, as the opposing team punted, began again with forward passes. The second of these was intercepted and, but for a lightning-like tackle by Old Kentucky—which brought the spectators to their feet—might have resulted in disaster.