to kick-off once more. Whether by design or not, the pigskin was
driven directly at Grinnell's offending player.
"I'll take it!" cried Frank, racing over from the side.
"No!" shouted Mack, "It's _mine_!"
Something in Mack's brain went hot at the realization that his
team-mates were trusting him no longer. Here was Frank, trying to take
a ball away from him which was rightfully his to accept. Frank made
the catch, snatching the ball practically out of Mack's arms.
"Get in front of me!" he yelled.
Mack had no other choice. Pomeroy players were sifting through
Grinnell's interference as Mack shot up the field, with the
fleet-footed Frank constantly urging him on to greater speed, until
both got behind a wedge of their own team members who were doing an
excellent job of crashing Pomeroy tacklers. At mid-field the wedge was
broken up and Mack and Frank emerged from the heap on their own.
"To the right!" directed Frank, seeing that two tacklers were bearing
down from the left. Mack changed directions obediently.
Grinnell supporters, wild with hope, screamed the two runners on.
"Look out from behind!" they shrieked, as a Pomeroy player, giving mad
chase, was rapidly closing up the gap.
Frank looked back over his shoulder, then called to the fellow who had
put his own team in the hole.
"Mack--drop back and take that guy out!"
"Okay!" answered Mack, dropping at once to the rear as Frank raced past
him.
The Pomeroy tackler loomed up almost at once and Mack, whose charge
down the field as Frank's interferer had been fraught with one
spectacular piece of frenzied blocking after another, now completed his
task by hurling himself in front of the last threat to Frank's
sensational touch down dash from kick-off. Tackler and interferer went
down in a thudding pile as Grinnell's star halfback crossed Pomeroy's
goal line and triumphantly touched the ball down. Then the field
rocked with sound.
"What a run!" gasped Dave Morgan, waving his crutch. "And what a piece
of interfering! Mack sure produced that time! Didn't look like he was
handing the game to Pomeroy then, did it?... Come on, gang--this old
game isn't lost yet!"
But a great groan went the rounds as the pass from center was bad and
Frank missed the kick for extra point. Score: Pomeroy, 14, Grinnell, 6!
"If we make another touchdown and kick the goal, we'll still be a point
behind!" grieved a Grinnell supporter. "There goes our outsid
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