He looked away from the tight cluster of players beside the goal posts, glanced at the telescreen. There it was. The north cameraman had it.
The picture was as clear as if Murf was peering over the referee’s shoulder. Cady’s figure was doubled over in the middle of a crush of surrounding white jerseys.
“It’s Cady’s ball! The ref flings his hands up over his head! It’s a touchdown! CADY DID IT AGAIN!! Just listen to that crowd... go... crazy!!”
II
The clock said three minutes to go in the fourth stanza. The scoreboard said USC 14 VISITORS 20, ball on the USC 30, second and seven. In the huddle, Hustling Mike grunted, “They’ll be laying for you if you try it again kid.”
Cady deadpanned: “Okay. Let ’em lay. Gimme this one short, huh, Zomby? At my shoe-laces, huh?”
The quarter smacked his palms together. “A thirty-two to Cady! Take care that right half Bob! Ev’body blocks! Yet’s go!”
Cady came up to the line; crouched; set his cleats.
Opposite him, the huge Trojan tackle growled:
“Here you go, Cady! Flat on your can!”
At Cady’s left, Sam Hardin snarled at the Trojan, “Pull anything out of line, Humpty Dumpty, an’ you know what it’ll take to put you together again!”
Cady said tightly: “I can handle it, Sam.”
Telfer rammed the ball back between his legs to Mike. Cady feinted a check-block, pulled the tackle off balance, sidestepped, drifted into the secondary with that deceptive loping stride.
The Trojan center flung himself in a desperate, rolling block. Cady went up and over him.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Trojan right end flatten O’Doul. There wouldn’t be anyone down in time to take care of that right half, then.
Cady revved it up, sprinting parallel to the line of scrimmage. The halfback breathed down his neck. They raced side by side for a dozen yards. Like a photo finish, Cady grinned to himself. Only the winner wouldn’t be the one in front.
The ball came whipping from Zomby’s outflung arm. Cady took one extra long stride, braked, bounced back as if he’d hit an invisible clothesline, chest high and spun as he recoiled.
He dived back toward the melee of charging linemen, felt the oval smack his palms as the back of his fingers touched grass. He scooped up the leather, tucked it under his right arm, used the left to piston his hand into a Trojan helmet.
Arms grabbed his hips from behind. He kept his legs churning, twisting and turning, hobbling and hopping. The arms slipped to his knees, his ankles, and then were gone.
Chuck Berry raced across pinning him against the sidelines. Cady slowed, dodged, let the safety man come to him. The end did a conga hip-swing, slewed away.
Tacklers came at him out of the ground; he danced the tight rope along that sideline, fox-trotting down to the ten, the five — over.
His face showed nothing as he touched the ball down behind the goal. But there was a fierce surge of elation inside him that matched the tremendous tumult in the stadium.
In his heart, there’d never been any doubt he could make the grade here, with the Class A boys, as Snub Garret had predicted. Still he had his own very special reasons for getting a terrific kick out of this mad pandemonium in the Stallion stands.
The screaming approval of twenty-five thousand frantic fans would have meant a lot to anybody, he knew that. But to William R. Cady, formerly of Banning High and more recently ex Redlands U, those cheers were going to mean a hell of a lot more than they would have to most members of the Stallion Squad.
They were eventually to mean figures in a nice, fat checking account. Dough in the sock. Bonds in the safe deposit.
He, Bill Cady would damn well see to it that the yells and cow-bells and the thumpings of the big bass drum were translated into cold, hard, spendable cash.
He’d had precisely that in mind ever since he discovered his peculiar ability to grab leather out of the air and hold onto it and jack-rabbit with it.
Plenty of other big-time pigskinners had traded line bucks for bucks in the bank. He could do it too... and he meant to do it, or bust a few guts trying.
He tossed the ball to the ref, trotted calmly back to the try-for-point huddle. He had an idea. A cockeyed idea, but one that might help along his private payoff program.
He told Hustling Mike about it:
“Just for laughs, huh, Mike? Were twelve points ahead and there’s only a minute or two left.”
The quarterback scratched his nose dubiously. True they’d come from behind, and there couldn’t be a living soul who’d deny this galloping beanpole had been responsible for two of the scores and for setting up the other one, still...
Zombrorowski growled: “Go on, Mike. Give you three to two th’ kid makes it!”
Mike nodded, barked signals, clapped his hands.
They snapped out of it into the kick formation. The ball came back to Mike, kneeling.
He poised it, faked a touch to the ground, flipped it backward. Zomby caught it shot it like a shortstop pegging to first. Cady drifting casually across the line, reached up, pulled the oval down.
Up in the telebooth Murf chattered: “Call that grandstand stuff, if you want to. Say this new Catch-and-Carry-Kid Snub Garret’s come up with is something of a show-off, making the conversion point the hard way. Still, the crowd ate it up.”
There were only seconds left in the game.
Cady half expected Snub to pull him out of the lineup. It was customary to let a standout performer come off the field by himself wasn’t it, so the crowd could have a chance to howl its head off?
He looked toward the bench. The white-haired coach was worrying the unlighted cigar from one side of his bear-trap mouth to the other, but he wasn’t making any move to rush in a replacement.
So when the gun went off, fifteen seconds later, and Cady linked arms with the rest of the team to give the short yell for USC and jogged off to the sidelines. He wasn’t in the best frame of mind for a quickie interview.
But the Number Three mobile unit was set up right beside the ramp leading down to the field house and Tim Murfree had hurried down from the control booth to make a request of the Lineman of the Hour:
“Hi, Cady... Hey, there, — Bill Cady...”
Cady said, “Howdy”.
Without Murf knowing it the control man up in the booth cut in the Number Three camera.
“How’s it feel,” Murf asked smilingly, “to score a couple times against a great team like the Trojans, your first time in a Stallion game?”
“Feels swell,” Cady started to back down the ramp, unaware he was facing half a million people in bars, restaurants, clubs, homes and hotels all over Southern California. “Only don’t forget it takes a man on both ends of a pass to make it click. That Zomby, now—”
“That’s right.” Murf caught the cameraman’s signal; Keep on, this is great. “Say, Bill, how’d you like to come down to the studio some night and talk about forward passing on our Sportlight program?”
Cady blinked.
“What,” he asked blandly, “is in it for me?”
For the first time in a dozen years of interviewing, Tim Murfree was stopped.
His jaw dropped. His mouth hung open foolishly. What could you say to a creep like this, who asked you what he was going to get out of a radio appearance... when all you were trying to do was give him a great big hand?!