O’Doul took it around right end for the score. Hustling Mike foozled the pass for placement. Zomby’s kick for conversion never got off the ground.
By half time the Stallion’s 6 points looked as big as a blimp. The Huskies hadn’t been able to get their powerhouse rolling.
In the Visitors locker-room, Snub didn’t say much:
“They’ll open up on you, this half. When they do, rush that passer. Tenth of a second can make a lot of difference to a man trying to get a throwing grip on a greasy egg.”
Jersey Joslin said: “Don’t try to get under those guards and tackles. They’re too big. Let ’em skid around in their own mud puddles. Keep ’em off balance, that’s all you got to do.”
You’ll probably park your pants on that hardwood again all this half, Bill noted sourly. Fine way to grab yourself a hunk of headline!
But Snub started him. Maybe Loftis was tiring. Or it might be Snub thought Bill would have a better chance to hurry the passer, on account of his height.
At any rate, he hadn’t been sent in to snag long shots. Hustling Mike ran a couple of line smashes after receiving the kickoff, punted to the enemy forty.
Maybe Zomby had something to do with that decision. Once when the Huskie secondary was pulled in too close, Mike suggested a pass, but Zomby shook His head.
So Mike called for a punt.
Bill went down, tackled the Huskie right half. “Here’s mud in your eye, bud,” he growled.
The stands were full, in spite of the rain. These Washingtonians didn’t let a little thing like weather stop them.
But it stopped the Huskies, for all of the third period and part of the fourth.
They tried spot passes, over-the-line quickies, buttonhooks out past the ends. They completed a few but by the time the receiver had his hands on the ball, the Stallions spread him horizontal.
Both long down-the-field tosses they attempted were incomplete. The second miscue gave the ball to the Stallions on downs on their own thirty.
Mike called for a smash at guard. Zomby got up to the line of scrimmage, got hit by the Huskie center. No gain.
Some Stallion fan who’d journeyed north to yell for the Rampaging Remuda, proceeded to do so in a voice reinforced by ample draughts of cough medicines:
“Cady... We wan’ Cady!”
Mike grinned, looked at Bill, shook his head, said to Zomby: “Boot it, boy. Watcha blocks, ev’body.”
Zomby got it away. High and short. Wobbling in the wind. Curving in the wind.
Bill was down under it fast. There were two Huskie receivers. Left half and quarter. One to block, one to catch.
The quarter circled ahead, under the ball, calling: “Got it, Andy...”
Bill drove at him racing in past the halfback.
The quarter struck out his left arm, scooped in the ball. Bill hit him at the knees. The safety man tossed the leather, underhand, backward. The half caught it on the dead run. He swung wide, lit out for the sideline, went scooting toward the Stallion goal, with nobody near him.
Bill let go of the quarterback, let out an expletive. He’d committed the flank-man’s unpardonable sin. Letting the ball-carrier get outside him!
Bob O’Doul caught the Huskie on the five, but the Washingtonian bulled and staggered and skidded over for six points.
It helped some that Bill, cursing himself with well-remembered GI obscenities, raged in at the snapback, — flung himself desperately at the place kicker, — blocked the extra point with his outstretched fingertips.
But it didn’t help enough. Not from Bill’s point of view. They hadn’t lost. But they could have won... and didn’t.
Nobody to blame but himself, he realized, trooping wearily off the field with the other wet rats at the final gun. He couldn’t pin that on Zomby.
But the feeling persisted that it was the trouble over Lou Ann that had thrown him off stride. So when Zomby muttered, as he stripped off his muddy socks,—
“That was one dilly of a block, Buster,” — Bill didn’t take it with good grace.
“Go climb a cactus,” he snapped. “I played it as if I had my head under water!”
Zomby looked at him queerly without answering.
VIII
The train-ride back to Los Angeles was a dismal business; the Sunday papers picked up at San Francisco on the way down disspelled none of the gloom.
Stallions Stave Off Defeat was the Times head. Huskies Come From Behind To Tie said the Examiner.
Tim Murfree started off his column in the News:
The flashy attach which the Stallions uncovered last week against USC seems to have been just a flash in the pan...
Bill slit the papers disgustedly, stuck the clippings in his pocket. There was scarcely a mention of him in any of the stories, — merely a reference to Cady’s blocking the try for conversion.
Nobody’d dished out any blame to him, not even Jersey Joslin. But there was no ducking it; — an end who let a punt receiver get around him, to go for a score, was no bargain.
When he got back to his room and found the note from Lou Ann slipped under his door, he would have sold out very cheaply indeed. It was just addressed: Bill.
I expect you’re thinking some pretty bitter things about me; I wouldn’t blame you. I can’t stop you from thinking what you want to, — but I’m just as sorry as I can be, — honestly, I am, deep-down sorry, Bill. Because I think you’re such a swell guy... and I wouldn’t want to hurt you, ever.
That’s why I thought it would be better just to let things ride the way they were, before either of us did get hurt. Sooner or later, we both would have, — because, — though we do like a lot of the same things, — we don’t really have the same ideas about which are the important things.
I’d never blame you for wanting to make a pile of money; I hope with all my heart you do. Most of all I hope, that when you do get it, it’ll still be the thing that’s most important to you.
To a lot of people it isn’t. Among others, it isn’t, to—
He started to tear the note up and chuck it in the wastebasket as something which was just what might have been expected from a dizzy dame. But the more he mulled it over, the sorer he got.
She was trying to put hint in the wrong. Not a line about how she’d said goodbye for half an hour one night and treated him like a stranger the next morning and from then on! Never a word about taking up with Zomby!
He’d set her straight on a few things.
It took him a while to corner Zomby, over at the Beta Psi house. Zomby was down cellar at the ping pong table. “Where’s Lou Ann live?”
Zomby’s lips tightened. “Somewhere in Westwood. Why?”
“Do I have to clout it out of you?”
“Think you can?”
For a few seconds they stood toe to toe, glaring. A couple of Zomby’s fraternity brothers made elaborate pretense of not noticing anything.
Bill said: “I’m going to have a try at it, unless you tell me first.”
“What you want to see her for?”
“I’ve got something I want to tell her. After I get it off my chest, that’ll be all I want to see of her, don’t worry.”
Zomby shrugged. “Up to you, I guess, if that’s how you feel. She lives at 29 Marview Terrace. You want her phone? It’s not in the book.”
“No. I want to see her.”
“You might get a surprise.”
Bill’s forehead puckered. “Such as for instance?”
Zomby went to the ping pong table, picked up his paddle. “Skip it. Just ribbing. Have fun.”