"Preparedness!" he'd smile at me. "That's one of the greatest words in the English language! I want to be ready when the fumble comes!"

Sometimes "Rus" would hit the lawn like an India rubber ball and almost seem to wrap his lean, lanky frame around the pigskin, bouncing up on his feet on the roll and untangling his legs from the knot to be streaking away almost before you could tell what was happening. Once he put so much steam behind it that he couldn't stop in time and plowed into the back fence, busting two boards loose and bruising his shoulder.

"Zowie! I ran into some real opposition that time!" he grinned.

It isn't long before all this extra practicing that "Rus" is doing begins to show up on the football field. In scrimmage he gets the reputation of being "sure-fingered" because he drags down pa.s.ses, recovers fumbles and handles the ball so smoothly that it seems like he can't miss getting hold of it no matter how wild it goes. In comparison the rest of us look pretty sick, all excepting me ... and I'm a little better than average because of my experience with "Rus."

Several times, while I'm playing my position at left half, there's a poor pa.s.s back from center and I have to drop on the ball. Believe me, I'm mighty thankful then for the special training I've picked up!

"This game of football is just a matter of following the ball," "Rus"

airs to me one night, "I don't care what these wise birds say. There's breaks in every game that, if we could take advantage of 'em, would do more than all the fancy plays ever invented. Look at last week when we played Madison. We have 'em down on their own ten yard line and we break through and block the punt and two of our fellows dives for it.

Do they get the ball? Yes, they do not! A Madison back, who knows his onions, shoots in--picks the ball up off his shoe tops after it's bounced out of our fellows' arms--and runs forty yards before he's stopped. That's what I call converting good fortune out of disaster!

Either one of our boys ought to have downed the ball on Madison's eight yard line but both of 'em m.u.f.fed it. On a dry field, too...!

Inexcusable!"

"But you must realize, Rus," I argues, "that _your_ att.i.tude on this matter is very exceptional. You can't expect all football players to pay the attention you've been paying to developing themselves to a fine point on picking up loose b.a.l.l.s!"

"Razzberries!" retorts "Rus," "Then they're not worthy of the name of football players!"

And there the arbitration rests. But the season doesn't get much older than "Rus's" mania begins to break out in a new channel. He's so anxious to see all the boys proficient in the gentle art of falling on the ball that he takes to ragging them every time they miss out.

"b.u.t.ter fingers!" he yells, and gets a glare in return for his trouble.

"b.u.t.ter fingers, yourself!" cries the guy who's just looked foolish.

And the first thing you know, the name that "Rus" has branded his team-mates with, comes back on him like a boomerang. So, the only fellow who doesn't deserve the t.i.tle of "b.u.t.ter Fingers" is the one who gets it!

"That's all right," "Rus" says to me. "Let 'em call me 'b.u.t.ter Fingers.' I'll make 'em eat that word twenty times a day. And they'll be trying extra hard to keep from being 'b.u.t.ter Fingers.' You see!"

Which makes it sound like "Rus" has decided to act the martyr to some adopted cause! Now right here's where a complication enters my story in the shape of Mr. Maxwell Tincup, dignified member of the school board and a political power in the town. Among other things Mr. Tincup is bitterly opposed to football as a sport that's "absolutely barbarious." Football, in Mr. Tincup's exalted opinion, is a machine which manufactures a lot of good-for-nothing rowdies. He's made the air blue at many board meetings, voicing his protest against continuance of the sport as an athletic activity at Burden High but he's never quite been able to get a majority vote against it. Just the same his att.i.tude has stirred up considerable feeling and hasn't exactly made him popular with the boys.

"What Tincup needs is a dose of second childhood," "b.u.t.ter Fingers"

prescribes one day. "He evidently didn't have any the first time!"

Mr. Tincup's home is right on our way to school, a big old-fashioned house that stands on a corner of the street, surrounded by a high picket fence. We often see the anti-footballist's three year old son hanging to the fence and peeking out as though he'd like to investigate the outer world.

"Look at the poor kid," points out b.u.t.ter Fingers as we're pa.s.sing one afternoon. "They keep him as spic and span as a children's advertis.e.m.e.nt. Maxwell Tincup, Junior's sure going to be a chip off the old block if the old block has anything to say about it! I'll bet some day he takes the tiddly-winks championship of South America!"

"Are you sure Mr. Tincup won't consider that too strenuous?" I asks, innocent like.

"b.u.t.ter Fingers" grins and shrugs his shoulders.

It's not until the Monday before the big game of the year with Edgewood that the something happens which changes the complexion of the whole situation and brings Mr. Tincup's objection to football to a boil's head.

"b.u.t.ter Fingers" and me are coming back from the athletic field after an extra hard workout. I have a football and we're tossing it back and forth as we're trotting down the sidewalk, me about fifty feet ahead of "b.u.t.ter Fingers" so we can have plenty of distance to pa.s.s. As we cut across the corner toward Tincup's house I spot him out in the yard, washing his front porch off with the stream from the garden hose.

"h.e.l.lo!" says I to myself, "Mr. Tincup's getting industrious in his old age!"

Just then "b.u.t.ter Fingers" lets loose an extra long throw. I can see at a glance that the ball's going to be over my head unless I can take it on the jump. Nope! I miss it by three feet, banging up against Mr.

Tincup's front fence trying to pull it down.

"Look out!" I yells when I see what's going to happen.

If "b.u.t.ter Fingers" had took aim he couldn't have made a squarer hit.

The pigskin spirals over the fence and plunks Mr. Maxwell Tincup smack on the side of the head. The blow's so unexpected it knocks the nozzle of the hose out of his hands and before anybody can say "Ask me another!" the hose squirms around like a snake and soaks him from head to foot. Mr. Tincup begins yelling like he's in the middle of the ocean, going down for the last time. It takes him a couple of seconds to get on to what's. .h.i.t him, but the minute he sees the football lying on the lawn he lets out a bellow of rage and turns to us, shaking his fist.

"All right, young gentlemen!" he snorts. "That's the end of your ball ... and it's the end of _you_, for that matter!"

It may be the end of us but it's not the end of our ball so far as "b.u.t.ter Fingers" is concerned. He's over the fence in a jiffy and streaking for the pigskin as though he's on a football field. Mr.

Tincup doesn't suspect any opposition on picking up what "b.u.t.ter Fingers" regards as a free ball. He's too dripping wet and ripping mad to suspect anything. As he stoops down to pick up the ball which is also wet, it slips out of his fingers. To make matters worse he kicks it accidently with his foot and it rolls along in front of him. It's right then that "b.u.t.ter Fingers" arrives. He takes a running dive across the wet lawn, skids right under Mr. Tincup's nose, curls himself around the pigskin, bounces up on his feet and keeps on going till he comes to the fence which he hurdles.

Mr. Tincup stares at the human cyclone, his mouth so wide open that you can see all the gold in his teeth.

"Come here!" he shouts, waving his arms.

"I'm sorry!" calls "b.u.t.ter Fingers," "We didn't mean to do what we did but this is our ball and we got a right to it!"

"You've got no right to be playing football!" raves Mr. Tincup, beginning to shiver now as the air's kind of cold. "And I'm going to see that you don't play football hereafter!"

"Gee!" I says to "b.u.t.ter Fingers," when we've beat it. "I don't know as that was such a bright stunt--your rescuing that pigskin. We might better have let old Tincup have it. Now he's going to raise a rumpus for sure! He'll probably go to the board."

"b.u.t.ter Fingers" gives me the laugh.

"Make your pulse behave!" he says. "Everybody knows Mr. Tincup's a great guy to holler. He won't get any further than his echo. Say--I don't hear you mentioning anything about that pickup I made. Speak up, brother! Can't you recognize a masterpiece?"

"Your masterpiece," I answers, "Wasn't the pickup. It was. .h.i.tting Mr.

Tincup on the bean!"

"Just the same," argues "b.u.t.ter Fingers," "if the old boy'd only had some football experience I'd never have gotten away with the ball.

That only goes to show the value of...!"

"Oh, dry up!" I orders. "You're getting unbalanced on that subject...!"

It isn't until the next morning that we get the glad tidings of bad news. Ain't it the truth that everyone's glad to be the first to tell you something sad? And what do you suppose has happened?

That peeved Mr. Tincup has stirred up a special called meeting of the school board and has gone and gotten us suspended from the team! He's raised a terrific rumpus about football in general and has tried to get the big game of the year with Edgewood canceled but he can't get away with that. He's influential enough to put a crimp in the team, though, and to put a crimp in us in particular, by getting the board to have us kicked off the eleven just when we're needed most. I hope you won't think I'm handing myself bouquets on purpose but I'm the best backfield man the team's got and I've already told you how hot "b.u.t.ter Fingers"

is as an end. Are we sore? Are we sick? So is most everyone else but what good does that do 'em? The students get out a pet.i.tion asking for the school board to meet again and reconsider the matter but the school board pays about as much attention as a deaf ear.

"We're sunk all right," I says to "b.u.t.ter Fingers" in the middle of the week. "Leave it to Tincup to see that we don't play Sat.u.r.day! He's got it in for us for fair! And we're going to be treated to the _exquisite pleasure_ of sitting on the sidelines and seeing our team take a nice tr.i.m.m.i.n.g from Edgewood!"

"Edgewood's going to be plenty tough!" admits "b.u.t.ter Fingers,"

soberly. "We wouldn't have been any too strong with our best line-up against 'em. Wouldn't this give you a pain? Especially after all the extra work we've put in so's we'd be in tip top shape for that game!"

"Don't cry on _my_ shoulder," I replies, "I got tears enough of my own!"

Sat.u.r.day comes. It's the one day in the fall that the almanac gets absolutely right. There's a precipitous rain falling. The weather sort of reflects our gloom.

"It's just the kind of a day I've been dreaming about," moans "b.u.t.ter Fingers," "There's bound to be plenty of fumbles. I ought to be in there to get 'em!"

"Tell that to Tincup!" I answers.