Barnes clenched his fists, but the referee stepped squarely in between the rival captains.

"Cut it!" directed that official tersely. "I'll do all the talking myself. Captain Barnes, return to your men and tell them that slugging and tricky work will be watched for more carefully, and penalized as heavily as the rules allow. If it goes too far I'll declare the game forfeited to the visiting team."

"This is a shame!" fumed Barnes. "And the whole charge is a ma.s.s of lies."

"I'll watch out and see," promised---or threatened---the referee.

"Back to your positions. Captain Barnes, I'll give you thirty seconds to pa.s.s the word around among your men."

"That black-haired prize-fighter with the mole on his chin tries to give me his knee every time we meet in a scrimmage," growled Hudson to d.i.c.k. "If he carries it any further, I think I know a kick that will put his ankle out of business!"

"Then don't you dare use it," warned d.i.c.k sternly. "No matter what the other fellows do, our team is playing a square, honest game every minute of both halves!"

The referee had signaled them to positions. The Gridley boys leaped into place.

Play was resumed. In the next three plays Fordham, under the now more keenly watchful eyes of the officials, failed to make the required distance, and lost the ball.

Gridley took the ball, now. In the next two plays, the smaller fellows advanced the ball some twelve yards. But in the next three plays following, they lost on downs, and Fordham again carried the pigskin.

"The Fordham fellows are pa.s.sing a lot of whispers every chance they get," reported alert Dave.

"I don't care how much they whisper," was d.i.c.k's rejoinder. "But watch out for crooked tricks."

Minute after minute went by. Gridley got the ball down to the enemy's fifteen-yard line, then saw it slowly forced back into their own territory.

Now Fordham began to "slug" again; yet so cleverly was it done that the officials could not put their fingers on a definite instance that could be penalized.

Bravely fighting, Gridley was none the less driven back. From the ten-yard line Fordham suddenly made a right end play on which the whole weight and force of the team was concentrated. In the mad crush, three or four Gridley boys were "slugged" in the slyest manner conceivable. Fordham broke through the line, carrying the pigskin over the goal line with a rush.

Fordham boosters set up a roar that seemed to make the ground shake, but the two hundred boys from the military school took little or no part in the demonstration. Tom Reade's reply to Phin Drayne had silenced them.

Swaggering like swashbucklers Fordham followed the ball back for the kick for goal. It was made, securing six points, which were added to the two received from Gridley being forced to make that safety earlier in the game.

"Of all the miserable gangs of rowdies!" uttered Dave Darrin, as the teams rested in quarters between the halves.

"I have two black-and-blue spots to show, I know I have," muttered Hudson.

"We'll have some of our men on stretchers, if this thing keeps up," growled Greg Holmes.

"What are you going to do about this business, Captain?" demanded two or three of the fellows, in one breath.

"As long as we play," replied d.i.c.k Prescott, "we'll play the same gentleman's game, no matter what the other fellows do. We may quit, but we won't slug. We won't sully Gridley's good name for honest play. And we won't quit, either, until Mr. Morton orders us from the field."

"You have it right, Prescott," nodded the coach. "And I shan't interfere, either, unless things get a good deal worse than they have been. But the Fordham work has been shameful, and I don't blame any of you for feeling that you'd rather forfeit the game and walk off the field."

Besides being coach, Mr. Morton was also manager. At his call the team would have left the field instantly, despite any other orders from the referee. It always makes a bad showing, however, for a team to leave the field on a claim of foul playing.

"All out for the second half!" sounded a voice in the doorway.

The Gridley boys went, fire in their hearts, flame in their eyes.

CHAPTER XVI

Gridley's Last Charge

"Remember, Captain Barnes!" called the referee significantly.

"Why don't you talk to Prescott, too?" demanded the Fordham captain sulkily.

"I don't need to."

"You----don't---need to?" demanded Barnes, opening his eyes in pretended wonder.

"No; Prescott and his fellows have a magnificent reputation for fair play, and they've won it on merit."

"You're down on us," growled Captain Barnes.

"I'm only waiting till I can put my finger on some slugging to stop the game and hand it to Gridley," retorted the referee, with a snap.

"Be mighty careful, fellows; be clever," whispered the Fordham captain to his most "dependable" men.

"Are we going to throw the game?" demanded the slugger who had so angered Hudson.

"No; but don't get caught at anything. Better not do anything.

We've got those milk-diet infants eight to nothing now. Play their own kind of kindergarten game as long as we can hold the score without rough work."

Barnes's own instructions would have sufficiently stamped his team, had these orders been heard by anyone else.

At the beginning of the second half Fordham played a much more honest game, and Gridley began to pick up hope that fairness might prevail hereafter.

Gridley's own game, in the second half, was as swift and scientific as it had ever been. By sheer good playing and brilliant dashes d.i.c.k and his men carried the ball down the field, losing it once on downs; but after the first ten minutes of the half they kept the pigskin wholly in Fordham territory.

Back and forth surged the battle. Fordham, despite its greatly superior weight and bulk, was not by any means superior when under the utmost watchfulness of a referee avowedly anxious to penalize.

Yet, until the game was nearly over, Fordham managed to keep the ball away from its own goal line.

Then, while the lines reformed and d.i.c.k bent over to snap back, Dave Darrin called out a signal that electrified the whole Gridley line. It called for one of their most daring plays, that Prescott himself made famous the year before.

While the start, after the ball was in play, seemed directed toward the right wing of Gridley, the ball was actually jumped to little Fenton, at the left end, and Fenton, backed solidly by a superb interference, got off and away with the ball. In a twinkling he had it down behind Fordham's goal line.

Then the ball went back for the kick. The band played a few spirited measures while the wearied Gridley boosters suddenly rose and whooped themselves black in the face.

The kick, too, was won.

"Oh, well." growled Barnes, "we have two points to the good yet, and only four minutes and a half left for the game. Don't get rough, fellows, unless you have to."