The Fighting Scrub by Ralph Henry Barbour — Read

Tuesday found the Fighting Scrub putting up a better defense, even though McMurtry, in Ames's place, proved a weak point in the line. Later Joe Craigie, a substitute guard, ousted McMurtry and the left side of the Scrub line got back to normal. In the first period of the practice game "Big Bill" banged through for a touchdown and Stoddard kicked the goal, while the best the Scrub could do was repeatedly kick out of danger. In the second go, however, with Fargo out of it and "Swede" Hanbury in his position, the Scrub not only held the enemy scoreless but earned two points when Houston, at quarter, touched the ball down for a safety rather than have a touchdown scored. The Scrub put up a hard fight toward the end and Captain Tom had the ball on the adversary's twelve yards when the whistle blew.

On Wednesday it became known that Quinlan, of the First, was in trouble at the Office and might not get reinstated in time to do much more playing. Quinlan was only a second-string guard, but he was a good man and his loss was no light matter. "G. G. " reached out and grabbed Clem Henning away from the Scrub, and the wails of that aggregation were loud and heart-rending. As Tom pointed out, and as most of the others acknowledged, it was luck for Clem, and for his sake they were glad enough, but his loss left a gaping hole in the Scrub line that Joe Craigie couldn't wholly fill. After two days of experimenting, Coach Babcock put Joe back at left tackle and gave the right guard position to Howlett. Howlett was light, but he had plenty of fight, and in time he learned his duties very well. But during the rest of that week the disrupted Scrub took some fine wallopings from the First and got but one score. That single bit of glory belonged about evenly to Clif and Johnny Thayer. It was Clif who pulled down Jackson's long heave across the left of the line and ran it through a thickly populated alien territory to the four yards where he was tackled from behind by Duval. If Clif was still weak at making tackles he was certainly strong at avoiding them, for no fewer than four of the First at one time or another laid hands on him. Clif had a way of spinning out of delaying clutches that was very pretty indeed! From the four yards, Johnny Thayer, at fullback, took the ball across in one straight plunge on Cotter. Sim Jackson fumbled the pass and there was no goal.