"If Bannister only had a sure, accurate drop-kicker!" reflected Captain
Butch hopelessly. "One who could be depended on to average eight out of ten
trials, we'd have a fighting chance with Ballard. Deke Radford is a wonder.
He can kick a forty-five-yard goal, but he's erratic! He might boot the
pigskin over when a score is needed from the forty-yard line, and again he
might miss from the twenty-yard mark. Oh, for a kicker who isn't brilliant
and spectacular, but who can methodically drop 'em over from, say, the
thirty-five-yard line! Hello, what's the row, Hicks?"
T. Haviland Hicks, Jr., started to speak, changed his mind, coughed, grew
red and embarrassed, and acted in a most puzzling manner. At any other
time, big Butch would have been bewildered; but with Thor's loss weighing
on his mind, the Gold and Green captain gave his comrade only a cursory
glance.
"I--I--Oh, nothing, Butch!" stammered Hicks, to whom, being "fussed," as
Bannister termed embarrassment, was almost unknown. "I--I guess I'll
take this football over to my locker in the Gym. I ought to glance at my
Chemistry, too. So-long, Butch; see you later, old top!"
When the splinter-youth had drifted into the Gym., Butch Brewster,
remembering his strange actions, actually managed to transfer his thoughts
for a time from the eleven to the care-free T. Haviland Hicks, Jr. The
behemoth Senior reflected that, to date, the pestiferous Hicks had not
explained his baffling mystery he recalled the day when he had told the
Gold and Green eleven of the loyal Hicks' ambition to please his dad by
winning his B, when he had described the youth's intense college spirit
and had suggested that if Hicks failed to corral his letter the Athletic
Association award him one for his loyalty to old Bannister.
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