The High School Left End; or, Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron

"Football is all at sixes and sevens, this year," muttered Dave Darrin disconsolately.

"I can tell you something more than that," added Tom Reade mysteriously.

"What?" asked Dick Prescott, looking at Reade with interest, for it was unusual for Reade to employ that tone or air.

"Two members of the Athletics Committee have intimated to Coach Morton that they'd rather see football passed by this year."

"_What_?" gasped Dick. He was staring hard now.

"Fact," nodded Tom. "At least, I believe it to be a fact."

"There must be something wrong with that news," put in Greg Holmes anxiously.

"No; I think it's all straight enough," persisted Tom, shaking his head to silence Holmes. "It came to me straight enough, though I don't feel at liberty to tell you who told me."

All six members of Dick & Co. were present. The scene of the meeting was Dick Prescott's own room at his home over the bookstore kept by his parents. The hour was about nine o'clock in the evening. It was Friday evening of the first week of the new school year. The fellows had dropped in to talk over the coming football season, because the week had been one of mysterious unrest in the football squad at Gridley High School.

Just what the trouble was, where it lay or how it had started was puzzling the whole High School student body. The squad was not yet duly organized. This was never attempted until in the second week of the school year. Yet it was always the rule that the new seniors who, during their junior year, had made good records on either the school eleven, or the second eleven, should form the nucleus of the new pigskin squad. Added to these, were the new juniors, formerly of the sophomore class, who had shown the most general promise in athletics during the preceding school year.

Gridley High School aimed to lead---to be away at the top---in all school athletics. The "Gridley spirit," which would not accept defeat in sports, was proverbial throughout the state.

And so, though the football squad was not yet formally organized for training and practice, yet, up to the last few days, it had been expected that a finer gridiron crowd than usual would present itself for weeding, sifting and training by Coach Morton. The latter was also one of the submasters of Gridley High School.

Since the school year had opened, however, undercurrent news had been rife that there would be many "soreheads," and that this would be an "off year" in Gridley football. Just where the trouble lay, or what the "kick" was about, was a puzzle to most members of the student body. It was an actual mystery to Dick & Co.

"What is all the undermining row about, anyway?" demanded Dick, looking around at his chums. Dick was pacing the floor. Dave, Tom and Greg Holmes were seated on the edge of the bed. Dan Dalzell was lying back in the one armchair that the room boasted. Harry Hazelton was standing by the door.

"I can't make a single thing out of it all," sighed Dan. "All I can get at is that some of the seniors and some of our class, the juniors, are talking as though they didn't care about playing this year. I know that Coach Morton is worried. In fact, he's downright disheartened."

"Surely," interjected Dick, "Mr. Morton must have an idea of what is keeping some of the fellows back from the team?"

"If he does know, he isn't offering any information," returned Harry Hazelton.

"I don't see any need for so much mystery," broke in Dave Darrin, in disgust.

"Well, there is a mystery about it, anyway," contended Tom Reade.

"Then, before I'm much older, I'm going to know what that mystery is," declared Dick.

"You're surely the one of our crowd who ought to be put on the trail of the mystery," proposed Dalzell, with a laugh.

"Why?" challenged Prescott.

"Why, you're a reporter on 'The Blade.' Now mysteries are supposed to constitute the especial field of reporters. So, see here, fellows, I move that we appoint Dick Prescott a committee of one for Dick & Co., his job being to find out what ails football---to learn just what has made football sick this year."

"Hear! Hear!" cried some of the others.

"Is that your unanimous wish, fellows?" asked Dick, smiling.

"It is," the others agreed.

"Very good, then," sighed Prescott. "At no matter what personal cost, I will find the answer for you."

This was all in a spirit of fun, as the chums understood. Yet this lightly given promise was likely to involve Dick Prescott in a good deal more than he had expected.

Readers of the preceding volumes in this series know Dick & Co. so well that an introduction would be superfluous. Those to whom the pages of "The High School Freshmen" are familiar know how Dick & Co., chums from the Central Grammar School, entered Gridley High School in the same year. How the boys toiled through that first year as half-despised freshmen, and how they got some small share in school athletics, even though freshmen were not allowed to make the school athletic teams, has been told. The pranks of the young freshmen are now "old tales." How Dick Prescott, with the aid of his chums, put up a hoax that fairly seared the Board of Education out of its purpose to forbid High School football does not need telling again. Our former readers are also familiar with the enmity displayed by Fred Ripley, son of a wealthy lawyer, and the boomerang plot of Ripley to disgrace Prescott and brand the latter as a High School thief. The same readers will recall the part played in this plot by Tip Scammon, worthless son of the honest old High School janitor, and how Tip's evil work resulted in his going to the penitentiary for the better part of a year.

Readers of "_The High School Pitcher_" will recollect how, in their sophomore year, Dick and Co. made their first real start in High School athletics; how Dick became the star pitcher for the nine, and how the other chums all found places on the nine, either as star players or as "subs." In this volume also was told the story of Fred's moral disasters under the tyranny of Tip Scammon, Who threatened to "tell." How Dick & Co. were largely entitled to the credit for bringing the Gridley High School nine through a season's great record on the diamond was all told in this second volume. Dick's good fortune in getting a position as "space" reporter on "The Morning Blade" was also described, and some of his adventures as reporter were told. The culmination of Fred Ripley's scoundrelism, and his detection by his stern old lawyer father, were narrated at length. Perhaps many of our readers will remember, the unpopular principal of the High School, Mr. Abner Cantwell; and the swimming episode, in which every High School boy took part, afterwards meekly awaiting the impossible expulsion of all the boys of the High School student body. Our readers will recall that Mr. Cantwell had succeeded the former principal, Dr. Thornton, whom the boys had almost idolized, and that much of Mr. Cantwell's trouble was due to his ungovernable temper.

During the first two years of High School life, Dick & Co. had become increasingly popular. True, since these six chums were all the sons of families in very moderate circumstances, Dick & Co. had been disliked by some of the little groups of students who came from wealthier families, and who believed that High School life should be rather governed by a select few representing the move "aristocratic" families of the little city.

Good-humored avoidance is excellent treatment to accord a snob, and this, as far as possible, had been the plan of Dick & Co. and of the other average boy at the High School.

"Let us see," broke in Dick, suddenly, "who are the soreheads in the football line?"

"Well, Davis and Cassleigh, of the senior class, for two," replied Dave Darrin.

"Dodge, Fremont and Bayliss, also first classmen," suggested Reade.

"Trenholm and Grayson, also seniors," brought in Greg Holmes.

"Then there are Porter, Drayne and Whitney," added Dave. "They're of this year's Juniors."

"And Hudson and Paulson, also of our junior class," nodded Harry Hazelton.

Dick Prescott had rapidly written down the names. Now he was studying the list carefully.

"They're all good football men," sighed Dick. "All men whose aid in the football squad is much needed."