“That guard thinks he’s hell on hooves. Might be a sucker for a trap now.”
The quarterback started to ask who the hell was calling B-team signals anyway. Dan could see it in his eyes. But Coco switched. He saw a chance to shift responsibility to the head coach. After all, Stoney’d stuck Webb in here. If the new back was a droop, that couldn’t be blamed on Coco.
“Guard buck. Weak side. Webb takes it. Pfieff’… wait for that guard an’ nail him! Hit it, everybody.”
All right, Dan told himself. Here it is. You asked for it! You got it! What you going to do with it? Muck it up, the way you’ve done everything else?
Then Coco was slapping the ball at Dommy, pulling it back, socking it into Dan’s ribs. The hulking guard crashed in. Pfieffer slowed him, shunted him. Dan took off.
There wasn’t any hole. There was a slit. He knifed between charging linemen.
Ike Brady, the 220-pound defensive center, came up fast, in a savage, lunging tackle, arms wide.
Dan had no more than a yard to get momentum. He met the center head on. His rigid left arm hit the center’s helmet like a crowbar. His right knee, riding high, caught the pivot man in the wishbone. Brady fell on his face.
Dan stumbled, recovered, side-stepped Everson, bulled into Blumenthal full tilt.
Blumenthal held him. To a twelve-yard gain. Dan spun, twisted, churned fiercely ahead, step after step, the crack safety man clinging to his knees.
It took Everson to clamp hands on his shoulders from behind, pull him over backwards on the eleven yard line.
There was no whistle. Stoney Hart, Boyd Mason and trainer Doc Gurley were bent over Brady. The big center’s face was puckered in pain. He rolled over on his side, clutching at his right shoulder.
Gurley’s fingers explored. “Collar bone,” he diagnosed.
Dan helped the trainer assist Brady off the field.
Mason grumbled: “That’s the lousiest kind of a break.”
“It’s an ill wind,” the head coach answered, “that blows no good. We may have lost a good center. But it sure looks as if we’d found ourselves a bucking back.”
The pale gray eyes watched Dan expressing sympathy for Brady on the sidelines; on the head coach’s long, glum face was a curiously puzzled expression, as if he was trying to recall where he’d seen Dan before…
III
The evening sea breeze, coming in from Santa Monica, whipped Marla’s skirts up around her knees just as the horn on the battered blue convertible gave a long, gentle beep, b-e-e-ep!
She tilted up her chin, kept her eyes straight ahead, marked briskly on.
The convertible came up beside her with suggestive slowness. She turned her head away, pointedly gazing at the sunlight gilding citrus fruit on the Westwood hills.
The car stopped. The driver did a one-hand leap to the sidewalk. Then he bowed, unlatching the door.
“Take you somewhere? I hope.”
“Wrong number,” Marla said icily. “You’d better— Oh!” She halted, putting up a hand to reassure herself her hair wasn’t disarranged. “It’s you!”
Dan beamed. “I might have been dialing blind. But I certainly have the right number.”
“You have a nerve,” she corrected him. “And you don’t have a driving companion… if that’s what you were looking for. I’m only going home.”
He made a sweeping gesture toward the jeep. “She may not look it, but the old hunk will get you there, Miss Gilman.”
“It’s only down the block. The Kappa House. But thanks anyway.” He deserved a smile for having gone to the trouble of finding out her name; she gave him one of her best, fully equipped with dimples.
“Do they serve dinner at sorority houses in this neck of the woods?” He took her arm.
“Why…!” Before she could properly protest, she found herself being helped into the jalopy. “I have a dinner date.”
He shut the door, ran around, hopped in.
“Say where, m’ lady…”
She couldn’t tell him who her date was, or why she was dining out with Lin Hollet for the first time. “I have to stop at the house first — fix my hair.”
He frowned at her page boy bob. “I can’t think of anything it needs, but if you say so…” He slowed the convertible.
Marla put out seconds on the smile. “I’m not in such a rush I couldn’t drive around a little, Mister Webb.”
“Dan. Where?”
“Marla. Shore drive?”
“Suh-well! I was hoping you wouldn’t suggest going up on Mulholland and looking down on Hollywood.”
“Don’t you like Hollywood?”
“I don’t know. Back home, I thought they made pictures in Hollywood, but it seems the studios are in Culver City or Burbank or the Valley. I thought the stars lived in Hollywood. Come to find out, they live in Northridge or Westwood or Encino. I thought every time you dropped into a Hollywood restaurant or drugstore, you had to ask two starlets to move over to make room. Matter of fact, unless you can afford those snazzy spots in Beverly Hills or the swanky-panty country clubs, you could go a year without seeing anybody except radio peep…”
“Did you come out here to look for starlets?” The low-hanging sun polished the Pacific to a pattern of copper and silver.
“No. Partly, to get an education. Mostly, to play football.”
“Couldn’t you do that back home?”
“Not very well.” Dan wasn’t curt about it. But he didn’t elaborate. “Not sure I can do it here, either. Near’s I can make out, I’m only on the squad by accident. Yokum didn’t see me as a lineman. Hart let me work out as a back, this afternoon. But he didn’t say anything about tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll stay on the squad.” She had to make it up as she went along. “I’m in the athletic director’s office, you know—”
He nodded.
“—and I keep my ears open. I can’t tell you what I’ve heard” — for the very good reason, she told herself nervously, that you haven’t heard anything, Marla Gilman! “—but I don’t think I’m giving away any secret when I say Stoney has great hopes for you.”
“That makes two of us hoping.”
“Three,” said Marla. “I hope you’ll get in the game Saturday, against Pacific.” But I won’t be able to help you there, she thought. I don’t make up that list on my little machine. Which reminded her: “I saw the proofs of the squad photo Tony Franno took this afternoon… and you must have moved or something…” She smiled.
“Yeah?”
“You’re behind Ship Morey in the picture. Only about half your face shows. Nobody’ll ever be able to recognize you.”
“I’m heartbroken,” he grinned. “What’ll my public do? Think I ought to make ’em take it over?”
“I think you ought to take me home. It’s getting late.”
“Okay.” He spun the wheel. “But be sure and join us here tomorrow night — same time, same station.”
She didn’t say she wouldn’t.
IV
The scoreboard said there was eleven minutes of play left in the fourth quarter and College of the Pacific was trailing Southern on the low end of a 27-7 tally. But Stoney Hart was not happy.
Southern had been chalking up gains on punt runbacks and long passes, had racked up four t. d.’s on buttonhooks and wide end sweeps. Through the Visitors’ scrappy line, they’d rammed over but one first down all afternoon.
Three of Southern’s scores had been in the first half; Dominque’s flashy runback of the kickoff after Pacific’s lone marker accounted for the rest of the 27 points. Even the passes had been smelling this half. The team from up north had found out they didn’t need to worry about line smashes; they were opening up in a 5-3-2-1 defense and beginning to intercept, instead of knock down, Southern’s aerial attack.