While I had never had any sympathy for fellows who made a fetish of athletic sports and competitions, I could not help being concerned for Lamar. Of course it would serve his eccentric uncle right to be disappointed, but it did seem too bad to have Lamar miss his senior year. Pug thought just as I did, and so, taking an interest in Lamar’s case, I went over to the rink on Tuesday to see the team practice. Pug couldn’t go, on account of his cold, and he acted rather haughty when I went away, leaving him with his feet on the radiator and sneezing his head off. I soon saw that Lamar hadn’t exaggerated much when he had said that he was not a good skater. They had a sort of game between the first team and the substitutes, and Lamar held a position next in front of Joe Kenton, who was the goal guardian—and had a hard time of it. He could skate fairly well, though most ungracefully, until some one got in his way or collided with him. Then he either fell down at once or staggered to the side of the rink and fell over the barrier. On one occasion,[164] when he had got the puck, he started off with it and was doing quite nicely until one of the other side got in front of him. Lamar tried to dodge, and I really felt sorry for him because all the fellows on the ice and all those looking on began to laugh at him like anything. You see, he lost control of himself entirely and went spinning across the rink on one skate, with the other pointing toward the sky, his arms waving and a most horrified expression on his face. He kept right on going until he struck the barrier and then dived over it into the snow, head first.
I will say, however, that when it came to returning the puck down the rink he was extremely clever, for he could do what very few of the others could do; he could lift the puck off the ice with a peculiar movement of his stick and send it quite a distance and very swiftly through the air. I gathered from remarks about me that a “lifted” puck was more difficult to stop than one merely slid along on the surface of the ice. But, of course, when the first team players came down to the goal where Lamar was he didn’t help very much. He generally charged into the first player who arrived and they went down together. I returned to Puffer before the game was ended, convinced that Lamar would never get the much coveted letter through playing hockey!
The next Saturday the team went to Munson to[165] play Munson Academy, Holman’s chief athletic rival, and was beaten by 14 goals to 11. Of course Lamar didn’t play, although he was taken along. I heard all about the game from him, and I gathered that our team had been defeated because of poor shooting. Holman’s it seemed, had “skated rings around the other team” but had missed many more goals than it had made. I believe, too, that the referee had favored the enemy somewhat, and I wondered why it was that the officials so frequently erred in that particular. I mentioned the matter to Lamar, but he only said “Humph!”
After that there were several other games, most of which our team won. Pug and I saw all of them, although on several occasions the weather was extremely cold and I frequently suffered with chilblains as a result of the exposure to the elements. Lamar played in some of the contests, usually toward the last and always when our side was safely in the lead. He had improved quite a good deal, but was still far from perfect. He fell down less frequently and was even able to dodge about fairly well without losing control of the puck. He also, on several occasions, made some remarkably good goals, sending the disk into the net at about the height of the goal man’s knees, which seemed to worry the latter a good deal. Then March arrived and the weather moderated somewhat, and finally[166] only the last Munson game remained to be played. We played but two games with Munson, one at Munson and one at Warrensburg, the team winning most goals in the two contests becoming the victor. It was hoped that, as Munson was but three goals ahead now, and as our team would have some slight advantage owing to playing on its own rink, we could win the championship. Lamar was very certain that we could win, and told Pug and me why by the hour. Or he did when we allowed him to. Lamar was almost hopeful of getting his letter, after all, for MacLean, who was our captain, had told him that if Holman’s “had the game on ice” at the end he would put Lamar in for a few minutes. I asked if they were thinking of playing the game anywhere but on the ice, and Lamar explained that the expression he had used signified having the game safe. I told him I considered the expression extremely misleading, but he paid no attention, being very excited about the morrow’s game.
When we awoke the next day, though, it looked as if there would be no game, for the weather had grown very mild over night, the sun was shining warmly and water was running or dripping everywhere. Lamar gave one horrified look from the window and, throwing a few clothes on, hastened to the rink. When he returned he was much upset. The ice, he said, was melting fast and there was[167] already a film of water over it. The game was scheduled for three o’clock, and if the ice kept on melting there wouldn’t be any left by that time, and without ice there could be no game, and if there was no game—Lamar choked up and could get no further. I really felt awfully sorry for him, even if it was perfectly absurd to magnify a mere contest of physical force and skill to such proportions.
Fortunately, the sun went under later and, while it was still mild and muggy, it seemed that there might possibly be enough ice left in the afternoon to play on. I was very glad, for Lamar’s sake, and so was Pug. Pug, I fear, had become somewhat obsessed by hockey. I had found a blue paper-covered book about the game under a pillow on his window-seat one day, and while he declared that it belonged to Swanson, I wasn’t fooled.
About noon MacLean and the others viewed the rink and the manager got the Munson folks on the wire and told them that the ice wasn’t fit to play on and that if Munson wanted to postpone the game—but Munson didn’t. They thought we were trying to avoid playing it, probably, and said they’d be over as planned and that they guessed a postponement wouldn’t be wise, because the weather might get worse instead of better. So the game was played, and Pug and I went. We were rather late, because Pug had mislaid one of his galoshes, but he found[168] it finally, under Swanson’s bed, and we got to the rink to find that it was lined two and three deep all around the boards. We found a place to squeeze in behind the Holman’s bench, though, and by stretching our necks we could see fairly well. We were glad afterwards that we hadn’t got close to the barrier, because every time a player swiped at the puck or turned short on his skates he sent a shower of slush and water over the nearer spectators.
There was a good half-inch of water over the rink, and under the water the ice was pitted and soft, especially near the barriers, and now and then the sun would come out for a few minutes and make things worse. No one except Pug and I wore a coat, I think, and we soon wished we hadn’t. Of course fast skating was impossible on a surface like that, and the first period was only about half over when the rink looked as if it had been flooded with white corn meal and water. When one of the players went down, which was far more frequently than usual, he got up wet and dripping; and once when the referee got a skate tangled with some one else’s and slid about six yards in a sitting position, laughter was spontaneous and hearty from both sides of the rink.
Our fellows had already scored twice and Munson once when Pug and I got there, and there wasn’t any more scoring for quite some time. This was largely[169] because no one could shoot very well, having to hunt for the puck in the slush first and then not being able to knock it very far through the water. Several times one side or the other got the puck right in front of the other team’s goal, but usually it got lost and the referee had to blow his whistle and dig it out from somewhere. It was during one of these confused scrambles that Munson scored her second goal. It looked to Pug and me as if one of the Munson fellows had slid the puck in with his skate, and our goal man, Kenton, said so, too. But the umpire behind the net waved his hand in the air and said it was all right, and so that tied the score............