Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories by Rex Ellingwood Beach
page 291 of 350 (83%)
page 291 of 350 (83%)
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they focused upon him all their fury. They tried to destroy him. They
fell upon him like animals; they worried and they harried and they battered him until I felt sick for him and for the girl beside me, who had grown so faint and pale. But his body was of my making; I had spent careful years on it, and although they wore themselves out, they could not break Running Elk. He remained a fleeting, an elusive thing, with the vigor of a wild horse. He tackled their runners with the ferocity of a wolf. "It was a grand exhibition of coolness and courage, for he was everywhere, always alert and always ready--and it was he who won the game. "There came some sort of a fumble, too fast for the eye to follow, and then the ball rolled out of the scrimmage. Before we knew what had happened, Running Elk was away with it, a scattered field ahead of him. "I dare say you have heard about that run, for it occurred in the last three minutes of play, and is famous in football annals to this day, so I'm told. It was a spectacular performance, apparently devised by fate to make more difficult the labors of old Henry and me. Every living soul on those high-banked bleachers was on his feet at the finish, a senseless, screaming demon. I saw Alicia straining forward, her face like chalk, her very lips blanched, her whole high-strung body aquiver. Her eyes were distended, and in them I saw a look which told me that this was no mere girlish whim, that this was more than the animal call of youth and sex. Running Elk had become a fetish to her. |
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