APRON STRINGS

"It's an outrage!" declared S. S. Zane, banging an indignant fist on the table in the Scouts' clubhouse. "Yes, sir, an outrage; that's what it is!"

The subject under discussion was a bulletin that had been posted that day on the board in the high-school hall. It read:

"Spite-work, I tell you!" chimed in Specs. "You know who picked the players as well as I do, with Professor Leland home sick in bed. Sheffield did. He's captain of the team, president of the athletic association, and—and enemy of the Boy Scouts, isn't he? Well!"

"Sheffield's all right himself," Bi admitted slowly, "but"—he looked up defiantly—"but the others aren't any better than we Scouts who have been playing."

"We were on the regular team when we beat Elkana that first game, I guess!" blazed Jump. "It was the other way around then, with Kiproy, Barrett, Collins and Turner as the substitutes. Right after that, Sheffield began to sack us, one at a time. There were three Scouts on the team that beat Grant City, then two in the Charles City mix-up, and finally only Bunny against Deerfield. Now there isn't a single one of us on the regular five. It's a wonder we are still in the running for the pennant."

"Well, we won't be," prophesied S. S.; "not after this Elkana game. You just wait and see!"

"They certainly buried us the last time," said Bunny, making a wry face. "But so did Grant, and you all know we nosed them out in the rubber. I wonder—Bonfire, what's wrong? What does this new line-up mean, anyhow?"

Number 8 of the Black Eagle Patrol stopped tapping the table with his pencil and looked up. "Want the truth?" he asked, with a smile.

There was a sheeplike nodding of heads. One and all, the Scouts had been won to the uncanny results of Bonfire's powers of observation.

"Well," began the tenderfoot slowly, "I have an idea Sheffield is trying to face Elkana with the strongest team he can put together; he'll have to if he expects to win, because Elkana has easily the best team, with the possible exception of our own, in the high-school league. I don't think he has dropped you Scouts because of spite."

Bi bristled. "You mean that those other four are better players than we are?"

"No." Bonfire considered the case judicially. "No, you fellows are better than they are—individually."

"But—"

"Wait a minute, Bi. I think I can make you understand what I mean. Basketball, you see, isn't like football, where the quarter calls a signal that tells some player what to do; nor like baseball, where you field a certain position, or bat yourself on base, or try to bring another fellow home. No, basketball is different, a lot different. When the ball comes to you, maybe you dribble it along and pass it to somebody else, and maybe you try for a basket yourself."

"I don't see—"

"You won the first Elkana game," Bonfire interrupted placidly, "by pure luck. You lost the second because you were outplayed at every turn. You'll lose the third and deciding one, too, if Sheffield starts the same team again, playing the same kind of game."

"But you just said we were better players than Barrett and Kiproy and Collins and Turner."

Bonfire looked him squarely in the face. "Better individually, I said. The trouble with you fellows is that you are too good. You can shoot baskets so accurately that you forget there is more to the game than merely looping the ball for a goal every time you get hold of it. Look here, Bunny, who shot the most baskets in the game we won from Elkana?"

"Sheffield," the patrol leader admitted readily.

"And in the Grant game? And the Deerfield game?"

"Sheffield. We aren't claiming, though, that he isn't the best basketball player in Lakeville. He is, I guess. But in those last games, at least, he had more chances to score than any other player."

"Exactly!" said Bonfire. "And that is how Lakeville will beat Elkana Saturday—if it does. By teamwork, by each player's forgetting himself for the good of the machine, by feeding the ball at every opportunity to the best basket-shooter of them all—Royal Sheffield. Kiproy won't try to score, but to pass the ball to Sheffield whenever he can, and then hover under the basket for a possible miss; and so will Collins and Barrett and Turner. You four fellows might loop it in from the center of the floor, or from off to one side—sometimes! Sheffield won't miss one try out of five. Do you see what I mean?"

It was obvious that they did. There was a solemn nodding of heads. Curiously enough, slow-thinking Bi was the one to voice the thought that was taking root in the mind of each of them.

"But why," he asked, "didn't Sheffield explain his system to Bunny and S. S. and Jump and me, and have us feed the ball to him in the game?"

Bonfire answered with another question. "Why did you fellows think he had dropped you from the team for spite?" He waited a moment for the idea to grip. "Don't you see, Bi, that just as surely as you have been mistrusting him, just that surely he has been questioning your willingness to do him a good turn without hope of reward? The others are so glad to make the team that they will play as he says."

"But we would—"

"Of course, you would," Bonfire caught him up. "But Sheffield doesn't know that your good turns are not done for pay, even in applause. He doesn't know that when a Boy Scout does a good turn, he doesn't wait around for thanks; doesn't even tell anybody else he has done a good turn. I am sorry he can't understand, because I know that if you fellows only had the chance, you'd play up to him as those others never will. But—Well, let's keep that eighth law in mind; let's be cheerful and obey orders." He glanced apologetically toward Bunny. "I didn't mean to preach," he added, smiling.

Bunny smiled back understandingly. At that moment, he was thinking not only that Bonfire was a mighty good Boy Scout, but that he would make an equally satisfactory patrol leader. If the Black Eagles ever needed a new Number 1——

"Going to the game?" Specs asked Bonfire abruptly.

"No—o. I'd like to, but I can't afford to spend the money."

Bonfire did not mention the ninth law, about thrift, but Bunny knew the boy had it in mind. "Yes, sir," he told himself, "he'd make a dandy patrol leader. Wish he was going to Elkana with us; he helps win more games than any player."

If Bunny had known of the problem he was to face at seven-thirty the next Saturday evening, between halves, he would have put that wish in stronger words; for he was to need Bonfire's advice and help more than ever before.

At two-ten on the afternoon of the fateful day, the manager of the Elkana Athletic Association met them as they stepped from the train.

"Good news!" he greeted. "We have arranged to play the game this evening in the Hallworth College gymnasium. Come on; I'll take you right over."

And a little later:

"This is the dressing room. You can put your clothes in this big locker while you play. Yonder are the shower baths. Now, if you like, you can use the main floor upstairs to practice till three-thirty; sort of give you the feel of the place, anyhow. Well, good-by and good luck to-night—only not too much of that last!"

Captain Sheffield elected to take advantage of the invitation to put his five through a short, brisk practice. Ten minutes proved ample, not only to satisfy him that the team was on edge, but to bathe it in perspiration.

"Call it a day!" said Sheffield at last. "Now get your baths and meet me here about six, to go out to supper together."

Bunny noticed that he left them free to do as they pleased the balance of the afternoon. It worried him a little. If he had been captain of the team, he would have warned the boys, at least, to loaf and rest as much as possible, that they might be fresh for the game. But, after all, Sheffield was in charge, not he; and Bunny knew Royal well enough to realize that youth's contempt for "tying anybody to his apron strings", as he had once put it.

But the tiny unrest would not down. Ten minutes later, his body glowing pink after a shower and a brisk rub with a great Turkish towel, Jump fed new fuel to the worry.

"Bunny," he said carelessly, "you don't mind if we go swimming, do you? There's a big tank in there, with the water so clear you can see the bottom all over."

"Sorry, Jump," the patrol leader decided, "but it wouldn't do. You'd tire yourself out in no time."

"The other fellows are swimming right now," Jump protested.

Bunny clenched his hands. "The Scouts, you mean?"

"No, Kiproy and Collins and Turner and Barrett. Bi said we ought to get your permission before we went in."

"Not now," Bunny told him. "After the game, maybe, but not now." He watched Jump slouch dejectedly away. "I wish," he told himself, "that Sheffield had stayed around and told those others not to go swimming. It won't help their speed any in the basketball game."

But at supper that evening, when they were guests of the Elkana team, the four boys who had been in the tank looked so fresh and fit for battle that Bunny decided no harm had been done. The business of eating a delicious meal, and of getting acquainted with their opponents, and of bandying challenges and promises and good-natured threats back and forth apparently galloped the hands of the clock on the wall; and it seemed no time at all before they were piling upstairs from the gymnasium dressing quarters into a room flooded with brilliant light and banked on all sides by a large and noisy gathering.

Some official tossed a coin for choice of baskets, and Sheffield said "Heads." He laughed when he won.

"I don't see any advantage either way," he told the Elkana captain. "Pick your side, please."

From the substitutes' bench, Bunny nodded his appreciation of this fine sportsmanship. After all, Sheffield had his good points. He watched eagerly as the Lakeville captain and a tall, rangy Elkana boy faced each other in the middle of the floor. Then the referee tossed the ball high into the air between them, piped a shrill blast on his whistle as it reached its top limit, and the game was on.

What followed was so rapid that Bunny could hardly follow the play. Sheffield leaped and whacked the ball to the right, straight for the side. But Turner was there to make the catch. He dribbled it, dodged a rushing opponent, dribbled it another yard, and suddenly shot it, with a long underhand pass, across the floor to Collins, far on the left. Like ants, the players swarmed toward him; the whole playing court, indeed, was curiously like an ant hill. Collins bounced the ball just once before he shot it to Barrett, on the opposite side. Barrett spun it through an open space to Kiproy, who was in a corner of the great quadrangle. By this time, Sheffield had raced down the center to a spot just in front of the basket. Here he took a perfect throw, balanced the ball in his hands, and then looped it upward for the net, scoring the first two points of the game in exactly twenty-seven seconds.

"Oh, boy!" gasped Jump on the bench, "I guess that's teamwork." And the other three Lakeville substitutes agreed that it certainly was.

But one basket in the first half-minute does not spell victory. Even before Lakeville had scored again, by an intricate triangular shooting combination that evolved a forward crisscross, Bunny fancied he could detect a laggard movement here and there; not enough, in any one instance, to interfere with rapid and accurate passing, but still a hint of possible future trouble.

After that, while Elkana was looping its first basket and Lakeville countering with its third, Bunny saw more and more clearly that only Sheffield was maintaining the dashing pace the team had set in the beginning. Barrett was puffing hard and running with a slight effort; Collins and Turner were slowing perceptibly; Kiproy was making passes an instant before they were necessary. In another five minutes of hard play, with the ball rushed from one end of the court to the other a dozen times, the lessening of snap and rush on Lakeville's part was becoming hideously apparent. Elkana had scored twice more, making the count six all.

Bunny knew the turn of the tide was at hand. The Elkana cheerers knew it, too, and yelled and tooted horns and rang bells and swung into a mighty rhythmical roar of, "One, two, will do!" It was a silly thing, Bunny thought; but it wasn't half as bad as the tag of, "Three, four, five, six; all scored on tricks!" when the goals reached that figure; nor the jubilant, "Seven, eight; just you wait!" when the Elkana team added another basket. Lakeville's total was still six.

With the first half nearly over, the visiting team was playing with its back against the wall, strictly on the defensive. Sheffield was still alert and dangerous, but he could not shoot goals when the other players failed to feed him the ball. A dozen times, it seemed to Bunny, the captain broke up threatening formations of Elkana's almost single-handed; and once, just at the end, he shot a clean basket from near the center of the floor, looping the ball upward in a great arc and dropping it like a plummet within the iron ring that supported the net. But Elkana scored again, too; and when the pistol shot signaled the end of the half, the blackboard showed: Lakeville, 8; Elkana, 10.

It meant defeat, Bunny knew, inglorious defeat. Lakeville was slowing and weakening; Elkana was only warming to the final onslaught. In a way, too, his conscience told him, the fault was his; he might have gone straight to the tank that afternoon and begged the fellows to come out before they tired themselves. He wished now that he had.

Between halves, while the four exhausted players lay stretched on benches, Sheffield wandered down the aisle between the rows of lockers for a glass of water. Bunny took quick advantage of his absence.

"Bring a drink of water for each of them, won't you?" he said querulously to the three substitutes. He waited till they were out of earshot. "Look here, you fellows!" he began grimly, spreading his legs and leaning toward them in his earnestness. "You're ready to drop, every last one of you, because of that long swim this afternoon. Does Sheffield know about it?"

"Didn't mention it to him," said Kiproy carelessly. "Why?"

"Somebody should!" snapped Bunny. "Not one of you is fit to play another minute, and he ought to know the reason."

Collins sat up. "Are you going to snitch?"

"No, I'm not. I'm no tattletale. But I'm going to ask you not to start this next half."

"So the substitutes can go in, eh?" It was Turner's slur.

"Maybe they can't hold that Elkana five," flashed Bunny, "but they're fresh, anyhow, and not half dead. Will you drop out, Kiproy?"

"No, I won't!"

"You, Collins? Turner? Barrett?"

In each case, the reply was a curt refusal. Barrett added doubtfully, "We'll be in shape by the time play starts again."

"After swimming in the tank for nearly an hour!" Bunny cried scornfully. "You know better than that, all of you. Once more—"

"Time's up! Come on!" It was Sheffield's cool voice. The captain stood at the end of the long bench.

With a sigh, Bunny brought his feet together and straightened up. "I can't do a single thing," he told himself bitterly. "I won't snitch, and I can't force them to quit playing. We're beaten, that's all."

Up the winding stairway marched the five members of the team; up and through the doorway at the top, and out upon the main floor of the gymnasium, to certain, inevitable defeat. On the bottom step, unconscious that he was blocking the way for the other three substitutes, Bunny watched till the last foot lifted and disappeared.