Children S Authors

"Never change your tactics when winning. Likewise, if you are losing try something new even though it may be foreign to your usual style of play."

"Without plenty of sleep, at least three hours of it before midnight if possible, no boy is going to go far in athletics. Overstraining is simply trying to do too much. A boy's constitution will not stand nearly as much physical effort as a man's in spite of the fact that a boy's competitive spirit flares just as brightly. No boy under sixteens should attempt to run farther than one mile or compete in more than two hard races in one meet. Younger boys do not have to go through the rigid training program intercollegiate athletes undertake because a boy's muscles are naturally more supple and his body in better general physical condition, thanks to the surprising amount of out-of-door walking, running, jumping, swimming, pulling, pushing and stooping boys do every day. Boys under sixteen should concentrate on acquiring form in their events rather than gaining razor-edge physical trim. A short period of special drill and speed sharpening is all they need before a meet."

"Despite an undeserved reputation for effeminacy, probably caused by its etiquette, tennis measures up to any sport in its demands upon skill, speed, stamina and gameness. The etiquette of tennis is more rigid than that of any other widely-played American sport. A tennis crowd sits dignified and sedately, applauding only at correct intervals and then with a pleasant patter of handclaps. The spectators do not raise parasols at matches, nor move around during actual play, nor boo players or officials. Tennis players always wear white clothing. In England, player and spectator conduct is even more conservative. While the English have a decided sense of humor, they will not tolerate comedy in tennis if it conflicts with the sport's conventions."

"His full name was Terence F. Rafferty, and I guess the "F" stood for fiery because that's the kind of fellow he was. Fiery and speedy and tiny and tough. And emotional. When the coach wouldn't start him, his freckled face would go under a cloud and he'd start blinking, and big tears would come rolling out of his eyes until it would get so wet in our dressing room that everybody wished they had fins instead of feet. We called him Red. You couldn't have called him anything else."

"Swimming probably ranks close to running, jumping and throwing as the oldest sport of all. We know that even the overhand swimming stroke was practiced by the Romans. Their paintings and mosaics show swimmers cutting through the water overhand, and others swimming with their faces in the water, which suggests the speedy crawl of modern times. The Greeks and Romans knew a great deal about swimming and diving. Plato declared that in Greece, a man who was not able to swim and dive was as uneducated as one who was ignorant of letters. Caesar was a good swimmer, and Cato showed his son how to cross dangerous gulfs, and the Emperor Augustus taught his nephew to swim. In more modern times, Charlemagne was noted for his swimming stroke, King Louis XI of France often swam in the Seine at the head of his courtiers, and the swimming couriers of Peru traversed hundreds of miles of the South American continent swimming day and night down the rivers. They were aided only by a light log of wood, and their dispatches were enclosed in turbans on their heads."

"Boys should not be afraid that running will give them a weak heart or shorten their lives. Statistics prove that longevity has favored the athlete."

"Never hurry. Do everything quietly."

"Some of Norman's old-timers still remember what the interior of Risinger's little shop looked like in early September, when the sun fried the Oklahoma prairie, meadowlarks sat around gasping with their bills open and cicadas chirred maddeningly in the dog-day heat. On the east wall swung a one-by-twelve-foot mirror where customers startledly beheld themselves emerging from furry anonymity into pale recognizability. On the west wall dangled an arresting picture of a barber innocently about to lop off a customer's ear with his shears while watching a dog fight across the street. There were three red plush chairs, a gallery of ornate shaving mugs for the town's more progressive merchants, and a large, white queensware bowl on a shelf. Only cold water shaves were purveyed. It was too hot to heat the precious water Risinger obtained for five cents a bucket from the softwater cistern back of what is now the City National bank. It was in this tiny crucible in September, 1895, that long-haired Jack Harts first proposed, "Let's get up a football team," and football at Norman was born."

"Clem Rogers had not given up on his determination to have Will acquire an education. He still believed Will could get some good out of schooling if only a school could be found that would hold his interest. After a good deal of thought Clem decided on Kemper Military Academy at Boonville, Missouri. The school had a fine reputation and in those days many well-to-do ranchmen sent their sons there, not only for the academic training the school offered, but also that they might acquire poise, learn obedience, manliness and how to be orderly in personal appearance. There were the sons of many prominent families at Kemper when Will Rogers went there, among them Burton Mudge, son of the president of the Santa Fe railroad; Alden Nickerson, whose father was president of the Mexican and Central railway; Norris Beebee, son of a well-known Boston leather manufacturer; R. D. Williams, son of a judge of the Missouri Supreme Court, and many others. Will arrived at Kemper on January 13, 1897, wearing full cowboy regalia, a short Stetson hat with a braided horsehair cord, red bandana handkerchief around his neck, a richly colored vest and high-heeled red-top boots with noisy spurs. He must have looked strange to the Kemper boys, clad in their trim uniforms. One of the first boys Will saw was John Payne, also part Cherokee, whom he had met and known at Tahlequah when their fathers went there to the Cherokee Council, years before. "Why hello, John," Will drawled, beaming because he had found someone from home, "they got you here, too?" "Yes," laughed John, "I'm servin' time same as you.""

"The Kemper authorities outfitted each cadet in beautiful gray-blue uniforms with braid down each side of the trouser legs and around the collars and sleeves. The caps were blue with heavy patent leather peaks and gold braid initials KS on the front. They had smart looking dress uniforms with "spike-tailed" coats and round brass buttons. They wore these uniforms to church and it was one of Will's favorite tricks, when a boy started to sit down in the pew in front of him, to kick his studded coat tails under him and then look innocently at the preacher as the uncomfortable cadet rose to readjust his coat tails and scanned the seats behind him for a guilty face."

"Boys everywhere are quick to recognize and respect any kind of talent in each other, and one of Will Rogers' best talents was talking."

"Those were stirring times out on that wild frontier- rough, dangerous times in many ways. But to young Will Rogers, growing up on his father's range, that frontier was the garden spot of the world. He had a comfortable home, kind parents, jolly playmates, and the whole country-side for a playground. But above all, he was happy because he was learning to rope and ride, the two things he cared for most in all the world."

"From his earliest childhood Will Rogers had strongly defined characteristics. He was by nature affectionate and fun-loving and, though he loved to tease and play pranks on his friends, there was no malice in him. Underneath his love of fun and his careless ways, there was a great sensitiveness which, in his early years at least, sometimes caused him unhappiness. But he was quick to forgive those who hurt him as he was to ask forgiveness when he himself was in the wrong, and this, as well as many other lovable traits, made Will Rogers a great favorite among his classmates at Willie Halsell."

"Just behind the school there was a one-hundred-and-sixty acre blue grass pasture, and Will and Charley and some of the other boys conceived the brilliant plan of leaving the gate of this pasture open, so that the strange cattle that ran at large might drift in to feet on the grass there. When they had lured the cattle into the pasture they would close the gate and ride and rope to their heart's content. This was an exciting game and they might have gone on with it indefinitely, but one day at round-up time, "Doc" Frazier missed some of his cattle. After looking all over the country for them, he found them at last in the pasture being ridden and roped by a crowd of shouting boys. "Doc" Frazier was furious at first and threatened to take the boys' ropes from them. Will, realizing how serious this would be, decided to try to save the day by diplomacy. "Aw, Doc," he said with a disarming grin, "we didn't mean any harm. Anyhow you ought to be proud of them cows now. We've got 'em all gentled and broke to ride!" The boys kept their ropes but they had to abandon the school pasture as a roping place."

"Several years ago Ty Cobb, the veteran manager of the Detroit American League baseball team, put on his gray uniform and walked on the field at Yankee Stadium, New York City, an hour before a scheduled game between Detroit and New York. He was alert, aggressive and keen-eyed, nearing forty years of age. He had to walk past the New York dugout where the World's Champion Yankees were sitting. "Howdy, gentlemen," said Cobb. "Howdy yourself," retorted the Yankees. Then Urban shocker, Yankee pitcher, decided to have a little fun. "Isn't it time to take that uniform off, old man, and quit kidding the public?" he razzed. Cobb laughed tolerantly at this sally and went to the plate for hitting practice. "Hit one into left field," one of the Yankees shouted, and thereupon innocently precipitated an exhibition of baseball place-hitting that old-timers still talk about. "All right!" said Cobb. He promptly faced the hitting practice pitcher and drove a terrific liner into the left field stands. "Now one to center!" the Yankees yelled. "O.K.," replied Cobb, and timing the pitch beautifully, shot a grass-burner over second base. "Let's see you hit the next one to the right!" the New Yorkers dared and quick as lightning the Georgia Peach whipped a fast ball to the desired locality. "Now foul one into your dugout," the New York players called, jokingly. With a grim smile, Cobb fouled the next delivery, not into the Tiger dugout, but straight among the Yankees themselves, who tumbled over one another to avoid being hit by the ball. "Is that all for today, gentlemen?" Cobb asked."

"Will's early years were much like those of other children in ranch houses or on farms. He rarely went to town because there were no towns near. Vinita, thirty miles east, was a straggling Indian village on the prairie, Old Claremore was a tiny cluster of stores on the stage route from Vinita to Albuquerque, and Tulsa was then only a switch. But Will was not interested in towns, and cared only for ranch life. There were so many fascinating things to do on his father's farm that the days were not long enough to get all of them done."

"The town had been named for Abner Ernest Norman, a Kentuckian. Norman, a government engineer, in 1871 had headed a surveying party north from Red river. They always camped, when they could, near a spring that bubbled up invitingly from a shady spot about a quarter of a mile south of where the city water tower now stands at the intersection of the railroad and Lindsey street. This spot became known as Camp Norman but was later called Bishop's Springs, after a settler who homesteaded it. The surveyors carved the name Camp Norman on several large cottonwood trees growing near by, so they could locate the pleasant spot during future visits. After the railroad came through sixteen years later, a box car was set out near the Santa Fe section house now stands and the words "Norman Switch" were painted on the car. The name stuck."

"Red Rafferty was a rugged little eighth-grader who weighed only 114 pounds. But each pound was a fighting pound, as we soon found out. His parents had moved in from a ranch near Buffalo Springs, and you could see that Red had lived around horses. He even smelled like horses. He wore a big Western hat and a pair of fancy-stitched boots. His legs were bowed as a hoop. He would have been a starter on any school's rodeo team, I'll bet. But basketball was his love. He worshiped the sport. In fact, he took it so seriously that he had the weird notion that it was a disgrace not to start a game, and that's what this story is about too."

"Mary and Clem were the very soul of hospitality, and the Rogers house was seldom without visitors. It was Mary's custom to bring some family home from church with her for dinner each Sunday- and in those days when people came for dinner they stayed all day and often all night as well. Mary always fed them bountifully, kept them as long as they would stay, and when they departed, they did not go away empty-handed. Perhaps it was apples or peaches from the orchard, a basket of grapes, or a bit of Mary's own baking that her guests took home with them. But it was always something. Clem often invited neighbors to go fishing with him, and when they did, these neighbors would come the night before so that a good early start could be made. Whole families would go in wagons to Four Mile Creek, where the perch and bass were so thick that they would strike not only at the baited hook, but also at the colored cork on each line. The catch would always be taken back to the Rogers farm where a big fish dinner would be served. An atmosphere of such friendliness could not fail to leave its impress on the child, Will Rogers, and it implanted in him an open-hearted generosity that was one of his chief characteristics throughout his life."

"The incident illustrates a batting skill that every boy can acquire with practice- place-hitting. Place-hitters, also called choke hitters because they choke their grip on the bat, snap the stick with their forearms and punch the ball through any opening in the diamond which the infield may leave them. Cobb was probably the greatest place-hitter of them all with the possible exception of Willie Keeler, diminutive marvel of the old Baltimore Orioles, a star of an earlier era. I am going to refer frequently to Ty Cobb in this chapter because he was the greatest baseball player who ever lived."

"But Pop just shook his head in his kindly way. "Today, he played only offense," he said. "You've never seen him on defense. No little guy can guard a big kid, or take a rebound away from him. We'll work with him; let's see how he comes along. But right now it would be suicide to throw him in there against a good team- like Bancroft." Bancroft! Slim winced. He always winces when somebody mentions Bancroft. We've never beaten them. Bancroft is the biggest junior high school in the state. It sprawls all over one side of a hill in Sun City, where the state university is located."

"A team of soldiers from Fort Reno came to Norman for the next game. Wearing their blue army uniforms, they were the first visiting aggregation ever to attend chapel exercises the morning of the game. In their warmup session that afternoon, the visitors caused a ripple of apprehension among varsity fans with an open rehearsal of their intricate formations. However once the game began, the varsity had no trouble. Clapham kicked off, a soldier was downed on his three-yard mark, the varsity held for downs and McCartney cleared right end for a touchdown. As the Norman Democrat-Topic proudly declared, "The university team everlastingly paralyzed the Fort Reno eleven last Friday, 79 to 0. The longest run made by the soldiers all afternoon occurred at the end of the first half when they rushed to the sidelines in a body and lit up several shuck cigarettes. They had just come along for the trip."

"Later, while I was picking up wet towels, Red Rafferty came busting out of the shower, naked as a jaybird and wet as a hell-diver. His freckles glistened in the eerie glow of the gymnasium lights. The first thing he did, even before he toweled himself, was reach inside his locker for that big hat and jam it on his head."

"And so passed the first quarter century and one year besides of football at the youngish University of Oklahoma, from the time beloved President Boyd had founded the old territorial school on the grassy prairie south of the raw little town of Norman, until President Brooks had rescued it from the politicians, expanding and raising it to new respectability on the same site many years later. The game had become solidly rooted since Jack Harts had planted the first tiny sprig in Bud Risinger's Main Street barber shop in 1895. It would grow even more phenomenally in the second quarter century ending in 1944."

"The tradition of John Burroughs, which you seek to keep alive through these awards, is a long and honorable one. It is a tradition that had its beginnings in even earlier writings. On the other side of the Atlantic it flowered most fully in the works of Richard Jefferies and W. H. Hudson; and in this country the pen of Thoreau - as that of John Burroughs himself-most truly represented the contemplative observer of the world about us. These four, I think, were the great masters. To those of us who have come later, there can scarcely be any greater honor than to be compared to one of them. Yet if we are true to the spirit of John Burroughs, or of Jefferies or Hudson or Thoreau, we are not imitators of them but-as they themselves were - we are pioneers in new areas of thought and knowledge. If we are true to them, we are the creators of a new type of literature as representative of our own day as was their own."

"The tomb cries aloud to us—its dead silence presses on the drum of the ear like thunder, saying, Look at this, and erase your illusions; now know the extreme value of human life; reflect on this and strew human life with flowers; save every hour for the sunshine; let your labour be so ordered that in future times the loved ones may dwell longer with those who love them; open your minds; exalt your souls; widen the sympathies of your hearts; face the things that are now as you will face the reality of death; make joy real now to those you love, and help forward the joy of those yet to be born. Let these facts force the mind and the soul to the increase of thought, and the consequent remission of misery; so that those whose time it is to die may have enjoyed all that is possible in life. Lift up your mind and see now in this bitterness of parting, in this absence of certainty, the fact that there is no directing intelligence; remember that this death is not of old age, which no one living in the world has ever seen; remember that old age is possible, and perhaps even more than old age; and beyond these earthly things—what? None know. But let us, turning away from the illusion of a directing intelligence, look earnestly for something better than a god, seek for something higher than prayer, and lift our souls to be with the more than immortal now."

"From space to the sky, from the sky to the hills, and the sea; to every blade of grass, to every leaf, to the smallest insect, to the million waves of ocean. Yet this earth itself appears but a mote in that sunbeam by which we are conscious of one narrow streak in the abyss. A beam crosses my silent chamber from the window, and atoms are visible in it; a beam slants between the fir-trees, and particles rise and fall within, and cross it while the air each side seems void. Through the heavens a beam slants, and we are aware of the star-stratum in which our earth moves. But what may be without that stratum? Certainly it is not a void. This light tells us much, but I think in the course of time yet more delicate and subtle mediums than light may be found, and through these we shall see into the shadows of the sky. When will it be possible to be certain that the capacity of a single atom has been exhausted. At any moment some fortunate incident may reveal a fresh power. One by one the powers of light have been unfolded."

"I have been obliged to write these things by an irresistible impulse which has worked in me since early youth. They have not been written for the sake of argument, still less for any thought of profit, rather indeed the reverse. They have been forced from me by earnestness of heart, and they express my most serious convictions. For seventeen years they have been lying in my mind, continually thought of and pondered over. I was not more than eighteen when an inner and esoteric meaning began to come to me from all the visible universe, and indefinable aspirations filled me. I found them in the grass fields, under the trees, on the hill-tops, at sunrise, and in the night There was a deeper meaning everywhere. The sun burned with It, the broad front of morning beamed with it; a deep feeling entered me while gazing at the sky in the azure noon, and in the star-lit evening."

"For grief there is no known consolation. It is useless to fill our hearts with bubbles. A loved one gone is gone, and as to the future—even if there is a future—it is unknown. To assure ourselves otherwise is to soothe the mind with illusions; the bitterness of it is inconsolable. The sentiments of trust chipped out on tombstones are touching instances of the innate goodness of the human heart, which naturally longs for good, and sighs itself to sleep in the hope that, if parted, the parting is for the benefit of those that are gone. But these inscriptions are also awful instances of the deep intellectual darkness which presses still on the minds of men. The least thought erases them. There is no consolation. There is no relief. There is no hope certain; the whole system is a mere illusion. I, who hope so much, and am so rapt up in the soul, know full well that there is no certainty."

"At this hour, out of thirty-four millions who inhabit this country, two-thirds—say twenty-two millions—live within thirty years of that abominable institution the poorhouse. That any human being should dare to apply to another the epithet 'pauper' is, to me, the greatest, the vilest, the most unpardonable crime that could be committed. Each human being, by mere birth, has a birthright in this earth and all its productions; and if they do not receive it, then it is they who are injured, and it is not the 'pauper'—oh, inexpressibly wicked word!—it is the well-to-do, who are the criminal classes. It matters not in the least if the poor be improvident, or drunken, or evil in any way. Food and drink, roof and clothes, are the inalienable right of every child born into the light. If the world does not provide it freely—not as a grudging gift but as a right, as a son of the house sits down to breakfast—then is the world mad. But the world is not mad, only in ignorance—an interested ignorance, kept up by strenuous exertions, from which infernal darkness it will, in course of time, emerge, marvelling at the past as a man wonders at and glories in the light who has escaped from blindness."

"That selfishness has all to do with it I entirely deny. The human race for ages upon ages has been enslaved by ignorance and by interested persons, whose object it has been to confine the minds of men, thereby doing more injury than if with infected hands they purposely imposed disease on the heads of the people. Almost worse than these, and at the present day as injurious, are those persons incessantly declaring, teaching, and impressing upon all that to work is man's highest condition. This falsehood is the interested superstition of an age infatuated with money, which having accumulated it cannot even expend it in pageantry. It is a falsehood propagated for the doubtful benefit of two or three out of ten thousand. It is the lie of a morality founded on money only, and utterly outside and having no association whatever with the human being in itself. Many superstitions have been got rid of in these days; time it is that this, the last and worst, were eradicated."

"This our earth produces not only a sufficiency and a superabundance, but in one year pours a cornucopia of good things forth, enough to fill us all for many years in succession. The only reason we do not enjoy it is the want of rational organisation. I know, of course, and all who think know that some labour or supervision will be always necessary, since the plough must travel the furrow and the seed must be sown; but I maintain that a tenth, nay, a hundredth, part of the labour and slavery now gone through will be sufficient, and that in the course of time, as organisation perfects itself and discoveries advance, even that part will diminish. For the rise and fall of the tides alone furnish forth sufficient power to do all the labour that is done on the earth automatically. Is ideal man, then, to be idle? I answer that if so I see no wrong, but a great good. I deny altogether that idleness is an evil, or that it produces evil, and I am well aware why the interested are so bitter against idleness—namely, because it gives time for thought, and if men had time to think their reign would come to an end. Idleness—that is, the absence of the necessity to work for subsistence—is a great good."

"Leaving the shore I walk among the trees; a cloud passes, and the sweet short rain comes mingled with sunbeams and flower-scented air. The finches sing among the fresh green leaves of the beeches. Beautiful it is, in summer days, to see the wheat wave, and the long grass foam-flecked of flower yield and return to the wind. My soul of itself always desires; these are to it as fresh food. I have found in the hills another valley grooved in prehistoric times, where, climbing to the top of the hollow, I can see the sea. Down in the hollow I look up; the sky stretches over, the sun burns as it seems but just above the hill, and the wind sweeps onward. As the sky extends beyond the valley, so I know that there are ideas beyond the valley of my thought; I know that there is something infinitely higher than deity. The great sun burning in the sky, the sea, the firm earth, all the stars of night are feeble—all, all the cosmos is feeble; it is not strong enough to utter my prayer-desire. My soul cannot reach to its full desire of prayer. I need no earth, or sea, or sun to think my thought. If my thought-part—the psyche—were entirely separated from the body, and from the earth, I should of myself desire the same. In itself my soul desires; my existence, my soul-existence is in itself my prayer, and so long as it exists so long will it pray that I may have the fullest soul-life."

"I hope succeeding generations will be able to be idle. I hope that nine-tenths of their time will be leisure time; that they may enjoy their days, and the earth, and the beauty of this beautiful world; that they may rest by the sea and dream; that they may dance and sing, and eat and drink. I will work towards that end with all my heart. If employment they must have—and the restlessness of the mind will insure that some will be followed—then they will find scope enough in the perfection of their physical frames, in the expansion of the mind, and in the enlargement of the soul. They shall not work for bread, but for their souls. I am willing to divide and share all I shall ever have for this purpose, though I think that the end will rather be gained by organisation than by sharing alone."

"The most extraordinary spectacle, as it seems to me, is the vast expenditure of labour and time wasted in obtaining mere subsistence. As a man, in his lifetime, works hard and saves money, that his children may be free from the cares of penury, and may, at least, have sufficient to eat, drink, clothe, and roof them, so the generations that preceded us might, had they so chosen, have provided for our subsistence. The labour and time of ten generations, properly directed, would sustain a hundred generations succeeding to them, and that, too, with so little self-denial on the part of the providers as to be scarcely felt. So men now, in this generation, ought clearly to be laying up a store, or, what is still more powerful, arranging and organising that the generations which follow may enjoy comparative freedom from useless labour. Instead of which, with transcendent improvidence, the world works only for to-day, as the world worked twelve thousand years ago, and our children's children will still have to toil and slave for the bare necessities of life. This is, indeed, an extraordinary spectacle."

"That twelve thousand written years should have elapsed, and the human race—able to reason and to think, and easily capable of combination in immense armies for its own destruction—should still live from hand to mouth, like cattle and sheep, like the animals of the field and the birds of the woods; that there should not even be roofs to cover the children born, unless those children labour and expend their time to pay for them; that there should not be clothes, unless, again, time and labour are expended to procure them; that there should not be even food for the children of the human race, except they labour as their fathers did twelve thousand years ago; that even water should scarce be accessible to them, unless paid for by labour! In twelve thousand written years the world has not yet built itself a House, nor filled a Granary, nor organised itself for its own comfort. It is so marvellous I cannot express the wonder with which it fills me. And more wonderful still, if that could be, there are people so infatuated, or, rather, so limited of view, that they glory in this state of things, declaring that work is the main object of man's existence—work for subsistence—and glorying in their wasted time. To argue with such is impossible; to leave them is the only resource."

"This our earth this day produces sufficient for our existence. This our earth produces not only a sufficiency, but a superabundance, and pours a cornucopia of good things down upon us. Further, it produces sufficient for stores and granaries to be filled to the roof-tree for years ahead. I verily believe that the earth in one year produces enough food to last for thirty. Why, then, have we not enough? Why do people die of starvation, or lead a miserable existence on the verge of it? Why have millions upon millions to toil from morning to evening just to gain a mere crust of bread? Because of the absolute lack of organisation by which such labour should produce its effect, the absolute lack of distribution, the absolute lack even of the very idea that such things are possible. Nay, even to mention such things, to say that they are possible, is criminal with many. Madness could hardly go farther."

"Asceticism has not improved the form, or the physical well-being, or the heart of any human being. On the contrary, the hetaira is often the warmest hearted and the most generous. Casuistry and self-examination are perhaps the most injurious of all the virtues, utterly destroying independence of mind. Self-denial has had no result, and all the self-torture of centuries has been thrown away. Lives spent in doing good have been lives nobly wasted. Everything is in vain. The circle of ideas we possess is too limited to aid us. We need ideas as far outside our circle as ours are outside those that were pondered over by Augustus Caesar."

"The old men say their fathers told them that soon after the fields were left to themselves a change began to be visible."

"I admired Red's honesty. He was human. He was thinking about getting to dribble out into the spotlight with the other four starters in the introduction ceremony. And he was thinking about playing the full twenty-four minutes with his team instead of only the last five. Pop nodded and his blue eyes gleamed queerly. "I thought you'd feel that way," he said. "Know what? I'm going to start you against Bancroft Friday. You've earned it.""

"An athlete is the shiniest target of all."

"They went outside to watch the new day dawn. Although the land lay hidden in dark shadow, the tops of the river cottonwoods glowed with a fiery beauty. Yellow leaves floated down the ebony surface of the river. All around them the hundreds of tipis sat dewy and still, their occupants slumbering. They reminded Pedro of ducks on a pond, heads under their wings. Even the dogs slept. Sound carried tenfold in the cool, dry air. A man with a rope in his hands was walking solitary and silent to the herding grounds to tend to his horses. Although he was almost an arrow shoot away, the gentle thup, thup, thup of his moccasins striking the frosty buffalo grass carried plainly to their ears. Together, they watched the dull lodge skins on their tipi assume an orange cast. Pedro thought, few things are prettier than the east side of a tipi at dawn."

"Reddy, crouching in the corn, was saddened by the loss of his friend. He dropped his head between his front paws, his green eyes darting vigilantly at all his enemies- dogs and men- standing triumphantly around the pickups. They wouldn't catch him. Nothing on four feet could catch him."

"A glad look came into the old man's eyes. "Throw yore gear right thar in thet south bedroom," he invited, pointing to its door. "It's all yores," he added. "Purty cool in thar. You can look out the west window into the pony pasture an' see yore hoss. Then come on in the dinin' room. Tonia's gittin' supper ready.""

"Lee fitted the key into his pocket ring and looked around once at the pitifully small room. Well, he told himself, you walk the ice and hope she's solid all the way across."

"That night Lee lay awake, staring into the darkness and wrestling with his problem. Jean was asleep beside him, her breathing slow and regular. Why do I coach? he asked himself. Why don't I get into something else? He turned on his side, smoothed his pillow, and thought about it. He liked boys. He and Jean had even wanted to adopt a boy, but so far they hadn't been successful. Also, he was fond of basketball. Every time he saw a basketball game he wanted to get into it. With him, coaching ranked next to playing. Like an architect or a composer, a coach created an exciting something that the whole community could embrace. It was fun to get wrapped up in a team and all the boys in it, and to watch them develop and mature. Lee sighed and flipped over on his back. Coaching was like narcotics; once you started, it hooked you. He remembered his friend Jim Fessenden. Jim had a degree in mathematics from Princeton. He had also played tackle on the football team there. On the day they handed him his diploma an insurance firm offered him ten thousand dollars a year to start as a junior actuary. But the position wasn't exciting enough. Jim turned it down to take a job at six thousand coaching a high school football team in Kansas. But this wasn't Kansas. It wasn't even coaching boys. This was a new town and a new job. He hated to be pushed around, by that surly school board president or anyone else. If he was ever going to get his team back, now was the time. He had to act fast. Enrollment started at nine."

"All the human characters in the story are fictitious, but most of the coyotes and hounds are not and this is no coincidence."

"An entire rebel regiment, the men swarming like ants, had completely turned the right anchor of the Union line and, boiling out upon the prairie, was threatening to outflank them. They were after a Federal artillery battery that had just arrived and was running up its long black guns. The rebels were tearing the top logs off a rail fence so they could clamber over, charge the Union guns, and capture them. "Let's go help 'em!" Noah proposed. Jeff didn't think much of the idea but he did not hesitate. By that time he would have followed Noah anywhere."

"The day before the army left Rhea's Mills, Jeff was surprised to hear his name called while the company was lined up at a morning inspection. Noah's name was called too. Obediently each took two steps forward and saluted. With a measured stamping of feet on the drill ground, half a dozen officers approached. Out of the corner of one eye, Jeff spied Clardy among them. Recoiling, he felt his insides tighten. What had he done now? The tramping stopped. A big man with black whiskers and two curved rows of brass buttons on the front of his blue dress coat, ambled up to Jeff and Noah. He was short and heavyset, with a thick neck and sloping shoulders. He walked with a roll, swaying his hips and planting his feet carefully, like a sea captain. In one hairy hand he carried a piece of paper. Everybody saluted. Then Jeff recognized General Blunt. Dumbfounded, he wondered what this was all about. In a bass voice sonorous as a bell, Blunt began reading from the document in his hand: "...for gallantry beyond the call of duty... distinguished themselves conspicuously at the risk of life... voluntarily assisted a battery that was hard pressed, although it was their first experience with artillery and they had already participated intrepidly in the infantry charge... the Medal of Honor, presented in the name of Congress.""

"Then the general stepped so close that Jeff could smell the pomade on his thick black hair. Leaning forward, he passed a ribbon around Jeff's neck and underneath his collar. Suspended from the ribbon was a tiny piece of red, white and blue fabric. And dangling from the fabric was a shiny bronze star and eagle that flashed more brilliantly in the sunshine than even the general's gold shoulder bars. Noah got one, too. Just as Jeff began to realize that he and Noah were being decorated, the general was shaking hands stiffly with each of them. Jeff couldn't hide the embarrassment and the unbelief in his face. Somebody had made a mistake. He hadn't done anything in the battle but follow Noah. If this was the way the army handed out decorations, then something was wrong with the system. "Shoot, General," Jeff blurted in protest, "all we did was load her and swab her.""