“Don’t you think that, with every H.S. boy and girl going around with the paper, it will force subscriptions?” Dick inquired.

“Oh, well,” granted the pessimist, “I believe it will cost enough money out of the public to pay all the cost of printing the subscription papers anyway.”

“If we didn’t need that kicker on the team, we’d throw him out of here,” laughed Sam Edgeworth, good-naturedly.

Then the matter was put to informal vote, and it was decided to ask the permission of the Athletic Committee to put through the scheme presented by Dick & Co.

“And now it’s time to be off for the field,” proclaimed Sam Edgeworth, with emphasis.  Coach Morton will be waiting for us, and he isn’t the man who enjoys being kept waiting.”

“Come along with us, Dick & Co.,” called Thompson.  “You’ll have a chance to see whether you approve of our way of handling the game.”

So Dick and his partners went along.  Though they could only stand at the edge of the field and look on, yet that was rare fun, for no other freshmen were on the same side of the fence.

As all six of the boys knew considerable about the theories and rules of football, and as all of them watched closely the plays between Gridley H.S. and the subs, they soon saw the reason why Gridley had one of the most formidable High School teams in the country.

“Oh, for the day when we can try to make the team!” uttered Dick Prescott, his eyes gleaming with anticipation.

The fund-raising scheme offered by Dick & Co. went before the Athletic Committee that same evening.  It was accepted, as Prescott and Darrin, hanging about outside the H.S. building, learned an hour later.

In three days more the subscription papers had been printed and were distributed.  Every boy and girl in the school received one, with instructions to bring it back, “filled out”—–­or take the consequences.

Then the canvassing began.

Would it work?  Dick & Co. felt that their own reputations hung in the balance.  And it was bound to be the case that some of the students, though they took the papers, did a lot of prompt “kicking” about it.

Would it “work"?

CHAPTER XIII

“THE OATH OF THE DUB”

For a full week the boys and girls of Gridley H.S. scoured the town, trying their fortune everywhere that money was supposed to lurk.

The great Thanksgiving game was coming on.  Gridley was to play the second team of Cobber University.  This second team from Cobber had beaten every high school team it had tackled for the two preceding years.

Gridley, in this present year, had not met with a single defeat in a total of nine games thus far played.  In six of the games the opponents had not scored at all.

But could Cobber Second be beaten?

The Cobber eleven was one of the finest in the country.  Even the second team was considered a “terror,” as its record of unbroken victories for two years testified.