Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 08 - Winning Can Be Murder Read Free

the goal line, when two players crashed into him from behind.  He’d been fast, but there were others who were faster.  They hadn’t kept him from scoring, though.
    Rhodes was so elated by the touchdown that he didn’t even feel his leg break.  He hadn’t even known it was broken until he tried to stand up and found that he couldn’t do it.  The trainer and the assistant coach had finally strapped him to a stretcher and carried him off the field.
    The story in the newspaper the next day referred to him as “Will-o’-the-wisp Dan Rhodes” and called him the hero of the game, which the newspaper called a “defensive struggle.”  Clearview had won by a score of only six to nothing because in the excitement of the kick return followed by the injury the Clearview kicker had missed the extra point.
    Rhodes’ broken leg kept him out of the rest of the games that year, which was just as well, since the six to nothing win was also the last Clearview victory for a long time.  In fact, the team lost several games by more than fifty points.  Rhodes liked to think that the team would have won more had he been playing, but he knew he was only kidding himself.  Even a will-o’-the-wisp couldn’t make that much difference.
    The next year, though Rhodes’ leg had healed completely, he had lost most of his speed.  He tried out for the team again, but the coach told him that there really wasn’t any place for him.  He was too small to play in the line and too slow to play in the backfield, either offense or defense. 
    So he had gotten a job after school and determined not to worry about football, but of course he’d never forgotten about being the will-o’-the-wisp, though just about everyone else had.  Ivy liked to twit him about it now and then, but no one else ever mentioned it, which Rhodes supposed was just as well. 
    He wouldn’t want to be like some of the men he could see from where he sat, Jerry Tabor for one, who still wore his fraying, thirty-year-old Clearview letter jacket and stood as near the sidelines as he could as if hoping that someone would remember when he was one of the best running backs in the district instead of a not-very-successful used-car salesman for Del-Ray Chevrolet.  These days, Tabor seemed to feel that he somehow shared in the team’s glory, and maybe he did.  The team’s success reminded people vaguely of Tabor’s glory days, and he’d been interviewed by the newspaper and invited to speak at several pep rallies.
    The Clearview kick receiver this year wasn’t as fast or as tricky as Rhodes had been.  He got only about ten yards before being swarmed by Garton Greyhounds.
    “Want some popcorn?” Rhodes asked Ivy.
    “Only if there’s no butter on it,” she said.
    Rhodes sighed, but he went to get the popcorn.
     

Chapter Two
     
    T he game wasn’t as satisfying as Rhodes had hoped.  Both teams were so intense that a fight broke out practically every time there was a hard tackle.  Nothing serious, nothing that required the ejection of a player, but tempers were high and Rhodes was afraid that it wouldn’t take much to set off a real melee.
    He was right.  Late in the third quarter, with the score tied at twenty-one, the Garton punt returner broke free from the pack at the thirty and sprinted down the far sideline.  A Catamount player had an angle on him, however, and caught up with him at about the fifty.  He barreled into him, sending him flying into the Greyhound bench.
    Rhodes wasn’t sure, but it looked to him as if the runner might have stepped out of bounds just before getting hit.
    Unlike Rhodes, the Garton bench was sure.  The Catamount tackler disappeared under a pile of red and white jerseys.
    The Catamount bench cleared in an instant as players charged to help out their teammate.  The entire Catamount squad, including the trainers, tore across the field toward the heaving pile of Greyhounds.  The coaches were right behind the team.  Rhodes hoped