great hockey star, was in the midst of one of his famed solo dashes. An amazing individual performer, Carl had twice split Howard Prep’s defense wide open, charging recklessly in on her goalie to smack the puck into the net. There was nothing he relished more than disconcerting the enemy and the entire Howard sextet was certainly frantically bewildered at his maneuvers. No team had, thus far, been able to keep Carl bottled up. Irrepressible in nature, he defied opposing sixes to stop him—combining daring with superb stick handling and dazzling skating. The tougher the going, the more it stimulated him, Carl possessing the ability to rise to all situations.

“We’ll get him this time!” said Bentley, Howard’s right defense, grimly.

He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Morton, Prep’s left defense, both of whom were smarting under previous assaults.

“Get him if you have to dump him!” answered Morton. “That boy’s been going through us like tissue paper!”

Disdaining an attempt to go around the human bulwark of the two forms huddled to impede his progress, Carl—going at top speed—crouched for the impact. Spectators were up on their feet, thrilled at the spectacle Carl was presenting. He was actually a one-man team. Taber hadn’t lost a game since his advent in school and ice hockey, through his exploits, had become the town’s most popular sport.

“Hit ’em high! Hit ’em low!” sung the Taber rooters, as though they were cheering a football team.

It was the third period of a game in which Taber led, three to one. No necessity for Carl’s tempestuous drive down the ice except that his dynamic nature sent him always on the attack whenever he could get his stick on the puck.

“Worry the enemy every minute of the game,” had been his motto, “and the enemy won’t worry you!”

Smack!

Howard Prep’s two defense men met the whizzing Carl Hemmer head-on. This time Taber High’s crack hockey player did not go through. Instead his body was catapulted backwards, with pieces of broken sticks flying in air, to land heavily some feet away and go skidding across the ice to bring up with a sickening thud against the sideboards.

“Wow! They certainly stopped him that time!” breathed a spectator. “Looked like dirty work, too! Illegal body-checking and free use of their sticks!... Yes, sir—there’s the referee waving them off the ice ... a major penalty for both of ’em!”

A chorus of boohs followed the two Howard defense men as they skated to the sideboards and clambered into the penalty box to remain out of the game for five minutes which, in this case, meant that the contest would be over before they could return.

“Hello—Carl’s hurt!” discovered the crowd, as the huddled figure sprawled near the sideboards, failed to rise. “He took quite a wallop!”

Knocked unconscious by the impact and suffering a jolting bump on his head, Taber’s hockey star was carried off the ice to the dressing room as the crowd gave him a burst of sympathetic applause. Minus two of her players, Howard Prep’s scoring possibilities were so reduced that she was forced to go strictly on the defensive save for lone attempts to put the puck in from long range. Taber High won the game a few minutes later, three goals to one—the injured Carl’s two goals again providing the margin of victory.

“Wonder how Carl is?” was Lank Broderick’s first question, as the teams left the ice. “I’d like to take a punch at those two Howard guys. Sorry they didn’t get back in play!”

Lank was Carl’s team-mate at left wing, Carl serving as forward on the right wing. They thought much of each other, Lank sacrificing his chances of scoring to feed the puck to Carl because of Carl’s admittedly greater prowess.