Chapter D: Appleton and Company (5)

“Talmadge?” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, I know, Zach. He’s been putting up a corking game on the second right along for two weeks, but when we try him on the first he falls down flat. We’ve had him over twice. The first time we thought it was stage fright, but he was just as bad the next. Sometimes fellows are like that. They’ll work like Trojans for the scrubs and be no earthly good on the first. Coach hauled him over the coals last week about it and all Talmadge could say was that ‘he didn’t know.’ Too bad, for he’d come mighty near to making trouble for Enwright.”

“It doesn’t sound like sense to me,” I said. “If he can play like a whirlwind on one team why can’t he do it on another.”

“Search me,” said Tru, “but some fellows are like that. Coach talks of trying him again Saturday against Wooster High. I don’t know if he will, though, for we can’t afford to take any chances. I’d like mighty well,” he added bitterly, “to win one more game this season.”

“One!” said I. “Oh, run away, Tru! The trouble with you chaps is that you’ve lost faith in yourselves. You’re so used to getting the short end of it that you can’t believe in winning. Buck up!”

“That’s a fact, old man! I believe you’re dead right. We’re so used to being rotten that we don’t know how to be anything else. What we need is one of these psychology sharks to come around and sort of hypnotize us into a new state of mind. Short of that, Zach, we’ll do the same old stunt again.”

“Psychology, your grandmother! Use your beans! Why shouldn’t we win from Enwright? What’s to prevent? Why――――”

“Nothing, except that they’ve got the best team they’ve had in three years and we’ve got a worse one than we had last year. And last year they beat us by seventeen――――”

“Sure! I know! You needn’t go into the sickening details. But it’s idiotic to think that you’re bound to be licked, Tru. I’m not much on the psychology stuff, but I do think that there’s a whole lot in believing that you’re going to get what you want. Why not try it?”

“Oh, I do. That is, I try to. I don’t talk this way to the fellows, Zach. You’re different. You don’t talk. And it’s a relief to be gloomy once in awhile. On the field I have to be ‘Little Sunshine’ until my mouth aches from grinning.”

“Well, for the love of lemons don’t quit yet, Tru. Keep a stiff upper lip and maybe you’ll pull off a miracle.”

Whether Joe Talmadge got onto the first or not was no affair of mine, but I sort of liked the chap, what little I’d seen of him, and, besides, it looked to me as if the team ought to go up against Enwright with the best players to be found. Anyway, I munched it over going across the yard, and when I got to the third floor of Hyde I stopped at thirty-seven and knocked. Someone said “Come in,” and I opened the door. Joe was alone. Tom, he said, hadn’t come back from supper, and would I wait? I had meant to ask Tom if there wasn’t some way of getting Joe to put up a fight when they got him on the first, thinking that maybe he could talk it over with his roommate and find out what the trouble was. I certainly hadn’t intended talking to Joe himself about it, but that’s just what I found myself doing a few minutes later. Joe was a nice sort and he kind of made you say what you had on your mind. Maybe he had what they call magnetism. Anyway, there I was pretty soon talking it over with him, he lolling back on the window seat, hugging his long legs and looking thoughtful.

“You’ve got me, Morris,” he said finally. “They’re dead right about it, too. Some way, when they stick me in there on the first I sort o’ lose my pep. I don’t know why. Say, do you believe in――in――――”

He stopped and I said “Fairies?”

“No, but atmosphere.”

“Sure, Talmadge! I’m a firm believer in it,” said I earnestly, not knowing what he was driving at.

“Honest?” He seemed pleased and I was glad I’d said the right thing. “Well, sometimes I think it’s atmosphere that does it.”

“Does what?” I asked, puzzled.

“Why, makes me play so dog-gone punk on the first,” he explained gravely. “I’ll tell you, Morris,” he dropped his knees and thrust his big hands into his trousers pockets, “when I’m playing on the second I――I kind of feel like I was doing something that wanted to be done. I feel like the fellows around me wanted to win the scrimmage. But when they put me over in the other line I don’t get that――that feeling at all. I suppose that sounds like silly stuff to you, but――――”

“Hold on!” I said. “It doesn’t, Talmadge. I believe you’ve found the answer. I believe you’ve put your thumb right on the――the tack! That’s just what you would feel on the first, I’ll bet. Those chumps have been licked so often they don’t believe in themselves any more.”

“That it? Well, that’s the way I feel, and I don’t seem to be able to get rid of it. I guess that coach thinks I’m an awful dub, but I can’t help it. I try hard enough, but the――whatdoyoucallit――incentive isn’t there. Or something. Atmosphere I’ve called it. Or feeling. Something.”

We talked it over quite a bit. I thought he was right about the trouble, and I still think so. I got him finally to promise to make a good hard bid the next time. “Just try your best to forget the atmosphere,” said I. “Play your own game, Talmadge. Make up your mind that, no matter whether the rest of the team want to win or get licked, you yourself are dead set on winning. Will you do it?”

“Sure! Much obliged. It’s good of you to――to bother.” He insisted on shaking hands. “If he lets me in Saturday I’ll do the best I can. Maybe it won’t be much, though. After all, I don’t know an awful lot about football. Just the rudiments. But I’ll see if I can’t――” he hesitated, smiled and went on――“can’t create my own atmosphere.”

I had planned to go home Saturday after dinner, but I stayed around and saw the game and took the five-twelve instead. I wish I hadn’t, for we got most unmercifully beaten by Wooster. To be sure, Wooster had every bit of luck there was, but even taking that into consideration our fellows played a pretty punk game. The big disappointment to me was Joe. Morgan put him in at the start and let him finish the quarter, but he didn’t put up any sort of a fight. And I could see that he was trying, too. Wooster broke up our center time and again, and the only reason Morgan let Joe stay in was because the play was all in mid-field and I guess he kept on hoping that Joe would find himself. I came across him between the halves. He had dressed and was looking on from the side line. When he saw me he smiled wryly and shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But it wasn’t any use, Morris. I’m kiboshed, I guess. They smeared me for fair, didn’t they?”

I nodded. “But what was the trouble?” I asked.

“I don’t know. The same, I guess. I tried to make believe that the whole thing depended on me and that I was the main squeeze, but it didn’t seem to work. Say, do the rest of those fellows really _want_ to win, or――or what?”

“Why, yes, they do, of course,” said I. “But――maybe they don’t know it!”

Joe sighed. “Something’s wrong with them. I had the impression all the time that I was taking a lot of trouble for nothing, that no one cared what happened, and it balled me all up. I’m going to quit football, I guess. Anyhow, I ain’t got time for it.”

I said something polite and beat it back to the stand. It didn’t seem to me to make much difference whether he quit or not.

Things ambled along toward the second Gloversville game. I noticed that Joe was still playing on the second, and gathered from something Tom said that he had wanted to quit and had been overruled by the coaches.

We licked Gloversville thirteen to six, in a glorified practice game in which every substitute had a chance to show his gait. And after that we settled down for the final humiliation of being whipped to a froth by Enwright the following Saturday. Honestly, you couldn’t find ten fellows in school who would say that Hollins was going to win, and you couldn’t have found one who believed it! I didn’t. I’ll say that frankly.

Three of the second team were taken over to the first, and Joe was one of them. Maybe Morgan thought he might need a third center if Enwright played the sort of game she was expected to. Anyway, Joe was huddled up on the bench with the rest of the subs when the game started.

It was a cloudy, still November day, with a touch of frost in the air, and there was no choice between goals. We won the toss and gave the ball to Enwright. The visitors were a husky lot, all right. They’d won six out of nine games and hadn’t any doubt about winning another to-day. They were a rangy, powerful bunch, and looked fast and keen. As to weight they had it over us by a few pounds in the average, but not enough to worry about. We weren’t worrying about anything, for that matter. We had made up our minds to fight hard and die fighting. Only, we expected to die. And anybody knows that that’s no way to go into a football game. We believed that Fate had everything all doped out for us, so what was the use of worrying? I heard afterwards that Morgan fairly insulted them in the dressing room before the game, but he didn’t get any reaction. They refused to be insulted. They were dogged, but there wasn’t enough vanity in the whole bunch to fit out a Pomeranian lap dog. Then they went out and trotted onto the gridiron, while we waved and cheered them nobly, prepared to die like heroes.

They had an awful surprise in the first ten minutes of that period. Enwright absolutely refused to play football. Whether she was a bit stale or what the trouble was I don’t know, but she fumbled and ran wild and misjudged punts and acted like a bunch of grammar school kids. You could have heard their quarter raving at them as far away as the laboratory, I guess. The first thing anyone knew Hollins had pushed White over for a touchdown and Tru had kicked a pretty goal!

Oh boy! Maybe we didn’t go crazy on the stand! Why, we hadn’t done anything like that to Enwright in four years! We got cocky and crazy-headed and predicted a score something like twenty-eight to nothing! We ought to have known better, but we didn’t. Enwright sort of pulled herself together after that and held us off until the quarter was up. But we were still hopeful and looked for more glory in the second period. The glory was there, too, but it went to Enwright. She came bravely out of her trance and pushed us straight down the field for a touchdown and then, when White misjudged a long corkscrew punt and had to fall on the ball on our twelve yards, she did it again in just three rushes. She missed both goals, though, and we got some comfort from that. Twelve to seven wasn’t so bad, after all. And the game wasn’t half over yet.

But, although the visitors didn’t score again in that quarter, they outplayed us badly. And they kept it up in the third period, too, after we had sung and cheered all during half-time. But they didn’t score. They had three perfectly good chances, and each time some turn of the luck queered them. Of course, our fellows did their bit. They were giving their well-known imitation of Horatius keeping the bridge. But, shucks, if it hadn’t been for a fumble on our three yards, a perfectly punk pass from center to fullback and holding in the line, Enwright would have scored three times in that quarter. The trouble with us was that we never forgot who we were up against. We were whatyoucallems――fatalists. When an Enwright runner was tackled he kept on running and made another yard, maybe two or three. When one of our fellows was tackled he quit cold. Same way in hitting the line. When one of our backs ran up against the defense he eased up. Even our punting showed it. We didn’t mean to quit, but we were doing it. We oozed through the third quarter with the score still twelve to seven, and we began to hope then that we could hold the score where it was. What happened after the whistle blew I got from Tru and Joe.

Coach Morgan called Joe from the bench. “Jones is very bad,” he said in that quiet, crisp way of his, “and they’re making too many gains at our center, Talmadge. It’s too bad we haven’t anyone to stiffen it, isn’t it? If it was only the second team I’d chance putting you in.”

Joe looked troubled. “I’ll try my best, sir,” he said doubtfully.

“We-ell, I don’t know. They’ve got us beaten anyway, and――――”

Joe flared up. “_They_ have! Like fun they have! We’ve got ourselves beaten. There isn’t a fellow out there that doesn’t think he’s done for right now. There isn’t one of ’em that really _expects_ to win. There isn’t more than one or two that’s _trying_. They’re just dying game, that’s all they’re doing! Beaten! Yah, that Enwright bunch would quit cold if someone put up a real fight!”

“Think so?” asked the coach mildly. “I wonder. Too bad someone couldn’t go out there and convince them of that, isn’t it, Talmadge?”

“Yes, but what’s the use? They won’t believe it, Coach.”

“They might――if it was put to them hard enough,” the man mused.

Joe began to pull up his sweater sort of half-heartedly.

“If _you_ think that way, Talmadge, you might get the others to. You might try it. It wouldn’t do any harm. We’re beaten anyway, and――――”

“That ain’t so!” cried Joe angrily. “You know it, too!”

“What good does my knowing it do?” asked Morgan gently.

Joe pulled his sweater over his head and flung it behind him.

“Jones?” he asked.

The coach nodded. “And tell Truitt I said I’d changed my plans. Tell him I’ve decided to win the game.”

Joe grinned. Then he ran on just in time and pushed Jones out of the way.

It was Enwright’s ball on her forty-six yards, second down and five to go when Joe arrived. Tru looked a bit puzzled at the message for a moment, but then he grasped the idea and it seemed to do him a lot of good. “That’s the stuff!” he cried hoarsely. “We’ve got orders from the coach to win this, fellows! What d’ye say now! Everyone into it hard! All we want’s one score. Let’s get it!”

Enwright tried out the new center and made only a yard. Joe jeered at them. “Come again!” he told them. “Always glad to see you!” They got three past left tackle and Joe was on Conners like a ton of bricks, bawling him out. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “Trying to chuck this game away? Fight, you big baby! Don’t let ’em walk over you! _Fight!_”

Conners was so surprised that he forgot to get mad until it was too late. Tru said that having Joe butt in and take things out of his hands like that sort of flabbergasted him, but he was so tired and used up he was glad to have someone else do the bossing. Enwright only needed another yard to make her distance and she tried to shove her way past Conners for it. But Conners was insulted and mad clean through now, and he wouldn’t have it, and blamed if we didn’t take the ball away from them in the middle of the field, and for the first time that day!

After that Joe created his own atmosphere, as he had put it to me, and it was a brand new atmosphere for the rest of the bunch. He kept dinning it into them that they were going to win, that Enwright was a lot of quitters and all tired out, anyway, that they only needed a touchdown and that they were on their way to it. And blessed if they didn’t begin to believe it! And it wasn’t long before Enwright was thinking there might be something in it, too! Tru said you could notice the difference five minutes after the last quarter began. They eased up and didn’t round off their plays. Their quarter began to change signals, and once they went back and put their heads together. When they did that Joe gloated openly and began to show even more pep.

“Sure!” he cried, “Talk it over! Know you’re beaten, don’t you? If you’ve got anything left, show it! Time’s getting short!”

It was, too. There was only about seven minutes left. We had taken the ball back to their twenty-eight and had to punt, and they had run it back to the thirty-six and were shy four yards on the third down. They got two of the four on a delayed pass that fooled every one on our team except Joe, it seemed, and then had to punt. Of course, all they wanted now was to kill time, and they tried every means they knew. But White got away from our thirty-five with a run that landed the pigskin past the middle again and then Morgan sent Presson back into the line-up and Press ate up ten yards in three plunges. It looked like we had them going then, and we were cheering ourselves hoarse on the stand. Joe snarled and bullied, and praised, too, and in those last five minutes he had every fellow on the team working for him like dogs. And they all expected to win, too. That’s the funny part of it. Dobbs told me afterwards that if we’d been beaten he would have cried like a kid. But we weren’t. No, sir, we weren’t. Not that year. We ate them up from their thirty-eight yards right down to their ten. They stiffened then and at first it was like chipping concrete to make gains. There was hardly more than a minute left. We could hear Joe barking and yelping. Even when he sounded the maddest you felt sure that he was going to get what he was after.

And Enwright knew it, too. Yes, sir, Enwright showed it right then. She wasn’t cocky any longer. She was pegged out and nervous and discouraged. You could see it in the way the backs changed positions behind the forwards, not being sure where they’d better stay, and you could see it in the way the line started before the ball twice. We made a yard and a half on the first plunge and lost the half on the second, and it was nine to go on the third down.

We were all off the stand by that time, clustering along the side line and back of the goal, cheering and yelping at one moment and then being so still the quarter’s voice sounded like claps of thunder. Our right end scampered off, Joe passed to the quarter, quarter faked a forward and dropped the ball to Maynard and Maynard shot straight into the center. Joe was clearing the hole out for him, and he did it to the king’s taste. Right through and into the secondary defense plunged Joe, taking them with him as he went, while Maynard, head down, pigskin clutched to his tummy, followed after. They stopped them short of the last line, but not much short, and we still had another down.

The timekeeper was walking nearer and nearer with his eyes on his watch and we fellows looking on almost had heart failure. It seemed to us that our team had never taken longer to line up and that the quarter had never been so slow with his signals. But he got them out finally and――Oh, well, you know what happened. It was Joe again, and Maynard again, and Enwright went down like nine-pins and our whole team broke through her center and went tumbling, streaming over the goal line! And when the whistle blew Joe had to trot back from the other side of the end line, he had been going so hard!

That’s how we broke the hoodoo. Tru failed at goal, but we had won, thirteen to twelve, anyway. They elected Joe captain a week later, and he would have been a corker if the war hadn’t come along. He went over in the spring, and the next thing we heard he was top sergeant. I’m sorry for the Huns in front of Joe’s platoon if he used that psychology stuff!

BILLY MAYES’ GREAT DISCOVERY

Captain Ezra Blake, seated on the edge of the deck-house of the little schooner _Molly and Kate_, was trying to do two things at once. He was superintending the unloading of ballast by a crew of four men and a boy and he was answering the questions of Billy Mayes, who sat beside him. Billy was twelve and Captain Ezra was almost five times twelve, but they were great cronies. The _Molly and Kate_ was tied up to Forster’s Wharf only last evening, and already, this being a Saturday morning, Billy was on hand to hear what wonderful adventures had befallen his friend on the latest voyage. The _Molly and Kate_ carried lumber to fascinating Southern ports like Charleston and Savannah and Jacksonville and even, less frequently, Havana, and never a voyage but what Captain Ezra returned with a new budget of marvelous tales for Billy’s delight. Some day Billy was going to sail with the Captain and see the astounding places and things with his own two very blue eyes: see Charleston and Cape Hatteras and the Sea Islands and Florida. But more especially he would visit Pirate Key, for it was on Pirate Key that the Captain met with his very startlingest adventures. Billy had never been able to find Pirate Key on any map, but, as the Captain explained, it wasn’t very big and few mariners even knew of its existence. Somewhere between the Marquesas and the Dry Tortugas it lay, and beyond that the Captain declined to commit himself: which, under the circumstances, Billy considered quite proper, for it seemed that the natives of Pirate Key were a peculiarly sensitive people and much averse to visitors and publicity. Even the Captain, with his winning personality, had had much difficulty in becoming friends with the inhabitants of the island. The first time he had tried to land on it, many years ago, he and his crew had been fired on with poisoned arrows. Captain Ezra could still point out the dents made by the arrows on the old blue dory that trailed astern there. The Captain, with one mild gray eye on the crew, had just finished a soul-stirring account of the hurricane that had met them off the South Carolina coast on their northward trip, and Billy was still glowing with pride at the thought of knowing so intimately a person of such nautical skill and personal bravery, for, although the Captain hadn’t said so in so many words, it was very plain that only heroism and remarkable seamanship had brought the _Molly and Kate_ safely through great peril, when “Long Joe” Bowen, shoveling sand nearby, was conquered by a perfectly terrible spasm of coughing and choking. Captain Ezra viewed him silently for a moment and then inquired mildly:

“Been an’ swallered some o’ that sand, Joe?”

“Long Joe” nodded and said “Yes, sir,” in a very husky voice.

“Mm, well you want to be more careful,” advised the Captain most sympathetically, “’cause if you ain’t I’m likely to have to swab out your throat for you, an’ that’s a remarkably painful operation, Joe.”

There was no response to this, but Billy could see “Long Joe’s” shoulders heaving and knew that he must already be in much pain. Billy, like his friend the Captain, had a very sympathetic nature. When the sufferer appeared to be easier Billy looked up again at the Captain’s seamed and ruddy countenance and asked:

“Did you get to Pirate Key this time, sir?”

“Pirate Key?” responded the Captain. “Oh, yes, we were there a couple o’ days. Not on business, but you see I’d promised the King I’d drop in on him the next time I was down around there. Seein’ as he leads a kind o’ lonely life, an’ him an’ me bein’ particular friends, as you might say, I didn’t have the heart to say no to him.”

“Was he quite well?” asked Billy politely.

“Pretty smart for an old fellow. You see, Billy, he’s――let me see――why, he must be well over a hundred now.”

“A hundred!” gasped the boy.

The Captain nodded gravely. “Them Pirate Key folks lives a long time. They don’t go to school until they’re twenty. If they did, you see, they’d forget all they’d learned afore they was what you might call middle-aged.”

Billy pondered that. Not going to school until one was twenty had things to be said in its favor. Still, it was revolutionary, and he decided to put it aside for further consideration.

“And how was the Queen? And the Prince?” he asked interestedly.

“Well, the Queen was well, but the Prince had been an’ ate something as didn’t agree with him. The Royal Physician was some worried when I got there, but I give him a couple o’ doses of kerosine oil an’ it did him a power o’ good.”

“The――the physician?” asked Billy doubtfully.

“No, the Prince, o’ course. There wasn’t nothing the matter with the physician.” The Captain sounded slightly vexed. “He’d been an’ ate some――some――what’s this now?――some hoki-moki fruit.” He viewed Billy sternly. “The Prince had.”

“Really?” asked Billy. “What――what is hoki-moki fruit like?”

“Well,” replied the narrator, knocking the ashes from his pipe and thoughtfully scraping the bowl with his pocket knife, “it’s a sort o’ like a orange an’ sort o’ like a apple.”

“Oh!”

“An’ it’s pizen if you eat it afore it’s ripe. Don’t never touch a hoki-moki fruit till it’s purple, Billy.”

Billy promised instantly. “Only,” he added, “I might not know it, Captain Ezra, if I was to go to Pirate Key. Is it round? Does it grow on trees?”

“More square than round, you might say. It grows in clusters as big as that water cask there. Hundreds of ’em together. An’ they grow high because if they didn’t the wild horses would eat ’em when they was green an’ die. That’s one o’ the wonders o’ Nature, Billy.”

“Yes, sir. But I didn’t know horses ate fruit.”

“Ain’t you ever see a horse eat a apple? Why, they’re plumb fond o’ apples. Bananas, too. An’ watermelons. Guess the only kind o’ fruit a horse won’t eat is cocoanuts.” The Captain filled his pipe leisurely and in silence. Then: “Another peculiar thing, Billy, is that you might call the affinity o’ the hoki-moki tree an’ them wild horses. They can’t keep away from ’em, the horses can’t. There’s something about the――the tree itself that draws the horses: something in the wood, they say. You don’t never find any bark on a hoki-moki tree low down because the wild horses keeps rubbin’ themselves against it. Seems like they just can’t resist the――the sub-tile influence. It’s extraordinary.”

Billy agreed emphatically that it was. “Are there many wild horses on the key?” he inquired after a moment.

“Thousands. The natives catch ’em an’ train ’em. The King has more’n three hundred horses in his private stable, an’ the Queen she has about a hundred, an’ the Prince he’s got maybe thirty or forty, too.” The Captain applied a lighted match to his pipe and puffed blue smoke clouds into the spring sunlight. “They kill ’em for their hides, too,” he went on presently. “They make fine leather.”

“I shouldn’t think they’d need leather,” said Billy, “being just savages.”

“Savages!” The Captain viewed him reprovingly. “Don’t you ever let ’em hear you say that, son! Benighted, in a manner o’ speakin’, they may be, but they ain’t savages. As for leather, why, now, they make lots o’ uses o’ it: saddles an’ harnesses an’ travelin’ bags――――”

“Traveling bags!”

“――An’ trunks.” The captain paid no heed to the interruption. “An’ here’s another peculiar thing. You may be able to explain it, but I can’t, an’ I never heard anyone who could. Them hoki-moki trees has just as much affinity for a horse-hide as they has for the horse himself. Lay a horse-hide saddle twenty feet away from a hoki-moki tree an’ just as soon as you lets go of it it’ll begin to move right over to the tree and try to rub itself against it! Now you explain that!”

“But I can’t,” said Billy, wide-eyed. “It――it’s most――most extronry!”

“It surely is!” declared the Captain. “What you might call one o’ the marvels o’ Science. I ain’t never――That the lot, Joe? Well, I guess it’s most dinner time, ain’t it? Talkin’ always gives me a powerful appetite an’ I’m plumb famished. Sing out to Steve to start that galley fire an’ get a hustle on him!”

Billy’s thoughts dwelt a good deal for the rest of that day on Captain Ezra’s interesting discourse, and when he went to sleep it was to dream terribly complicated things about wild horses and hoki-moki trees and the fascinating inhabitants of Pirate Key who wore the scantiest attires but indulged themselves in traveling bags! Sunday was always a hard day to live through, for after church and Sunday school were past many empty hours stretched ahead. This Sunday, however, was not so bad, for Mr. Humbleton, the bank treasurer, came to call in the afternoon and brought Arthur Humbleton with him. Arthur was fourteen and a youth of affairs and position in the community, as became the son of a bank treasurer. For one thing, Arthur was captain of the Broadport Junior Baseball Team. Billy and Arthur were graciously allowed to retire from the front parlor and the society of their elders and found sanctuary on the little side porch where the chill of an easterly April breeze failed to penetrate. Billy was glad of the opportunity to talk to Arthur, for he had a request to make, and after several false starts he managed to make it.

“I wish,” he said, after swallowing hard a couple of times, “I wish you’d let me play on the nine this year, Arthur.”

Arthur Humbleton observed him frowningly. Then he shook his head. “I don’t see how I could, Billy,” he answered. “The team’s all made up, in the first place, and then you aren’t much of a player. Maybe next year――――”

“I can play in the outfield all right,” defended Billy eagerly.

“Oh, most any fellow can catch a fly,” replied the other carelessly. “There’s more to baseball than just that, Billy. You’ve got to know how to run the bases and bat and lots of things.”

“I can run bases just as fast as――――” Billy paused. He had been going to say “as you can,” but diplomacy came to his aid. “As fast as Tom Wallace can,” he substituted.

“Maybe, but you can’t bat a little bit,” responded Arthur triumphantly. “And you know you can’t.”

“If I had more practice, Arthur――――”

“No, sir, you couldn’t ever be a real corking batter.” Arthur was kindly but firm. “A fellow has to have the batting eye. Of course I don’t say that maybe if you worked awfully hard this year and practiced every day you mightn’t be a lot better, but I don’t believe you’ll ever be a real star, Billy.”

The subject, engrossing to both boys, continued for some time, and in the end it was agreed that Billy should become a sort of unofficial outfield substitute with the privilege of practicing with the nine sometimes and making himself useful chasing the long flies that infrequently went over Mr. Bannerman’s garden fence. As Mr. Bannerman was aged and crabbed and disliked seeing small boys wallowing across his asparagus bed in search of baseballs, the position assigned to Billy promised as much danger as honor. But he knew himself to be fast on his feet and knew Mr. Bannerman to be slow, and he accepted gratefully. Soon after that Arthur was summoned hurriedly by his father, so hurriedly that he left behind him an enticing blue paper-bound pamphlet entitled “How to Play Base Ball” which Billy discovered just before supper and which he surreptitiously studied later behind the shielding pages of “Travels in the Holy Land.”

But he found it difficult to understand until he happened on a dozen pages at the end of the booklet devoted to advertisements of baseball goods. There were soul-stirring pictures and descriptions of mitts and gloves, bats and masks and balls. He admired and coveted, and mentally compared the prices set down against the articles with the contents of the little box in his top bureau drawer that was his bank. The comparison wasn’t encouraging. Billy sighed. And just then his eyes fell on a word that challenged attention. “Westcott’s Junior League Ball,” he read. “Regulation size and weight, rubber center, all-wool yarn, double cover of best quality selected horsehide. Warranted to last a full game without losing elasticity or shape.”

Billy read it twice. Then he became thoughtful. After that he read the description of the baseball again and his eyes became big and round. Later, in bed, with the light from the electric lamp at the corner illuming the ceiling, he lay sleeping for a long hour, experiencing the triumph that thrills all great discoverers and inventors.

The next morning he surprised every member of the household by being downstairs in advance of breakfast _and with his shoes tied_! His mother viewed him anxiously and felt his face but was unable to detect anything abnormal save, perhaps, a certain intensity of gaze and impatience of delay. There was a full half-hour between breakfast and school and Billy made the most of it. Captain Ezra was smoking his pipe on the wharf when Billy arrived, breathless, on the scene.

“Well, well,” exclaimed the Captain. “Ain’t you round kind of early?”

But there was scant time for amenities and Billy plunged directly into his business. “Are you going down South again pretty soon, sir?” he inquired anxiously. The Captain allowed that he was; as soon, in fact, as the new cargo was aboard, which, if he wasn’t saddled with the laziest crew on record, ought to be in about four days. “And are you going to Pirate Key?” Billy continued. The Captain blinked.

“Well, I might,” he replied after slight hesitation. “Why?”

“Because I want you to bring me a piece of that hoki-moki wood, sir, a piece big enough to make a bat. You see――――”

“A bat? What sort of a bat?”

“Why, a baseball bat. Could you, do you think? It would have to be that long――” Billy stretched his arms――“and that big around――” Billy formed a circle with his small fingers――“and it oughtn’t to have any knots in it. Is hoki-moki very knotty, Captain Ezra?”

“Knotty? N-no, I wouldn’t call it that. I――――” He coughed and cast a troubled gaze toward the lighthouse point. “What was it you wanted it for, now?”

“A baseball bat,” answered Billy, almost impatiently. “I thought if you could get me a piece big enough I could get Jerry Williams, over at Morris’s carpenter shop, to make it for me. Could you? Would it――would it be much trouble to you, sir?”

“Why, n-no, only――hm――you see I ain’t plumb sure of gettin’ to Pirate Key this trip, Billy.” Billy’s face fell and Captain Ezra went on quickly. “But I ain’t sayin’ I won’t, you know. Fact is, it’s more’n likely I will. An’ if I _do_――――”

“Oh, will you please?” cried Billy, beaming. “How much would it cost, sir? I’ve only got twenty-two cents, but if you’d take that I’d pay you the rest when you came back.” He dug into a pocket, but the Captain waved the suggestion aside.

“Shucks,” he said, “a little piece o’ wood ain’t goin’ to cost nothin’. Why, I guess I could bring off a whole tree if I wanted it. I guess there ain’t anything on that there island I couldn’t have for the askin’, Billy, the King an’ me bein’ so friendly. Tell you what I’ll do now. I’ll get ’em to cut a piece o’ that wood an’ make the bat for you right there. How’ll that be?”

Billy looked dubious. “Why, that’s awfully kind, sir, but――but do you think they’d know how to make a baseball bat? Bats have to be made awf’ly partic’larly, Captain Ezra, or else they aren’t much good.”

“Don’t you worry about that, son. They been makin’ their own bats on Pirate Key for years, an’ I guess there ain’t no better ones to be had.”

“Why, do they play baseball _there_?” gasped the boy.

“’Course they do! Leastways, they play what’s pretty near like it. The――the general idea’s similar. They’re plumb crazy about it, too. They got a eight-club league down there――――”

But at that moment the bell in the town hall clanged its first stroke and Billy fled.

During the four days that the _Molly and Kate_ remained at Forster’s Wharf, Billy and the Captain met twice and when the schooner finally sailed the Captain had full, detailed and most explicit instructions regarding that length of straight, well-seasoned hoki-moki wood that was to be brought back either in the rough or shaped into the Pirate Key idea of a baseball bat. After that there was nothing for Bill to do save await the return of the schooner.

April gave place to May and the Broadport Juniors began to play Saturday afternoon games on the back common and to practice diligently on other days after school was over. Billy served a rigorous apprenticeship in the outfield, chasing flies that went over the heads of the regular players and several times scrambling over Mr. Bannerman’s fence and recovering the ball from under the rhubarb or from between the rows of early peas. So far fortune had attended him and he had invariably escaped with his life. Now and then he was allowed to take his turn with the batters and stand up at the plate while Waldo Hutchins pitched his famous “slow ones.” Practice is supposed to make perfect, but Billy was still a long way from perfection as a batsman. Nor could either he or Arthur Humbleton observe any great amount of improvement. But Billy persisted, consoling himself with rosy dreams of the future. Almost any day now the _Molly and Kate_ might return bearing Billy’s Great Discovery.

Meanwhile the Juniors won from Scalfield Grammar School, were defeated by the West Side Reds and were annihilated by the Downerport Eagles. And then, as it seemed to Billy, just in the nick of time to prevent a similar fate at the hands of that especial rival, the Broadport White Sox, the _Molly and Kate_ tied up again at Forster’s Wharf!

That was an eventful day in Billy’s life, eventful from the moment he heard the glad news to the moment that he was back at the house with the precious hoki-moki bat in his possession. He had scarcely heard Captain Ezra’s detailed and interesting account of the securing of the article. For once, anxious to put the bat to the test, Billy thought the Captain just the least bit loquacious! But he banished the thought almost instantly, blushing for its ungraciousness, and quite overwhelmed his benefactor with thanks ere he hurried away with the bat tightly clutched in hand and one jacket pocket bulging with a perfectly good “genuine horsehide” ball that had seen only two weeks’ service in practice and had been acquired from Captain Humbleton for fifteen cents.

Subsiding, much out of breath, on the edge of the side porch, Billy once more examined his prize with eager eyes. As to shape it looked as fine as the best “wagon tongue” ever made. There was no doubt about it, those Pirate Key natives knew how to make a baseball bat! Billy was just a trifle disappointed about one thing, however, and that was the lack of novelty. To all appearance the bat was quite like any other bat except that the inscription “Genuine Hoki-Moki Wood” appeared half-way along its smooth length. The words were printed in uneven characters, and evidently with pen and ink, and the ink had run with the grain of the wood. The varnish was still new and just a bit sticky, but that was to be expected since varnish always dried slowly near salt water. Hoki-moki wood was, contrary to Billy’s preconceived idea, light instead of dark, and closely resembled ash. A surprising feature of the bat was the twine-wound handle. It seemed strange to Billy that the natives of Pirate Key should know of that refinement. His respect for them grew tremendously then and there.

Having examined the bat to his heart’s content, he stood up and swung it experimentally. It proved the least bit heavier than he could have wished, but that wasn’t anything to trouble about. He had frequently heard Jack Cantrell express a preference for a heavy bat, and Jack was the hard-hitter of the Broadport Juniors. Remained now the supreme test, and Billy approached it falteringly. Suppose it failed! Suppose Captain Ezra’s tales of the peculiar properties of hoki-moki wood proved false! Billy felt that the disappointment would be more than he could bear! Nerving himself to the ordeal, he laid the bat at the edge of the porch, squeezed the horsehide ball from his pocket and deposited it with trembling fingers against the house. Seven feet separated ball and bat, and as he withdrew his fingers he gave a deep troubled sigh. For an instant it seemed that the experiment was to fail, and Billy’s heart sank sickeningly. But then, as he stepped back across the boards to the porch’s edge the miracle happened. Slowly, irresolutely the ball moved, rolled a few inches, stopped, went on, gathered momentum and traveled straight along a board until it bumped companionably against the hoki-moki bat!

Billy shrieked his triumph and danced ecstatically on the mignonette bed. It was true! The Great Discovery was proved.

Again he tried the experiment and again the ball yielded to the magic influence of the bat as the needle of a compass yields to the influence of the North Pole. Thrice the experiment worked perfectly. A fourth time the ball, having been placed further to the left, collided with the handle of the bat, jumped it and rolled over the edge of the porch into the flower bed. Billy waited for it to rise up and come back again, but that effort appeared beyond it. Considering that a distance of eighteen inches intervened between porch floor and flower bed, Billy felt that it would be asking too much of the ball. Anyway, it atoned a minute later by rolling nicely from house wall to bat with what seemed greater alacrity. Billy was more than satisfied.

I feel that I ought to inform the reader of a fact that quite escaped Billy, which is that the outer edge of the side porch was fully an inch and a half lower than the inner, being so built that water would run off it. I doubt if Billy ever knew of this. Certainly the slope was not perceptible to an unsuspicious vision. I make no claim that the slope of the porch floor had anything to do with the remarkable behavior of the ball. I am willing to believe that the ball would have rolled across to the bat had the floor been perfectly level. I only mention the fact in the interest of truth.

Later Billy sought the back yard and tried throwing the ball in the air and hitting it with the bat. At first this experiment proved less successful than the other, but presently he found, to his great delight, that he could hit almost every time! To be sure, he didn’t always hit just squarely, but he hit. That absorbing occupation came to an end when the ball went through a cellar window with a fine sound of breaking glass. Thereupon Billy recovered the ball and went innocently in to supper.

That night, for fear of burglary, Billy slept with the hoki-moki bat beside him under the covers.

The next day was Saturday and the day of the White Sox game. Billy spent most of the morning knocking the ball against the back yard fence and only desisted when Aunt Julia informed him from an upstairs window that she had a headache and would go crazy if he didn’t stop making all that noise. Billy stopped and went and sat on the side porch, with his feet in the mignonette and the hoki-moki bat hugged to his triumphant breast, and dreamed dreams worthy of Cæsar or Napoleon.

The Broadport Juniors wanted to win to-day’s game, wanted to win it more than they wanted to win any other contest in a long and comprehensive schedule. The White Sox team was comprised of boys who lived on the Hill. The Hill was the town’s patrician quarter. Just about everyone who lived up there had an automobile and a chauffeur to drive it and wore their good clothes all the time. The juvenile residents of that favored locality were, in the estimate of the down-town boys, stuck-up and snobbish, and they had a fine opinion of their baseball prowess. The worst of it was that their opinion was justified, for the White Sox――the down-towners jeeringly called them the Silk Sox――usually beat almost every team they went up against! Last year the Juniors had played two contests with them and had been beaten decisively each time. And so Captain Arthur Humbleton and all the other boys of the Juniors and all their adherents――including mothers and brothers and sisters and an occasional father――were especially keen on a victory. And when, in the first of the sixth inning, the White Sox finally solved Waldo’s delivery and made three hits and, aided by an infield error, sent four runs over the plate the Juniors’ bright dream faded and despondency gloomed the countenance of Captain Humbleton and his doughty warriors. The White Sox had already held a one-run lead, the score at the start of the sixth having been 12 to 11, and now, with four more tallies added, they looked to have the contest safely on ice.

Billy, his precious bat held firmly between his knees, occupied a seat on the substitute’s bench, a yellow-grained settee borrowed from the High School across the common. He had twice offered his services to Arthur and they had been twice refused, the second time with a scowl. Billy was absolutely certain that he could, if allowed to face the opposing batter, who hadn’t much but a fast ball to boast of, deliver wallops that would radically alter the history of the game. But the hoki-moki bat was no better than any little old sixty-cent stick so long as he was not allowed to use it. To his credit is the fact that he had determined, in case the White Sox still held the lead at the beginning of the ninth inning, to entrust the bat to others should Arthur still refuse his services. That was real self-denial, real patriotism. As much as Billy wanted to wield the wonderful hoki-moki bat himself victory for the team stood first.

The friends of the Juniors clapped and cheered as “Wink” Billings went to bat in the last of the sixth, and the one who cheered the loudest was Captain Ezra Blake. The Captain had come at Billy’s earnest and repeated behest and had togged himself out wonderfully in honor of the occasion. The Captain did not, Billy suspected now, know a great deal about baseball, for he cheered just as loudly when a villainous White Sox rapped out a two-bagger as he did when one of the Juniors stole home from third. But it was very evident that the Captain’s intentions were of the best.

The last of the sixth developed no runs for the Juniors, nor did the seventh add to the score of either side. In the eighth the White Sox captain got to third with two down and tried to tally on a bunt past the pitcher’s box. But shortstop ran in, scooped up the ball and nailed him a foot from the plate. The Juniors started their inning by a safe rap that placed Cantrell on first base. Myers sacrificed neatly and then the next man connected for a screeching liner that was too hot for the Sox second baseman and Cantrell scored the Juniors’ twelfth tally. But the score was still four runs to the advantage of the White Sox when Stone hit into a double and ended the inning.

Captain Humbleton pretended a confidence he didn’t feel and assured the team that all they had to do now was hold the Sox and then bat out a victory. It sounded easy, but Billy felt defeat impending. He tried to get a word with Arthur before that youth hurried off to his infield position, but failed. The White Sox started by putting their third baseman on first in consequence of Waldo Hutchins’ inability to pitch strikes. Then a bunt was mishandled by the catcher and there were runners on first and second, and things looked very bad. The next player was thrown out, but the others moved up a base apiece. The infield crept closer. The White Sox left fielder tried hard to slug, missed two and finally popped up a silly little foul that dropped comfortably in the catcher’s mitt, and the Junior nine’s adherents cheered loudly, Captain Ezra’s voice dominating all like a fog siren. There was another period of doubt and anxiety when, after knocking the ball everywhere save between the foul lines, the Sox first baseman finally whaled out a long, arching fly. The bases emptied and the runners scuttled home, but Leo Smith arose to the occasion like a veteran――which he was not――and pulled down the ball.

“Four to tie ’em and five to win!” shouted Arthur as he trotted in to the bench. “Come on now, fellows! Let’s get this! We can―――― What is it, Billy? Don’t bother me now!”

“I’ve got to, Arthur,” said Billy firmly, a tight clutch on the captain’s arm. “You’ve got to listen a minute. If you want to win this you must let me bat, Arthur. I can’t help hitting with this bat, honest, and――――”

“You’re up, Waldo! Work him for a base. Get it somehow!” Arthur tugged impatiently, but Billy held like glue. “You see, it’s a hoki-moki wood bat, Arthur, and hoki-moki wood has a――a infinity for horsehide. All you got to do is just swing the bat and the ball comes right up and hits it. It’s the greatest discovery of――――”

“What are you talking about?” demanded the captain. “Let’s see your old bat. ‘Hoki-Moki Wood,’ eh?” he jeered. “Where’d you get this contraption?”

And, still holding him firmly, Billy told him, and in spite of his expression of incredulity Arthur was secretly a little bit impressed. “Oh, shucks,” he said, “I don’t believe it, Billy! It ain’t possible! ’Course, you might have luck――――” He paused and frowned intently and then, with a short laugh, added: “Maybe I’ll give you a chance, Billy. We’ll see.”

Billy had to be content with that. Meanwhile Waldo Hutchins had waited and walked. An attempted sacrifice, however, failed to work and Waldo was cut off at second. The runner was safe on first. With one gone the audience began to disperse slowly. Then the Juniors’ right fielder landed squarely and rapped past third and hope crept back into the breasts of his team-mates. The departing onlookers paused in their flight. The Sox second baseman let the throw from the pitcher pass unchallenged over his head and the runners advanced to second and third. The cheering grew frantic. The coachers shouted and danced. “Slim” Gaynor did his best but only laid the ball down in front of the plate and was tagged out before he had taken two strides toward his base. Two on, now, and two gone!