“So’ll I,” said Sleeper. “Marty ought to go along; that’s a fact.”
“Here’s another.” “You pay for me, Dick, and I’ll settle with you when we get back.” “I’ll give a quarter, too.”
“All aboard!” shouted the conductor.
“All right, Marty; jump on,” cried Bob. “We’ll find the money – though I don’t know where your dinner’s coming from!”
Marty was up the car-steps before Bob had finished speaking, and was hauling the long bag from Wolcott with eager hands. Then they trooped into the smoking-car, since the day-coaches were already full, and Marty sat down on the stiff leather seat and stood the bag beside him. The train pulled out of the little station, and Marty’s gloom gave place to radiant joy.
The journey to Vulcan occupied three-quarters of an hour, during which time Bob and the other eight groaned over the absence of Magee and Curtis and Goodman, predicted defeat in one breath and hoped for victory in the next, and rearranged the batting list in eleven different ways before they were at last satisfied. Marty meanwhile, with his scuffed shoes resting on the opposite seat, one brown hand laid importantly upon the leather bag and his face wreathed in smiles, kept his blue eyes fixedly upon the summer landscape that slid by the open window. It was his first railway trip of any length, and it was very wonderful and exciting. Even the knowledge that defeat was the probable fate ahead of the expedition failed to more than tinge his pleasure with regret.
At Vulcan the train ran under a long iron-roofed structure, noisy with the puffing of engines, the voices of the many that thronged the platforms, and the clanging of a brazen gong announcing dinner in the station restaurant. Marty was awed but delighted. He carried one end of the big bag across the street to the hotel, his eager eyes staring hither and thither in wide amaze. Vulcan boasted of a big bridge-works and steel-mills, and put on many of the airs of a larger city. Bob told Marty that they had arranged for his dinner in the hotel dining-room, but the latter demurred on the score of expense.
“Yer see, I want ter pay yer back, Bob, and so I guess I don’t want ter go seventy-five cents fer dinner. Why, that’s more’n what three dinners costs us at home. I’ll just go out and get a bit of lunch, I guess. Would yer lend me ten cents?”
Marty enjoyed himself thoroughly during the succeeding half-hour: He bought a five-cent bag of peanuts and three bananas, and aided digestion by strolling about the streets while he consumed them, at last finding his way to the first of the wonderful steel-mills and wandering about freely among the bewildering cranes, rollers, and other ponderous machines. He wished it was not the Fourth of July; he would like to have seen things at work. Finally, red-faced and perspiring, he hurried back to the hotel and entered a coach with the others, and was driven through the city to the ball-ground. This had a high board fence about it, and long tiers of seats half encircling the field. There were lots of persons there, and others were arriving every minute. Marty followed the nine into a little dressing-room built under the grand stand, and presently followed them out again to a bench in the shade just to the left of the home plate. Here he unstrapped his bag and arranged the bats on the ground, examining them carefully, greatly impressed with his own importance.
The Vulcans, who had been practising on the diamond, trotted in, and Bob and the others took their places. The home team wore gray costumes with maroon stockings and caps, and the big V that adorned the shirts was also maroon. Many of them were workers in the steel-mills, and to Marty they seemed rather older than the Summervilles. Then the umpire, a very small man in a snuff-colored alpaca coat and cap, made his appearance, and the men at practise came in. The umpire tossed a coin between Bob and the Vulcans’ captain, and Bob won with “heads!” and led his players into the field. A lot of men just back of Marty began to cheer for the home team as Vulcan’s first man went to bat.
It were sorry work to write in detail of the disastrous first seven innings of that game. Summerville’s hope of taking the one-hundred-dollar purse home with them languished and dwindled, and finally faded quite away when, in the first half of the seventh inning, Vulcan found Warner’s delivery and batted the ball into every quarter of the field, and ran their score up to twelve. Summerville went to bat in the last half plainly discouraged. Oliver struck out. Hamilton hit to second base and was thrown out. Pickering got first on balls, but “died” there on a well-fielded fly of Warner’s.
Vulcan’s citizens yelled delightedly from grand stand and bleachers. Summerville had given a stinging defeat to their nine the year before at the rival town, and this revenge was glorious. They shouted gibes that made Marty’s cheeks flush and caused him to double his fists wrathfully and wish that he were big enough to “lick somebody”; and they groaned dismally as one after another of the blue-and-white players went down before Baker’s superb pitching. Summerville’s little band of supporters worked valiantly against overwhelming odds to make their voices heard, but their applause was but a drop in that sea of noise.
The eighth inning began with the score 12 to 5, and Stevens, captain and third-baseman of the Vulcans, went to bat with a smile of easy confidence upon his face. He led off with a neat base-hit past short-stop. The next man, Storrs, their clever catcher, found Warner’s first ball, and sent it twirling skyward in the direction of left field. Webster was under it, but threw it in badly, and Stevens got to third. The next batsman waited coolly and took his base on balls. Warner was badly rattled, and had there been any one to put in his place he would have been taken out. But Curtis, the substitute pitcher, was ill in bed at Summerville, and helpless Bob Ayer ground his teeth and watched defeat overwhelm him. With a man on third, another on first, and but one out, things again looked desperate.
Warner, pale of face, wrapped his long fingers about the ball and faced the next batsman. The coaches kept up a volley of disconcerting advice to the runners, most of it intended for the pitcher’s ear, however. On Warner’s first delivery the man on first went leisurely to second, well aware that the Summerville catcher would not dare to throw lest the runner on third should score. With one strike against him and three balls, the man at bat struck at a rather deceptive drop and started for first. The ball shot straight at Warner, hot off the bat. The pitcher found it, but fumbled. Regaining it quickly, he threw to the home plate, and the Vulcan captain speedily retraced his steps to third. But the batsman was safe at first, and so the three bases were full.
“Home run! Home run, O’Brien!” shrieked the throng as the next man, a red-haired little youth, gripped his stick firmly. O’Brien was quite evidently a favorite as well as a good player. Warner and Oliver, Summerville’s catcher, met and held a whispered consultation to the accompaniment of loud ridicule from the audience. Then the battery took their places.
“Play for the plate,” cried Bob at first base.
Warner’s first delivery was a wide throw that almost passed the catcher. “Ball!” droned the umpire. The men on bases were playing far off, and intense excitement reigned. On the next delivery Warner steadied himself and got a strike over the plate. A shout of applause from the plucky Summerville spectators shattered the silence. Another strike; again the applause. O’Brien gripped his bat anew and looked surprised and a little uneasy.
“He can’t do it again, O’Brien!” shrieked an excited admirer in the grand stand.
But O’Brien didn’t wait to see. He found the next delivery and sent it whizzing, a red-hot liner, toward second. Pandemonium broke loose. Sleeper, Summerville’s second-baseman, ran forward and got the ball head high, glanced quickly aside, saw the runner from first speeding by, lunged forward, tagged him, and then threw fiercely, desperately home. The sphere shot like a cannonball into Oliver’s outstretched hands, there was a cloud of yellow dust as Stevens slid for the home plate, and then the umpire’s voice droned: “Out, here!”
Summerville, grinning to a man, trotted in, and the little handful of supporters yelled themselves hoarse and danced ecstatically about. Even the Vulcan enthusiasts must applaud the play, though a bit grudgingly. For the first time in many innings, Marty, squatting beside the bats, drew a big scrawling 0 in the tally which he was keeping on the ground, with the aid of a splinter.
It was the last half of the eighth inning, and Bob Ayer’s turn at