Albert Heaton was sitting up in bed, alternately shaken with ague and parched with fever, when his little sister brought him the unwelcome tidings. He groaned aloud and asked if Alice Howell had heard the news. Mrs. Heaton, a motherly woman who had no patience with baseball players that go about the country, like circus-riders, remarked, with some asperity, that she should suppose that Judge Howell would put a stop to Alice’s giving so much time and attention to baseball. For herself, if she had a grown-up daughter, she would try and put something else into her head than baseball and such mannish and vulgar doings. If Alice’s mother was alive, it would be mighty different in the Howell family. As it was, the Judge allowed Alice to do just about as she pleased, and it was a shame, so it was, for a nice young girl like Alice to be permitted to make a tomboy of herself. Flirting with that young Irish fellow from Sugar Grove! Did anybody ever hear of the like?
“Oh, mother,” sighed poor Albert. “If you only knew how sick and sore I am for the boys, you would let up on Larry. If you had let me go with the Nine, perhaps I might have helped them out of the defeat. At any rate, it might have been less of a clean-out than it is. Dear me! How cold I am! Cover me up and let me be.”
With a pang of remorse at having added unwittingly to Albert’s sufferings, his mother soothed the sick boy and left him to sorrowful meditations. “And I was fool enough to think that the boys would be able to challenge the Calumets.” With these repentant meditations, Albert sunk into a feverish and uneasy sleep. He might have dreamed (perhaps he did) that at that very moment, Alice Howell was looking out into the gloom of the moist summer night and lamenting with bitterness the defeat of “our nine.”
Next day, when The Leaf came out, and fuller particulars of the game were made known in a despatch from Charlie King, there was nothing to mitigate the gloom of the friends of the Catalpas. Singularly enough, some of the Dean County Nine, who had been among the most enthusiastic boomers of the Catalpa Nine, now assumed a most discouraging attitude. They were sure, so they said, that the Catalpas would be defeated all along the line. They had won the game at Sandy Key by a scratch. They had found their true level in Bluford. They would be beaten along the river, for it was well known that the nines in the river towns were far ahead of those in the interior of the state.
Something of this talk reached the ears of Al Heaton, who was still suffering from fever-and-ague. He took up his bottle of cholagogue and shook it at his terrified little brother (who had retailed the gossip of the drug store, where he had been sent on an errand), and said, “If you hear any such infernal nonsense as that, downtown, Dan, you go and tell Tom Selby that I want him to lick the first fellow that says anything against our nine. Do you mind me?”
Little Dan promised stoutly that he would give Tom the message. Whether he did or not, it came to pass that Henry Jackson and Thomas Selby had a discussion, that very night, and that Dr. Selby sent his son home with strict injunctions to cover his face with brown paper and vinegar, while the big-fisted Henry went to bed with a bit of raw beef on his eye.
There is nothing like news from the field of battle to bring out the partisan feelings of a community far from the scene of strife. Catalpa was stirred to its very depths by the ill tidings brought from Bluford. Those who disapproved of baseball asserted themselves in the most unexpected and exasperating manner. Nobody had suspected that there were in Catalpa so many who sympathized not with the home nine and who secretly wished that they might be defeated. But the fact that the nine had met with disaster only stimulated their friends to new courage and stronger hopes for the future. This was a time, they said, for the friends of the nine to show themselves. Mr. Heaton sent an encouraging despatch to Larry Boyne, assuring him that the temporary reverse had only strengthened the confidence of home friends of the club. Even Judge Howell, who was greatly concerned lest the nine should be unduly depressed by their reverses, authorized Lewis Morris to write to Hiram Porter, as Captain of the club, and say to him that the club must be prepared for occasional defeats and that the next news from “the front” would undoubtedly be inspiring to the many supporters of the Catalpas.
“The Judge is a brick!” said Larry Boyne, when this message was read to the members of
