The old man paused, when halfway across the bridge, to lift his furry cap from his head and wipe the servile drops from off his burning brow. While he rested his bundle on the guard rail of the bridge, Miss Anstress Howell, the Judge’s aged sister, came mincing along from the North Catalpa side, cool and fresh as if she had never before been outside of a bandbox.
“I wonder ef it will be safe to tackle her for news from Galena?” muttered the old man to himself. “She’s a dangerous team to fool with. Mebbe she’ll get away with me, but I’ll try it.”
“Good arternoon, Miss Howell. Fine hot day. Good growin’ weather, as the farmers say. Hev you heerd that any of your folks got a despatch from Galena givin’ any account of how the ball opens?”
Miss Howell’s manner stiffened a little as she said, with a slight toss of her head, “Judge Howell, my brother, is holding court in Pawpaw, today, for Judge Sniffles, and nobody else but the Judge would be likely to have any despatches concerning baseball.”
“Well, Miss Howell, I heerd over in town that Miss Ally had a message of some kind, no offence to you, marm, and I want to hear from the boys powerful bad, you see, and so I make bold to ask if Miss Alice mayn’t hev a despatch, or something from Larry, I mean Al.”
“There is altogether too much nonsense about this baseball business in Catalpa, Mr. Rough—excuse me, I forget your other name. It does seem to me as if the people had gone crazy, and the weather so hot too! Excuse me, I don’t know anything about what is going on in Galena, no more than a child, I may say, and if any grown people want to begin over again and make children of themselves with playing ball, they have my sympathy.”
So saying, and flirting off an imaginary fleck of dust from her gown with a spotless handkerchief, Miss Howell resumed her deliberate walk across the bridge. Rough and Ready replaced his cap, and looking after her said, “Sarves me right! I might hev knowed that I should get the worst on it in a talk with her. My grief! But she is a teaser. Has forgot all about the time when she was a young gal, it’s so long ago. P’raps she never was young.” With this, the old man shouldered his bundle and slowly made his way northward.
But Alice had received a telegram from Galena, and as Rough and Ready climbed the slope by the Judge’s house, a sunny head was popped from one of its upper windows and Alice’s cheerful voice cried, “Oh, Roughy—excuse me for calling you Roughy, but I’m so glad!—Albert Heaton has telegraphed to me that the Catalpas have made ten runs in the first three innings and the Galenas only one! Isn’t that perfectly splendid? Does anybody over in town know anything about it?”
“Bless your bright eyes! Miss Ally, no; the whole town’s asleep. It’s a hot day, you know, and there’s nobody stirring. All the farmers are busy with their crops, and the streets are as lonesome as a last year’s bird’s nest. Ten to one, did you say? By the great horn spoon! I must go back and wake up the folks.”
Suiting the action to the word, the old man tossed Mrs. Boardman’s bundle of sheeting over the fence and made his way back to town as fast as his rheumatic legs would carry him. Halfway across, he met Lewis Morris who was on his way over to verify the rumor that he had caught concerning the early success of the Catalpas in Galena.
“Hooray for our side!” cried Rough and Ready, exultingly. “I have heard it from the gentle Miss Ally. Our boys have made ten runs in the first three innings, and the Galena fellows have made one—one whole one.”
“Then I’ll turn right around and tell the news in town!” said Lewis, with excitement. “I’ll have to stir the people up, for the whole town has gone to sleep, except Dr. Selby, and he was sweating at every pore, as I came by the drug store, for thinking of another defeat for the Catalpas.”
Rough and Ready gazed after the rapidly retreating form of the young man who turned and stepped swiftly across the bridge. Then, putting his hand to his coonskin cap, as if trying to recall something to his mind, he murmured, “If I didn’t go and leave that ther bundle of sheetin’ in the Judge’s dooryard! ’Pears to me as if that pesky baseball had knocked my wits clean out.” And, smiling at his own feeble joke, he retraced his steps to the North Catalpa side of the river.
When Lewis Morris reached the center of the town, he saw a knot of men and boys gathered around the bulletin board of The Leaf. “Just my luck,” he muttered. “Downey has got the news out, and they have taken the edge of it off before I could get back.”
But Lewis forgot his little disappointment when he eagerly scanned the bulletin which the editor had posted during his brief run across the bridge. This was what he read:
An overwhelming victory for our nine! In the contest today, the Catalpas were the victors by a score of 13 to 3. Great enthusiasm prevails and the visiting nine are now being cheered by the excited populace. The result has astonished everybody, none more so than the defeated nine and their immediate friends. Our esteemed fellow townsman, Mr. Albert Heaton, Senior, has telegraphed to The Leaf the score by innings, as follows:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 total Catalpas 5 4 1 0 0 2 1 0 0 13. Galenas 1 0 0 2 1 2 1 0 1 3. Errors, Galenas, 13; Catalpas, 1.
“Here’s Lew Morris!” cried brawny Hank Jackson, “Glory enough for one day! hey, Lew? Everybody
