“If I were a man, I’d like to take that offer,” she said, her eyes sparkling.
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t, Alice,” cried her friend Ida. “You wouldn’t encourage gambling on baseball, I’m sure.”
“Perhaps not; but if I were a man, I would like to thrash that big ruffian.”
Better news came, after a little while. The bulletin for the fourth inning showed four for the Catalpas and a big round “0” for their opponents. At this, there was a general and apparently concerted hurrah from the company in the street below. Editor Downey, as if thinking the cheer a personal compliment, put his frowsy head out of the window and bowed with as much grace as was possible under the circumstances.
“Mr. Downey’s hair looks as if he was laboring under great excitement,” said the apothecary, blandly smiling at the editor’s somewhat touseled appearance. “Every individual hair is standing on end, as if he were charged with electricity.”
Alice laughed joyously and seemed glad to find something under which she could cover her great elation at the good news from the North. Miss Ida uttered sarcastic remarks about the editor’s exuberant comments in the morning paper regarding the coming contest in Galena. She declared that she did not think the game nearly as important as any one of the decisive battles of the war. And she was sure that The Leaf would be perfectly ridiculous, next day, if the Catalpas were to win the championship. Her remarks were cut short by the display of another bulletin announcing the result of the fifth inning in these terms:—
Hurrah for our nine! Fifth inning—Catalpas, 0; Galenas, 0.
“What in thunder does that mean?” asked Lew Morris, angrily. “Why does the numbskull tell us to hurrah for our nine when both sides have a zero?”
A yell of derision went up from the crowd, and the editor, hearing groans and catcalls in the street below, put out his head and, with much trepidation, cried, “It was a mistake. I forgot to put on the sixth inning. Catalpas, one; Galenas, nix!”
A loud laugh greeted this sally, and the crowd good-humoredly proposed three cheers for The Catalpa Leaf, which were given in a random fashion, mingled with laughter. Mr. Downey, now well-smeared with ink, and perspiring with excitement, acknowledged the salute with gravity.
“Six innings played and the Catalpas are six to the Galena’s one!” exclaimed Alice, who was keeping the score with an assiduity that seemed to come from a belief that exactness in the figures would, somehow, affect the final result. Scraps of paper, on which observers had marked the score and had set down their prognostications of the innings yet to come, were circulated through the crowd. The Catalpas now had the lead, and it would be difficult for their adversaries to come up with them.
Lew Morris, leaning on the door of the carriage, chatted with Alice, drawing on his vivid imagination for pictures of the nine as they were probably looking now, away up there in Galena. He could see, he thought, Hiram Porter devouring the ground as he made his bases with a giant’s stride, his handsome face glowing with mingled heat and determination. He could even hear Larry’s voice, in a stage whisper, crying, “Go it, Hiram!” And he could see Larry, at third base, when the Catalpas were in the field, making one of those superb running catches of his, Ben Burton looking on, “as if he would eat him up,” added Lewis, jocularly.
“Why should Ben want to eat Larry up?” asked Dr. Selby, innocently. “Does he love him so?”
“On the contrary, quite the reverse,” laughed Lewis. “Larry is showing himself to be the best player in the nine, and as Ben thought that he was the best, and is finding out that he is not, he loves Larry accordingly. Besides that, he is jealous of Larry for other reasons,” and the young man fixed a bold look on the blushing face of Miss Alice. She turned away to see if another bulletin were not ready, and the doctor shook his head deprecatingly at Lewis.
There was much time for talk, however, before another despatch from the seat of war appeared. The impatient crowd, panting in the heat that was more and more oppressive as the sun approached the west, flung all sorts of appeals upwards to the windows of the office of The Leaf. There was no response, although Mr. Downey, as if to contradict Hank Jackson’s loud jeer that the editor had gone to sleep, showed his shaggy head at the window and made a negative motion with the same. There was no news.
Finally, just as some of the less patient were beginning to make their way homewards, like a banner of victory, the sheet of paper again appeared. This time, it was blazoned with these returns:—
7th inning—Catalpas, 1; Galenas, 0; 8th inning—Catalpas, 0; Galenas, 1.
“An even thing for the two innings!” cried Lew Morris triumphantly. “The Galenas cannot possibly pull up in the last inning! The game is ours! The game is ours!”
Lew’s jubilant shout was taken up by the crowd, which now grew denser again, and the excitement mounted to fever heat as the sun sank behind the cottonwoods below the town. Satisfied that the game and the championship were virtually won, some of the elder citizens, after exchanging congratulations with everybody that had a word of joy on their lips, walked homewards. But some of them stopped on the road and turned a listening ear towards the main street to hear the rousing cheer that soon went up, telling the town and all the Stone River Valley that the game was won and that our nine had captured the pennant of Northern Illinois.
A grimy and inky young imp, on the roof of The Leaf building, hoisted a particularly inky and grimy flag as the
