When we was through at Boston we made the cute little jump to St. Louis, and Carey was ridin’ him all the way.
“This line,” he told him, “is the one the James Boys works on. You see one o’ the Jameses pitches for Boston and another pitches for St. Louis in the other league. And the ones that ain’t ball players works back and forth between the two towns. Somebody has to set up all night and keep watch. I’ve been picked to set up the first night because I can shoot so good. Tomorrow mornin’ we’ll draw lots to see who sets up tomorrow night. But if you got somethin’ you don’t want to lose you better sleep with one eye open and keep your suitcase right in the berth with you. O’ course it’s too late for ’em to steal your control, but they might get your fast ball and then you wouldn’t have nothin’ but your complexion.”
“Oh, yes, I would,” says Skull. “I got a little money and a watch and some clo’es.”
“Shut up!” says Carey. “Don’t be boastin’ o’ what you got. Maybe one o’ them Jameses is right in this car now. You can’t never tell where they’re hidin’.”
Well, the next mornin’ we all ast Carey what kind of a night he had and did he see anything suspicious, and so forth. He told us he had one bad scare. Somebody come through the car with a mask on. But as soon as he seen the mask he knowed it wasn’t one o’ the James Boys, because they wasn’t none of them catchers.
“Who was it?” I says.
“Some society fella,” he says, “goin’ to the masquerade ball up in the day coach.”
We drawed lots right after we was through breakfast. They was supposed to be all our names wrote on pieces o’ paper and dropped into a hat. Then the fella that drawed his own name was to keep watch the second night.
Skull was the baby. All the rest of us drawed his name, too, only o’ course he didn’t know that.
“Well,” says Carey, “it looks like it’s up to you. And you don’t want to take it as a joke. Whether we get by or not depends on how you work. You’ll have to take my gun; I’ll show you how it handles. If you see some stranger come into the car, shoot! Don’t throw a baseball at him or you might wound the engineer. You better set up in the washroom all night with the porter, and if he asks you to help him shine shoes you go ahead and help him. Some o’ these here porters is in with the James Boys and if they get sore it’s good night. And be sure and don’t let the robbers get the first shot.”
Skull tried to sleep a little durin’ the day. But he was too nervous.
“Who’s keepin’ watch now?” he ast Carey.
“Nobody, in the daytime,” says Carey. “They’re afraid of bein’ seen by scouts, because, as I say, one o’ them’s with the Braves and another with the Browns, and the next one that gets caught might be hung or sent to the Carolina League.”
Carey had to borry a gun off’n the conductor.
“I’ll be sure it’s empty before I leave the bird have it,” he says. “He’s dangerous enough with a baseball in his hand, let alone a loaded gat.”
Well, sir, I wisht you’d saw the porter when Skull and the gun went on watch at eleven that night. We had to call him out and put him wise or he’d of dove off the train. He told us he never seen a guy as restless as Skull. All night long he was movin’ round—out on the platform, then back in the washroom, then through to the other end o’ the car and then out on the platform again. And jumpin’ sideways at every noise.
“Nothin’ doin’, eh?” says Carey in the mornin’. “Not a sign o’ ’em?”
“Not a sign,” says Skull.
“And ain’t you sleepy?” says Carey.
“Yes, I am,” says Skull. “I hope I don’t have to work this afternoon.”
“What if you do?” says Carey. “It won’t keep you up more’n ten minutes.”
VII
Skull didn’t pitch that afternoon. He didn’t pitch the next day neither, but he was in there tryin’. Rigler could of umpired with his right arm cut off. They wasn’t no strikes to call.
When he’d throwed fourteen without gettin’ one clost, Cap took him out.
“I’d leave you go through with it,” says Cap, “only the public likes to see some hittin’. Did you think just because this is a bad ball town you couldn’t pitch nothin’ but bad balls?”
“I’m wild,” says Skull. “I can’t get ’em over.”
“I’d of guessed it in a few more minutes,” says Cap. “Did you ever try pitchin’ left-handed?”
“Left-handed?” says Skull. “Why, I wouldn’t know where a ball was goin’ if I throwed it left-handed.”
“Then you must be equally good with both hands,” says Cap.
Waivers was ast on Skull before we left St. Louis.
“They’s no use foolin’ along with him,” Cap told us. “He don’t look like he’d ever get a man out, and even if his control come back you couldn’t never learn him nothin’.”
“I knowed it,” says Carey. “I knowed we’d never have him the whole year.”
“It’s better for you this way,” I says. “Your brains would be wore out before fall.”
We went back home and the third day we was there Cap told us that everybody’d waived.
“The next thing’s placin’ him,” he says. “The newspaper boys has advertised him so good that every hick town in the country is wise to him. If I can’t make no deal within a couple o’ weeks I’ll leave him go outright.”
The two weeks was pretty near up when Carey put over his last one on the poor simp. I and Carey was throwin’ in front o’
