CHAPTER IIICONSTERNATION
McRae’s exclamation of alarm was echoed promptly in various forms by Robbie and the members of the Giant team, who came crowding around Joe and Jim.
“No, I’m not hurt, Mac,” replied Joe reassuringly, “though I don’t wonder you think so, from the way I look. That is, I’m not hurt seriously. A bit of a burn and blister here and there, that’s all. Wait till you see the supper I pack away and you’ll know I’m all right.”
“But what has happened, anyway?” asked McRae.
“Oh, I got a bit too near to a burning house down there a way and got singed,” returned Joe.
“Listen to him!” exclaimed Jim. “Here’s the straight of it. Joe went up through a house that was burning like tinder, got an old woman who was trapped in one of the rooms, threw her over his shoulder and made his way down with her through the flames and smoke. Outside of that he didn’t do anything!”
“Just like the old rascal!” exclaimed Robbie, with a glint of admiration in his eyes. “Always Johnny on the spot when there’s anything to be done.”
“But you couldn’t do all that without getting hurt,” declared McRae. “You’re not trying to cover up anything from me, are you, Joe?”
“Not at all, Mac,” returned Joe. “My lungs feel all right, so I know I didn’t inhale any of the flame. And I kept my eyes shut at the worst places. The only hurts I’ve got are a few superficial burns here and there that don’t amount to anything. I’ll be right as a trivet in a day or two.”
“But your arm, your pitching arm?” persisted McRae. “Was that burned at all?”
“Scorched a bit,” replied Joe. “But a doctor down there dressed it. He’s coming around to take another look at it later on.”
“We won’t wait for him,” declared McRae. “Dougherty,” he said, addressing the trainer of the club, who had joined the group, “come right up with Joe to his room and look at that arm. I’d rather have your judgment of it than that of any doctor round here.”
Joe and Jim, together with McRae, Robbie and Dougherty, repaired at once to Joe’s room where the latter was at once subjected to the most careful examination.
“Absolutely all right except the arm,” pronounced Dougherty at last.
“Except the arm!” McRae fairly shouted. “Why, man, that’s everything!”
“I don’t mean that there’s anything serious with that either,” explained the trainer. “I only mean that I’m sure the other burns don’t amount to anything, while I’m not so sure about the arm. It depends on how deep the burn went. Probably it didn’t go deep enough to affect or twist any of the muscles. But we’ll have to wait a little while until the inflammation subsides before we can be absolutely certain.”
He made Joe flex the muscles, which the latter did with so little appearance of pain or flinching that McRae was partially reassured. Then the doctor, who had come in, dressed the arm with exceeding care and went away and the anxious party adjourned to the dining room.
But the clean sweep that the hardy athletes commonly made at the table was not in evidence that night. Their usual appetites were lacking. The mere possibility that anything could have happened to their kingpin twirler to mar his effectiveness was felt by each as a personal calamity.
They all felt that Joe was the keystone of the Giant arch. If that keystone gave way, the whole structure threatened to fall.
McRae and Robbie scarcely ate anything andsoon left the table to seek a secluded corner of the porch where they could brood undisturbed over their troubles.
“Just when everything was going as smooth as oil this thing had to happen,” growled the manager, as he viciously bit off the end of his cigar. “What was it I told you just this afternoon? That if Joe should break his arm all our hopes would go geflooey. The greatest pitching arm that baseball ever knew!”
“There, there, John,” soothed Robbie. “Don’t be so quick in borrowing trouble. Joe hasn’t broken his arm, and by the same token he probably hasn’t hurt it at all, at all. Just keep your shirt on and be patient for a day or two. It’ll all come out in the wash.”
“I hope so,” said McRae. “But if Joe doesn’t come through all right it’s all up with the Giants for this season as far as the championship is concerned. I was counting on him to turn in thirty victories this year, and that, with what the other pitchers could do, would practically cinch the pennant.”
“To say nothing of the other games he’d win with his bat on the days he wasn’t pitching,” added Robbie. “He’s as much of a wonder with the stick as he is in the pitcher’s box.”
“Oh, why couldn’t it have been his left armthat was hurt, if it had to be either!” groaned McRae.
“Be thankful, John, that ’tis no worse,” adjured Robbie. “Suppose he’d never come out of that house alive. And from what Jim said, it was just a matter of touch and go. I tell you, John, that boy is a regular fellow to risk his life for an old woman he’d never seen before.”
“Of course he is,” agreed McRae. “And of course I wouldn’t have wanted him to do anything else than he did. All the same, I wish that house hadn’t taken a mind to burn.”
While this colloquy was taking place on the veranda, another was going on in Joe’s room, where he and Jim had gone directly from the table in compliance with Dougherty’s command that Joe should go to bed early and get a good night’s sleep.
On the way Joe had stopped at the clerk’s desk and sent a long night letter to Mabel and another to his mother, reassuring them against any lurid accounts that they might see of the affair in the next day’s papers.
“Pretty well all in, old boy,” remarked Jim solicitously, as Joe dropped into a chair after reaching the room occupied by him and his chum.
“I am, for a fact,” admitted Joe. “The reaction, I suppose. Tired physically and worried a little mentally.”
“What do you mean?” asked Jim in quick alarm. “You don’t really think that you’ve seriously injured your arm, do you?”
“I try not to,” returned Joe, with a forced smile. “But naturally I can’t help feeling anxious about it. That arm brings me in my livelihood. I suppose I feel somewhat as a violinist might who had hurt his fingers and didn’t know whether they were going to be permanently crippled or not.”
“But you worked your arm without any apparent pain when Dougherty asked you to!” exclaimed Jim.
“‘Apparent’ is right,” rejoined Joe. “But I don’t mind admitting to you, old boy, on the dead quiet, that it hurt me like the mischief all the same. But good old Mac was so worried that I didn’t have the heart to add to his burdens. So I just grit my teeth and stalled through.”
“Of course, though, that may not have meant anything,” said Jim comfortingly, though his own heart had sunk down into his boots with apprehension. “The arm was naturally inflamed from the burn and any motion would have hurt it. But that doesn’t say that it won’t be all right as soon as the inflammation subsides.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself,” said Joe. “All the same there’s a great big if behind it, andI can’t help thinking what it may mean if the worst comes to the worst.”
“There isn’t going to be any worst,” declared Jim stoutly. “In a couple of days this will be only like a bad dream and we’ll be laughing over the worry we’ve had for nothing.”
“Here’s hoping that you’re a true prophet,” said Joe. “Well, I’m not going to grizzle over it anyway. It isn’t for myself I care so much. It’s what it will mean to Mabel! To mother, too, and to Clara and to dad. They’d take it to heart more than I would myself. And then—there’s the Giants!”
“It would be a terrible blow to the chances of the team,” Jim admitted. “It would mean more to them than the loss of any other three men. Why, you could take the Yannigans, just as you did this afternoon, and with you pitching and batting you could lead them to the pennant.”
“I’m afraid it’s just your friendship that’s talking now,” deprecated Joe. “But honest, Jim, the old team is more to me than anything on earth except my family. My heart is bound up in its success. They’ve done an awful lot for me. They’ve given me my chance, they’ve backed me up, they’ve helped me make whatever reputation I have. And to think of failing them now—well, I don’t dare think of it.”
“I know just how you feel about it,” repliedJim sympathetically. “All the same, don’t forget that if you owe a lot to the Giants, they owe still more to you. There have been years when they wouldn’t have been anywhere at all in the race if it hadn’t been for you.
“And don’t forget, Joe,” his friend went on earnestly, “that even if your right arm did go back on you, that wouldn’t put you out of baseball. What’s the matter with that left arm of yours? In a little while you could develop that so that you would become as great as a southpaw as you are as a right-hander.”
“I suppose I might do something with it,” said Joe, brightening a little. “By Jove, I hadn’t thought of that!”
“And even leaving that out of the question,” pursued Jim, “there’s that old noddle of yours, full of baseball brains and able to out-think any other on the diamond. Why, there’s any number of clubs in the league that would fight each other to a frazzle to get you as manager at any salary you might want to ask. It would be a matter of writing your own contract.”
“Oh, I don’t suppose I should starve,” said Joe, with a whimsical smile. “But it would be a mighty wrench to get out of the active part of the game. The roar of the crowds, the thrill of striking out a batter with the bases full, thecrash of the bat when you knock out a homer! Gee, it’s the breath of life!”
“Well, you’re going to draw in a good many of those breaths yet,” declared Jim, with decision. “Now, let’s cut out all the gloom stuff and you get to bed with the belief that everything’s going to be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. McRae would have a fit if he knew I’d kept you up talking.”
Just then there came a knock at the door.
“Who on earth can that be?” asked Jim, a little impatiently.
“A bellboy perhaps,” surmised Joe. “Better let him in and see what he wants. Come in,” he called.
The door opened, and in the doorway stood framed a resplendent vision, a young man dressed from head to foot in the very height of fashion.