CHAPTER VIIISTEADYING DOWN
Tom Locke did not turn his eyes toward the bench; he did not dare, lest a glance should be interpreted as a supplication, and bring about his removal from the field. He saw Oulds, ball in hand, standing squarely on the plate, while “Wop” Grady, the next batter, eager to keep things going and gain as much advantage for Bancroft as possible before another pitcher was sent in, was seeking to push him back into his position.
His manner entirely changed, although his face continued ashen, Locke beckoned to the catcher, and ran forward. Oulds, scowling, sour, sullen, met him five feet in front of the pan.
“Give me that ball,” said Locke, taking it from the catcher’s hand. “Call the curves: a drop or a high inshoot for a strike-out, whichever you happen to know this man is weakest on. I’m going to get him.”
“Yes, you are!” sneered Oulds. “Why, you can’t—”
“Get ready to catch me,” Locke cut him short. “I tell you I’m going to get this man.”
Then, seemingly deaf to the continued howling of the crowd, he turned and walked back, apparently disregarding the taunting base runners, who were dancing off the sacks to lure a throw.
Larry Stark, doubtless wondering that Hutchinson had not signaled for a change, stood listless, twelve feet off second; but, without betraying the fact, Locke observed that Jim Sockamore, the Indian center fielder, apparently hoping to work an old trick in the midst of the excitement, was walking swiftly, but unobtrusively, in toward the sack. Indeed, Sockamore was not twenty feet from the bag when the pitcher faced Grady at the plate.
Only for an instant were Locke’s eyes turned toward the batsman; like a flash, he whirled again to face second, and the ball shot from his fingers as he turned.
He had not received a signal to throw, but he did so on the chance that the foxy Indian player would sneak all the way to the hassock, if for no other purpose than to show up what might have been pulled off with a live pitcher on the slab.
Sockamore was within five feet of the cushion when Locke turned, and, seeing the ball was coming,he leaped forward. Harney, not a little surprised, lunged back. Like a bullet the scarcely soiled ball sped straight into the eager hands of the young redskin, who met Harney and jabbed it on to him viciously as the Bancroft captain weakly sought to slip under.
The howling of the angry and dissatisfied crowd was instantly cut short. The sudden silence was ruptured by a single hoarse word shot from the lips of the umpire, who had been so surprised that for a moment he had faltered in giving the decision:
“Out!”
The spectators gasped; Harney choked and rumbled weakly. Sockamore grinned into the face of the tricked and chagrined man. At the bench, Henry Cope brought his hand down with a resounding slap upon his thigh, crying jubilantly:
“There! He got him!”
After a few moments of dazed silence, some scattered persons ventured to applaud and cheer faintly, while, apparently struck by the seeming incongruity of the unexpected performance, many others laughed.
“Oh, what an accident!” groaned one of the coachers, as Harney, his face red with mortification, rose to his feet and gave Locke a stare.
“How’d you ever happen to think of it?” sneered the Bancroft captain.
Chuckling, Sockamore threw the ball to the pitcher, and capered back into center field. Harney, his mouth twisted and his cheeks burning, made slowly for the Bancroft bench.
“Accidents will happen,” came from a coacher. “Never mind that. Take a constitutional, Wop; he’ll accommodate ye.”
Grady idled at the pan, laughing silently over the discomfiture of his captain. He was still idling when Locke, seeing Oulds ready, shot over a scorcher that clipped the inside corner.
“Strike!” declared the umpire.
“What’s that? What’s that?” cried the coacher. “It can’t be poss-i-bill? Another accident!”
Surprise was general, but still, like the coacher, the spectators on the bleachers and in the stand fancied it related in a way to something “accidental,” and not one in a hundred thought it probable that the left-hander could put over another without wasting several.
Oulds, wondering, called for an out-drop, but Locke, knowing the batter had not yet been egged into a condition that would make him easy to “pull,” shook his head. The signal was changedto one requesting a straight drop, and the pitcher swung into a snappy, quick delivery.
The ball seemed to be too high, and not looking for the despised twirler to “put much on it,” Grady permitted himself to be caught again. Down past his shoulders shot the sphere, to the instant croaking of “Strike tuh!” from the umpire.
“Hey, hey! What’s comin’ off here?” bellowed an uncoated, unshaven, collarless man back of first base. “Lightnin’s hit agin in the same place.”