CHAPTER XIXTHE AGITATION IN BANCROFT
More than a hundred men, laborers and mill hands, bearing new brooms, recently bought in grocery stores, and making a tremendous noise with tin horns, cow bells, and voices, were marching down the main street of Bancroft.
They were Kingsbridge fans, who had come down to the city to root for their baseball team, and to back it up, if necessary, should a disturbance start upon the field; and, to the last horny-handed husky, they looked like fellows who would as soon fight as eat; one might have fancied, even, that not a few of them were the sort who would leave a meal any day to take a hand in a healthy, head-cracking scrap.
At any rate, their appearance had been sufficient to serve notice of the cause which had brought them thirty miles by rail on this mid-week day to sit in a bunch on the Bancroft bleachers while the game was in progress.
After the affair in Kingsbridge, which ended with the whipping of Hoover, there had been rumors that the resentful Bancrofters would do things to Locke when he appeared in the city down the river, which had brought out this picked band of Lefty’s admirers with the openly proclaimed intention of being concerned in such “doings” as might come off.
The game was over, the Kinks had won again, and there had been no riot. Up to the seventh, it had been another pretty struggle between Locke and Hoover, but when the first Kingsbridger opened that fatal inning with a stinging two-sacker, the local pitcher went up in the air for the first time in the Northern League, being bumped for three earned runs before Manager Riley brought himself to send in a substitute. The game had terminated with the score seven to three in Kingsbridge’s favor. Hence the demonstration of the rejoicing visitors, as they marched down through town to take the homeward-bound train.
Mike Riley, chewing at his inevitable cigar, stood on a corner, and sullenly watched the parade. After the game, he had not lingered to say anything to his players, for he knew that his mood would lead him into remarks not at allsoothing or flattering, and mere talk could not remedy what had happened.
Some one grabbed Riley by the elbow, and he looked round, to see Fancy Dyke, accompanied by Rufus Kilgore, a lawyer, who was one of the backers of the Bancroft team. Dyke’s thin lips were pressed together, the corners being pulled down into something half sneer, half snarl. The lawyer looked disturbed.
“What’re you doing?” asked Fancy. “Standin’ here to give them howlin’ muckers a chance to see how bad you feel? Where’s the police, anyhow? They oughter pinch that whole bunch for disturbin’ the peace.”
“It would take the whole police force of the city to arrest a single man of them and land him in the caboose,” said Kilgore. “Kingsbridge didn’t send down a hundred fighting men to see any one of them pinched because he was celebrating a victory over us.”
“We was lookin’ for you, Riley,” said Dyke. “Come on over to Kilgore’s office.”
“What for?” growled the manager, having drawn back and shaken off Fancy’s hand.
“We’re goin’ to have a consultation; we’re goin’ to talk this thing over. Jorkins and Butler will be right along. We’ve told ’em to come.”
“What’re you tryin’ to do—make trouble fer me?” rasped Riley resentfully. “You’ve got busy mighty quick after the game, ain’t ye?”
“It’s sure time something was done,” retorted Fancy defensively. “This town won’t stand for much more of the medicine it had to swaller to-day.”
“That’s right,” agreed the lawyer. “Everybody is sore over it. To be downed by Fryeburg or Lakeport would be bad enough, but to have Kingsbridge rub it into us—oh, blazes!”
“I don’t s’pose you guys got an idea I’m goin’ to lay down and let the Kinks keep it up right along?” snapped the manager. “I reckoned you knew I warn’t built that way.”
“It won’t do any hurt to talk over what’s to be done,” said Dyke. “Come on!”
Riley followed them, scowling blackly. They crossed the street along which the hilarious Kingsbridgers had passed, came to an open doorway two blocks farther on, and mounted a rather dark flight of stairs. Kilgore jingled a bunch of keys attached to a chain, and opened a door bearing his name lettered upon it, at the head of the stairs.
The office consisted of two uncarpeted rooms, the front and larger having windows which looked upon the street. The lawyer flung open one ofthose windows, through which drifted distant and dying sounds of the celebrating Kingsbridgers. Then he motioned his companions to chairs, himself taking the swivel in front of his littered, untidy desk.
“Had to let my stenographer off for the game,” he said. “She made a bluff that she was half sick and had a terrible headache, but I knew what ailed her, and I cured her by giving her a pass. She’ll come back to-morrow feeling worse than ever over our licking.”
“Natural enough,” said Dyke, sitting down. “It’ll make the whole town sick.”
Riley’s chair cracked under his weight. “Ain’t got a swaller of somethin’ round here, have ye, Kilgore?” he asked.
The lawyer produced a “longnecker” and a dirty glass. “Running water in the back room if you want it,” he said.
But the manager, having no desire to dilute the amber liquid with which he almost overran the glass, and disdaining a “chaser,” took his “straight.” Dyke followed with a small “nip,” but Kilgore asked to be excused from joining them, and put away the bottle and glass.
Heavy steps sounded on the stairs. A tall, slim, sallow man entered, a puffing, red-faced, rolypolyindividual toddling at his heels. These were Timothy Jorkins and Ira Butler, both financial backers of the team, and members of the Bancroft B. B. A.
“Here you are!” said Jorkins, in a deep voice pregnant with accusation, fixing his eyes on Riley.
“Yes, here you are!” gurgled Butler, likewise glaring at the manager.
“Yes, here I am,” rasped Mike, returning their gaze. “What about it?”
“What about it?” rumbled the tall man excitedly. “Do you say what about it? Have you the nerve to say what about it? We are the ones to say that. What about it, Mr. Riley; what about it?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Riley, what about it?” wheezed the fat man, digging up a limp handkerchief, and painfully mopping around inside his collar, his face becoming still more beetlike during the process. “That’s what we want to know.”
Riley removed the cigar from his mouth, and spat on the floor. “You’re all wrought up, ain’t ye?” he sneered. “Goin’ to jump on me good and hard, hey? There’s some poor losers in this burg.”
“Bancrofters’ll never stand losing to Kingsbridge,” declared Jorkins. “You were dead certaintheir left-hand kid pitcher couldn’t repeat the trick he played on us in their town last Saturday, but he did it, and everybody’s chewing the rag. If he can keep that up, they’ll grab the pennant away from us. They’re getting the jump on us at the beginning of the season. It’s plain we haven’t a pitcher to hold his own with that man Locke. Hoover blew up to-day. Locke got his goat, and he won’t be any more use against that team. They’ll keep Locke just to run against us.”
“Has Bancroft ever had a losin’ team with me managin’?”
“No, but—”
“She won’t this year, either. Leave it to me. Don’t go off your nut so soon.”
“What do you propose to do?” asked Butler.
“I ain’t had much time to figger on it yet, but you can bet your life that I’ll do somethin’.”
“I lost a hundred on the game to-day,” said Dyke mournfully.
“Where did they get hold of Locke?” questioned the lawyer.
“I don’t know,” confessed Riley. “Cope dug him up, and he ain’t tellin’ where. Hutchinson don’t know no more about the youngster than we do.”
“Perhaps he lies,” put in Jorkins. “Perhaps he does know.”
“He wouldn’t take the trouble to lie about it if he knew, and he told me straight that he didn’t know.”
“Think his conscience would keep him from lying?” asked Fancy.
“Conscience! If Bob Hutchinson has one, nobody ever accused him of it. But if Locke was his find he’d be taking the credit, you bet.
“Don’t nobody think for a minute that I’m goin’ to sit round and twiddle my thumbs while Kingsbridge is winnin’ games off us. I ain’t built that way. We’ll down ’em somehow or other, mark that.”
“We ought to have a pitcher as good as Locke, at any cost,” was the opinion of Jorkins.
“At any cost,” agreed Butler. “Why don’t we have him?”
“Pitchers of that caliber ain’t to be picked off ev’ry bush this late in the season,” said Riley. “There’s other ways of downin’ Kingsbridge.”