CHAPTER XXXII
NIP AND TUCK FOR VICTORY
Thegame was halted. There were angry demands from several players as to why a stranger was allowed to come on the field. Others, recognizing the professor, clamored that it was all right.
“I came as soon as I could!” explained the medicine man to the Smith boys, who gathered about him. “I knew something must be wrong. I can’t locate Tithonus though. What is it? Bill’s glasses? Here they are, found in the most opportune way! Talk about golden rivers!”
The professor was panting from his run and his rapid talk. He held the glasses to Bill.
“Where did you find them?” gasped the pitcher.
“Just now, as I was coming across the campus. I left my wagon over in the road. As I was passing one of the cannon some of the janitors were cleaning it. There was a lot of leaves and rubbish in it. Then out fell the glasses just as I passed. I grabbed them up, and I knew the whole story.”
“You knew the whole story?” cried Cap. “Who put them there?”
“No, no! I can’t tell that!” declared Mr. Clatter, while North and Mersfeld looked at each other in relief. “I mean I understand it all—about your messages to me,” wenton the medicine man. “At first I couldn’t imagine why you had telegraphed me. I knew you must be in some kind of trouble though.”
“Yes, we generally are,” murmured Pete.
“And, as soon as I saw the glasses fall from the cannon I realized what it was. Bill lost them, perhaps a bird took them for its nest. At any rate here they are, and it’s very lucky, too, for I can’t get any trace of Tithy. Here, Bill, put them on and play ball.”
“I don’t need them now,” answered the pitcher.
“Don’t need them! You don’t mean to say that the game is over—you haven’t lost the championship; have you?” and the professor looked pained, for he was a lover of base ball, and in his journeyings he faithfully read the accounts of the games at Westfield, where his friends the Smith boys attended. “Have you lost the pennant?” asked the professor sadly.
“Not yet, but we’re in a fair way to if this keeps on,” murmured Cap, for the score was seven to nine in favor of Tuckerton.
“But why doesn’t Bill need his glasses then?” asked Mr. Clatter.
“Because I can see to pitch without them,” answered our hero. “A funny thing just happened, Professor,” and Bill told about his fall and the odd effect it had had on his vision. The traveling medicine man looked interested.
“Yes, that’s exactly how it may have taken place,” he declared, as Cap stated his theory. “Here, let me have a look at you, Bill.”
“Say,” angrily cried Burke, captain of the Tuckertonnine, “if this is a ball game let’s go on with it, and if it’s a hospital for injured players we’ll get off the field.”
“That’s right,” added Hedden, the pitcher. “We’re here to win the pennant, not to listen to fairy stories.”
“Play ball!” yelled Brower, the catcher.
“Easy now,” counseled Professor Clatter. “It won’t take me but a moment to look at Bill’s head, and then the game can go on. You don’t seem to realize that something extraordinary has taken place here.”
“It will be extraordinary if we ever play ball again,” remarked Burke, sarcastically. But the professor did not heed him. He was looking at the cut on Bill’s head.
“That accounts for your eyes getting right again,” he said. “It’s a bad cut, but you’re in shape to play, in spite of it. Go in, and win!”
“That’s what we’re going to do!” declared Cap.
“Surest thing you know!” cried Pete.
“I’d like to find out how my glasses got in that cannon,” spoke Bill, but no one enlightened him, though Professor Clatter, as he looked at the guilty, flushed face of Mersfeld had a suspicion of the truth.
“Play ball!” called the umpire, and the Westfield nine went to their places in the field. Mersfeld, with a bitter look on his face, watched Bill go to the box.
And the pitcher did not need his glasses, though he took them with him as a matter of precaution. With his eyes right once more, and feeling full of confidence Bill exchanged a few preliminary balls with Cap. Then he signified that he was ready for the batter. Cap, with a gratified smile, had noticed that the horsehide cut the plate cleanly and yet the curves broke just at the right time.
“Strike one!” called the umpire suddenly, following the first ball Bill delivered. The batter started. He had not moved his stick. He gave the umpire an indignant glance, opened his mouth as if to say something, and then thought better of it.
There was a long-drawn sigh of relief from the grandstands and bleachers where the Westfield supporters sat, and Bob Chapin ventured to start the song, “We’ve Got Their Scalp Locks Now!”
Bill smiled at his brother behind the plate. Pete picked up a handful of gravel and tossed it into the air before settling back ready for whatever might come his way.
“Strike two!” came sharply from the umpire.
“That’s the way to do it! Make him fan, Bill!” cried Whistle-Breeches.
“He’s done,” called Bob Chapin.
“Make him give you a nice one,” was the advice the batter got from his friends.
The man with the stick tapped the plate and smiled confidently. He was still smiling when the next ball came. He struck at it—missed it clean, and threw his bat to the ground with such force as to splinter it.
“Batter’s out!” said the umpire quietly.
“That’s the way to do it!”
“There’s more where those came from!”
“We’ve got their Angora!”
These were the cries that greeted Bill’s initial effort in the box at that championship game. Matters were looking brighter for Westfield, and every man on the team, and every supporter who wanted to see the pennant stay where it was, felt hope coming back to him.
There was a little apprehension in Tuckerton’s ranks. The game had seemed so sure to them, but now the tide was turning. Still Bill might not be able to keep it up.
As for our hero, however, he knew that his eye was as true as it had ever been, and he felt able to go on for nine innings if necessary. But only four remained in which to turn the trick. Could he do it? Others beside himself asked that question.
The next man stepped to the plate. Two fouls and a miss on the last strike was the best he could do, and he went back to the bench. The third man Bill struck out cleanly.
“Wow! Wow!” howled the Westfield crowd. “We’ve got ’em going!”
But it was to be no easy victory. Though by reason of Bill’s twirling a momentary halt had been called on the winning streak of the visitors, still Westfield must make more runs in order to win the game.
And this was not easy. Hedden was hit for two singles, but the Westfield players were a bit careless on bases, and one was caught napping. One run was brought in on Cap’s three bagger making the score eight to nine, with a single leading tally in favor of the visitors.
From then on it was nip and tuck for victory. Bill kept up the good twirling, and such box work as he exhibited was not seen for many a long day on the Westfield diamond. Not a Tuckerton player got a hit off him in the next three innings, goose eggs going up in the frames, that up to the advent of Bill had contained at least one tally for each time the visitors were at bat.
But, on the other hand Westfield, try as they did,could not score. The captain and coach begged and pleaded, and the crowds by songs and cheers urged their men to battle to the death. It seemed useless. The two teams, now evenly matched, sea-sawed back and forth, with grim, bulldog tenacity, but there the game hung in the balance.
Tuckerton was still one run ahead when they came to bat in the ninth inning.
“Hold ’em down! Hold ’em down!” pleaded Cap to Bill.
“I will,” promised the pitcher, and he did, striking three men out in quick succession amid the cheers of the crowd.
“Now’s our last chance,” murmured Captain Graydon as his men came in. “It’s do or die for the pennant now!”