Читать книгу Jimmy Kirkland of the Cascade College Team - Hugh Stuart Fullerton - Страница 7

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Major Lawrence arose from his seat by the fire, stretching himself, scolded.

“Pair of young wastrels,” he declared accusingly. “Wasting my time, making me sit here and listen to your yarns. You ought to be made to work overtime for it. Here the ranch accounts are a week behind; and Krag loafing and telling yarns, leaving it for an old man like me to do.”

“Sit down, Major,” said Krag easily. “I’ll finish them up after you and Larry go to bed.”

“You shan’t do it,” stormed the Major. “Sit up all night, then be too sleepy to get up and do your work. I’ll do them myself.”

He stormed away to his private office, sniffing angrily, and Larry Kirkland and Bill Krag laughed.

“He’d never be happy unless he scolded someone,” said Krag. “I think he is half mad because I didn’t do the accounts, so he could quarrel with me over them.”

“I had a notion to tell him he was too old to be working late,” laughed Larry. “He always calls himself old and gets mad when any one else does it.”

They were sitting before the big open fire in the living room, for the day had closed with a misty rain. Larry was expanding under the home influence and the Major’s kindness and love, thinly concealed under his pretense of anger. Chun, the Chinese youth who had succeeded to the entire charge of the household, had served a late supper at the fireside, and Krag had told stories. His tales of exciting games on many major league ball fields, of the old friends and foes, of desperate struggles, of narrow escapes and hard-luck defeats. The big pitcher suddenly broke off in his recital of events and lapsed into a thoughtful silence, while Larry took up the story of his own exploits on the Shasta View team and in the preparatory school. Major Lawrence occasionally chuckled over some tale of boyish outbreaks, but Krag maintained a silence, punctuated by the sucking of his pipe.

After Major Lawrence’s choleric exit from the scene, Krag smoked silently for some time. Then he roused himself suddenly and asked:

“Larry, why didn’t you play ball at Cascade?”

“I—I—well, the truth is they didn’t want me.”

He launched into a long explanation of his trials and troubles at Cascade College, of his feud with Harry Baldwin and of Baldwin’s influence over the coach and those in charge of the athletic teams at Cascade. As he talked the recollection of his wrongs stirred him to eloquence, and more and more he forgot Krag and voiced his inner injuries.

“So you quit—quit cold, showed the yellow?” inquired Krag quietly, as he removed his pipe from between his teeth and sat forward waiting for a reply.

Larry’s mouth opened as in surprise. He started to make a reply, broke off shortly and sat staring thoughtfully into the fire. Krag, smoking glanced toward him from the corner of his eye. He saw the boy hurt, and angry, and puffed away in silence waiting for the youth to speak, to defend himself or give some explanation.

“I’ve been afraid of it for a month,” said Krag quietly. “When I picked up the papers in town and did not see your name in the lists, I thought you had the sulks and were not trying for the team. I believed if you tried you could have made it.”

“What could a fellow do, under the circumstances?” asked Larry sulkily. “I couldn’t beg them to let me play.”

“I said to myself,” Krag continued, unheeding the remark, “I said, ‘he has the swelled head.’ I hoped it wasn’t true.”

“It wasn’t true,” said Larry flashing into anger. “You know I’m not that kind. I wasn’t trying to run the team, or anything of that sort.”

“No,” replied Krag, still unmoved. “You didn’t ask them to make you captain, you just walked out and condescended to show them a few things about the game. You didn’t put on a uniform and get out and work; you loafed around waiting for them to beg you to help out the team.”

“It isn’t true. You know it isn’t true,” stormed Larry, although he stirred uncomfortably, realizing that Krag was hitting nearer the truth than was comfortable.

“I know you don’t think it is true, Larry,” said the big pitcher kindly. “You don’t know. I believe you dislike that kind of a fellow almost as much as I do—and I’ve been with them for years. I ought to know the symptoms. I hoped you’d escape it, that’s what made me so anxious to see your name in the paper.” Larry maintained a sulky, aggrieved silence.

“The trouble with you, Larry,” said Krag after a long pause, during which he lighted his pipe afresh, “is plain, untrimmed, swelled head.”

“Yes it is,” he said sharply when Larry started to expostulate—“plain, unvarnished, swelled head. I’ve seen too many kids ruined by that disease not to know it—and too many to permit me to keep quiet and let you go wrong from it.

“You went to college thinking you were the big recruit to the baseball ranks. It was natural. You had been the whole thing here on the ranch, boss of everything and used to being obeyed. You were the best player in that little prep school, and bossed the whole works and showed them how the game should be played. Then when you went down to Cascade your feelings were hurt because you weren’t asked to run the team.”

Larry maintained an angry, sullen silence. He was boiling with resentment, outraged, scandalized and shocked at the brutal accusations hurled at him and heaped upon him by the man he had made an idol for years.

“You did feel a little hurt because no one paid much attention to you, didn’t you?”

No answer.

“You did want to play? You would have played in spite of studies, if they had shown the proper respect for your ability, wouldn’t you?”

No reply.

“You didn’t organize that Freshman team out of love for the Freshman team, but with an idea of beating a fellow you didn’t like. Isn’t that true?”

No response, except that Larry shoved his hands more deeply into his pockets and slid lower into his chair.

Krag smoked in silence for a time. Then he arose, knocked the dottle from his pipe, stretched himself and coming nearer, dropped a big hand onto the boy’s shoulder.

“If I didn’t like you so much I wouldn’t tell you these things, Larry,” he said quietly. “I wouldn’t know just how you felt, if I hadn’t felt that way myself when I started playing baseball. I don’t want you to make the mistakes I made, or suffer from them the way I did. You know that, don’t you?”

A long silence.

“If—if—if what you say is true,” said Larry hesitatingly, “what ought I do?”

“It is true, isn’t it?”

“There’s a lot of truth in it.”

“Then all you’ve got to do,” said Krag cheerily, “is to treat yourself the way you’d treat one of your players—Benny, the fellow you had the trouble with, for instance. Just go out there, work, and keep your mouth shut. Obey orders, and let others decide whether they are right or wrong.”

“But if Baldwin, and the coach?” Larry hesitated.

“Rot,” said Krag. “Larry—if you’re right, no wrong person can make you wrong. In a college it is the students that decide who is wrong and who is right, just as in a government it is the people. The bosses can run either a ball team or a government for a time—but not with the public watching them—and they watch baseball closer than they do governments in this country.”