Читать книгу Lefty Locke Pitcher-Manager - Standish Burt L. - Страница 5

The swarthy little fabulist rose hastily to his feet, making a quick survey of the southpaw. “Am I indeed and at last in the presence of the great Lefty Locke?” he cried, his face beaming like the morning sun in a cloudless sky. “Is it possible that after many weary moons I have dropped anchor in the same harbor with the most salubriously efficacious port-side flinger of modern times? Pardon my deep emotion! Slip me your mudhook, Lefty; let me give you the fraternal grip.”

He grabbed Locke’s hand and wrung it vigorously, while the other members of the Wind Jammers pressed nearer, looking the Big League pitcher over with interest.

“In many a frozen igloo,” declared Wiley, “I have dreamed of this day when I should press your lily-white fingers. Oft and anon during my weary sojourn in that far land of snow and ice have I pictured to myself the hour when we should stand face to face and exchange genuflections and greetings. And whenever a smooched and tattered months-old newspaper would drift in from civilization, with what eager and expectant thrills did I tremulously turn to the baseball page that I might perchance read thereon how you had stung the Hornets, bitten the Wolves, clipped the claws of the Panthers, or plucked the feathers from the White Wings!”

“And I have been wondering,” confessed Lefty, “if you could be the original Cap’n Wiley of whom I heard so many strange tales in my boyhood. It was reported that you were dead.”

“Many a time and oft hath that canard been circulated. According to rumor, I have demised a dozen times or more by land and sea; but each time, like the fabled Phœnix, I have risen from my ashes. During the last few fleeting years I have been in pursuit of fickle fortune in far-off Alaska, where it was sometimes so extremely cold that fire froze and we cracked up the congealed flames into little chunks which we sold to the Chilkoots and Siwashes as precious bright red stones. Strange to say, whenever I have related this little nanny goat it has been received with skepticism and incredulity. The world is congested with doubters.”

“When you wrote me,” admitted Locke, “proposing to bring your Wind Jammers here to play the Fernandon Grays, I thought the letter was a hoax. At first I was tempted not to answer it, and when I did reply it was out of curiosity more than anything else; I wanted to see what the next twist of the joke would be.”

“Let me assure you that you will find playing against the Wind Jammers no joke. I have conglomerated together the fastest segregation of baseball stars ever seen outside a major league circuit, and I say it with becoming and blushing modesty. Look them over,” he invited, with a proud wave of his hand toward the remarkable group of listeners. “It has always been my contention that there are just as good players to be found outside the Big League as ever wore the uniform of a major. I have held that hard luck, frowning fate, or contumelious circumstances have conspired to hold these natural-born stars down and prevent their names from being chiseled on the tablet of fame. Having gathered unto myself a few slippery shekels from my mining ventures in the land where baseball games begin at the hour of midnight, I have now set out to prove my theory, and before I am through I expect to have all balldom sitting up agog and gasping with wonderment.”

“I wish you luck,” replied Lefty. “If you don’t do anything else, you ought to get some sport out of it. I presume you still ascend the mound as a pitcher?”

“Oh,” was the airy answer, “on rare occasions I give the gaping populace a treat by propelling the sphere through the atmosphere. When my projector is working up to its old-time form, I find little difficulty in leading the most formidable batters to vainly slash the vacant ether. The weather seeming propitious, I may burn a few over this p.m. I trust you will pitch also.”

“I think I shall start the game, at least.”

Bailey Weegman butted in. “But he won’t finish it, Wiley. Like yourself, he’s not doing as much pitching as he did once.” His laugh was significant.

The owner of the Wind Jammers looked startled. “Tell me not in mournful numbers that your star is already on the decline!” he exclaimed, looking at Locke with regret. “That’s what the Big Leagues do to a good man; they burn him out like a pitch-pine knot. I’ve felt all along that the Blue Stockings were working you too much, Lefty. Without you on their roster ready to work three or four times a week in the pinches, they never could have kept in the running.”

“You’re more than complimentary,” said Locke, after giving Weegman a look. “But I think I’ll be able to shake something out of my sleeve this season, the same as ever.”

“Then don’t let them finish you, don’t let them grind you to a frazzle,” advised Wiley. “For the first time in recent history you have a chance for your white alley; the Federals are giving you that. If you’re not already enmeshed in the folds of a contract, the Feds will grab you and hand you a square deal.”

Weegman rose, chuckling and snapping his fingers. “All this talk about what the Feds can do is gas!” he declared. “They’re getting nothing but the soreheads and deadwood of organized baseball, which will be vastly better off without the deserters. Cripples and has-beens may make a good thing out of the Feds for a short time. Perhaps Locke would find it profitable to jump.” His meaning was all too plain.

Lefty felt like taking the insinuating fellow by the neck and shaking him until his teeth rattled, but outwardly he was not at all ruffled or disturbed. “Mr. Weegman,” he said, “is showing pique because I have not seen fit to sign up as manager of the Blue Stockings. He professes to have authority from Charles Collier to sign the manager, Collier having gone abroad for his health.”

“If anybody doubts my authority,” shouted Weegman, plunging his hand into an inner pocket of his coat, “I can show the documents that will–”

The southpaw had turned his back on him. “I understand you have a clever pitcher in the man known as Mysterious Jones, Wiley,” he said.

“A pippin!” was the enthusiastic answer. “I’ll give you a chance to see him sagaciate to-day.”

“He is a deaf-mute?”

“He couldn’t hear a cannon if you fired it right under the lobe of his ear, and he does his talking with his prehensile digits. Leon Ames in his best days never had anything on Jones.”

“Strange I never even heard of him. Our scouts have scoured the bushes from one end of the country to the other.”

“I never collided with any baseball scouts in Alaska,” said Wiley.

“Oh! You found Jones in Alaska?”

“Pitching for a team in Nome.”

“But baseball up there! I didn’t know–”

“Oh, no; nobody ever thinks of baseball up there, but in the all too short summer season there’s something doing in that line. Why, even modern dances have begun to run wild in Alaska, so you see they’re right up to the present jiffy.”

“Where did this Jones originally hail from?”

“Ask me! I don’t know. Nobody I ever met knew anything about him, and what he knows about himself he won’t tell. He’s mysterious, you understand; but his beautiful work on the slab has caused my classic countenance to break into ripples and undulations and convolutions of mirth.”

“Where is he? I’d like to give him the once over.”

“I think he’s out somewhere prowling around the town and sizing up the citizens. That’s one of his little vagaries; he has a combustable curiosity about strangers. Every place we go he wanders around for hours lamping the denizens of the burg. Outside baseball, strange people seem to interest him more than anything in the world; but once he has taken a good square look at a person, henceforth and for aye that individual ceases to attract him; if he ever gives anybody a second look, it is one of absolute indifference. Oh, I assure you with the utmost voracity that Jones is an odd one.”

“He must be,” agreed Lefty.

“Ay tank, cap’n,” said Oleson, the Swede outfielder, “that Yones now bane comin’ up the street.”

Wiley turned and gazed at an approaching figure. “Yes,” he said, “that’s him. Turn your binnacle lights on him, Lefty; behold the greatest pitcher adrift in the uncharted regions of baseball.”