[Illustration: “RIGHT HERE, JACK! PUT IT OVER!”]
THREE-BASE BENSON
BY
RALPH HENRY BARBOUR
AUTHOR OF “FOURTH DOWN,” “THE LOST DIRIGIBLE,”
“GUARDING HIS GOAL,” “UNDER THE
YANKEE ENSIGN,” ETC.
[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE]
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK LONDON
1921
COPYRIGHT 1921, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A NEW BOY ARRIVES 1
II. TOM ASSUMES A RESPONSIBILITY 11
III. JERRY UPSETS HIS TEA 23
IV. THE HAZING 37
V. JERRY SPENDS SOME MONEY 49
VI. THE TRYOUT 59
VII. AT THE BATTING NET 72
VIII. JERRY HIRES OUT 82
IX. THE MAJOR GIVES ADVICE 98
X. THE DESERTED MINE 111
XI. INTO THE DEPTHS 121
XII. “KEEP YOUR CHIN UP!” 129
XIII. ENEMIES SHAKE HANDS 145
XIV. JERRY GOES ALONG 158
XV. IN THE NINTH INNING 169
XVI. THE GREAT DISCOVERY 184
XVII. THE CABIN IN THE WOODS 195
XVIII. JERRY ISSUES INVITATIONS 206
XIX. JERRY GIVES A PARTY 220
XX. THE SCHOOL GIVES SUPPORT 232
XXI. “THREE-BASE BENSON” 243
XXII. A VICTORY AND A DEFEAT 255
XXIII. COACH KEEGAN CONVERSES 266
XXIV. JERRY LOSES HIS TITLE 277
THREE-BASE BENSON
CHAPTER I
A NEW BOY ARRIVES
A boy of sixteen, dark-eyed, fairly tall and of medium weight, set a
very new-looking kit-bag on the floor in front of the news stand in the
Baltimore station, shifted an overcoat to his left arm and selected
a magazine. In the act of drawing a folding purse from a pocket his
attention was attracted by a second youth who ranged alongside. The
latter appeared of about his own age, but there all similarity ended.
The newcomer was tall and angular and looked overgrown. He had a sallow
face, with high cheek bones, pale blue eyes, under lashes and brows
that were almost white, and a wide mouth. Underneath a snuff-colored
felt hat with a low crown and a narrow, straight brim, his hair, which
was a shade or two darker than his eyelashes, had recently been clipped
close. Although evidently dressed in his best, his attire looked
strange even in a place where strange attires are no novelty. Perhaps
his clothes had been made for a much larger person. In any case, they
fell in loose folds from every part of his spare frame, almost covering
his knuckles and wrinkling ridiculously above his shoes. In hue they
were very like his hair, and they seemed made of some material in
which cotton and wool combined, with the odds in favor of the cotton.
A bluish gingham shirt was in evidence below a turned-down collar and
a black bow tie, which, the first lad suspected, was attached to his
collar-button by an elastic. Like his neighbor, he carried his overcoat
over one arm and had set a new bag on the floor beside him. But the
bag was an old-fashioned valise, aggressively yellow and palpably of
imitation leather, and the coat was a khaki-colored army overcoat.
“Got any chewing gum, stranger?”
The man behind the counter offered a choice of many brands and the boy
fished a handful of loose change from a capacious trousers’ pocket,
purchased, smiled in a neighborly fashion at the lad beside him,
showing a set of fine white teeth, and, taking up his bag, ambled off.
Tom Hartley and the news stand man exchanged amused smiles, the latter
shaking his head humorously.
“Right down from the mountains, I reckon,” he said. He himself
pronounced the word “daown,” and Tom, fresh from a fortnight above
Mason and Dixon’s Line, smiled again, this time to himself. Then,
adding the magazine he had bought to his burdens, he made his way
through the near-by gate and along the platform to the waiting “train.”
On that electric line they always called it a train, whether it
consisted of one car or two. The afternoon travel out of the city had
not set in and the two o’clock “Limited”――another word that always
aroused Tom’s amusement――held but a handful of persons. He set his bag
on a seat, draped his coat over it and went back to the small baggage
compartment at the rear to see if his trunk was aboard. Of course it
wasn’t. One’s trunk was never known to get on the same train that one
traveled by, and had Tom seen it there he would possibly have fallen in
a dead faint.
There were, Tom noticed on his way back, several of his school
companions present, and to all but one he nodded and spoke. None was a
sufficiently close acquaintance to demand more than a brief “Hello.”
The single exception was a boy of eighteen, a big, good-looking fellow
who, noting Tom’s arrival, turned his face toward a window with a
sneering, contemptuous expression. To him Tom neither spoke nor nodded.
He and Wayne Sortwell were acknowledged enemies, although neither could
have offered a sufficient explanation for the fact. Meeting each other
in the very middle of the Sahara Desert, with no one else present,
they might have nodded scowlingly, but on ordinary occasions they
sedulously avoided recognition.
The car filled slowly. Tom, opening his magazine, hoped that leaving
time would arrive before a colored “mammy” toting a pickaninny or a
basket of marketing plumped herself beside him. He was spared that,
although he was not fortunate enough to keep the seat to himself.
At the very last moment, when he had congratulated himself and was
settling down to a story in the magazine, he became aware of a
disturbance beside him and looked up to see a flash of white teeth and
the friendly twinkling of a pair of pale blue eyes under colorless
lashes.
“Reckon I’ll have to sit in with you-all,” said the owner of the teeth.
Tom murmured politely and drew himself toward the window, and the youth
of the chewing gum incident lowered himself to the seat, very careful
not to jostle his neighbor as the car swayed over the yard switches,
set his valise between his feet, doubled his faded khaki overcoat
over his gaunt knees and folded a pair of scarred and rugged hands on
the coat. Observing from the corners of his eyes, Tom saw the boy’s
jaws working rhythmically over his gum. Tom went back to his story.
Evidently his neighbor had the good sense not to attempt conversation.
Presently the conductor came, and Tom, yielding his own ticket to North
Bank, saw with surprise that the boy beside him gave up a similar
ticket. That this raw-boned, countrified fellow could be on his way to
North Bank School was too ridiculous for credence, and yet, if he was
not going to the school, where could he be going? Broadly speaking, the
school was all there was at North Bank in the winter. In summer the
houses and bungalows that lined the river were occupied, but at this
time of year, the first week in January, only one or two would be open.
Tom stole a puzzled look at his traveling companion, and at the same
moment the latter turned his blue eyes on Tom. The blue eyes twinkled
before Tom could look past and away, and the broad mouth curved in a
likable smile. Unconsciously, Tom smiled back. If, he reflected, you
lost sight of the fellow’s impossible attire, he wasn’t so bad!
“Reckon you-all are goin’ to the school,” said the boy questioningly.
Tom nodded.
“I’m going to North Bank,” he agreed pleasantly.
“That’s what I thought. I’m goin’ there, too.” The blue eyes moved past
Tom to stare calmly through the window.
“Oh!” said Tom, not thinking of anything better at the moment. His
gaze swept the oddly dressed youth again. He hated to think what would
happen when this new acquaintance was seen by his future schoolmates!
After a moment he asked: “What class are you in?”
“The feller that wrote to Pap said I’d be in the third class. I ain’t
had much schoolin’. Reckon I’m kind of old for the third.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
Tom hesitated. Looking closely at the other he could see that his
first guess of sixteen had been wrong. Now he could have accepted even
eighteen as the chap’s age, for in spite of the boyish smile and the
uncouth appearance there was a settled, mature expression in the face.
“Well,” Tom said finally, “seventeen is a bit old for the third class,
but I wouldn’t let that trouble you.”
The other shook his head placidly. “I ain’t reckonin’ to let it trouble
me none, neighbor,” he said in his not unpleasant drawl. “I ain’t never
goin’ to get any younger. Reckon that’s your class, too.”
“No, I’m in the second.” Tom, to his surprise, spoke almost
apologetically.
“Are you? Well, then I reckon you-all can tell me somethin’ about this
class I’m goin’ in. Do they learn you pretty hard?”
“Learn you――oh, are the studies hard, you mean? No, I don’t think so.
The regular stuff; algebra, English, Latin, geography and so on.”
“Mh-mh. Reckon that Latin’s goin’ to stump me, though. I never had any
Latin. The feller that wrote Pap said I’d have to do a sight of work on
that Latin so’s to catch up with the other fellers.”
“Third class Latin’s not very hard,” said Tom consolingly. “Coming in
like this, though, in the middle of the year, makes it a bit stiffer.
If you’d started in with your class, you know――――”
“Mh-mh, that’s what the feller said. But I couldn’t of come last
September. Pap didn’t have any one in the store and he couldn’t get
any one, either, and so I had to stay by him. Seems like since the
War nobody wants to do any work. Then some of the fellers didn’t come
back at all. Gene Simpkins and Bill Tolliver was killed, and Lee
Nash――nobody knows what happened to Lee. He just dropped out of sight.
His mammy’s still lookin’ for him, but I reckon he’s a goner. A couple
of the fellers got jobs in New York. Pap ain’t as young as he used to
be and I sort of hated to leave him.”
“I see,” said Tom. “But he found some one finally, eh? Your father, I
mean.”
“He ain’t my father. I never had any father, any rate not as I can
remember. Nor any mammy, neither. Reckon I did have ’em once, but they
died before I knowed ’em. Pap Huckins brung――brang me up, but he ain’t
any kin of mine. I always called him Pap because I never had any real
Pap.”
“Where do you live?” asked Tom.
“Huckinsburg, North Carolina. It’s named for Pap. Pap’s folks was
quality before the war; the old war, I mean, where we-all fought
you-all.”
Tom laughed. “You think I’m a Northerner, then, do you?”
The other smiled with twinkling eyes. “Reckon you must be,” he answered.
“Any rate, you ain’t a Southron. Ain’t you a Yank?”
“I guess that’s what you’d call me. My name’s Hartley, by the way.”
“Pleased to know you.” The boy seized Tom’s hand in a crushing grip and
shook it heartily. “My name’s Jerry Benson. I’m powerful glad to meet
up with a friend, ’cause I reckon a lot of those high-toned fellers at
school won’t have much use for a feller like me.”
Tom, a trifle dismayed, muttered something as he surreptitiously
examined his mangled fingers. Jerry Benson went on placidly.
“Reckon I ain’t really got any right at this school, seeing I’m a sort
of country feller, but Pap allowed the best was the cheapest in the
long run, and he knows a man over to Brattleville whose boy went to
North Bank and so he made up his mind I was to go here too. I wanted
to go to the school over to Major’s Run. It’s a right good school,
too. But Pap, he’d set his heart on this place. Reckon there’s a heap
of trouble ahead of me, don’t you?” The pale blue eyes were twinkling
again and Tom had the thought that even if his acquaintance anticipated
trouble he certainly didn’t look concerned about it!
“Well, I don’t know,” he began. “Perhaps a few fellows may rag you, but
I guess they’re not worth considering, Benson. You see――――”
“Say,” the other interrupted, “I’d sort of like you to call me Jerry.
No one ain’t never called me Benson before, and it sounds unnatural.
Reckon you didn’t say what your first name is.”
“Tom.”
“Mh-mh. Tom’s a good easy name to handle, ain’t it? Reckon you and me’s
goin’ to be friends, Tom.”
What answer Tom would have made he never knew, for at that moment the
car began to slow and the conductor’s voice came as a welcome diversion:
“North Bank! North Bank!”