_An Old Friend is Found_
The train bearing Larry Kirkland back to Shasta View ranch for the long
summer vacation carried a heavy-hearted, discouraged youth, for whom
even the pleasure of home-coming was dimmed. His college year had been a
series of disappointments and rebuffs. He had gone to Cascade College
filled with high hopes and dreams of winning a place among the men of
the institution. The year had been one of rebukes, and loneliness,
except for the friendship of a few. He, who had always been a leader and
popular, found himself looked upon with suspicion, and rated as
undesirable by many. His attempts, which were few, to add to his circle
of friends, had been met with coldness. Every effort had been a failure,
and some of them, he realized, had been serious mistakes, chiefly
because they were misunderstood.
For all his woes he blamed Harry Baldwin who had exerted his influence
against his boyhood rival in every direction. Larry realized that he had
been beaten by Baldwin, and felt, bitterly, that he could not fight his
neighbor with the same weapon. Instead of choosing his own circle of
friends, ignoring Baldwin and living in a different set and circle,
Larry, rebuffed, had withdrawn more and more, to himself, and avoided
introductions, even to those who were with him in classes. Katsura, the
diminutive Japanese boy, had remained his staunch and loyal supporter,
and at times, a valuable advisor who had prevented him from making even
more serious mistakes in his dealings with the other boys. He had
Winans, the hearty, good-natured youth who had caught for the Freshman
team, and Lattiser occasionally favored him by stopping to talk with him
on the campus, always with a quiet word of advice. Larry did not
understand, until during the final month of the spring term, that his
friendship for Katsura was an additional cause for his unpopularity, or
that, among a certain element of the student body, there existed a
hatred for the Japanese. That discovery aroused his resentment.
It was with relief that he finished his examinations and caught the
train for Shasta View. The train was panting out of the wide valley into
a narrow gorge in the mountains and commencing its twisting, tortuous
climb over the Cascades when he awoke. His first glimpse of Mount
Shasta, towering high overhead, revived his spirits, which rose with the
altitude as the train labored upward through the twisting canon, past
the gushing, geyser like springs of Shasta, over the Black summit, and
went racing downward through the fir forests into the valley garden of
the Rogue River.
He was standing in the vestibule, grip in hand, when the train stopped
at Pearton, and, almost before the porter could throw open the doors he
sprang to the platform. The depot wagon from the ranch was waiting and,
recognizing the wagon and ponies, Larry ran toward it, expecting to see
Major Lawrence. He saw the driver jump down, and glance along the long
line of cars. There was something familiar to him in the slope of the
huge shoulders and the easy grace of movement. Before Larry could recall
where he had seen that form, the driver turned toward him. Larry dropped
his suitcase and sprang forward.
“You—you, Mr. Krag? Where did you come from?” he cried.
Krag, the former pitcher of the Giants, one of the great players of
baseball history, stretched out his huge hands and seized Larry.
“Hello, Jimmy boy,” he bellowed cheerfully. “I never would have known
you. I was watching for a kid the size of the one I put on the train at
Portland—and I find a man. Gee, boy, how you’ve grown!”
“I’d have known you anywhere,” exclaimed Larry eagerly shaking hands.
“Tell me, how did you come to be waiting for me? Where did you drop
from? I haven’t heard a word from you for more than a year—and find you
here.”
“I’m working for Major Lawrence,” Krag responded. “I asked him to let me
come down to meet you. I wanted to give you a surprise. You don’t know
how lucky you are to have him your friend, boy,” he added seriously.
“He’s the squarest, best fellow in the world.”
“I know that,” replied Larry, growing serious, “but how did you come to
be here, and when did you come?”
“Nearly two months ago,” Krag said laughing. “I’m getting to be an old
residenter on the ranch. You’d better behave yourself during vacation.
I’m general overseer, and if you don’t behave, I’ll take you in hand.”
“Where did Uncle Jim find you?” asked Larry, still puzzled. “He never
mentioned you in his letters.”
“I suppose he wanted to surprise you when you came home,” replied Krag.
“He always thinks of things that might please some one.”
“Where have you been?” demanded Larry. “I wrote as soon as I heard the
Giants had let you go. The manager wrote that you had dropped out
without telling any of the fellows your plans, and had gone West. I
wrote twice more, and asked to have the letters forwarded, but never
heard from you, excepting one paper said you were coaching a team. I
wrote there, and it was not true.”
“I know,” said Krag earnestly. “I received one letter, and I was proud
to know you still thought of me. Most of the others forgot me as soon as
my arm went back on me. I’m beginning to think now that the luckiest day
in my life was the one on which I found a lonely little boy on a
railroad train and amused myself entertaining him.”
“I never can forget your kindness,” said Larry, “but how did you happen
to quit the Giants?”
“It was my own fault,” said the big pitcher quietly. “Jump into the
wagon, I’ll toss the trunk up behind and tell you while we are driving
out to the ranch.”
A few moments later the wagon was rattling rapidly through the main
street of Pearton, and Krag did not speak until he pulled the ponies to
a more sedate gait ascending the hill.
“I was drawing a big salary,” he said, “one of the best; $8,000 a season
and a lot besides, easy money, forced upon me by admirers. I thought it
would last forever. I never had known anything about business. Jumping
from nothing a year to $8,000 spoiled me. Money ran away from me, and I
never saved anything. I seldom had a month’s pay saved up and usually
had to draw advance money before the winter was over, to tide me
through. I drew big pay for eight seasons, and made a good fellow of
myself.
“My arm felt as good as ever, and I was pitching just as well, so I
never worried about it, or tried to save. It seemed good for a dozen
more years. I was pitching against a weak club, working easily and
winning, I wasn’t even trying hard, but suddenly, as I tossed up a slow
twister, a ligament in the arm snapped. They nursed me along the rest of
the season, hoping the arm would come back. I knew it wouldn’t. It was
done, and I couldn’t even go to the minors.
“The Giants offered me a contract the next spring. There wasn’t a chance
for me to pitch and I couldn’t go take money under false pretenses. I
might have had a job as first baseman on account of my batting.”
He waited for Larry to laugh, but Larry was so sympathetic, he had
forgotten that Krag was joking at his own expense on account of his weak
hitting.
“I was done as a ball player—with the best part of my life gone and
only a few hundred dollars. That’s the trouble with this baseball
business. A young fellow makes good money at first, but after six or
eight or ten years, he is through, and the years he might have used in
getting a good start in some trade or profession are gone. I looked
around for a job. The fellows who had been my closest associates
commenced dodging for fear I’d ask them for something, so I decided to
come West and go to work. I landed in Portland, almost broke and got a
job working on the docks. I didn’t want any of my old friends to find
me, but one did. He was a reporter. He wrote that I was in Portland and
might locate there if I found the proper opening. Major Lawrence saw the
note, wrote, offered me a job, and here I am.”
“That’s like him,” said Larry tenderly. “He never forgets. The day I
came, I told him of your kindness to me, and he said he would like to
meet you. He probably has been watching for mention of you ever since.”
“He certainly is good,” said Krag feelingly. “He must have sized me up
as too strong or too lazy to do real work, and put me in charge of the
packing houses. Then, when Arnett, his general overseer, quit a month
ago, the Major gave me his position—in spite of the fact that I’m just
starting to learn the ranch business.”
“Gee, that’s great!” exclaimed Larry enthusiastically. “You must live at
the bungalow?”
“Yes, the Major insisted that I take a room there. He said he was so
lonely with you gone that he couldn’t find any one even to have a
satisfactory quarrel with. He gets mad at me because I won’t get mad at
him, and we have some magnificent quarrels.”
“He likes to have any one contradict him, so that he can pretend to get
mad,” laughed Larry. “The only thing that makes him really angry is for
someone to agree with him all the time. He’s the grandest, finest man in
the world, and I never can repay him for his kindness to me.”
“Nor I,” said Krag seriously. “He saved me from becoming a
day-laborer—or worse—and I thank you for your part in it.”
“My part? I hadn’t any part. Besides I think Uncle Jim guessed pretty
shrewdly that you’d make the best kind of a man to run the ranch for
him. All I’m afraid of is that you’ll be too busy to teach me any
baseball.”
“By the way,” said Krag quickly. “I’ve been so busy gossiping about
myself, I forgot to ask if you made the team?”
The wagon, rolling along at a rapid gait, was nearing the crest of the
last billow of ground, and ahead, over the tops of the orchards, they
could see the gables of Shasta View. Towering high in the background
rose the mountains, and at that moment the fog wreath was wind-torn from
the brow of Shasta, revealing the cone in its steely whiteness.
“It seems home now,” said Larry, pointing away across the valley. “I
never shall forget how it seemed the first morning I came, walking,
homesick, scared and tired, carrying the uniform you gave me and
wondering what kind of a reception I would get.”
“Stick to the subject,” said Krag quickly, observing that Larry was
striving to turn the conversation into other channels. “Did you make the
team?”
“I didn’t play any baseball,” said Larry reluctantly, “I didn’t even try
for the team.”
“Why?” asked Krag in quick surprise.
“Please don’t ask now,” said Larry quietly. “I’ll tell you later. It is
not pleasant, and just now I want to forget it.”
They were descending the last hill rapidly, and in a few minutes Krag
touched the ponies with the whip and they whirled into the long avenue
with a fine burst of speed. Before the ponies stopped at the front of
the bungalow, Larry Kirkland had leaped from the wagon, sprang up the
steps and threw both arms around Major Lawrence. The Major, puffing,
scolding, growling, while tears of joy dimmed his eyes, patted his hand,
and to hide his emotion, scolded Krag for loitering, declaring it had
taken him an hour to drive from Pearton to the ranch.