_Krag Reads Larry a Lesson_
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.”