A SCRIMMAGE
“Play ball!” called the umpire.
“Wait! Wait!” begged Bill breathlessly, as he ran forward. “I’m in
time! I can play. Where’s Armitage? I’ve been locked up—couldn’t get
here before! Can’t I play?”
A cheer greeted Bill’s unexpected appearance. His brothers who had
given up hope rushed forward to clap him on the back. Whistle-Breeches
did a war dance around him. There was wild rejoicing among the
Westfield Freshmen. The Tuckerton Freshmen looked glum.
“Well, he got here after all,” muttered Swain, the pitcher, to Captain
Borden.
“Yes. That farmer must have let him go before I meant him to.”
“What are you going to do—protest again?” asked Cadmus.
“No; what’s the use? I think they’re suspicious as it is. All we can
do now is to play to beat ’em. Hang the luck anyhow, but—I s’pose it
serves us right.” Borden had the grace to admit that much.
Meanwhile Bill had rapidly told the story of his captivity and his ride
in the auto.
“I tell you what we ought to do!” declared Armitage angrily, “we ought
to refuse to play them, and claim the game. The idea of kidnapping our
pitcher!”
“Easy!” exclaimed Cap.
“That’s right,” put in Bill. “I wasn’t hurt any, and it was rather a
lark after I got away. Besides we don’t know for sure that Borden and
his crowd did it, though I’m almost positive it was his auto. But never
mind. Let’s play ball.”
“It’s too late to get into uniform,” remarked the captain, “and we’re
to take the field.”
“I’ll pitch as I am, and borrow a uniform when it’s our turn to bat,”
spoke Bill.
“But can you twirl?” inquired his brother. “After what you’ve been
through—away all night—knocked around in an auto, no decent meal—”
“That’s where you’re wrong, I had one good meal, and the next one can
wait until we win the game. Miss Morton—she’s several kinds of a
pretty brick, by the way—she got some sandwiches on the trip in. My!
She’s a stunner! How she did drive! She—”
“Oh, get in your box, and play ball,” interrupted Armitage, with a
laugh at Bill’s enthusiasm.
There were dubious looks on the faces of the Tuckerton players at the
advent of the talented pitcher, but a gleam of hope came when Borden
whispered that he might be all out of condition from his captivity, and
could not hold his own in the box.
Curiously enough it did not occur to any of the conspiring rivals of
Westfield that they had taken an unfair advantage in spiriting Bill
away. They felt that he had no right, as the Varsity pitcher, to play
with the Freshmen against them.
But if they hoped that Bill was out of condition they were doomed to
disappointment, for when he had put on his glasses, which Cap had
brought with him on a forlorn chance, Bill never pitched better ball.
At first he was a little stiff, and issued several passes, whereat
there was rejoicing among the visitors, and grim despair in the ranks
of the home team. But Bill shook off his momentary indisposition, and
when the final inning had ended in a dazzling succession of plays, the
Westfield team had won by a score of ten runs to three.
“Wow, Oh, wow!” cried Armitage, hugging Bill. “If you hadn’t come along
we’d have been in the soup!”
“Nonsense!” objected Bill.
“It’s true,” said Whistle-Breeches. “Swain was in great form to-day.”
“But Bill was better,” added Pete.
“You could make a story out of what you went through,” drawled Bob
Chapin. “Ring in Miss Morton as the heroine.”
“Only for her I’d never have made it,” agreed Bill, as he went over to
shake hands with the pretty, blushing girl.
“Oh, it was fine! Fine!” cried Miss Morton, as she greeted Bill and his
companions who surrounded her and Miss Dunning.
“Perfectly wonderful the way you struck out the last three men,” went
on the other girl.
Bill blushed behind his ears. He was too tanned to have the color show
elsewhere.
And so the Tuckerton-Westfield Freshmen game passed into school
history, and Bill never really found out who had kidnapped him. In fact
he never tried, for he concluded that his suspicions were good enough,
and he did not want revenge.
The summer crept on, and the close of the term was near at hand. More
games were played, and Westfield was doing well. She did not have, as
yet by any means, a clear title to the pennant. In fact the loss of a
few games would mean that Tuckerton or Sandrim would get it, but the
Smith boys and their chums were working hard.
As for Mersfeld he was still under the ban, for when he was allowed
to resume athletics he had gone so stale that after a try-out he was
relegated to the ranks of the subs for the Varsity, and Bill’s place as
first pitcher was undisputed. And there was bitterness in the heart of
the former twirler.
“Oh, if I could only get square with him!” he muttered to North.
“There’s only one way to put him out of the running,” declared that
worthy.
“And that is—?”
“To get his special glasses. He can’t get another pair made in time
now, for that old codger of an astronomer has been arrested I hear, and
the other professor hasn’t been around lately. There’s only a week more
before the close of the season, and if you get the specks Bill couldn’t
pitch. You might have a chance then.”
“I wish we could get ’em, but we risked it once, and—”
“We’ll have to do it differently this time. No more trying to sneak
into his room. We’ve got to take the glasses away from him personally.”
“How? Hold him up some dark night? That won’t do, for he only carries
them with him going to and from the games.”
“And that’s just when I mean to take them. If we could get him into
what would look like a friendly scrimmage say, one of us could frisk
the glasses out of his pocket, and he’d be left when he tried to pitch
next time.”
“Can it be done?”
“Sure. If you’re with me just hang around the next time Bill comes
off the diamond. I’ll start something, you come back at me, we’ll run
around Bill and his brothers—maybe upset ’em, and in the confusion if
I can’t get the glasses I’m no good. I know where he carries ’em.”
“All right, North. If I can only get back on the team I’d do anything!”
“Then it’s settled,” was the reply, and the two cronies walked away
together, talking of their mean plot.
Their chance came the next day, when a crowd of the players were
returning from the ball field after a practice game.
“Tag, you’re it!” suddenly cried North to Mersfeld, and he
began circling about Bill, Pete and Cap, who were walking with
Whistle-Breeches.
“Oh, cut it out!” cried Mersfeld, as if in objection, and he tripped
North up. The latter in falling made a grab for Bill, as if to save
himself, and in an instant the two went down in a heap and there was a
laughing, struggling crowd of youths rolling over the grass in what was
apparently a friendly scrimmage.