THE STRANGER
The train was swinging along through open, rolling country when Locke,
now being left severely to himself on account of his churlishness by
his resentful teammates, tired of gazing dully at the flying landscape,
rose and passed down the aisle of the special car. Scarcely anyone
seemed to observe him, and he noticed no one. When he had disappeared,
however, Billy Orth shook his head and turned to Larry Dalton.
“Thundering shame, Larry,” he said in a low tone. “Do you know, I think
I’ve solved the trouble.”
“Then you’re wiser than the rest of us.”
“It’s the girl business, to begin with.”
“Oh, we’ve all guessed that much, but being thrown down by a girl isn’t
enough to put an ordinary well-balanced chap, same as Lefty seemed
to be, all to the punk. Of course, it might affect a fellow, but it
wouldn’t turn him from a fine, jolly soul into a sour, nasty-tempered,
unreasoning grump. You’ve got to go farther, Billy.”
“I have been,” asserted the other with assurance.
“What way?”
“He’s taken to hitting the booze.”
“No!” breathed Laughing Larry incredulously. “Why, he never drank. He’d
take a glass of beer now and then, to be sure, but you couldn’t drive a
drink of hard stuff into him. You’re wrong, Orth.”
“When a man gets double crossed in love he’s liable to do any freakish
thing, and lots of ’em affiliate with the jag juice.”
“But Locke hasn’t been full. No one has seen him under the influence.”
“Perhaps he’s under the influence right now. Perhaps he’s keeping about
so much redeye in his skin all the time. Maybe that’s why he herds
by himself so much. He sure has had plenty of chance to drink by his
lonesome lately.”
“Yes, but―― Oh, say, you’ve got to have something better than mere
supposition to base this on.”
“I have.”
“What?”
“Saw him coming out of a saloon last night. Couldn’t believe my eyes at
first, but it was Lefty, sure. You know firewater works in peculiar
ways with some men. Occasionally it turns a jolly good fellow into an
ugly dog. Lefty hasn’t hit it up enough to stagger or show the usual
signs, but in his effort to drown his sorrow he’s taken just enough to
change him completely. Something ought to be done. But when a fellow is
absolutely unapproachable, what can you do?”
“What can you?” echoed Larry.
In the meantime, passing through the train, Lefty had entered the
ordinary smoker, which chanced to be so well filled that nearly every
seat was taken. Through a blue haze of smoke he peered in search of
a seat as he walked along the aisle. Suddenly a young man took a
brierwood pipe from his mouth, stared hard at the pitcher, and rose to
his feet.
“By Jove! Phil Hazelton!” he exclaimed. “Why, how are you, old man?”
Lefty stared, unsmiling, at the speaker, apparently failing to notice
the extended hand.
“Pardon me,” he said; “I don’t remember you.”
“Don’t remember me?” cried the other incredulously. “Great Scott! Have
I changed so much? I know I’m threatened with premature baldness, but
still it can’t be that in such a short time you’ve forgotten Walt
Hetner.”
“Hetner?” said Locke, frowning and shaking his head in a puzzled way.
“I don’t have the slightest recollection of you.”
“Cæsar’s ghost! I knew you at Princeton. We were college mates.”
“Princeton?” said Lefty. “Yes, I was at Princeton, I believe.”
“You pitched for the varsity nine. Your old man didn’t like it, and
was pretty sore. I’ve heard lately that you’ve gone into professional
baseball. Don’t get a chance to see many games myself nowadays, but the
report is that you’re _some pitcher_ for the Blue Stockings.”
“I have been pitching for them,” admitted Locke slowly. “Sorry I don’t
remember you.”
His pride hurt, Hetner sank back into his seat, and Lefty passed on.
The rebuffed man turned to his companion, who was an old acquaintance
he had met on the train.
“Well, wouldn’t that frost you some, Wilson?” he exclaimed, his face
flushed. “Why, I knew that fellow at college as well as I know you, and
he’s the last man I’d expect to hand out anything of that sort.”
“Do you think he didn’t recognize you, Doctor?”
“Recognize me? Of course he did. That’s what makes me hot. I don’t know
why he should play the cad. It’s beyond me. Perhaps he’s ashamed of
the fact that he’s playing professional baseball under a fake name.”
“Still,” said Wilson, “he might be decent, at least.”
Lefty came to a seat in which a slender, pallid, sad-eyed young man sat
alone.
“I beg your pardon, stranger,” he said; “is this seat taken?”
The young man started a bit, glanced up, and smiled faintly.
“No, it isn’t taken, pal,” he answered. “But how the dickens did you
happen to know my name?”
“Your name?” said Lefty, sinking down, a puzzled frown plowing a deep
furrow between his eyes.
“Yes. You called me Stranger. That’s my monacker――Robert Stranger; Bob
for short.”
“Oh, I get you,” said Lefty, failing to return the young man’s engaging
smile. “It was just by chance that I called you that.”
“Well, for a moment I thought you knew me. It’s mighty lonesome taking
this jaunt without anybody to chin to, and I’m glad you came along.
Traveling alone yourself?”
“In a way I am,” answered Lefty, betraying a willingness to talk to
this chance acquaintance which would have surprised his antagonized
friends in the special car. “I’m a ball player, but I ducked to get
away from the rest of the bunch. They’re on this train.”
“Oh, a ball player!” murmured Mr. Stranger. “Professional? Big League?”
“The Blue Stockings.”
“They’re some,” beamed the man by the car window. “Of course I hear
plenty of baseball talk. Can’t help it. But I never did take to the
game much. It may sound like bunk to you, but I never saw a real game
in my life.”
“Really?” said Lefty, in an expressionless way. “That is rather odd.”
“S’pose I’m a crank,” laughed the other; “but all the guff I hear and
see in the newspapers about baseball makes me weary; it sure does.
Seems like ninety per cent. of the population has gone dippy about the
game. Once on a time I was mistook for a pitcher I happened to look
like. A gent blew up and called me by that ball tosser’s name and asked
me how I was coming on at it. He didn’t believe me when I told him I’d
never pitched a ball in my life. Why, I don’t know a curve from a wedge
of restaurant pie.”
“You’re a rare bird,” said Lefty.
“I am, pal, and I’m rather proud of it.”
“What’s your business, if it’s not too personal?”
The young man hesitated and coughed behind his hand.
“I’m a――a diamond cutter,” he answered. “That is, I have been, but I’ve
had to give it up on account of my health. Too confining, you know. I’m
not much on being confined,” he continued oddly. “You can see it has
rather taken hold of me. My health isn’t just what it should be.”
“I noticed you were unusually pale.”
“That comes from confinement. A pill slinger told me it would be a good
thing for me to get out into the country and find a job somewhere in
the open air. I’m looking for work on a farm. The rural life for mine,
far from the lure of high-cut swinging doors. Between us, pal, I’ve
hit it up a bit too hard in my day. I always was a wild one,” he went
on garrulously. “Even when I was a boy I touched too many of the high
spots. I’ve been a mark, too. Ever play poker? Well, I’ve been the
easiest dub you ever saw at that game. But I like it. Can’t seem to
keep away from it. Every time I get a roll on hand I go searching for a
game and someone to pass the velvet over to. Even now I’ve got a little
wad of long green that’s burning in my pocket. Before you came along I
was thinking I’d like to find three or four good sports and get up a
little game.”
“I don’t play poker――for blood,” said Lefty. “A bunch on the team are
at it every chance they get; though, of course, they only play a
little game.”
“Oh, that would suit me. I don’t want to really gamble, you know. I’m a
minister’s son.”
Lefty refrained from saying that he was another.
“Brought up in a straight-laced family,” Stranger went on. “My old
man thought cards the tools of Satan. And my mother”――a cloud seemed
to come to his face and his smile faded――“it broke her heart when she
found out I was playing penny ante with a bunch of game lads. Mebbe
that’s what finished her. The old gent didn’t last long after she was
put away under the daisies.”
“Then your father and mother are both dead?”
“Both gone. But come, what’s the use to talk of things like that?
Let’s see if we can’t find a couple of lonesome travelers looking for
amusement. Let’s start something. A little game of poker to pass away――”
The sentence never was finished. At this moment there came a sudden
jarring, grinding, crashing sound. A broken rail had given way on a
curve, and it shot half the train from the track to strew it into a
splintered mass of wreckage along the foot of the embankment.