THE REGULARS ARRIVE
Kennedy was determined to find out where the busher got his liquor.
Savage’s attitude next day greatly strengthened that determination. Not
only did he refuse to tell anything about it, but he brazenly denied
having had anything intoxicating at all. He reeled off a lot of ancient
stuff about taking colic medicine, which struck the manager temporarily
dumb.
Recovering, old Jack spat out some verbal vitriol which made even
Savage wince. Kennedy then held confab with Jack Stillman, after which
the reporter proceeded to corner the hotel proprietor, and, with his
usual dexterity, painlessly extract the facts he sought. They were
brief and singularly discouraging. The land across the river for
almost a mile in either direction was owned by one Caspar Livermore,
a well-to-do planter and horse breeder. Mr. Livermore was not only
extremely penurious, but had the reputation of being a prohibitionist
of the deepest dye, to whom the mere mention of intoxicants was like a
red rag to a bull. There were no other habitations of any sort save the
hut of a decrepit old negro woman, reputed among the superstitiously
inclined of her race to have dealings with the devil. Even that hut,
which was on Livermore land, stood a good half-mile above the rotten
old boathouse.
“Looks as if the old lady might bear investigating,” Stillman said
afterward to Locke, “though it’s usually safe to be suspicious of these
guys that throw a fit at the sight of a whisky advertisement. They’re
often the kind who lap up sixty per cent. alcohol patent medicines by
the gallon. I reckon I’d better hunt up a boat, and be ready in case
there’s anything doing to-night.”
With considerable difficulty, he managed to locate a flat-bottomed
scow, which he conveyed by the sweat of his brow to a point about a
quarter of a mile above the boathouse. Unfortunately, after all this
labor, there was no occasion to use it that night. After dinner Savage
lounged around the lobby in solitary silence for half an hour or so. At
half past seven he sallied forth to one of the moving-picture shows.
Lefty and Stillman were both prepared to swear that this time he not
only entered the Palace Theater, but remained there until the last
foot of film had been shown. That over, he returned to the hotel, and
treated himself to the luxury of several wordy altercations before
bedtime.
Kennedy was annoyed by their report. The desire to learn the source of
the perplexing pitcher’s drink supply was becoming an obsession with
the manager, and he urged them to continue their sleuthing. To this
both ball player and newspaper man agreed. They, too, were becoming
more than vexed at the success which seemed to attend Savage’s every
maneuver.
Hustling back from the field that afternoon, however, every thought of
the delinquent busher was driven from Lefty’s brain by the sight of
four men lounging in the hotel lobby. They were cleanly built, well
set-up specimens, remarkable mainly for the almost miraculous fit
of their very up-to-date garments, and for rather blasé manners. At
the sight of Locke the latter mood vanished as if it had never been.
They fell upon the southpaw as one man, slapping his back with a fond
enthusiasm which fairly took his breath away.
It was the vanguard of the “regulars”――the men whose names were
familiar household words the country over. It was small wonder that
they carried themselves with a little air. The surprising thing was
that they could fling that air aside, as they were doing now, to greet
with hearty, genuine boyish delight the comrade they had not seen in
months.
When the rougher preliminaries were over tongues began to wag in
chorus as Lefty was informed how the various men had passed the winter.
Dirk Nelson, the steady, dependable, rather quiet backstop, had been,
as usual, on his farm in Maryland.
“And don’t you believe it wasn’t hard to come away just when things
were getting ready to sprouts,” he concluded, with his slow, attractive
smile. “Golly, if I’d saved up as much mazuma as old Herman Brosk, I’d
sure quit the game!”
“Yes, you would!” exclaimed Rufe Hyland skeptically. Rufe looked
after the Blue Stocking right field in summer, and spent his few
leisure winter months in presiding as capably over a well-equipped
gymnasium on Sixth Avenue. The gym was merely a diversion, however.
With him baseball was the only thing worth while. “Yes, you would,” he
repeated――“for about one month! Then you’d be back hustling to sign on
again.”
“That’s right,” chimed in Kid Lewis, the peppery little shortstop.
“It’s a mighty fine thing after the post season to know you don’t have
to play ball for three solid months, but if you thought it was for
good――suffering cats! Why, come February, when a fellow’s blood begins
to stir, I leave my little old two-by-four cigar store on Pennsylvania
Avenue without even tellin’ it good-by.”
“Say, Kid,” inquired Torrey, the change catcher, curiously, “how’s
that business pay, anyhow? You must pull in quite a bunch of mazuma
just because you’re a Blue Stocking.”
“Oh, I do pretty well,” returned Lewis. “It ain’t as if I was the
real thing, like Lefty here”――he grinned, and ducked under the sweep
of Locke’s arm――“but there’s plenty of decent fellows who are willing
to buy their smokes even from an outfielder. Say, look what’s coming!
Whew! Some class to the old hoss, ain’t there?”
The others turned to behold Laughing Larry Dalton, with his brown eyes
and gay, careless smile. He was arrayed in a suit of amazing checks,
sported a three-carat diamond in a startling scarf, and was preceded
by a small darky staggering under the load of very new and very
English-looking luggage.
“Solomon’s glory!” gasped Hyland. “I thought I was some dressed, but――
Say, old man, who wished it on you, anyhow?”
“Ain’t he immense!” cried Lewis. “Pipe that chunk of alum weighing down
his manly bosom! Can you beat it?”
“Jack’s got a cub who’s jest set his heart on your job, old horse,” put
in Nelson seriously, “and won’t take no for an answer. How about it?”
“Hush!” said Lefty, with upraised hand. “You boys are pretty raw,
talking like that to a real actor. Didn’t you know little Larry’s been
on the stage all winter? Talk about side――why, it sticks out all over
him.”
Dalton was quite unaffected by the comments on his personal appearance.
His smile widened as he shook hands with one after another of his
teammates.
“Glad you like my get-up,” he drawled. “I thought these were some togs
myself. Came pretty near starting a riot when I did my turn in it out
at Salt Lake.”
“You were the handsome, curly-haired hero, I s’pose?” said Hyland.
“Nothing like that for me!” retorted Dalton. “I was the villain. Great
dope, fellows! Before I quit the show I used to get sore as a crab if I
wasn’t hissed enough.”
Lefty was highly amused by the mental picture of the laughing-eyed,
happy-go-lucky chap doing the heavy villain. By this time the lobby
was filled with curious recruits pausing on their way to showers, and
newspaper men who quickly joined the circle. Kennedy appeared, and
shook hands in his friendly fashion, exhorting them to have “plenty
of pep this year.” The reporters stood about, laughing and joshing
familiarly, and making mental notes for the daily wire home.
After dinner, while they were all gathered in the lobby, joking and
discussing old times, two more arrivals blew in. Handsome Billy
Orth, from his orange plantation in California, had picked up Joe
Welsh, who owned a small cattle ranch in Arizona, and who affected
rattlesnake-skin four-in-hands and hatbands.
“Back to the land of ’simmons and sore arms!” greeted Dalton. “By heck,
Joe, you look kinky as the deuce! I’ll bet you’ll be down with a case
of Charley horse inside a week. William, what do you think of this foxy
shark――Locke here――sneaking down with the cubs and getting all limbered
up ahead of us?”
Orth and Lewis joshed back. And so it went. There was a pleasant sense
of friendliness about the whole affair which made Lefty regret the
promise he and Stillman had given to keep an eye on Nels Savage.
He was not incommoded in the least by it. Savage did not leave the
hotel, but spent the evening lolling about the lobby and playing pool
with Pete Zacher. Locke and Stillman were puzzled enough to know what
to make of such behavior, but when the third evening passed, and the
fourth, and the fifth, without a single dereliction from duty on
the part of the bush twirler, they began to believe that his last
experience had taught him something. Then, to upset this theory, the
reporter learned of several attempts that Savage had made to wheedle a
drink out of one of the older men. He was just as disagreeable as he
had ever been, while his pitching, though it showed occasional brief
spells of cleverness, continued to make old Jack shake his head and
mutter.
“He ain’t used the spitter once since he landed,” the manager commented
to Stillman one afternoon. Like more than one other baseball man, he
did not hesitate to open his mind to this reporter, who had never once
offended by sending the wrong thing to his paper. “Says he don’t want
to do it till he’s warmed up. That may be so, or it may not, but I
never yet see a spitball flinger that wasn’t trying it every little
while.”
Two days later Kennedy announced the first five-inning practice game to
take place next morning at eight-thirty between the Regulars and the
Yannigans, as the recruits were called. Since their arrival the former
had been warming up with even greater leisure than the youngsters. From
experience they knew well how an apparently trifling strain or twisted
muscle at this crucial stage was likely to develop into something
serious later on.
Even the prospect of the first game left them cool and unperturbed.
On the other hand, the cubs, thrilled with the notion of showing off
before Kennedy, hustled around, perfecting an elaborate system of
signals and indulging in various other stunts which merely emphasized
their “cubbishness.”