LOST: ONE BASEBALL TEAM
In choice seats of the Belden bleachers, opposite first base, sat two
men and one girl. Anybody with half an eye could see that the girl was
in charge of the party. For instance, every time the gathering fans in
the stands chorused the staccato Belden High School yell, she sprang
up, like a cheer leader, with her black eyes snapping, and said: "Right
back at them now! We'll show them! Ready! One--two--three!" And Mr.
Sefton and Mr. Hibbs and Molly Sefton roared defiantly:
"U Rah! U Rah!
U Rah! Yi!
Lakeville! Lakeville!
Lakeville High!"
Out on the diamond, the Belden team practiced in a desultory fashion,
keeping one eye on the ball and the other on the gate of the
park--which, it may be remarked in passing, was all right so far as the
gate was concerned, but not particularly helpful in batting, throwing,
or catching. In fact, the nine was displaying a brand of baseball that
would have shamed a bunch of kindergartners; and the boys knew it and
were consequently irritated. But the fault was not wholly theirs.
The trouble was that even at two-thirty with the stands rapidly
filling, with the Belden team warming up, and with the umpire waiting
patiently and pretending not to see or hear anything that was going
on (as all good umpires must pretend before they slip on their chest
protectors and fill the pockets of their navy-blue serge coats with
balls and go out behind the pitcher and raise their right hands and
yell, "Pla-a-ay ba-a-al!")--with everything and everybody apparently
ready for the game that was scheduled to begin half an hour later, the
opposing Lakeville players had not yet arrived.
"But they'll come," declared Molly Sefton for the hundredth time.
"If they don't"--she stamped her foot angrily--"if they don't come,
why--why, we'll just go out there and play that Belden team ourselves."
Whereat the portly Mr. Sefton and the gray-haired Mr. Hibbs winced
perceptibly.
"I don't understand it," said the Scout Master of the Black Eagle
Patrol, also for the hundredth time. "The train should have arrived
long ago."
"Nonsense!" snapped Mr. Sefton, speaking as if it were a lesson he was
learning by heart. "It's late, that's all. Nothing to worry about. Give
them time."
Molly saw the man first. He was shouldering his way up the rows
of seats from the ground toward them, and he was doing it with an
officiousness that marked him as a person of importance. He wore a
black suit, almost ministerial in cut, a stiff white shirt, and a black
bow tie of the sort that is put on by tucking two stiff ends underneath
the flaps of a turn-down collar.
"Gentlemen," he said, halting before the two Lakeville men and ignoring
Miss Molly altogether, "where is your baseball team?"
Mr. Sefton held him eye to eye. "It's coming," he announced confidently.
"Are you the Belden coach?" Horace Hibbs asked mildly.
"No, gentlemen, I am not the coach. I am, you might say, the man
behind the team. Throughout the season, I have been its supporter, its
mainstay, its benefactor. Allow me to offer an illustration of what I
mean. Do you see that flagstaff?"
"Yes."
"I contributed that. When Belden has won this game, I shall run up the
pennant with my own hands, and I shall, at the request of my friends,
say--ahem, a few words of congratulation to the team and the assembled
crowd."
"Indeed!" remarked Mr. Sefton, without any great show of enthusiasm.
"But I am digressing," the great one stated. "I came here to warn you
gentlemen that if, on the stroke of three o'clock, the Lakeville team
is still missing, I shall instruct the umpire to forfeit the game by
the usual score of nine to nothing. Immediately, I shall award the
pennant to Belden and begin--ahem, my speech. I thank you, gentlemen."
"For what?" gasped Mr. Sefton, watching the man push his way to the
bottom of the stand. "Look here, Horace, they can't do that, can they?"
Mr. Hibbs shook a worried head. "I don't know," he confessed. "In golf
or tennis, of course, if a player does not report, he forfeits his
contest. And there is a baseball rule to the effect that if a team
refuses to play--"
A boy stalked along the ground at the foot of the bleachers. He was
waving a paper and shouting: "Horace Hibbs! Message for Horace Hibbs!
Horace Hibbs! Message for--"
"Up here, boy!" Molly sprang to her feet, waving wildly. "Right up
here!--Let him pass, _please_! Thank _you_!--This is Mr. Hibbs--Quick!
What is it?"
With nervous haste, Horace Hibbs unfolded the paper. The message was
scrawled in a free, running hand, with several erasures, as if it had
been taken over a telephone. He read it to the other two:
Tell Horace Hibbs, Belden High School baseball park, that Lakeville
team has been delayed by bad freight wreck on railroad ahead. May be
very late in arriving. Hold game.--Leland.
"Oh!" gasped Molly. It was as if somebody had struck her a stinging
blow on the cheek. She felt the pain, the mental despair, and then, as
the numbness passed, a tingling anger and unreasoning spleen against
the world in general. "Oh!" she said again, crimsoning. "They are in
trouble. It isn't fair. Why don't you men do something? Dad, how can
you sit quietly when the boys need help?"
Mr. Sefton took the message from Horace Hibbs and smoothed it upon his
knee. "H'm! No time mentioned; no name of the place where they are
stranded. But they will know at the Belden station. I will get in touch
with the team by telephone; then we will see what can be done." And
with a final admonition not to worry, he was gone.
With troubled eyes, Molly Sefton and Horace Hibbs followed his course
across the park. Once, near the ball players on the diamond, he seemed
to hesitate, as if to offer them some explanation; then, with a shrug
of his shoulders, he marched on without stopping. Again, near home
plate, he turned his head at the call of the pompous man who meant to
award the pennant to Belden. Even from where they sat, the girl and
the Scout Master could see Mr. Sefton smile and nod confidently. He
believed the Lakeville team would yet arrive safely, and he meant to
make the important person believe it, too.
"Good old Dad!" beamed Molly. She squirmed sideways on her seat. "Talk
to me, Horace Hibbs. Tell me the team will come. Tell me it will be
here in time. It must, you know; it just must!"
"Of course," said Horace Hibbs simply, "it will come." There was
something so earnest in the boyish way he said it, and in the plausible
reasons he gave later for expecting the missing team, that Molly felt
her courage warming again. The twin worried lines from the top of her
nose to the middle of her forehead ironed out; the corners of her mouth
quirked into the forerunner of an honest smile.
In the meantime, though, the minutes had been ticking away. It was
a quarter of three now. Up and down the stands, impatient fans, who
could not understand why the Lakeville nine did not take the field for
practice, were shuffling their feet uneasily, and calling, "Play ball!
Play ball!"
The messenger came a second time. He knew now where to find Horace
Hibbs, and he was holding out the scribbled paper before either Molly
or the Scout Master saw him. It read:
We are leaving to walk around wreck to Elkana, where conductor tells
us they may start another train for Belden, to take place of one held
up by blocked track.--Leland.
"Wait!" Molly called to the boy as he was turning away. "Where did you
get this?"
"Long-distance telephone to the grand-stand over there."
Molly dismissed him with a wave of her hand. "Then Dad won't know
where to reach the team," she said, puckering her mouth as she thought
rapidly. "You must find him here at the station, Horace Hibbs, and tell
him to call up Elkana. Run along. Don't waste a minute. If they are
really coming, I will keep this game from starting till they get here."
Obediently, the man rose. Whatever doubts he may have entertained as to
her ability to handle the situation at the ball park vanished before
the determination expressed by her pursed lips and clenched fists. She
was competent, Horace told himself; yes, as competent as any Scout in
the Black Eagle Patrol.
With both her father and Horace Hibbs gone, Molly realized that she was
now the single Lakeville representative in all that crowd. The thought
sent little prickles down her rigid back, and she caught herself
plucking nervously at her skirt. The discovery wounded her pride.
"Now, Molly Sefton," she admonished herself severely, clasping the
errant hands in her lap, "don't be a good-for-nothing, sniveling little
coward!"
More time passed. More fans stamped their feet and yelled, "Play ball!"
The important person who was going to have the umpire forfeit the game
strutted to the bottom of the rows of seats. There, watch in hand, he
looked up near-sightedly, without discovering that two thirds of his
former audience had disappeared, and said, in a voice like fate, "Five
minutes more, gentlemen; five minutes!"
Molly was having a good deal of trouble keeping herself in leash.
She wavered between a desire to shriek at the top of her voice and
another to get out the little lace-fringed handkerchief Aunt Ella had
given her, and have a good cry. It took courage to fight back both
temptations. Instead, she plucked at the sleeve of the high-school boy
at her side.
"Will you do me a favor, _please_?"
The high-school boy would.
"Run down there to the diamond, then," Molly commanded, "and ask the
captain of the Belden team to come here a minute, _please_!"
She liked the boy in uniform who responded to her call. He had round
blue eyes, lots of freckles, and a smile that came without coaxing. It
was easy to tell him the troubles Lakeville's team was encountering.
"So they are coming, you understand," she finished breathlessly. "If
you will just hold the game a few minutes, till they get here--"
"Why sure!" The boy fumbled with his cap and spoke awkwardly, but there
was no doubting his sincerity. "We meant to postpone the start till
your team came, of course."
"But that--that man--" Molly halted until she had spied the important
person and pointed him out to the Belden captain. "That man said he
would tell the umpire to forfeit the game at three o'clock if our boys
weren't here."
"So he could make a speech, huh?" The boy's smile revealed two rows
of gleaming white teeth. "That's old Senator Cannon, who used to be
in the State legislature; he'd rather make a speech, I guess, than
eat. Regular talking machine, that man. But he isn't running our ball
team. Why, he wanted to award the pennant last week, after we licked
Elkana--so's he could make a speech, you see."
"The idea!" sniffed Miss Sefton in her most grown-up manner.
"But we fellows voted 'no' on his little scheme. Said we had Lakeville
to trim for a clear title to the State championship. That's why we are
so keen to play to-day, even if we start a bit late. You know, it's
this afternoon or never, because school ended yesterday, and we can't
very well postpone the game."
"Oh, you won't have to worry that way," Molly assured the Belden
captain. "Our team is surely coming. It--it--" She faltered at sight of
the messenger, on his third trip that day. Some inkling of impending
disaster gripped her. Before she spoke again, she moistened her lips.
"Well, what is it now?"
"Message for Horace Hibbs."
Molly reached for the paper. She had meant to ask for it, but the words
would not come. All at once, she was afraid of what those scrawled
words might reveal. The Belden captain watched her curiously.
But she was no coward. She would prove that much. So, calling upon
every ounce of her will power to steady her fingers, she calmly
unfolded the paper and read the message. There was not even the flicker
of an eyebrow to suggest its import. When she had deciphered the final
blur that stood for "Leland", she looked up at the boy.
"I am sorry," she said in a low, hurt voice, "but I am afraid we can't
play the game, after all. The team is--is not coming."
For the message read:
Tell Horace Hibbs, baseball park, that no train will leave Elkana for
Belden before night. Too far and too late to use automobile. We are
getting ready to start back home.--Leland.
If the Belden boy spoke to her, Molly did not hear him. For a time,
indeed, the measured _pound-pound-pound_ of her heart tolled so loudly
that it deafened her to all else. Not till her quickening ears counted
the three strokes of some belled clock in town did she become conscious
of the babel about her.
It was time for the game to begin. To the rhythm of thousands of
stamping feet, the fans were dinning, "Start the game! Start the game!"
Off down the road, outside the park, a muffled roar grew and doubled in
volume, like distant thunder coming closer and closer. It rumbled to
the very gate; it died to a faint putter. As the great swinging doors
flung wide, it belched forth once more, nerve-racking, ear-rending.
Then Molly gasped and stared.
Into the ball park rolled the queerest contrivance she had ever
seen--a great engine, running on broad, endless belts instead of
wheels, and towing behind it a half-loaded hayrack.
"It's a farm tractor!" said a startled voice below her.
"It's the Lakeville baseball team!" screamed Molly watching Bunny
Payton and Bi Jones jump from the hayrack, with at least seven other
boys ready to spill over the sides.
She experienced a sudden absurd pity for the man who wanted to forfeit
the game, that he might make a speech, and for the blue-eyed, freckled
Belden captain who was about to lead his team to defeat, and for all
those fans who counted confidently on a Belden victory.
They were very still now, very apprehensive. In a little while, she
guessed, they would be sorry the Lakeville nine had ever come. She
laughed hysterically and sprang to her feet. With a Lakeville High
banner streaming in the wind, she shrieked at the top of her voice:
"Play ball!"