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! Lakeville! Lakeville! 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 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 "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 "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. "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. 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 "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 "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 "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!" |