_ CHAPTER XV. A DASTARD'S WORK IN THE DARK
Thanks to the methods Dick & Co. had started the year before of raising funds for High School athletics through stirring appeal to the local pride of the wealthy residents of the city, the school nine had an abundant supply of money for all needs.
Through the columns of "The Blade" Prescott warmed up local interest effectively. Tickets sold well ahead of the time for the meeting with Gardiner City High School.
"Prescott, you've been picked to pitch for the Gardiner game," Coach Luce informed the sophomore. "We're going to have almost the hardest rub of the season with this nine, on account of its being our first game. Gardiner City has played two games already, and her men have their diamond nerve with them. Keep yourself in shape, Mr. Prescott. Don't take any even slight chance of getting out of condition."
"You may be sure I won't," Dick replied, his eyes glowing. "You know, Mr. Luce, that, though I played some on second football team last fall, this is the first chance I've had to play on the regular team."
"As the game is close at hand," continued the coach, "I'd even be careful not to train too much. You're in as fine condition, now, as you can be this season. Sometimes, just in keeping up training, a fellow has something happen to him that lays him up for a few days."
"It won't happen to me, sir," Dick asserted. "I'm going to take care of myself as if I were glass, until the Gardiner game is over."
"You won't get too nervous, will you?"
"I may be a bit, before the game," Dick confessed, candidly.
"But after the game starts?"
"Once the game opens, I shall forget that there's any such fellow as Prescott, sir. I shall be just a part of Gridley, with nothing individual about me."
"Good! I like to hear you talk that way," laughed Mr. Luce. "I hope you'll be able to keep up to it when you go to the diamond. Once the game opens, don't let yourself have a single careless moment. Any single point we can get away from Gardiner will have to be done by just watching for it. You saw them play last year?"
"I did," Prescott nodded. "Gridley won, four to three, and until the last half of the last inning we had only one run. I thought nothing could save us that day."
"Nothing did," replied the coach, "except the hard and fast can't-lose tradition of Gridley."
"We're not going to lose this time, either," Dick declared. "I know that I'm going to strike out a string in every inning. If I go stale, you have Darrin to fall back on, and he's as baffling a pitcher as I can hope to be. And Ripley is a wonder."
"He would be," nodded Mr. Luce, sadly, "if he were a better base runner at the same time."
It seemed as though nothing else could be talked of in Gridley but the opening game. Just because it was the starter of the season the local military band, reinforced to thirty-five pieces, was to be on hand to give swing and life to the affair.
"Are you going, Laura?" Dick asked, when he met Miss Bentley.
"Am I going?" replied Laura, opening her eyes in amazement. "Why, Dick, do you think anything but pestilence or death could keep me away? Father is going to take Belle and myself. The seats are already bought."
Prescott's own parents were to attend. Out of his newspaper money he had bought them grand stand seats, and some one else had been engaged to attend in the store while the game was on.
"You'll have a great chance, Dick, old fellow, against a nine like Gardiner," said Dave Darrin. "And, do you know, I'm glad it's up to you to pitch? I'm afraid I'd be too rattled to pitch against a nine like Gardiner in the very first game of the season. All I have to do is to keep at the side and watch you."
"See here, Dave Darrin," expostulated his chum, "you keep yourself in the best trim, and make up your mind that you may _have_ to be called before the game is over. What if my wrist goes lame during the game?"
"Pooh! I don't believe it will, or _can_," Dave retorted. "You're in much too fine shape for that, Dick."
"Other pitchers have often had to be retired before a game ended," Prescott rejoined, gravely. "And I don't believe that I am the greatest or the most enduring ever. Keep yourself up, Dave! Be ready for the call at any second."
"Oh, I will, but it will be needless," Dave answered.
Dalzell and Holmes were other members of the school nine squad who had been picked for this first game. Purcell was to catch, making perhaps, the strongest battery pair that Gridley High School had ever put in the field. Half of Dick & Co. were to make up a third of the nine in its first battle.
"I'm getting a bit scared," muttered Dan, the Friday afternoon before the Saturday game.
"Now, cut all that out," Dick advised. "If you don't I'll report you to the coach and captain."
This was said with a grin, and Dick went on earnestly:
"Dan, the scared soldier is always a mighty big drag in any battle. It takes two or three other good soldiers to look after him and hold him to duty."
"I'll admit, for myself, that I wish the druggist knew of some sort of pill that would give me more confidence for this confounded old first game," muttered Greg Holmes.
"I can tell you how to get the pill put up," Prescott hinted.
"I wish you would, then." But Greg spoke dubiously.
"Tell the druggist to use tragacanth paste to hold the pill together."
"Yes?-----" followed Greg.
"And tell the druggist to mix into each pill a pound of good old Yankee ginger," wound up Prescott. "Take four, an hour apart before the game to-morrow."
"Then I'd never play left field," grinned Greg.
"Yes, you would. You'd forget your nervousness. Try it, Greg."
The three were walking up Main Street, when they encountered Laura Bentley and Belle Meade.
"What are you going to do to-morrow?" asked Laura, looking at the trio, keenly. "Are you going to win for the glory and honor of good old Gridley?"
"Dick is," smiled Greg. "Dan and I are going to sit at the side and use foot-warmers."
"You two aren't losing heart, are you?" asked Belle, looking at Dick Prescott's companions with some scorn.
"N-n-not if you girls are all going to take things as seriously as that," protested Greg.
"Every Gridley High School girl expects the nine to win to-morrow," spoke Laura almost sternly.
"Then we're going to win," affirmed Dan Dalzell. "On second thought, I'll sell my footwarmers at half the cost price."
"That's the way to talk," laughed Belle. "Now, remember, boys---though Dick doesn't need to have his backbone stiffened---if you boys haven't pride enough in Gridley to carry you through anything, the Gridley High School girls are heart and soul in the game. If you lose the game to-morrow don't any of you ever show up again at a class dance!"
The girls went away laughing, yet they meant what they said. Gridley girls were baseball fans and football rooters of the most intense sort.
Dave wanted to be abed by half past eight that evening, as Coach Luce had requested; but about a quarter past eight, just as he was about to retire, his mother discovered that she needed coffee for the next morning's breakfast, so she sent him to the grocer's on the errand. Dick, while eating supper, thought of an item that he wanted to print in the next day's "Blade." Accordingly, he hurried to the newspaper office as soon as the meal was over. It was ten minutes past eight when Dick handed in his copy to the night editor.
"Time enough," muttered the boy, as he reached the street. "A brisk jog homeward is just the thing before pulling off clothes and dropping in between the sheets."
As Dick jogged along he remembered having noticed, on the way to the office, Tip Scammon in a new suit of clothes.
"Tip's stock is coming up in the world," thought young Prescott. "But I wonder whether Tip earned that suit or stole it, or whether he has just succeeded in threatening more money out of Ripley. How foolish Fred is to stand for blackmail! I wonder if I ought to speak to him about it, or give his father a hint. I hate to be meddlesome. And, by ginger! Now I think of it, Tip looked rather curiously at me. He---oh!---_murder_!"
The last exclamation was wrung from Dick Prescott by a most amazing happening.
He was passing a building in the course of erection. It stood flush with the sidewalk, and the contractor had laid down a board walk over the sidewalk, and had covered it with a roofed staging.
Just as Dick passed under this, still on a lope, a long pole was thrust quickly out from the blackness inside the building. Between Dick's moving legs went the pole.
Bump! Down came Dick, on both hands and one knee. Then he rolled over sideways.
Away back in the building the young pitcher heard fast-moving feet.
In a flash Dick tried to get up. It took him more time than he had expected. He clutched at one of the upright beams for support.
Half a dozen people had seen the fall. Stopping curiously, they soon turned, hurrying toward Prescott.
Forgotten, in an instant, was the youngster's pain. His face went white with another throbbing realization.
"The game to-morrow! This knee puts me out!" _