Local Color Part 30

"Anyhow, I reckon my wife wouldn't hear to it," said Mr. Fluellen hopelessly. "She's funny that way."

"No, it wouldn't do for you to be along either, Pink Egg," said Mr.

Birdseye compa.s.sionately but with all firmness. "You don't know the real science of baseball the same as I do. They wouldn't care to talk to anybody that was even the least bit off on the fine points. I was just thinking--I'll be able to give 'em some tips about how to size up the situation here--not that they need it particularly."

"J. Henry, you wouldn't tip 'em off to the weak spots in the Anneburg team?" Loyalty to local ideals sharpened Mr. Fluellen's voice with anxiety.

"Certainly not, Pink Egg, certainly not," rea.s.sured Mr. Birdseye. "What do you think I am? Not that they need to be told anything. They'll wipe up the ground with our bunch of morning glories anyway--best we can hope for is that we don't get skunked and that the score is kind of low. But I'll certainly put 'em wise to that soft place back of centre field, where the gra.s.s is high. That's only true sportsmanship, that's only fair."

"Yes," a.s.sented Mr. Fluellen, "I reckon that's no more than fair. Well, as I said before, J. Henry, I certainly wish I was going to be with you."

The great day came and was auspiciously sunshiny from its dawning onward. Contrary to the custom of trains in certain interior sections of our common country, the train upon which so much depended slid into Barstow Junction at eleven-twenty, exactly on time. On the platform of the little box station, awaiting it, stood our Mr. Birdseye, impatiently enduring the company of a combination agent-telegrapher-ticketseller, who wore pink sleeve-garters with rosettes on them and a watch charm carved from a peach kernel to represent a monkey with its tail curved over its back.

Mr. Birdseye was costumed in a fashion befitting the spirit of the hour, as he sensed it. The main item of his attire was a new light-gray business suit, but lightening touches of a semi-sporting character were provided by such further adornments as a white Fedora hat with a wide black band, a soft collar held down trimly with a gold pin fashioned like a little riding-crop, and low tan shoes with elaborated gunwalelike extensions of the soles, showing heavy st.i.tching. The finger tips of a pair of buckskin gloves, protruding from a breast pocket of his coat, suggested two-thirds of a dozen of small but well-ripened plantains. His visible jewelry included dog's-head cuff b.u.t.tons and a fob strap of plaited leather with a heavy silver harness buckle setting off its pendant end.

Looking the general effect over from time to time during that dragging forenoon, he had each separate time felt himself to be habited in accordance with the best taste and the best judgment, considering the nature of the occasion and the role he meant to play. An added fillip to his antic.i.p.ations was afforded by the consciousness that no rival would divide the coming triumph with him. Anneburg had forty thousand inhabitants, including whites--that is, forty thousand by the United States census reports; seventy-five thousand by patriotic local estimates. By sight or by name Mr. Birdseye knew most of the whites and many of the blacks, browns and yellows. At the hotel no Anneburgian name was registered, saving and excepting his own; in the little knot gathered on the platform no familiar Anneburg shape now disclosed itself. He was alone and all was well.

The locomotive rolled in and gently halted, as though to avoid jostling its precious freightage of talent. Behind it, tailing along up the track, stretched two day coaches and sundry Pullmans. From these last dropped down dark-faced figures, white-clad in short jackets, and they placed boxes below every alternate set of car steps. The train conductor dismounted. Carrying a small handbag, Mr. Birdseye approached and hailed him.

"h.e.l.lo, Cap," he said, "have a smoke."

"Thanks." The conductor deposited the cigar with tender care in the crown of his uniform cap. "Smoke it later on, if you don't mind. Nice weather."

"Which car are the boys on?" asked Mr. Birdseye.

"Boys--which boys?"

"Why, the boys that are going to play Anneburg, of course."

"Oh, that bunch? Back yonder." He flirted a thumb over his shoulder toward the tail of his vestibuled convoy. If the conductor meant to say more he lost the chance through his own slowness. Already Mr. Birdseye was hurrying up the cindered stretch beyond the platform.

At the portals of the rearmost Pullman but one a porter interposed himself.

"Private sleeper, cap'n," he warned.

"That'll be all right," stated Mr. Birdseye. "That's the one I'm looking for--came out from Anneburg especially to meet the boys and ride in with 'em." He proffered a small cardboard slip and with it a large round coin. "Take the Pullman fare out of that and keep the change."

"A' right, suh, boss--an' much obliged." The porter pouched dollar and ticket with one hand and with the other saluted profoundly. He aided the generous white gentleman to mount the steps.

Within the door of the coach, at the mouth of its narrow end pa.s.sage, Mr. Birdseye halted to take swift inventory of its interior. It was a sleeper of the pattern familiar to all who travel much and widely; it looked its part and smelled it, giving off the inevitable torrid aromas of warm plush and heat-softened sh.e.l.lac. It contained fifteen or eighteen occupants scattered through its length, some sitting singly, some paired off and, in one group, four together, playing cards--all young or youngish men, all smartly dressed, all live-looking. At first glance Mr. Birdseye told himself he was in the right car. At second glance he told himself he was not so absolutely sure. For one thing, the persons here revealed seemed so quiet, so sedate; there was no skylarking; no quips flying back and forth; no persiflage filtering out of the open windows. Still, for one initiated, it should be an easy task to make sure, and very sure at that.

Almost in arm-reach of him two of the pa.s.sengers faced each other from opposite seats with a checkerboard upon their knees. The one who had his back to Mr. Birdseye, a tall, light-haired person, kept his head bent in deep study of the problem of the next move. His opponent looked up.

Barring the cut and colour of his costume he might have pa.s.sed, with his smooth, rosy cheek and his round, blue Irish orb, for a Christian Brother. Full well did Mr. Birdseye know that Gigs McGuire, foremost of all second-bas.e.m.e.n, had studied for the priesthood before he abandoned the seminary for the stadium. Indeed, he knew all about Gigs McGuire that the leading chroniclers of baseball had ever written for publication. He advanced half a pace, his right arm extended, a greeting forming on his lips.

The ensuing conduct of the blue-eyed man was peculiar, not to say disconcerting. He stared at Mr. Birdseye for the brief part of a brief second. Then he twisted his head over his shoulder, and, without addressing anyone in particular, rapidly uttered the word "Cheese!"

thrice in a tone of seeming impatience. And then he picked up a red disk and with it jumped a black one. Mr. Birdseye felt constrained to step along.

Across the aisle diagonally were the four who played at cards. It was to be seen that bridge was the game occupying them. And bridge, properly played, is an absorbing pursuit, requiring concentration and silence.

None of the quartet bestowed so much as a sidelong look upon Mr.

Birdseye as Mr. Birdseye, slowly advancing toward the middle of the car, pa.s.sed them by.

Thus progressing, he came close to one who spraddled in solitary comfort over two seats. This one was interred nose-deep in a book.

"h.e.l.lo," said Mr. Birdseye tentatively, almost timidly, for increasing doubt a.s.sailed him.

"'Lo," answered the reader in a chill monosyllable without lifting his face from his book. Mr. Birdseye noted that the book contained verse printed in German, and he regretted having spoken. It wasn't in the nature of things for a ballplayer to be reading German poetry in the original, and he had no time to waste upon any other than a ballplayer.

In that same instant, though, his glance fell on the next two pa.s.sengers, and his heart gave a glad upward leap in his bosom. Surely the broad man with the swarthy skin and the straight black hair must be the Indian. Just as surely the short, square man alongside, the owner of that heavy jaw and that slightly up-tilted nose, could be none but the Richelieu of managers. Mr. Birdseye almost sprang forward.

"Well, Chief!" he cried genially. "Well, Swifty! I thought I'd find you.

How's everything?"

Coldly they both regarded him. It was the short, square man who answered, and the reader behind put down his volume of Heine to listen.

"Everything would be all right if they'd only keep these car doors locked," said the short man, and he didn't speak as a true sportsman should speak--tone, inflection, p.r.o.nunciation, all were wrong.

Enthusiasm was lacking, joviality was woefully missing. He continued, in the manner rather of a civil engineer--an impa.s.sive ordinarily civil engineer, say, who was now slightly irritated about something: "I figure you've made a mistake. This gentleman is not a chief--he's my private secretary. And my name does not happen to be Swift, if I heard you right. My name is Dinglefoogle--Omar G. Dinglefoogle, of Swedish descent."

He disengaged his gaze from that of the abashed Birdseye and resumed his conversation with his companion at a point where it had been interrupted:

"Have it your own way, John. Abbey for yours, but Sargent and Whistler for mine--yes, and Remington."

"But where are you going to find anything to beat that thing of Abbey's--The Search for the Holy Grail?" It was the swarthy man taking up the issue. "Every time I go to Boston----"

Moving onward in a small, self-generated fog of bewilderment which travelled with him, Mr. Birdseye heard no more. So moving, he pa.s.sed in turn a young man who was bedded down in a nest of pamphlets and Government bulletins dealing in the main apparently with topics relating to forestry or else with intensive farming; and a young man who napped with his hat over his eyes; and another young man intently making notes on the back of an envelope; and two young men silently examining the mechanism of a gold watch which plainly was the property of one of the two; until at the far end of the car he came to one more young man who, casting aside a newspaper and straightening to get the kinks out of his back, showed Mr. Birdseye a profiled face of a clear pinkish colour, with a calm, reflective eye set in it under a pale yellow eyebrow and, above, a mop of hair so light as to be almost white. Verily there could be no confusion of ident.i.ty here. Coincidence was coincidence, but so unique, so distinctive, a physical aspect was not to be duplicated outside of a story book.

"Say, I'd know you anywhere by your pictures," said Mr. Birdseye, and extended the right hand of fellowship.

"That's the main objection to those pictures--they do look a little like me," replied the young man with a smile so grave as to verge upon the melancholy. Half rising, he shook hands with the other. "Have a seat?"

Hospitably he indicated the cushioned expanse in front of him and drew in his knees.

Here was proof, added and c.u.mulative. The voice of the pale-haired young man was as it should be, a gently modulated r-slurring voice. Was it not known of all men that Albino Magoon, the Circa.s.sian Beauty of the outfield, owned allegiance of birth to the Sunny Southland, Mr.

Birdseye's own land? Bond and double bond would they share between them.

In a flutter of reviving joy Mr. Birdseye scrooged in and sat.

The young man, having done the courtesies, sat back modestly as though awaiting the newcomer's pleasure in the matter of choosing a topic for conversation. Mr. Birdseye lost no time. He knew the subjects fittest to be discussed.

"Well," he said, "what do you think about Chicago's chances? Think she's going to give New York a run for her white alley this year?"

"I'm sure I don't know, suh." Such was the first sentence of the astonishing rejoinder. "Chicago is growing, awfully fast--faster than any big interior city, I presume, but the latest figures show New York has a greater population now, including suburbs, than London even. It's hardly possible, I reckon, for Chicago to hope to catch up with New York--this year or any other year."

Puzzled, I must admit, but by no means nonplussed, Mr. Birdseye jibed and went about mentally. As the cant phrase goes, he took a new tack.

"Say, listen," he said; "do you know what I think? I think the Federals gave you-all a rotten deal. Yes, sir, a rotten deal all the way through.

Naturally down here nearly everybody feels that way about it--naturally the sympathies of nearly everybody in this part of the country would turn that way anyhow. I reckon you'd know that without my telling you how we feel. Of course a good knock-down-and-drag-out fight is all right, but when you sit down and figure out the way the Federals behaved right from the start----"

The other put up an objecting hand.

"I hope you'll excuse me, suh," he said, "but I don't believe in keeping those old sores open. I thought sectionalism was dying out everywhere--I hoped it was, anyway. My father fought the Federals for four years and he died reconciled. I don't know why we younger men shouldn't be. After all, we're all Americans now."