Rival Pitchers of Oakdale Part 4

"I hope Barville beats the everlasting stuffing out of Oakdale."

"Do you really?" chuckled Roberts. "How's your friend feel about it?

Does he play?"

"Nit," said Rackliff. "Draw poker is about the only kind of a game I ever take a hand in."

"Oh, Herbert knows they've given me a rotten deal," said Hooker quickly. "He's got his opinion about it. Honestly and truly, we'd both like to see Barville win."

"If that is the case," whispered Roberts, with a secretively friendly and confidential air, "you're just about dead sure to have your desire gratified. We'll have the finest high school battery ever seen in these parts. Got a new catcher, you know."

"No. I didn't know."

"Yep. He's a corker. Knows the game from A to Z, and he's coaching Sanger. You should see them work together. By the way, he comes from a town near Boston. Part of the city, isn't it--Roxbury? He knows more baseball than any fellow in these parts."

"What's his name?" asked Rackliff, lighting a fresh cigarette.

"Copley."

"What?" exclaimed Herbert, nearly dropping his cigarette. "Not Newt Copley?"

"That's him."

"Great scott! Say, he is a catcher. He's the trickiest man who ever went behind a bat. I know, for I've seen him play. He knows me, too.

Say, isn't it odd that I should have a chum pitching for Wyndham this year and an acquaintance catching for Barville?"

The face of Len Roberts wore a look of satisfaction.

"Of course, we haven't seen Cop in a real game yet, but he brought his credentials with him, and they were sufficient to satisfy everybody that he was the real thing. Glad to meet somebody who knows about him.

With Sanger handing 'em up, and Cop doing the receiving, you can bet Barville is going to take a fall out of Oakdale."

"I'd like to bet on it," said Herbert, with a touch of eagerness; "but I don't suppose I could find anybody down around here with sporting blood enough to risk any real money on the game. Say, do me a favor; tell Newt Copley that Herbert Rackliff is here in this town. He'll remember the fellow they called 'the plunger,' and 'the dead-game sport.' Even if I don't play baseball, I've sometimes made a few easy dollars betting on the games."

"And you'd bet against Oakdale?"

"Sure thing, if I felt certain she would lose."

"I'm afraid," grinned Roberts, "that neither you nor Hooker is very loyal to his school."

"Loyal!" snarled Roy. "Why should we be?"

"When it comes to wagering money," observed Rackliff wisely, "the fellow who bets on sympathy or loyalty is a chump. I always back my judgment and try to use some common sense about it. I hope you don't think for a fleeting moment that I contemplate finishing my preparatory school education in this stagnant hole. Not for little Herbert. I'd get paresis here in less than a year. I'm pretty sure the governor simply chucked me down here for a term, as sort of a warning. I'll go back for good when the term's over."

"Well, now if you fellows really want to see Oakdale surprised, and enjoy the pleasure of witnessing Barville hand 'em a good tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, perhaps you won't say anything about our new catcher."

"Not a word," promised Hooker.

"Not a whisper," a.s.sured Rackliff. "And perhaps I'll catch a sucker or two if I fish around for them. Really, the prospect is inviting, for it seems to promise a break in the deadly monotony."

"Here come some of the fellows now," said Hooker, as two or three boys were seen coming down Lake Street. "Practice is over. Let's sift along, Rack. I don't care to see them. So long, Len. Good luck to you."

"So long, fellows," said the boy from Barville, as they turned up Main Street. "You'll have a chance to be happy Sat.u.r.day. Bet all you can on it, Rackliff, old fel."

CHAPTER V.

HOOKER'S MOTORCYCLE.

Thus began the friendship between Roy Hooker and Herbert Rackliff.

Henceforth they were seen together a great deal. They came out to watch the nine practice, but Hooker no longer wore his baseball suit, and he sat on the bleachers with Herbert, the two talking together in guarded tones. No one paid much attention to them, for most of the boys held very decided opinions, which were far from favorable, of a chap who would show the disposition Hooker had so plainly betrayed; and Rackliff had never revealed an inclination to seek popularity among his schoolmates.

Roy was the owner of a second-hand motorcycle, which his father had given him at Christmas time, a present that had filled him with keen delight and intense satisfaction, in the knowledge that it would cause him to be envied by less fortunate lads. It was necessary, however, to tinker a great deal over the machine to keep it in running order, and the joshing flung at him by the Oakdale lads whenever he had a breakdown had been anything but balm to his irritable nature.

"Confound the thing!" he cried, after fussing with it a long time one night, while Rackliff, his creased trousers carefully pulled up to prevent bagging at the knees, sat on a box near by, in the open door of the carriage house, smoking cigarettes. "I don't believe it's any good. The old man got soaked."

"It seems harder work to keep the thing going than to pump an ordinary bike," said Herbert, "and that's too strenuous for me--though I learned to ride one once."

"Oh, regular bicycles are back numbers now. I could have a ripping lot of fun if I could make this machine go. Never saw anything so contrary. Sometimes it starts off and behaves fine for a little while, and I think it's all right. Just when I get to thinking that, it kicks up and leaves me a mile or two away from home, and I have to push or pedal it back. That's what makes me sore. If I try to sneak in by some back way somebody is sure to see me and give me the ha-ha."

"Like automobiles," observed Herbert, after letting a little smoke drift through his nose, "they're all right when they go, and a perfect nuisance when they don't. Now look at yourself, Roy, old fellow. Your hands are covered with grease, and you've got a black streak across your nose, and you're all fretted up."

"Drat the old thing!" snarled Hooker, giving the rear tire a kick.

"It's just simply contrary, that's all. There's only one person in town who knows anything about gas engines, and he's Urian Eliot's chauffeur. I suppose I could get him to tinker this contraption up if I only was chummy with Roger."

"Anyway," said Herbert, "I should think it would shake one up fearfully riding over these rough country roads. We have some roads around Boston."

"Oh, a fellow can pick his way along pretty well after our roads get settled. Of course, they're no macadamized boulevards. It's lots of sport, and one can get around almost anywhere he wants to go. As long as I'm not going to be on the baseball team, I might use it to run over to Barville or Wyndham or Clearport to see the games."

"So you're going to chase the games up, are you?" laughed Rackliff. "I thought perhaps you'd be so sore you'd keep away from them."

"What, and lose the chance of seeing Oakdale beaten? Why, I wouldn't miss that first game with Barville for anything."

"But you don't have to go out of this town to see that game. Give it to me straight, Roy, is that fellow Sanger really much of a pitcher?

Of course, I know Roberts would blow about him, but what do you think?"

"He was green the first of last season, and with a poor catcher to hold him he didn't show up very strong; but it's a fact that Wyndham, the fastest team in these parts, only got three clean hits off him the last game he pitched."

"Well, he'll have a catcher that can hold him this year," declared the city lad. "Newt Copley is a bird. He can throw to bases, too; it's rank suicide for runners to try to steal on him. Then you should see him work a batter. Gets right under the man's club and talks to him in a low tone, telling him how rotten he is and all that, until he has the fellow swinging like a gate at every old thing that comes over. And the way he can touch a bat with his mitt and deflect it on the third strike without being detected by the umpire is wonderful. He's great for kicking up a rumpus in a game; but he enjoys it, for he'd rather fight than eat."

"He hadn't better try anything like that on Rod Grant."

"Oh, I don't know," murmured Rackliff. "Copley's a sc.r.a.pper, and he can handle his dukes. He has science, and it's my opinion he'd eat your cowboy alive."

Hooker shook his head. "You never saw Grant when his blood was up. I have, and he's a perfect fury. They say his old man was a great fighter, and that he's been all shot and cut to pieces. _I_ wouldn't buck up against the Texan for anything."

With which confession Hooker resumed his tinkering on the motorcycle.

After a while, with the switch on, he bestrode the thing and started to pump it down the slight in-line toward the street.