Although there was an early breakfast on Kennedy’s farm, when old Jack arose his sister surprised him by stating that the new man had been up and wandering about the place for an hour or more.
“I wonder if he didn’t sleep well?” said Kennedy.
“I asked him,” returned Mrs. Malone, “and he said he slept like a log. He’s a fine-looking fellow, Jack, but he ain’t no farmer. If you took him for one you got bunkoed.”
Kennedy gave her a laughing, knowing wink. “Leave it to me, Kit,” he said. “I know my business, whether I’m hirin’ farm hands or ball players.”
“I’m thinking you’d be much more successful picking the latter,” she replied. “You may call yourself a farmer, but it’s baseball that’s still got the hook on ye.”
“Mebbe you’re right, Kitty,” he agreed. “Mebbe that’s why I decided to taper off with this bush league bunch. Perhaps I’m like a man that’s been drinking hard and finds he’s got to quit, but it’ll kill him if he stops all to once. When the baseball bug gets into a man’s blood for fair he never is quite cured. It’s a disease, my girl.”
“If you’d had a square deal you’d be at it now.”
“Don’t let that worry you. I knew it was coming some time. Where’s this man of mine?”
“I wouldn’t wonder if you found him out viewin’ the scenery. There’s something sort of sad and lonesome about him. He acts like he’s lost his last friend on earth. But he’s a handsome feller, Jack.”
“Now, Kitty, don’t be sentimental. I thought you was done with the men?”
“So I am,” she retorted, flushing almost like a girl. “Stop your joshing. Me day is over, but I can tell the kind that git the girls as well as I ever could. Breakfast will be ready in less than five minutes.”
Laughing, Kennedy went out to search for Locke, whom he found on the veranda. Lefty rose at once when Jack appeared.
“Good morning,” he said. “You told me to look around, and I’ve been doing so.”
“Right-o! You’re an early bird, all right. It’s an appetite you should have for breakfast.”
“I haven’t any working clothes,” said the other. “I’ve been trying to think what became of my outfit. Can’t seem to remember.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got old clothes enough, and they’ll do when you want ’em, which won’t be to-day. Come in to breakfast.”
At the table Lefty was silent, but, whatever else could be said of him, his appetite was healthy enough. He seemed wholly unaware of the occasional glances of interest from the blue eyes of Mrs. Kitty Malone. In every movement he proclaimed himself a person of refinement, and it was only in occasional lapses of speech when he seemed almost trying to remember something, or repeating a lesson that had been learned, that there was the slightest suggestion of anything different.
After breakfast Kennedy gave his foreman some instructions, and later he found Locke waiting for him. Old Jack appeared with a soiled baseball and a glove.
“I may have to get into the game myself to-day,” he said cheerfully, “and I’m a bit out of practice. As long as you’re not going to work until to-morrow, mebbe you’d throw me a few?”
Lefty frowned, but did not refuse.
“Pull off your coat,” directed the old manager, as he paced off and marked the regular pitching distance in the yard. “Here’s a flat stone for you to put ’em over. I’ll be the catcher.”
If he had prepared a trap, the other walked into it without hesitation. Taking his place on the mark indicated, he caught the ball which Jack tossed him, and squared away.
“Take it easy at first,” suggested Kennedy, in full remembrance of the smoking speed with which Lefty Locke had dazzled the best batters in the Big League. “As long as you’re green, you’ll hurt your whip if you start in by wallopin’ ’em.”
Lefty complied to the letter, and the old manager’s eyes glittered with the secret triumph he felt as the young man began putting the ball over with perfect control and apparently without effort. Gradually Kennedy urged him to speed up, and the change made no difference. Wherever Jack held his hands behind that flat rock—high, low, behind the inside or the outside corner—Lefty Locke winged the ball straight into them, so that it was scarcely necessary to make the slightest movement to catch it.
“Say,” cried Kennedy suddenly, “I thought you didn’t know anything about this business?”
“I don’t,” was the instant declaration. “Don’t think I ever handled a baseball before in all my life.” But there was a strange flush in his face and a peculiar light of aroused interest in his eyes, all of which the former Blue Stockings’ manager observed with unspeakable gratification.
“Well, if you’re a greenhorn, certainly you’re a wonder,” said Kennedy, still careful to follow the other’s lead. “Say, throw me a drop.”
Locke shook his head. “I don’t know how.”
“Easiest thing you ever tried. Here, I’ll show you.”
He jogged forward, took the ball, and demonstrated how it should be held and in what manner it should be released with the proper whirling motion to make it drop.
“Now try it that way,” he said, returning to his position.
Three times Lefty threw the ball without the slightest indication of a drop, but with the fourth throw, into which he put a bit more speed, the sphere, coming breast-high, took a sudden shoot toward the ground just before reaching the stone which served for a plate. Kennedy, scooping it from the turf, whooped.
“That’s it!” he shouted. “Great smoke! That was a peach! It would have had Logie, of the Specters, breakin’ his back.”
For the first time since his arrival in Deering, something like a faint smile flitted across the young man’s face.
“Queer,” he said. “I didn’t know I could do that. Pitching can’t be so difficult to learn.”
“It isn’t for some men,” assured Kennedy. “Give me another.”
He snapped the ball wide and high to Locke, who carelessly thrust up his right hand, stopped it, and permitted it to drop into his left, a movement so familiar to old Jack that he nearly whooped again.
“Give me one just like the last,” invited Kennedy, “and burn it. Let it come smoking.”
It was like the last, and with only his small fielder’s glove to aid him Kennedy lost it.
“Oh, some speed, son—some speed!” he rejoiced. “The left-hander I told you about last night used to have a duplicate of Walter Johnson’s hook curve, only it took the opposite twist toward the inside corner for a right-hand batter, and so was a heap worse to hit. Let me show you how he threw it, if I can remember.”
Again he demonstrated, and again Locke apparently tried to follow directions. This time he threw the hook with the first effort, and old Jack bit his tongue to hold himself in check.
“That’s it!” he cried. “Why, I could make a pitcher out of you—I sure could! And there’s more money in it than working on a farm. It’s good, healthy business, too. Just what your doctor’d ordered if he’d knowed you could do it.”
“How could he know, if I didn’t know myself?” was the good-natured question, all the somberness seeming gone from Locke’s face—temporarily at least. In every movement he was now a pitcher, the same young wonder who had made such a record under Kennedy with the Blue Stockings; the same jovial-appearing, resolute, reliable boxman who had made a host of friends and admirers, and had come to be feared and respected by opposing batsmen.
“You throw ’em any way you’re a mind to now, and let ’em come,” said Kennedy. “You’re giving me some practice, all right.”
There was life, ginger, fire, and marvelous control in every delivery. The whistlers that left Locke’s fingers made old Jack set his teeth and grin painfully as, one after another, they nearly lifted him off his feet. In a few moments the old manager, unprotected by a big mitt, found that he was getting more than enough.
“That will do!” he shouted, dropping the ball, and blowing on his smarting right hand. “Perhaps you never saw a ball game, but, believe me, you can pitch—and I know pitchers.”