CHAPTER XXXVI

STRANGER IS ANNOYED

“Gods of our fathers!” said Buster Brown as Locke reached the bench. “You done it, old boy, and you done it slick. I’ll bet that man Elgin goes up so far you can’t see him with the Lick telescope.”

As for Elgin, he spent some minutes in an apparent endeavor to steady himself; then, when he pitched again to Collins, Chick smashed out a safe drive.

The fusillade of singles and doubles and triples which followed gave the Deers four more runs before Bristol came to realize that Elgin was wholly gone, and sent another man to the mound.

“Got his goat! I knew we would!” rejoiced Landlord McLaughlin. “It’s all over but the shouting. Nobody is afeared of the Buccaneers now.”

Appalled and silenced by the sudden turn of the game and the amazing and unexpected downfall of their pitching hero, many of the disgusted local spectators crept out of the stand and stole away before the Buccaneers went down to defeat in the last of the ninth, vainly seeking up to the finish to fathom the delivery of Kennedy’s southpaw.

When it was all over, Locke lost not a moment in dashing away toward the dressing room――an action which seemed instinctive or born of baseball experience in other days. He was pursued by the shrill cheering of the little bunch of delighted Deering fans.

Elgin had vanished. Crushed, bitter, unspeakably humiliated, after his removal from the box he had lost no time in leaving the field. He could not realize that retribution had reached forth its iron hand and touched him again, as it will any and all of us who do wrong and have a conscience that must cause us to suffer.

Reaching the dressing room, Lefty had peeled off the old uniform, and was ready for a hasty shower before his teammates arrived. They came in rejoicing, with the possible exception of the jealous pitchers who had failed in the early stages of the game.

“Stranger, of the southpaw!” cried Kilgore, as Locke seized a towel and began rubbing himself dry. “You were there when the hour struck. That steal home broke Elgin’s heart. Never saw a man blow up so sudden before. Couldn’t touch him before that; everybody hit him afterward.”

Old Jack Kennedy came in. “Let me massage that portside flinger of yours, Stranger,” he urged. “We’ve no regular rubber to look after it, so I’ll have to give it what it needs.”

Lefty submitted to the massaging of his strong, free-swinging left arm and shoulder.

“How did you happen to try that steal to the plate?” asked Kennedy, as he worked over the man’s arm.

“I don’t know,” was the answer. “Seems to me I’ve done it before, but of course I haven’t, never having played baseball.”

“You have played baseball――take it from me,” said Kennedy. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten about it, but you’ve played the game aplenty.”

“Anyhow,” said Locke, “something told me to go home when I saw Elgin getting a bit careless in the box. I knew it would tie things up if I scored, and it might put him off his pins. If I failed, we’d still have another chance in the first of the ninth inning. Before I knew it I was streaking to the plate. Of course it was luck.”

“Of course there was some luck about it,” agreed old Jack; “but it took nerve and judgment. If you’d failed, everybody would have handed you the laugh.”

“That wouldn’t have disturbed me,” said Locke. “A man can’t do much if he’s never going to try anything for fear he’ll be laughed at if he fails. Sometimes a sense of humor helps; other times it hurts.”

“That’s philosophy,” said Kennedy. “Now you’re talking like yourself, son.”

Indeed, at that moment Locke appeared like the fine, forceful, jovial fellow Kennedy had known him to be, having lost much of his shadowy gloom and all that peculiar style of talk which had bothered old Jack not a little.

Locke was fully dressed and ready to leave when a prematurely corpulent young man arrived at the dressing-room door and inquired for Phil Hazelton.

“Nobody by that name here,” he was told.

“Wait a minute,” called Kennedy, who had heard the words. “Who’s that? The young doctor who follows up the Bucks? I’ve seen him over in Deering.”

“My name is Hetner,” said the man at the door. “I’m Doctor Wallace Hetner, and I’d like to have just a word with my old college friend, Hazelton. Perhaps he doesn’t call himself by that name in baseball. Perhaps he calls himself Locke. And I see by the score sheet that he was down to-day as Stranger.”

Lefty turned and stepped to the door to face the speaker.

“You must mean me,” he said. “I’m the Stranger who pitched for the Deers.”

“And you’re Phil Hazelton,” said Doctor Hetner. “I wondered what had become of you, Hazelton. You were on the train with me when the smash came. You were on that very smoking car. I spoke to you a short time before the car jumped the track. Don’t you remember?”

Locke shook his head.

“It’s a singular thing,” he said, “but people get me mixed up with someone else. They persist in thinking I’m some other person. My name is Robert Stranger, pal. I’m a diamond cutter by trade. My health ain’t just what it should be, and a pill slinger advised me to get outdoors somewhere and work on a farm. That’s how I happen to be here.”

Hetner’s jaw dropped, and he stared hard at the speaker. At the same time, behind Locke’s back, Kennedy clenched his right fist, and his eyes narrowed as he listened to this sudden change in the young left-hander’s style of speech.

“That’s right, doctor,” he said suddenly. “Folks seem to think that Stranger, here, is someone else. Even I made that mistake. It annoys him.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” persisted Doctor Hetner, his eyes fastened on Locke, “that you weren’t on that train when a broken rail sent us into the ditch? I looked for you among the injured or killed, but couldn’t find you.”

“I never was in a train wreck in my life,” said Lefty.

Baffled, the doctor turned away, mumbling an excuse, although not at all satisfied.

“I wish they’d quit that,” said Lefty, brushing a hand across his forehead. “I wish they’d stop taking me for some other person. It’s infernally annoying.”

“It must be,” agreed Kennedy, turning to Toots Kilgore. “Toots,” he said, in a low tone, “take the boys to the hotel and get supper. If I’m not there, I’ll meet you at the train.”