CHAPTER XXXIX

A TROUBLED MIND

A person who has never had any experience with baseball in the bush can scarcely realize the effect upon Deering of the knowledge that the local team had jumped into the lead and stood more than a fair prospect, managed by Kennedy, of winning the championship. The place, which ordinarily seemed rather sleepy and lifeless, suddenly seethed. Almost everyone, save crabbed old men or cranks prejudiced against the game, talked baseball, praised Kennedy, and speculated concerning his new left-handed wonder, who had beaten the dangerous Buccaneers.

On Saturday afternoon the crowd that came streaming out to the field gladdened the hearts of the team’s backers by the manner in which they forked over their quarters at the box office. A flow of silver poured in, and the Deers, who had once seemed likely to end the season several hundred dollars in debt, saw a prospect of coming out ahead in finances――a prospect which made everyone rejoice.

Of course Lefty Locke was the hero of the day. Everyone stared at him. The girls whispered and giggled as they looked in his direction, and even young married women discreetly ventured to say that they considered him a very handsome man. There was something about his reserved bearing, the melancholy touch in his face, and the somber shadow in his eyes which seemed poetical and fascinating to those of the fair sex who observed him.

In some manner, stories about him began to be whispered around. It was suggested that he had a broken heart, caused by some foolish girl, who had thrown him over for another man. Another story was that he was mourning for his sweetheart, who had died. The one humorous yarn of the lot was that he was a married man and the father of several children.

But no matter what baseless speculation was circulated, each and every one of these stories simply made him seem all the more fascinating and attractive to the young women of Deering.

But Lefty favored not one of them with more than a passing glance, and never in his eyes was there as much as a twinkling light.

They had a chance to see Locke in action in the ninth inning, when, after pitching a great game to that point, Sullivan let down a little, and the Boobs, scampering over the sacks as they chose, threatened to snatch victory from defeat.

Old Jack was watching every turn like a hawk, and promptly he pulled Sullivan from the mound, and sent out Locke, who had warmed up once before and once during the game, but was now cold.

With one man down, Lefty took the next two batters in hand, and buried the whooping, aggressive Boobs in short order. The first man he fanned, and the next he forced into putting up a little pop foul back of first base, which ended the game.

Coming down from the park, half an hour later, Locke was surrounded and pursued by at least twenty youngsters, who openly discussed him for his own ears to hear, all agreeing that as a pitcher Christy Mathewson had nothing on this great southpaw.

Ordinarily this would have provided no small amount of amusement for Lefty; now, however, he scarcely seemed to hear or see any of them as he strode along, his expression one of troubled thought.

Was it possible that he was beginning to realize that his name was not Robert Stranger, and that, for all his protestations that he had never played baseball before coming to Deering, he had a past upon the diamond? At any rate, he moved like a shadow among those admiring people of Deering――among them, but not of them.

Sunday followed――Sunday on Kennedy’s farm. Old Jack made a suggestion about church, but Locke shook his head, saying he did not care to attend. And all day long he wandered restlessly about the farm, or sat idly on the veranda, declining to read, apparently striving to think――to think.

“The poor boy’s worried, Jack,” said Mrs. Kitty Malone. “It upsets me complete to see him this way.”

“Kit, I never thought the sight of any man would upset you again,” returned her brother. “I thought you’d had enough of them.”

“So I have. But this is different――this case. He’s only a boy. I feel like a mother toward him.”

“Yes, you do!” laughed Kennedy. “Oh, yes, you do――not. Why, you’re not so much older, Kit――not more than ten year, and he really is almost a boy.”

“But ten year,” she said sadly. “If ’twere t’other way ’twould be different. Do you know what’s on his mind, Jack?”

“I’m not sure,” he replied; “but mebbe I could make a guess. He had a girl once, if I remember right.”

“Once!” she exclaimed. “I’m jealous this minute. But, then, I don’t see how he could help having twenty of them. What’s become of her?”

Kennedy shook his head. “Ask me!” he said. “There’s a whole lot about Lefty Locke that I’m guessin’ at.”

“Lefty Locke? He calls himself Stranger.”

“A man can call himself anything he pleases; there’s no law against it.”

“It’s a real pitcher he is, Jack?”

“Sis, you should have seen him pitch against Bristol’s Bucks! If you want to, you’ll have a chance to see him pitch against them Monday. I’m going to put him in. You should have seen him pitch for the Blue Stockings. They lost the best man on the staff when they lost him, but Al Carson is such a pig-headed chump that he won’t acknowledge it. He’d rather lose the pennant than own up that he’d made a mistake.”

“And that’s the man they threw you down for, Jack, is it――after you’d won the championship twice before? It’s always the way in this world. The one who delivers the goods is thrown down for another who’s got the cheek to crowd himself in.”

“Not always the way, sis,” contradicted Kennedy, shaking his head. “It sometimes happens so, and when it does pessimists are inclined to say it always happens.”

“What are these pessimists ye speak of?” she asked quickly. “I don’t think I ever met one of them.”

“You were a bit inclined to be one yourself,” he replied, “until Robert Stranger came to the farm.”