CHAPTER XLVI

THE GAME OF HIS LIFE

Never in his life had Lefty Locke pitched such a game of baseball. Never had that great crowd seen such splendid work upon the mound. Again master of himself in every respect, thrilled with life and vigor from toes to finger tips, the amazing southpaw of the Blue Stockings fought every inch of the way as if life and honor depended upon it.

He knew _she_ was watching him. He could feel her eyes upon him; yet they did not distract him from the task to which he had set his hand, his brain, his very soul. Instead, they were his inspiration, making him as unfathomable to those desperately waiting Specter batters as would have been Mathewson at his best.

In the whirl and thrill of the conflict, once or twice he thought of how a ball pitched by Donovan, his present opponent, glancing from his bat, had seemingly done him little damage, although it struck him squarely in the head; how that blow had presently brought about the entire loss of his own identity and the assumption of the name and, in some respects, the identity of another man killed at his side in the railroad smash. Vaguely he could now remember fighting to recall the truth concerning himself, while his mind remained an absolute blank as to the past. And the agony of his struggles caused him to shudder.

But it was glorious to know that he was again restored to reason and to his normal condition. The shadow was gone from his mind――gone, he believed, never to return.

And all the other shadows had been dispelled in the meanwhile. Janet was yonder in the box, trusting him, believing in him, sorry she had ever doubted.

And so, while Jack Kennedy hugged himself on the bench, while Charles Collier gazed and marveled, while the great crowd cheered itself mad again and again, he cut the Specters down one after another as they faced him. Behind him his teammates waited, ready to give him their best support. Three times this great support prevented a Specter from getting a hit.

And Donovan, also pitching the game of his career, twice pulled himself out of bad holes, and kept the Blue Stockings from scoring. Once he wabbled and it seemed that he was gone, but his manager made no move, and in time he rose to the emergency and saved himself.

So the game continued, inning after inning, with neither side getting a tally, with not a single Specter reaching first; for thus far Lefty was pitching a no-hit, no-run game. To-morrow the newspapers would be full of it, and the name of Tom Locke would be chiseled forever on the baseball tablet of fame.

No man present was happier than old Jack Kennedy, for he was the manager whose judgment had brought this young busher to the front and given him the opportunity through which in a single season he had risen higher than any bush-league pitcher ever rose before.

“He’s my boy――my boy!” Kennedy whispered again and again as Lefty cut the Specters down with his burning speed, his bewildering change of pace, and his unhittable hook drop, delivered always when least expected. “I found him. I put him into the game after Brennan kicked him out. I thought I was done with baseball, but I’m back to die in harness, unless I’m fired again.”

Without a single exception, Lefty’s teammates were elated. Yes, it is true that even the veteran, old Pete Grist, was supremely happy as he watched Locke work. If for an instant a pang of jealousy entered his heart, he thrust it out as one would thrust forth the devil himself.

And Lefty’s chums, Billy Orth, Laughing Larry, and Dirk Nelson, rejoiced unspeakably. All through the game Dalton laughed as of old, while behind the pan Nelson crouched and signaled, sure that never once would Lefty fail to throw the curve called for and put it where he desired without the variation of an inch. Such control, such smoke, such headwork, Nelson had never before seen a pitcher display; and he afterward made the statement, regardless of the feelings of other twirlers who had worked with him.

From the opening of the game till the last man was down, the Specters strove like fiends to get Lefty’s goat; but all their sneers, their tricks, and their baiting proved ineffectual. Apparently he was deaf, dumb, and blind to everything save the task in hand. The wild cheering of the tremendous crowd as he swept down batter after batter seemed to affect him no more than profound silence――perhaps not as much.

One, two, three, four, five innings――not a hit off Locke! Six, seven, eight innings――not a hit; not a man had reached first base!

“Shut ’em out!” pleaded the crowd. “Don’t let ’em touch you to-day, Lefty! You’ve got ’em killed!”

Then in turn, when the Blue Stockings were at bat, that immense throng begged them to fall on Donovan and get a run.

“One run will do it!” yelled an urchin with a voice like a calliope. “Dat’s all you want, fellers. It wins dis game.”

One run! Donovan himself felt that it would be enough. Perspiration standing forth from every pore, his teeth set like the jaws of a vise, his eyes blazing, he whipped the ball across the corners. One run! Was he going to let this left-handed cub outpitch him in the struggle which would give the winning team the championship? Not if he ruined his arm then and there!

Then came the eighth inning, and again the strain of the terrible pace told on Donovan. The first man up got a safety, and the next hitter, directed by Kennedy, sacrificed him to second. With one down, it was Jack Daly’s turn to bat, and Donovan laughed; for he had Jack’s alley, and knew he could keep him from hitting.

But at this moment Kennedy suddenly came forth from the bench, bearing a bat. Kennedy, the old stager, the veteran, was going in as a pinch hitter.

Donovan laughed. “He’s easier,” he thought. “Why don’t he send out Burchard?”

Burchard was the Blue Stockings’ greatest batter, kept on the bench for just such emergencies as this; and a thousand others wondered that Kennedy should throw himself into the breach with big Burchard waiting and ready.

But Kennedy was inspired. He had been watching Donovan’s work from the beginning of the game, and he believed he could find the man for a safety. As he walked to the plate, he gave the runner a signal which told him to be on his toes and ready to go when the ball was hit.

Two balls Donovan pitched to Kennedy without finding the plate, and then he put one over. Old Jack let it pass, and heard a strike called. Donovan laughed at him, and Kennedy smiled back serenely.

“Give me another just like that, Jim,” he invited. “I’ll hit the next one.”

“All right,” returned the pitcher; “all right, Jack, old back number. Here you have it.”

Kennedy knew Donovan was lying. He knew the man would pitch something entirely different, and perhaps wholly unexpected, but some inspiration told him just what it would be; and when Donovan put it across the inside corner, Kennedy fell back and met it on the trade-mark.

It was a line drive into left. The runner on second tore across third and stretched himself for the plate, while the fielder made a great throw to the pan to stop the score.

At the plate, Dillingham, the catcher, took that throw and jabbed the ball at the sliding runner, but nine men out of ten in the crowd saw that the prostrate man’s foot was on the rubber when Dillingham tagged him, and the outspread hands of the umpire declaring him safe was the only manner in which the decision reached them; for it seemed that thirty thousand maniacs filled the stands, the bleachers, and the outfield.

Donovan, shaking visibly, and pale as a sheet, braced himself hard while that uproar pounded upon his ears. The game was lost, and he knew it. Between them, Lefty Locke and old Jack Kennedy had won it.

It made little difference that, having apparently regained his control, Donovan grinned hard at Lefty when the latter came to bat, and told him he could not hit the ball. Calmly the young southpaw replied:

“I don’t have to hit it, Jim; the damage is done.”

It made no difference that Donovan struck Locke out. The Blue Stockings had scored, and when Lefty returned to the mound and the Specters faced him in the ninth, he mowed the last three down one after another, as if they were schoolboys.

At this moment it seemed that Lefty had triumphed over all obstacles and conquered every foe, but, with the approach of the coming season, he encountered a rival pitcher far more persistent and dangerous than Bert Elgin; a strange and unfathomable character who changed, almost in the flash of an eye, from open-hearted friendship to deadly and vindictive enmity, and as quickly and unexpectedly changed back again; a person enshrouded in mystery, and seemingly the possessor of a dual nature that made him a veritable _Jekyll and Hyde_. The book in which this character, Nelson Savage, appears, is the fourth volume of the Big League Series, and it bears the title of “Lefty o’ the Training Camp.”

Had he attempted to reach the clubhouse by crossing the field, Lefty could not have escaped the clutches of the madly exultant crowd. They waited for him, but discreetly, with old Jack Kennedy at his side, he ducked into a runway and disappeared beneath the stand even while the great throng was still cheering, and shrieking his name.

“Well, some game to-day, kid, eh?” laughed old Jack, giving him a clap on the shoulder. “Some game, hey? I guess we’re back in it.”

“I guess we are,” said Lefty. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to dust away as soon as I can get a shower and change my clothes. There’ll be someone waiting for me outside the gate.”

“Go on, old man,” returned the veteran manager. “I don’t blame you a bit. She’s a dream.”

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

――Inconsistent hyphenation and compound words were made consistent only when a predominant form was found.