by Zane Grey
Chase delivered a slow, easy ball that apparently came sailing like a balloon straight for the plate, and just as the batter swung his bat, the ball suddenly swerved so that he hit nothing but the air. Some of them spun around, so viciously did they swing, but not one of them so much as touched the ball.
The giant pitcher grunted like an ox when he made his bat whistle through the air; and every time he swung at one of the slow, tantalizing balls to miss it, he frothed at the mouth in his fury. His reputation as a great hitter was undone that day, and he died hard.
In the eighth inning, with the score 11 to 0, matters were serious when the Jacktown team came in for their turn at bat. They whispered mysteriously and argued aloud, and acted altogether like persons possessed. When the first batter faced Chase the other players crowded behind the plate, where already a good part of the audience was standing.
“It’s his eye, his crooked eye,” said one player, pointing an angry finger. “See thet! You watch him, an’ you think he’s goin’ to pitch the ball one way, an’ it comes another. It’s his crooked eye, I tell you!”
A sympathetic murmur from the other players and the crowd attested to the value of this remarkable statement. The first batter struck futilely at the balls, getting slower and more exasperating, and when he had missed three he slammed his bat on the ground and actually jumped up and down in his anger. The second batter aimed at a slow coming ball and swung with all his might, only to hit a hole in the air.
With that the umpire tripped lightly before the plate, and standing on his tiptoes, waved his hand to the spectators. His eyes were staring with excitement, and on his cheek blazed the hue of righteous indignation.
“Ga-me cal-led!” he yelled in his penetrating tenor. “Game called, 9 to 0, favor Jacktown! BROWNSVILLE PITCHER THROWS A CROOKED BALL!”
Pandemonium broke loose among the spectators. They massed on the field in inextricable confusion. The noise was deafening. Hats were in the air, and coats, and everything available for throwing up.
Hutchinson fought his way through the crazy crowd, and grasping Chase pulled him with no gentle hand from the mob in the direction of the barn. Once out of the tumult, he said, “Hurry and change. I don’t like the looks of things. These Jacktown fellows are rough. I think we’d better hurry out of town.”
It was all so amusing to Chase that he could not help laughing, but soon Hutchinson’s sober aspect, and the wild anger of the other Brownsville players, who poured noisily into the barn, put a different coloring on the affair. What had been pure fun for him was plainly a life-and-death matter to these rustics. They divided their expression in mauling Chase with fervid congratulations and declarations of love, and passionate denunciations of the umpire and the whole Jacktown outfit.
Suddenly, as loud shouts sounded outside the barn, Hutchinson ran out, to return at once with a startled look.
“You’ve got to run for it!” he cried. “They’re after you; they’re in a devil of a temper. They’ll ride you on a fence-rail, or tar and feather you. Hurry! You can’t reason with them now. Run for it. You can’t wait to dress.”
One look down the field was sufficient for Chase. The Jacktown players were marching toward the barn. The blacksmith led the way, and over his shoulder hung a long fence-rail. Behind them the crowd came yelling.
“Run for it!” cried Hutchinson, greatly excited. “I’ll fetch your clothes.”
Chase had removed all his uniform except stockings and shoes, and he had put on his shirt. Grabbing up his hat, trousers, and coat, he bounded out of the door and broke down the field like a scared deer.
When the crowd saw him they let out a roar that lent wings to his feet. It frightened him so that he dropped his trousers, and he did not dare stop to recover them. Over his shoulder he saw the Jacktown players, with the huge pitcher in the lead, start after him.
The race was close only for a few moments. Chase possessed a fleetness of foot that now served him in good stead, and undoubtedly had never appeared to such advantage.
With his hair flying in the wind, with his shirt-tails standing straight out behind him, he sped down the field, drawing so rapidly away that his pursuers seemed not to be running at all.
CHAPTER IV
VICISSITUDE
Not until he had leaped fences and crossed half a dozen fields did Chase venture to look back. When he did so, he saw with immense relief that he had distanced his pursuers. Several were straggling along in front of the others, but all stopped running presently, to send after him a last threatening shout.
It made Chase as angry as a wet hornet. With all the power of his lungs he yelled back at them: “Hayseeds! Hayseeds!”
Then at sight of his bare knees he took to laughing till he nearly cried. What would his brother Will have thought of that run? What would his mother have thought? This last sobered him instantly. Whenever he remembered her, the spirit of adventure fled, leaving him with only the uncertainty of his situation.
“It won’t do to think of mother,” he soliloquized, “for then I’ll lose my nerve. Now what’ll I do if those dunder-headed hayseeds steal my pants? I’ll be in a bad fix.”
He climbed a knoll which stood about a mile from the ball-grounds, and from which he could see the surrounding country. The sun slowly sank in the west. Chase watched and watched and strained his eyes, but he could not see anyone coming. The sun went down, leaving a red glow behind the hills; twilight, like a gray shadow seemed to steal toward him from the fields.
He had noted a haystack at the foot of the knoll, and after one more hopeless glance over the darkening meadows, he went down to it. He had visited farms in the country often enough to know that haystacks left to the cattle usually had caves in them; and he found this one with a deep cavern, dry, sheltered, and sweetly odorous of musty hay.
“If things keep up the way they’ve started for me, I’m likely to find worse beds than this,” he muttered.
He discovered he was very tired, and that the soft hay was conducive to a gradual relaxing of his muscles. But his mind whirled ’round and ’round. Would Hutchinson come? What had happened to the other Brownsville players? A savage bunch of Indians, that Jacktown nine! How easy it had been to fool them with a simple, slow outcurve!
“It’s his crooked eye! He looks one way an’ pitches another!” That jaunty umpire with his dainty shoes and velvet knickerbockers—wherever on earth did he come from?
So Chase played the game over in his mind, once more ran his desperate race, to come back to his predicament and the fear that he might not recover his trousers. At length sleep put an end to his worry.
* * * *
In the night he awoke, and seeing a bright star, which only accentuated the darkness, and smelling the fragrant hay, and hearing a strange sound, he did not realize where he was, and a chill terror crept over him. This soon passed. Still the low sound bothered him. Stretching forth his hand, he encountered a furry coat and heaving warm body. A cow had sought the shelter of the haystack and lay beside him chewing her cud.
“Hello, bossy!” said Chase. “I’d certainly rather sleep with a nice, gentle cow like you than a dead man in a boxcar.”
The strangeness of it all kept him awake for a while. The night was very quiet, the silence being unbroken save for the “peep, peep,” of spring frogs and the low munch beside him. He asked himself if he were afraid, and said “No,” but was not sure. Things seemed different in the dark and loneliness of night. Then his brother’s words, “Hang on!” rang out of the silence, and repeating these in his heart, he treasured up strength for the future, and once more fell asleep.
* * * *
The sun was rosy red on the horizon when he awakened. His gentle friend stood browsing on the grass near at hand, and by way of beginning the day well, he said, “Goodmorning” to her.
“Now what to do!” he said, seriously. “There’s no use to expect anyone now, and no use to go back to look for my trousers.”
The problem seeme
d unsolvable, when he saw a farmer in the field, evidently come out to drive up the cows. Chase covered his nakedness as well as possible with his coat, and hailed him. The farmer came up, slapped his knee with a big hand, and guffawed.
“Gol darn my buttons, if it ain’t thet Chaseaway fellar! Say, I was over there yestiddy an’ seen the whole show. Best thing I ever seen, b’gosh! I’m a Brownsville boy, I am. Now you come along with me. I’ll git a pair of overalls fer you an’ a bite to eat. But you must light out quicker’n you’d say ‘Jack Robinson,’ fer two of my farmhands played yestiddy, an’ they’re hoppin’ mad.”
The kind-hearted farmer hid Chase in a woodshed near his house and presently brought him a pair of overalls and some breakfast. Chase right gladly covered his chilly legs. Once more he felt his spirits rise. Fortunately his pocketbook had been in his coat, so it a was not lost. When he offered to pay the farmer, that worthy refused to accept any money and said he and everybody who was ever born in Brownsville were everlastingly bound to be grateful to a lad called Chaseaway.
Then, under direction from the farmer, Chase started cross-country with the intention of finding the railroad and making for Columbus. When he reached the railroad, he had to take the spikes off his baseball shoes, for they hurt his feet. He started westward along the track. Freight trains passed him going too fast for him to board, so he walked all day. Nightfall found him at a village, where after waiting an hour he caught a westbound freight and reached Columbus at ten o’clock. He stumbled ’round over the tracks in the yards, climbed over trains, and made his way into the city. He secured a room in a cheap lodging-house and went to bed.
In the morning he got up bright and early, had breakfast, and bought a copy of the Ohio State Journal. He knew Columbus had a baseball team in the Tri-State League, and he wanted to read the news. The very first column he saw on the baseball page contained in flaring headlines, the words:
“CHASEAWAY, THE CROOKED-EYE WONDER, HOODOOS THE GREAT JACKTOWN NINE”
He could not believe his eyes. But the words were there, and they must have reference to him. With feverish haste he read the detailed account that followed the headlines. He gathered that the game had been telephoned to the baseball editor of the journal, who, entirely overlooking Jacktown’s tragical point of view, had written the game up in a spirit of fun. He had written it so well, and had drawn such a vivid picture of the Jacktown players, and especially of his own “chase away” with his shirttails flying, that Chase laughed despite his mortification and chagrin.
He gloomily tore out the notice, put it in his pocket, and started off to put Columbus far behind him. The allusion to his crooked eye hurt his feelings, and he resolved never to pitch another game of ball. There were other positions he could play better. It was Chase’s destiny to learn that wherever he went, his fame had preceded him.
In Black Lick he was told he might get a rail ride there; at Newark the wise-boy fans recognized him at once and hooted him off the ground before he could see the manager of the team; the Mansfield captain yelled for him to take himself and his hoodoo off into the woods; Galion players laughed in his face; Upper Sandusky wags advised him to go back to scaring crows in the cornfields.
Every small town in Ohio, as well as every large one, supported a baseball club, and Chase dragged himself and the hoodoo that haunted him from place to place.
The Niles team played him in right field one day, and, losing the game, promptly set him adrift. He got a chance on the Warren nine, and here again his hoodoo worked. Lima had a weak aggregation and readily gave him opportunity to make good. He was nervous and overstrained, and made five errors, losing the game.
He drifted to Toledo, to Cleveland, thence back to Toledo and over into Michigan. It seemed that fortune favored him with opportunities that he could not grasp. Adrian, Jackson, Lansing, Owosso, Flint—all the clubs that took him on for a game lost it, and further spread the fame of his hoodoo.
Chase’s money had long since departed from him. His clothes became ragged and unclean. Small boys called him “Hobo,” and indeed in all except heart he was that. For he rode on coal-trains and cattle-trains, and begged his few and scanty meals at the back doors of farmhouses.
In every town he came to, he would search out the baseball grounds, waylay the manager or captain, say that he was a player and ask for a chance. Toward the end of this time of vicissitude no one had interest enough in him to admit him to the grounds.
Back he worked into Ohio, growing more weary, more downhearted, till black despair fixed on his heart. One morning he awoke stiff and sore in a fence-corner outside of a town. He asked a woman who gave him bread to eat what the name of the town was, and she said Findlay.
Chase thought bitterly of how useless it would be to approach the manager of that team, for Findlay was in the league, and moreover, had been for two years the crack team of Ohio. He did not even have any intention of trying. There was nothing left for him but to go back home and beg to be taken into the factory at his old job and poor wages. They did not seem so bad now, after all his experience. Alas for his dreams!
It occurred to him in wonder that he had persisted for a long time in the face of adverse circumstances. It was now June, though he did not know the date, and he had started out in May. Why had he kept on? For weeks he had not thought of his mother and brother, and now, quite suddenly, they both flashed into his mind. Then he knew why he had persisted, and he knew more, that he would never give up.
He saw her smile, and the warm light of faith in Will’s eyes, and he heard his brother’s last words: “Hang on, Chase. Hang on!”
CHAPTER V
THE CRACK TEAM OF OHIO
In the afternoon of that day Chase, was one of the forerunners of the crowd making towards the Findlay ballpark.
Most ball-parks were situated in the outskirts of towns; Findlay, however, being a red-hot baseball centre, had its grounds right in town on a prominent street. They were inclosed with a high board fence, above which the roof of a fine grandstand was to be seen. Before the gates the irrepressible small boy was much in evidence.
As Chase came up he saw a ball fly over the stand fall to the street and bound away, with the small boys in a wild scramble after it. To secure the ball meant admission to the grounds. Quick as a flash Chase saw his opportunity and dashed across the street. He got the ball, to the infinite disgust of the small boys. The gatekeeper took it and passed Chase in.
Players in gray uniforms marked “Kenton” were practising, some out in the field, others on the diamond. Chase had never seen such a smooth baseball ground. The diamond was bare; all the rest of the field was green, level sward, closely cropped. Chase thought a fellow who could not play well there was not worth much. As the noisy crowd poured in, filling the bleachers, and more slowly the grandstand, he thrilled to think what it would mean to him to play there.
Then when the thought came of what little chance he had, the old heartsickness weighed him down again. By and by he would ask to see the manager, but for the moment he wanted to put off the inevitable.
He stood in the aisle between the grandstand and bleachers, leaning over the fence to watch the players. A loud voice attracted him. He turned to see a very large, florid man, wearing a big diamond, addressing a small man whose suit of clothes was as loud as the other fellow’s voice.
“Hey, Mac, what’s the matter with this bunch of dead ones you’ve got? Eleven straight games lost! You’re now in third place and dropping fast, after starting out to set the pace. Findlay won’t stand for it.”
The little man bit savagely at the cigar, tilting it up in line with his stub nose; and the way he frowned lowered the brim of his hat. “Sure, it’s a slump, Mr. Beekman,” he said, in conciliating tones. “Now, you know the game; you’re up; you’re up on the fine points. You ain’t like most of them wooden-headed directors. The boys ain’t been hittin’. Castorious is my only pitcher whose arm ain’t gone lame this cold spell. I’ve been weak at shortstop all thi
s spring. But we’ll come ’round, now you just take that from me, Mr. Beekman.”
The pompous director growled something and went on up to the grandstand steps. Then a very tall fellow with wide, sloping shoulders and red hair accosted the little man.
“Say Mac, what was he beefing about? I heard him speak my name. Did he have his hammer out?”
“Hello, Cas. No, Beekman ain’t knockin’ you. He was knockin’ me. Sore on me, because we’re losin’.”
“If some of those stiffs would stay away from the grounds and stop telling us how to play the game, we’d sooner break our bad streak. Are you going to work me today?”
“How’s your arm?”
“Good. It’s getting strong. What I need is work. When I get my speed, I’ll make these puff-hitters lay down their bats.”
With that Castorious swaggered into the dressing-room under the grandstand, followed by the little manager. Chase left his post, went to the door, hesitated when he saw the place full of ball players in the various stages of dressing, and then entered and walked straight up to the manager.
“I heard you say you needed a shortstop. Will you give me a chance?”
He spoke distinctly, so that everyone in the room heard him. The manager looked up to speak when Castorious bawled out:
“Fellows, here he is! He’s been camping on our trail. I said somebody had Jonahed us. It’s the crooked-eyed hoodoo!”
Ball players are superstitious and are like sheep, inasmuch that they follow one another. The uproar that succeeded upon Castorious’s discovery showed two characteristic traits—the unfailing propensity of the players to make game of anyone, and the real anxiety with which they regarded any of the signs or omens traditionally disastrous. How well they recognized Chase showed the manner in which they followed anything written about baseball.
“Hello, there, Chaseaway!”
“Where’s your pants?”
“Hoodoo!”
“Jonah!”