Chapter XXIII A Threatening Sky
Rex had brought the camp hatchet and placed it where everybody could see it. None of his fellow-campers spoke of its return. They were all hungry, and they hurried through dinner, took a nap, and then made for the sound while the tide was up.
There was a good diving place just east of their cove, and within a few rods of the spot where the other fellows moored their canoes. When the Walcott Hall boys arrived at the bathing place the four white youths from the other camp were already in the water. Joe Bootleg seemed to have a constitutional objection to water for bathing purposes.
With a driftwood plank they had found, Midkiff and Phillips rigged a diving-board. The rocks which weighted its shoreward end sometimes slipped off and “dumped” the diver ingloriously into the deep hole under the bank, but that merely added to the sport.
Peewee hailed Pudge MacComber, with whom he had struck up something of a doubtful friendship, and soon four of the other fellows were at the spot where the Walcott Hall boys bathed.
Pence, a fine swimmer, dove like a shark and stayed under water longer than anybody in the crowd, save Kingdon himself. The two raced informally from the diving hole to the canoes and back again, and it seemed that Pence had a wee bit the better of it.
“You do that Australian crawl fine,” Kingdon told the black-eyed chap frankly.
“That’s one thing I do all winter. There’s a corking pool in our town gym., and I don’t often miss a day.”
“Swimming and rowing are as good all round training stuff as a fellow can do,” Kingdon said. “Gives you wind and what Downs, our coach, calls stamina. You handle a paddle like a veteran, Pence. How are you with the oar?”
“So-so,” Horace replied languidly. “Had good crews at Belding where I went for a year. I made Number Two eight.”
“Belding?” ejaculated Kingdon. “Did you go to Belding?”
“I went and then I came away again,” laughed Pence with that unpleasant curl of his lip. “Didn’t stay long.”
“Why not?”
“I rather think my absence was requested because of something regarding a calf being led into chapel and tied in the pulpit. Had a kind of a weak-voiced chaplain and the calf helped him out in bellowing.”
“Boys will be boys,” Kingdon said sadly, “and calves will be calves. Sometimes it’s hard for the faculty to tell ’em apart.”
Pence’s eyes twinkled with appreciation. “At least, they didn’t make the mistake of rusticating the calf instead of me.”
“After that?” quizzed Rex.
“After what?”
“Belding wasn’t your last school? Where do you go now?”
“I’ve finished school. Nothing to it,” yawned Pence.
“That reminds me,” Kingdon said quickly. “Those fellows sailing the Nothing To It claim to be the fastest crew in these parts in eight-oared shell.”
“Nothing To It?” echoed Pence.
Rex told him about the Blackport Boat Club fellows and their boasting. “I’d dearly love to get hold of that old boat of theirs, train a bit, and see how bad they could trim us in a race.”
“But you five fellows can’t handle an eight-oared shell,” the black-eyed youth said.
“No. But we five, with your four, could. Even Pudge would do as ballast. Have to work in Hicks as cox.”
Pence stared and laughed shortly. “You’re a queer fellow,” he said. “Anybody’d think we were bosom friends of yours.’
“Bosom enemies,” responded Kingdon. “What’s the odds, enemies or friends? We might work up a good crew and have a little fun with that Nothing To It crowd.”
“You must have sport on the brain, Kingdon,” drawled Horace.
“Sure. Clean sport. There’s nothing like it. I can have a fine time with the worst enemy I’ve got, if he only plays the game—any game—fair.”
“Suppose you’ve got plenty of deadly enemies?” was the other’s rejoinder.
“Got one, I fancy, right in your crowd,” Kingdon said, with rather a meaning inflection to his voice.
Horace stared at him. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about Ben Comas.”
“I don’t. It’s your Indian chum, Joe Bootleg.”
“Joe? Tut, tut! He’s as tame as——”
“As a tarantula,” finished Kingdon, laughing again.
“I’ll have an eye on him,” said Pence, rather sneeringly smiling once more. “But you don’t expect a fellow like him to play any game fair?”
“Not so’s you’d notice it,” Kingdon cheerfully returned. “But you other fellows, now—take for instance yourself, Horrors.”
The other straightened up on the rock where they were sitting in the sun, at a distance from the other fellows, and looked with hard eyes at Rex. “What do you mean?” he questioned. “I don’t just get you.”
“Consider your pitching,” Kingdon said coolly. “It’s crude.”
“Crude?”
“Very.”
“Say, I’ve got some reputation as a pitcher around home.”
Rex repressed a laugh. “Others before you have been Walter Johnsons around home, but have lost their reputations as soon as they got away anywhere.”
“What’s the matter with my pitching, anyhow?”
“I’ve told you that you lack control, but you need experience and training in other things. Speed is a great thing, I’ll admit, when a pitcher mixes it with brains.”
“Perhaps I’ve got as many brains as your friends Midkiff and Cloudman,” flared Horace. “I suppose you think them Mathewsons?”
“They’re steady and dependable, at least.”
“Plugging horses!” snapped Pence. “No real stuff.”
“I’ve seen fellows who didn’t succeed though everybody thought they had the ‘real stuff,’ and I’ve seen ‘plugging horses’ who climbed steadily and surely to the top. Brilliancy is sometimes nothing but a flash in the pan.”
“Is that so?” demanded the heated Horace. “I don’t suppose I’d make any showing at all on the diamond of that fancy prep. school of yours?”
“Oh, you’re baseball material; no doubt of that,” answered Kingdon carelessly. “I figure Stanley Downs would place you about on the Number Three scrub.”
“In-deed?” exploded Horace.
“Yes. We’re weak in our pitching staff, too. I could use a southpaw like you, even if you came in as a freshman, with the school nine this fall.”
Kingdon said it in such a matter-of-fact way that the other stared at him for a full minute before demanding: “What’s this you’re driving at? What’s the big idea?”
“I might use a fellow like you on the pitching staff of the Walcott Hall nine, if he was amenable to discipline and I could work with him this summer.”
“You go fish!” jeered Pence, rising suddenly to cast himself into the sea and swam away.
“Now, let that idea rattle about in that dome of yours, Horrors,” chuckled Rex, also rising. “We’ll see what comes of it.”
That evening, while supper was cooking, Rex strolled up the hill over-looking the camp. He glanced at the bowlder, and again found the stick that had been cut and hidden at the edge of the wood. Apparently no one had been there since he made his previous examination.
The next day the Walcott Hall boys saw Joe Bootleg and Harry Kirby paddle away from the island in one of the canoes, and knew the pair were going for provisions. When Kingdon and his chums went up to the ball field, the former was not surprised to see Horace Pence there, alone.
Pence lay languidly in the shade, chewing a grassblade, and watched the workout of Midkiff and Cloudman, without comment. On this occasion Kingdon was intentionally sharp with both his moundsmen. He criticized them so severely that Midkiff became a boiling volcano of wrath, and Applejack was as wild as a tiger. But neither of them answered back.
Further than being catcher, Rex was captain of the Walcott Hall nine. Off the field he was even more easy and democratic than most fellows, but in practice or in a game he was the leader, and would brook no rebellion against his authority.
When Cloudman had come in and joined the sullen Midkiff in the shade, Rex whipped around to look at Horace Pence. “Want to get out there and see if you can find the pan to-day?” he asked. “I can give you a little time before sending those babies of mine out to practice base throwing.”
“If you talk to me the way you have been ballyraggin’ those chaps, I’ll maybe punch your head,” drawled Horace.
“That would be careless of you. You might make me cry. You might wake up,” Kingdon shot at him with surprising fierceness, “and find yourself in the hospital!”
Horace laughed. Then he drawled, as he walked out toward the pitcher’s box: “My goodness! You’re some bully, aren’t you? Where’s your umpire?”
“Want one?”
“I’m going to show you I can cut the platter.”
“I don’t see any of your crew here.”
“Call one of yours. I can stand him. That sunny-tempered chap you call Midkiff is my choice. He just loves me, I know. If he says it’s a fair ball I shall know I’ve earned it.”
“Jawn, as a favor to me, please,” begged Rex, adjusting his mitt.
He knew Midkiff was doubtless stewing in the red-pepper of his own temper. Therefore he was suddenly mild as milk in begging John’s assistance; so mild, indeed, that John was forced to repress a smile as he reluctantly came forward.
With Pence working, however, Rex continued mild and encouraging, almost complimentary at times; for he was honestly desirous of developing this southpaw with the phenomenal speed. To Kingdon’s mind, here was a fellow who, having speed, could be taught control; a fellow who, if he wished, could contain himself and be, on the surface at least, as cold as a glacier.
When Horace Pence considered it best to check his temper, he could do so. Kingdon had perceived that. The question was, did he care enough about baseball and about excelling in the game to hold a tight rein on that flaring rage that the lift of his upper lip indicated?
With Midkiff and Cloudman, both tempestuous natures, there was an advantage. Each was inspired by the thought that he was working for his Walcott Hall; and the biggest and most sweetening thing in a school-boy’s life is his loyalty to his school. In a miniature way, it is the feeling which every citizen should hold for his country; it is that not easily explained virtue called patriotism.
Somewhere else it has been pointed out that Rex Kingdon was so successful in molding his comrades, even those who did not much admire him, to his will because he possessed an ability to read character. It was really the foundation of his success in sports.
He had read Horace Pence like an open book from the start. He saw just the sort of hot-as-fire, cold-as-ice kind of a youth Horace was. Reckless, bold, dishonorable, yet clean in his habits because he abhorred viciousness. Pence was secretly proud of his influence over others, but too proud in another way to put forth much effort to hold that influence. Never, for one moment, did he think of exercising his power for the good of others.
For all such faults, Rex believed that discipline of the right sort would turn Horace into a real pitcher and a real man as well. Everything depended upon leading him into the proper path through an appeal of some sort that, while opening his eyes to what was wrong, would rouse his ambition to do right.
Rex kept all this to himself. On this present occasion, despite all that had led up to Horace Pence’s work-out, with Midkiff as umpire, the session went through, as Peewee said, “without a skid.” Even Midkiff, had he admitted it, would have been forced to acknowledge that the dark-eyed fellow showed distinct signs of improvement.
“How does the arm feel?” asked Kingdon, when they had finished.
“Just getting warmed up—as though I hadn’t used it at all.”
“Therefore now’s the time for you to come in from practice. It’s all right under conditions that demand it, to put everything you’ve got on the ball and work till the old wing just about drops off. But overwork in practice is as foolish and harmful as too little work. Some fellows, who might be pitchers, kill their arms before they ever get into any real games.”
Pence did not scoff at this. There was nothing offensive or “preachy” in the way Rex spoke. His manner was as sincere and friendly as if Horace had been one of his chosen chums.
That afternoon the mainland grew hazy, clouds began to gather, and a threatening sky presaged heavy weather.
“Seems to me those canoeing fellows have bad luck,” Red Phillips said, as the Walcott Hall boys lazed around the campsite waiting for a contrary fire to burn up briskly so supper could be made. “Look at it now.”
“Hasn’t that Injun and Kirby got back?” questioned Peewee.
“If they have, I don’t see the second canoe over there,” Red yawned.
“If they haven’t started from Blackport by this time somebody’ll tell them not to,” Midkiff said.
“They had a leg-o’-mutton sail,” said Kingdon. “They could skim over with this breeze. It won’t rain yet awhile, and the wind’s only puffy.”
“I’d rather be on terra firma just the same than out in a canoe on this sound,” Red declared.
Without feeling any disturbance about the absent Indian and Kirby, Kingdon climbed to a point above the camp where he could see far away along the sound shore of the island to the westward. In fact, he stood upon the great gray bowlder which had already attracted his attention.
Was that a small sail away to the west? He had no glass, and could not be sure. If it was, the craft was so close under the island that it almost immediately was wiped from the range of his vision. It might have been nothing but a flash of surf. If it were a boat, it had been beached in safety by its crew, who feared the threatening aspect of sea and sky more than they did the sign-boards of the Manatee Lumber Company.
Rex was climbing down from the eminence when he fancied he felt the bowlder move under him. His efforts to descend seemed to contribute a rocking motion to the granite.
“A rocking stone?” muttered Kingdon, leaping down. “If it is so easily tipped off its balance——”
He tried a dozen times, and from as many angles, to rock the bowlder. It weighed several tons and of course he might as well have taken hold of the corner of Old Hall and tried to topple it over.
Finally he went back to the tent, for the other fellows were calling him.