"Yes, the refrigerator you know--safe. Then I'm to try my hand at putting 'em over. Of course I'd like to go the whole nine innings but I can't have everything at the start. It's mighty decent of Darrell to give me this chance. Aren't you glad, sis?"

"Yes, of course I am. I'd like to see the game, but I've used up all of my allowance for this week, and----"

"Here!" and Joe held out a dollar. "Blow yourself, sis."

"Oh, what horrid slang!"

"I mean go to the game on me. I'll stand treat. Take a girl if you want to and see yours truly do himself proud."

Joe hunted up his mother to tell her the good news. He found her in the room which his father had fitted up as a workshop since the suspicious actions of Mr. Benjamin at the harvester factory. Mrs. Matson was looking over some papers, and there was on her face the same worried look Joe had seen there before.

"Has anything happened, mother?" he asked quickly, his own good news fading away as he thought of the trouble that might menace his father.

"No, only the same trouble about the patent," she said. "There is nothing new, but your father thinks from the recent actions of Mr.

Benjamin that the manager suspects something. Your father is getting some papers ready to go to Washington, and I was looking them over for him. I used to work in a lawyer's office when I was a girl," she went on with a smile, "and I know a little about the patent business so I thought I would help your father if I could."

"Then there's nothing wrong?"

"Not exactly, and if all goes right he will soon have his patent granted, and then those men can not harm him. But you look as though you had good news."

"I have," and the lad fairly bubbled over in telling his mother of the chance that had so unexpectedly come to him.

Mr. Matson was quite enthusiastic about Joe's chance when he came home from work, and together they talked about it after supper.

"I wish I could go see the game," said Mr. Matson, "but I am too busy."

"How is the patent coming on?" asked Joe.

"Oh, pretty good. Thanks to you I was warned in time. If I had left my drawings, patterns and other things in the shop I'm afraid it wouldn't be going so well. Mr. Benjamin evidently suspects something. Only to-day he asked me how I was coming on with it, and he wanted to know why I wasn't working on it any more. I had to put him off with some excuse and he acted very queer. Right after that I heard him calling up Mr. Holdney on the telephone."

"But your worry will be over when your application is allowed,"

suggested Mrs. Matson.

Joe went to his baseball practice with a vim in the days that intervened before the game that was to be so important to him. Tom Davis helped him, and several times cautioned his chum about overdoing himself.

"If your arm gets stiff--it's good-night for you," he declared, in his usual blunt way. "You've got to take care of yourself, Joe."

"I know it, but I want to get up more speed."

"That's all right. Speed isn't everything. Practice for control, and that won't be so hard on you."

And, as the days went on, Joe realized that he was perfecting himself, though he still had much to learn about the great game.

It was the day before the contest when our hero was to occupy the box for the first time for the Stars. He and Tom had practiced hard and Joe knew that he was "fit."

Joe wondered how Sam Morton had taken the news of his rival's advance, but if Sam knew he said nothing about it, and in the practice with the scrub he was unusually friendly to Joe. For Darrell decided not to have the new pitcher go into the box for the Stars until the last moment. He did not want word of it to get out, and Joe and the catcher did some practice in private with signals.

The last practice had been held on the afternoon prior to the game, and arrangements completed for the team going to Fayetteville. Joe was on his way home on a car with Tom Davis, for Riverside boasted of a trolley system.

"How do you feel?" asked Tom of his chum.

"Fine as a fiddle."

"Your arm isn't lame or sore?"

"Not a bit, I can----"

Joe was interrupted by a cry from two ladies who sat in front of them, the only other occupants of the vehicle save themselves. The car was going down hill and had acquired considerable speed--dangerous speed Joe thought--and the motorman did not seem to have it well under control.

But what had caused the cry of alarm was this. Driving along the street, parallel with the tracks, and about three hundred feet ahead of the car, was a boy in an open delivery wagon. He was going in the same direction as was the electric vehicle.

Suddenly his horse stumbled and fell almost on the tracks, the wagon sliding half over the animal while the boy on the seat was hemmed in and pinned down by a number of boxes and baskets that slid forward from the rear of the wagon.

"Put on your brakes! Put on your brakes!" yelled the conductor to the motorman. "You'll run him down!"

The motorman ground at the handle, and the brake shoes whined as they gripped the wheels, but the car came nearer and nearer the wagon. The conductor on the rear platform was also putting on the brakes there.

Suddenly the horse kicked himself around so that he was free of the tracks, lying alongside them, and far enough to one side so that the car would safely pa.s.s him. There was a sigh of relief from the two women pa.s.sengers, but a moment later it changed to a cry of alarm, for the boy on the seat suddenly fell to one side, and hung there with his head so far over that the car would hit him as it rushed past. The lad was evidently pinned down by the boxes and baskets on his legs.

"Stop! Stop the car!" begged one of the ladies. The other had covered her eyes with her hands.

"I--I can't!" cried the motorman. "It's got too much speed! I can't stop it."

Joe sprang to his feet and made his way along the seat past Tom, to the running board of the car, for the vehicle was an open one.

"Where are you going?" cried Tom.

"To save that lad! He'll be killed if the car strikes him!"

"Let the motorman do it!"

"He can't! He's grinding on the brakes as hard as he can and so is the conductor. I've got to save him--these ladies can't! I can lean over and pull him aboard the car."

"But your arm! You'll strain your arm and you can't pitch to-morrow."

For an instant Joe hesitated, but only for an instant. He realized that what Tom said was true. He saw a vision of himself sitting idly on the bench, unable to twirl the ball because of a sprained arm. Then Joe made up his mind.

"I'm going to save him!" he cried as he hurried to the front end of the running board. Then, clinging to the upright of the car with his left arm, he stretched out his other to save the lad from almost certain death, the conductor and motorman unable to lend aid and the women incapable. There was not room on the running board for Tom to help Joe.

CHAPTER XXII

A DELAYED PITCHER

The motorman was grinding away at the brakes but the heavy car continued to slide on, for the hill was steep. The horse lay quiet now, for a man had managed to get to him and sit on his head, so the animal could not kick and thresh about with the consequent danger of getting his legs under the trolley. The car would pa.s.s the horse and the wagon by a good margin, but the boy, leaning far over, was sure to be hit unless Joe saved him, and no one in the street seemed to think of the boy's danger.

He said later that he did not realize it himself.