CHAPTER XIX.

POISON SPLEEN.

Phil Springer returned to Oakdale in a wretched frame of mind. Barely had the train carried him out of Clearport before he began to regret his hasty action in running away, but it was then too late to turn back.

"I suppose some of the fellows will think it rotten of me to sneak," he muttered, "but the game was practically over, and there was no reason why I shouldn't get back home as soon as I could. Why should I hang round just for the pleasure of making the return trip with the rest of the bub-bunch and being forced to listen to their praise of Rod Grant for his fine work! They'll s...o...b..r over him, all right. He's the star now, and I--I who taught him everything he knows about pitching--I am the second string man! I won't be that! I won't be anything! I'm done!"

He was not a little surprised as he stepped off the train to find it was not raining, although the sky was still heavy and threatening, as if the downpour might come at any moment.

"It certainly is coming down in Clearport, just the same. It had begun before I hiked. Hiked! I hate that word; Grant uses it. Clearport is nineteen miles away, and it frequently rains there when it doesn't here."

He hurried over the bridge and up through the village toward his home.

"Hi, there, Phil!" cried a voice as he was pa.s.sing the postoffice, and a wondering looking youngster came running out. "What are you doing here--at this hour? Saw you start for Clearport with the team, and----"

"Game's over," cut in Springer. "Rain sus-stopped it."

"Rain? Why----"

"Yes; it's raining over at the Port."

"Rotten! How many innings----"

"Five; just finished the fif-fifth when the clouds started to leak."

"Oh, then it counts as a game," palpitated the interested boy. "How did the score stand? Who was ahead?"

"Oakdale, six to one," answered Springer over his shoulder as he hurried on up the street.

"Hooray!" came the elated shout of the rejoicing lad. "Then you trimmed 'em! Jinks! that's fine. But, say--say, who pitched?"

Springer quickened his stride, seemingly deaf of a sudden. He had felt the question coming, and he had no heart to answer it. It would be asked by every fellow in Oakdale who had not attended the game, and, on learning the truth, they would join in one grand chorus of acclamation and praise for the Texan. For the time being Grant would be the king pin of the town.

Reaching home, Phil slipped in quietly without being seen by his mother and tiptoed up to his room, where, in sour meditation, he spent the intervening time until supper was ready. In a vague way he realized that he had, by deserting the team, betrayed himself to all his comrades as a fellow swayed by petty jealousy; but this thought, which seemed trying to force itself humiliatingly upon him, he beat back and thrust aside, persisting in dwelling on the notion that he had been most shabbily treated by Captain Eliot.

"He led me to believe he meant to give me a chance to-day, and then he let me warm the bench while Grant went out to win all the glory. It wasn't a square deal. I'll show him he can't treat me that way! I'll never pitch again as long as he is captain."

This resolution, however, gave him anything but a feeling of satisfaction; it was poor retaliation, indeed, for him, who loved the game so dearly and had looked forward so confidently to this season when he would be the star pitcher of the nine, to "get square" with Eliot by refusing to play at all. It would have seemed somewhat better had he felt certain that his withdrawal must seriously cripple the nine, but, judging by recent events, it appeared that Oakdale could get along very well without him--might, indeed, succeed fully as well as it could with him on the team.

Grant was to blame for it all. No, not Grant; he himself was to blame.

Had he not been such a blind fool he might have foreseen what would happen, for had not Rodney Grant displayed beyond doubt since appearing in Oakdale the natural qualifications of mind and body which would make him a leader at anything he might undertake with unbridled vim and enthusiasm? The fellow who had been so completely misjudged by almost everyone during his early days at the academy, had demonstrated later that he was a thoroughbred, with nerve, brains, courage and the will to step into the front ranks wherever he might be. His one great fault, a fiery and unreasoning temper, he was fighting hard to master, and in this, as in other things, he had already shown that he was destined to succeed.

"I was a Jack!" growled Phil, walking the floor of his room and savagely kicking an inoffensive chair out of his way. "I should have known. If I had taken Hooker in hand and coached him, instead of Grant---- But I never did like Roy very much, and somehow Rod Grant got on my sus-soft side."

His mother, hearing him prowling around, called up the stairs and was somewhat surprised to find him home.

At supper he tried to hide the disturbed state of his mind, but his father, who seldom took any interest at all in such matters unexpectedly attempted to joke him a bit.

"Got beat to-day, I see," said Mr. Springer. "Did you up pretty bad, didn't they?"

"How did you get that idea?" asked Phil evasively.

"Oh, I can tell by the way you act. You're broke up, though you're making a bluff not to show it. Let's see, played Clearport, didn't ye?

I s'pose they give you an awful hammering? Oakdale'll have to get another pitcher after this."

"They didn't beat us; we won."

"Whew! Is that a fact? Well, what's the matter with you, then? I thought by your looks that you'd been done up brown. What went wrong with the game, anyhow? Didn't you get good backing up?"

"I didn't pitch."

"So _that's_ it, eh? How did it happen? The way you've been blowing around the house every time you could get anybody to listen, I thought you were the whole thing in that particular department."

Phil's cheeks burned and his hands shook nervously, although he fought hard to appear unconcerned and indifferent. In replying the slight impediment in his speech became more p.r.o.nounced.

"The gug-game only went fuf-five innings; it commenced to rur-rain then, so they didn't finish it out. You see I--I cuc-can't do all the pitching, and Eliot put in Grant for the first pup-part of this game."

He was intensely annoyed because of his unusual halting and stammering over this explanation.

"Humph! Rained, eh? That was odd; just began to rain here about half an hour ago."

"It began to pour at Clearport right in the middle of the game,"

declared Phil. "I was just ready to relieve Grant, for he--he was sort of--sort of sus-showing signs of weakening. Eliot had sus-started me to warming up, but it--it began to rain, and that sus-settled it."

His wounded pride, his wretched jealousy of Grant, had led him into the telling of an untruth, and he left the table feeling very contemptible indeed. Certainly it was not a malicious falsehood that was liable to do any one particular harm, but it was a falsehood just the same, and he was ashamed.

His room was like a cage, and he found he could not read or study.

What were they saying about the game in town? What were they saying about the pitching of Rodney Grant? Despite the rain, some of the fellows would gather after supper at the postoffice or Stickney's store to talk it over. This talk after a victorious game had ever held a keen delight for Phil, and it was rarely that he missed being on hand to take part in it.

"I must get out!" he cried suddenly. "I'll just wander down street; maybe I'll meet some fellow who won't be all done up in Grant."

Putting on an old raincoat and securing an umbrella, he left the house and started down the street. At the first corner he paused, for if he continued straight down Main Street he would have to pa.s.s Roger Eliot's home, and surely he had no desire by any chance to run upon Roger. A drizzling rain was falling, and twilight was coming on. Turning, he cut through Cedar Street and down Willow to avoid pa.s.sing Urian Eliot's fine house.

On his way he pa.s.sed a house no less pretentious than that of the Eliots; it was the home of Lemuel Hayden, whose only son, Bernard, had been compelled to leave Oakdale because of his jealous efforts and lying and plotting to injure Ben Stone, whom he bitterly hated. The boys of the town had talked that matter over many times, and it was universally conceded that Bernard's unrestrained hatred of Stone and plotting for the boy's injury had led him at last into a pit of his own digging and brought upon him nothing more than just retribution.

A strange and most unpleasant thought struck in upon Springer; in almost every particular, save a deliberate underhand effort to injure Grant, he was not a whit better than Bern Hayden, who now had not a single boy friend left in Oakdale.

That thought staggered Phil a bit. Why, in a vague way he had contemplated seeking some surrept.i.tious method of accomplishing the overthrow of Grant!

"Oh, I guess I'm rotten!" he growled. "But it's dirty luck that's made me so!"

CHAPTER XX.

FELLOWS WHO MADE MISTAKES.

Roy Hooker lived one block further down the street. The popping explosions of an approaching motorcycle greeted Phil's ears as he walked on, and up the street came a chap astride such a machine, the lamp of which had not yet been lighted. The motorcycle swerved into Hooker's yard and nearly ran Springer down.