Chivalry in Carbon County

HIS back was turned to me, but the mourn ful howl of as automobile siren caused him to crane his neck anxiously, thus furnishing me with a mental snapshot of his profile. It had been three years since to gether we had flicked battered trout flies across the pools of the North Platte, forty miles south of Fort Steele, in Wyoming. At that time he had not worn the gaudy habiliments of the ridiculous curbstone ornament scornfully recognised in certain portions of the West as a "city cow-puncher," yet, in spite of his bizarre disguise, I recognised Bud McKinstry at once. Bud was the friend of a friend of a very dear friend of mine, and his home, when he had need of one, was in the little town of Saratoga, Wyoming, high and dry among the sage of Carbon County. But what he was doing in the shade of the Flatiron Building on Manhattan Island, and why he wore an enormous grey, flop-brimmed sombrero with a snakeskin band, a blue flannel shirt with a red-and-yellow ban danna for a tie, high-heeled boots, and a few other obsolete trinkets, were things which re quired explanation, if not apology. So I tapped him gently upon the shoulder, and, "Where is the fancy-dress ball?" I asked. Bud jumped when he felt the weight of my hand, and the face which he turned to me blazed with sudden suspicion. It changed immediately into a mask of pleased surprise. "Well, well!" he cried, wringing my hand. "It's you, ain't it? Yes, it's you! And I thought it was a bunko steerer! I sure did. Well! L-o-o-ong time I no see you, eh? Why ain't you ever been out fishing again?" This, and much more, came tumbling from Bud's lips, but when he caught me examining his regalia with a grin, the pleased ejaculations dribbled away into embarrassed silence. I must say for Bud that he had the grace to seem ashamed of himself. When at home — in Carbon County, Wyoming — Bud clerks in a dry-goods store, and wears clothes which are, to quote the catalogue of the Chicago mail-order house, "the last, expiring sigh of fashion's latest whimsy; elegantly simple, simply elegant, cut, fit, and texture guaranteed," which is to say that the coats run to phenomenally long, slender lapels, buttons in unexpected places, and the trousers to three-inch cuffs. "Why the masquerade?" I demanded. "Is there a warrant out for your arrest? Have you done anything which you couldn't tell a friend? If Baldy Sisson could see you now" Bud's face shamed the bandanna's flaming scarlet. "Oh," said he, ''I guess you ain't heard the news. I'm in the show business now." "And therefore can't look any one in the eye," I said. "Which is it — wild West, vaudeville, or the moving pictures? Out with it!" "It's the movies," said Bud, with a sickly grin. "Ye-eh, I'm a regular actor now, riding the range in New Jersey while Larry turns the crank. Quite a bunch of us came over at the same time — under contract. Two carloads of broncs. Some of 'em outlaws." "Tell it to the press agent!" I said sternly. "You ride an outlaw! You? Bud, I'm ashamed of you!" "Shucks!" said Bud uneasily. "Of course, they ain't none of 'em what you might call man-eaters, but they're feerocious enough for New Jersey." "But I didn't know you could ride at all!" I persisted cruelly. "Aw, let go!" pleaded Bud. "What folks don't know won't never keep 'em awake nights. I can sit up in the middle of 'em all right; I got a strap fixed through the saddle, and" "Pulling leather, eh? I'll certainly have to write a letter to Baldy Sisson!" "Don't you do it!" cried Bud quickly. "Don't you! I might want to go back to that town some day. They laughed me out of it once, and I wouldn't wish to have 'em do it again. And, Baldy, lie's the longest, strongest laugher of the bunch. You can hear him plum' to Wolcott when he gets tuned up. Don't you write him, if you got any humanity in you at all. Besides," he continued lamely, "I don't want to get my fool neck broke for a measly twenty-five a week — not right in front of a picture machine, anyway. You wouldn't, either. I never claimed to be a Thad Sowder, nor yet a Harry Brennan, and — well, anyhow, the strap won't show in the films." He paused and eyed me with a curious mixture of importunity and defiance. "Don't you go and write Baldy!" he repeated. "I won't," I promised, "if you can give me any good excuse for traipsing around New York in a Pawnee Bill make-up." "Why, sure!" said Bud hastily. "That's easy! I was working over there in the jungles this morning. Something went wrong, and they gave us all half a day off. I didn't have no time to change. That's on the level. And, anyway" —was there a trace of disappointment in Bud's voice? — "people here don't seem to pay any attention to you, no matter what you wear." "Of course not," I said. "Long-haired men and short-haired women create no excitement in this town, Bud. These people have seen everything in the freak line, and they wouldn't turn around to look at you if you walked up Fifth Avenue on your hands. They'd think you were advertising Rattlesnake Oil, or ped- dling souvenirs from the Alamo. You look the part." "Aw, dry up!" said Bud weakly. "Some of the boys are worse 'n I am. There's Charlie Fothergill. He wears blue angora chaps day and night. You remember Charlie. He used to work in the drug store at Saratoga. The bluest blue you ever saw, and a green silk shirt, with a canary handkerchief. That's going too far, it seems to me. Say, is there any place in this town where a fellow can go and see things on his afternoon off?" "Why, yes," I said. "A fellow might go down to the Aquarium and give the fish a treat — they've got some Wyoming trout down there that would probably be tickled to death to see even an imitation cow-puncher. Or a fellow might run out to the Museum of Natural His tory, and see the stuffed animals. Then there's the baseball game. You ought to be interested in baseball; seems to me you pitched for the 'Antelopes.' Come on out to the Polo Grounds and see the Giants and the Cubs; that's always a fight worth the money." "No, sir!" said Bud, shaking his head vigorously. "Don't mention baseball to me. I'm off that game for life." He spoke bitterly and, it seemed to me, with a great deal of unnecessary heat. "But for a ball game I wouldn't be here. I'd choose the stuffed animals for mine. Lead me to 'em!" Bud had twice hinted at a story, but I knew him better than to attempt to extract his con- fidence, corkscrew fashion. When time and mood were ripe he would tell me, and not be fore, but I believed I knew a sure way to hasten the ripening process. With this end in view, I carefully steered him into that wing of the museum which contains the American bird groups, each in a marvellous stage setting of its own, where real earth, grass, and foliage blend into painted canvas so skil fully that the sharpest eye cannot trace the dividing line between the real and the un real, and the brain is tricked into impressions of far horizons and deep vistas of open country. "This," said Bud disgustedly, "is the bunk! D 'you believe a bird ever had a neck like that I "He indicated a flamingo with a jerk of his thumb. "Let's go back and see old dinah-what-you-may-call him again; him with the bones. It says on the card that he came from Wyo ming. If he did, it must have been before my time. If I'd ever met anything like that, rambling over them hills, I'd surely have taken the pledge." "Just a minute," I said. "And don't hurry so. You've got the whole afternoon." Then Bud, who was in front, paused with a gurgle of pure delight. "Hey!" he called. "Come here, and look at these little old sage hens! Ain't they natural, though? Watch that fellow strut! Say, that's what I call neat. That's just the way you see 'em out in Carbon County." "Ever seen that country before?" I inquired innocently. Bud fell back a pace, and his eyes swept the canvas background. "Moses and the prophets!" he ejaculated, seizing me by the arm in his excitement. "Look! Ain't that Elk Mountain over there? It is, as sure as you're a foot high! There's the canon where the trout creek comes down! Say, this ain't no fake; this is the real thing! It's a little chunk cut out of God's country. It's home, that's what it is — home! Carbon County right here in New York! M-m-m-m-mph! Oh, lordy!" My moving-picture cow-puncher sat down on a bench and babbled incoherently to himself, while his eyes took in each faithful detail of a well-remembered scene. The artist had contrived to counterfeit the deep crystal atmosphere of that wonderful land which lies along the ridgepole of the continent, and, as one sense calls to another, to see Elk Mountain lying purple in the distance was to smell again the clean wind of that mile-high country — the wind and the odour of the sage. From mutterings and ejaculations, Bud passed into a reverie, chin in his hands. After some time he arose suddenly, shook himself like a wet spaniel, and started for the exit. "Come on!" he said thickly. "I want to get out of this bird theatre as quick as I can. Your blame' pinny-poppy show has made me home sick!" Under the trees outside I waited for what I knew must come. "We've still got time to go to the ball game," I hinted. Bud's language, in response to this suggestion, would not be a pretty sight in type. More silence. "Say," demanded Bud, "did you ever see a female baseball club?" I said that I understood there were such or ganisations, but that I had never seen one. Bud drew out a sack of tobacco and a packet of brown papers. "You're lucky!" he said. "Wisht I never had!" And then, with the spell of the sage-brush upon him, and a two-thousand-miles-away look in his eyes, my New Jersey roughrider opened his heart. "Speaking of baseball," said he, by way of preface, "that team we had in Saratoga wasn't the softest in the State by no means. "We whaled the everlasting daylights out of every thing between Green River and Laramie. Of course, the Rawlins bunch put one over on us when they hired five professionals from Cheyenne. They beat us three to two in eleven innings, and if it hadn't been for the 'ringers' they wouldn't have stood a show in the world. "One day last June I met Baldy Sisson on the street. He was waving an envelope, kind of excitedlike. Baldy used to run the team — him and Comstock. "'Say, Bud,' says Baldy, 'I've got a game for next Saturday!' and then he opens up the letter. Right across the top of the page it says, in big, blue print: 'Baltimore Bloomer Girls' Baseball Club.' Just like that. Well, of course, I'd heard about female ball clubs travelling through the country, and giving a kind of a burlesque on the game, but none of 'em ever came our way. "'You ain't a-going to stack us up against anything as soft as that, are you?' I asks. "'How do you know they're soft?' says Baldy. 'They beat a lot of teams in Colorado. And they ought to be a good attraction.' "Well, that part of it sounded reasonable. But there's a lot of difference between a good attraction and a good show. Ever think of that! "'I'm going to telegraph that manager to come running,' says Baldy. "You'd be surprised to know what an excitement was kicked up in that town when word got around that a she-male ball team was com ing. In a day or so Baldy got a big roll of advertising posters in the mail. All colours. On the top was a picture — made from a photograph it was — of a girl in a baseball uniform. Well, not a regular uniform exactly. Part of it sort of looked like a skirt to me. Loose and bunched up at the knee. Under the picture it said: "Miss PANSY DEMAKR, "The Peerless Shortstop of the Baltimore Bloomer Girls' B. B. C. "You know how a fellow's mind will get to running on photographs and things. The min ute I saw Pansy's picture I was glad Baldy had made the date for us. She was a bird, Pansy was, young, and considerable of a looker. You can't fake up an old girl so that she looks like sweet sixteen; it shows through somehow, even in a photograph. Yes, Pansy was young, and as cute as a little sage rabbit. I wasn't the only one in town that took a shine to her. Curt' Mahaffey stole one of the posters and took it home with him. "Well, there was other things on the poster, too. 'A genuine scientific exhibition of inside baseball,' was what it said, 'as played by the leading female exponents of the national game.' There was a lot of that kind of hog-wash, and then came a string of newspaper write-ups, and not a knock amongst 'em. Down at the bottom was a string of scores. According to the posters, the girls had cleaned up mostly all of Kansas, and by awful one-sided figures at that. It got us to thinking. "'You don't suppose this is on the level, do you!' says Henry Kamphefner, our first base man. 'Did they beat all these clubs, or is this just an advertising fake? And them news paper accounts! Did they pay for them, or how?' "Well, we talked it all over, and made up our minds that we couldn't afford to have a lot of bloomer ladies travelling through Wyo ming, advertising that they had licked the Sara- toga 'Antelopes.' That sort of thing would set the town back ten years, and make us the laughingstock of the State. "'Here's how we'll do it,' says Jeff Bloodgood, our catcher. 'We'll play these girls, all right enough, and we won't be any rougher with 'em than we have to be. We'll hand them a nice, polite, gentlemanly trimming — say about twenty-five to nothing — and if they paste up any lies about us we'll sue for libel and defalcation of character. Anyhow, we'll tell 'em we'll sue, and that'll scare 'em. None of these fly-by-night shows like to get mixed up with the courts.' "'Yes,' says Fred Gilroy, the shortstop. 'We can do that 'r take a poke at their man ager. He's a man, ain't he?' "But we decided that wouldn't answer. Jeff's idea was the best. "Well, Saturday morning came, and most of us were down at the depot to see the bloomer troupe come in. I didn't hardly think they'd wear 'em in the streets, but Jeff Bloodgood did. He said they'd do it for the advertising. "As soon as the train came in sight, we spotted an extra coach — a Pullman sleeper it was. "'Humph!' says Billy French, one of our boys. 'They put on plenty of dog, don't they! Private car! You lose, Dan!' "Dan McLaurin, our second baseman, was pretty much peeved about that private car, and I don't blame him. Dan runs the hotel, and he'd been figuring on some transients. Had the whole place cleaned up on purpose, and went out at daylight to catch a mess of trout for dinner. I'd have been sore, too. "Well, we stood around and watched 'em switch the Pullman onto the siding by the depot. That car was a regular rolling hotel, with a cook house and everything complete, and when Dan saw the smoke coming out of the roof he said he didn't care how bad we'd beat 'em, but he hoped it wouldn't be less than fifty to nothing. "I got a peek at one of the bloomer ladies. She was setting by a window, combing her hair and fixing up a lot of yellow puffs and things, and her mouth was full of hairpins. I knew right away that she wouldn't answer to the name of Pansy. No, there wasn't nothing deli cate about that lady. Or young, either. Some folks like these big preferential blondes; some don't. Me, I'd just as lieve their hair and eye brows would be the same colour. "While we were sort of standing around, waiting for something to happen, the yellow-headed lady looked out and saw us. You might have thought it would embarrass her some to be caught doing her hair in public that way, but this lady certainly wasn't the embarrassing kind. She was the sort that can look straight at a fellow until he begins to wonder what there is about him that's so peculiar. "She opened the window and stuck her head out. I took off my hat because I'm always polite, but she didn't seem to pay any attention to good manners. "'What's the matter with you yaps?' says she, and her voice was like her face — hard. Kind of shrill, too, like a parrot. 'What are you staring at, little boys?' she goes on. * Ain't you ever seen a lady before? Or haven't you got the price to see the game? This ain't no free show, so beat it while your shoes are on your feet! Git!' "Some more of the bloomer ladies showed up at the windows and passed out quite a line of conversation. I didn't see Pansy among 'em, so I came away. Jeff Bloodgood said after ward that he stuck around and jollied 'em back. Jeff always was a liar. He couldn't think fast enough to hold up his end in a kidding match with those ladies. Yes, sir, they seemed to know exactly what to say that would be the hardest to answer right off the reel. "Well, we went up to Dan's place and talked some more. We decided that a real licking might take some of the freshness out of the bloomer people. Then in came Baldy Sisson with a big whale of a man that had a kind of a wry neck. Baldy introduced him as the man ager of the girl team. "Of course, him being a man, we could talk to him, and we started in. I don't know yet who made the first break, but all at once out comes a big roll of bills, and the wryneck said he'd take the short end of any two-to-one bet ting that might be flying around. He was mighty near mobbed, and I suppose, all told, we dug up close to two hundred dollars. Dan locked the money up in the safe until after the game. "I guess everybody in Saratoga that could walk turned out that afternoon. People came from away down by Tilton's ranch and over on Jack Creek. It was the biggest bunch I ever saw at a ball game in the town. "We were practising, along about two o'clock, when all at once the crowd began to cheer and yell, and here came the bloomer ladies, walking two by two, the big blonde out in front. There was a lot of laughing mixed up with the applause that I didn't quite under stand at first, but I mighty soon tumbled. There, at the tail end of the line, was two of the biggest old battle-axes I ever saw in my life, one of 'em with a wind-pad, a catcher's mitt, and a mask; and the other one with an armful of bats. I began to laugh, too, until I noticed that the one with the bats had a wry neck; then I got up closer. Both of 'em had on bloomers and about forty dollars' worth of store hair, and they were painted and powdered and fussed up to beat the band, but a blind man could have seen that those two battle-axes were men dressed up in women's clothes! "Well, there we were, up against it. For a minute we didn't know whether to make a kick or not. Henry Kamphefner was our team cap tain, and he had bet forty bucks on the game. "'Look at them ringers!' says Henry. 'May be we ought to call the bets off.' "'Call off nothing!' says Dan McLaurin. Dan hadn't put up any two to one, you under stand. 'We'd be joshed to death about it. Let 'em have their gentlemen friends for a battery if they want 'em. The rest of 'em are women, and if we can't beat seven women and two men, we'd ought to be arrested.' "That was reasonable again. I took a look, and there wasn't any question about the rest of the bloomer outfit. Most of 'em had been women so long that there wouldn't have been any excuse for mistaking 'em for anything else. Some of those bloomer ladies must have been playing baseball ever since the war. "They knew their business all right enough. First thing they did was to scatter through the crowd and take up a collection. There wasn't any fence around the ball grounds, but if any of the folks in the crowd thought they were going to see that game for nothing, they had another think coming. "I was warming up with Jeff Bloodgood when I caught sight of Pansy, and forgot about everything else. She was a little late getting on the field. The posters hadn't flattered her a little bit; they hadn't even given her all that was coming. She was just about the neatest, modestest little trick a man ever treated his eyesight to, and nothing like the others. They looked kind of loud in that foolish baseball uni form, but Pansy — why, to look at her, you'd say she never ought to wear any other kind of clothes! Slim and neat and graceful as a cat. The others looked big and clumsy beside her. "The bloomer ladies went through that crowd, joshing everybody right and left, and bawling out the cheap ones something scandalous, but Pansy, she didn't have a word to say. I know, because I went over and borrowed a dollar from George Bainbridge, and when she came my way I dropped it into her cap. She looked up at me kind of surprisedlike, and then she smiled. Gee! It gave me a warm chill all over! I remember thinking at the time that it was a privilege to give money to any lady as pretty as Pansy was. Did I tell you she had brown eyes? "Well, the bloomer ladies didn't take much preliminary practice, but the wryneck, he got out and heaved a few to the other fat he-male, and then him and Henry Kamphefner tossed a coin. The wryneck called the turn, and sent us to bat first. "Pansy went skipping down to short, the rest of the bloomer ladies took their places, and the big, fat catcher buzzed a couple down to second a mile a minute. Pansy came across to the bag like a big leaguer, took the throws as pretty as you would want to see, and chucked 'em back just like a boy. My, how the crowd cheered her! Pansy was the hit of the show, right from the start. "Martin Carey umpired, and Fred Gilroy, our shortstop, led off for us. The wryneck sort of uncoiled himself, and broke a fast one across Fred's letters, and all the bloomer ladies began to chirp. "'That's pitching!' they yelled. ' You've got everything to-day, Pearl! He couldn't hit you with an ironing board, girlie!' "Pearl and girlie! What do you think of that for gall? 1 ' Well, of course, that first strike and all the joshing he got from the bloomer ladies made Fred mad, and he took an awful wallop at the next one. It broke toward him this time, and he missed it a foot. That rattled him so that he stood still and let Carey call the third one on him, and what the bloomer people did to Fred when he walked away from the plate was certainly plenty. I've seen some pretty fair single-handed joshers in my time, but the bloomer ladies had it figured down to scientific teamwork. "'Ain't he the cute thing?' chirps the big blonde over on first base. 'I'll bet his best girl saw him stand up there like a cigar-store Indian and let 'em call a third strike on him!' "'Mother's darling boy!' squawks the old lady over on third. 'Don't let Hazel make you angry, Clarence!' "There was plenty more of the same kind, and the crowd laughed fit to bust. It was as good as a show for them. "Pete Townes, our third baseman, batted next. Pete chopped at the first one, and poked a little foul over back of first. The big blonde ran right into the crowd, and made a nice one-handed stab. All the bloomer ladies yelled: 'Nice work, Hazel!' Then they whirled in on Pete, and told him a few things about himself. "I'd been watching the wryneck, and beginning to see that we wasn't up against any tapioca. That old fat boy was there! He had swell curves, a dandy fast ball with a nice hop to it, and a change of pace, and when you come right down to it, that's all the best of 'em have got — that and control, and the wryneck didn't have no trouble putting 'em where he wanted 'em to go. "While I was studying him, he pulled a stunt on Charlie Kennedy, our centre fielder, and the best hitter we had, that made me respect the wryneck more than ever. He had a strike on Charlie to begin with, and he put another one right in the same place. Charlie took a good toe hold, and lammed that ball over third base pretty near a mile on a line. It struck foul, though, and that made two strikes. The wryneck saw that he couldn't afford to let Charlie hit any more as hard as that, and what do you think he did? He'd been pitching right-handed, but he faced the other way in the box, and lobbed up the third strike with his left! When you're all set for right-handed pitching, and looking for a wide outcurve, it balls you up something awful to have the next one break from two feet outside the plate and come in toward you. Charlie was so paralysed that he stood still, and never even offered at the ball. I'd heard of pitchers who could do that stunt, but I never saw one before. Amphibious pitch ers are scarce in any man's country! "I saw then that I was going to have to do some pitching myself, and when I walked out into the box I sort of timed myself to meet Pansy on the way. She gave me another smile. I'd noticed particular that when all the other bloomer people were yelling that Pansy kept her mouth shut, and attended to business. That made her stronger with me than ever. I like the quiet ones myself. ''Well, of course, I was out there to show those bottle blondes that they didn't have the only pitcher on earth. Up came the old third baselady. 'Maudie,' they called her. Two of the women were in the coachers' boxes, and as soon as I got my toe on the slab they started after me. I usually stand that sort of thing pretty good — from men. But what can you think of to say to a lady that wears bloomers! They opened up on me for fair. They talked about my face and my feet and the way my clothes fit me. It was fierce. I know my foot is long, but I take a narrow last. "'Come on, Maudie!' they squalled. 'Here's Oswald, with the big feet! He's out there on the hill, and he ain't got a thing in the world but a chew of tobacco and a prayer!' "Now, that's a fine way for ladies to talk, ain't it? "I didn't fool much with Maudie. She wanted to bunt, but I kept 'em too high for her, and she never even got a foul. Then came Hazel, the big blonde. I owed her something for what she said down at the depot, and I put the first one so close to her nose that she could have smelled it when it went by. She was hug ging the plate, anyway, and I wanted to drive her back. Hazel didn't scare worth a cent. She shook her bat at me, and danced up and down, and said if I 'beaned' her she'd bust it over my head. "What's more, I think she meant it. "I fed her the old McKinstry special, the wide outdrop, and she missed two of 'em. Hazel was no piker. She'd swing at anything she could reach. I figured she'd be looking for a third one, so I banged the ball straight over, she shut her eyes, and popped a fluky little 'Texas leaguer' back of first base. Pure luck. Hazel wasn't built for speed, but any fat lady could have made first on that hit. I was mad enough to fight until I looked up and saw Pansy at the plate — Pansy and her cute little bat. "'Come on, girlie!' squalled the coachers. 'HereVwhere we put the rollers under Oswald! Get a hit, girlie, get a hit! ' "I hated to do it, but I slipped Pansy one over the inside corner that nearly took Jeff off his feet. I was going to show her that I was a pitcher if I didn't do anything else. I tried it again; Pansy swung with all her might, and the ball came back at me like it was shot out of a gun. I just had time to get my glove up in front of my face when bam! the ball hit right in the middle of it and stuck there. I chucked it over to Henry Kamphefner on first, and wo doubled Hazel by forty feet, but somehow I felt kind of rotten about robbing Pansy of that hit. "'Take the horseshoes out of your pockets, Oswald!' squalls Hazel when she finally got it through her head that we'd stopped 'em with a double play. * Pretty lucky! Pretty lucky! ' "I ran into Pansy again as we changed sides, and this time she grinned when she saw me coming. "'Pretty tough, little one,' I says. 'A foot on either side, and that ball would be going yet.' She never said a word; just trotted out and picked up her glove. "Well, that's the way it started. Skipping the details, the wryneck pitched swell, elegant baseball, and when he got in a hole, he'd switch and roll a few down the alley with his left. He had us all swinging like a farmyard gate, and when you've got a team doing that, you've got the boys guessing. We put some men on the bases here and there, but we didn't seem to be able to hit 'em around, and there wasn't much nourishment in trying to steal — not with Pansy covering the bag and handling the throw. The wryneck hit me an awful soak in the ribs in the third inning, and I did my level darndest to steal second, because I wanted to be where I could talk to Pansy. I'm supposed to be a pretty fast little fellow on my feet, and I was up and gone with the wryneck's wing, but that fat catcher slammed the ball down like a white streak, and when I arrived, feet first, Pansy had the ball waiting for me. "Along about the sixth we slipped a run across. Pete Townes drew a base on balls, Charlie Kennedy pushed him along with a sacrifice bunt, and Billy French brought him home with a single to centre. You bet that one run looked mighty good to us. We'd forgotten all about beating those bloomer ladies forty to nothing, and, considering the way the wryneck was going, we were thankful for that ace. It looked big enough to win with, but in the eighth we had another guess. Old double-barrel tied the score on us. "I hadn't been worrying so much about the wryneck being a hitter, because he'd been swinging at anything, but he came up first in the eighth and tied into one good and plenty. It would have been a home run if he hadn't been so fat. Of course, he blamed it on the altitude. He got as far as third base, and then he sat down on the bag with his tongue hanging out a foot. His bloomer friends certainly knew the fine points of the game. Hazel broke a shoe lace, and took five minutes to fix it, and then Pansy had to stop to do up her hair, and Maudie's belt got twisted, and between 'em all they gave the old rascal a fine breathing spell. At that I'd have left him marooned on third base if Fred Gilroy hadn't played ping-pong with a ball that Myrtle hit straight at him. Fred made a high peg to the plate, Jeff had to jump for it, and he came down square on top of the wryneck. I've never seen a hippopotamus slide to the plate, but I don't need to. I saw the wryneck, and there we was with the score tied up and the ninth inning coming. "By this time we was pretty much worked up about them two-to-one bets, and the bloomer ladies were chirping like a lot of canaries. That one run put a lot of life into 'em. "We didn't do any good in our half of the ninth, and then here was Maudie again, leading off for the ladies. Maudie was tolerable soft for me. She was afraid of a fast ball, and I didn't give her anything else. Three strikes for Maudie. The bloomer ladies rooted hard for Hazel, but I got her in a hole and made her swing at a curve, and she went back. "Pansy waltzed up to the plate. She had a bigger bat this time. Pansy hadn't hit a ball out of the diamond all the afternoon, and Henry Kamphefner, who'd been reading the magazines, and thought he knew all about inside baseball, wigwagged to the outfielders to get in close. "When I saw that big bat I had to laugh. It was 'most as big as Pansy was. "'Hey, little one,' I sings out, 'what are you going to do with that telegraph pole?' "Pansy laughed back at me, waved her hand, and then I hope I may choke if she didn't throw me a kiss! Honest Injun, that's just what she did! You could have knocked me down with a lead pencil. "Next thing I knew there was a terrible racket over back of first base. Hazel and Maudie and Mrytle and Jennie and all the rest of the bloomer ladies were yelling at Martin Carey: "'Mister Umpire! Oh, Mister Umpire!' "'Well, what's wrong now?' says Martin. The crowd hushed up to listen to their kick. Hazel cut loose with a howl that you could have heard half a mile away. 11 'You make that pitcher stop flirting with Pansy!' she bawls. 'He's been making goo-goo eyes at her all through the game! You make him quit it! ' "Well, she got the crowd a-going, and I sup pose that's what she wanted. Laugh? They laughed their heads off. First thing I knew my ears were burning up, and I didn't hardly know what end I was on. I'll bet if I'd took off my shoes and dropped my glove I'd have gone straight up in the air like a balloon. "'Come on there!' yells Hazel. 'Quit stall ing and pitch! Call time on him, Mister Um pire!' "I must have been pretty badly rattled. Wasn't that bawl-out enough to rattle any body? I set myself to pitch, but I was so plum' full of other ideas and things that I mislaid the plate entirely, and before I knew it there was Hazel and Maudie and the rest of those squaws doing a ghost dance along the side lines, and the crowd roaring like a menagerie at dinner time. "What's the count, Martin?' I says. You can tell how upset I must have been to ask a question like that. "'Three balls and no strikes,' says Martin. "For the love of Heaven, Bud, take a brace! Don't let those old battle-axes scare you. Steady down and get 'em over!' "Well, I knew I had to do it. I aimed the next one straight down the groove, and there wasn't a thing on that ball but the cover — not a thing. With three and nothing, I figured that Pansy would wait me out for a base on balls, and I heaved that one up there as straight as I knew how, looking to cut the plate where it was biggest. "Pansy saw that it was a groover, and back went that big bat, and then bing! she landed on it as hard as she could swing! I got one flash at the ball as it went out over my head. It was another one of those low line drives. I whirled around, and there was Charlie Kennedy and Billy French and George Perkins, all hit ting the high spots in the direction of the river. Kamphefner had pulled 'em in close, and Pansy had crossed us by lamming it out over their heads. "The next thing I noticed was Pansy round ing second base, and run? She could have given a coyote a head start and run him breathless around them bags! She was straightened out for third before Charlie caught up with the ball at all. Dan McLaurin had the best wing in the infield, and he ran back to handle the relay. Charlie let fly just as Pansy rounded third base, and Dan made a chain-lightning peg to the plate, but little Pansy hit the dirt like an avalanche, and Jeff never did find her in the dust she kicked up. "' Safe!' yells Martin Carey, and there went our old ball game, two to one, And licked by the bloomer ladies! Jeff Bloodgood heaved the ball away, he was so mad. I don't blame him." Bud paused and rolled another cigarette, whistling between his teeth as he did so. I offered some consolatory remarks, but Bud held up a restraining hand. "Wait! "he said. "The worst is yet to come. I wouldn't have left home for a little thing like that." He lighted his cigarette, blew a few clouds from deep down in his lungs, and resumed his narrative: "After the game the wryneck took off his wig, and so did the catcher, and they went up to the hotel with our bunch. The girls beat it back to the private car. Dan got the money out of the safe, and turned it over to the wry neck. I got to say for him that he acted like a true sport, and did the right thing by tho gang. Then Dan said we'd all have one on the house and we did; and then some more of the boys had a stroke of enlargement of the heart, and then the wryneck started it all over again. It got to be quite a party after a while. The wryneck, he said we'd given him the toughest battle of the season so far, but then I guess he was just salving us a little. Goodness knows he could afford to. "Other folks dropped in, and finally there must have been fifty or sixty of us. Then some one — no, it wasn't me — suggested that it would be a right cute little idea to go down to the depot and give three cheers for the bloomer girls, just to show 'em that we were true sports, and knew how to lose like gentlemen. Every body thought well of the scheme, and then Luke Fosdick got up on a table, and said if we were going to do anything of that sort we might just as well do it right. « 'We'll get the band boys together, and go down there and give 'em a serenade!' says Luke. Luke played the E-flat cornet, and thought he was quite a bunch on that solo business. "Well, that wasn't any trouble, because most of the band boys were with the gang. They rustled out their instruments, and away we went across the bridge and over toward the depot, the band taking an awful fall out of that 'Hot Time in the Old Town' piece. We marched up alongside of that private car, and opened the celebration with three cheers. Then the band played some more — rotten, it was — and the wryneck went into the car and brought out some of the bloomer ladies and introduced 'em. They didn't look any better to me in their regular clothes. "I rubbered and I rubbered, but I didn't see anything of Pansy, so after a while I edged over to Hazel, who had borrowed the bass drum, and was leading the band, and I asked her about it. "'Where's the little shortstop?' I says. 'Why don't you trot her out? This is her party, and she oughtn't to run out on it this way.' "Hazel threw back her head, and began to laugh, and she laughed so long and so loud that all the gang gathered around to find out what was so funny. "'Oh, Joe!' says Hazel to the wryneck. 'Pansy has another mash! Oswald says he'd like to meet her.' "Of course, the boys had the laugh on me, but shucks! they was just as anxious as I was to see her. They began to yell: "'Pansy! Oh, Pansy! WTe want Pansy!' and things like that. "'All right, boys,' says the wryneck. 'I'll go in and coax her to come out. Pansy ain't very strong for the rough stuff, but I guess I can persuade her.' And he climbed into the car. "He was gone quite some time. We bunched up around the car steps and waited, and while we were waiting we made it up among ourselves to give her three regular ring-tail peelers and a tiger the minute she poked her nose outdoors. "Finally the door opened, and there was the wryneck. "'Gentlemen,' says he, 'the young lady was dressing, or she wouldn't have kept you wait ing. Allow me to present to you Miss Pansy DeMarr, the greatest lady shortstop in the world! ' "He made a flourish with his arm like a ring master in a circus, and there was Pansy, stand ing in the vestibule and looking down at us. She had on what looked like a long robe of some sort, all embroidery and lace, and she smiled when we gave her a real Wyoming send-off with a tiger that started the dogs to barking for miles and miles. "'Speech! Speech!' yells Charlie Patterson, and we all took it up like a lot of parrots. "Pansy looked over at the wryneck and he nodded at her. She put one hand up to her hair, and the other one went to her throat. I could see that she was fumbling with the catch to that robe, and just as I was beginning to wonder what was coming off next two things came off at once — Pansy's head of hair and her dressing gown! She kicked the robe backward, and hopped down on the car steps — as pretty looking a boy as ever you saw in your life! "Maybe you've heard the sound that goes through a crowd at a prize fight, when one lad slips over a fluke knockout, and takes every body by surprise, including himself? A sort of a cross between a grunt and a sigh. I'll bet there wasn't enough wind left in the whole lot of us to fetch out one decent, healthy cuss word! Flabbergasted? That ain't no name for it. And before we could get breath enough to say anything, Pansy made the speech we'd been asking for — made it in the kind of a voice that goes with pants. "'"Where's that rube pitcher?' says he. 'I want to give him a kiss!' There was a long silence, while Bud traced patterns in the gravel with his boot heels. "At that," he remarked defiantly, "I wasn't fooled any worse 'n the rest of 'em. That kid could have fooled anybody. Why, he used to be on the stage. One of those female impersonators. But you know how it is in a small town. Once they get anything on you, they never let go. They just keep riding you and riding you, and I got sick of it. Baldy Sisson had everybody in Carbon County calling me 'Pansy.' I couldn't stand that, so I ducked, but if you've got a heart at all you won't tip it off to Baldy what I'm doing now." Bud rose, stretched himself, and looked at his dollar watch. "I feel quite some better!" he said. "Come on, let's go down to that fish place, and see those Wyoming trout. Somebody must have fooled them, too, or they wouldn't be here!"