“Hardly that,” returned Carter. “Highbridge ate ’em up.”
“Go on!” mocked Dick.
“It’s a fact.”
“Oh, you’ll have to tell that to some one else.”
“I’m not joshing,” persisted Carter. “That’s the report. Umpty-ten was trimmed by Highbridge. Horrible doings. Two pitchers knocked out of the box.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Dick, the smile slowly disappearing from his face. “Why, no one regarded Highbridge as dangerous. Both Jones and Robinson told me I would not be needed with the team to-day. That’s how I happened to be here.”
“You never can tell,” chuckled Carl Henderson. “Sometimes these things happen when they’re least expected. It’s possible you might have saved the game if you’d been with the team, Merriwell.”
“And it’s possible I might have lost this game if he had been with his own team,” confessed Wilbur Keene. “Every time I found myself in a hard hole I got a nod of encouragement from Merriwell, and it seemed to stiffen my backbone.”
“Well, will you hear that blamed fool?” muttered Welch, in Dud Towne’s ear. “He makes me sick at the stomach.”
“If this keeps up,” said Towne, “Merriwell will have the credit for winning the game, not Keene.”