“The colonel wanted me to come over to Ophir to-night,” went on Darrel, “in order to get that letter into your hands. You know the sort of a fellow Uncle Alvah is. He’ll crowd a chap mighty hard if he’s given half a chance. He’s more bitter against Jode than he ever was against me—and I reckon you know what that means. I’ve argued with him to give Jode another chance, but he’s as hard and set in his way as the rock of Gibraltar. You can’t budge him. There’s only one thing that might pull him over a little in Jode’s direction, Chip.”
“What’s that?”
“You know how wrapped up the colonel is in every sort of sport? Well, his biggest favorite of all the sports is the national game. He’s the most inveterate fan that ever came down the pike. What’s more, he’s too good a sportsman to be much of a partisan. Naturally, he likes to see the Gold Hill fellows win; but to-morrow, if an Ophir chap makes a star play, you’ll find the colonel cheering himself blue in the face. Simmer the thing right down, and it’s the game itself he loves—the man in the box with the clever ‘wing,’ the chap who makes a running catch with all the odds against him, the fellow who steals and slides to the bag, keeping the base on a close decision. You understand what I mean, Chip, a heap better than I can tell it. That’s what gets under the colonel’s skin. A little, snappy baseball, and he’s sure to bring his best side uppermost.”
“I don’t get you exactly,” said Merriwell. “What has the colonel’s love for baseball to do with Jode?”
“If Jode’s in the game, and makes good with a few star plays, it will start the good suggestions to working in his favor. See what I mean?”
By a queer twist of the imagination, Merriwell began thinking of the thermometer which Clancy had manipulated on the veranda of the Ophir House, two or three days before. The colonel’s very words, in commenting on the thermometer incident, recurred to Frank: “Start a train of suggestions properly, and, if they lead in the right direction, you can mold nearly any one to your will.” Was that foolish little joke of Clancy’s to bear fruit in the affairs of Jode Lenning?
“I see what you mean, all right, Curly,” said Frank, “but Lenning has told me that he doesn’t care to curry any favor with the colonel. He has decided to make his fight single-handed, without putting himself under obligations to any one. Good idea, too, strikes me.”
“What he’d do in that ball game, Chip,” declared Darrel, “is part of his fight. He’d not only impress the colonel, but a rush of true sportsmanship over the diamond would blot out all the hard feelings Jode’s old friends are holding against him. Just one snappy double play, in the last of the ninth, with the score tied and the bases full, might make or mar Lenning’s whole future. Maybe it seems foolish to talk like that, but human nature is a queer problem, Chip. I’ve studied it a little, and there are times when it only takes a mere trifle to start a flood of sentiment moving in a right or wrong direction.”
“I think you’re right about the things that are liable to happen during a ball game, Curly,” Merriwell answered, “but would luck favor Lenning? Is he a good enough player so that he could confront an issue like that and make good?”
“Jode? Why, he’s one of the best ball players in this part of Arizona. An all-around player, Jode is. I’ve known him to pitch a no-hit game, to put up one of the smoothest performances as backstop that I’ve ever seen, to play first, and short, and all around the diamond in a way that made everybody sit up and stare. He knew that baseball was the colonel’s favorite game, and he studied and worked to perfect himself in it.”