“Oh, I say, Locke, let me introduce you. This is Cap’n Wiley, owner and manager of the Wind Jammers.”
CHAPTER V
A MAN OF MYSTERY
The swarthy little fabulist rose hastily to his feet, making a quick survey of the southpaw. “Am I indeed and at last in the presence of the great Lefty Locke?” he cried, his face beaming like the morning sun in a cloudless sky. “Is it possible that after many weary moons I have dropped anchor in the same harbor with the most salubriously efficacious port-side flinger of modern times? Pardon my deep emotion! Slip me your mudhook, Lefty; let me give you the fraternal grip.”
He grabbed Locke’s hand and wrung it vigorously, while the other members of the Wind Jammers pressed nearer, looking the Big League pitcher over with interest.
“In many a frozen igloo,” declared Wiley, “I have dreamed of this day when I should press your lily-white fingers. Oft and anon during my weary sojourn in that far land of snow and ice have I pictured to myself the hour when we should stand face to face and exchange genuflections and greetings. And whenever a smooched and tattered months-old newspaper would drift in from civilization, with what eager and expectant thrills did I tremulously turn to the baseball page that I might perchance read thereon how you had stung the Hornets, bitten the Wolves, clipped the claws of the Panthers, or plucked the feathers from the White Wings!”
“And I have been wondering,” confessed Lefty, “if you could be the original Cap’n Wiley of whom I heard so many strange tales in my boyhood. It was reported that you were dead.”
“Many a time and oft hath that canard been circulated. According to rumor, I have demised a dozen times or more by land and sea; but each time, like the fabled Phœnix, I have risen from my ashes. During the last few fleeting years I have been in pursuit of fickle fortune in far-off Alaska, where it was sometimes so extremely cold that fire froze and we cracked up the congealed flames into little chunks which we sold to the Chilkoots and Siwashes as precious bright red stones. Strange to say, whenever I have related this little nanny goat it has been received with skepticism and incredulity. The world is congested with doubters.”
“When you wrote me,” admitted Locke, “proposing to bring your Wind Jammers here to play the Fernandon Grays, I thought the letter was a hoax. At first I was tempted not to answer it, and when I did reply it was out of curiosity more than anything else; I wanted to see what the next twist of the joke would be.”
“Let me assure you that you will find playing against the Wind Jammers no joke. I have conglomerated together the fastest segregation of baseball stars ever seen outside a major league circuit, and I say it with becoming and blushing modesty. Look them over,” he invited, with a proud wave of his hand toward the remarkable group of listeners. “It has always been my contention that there are just as good players to be found outside the Big League as ever wore the uniform of a major. I have held that hard luck, frowning fate, or contumelious circumstances have conspired to hold these natural-born stars down and prevent their names from being chiseled on the tablet of fame. Having gathered unto myself a few slippery shekels from my mining ventures in the land where baseball games begin at the hour of midnight, I have now set out to prove my theory, and before I am through I expect to have all balldom sitting up agog and gasping with wonderment.”