The southpaw had turned his back on him. “I understand you have a clever pitcher in the man known as Mysterious Jones, Wiley,” he said.
“A pippin!” was the enthusiastic answer. “I’ll give you a chance to see him sagaciate to-day.”
“He is a deaf-mute?”
“He couldn’t hear a cannon if you fired it right under the lobe of his ear, and he does his talking with his prehensile digits. Leon Ames in his best days never had anything on Jones.”
“Strange I never even heard of him. Our scouts have scoured the bushes from one end of the country to the other.”
“I never collided with any baseball scouts in Alaska,” said Wiley.
“Oh! You found Jones in Alaska?”
“Pitching for a team in Nome.”
“But baseball up there! I didn’t know–”
“Oh, no; nobody ever thinks of baseball up there, but in the all too short summer season there’s something doing in that line. Why, even modern dances have begun to run wild in Alaska, so you see they’re right up to the present jiffy.”