“Batter up!” the umpire bawled for the tenth time.
Thereupon Prince Total went to bat, stuffing things in his pockets until they bulged like the pockets of a boy who had been on a visit to an apple orchard. He had rabbits’ feet and buzzards’ feathers, iron rings and iron bolts, buckeyes and raw potatoes, rattlesnake rattles and birds’ claws, teeth of horses and tusks of hogs, locks of hair and four-leaf clovers, rings and chains and rubber bands, beer-checks and copper pennies—a veritable witch’s brew of trifles.
Standing at the plate with all this equipment of luck, he bunted the ball to the feet of the shortstop, started to first base carrying his bat, tangled the bat up between his legs, fell on his head, and scattered his luck-charms all over that part of the diamond.
A loud groan went up from the throats of the spectators, and Prince got up, picked up his scattered trinkets, placing them in his hat, and laid them at the feet of Skeeter Butts with a sheepish grin.
“I had too many of dem things, fellers,” he explained. “Too much luck is more’n a plenty. I couldn’t tote it all!”
Then Figger Bush fanned wildly at two balls, shut his eyes and took a lick at the third, hit himself on his own shin with the bat, and came limping back, nursing his crippled leg, and muttering profane things.
In the meanwhile Skeeter had loaded down Mustard Prophet with all the hoodoo charms which Figger had carried and a large assortment which Hitch had accumulated by solicitation among the fans. They were in his shoes, in his belt, in his cap, in his shirt; he rubbed snake-dust on his hands, sprinkled magic powder on his woolly head, and went to bat as uneasy as a condemned criminal facing the electric chair.
“Lam de ball, Mustard!” Skeeter howled. “Put some ginger on de bat, Mustard! You’s puffeckly safe—you done crossed de hoodoo sign on ’em! I’s prayin’ fer you, Mustard!”
Skeeter’s prayers were not answered.
Mustard saw the first ball coming and jumped ten feet away. He struck at the second ball after it was in the catcher’s mitt, and he struck twice at the third ball—once while the pitcher was winding up and again when the ball was forty feet from the plate. Then he walked back to Skeeter, delivered of all his lucky pieces, and joined the Tickfall team on its way to the field.