It was done in a minute. Bob Holliday and Tom Taylor “chose up sides,” the bases were all ready, and by the time Pewee and his aides-de-camp had walked disconsolately to the pond and back, the boys were engaged in a good game of bull-pen.
Perhaps I ought to say something about the principles of a game so little known over the country at large. I have never seen it played anywhere but in a narrow bit of country on the Ohio River, and yet there is no merrier game played with a ball.
The ball must not be too hard. There should be four or more corners. The space inside is called the pen, and the party winning the last game always has the corners. The ball is tossed from one corner to another, and when it has gone around once, any boy on a corner may, immediately after catching the ball thrown to him from any of the four corners, throw it at any one in the pen. He must throw while “the ball is hot,”—that is, instantly on catching it. If he fails to hit anybody on the other side, he goes out. If he hits, his side leave the corners and run as they please, for the boy who has been hit may throw from where the ball fell, or from any corner, at any one of the side holding the corners. If one of them is hit, he has the same privilege; but now the men in the pen are allowed to scatter, also. Whoever misses is “out,” and the play is resumed from the corners until all of one side is out. When but two are left on the corners the ball is smuggled,—that is, one hides the ball in his bosom, and the other pretends that he has it also. The boys in the ring do not know which has it, and the two “run the corners,” throwing from any corner. If but one is left on the corners, he is allowed, also, to run from corner to corner.
It happened that Jack’s side lost on the toss-up for corners, and he got into the ring, where his play showed better than it would have done on the corners. As Jack was the greenhorn and the last chosen on his side, the players on the corners expected to make light work of him; but he was an adroit dodger, and he put out three of the boys on the corners by his unexpected way of evading a ball. Everybody who has ever played this fine old game knows that expertness in dodging is worth quite as much as skill in throwing. Pewee was a famous hand with a ball, Riley could dodge well, Ben Berry had a happy knack of dropping flat upon the ground and letting a ball pass over him, Bob Holliday could run well in a counter charge; but nothing could be more effective than Jack Dudley’s quiet way of stepping forward or backward, bending his lithe body or spreading his legs to let the ball pass, according to the course which it took from the player’s hand.
King Pewee and company came back in time to see Jack dodge three balls thrown point-blank at him from a distance of fifteen feet. It was like witchcraft—he seemed to be charmed. Every dodge was greeted with a shout, and when once he luckily caught the ball thrown at him, and thus put out the thrower, there was no end of admiration of his playing. It was now evident to all that Jack could no longer be excluded from the game, and that, next to Pewee himself, he was already the best player on the ground.
At recess that afternoon Pewee set his hat down in the hat-ball row, and as Jack did not object, Riley and Ben Berry did the same. The next day Pewee chose Jack first in bull-pen, and the game was well played.