Truesdell had won, and with the sort of finish that comes once in a lifetime. With a roar, the Truesdell rooters swept across the diamond, and hoisting Ned Blake and Dick Somers high above the surging crowd, bore them in triumph from the field.
Slugger Slade stared after the retreating crowd and a savage scowl darkened his face. Into his mind there flamed a great hatred of these jubilant lads who had beaten him so unaccountably. Deep within him arose the sullen wish that he might somehow even matters with them. It was a wish that would later bear much fruit.
CHAPTER VIII
A SUMMER PROPOSITION
The school year had ended in a fashion to delight the heart of every loyal son of Truesdell, and the day following graduation found a group of the boys lounging in Dave Wilbur’s yard, a convenient meeting-place by reason of its central location.
“Are you going to play ball this summer, Ned?” asked Jim Tapley. “I hear they’re looking for a pitcher on the North Shore Stars. You could make the team easy, and there’s seventy-five a month in it plus expenses.”
Ned Blake shook his head. “Nothing doing, Jim,” he said regretfully. “I’ll admit the money would mean a lot to me, for, as you all know, I’m trying to scrape together enough to enter college in the fall. But if I get there, I want to play ball and this professional stuff would bar me.”
“What I’d like to do is go to England on a cattle steamer,” declared Charlie Rogers. “All you have to do is rustle hay and water for the steers.”
“Yeah, that’s all, Red,” drawled Dave Wilbur, “and they only eat about four tons a day and drink—well, they’d drink a river dry, and you sleep down somewhere on top of the keel and eat whatever the cook happens to throw you—unless you’re too blamed sea-sick to eat anything.”
“Well, even that would be better than hanging round this dead dump all summer,” retorted Rogers, with some spirit.
“Dan Slade has got a job over across the lake in Canada,” announced Wat Sanford. “I saw him at the station yesterday when the train came through from Bedford. He was bragging that he was going to pull down a hundred a month, but he didn’t say what the job was.”