“See him shake his mane, fellows!” he yelled in a shrill falsetto. “Don’t let him scare you, Blakie; he’s tame!”
“He’ll be the goat, all right, before we get done with him,” chimed in another.
Ranny hesitated an instant in his swing, bit his lips, and then put the ball over. It was wide, and, as he caught the return, there was an angry flush on his handsome face.
“Don’t he blush sweetly?” shrilled Conners, dancing about off first. “He’d make a peach of a girl!”
Ranny wound up hastily and pitched again. It was a straight, speedy ball, but in his annoyance he must have forgotten that this was just the sort Blake liked. The latter met it squarely with a clean crack that brought Dale’s heart into his mouth and jerked him to his feet to watch with tight lips and despairing eyes the soaring flight of the white sphere over the diamond and on–on–seemingly to the very limits of the outfield!
CHAPTER XVII
DALE’S CHANCE
To Tompkins, watching with bated breath and clenched fists, it seemed as if the ball would never drop. Two of the fielders were running swiftly backward, but there wasn’t a chance in a hundred of their catching it. Bat flung aside and toe-clips digging into the ground, Blake was speeding toward first. Before the ball hit the turf he had rounded the sack. By the time Pete Oliver had recovered it and lined it in, the runner was panting on second.
“Got him going! Got him going!” shrieked Conners, delightedly. “Get after it, Peanut. Smash it on the nose and bring in Blakie!”
His team-mates added their jubilations to his, and a bedlam of shrill advice, mingled with fresh joshing, ensued. Ranny’s eyes flashed with ill-concealed anger, and he gripped his under lip tight between his teeth. His first ball was good, but the batter fell on the second with all his might. Crack! A gasp went up from the watchers on the bench. Smack! The gasp merged into a yell of delight as the ball landed squarely in Frank Sanson’s mitt and stuck there. The force of the impact nearly upset the short-stop, but he recovered swiftly and lined the horsehide straight into the outstretched hands of Court Parker, astride of third. There was a flashing downward motion of those hands, and the sliding runner was tagged, his fingers not six inches from the sack.
To the shout of delight that went up, Dale Tompkins contributed rather more than his share. Leaping and capering in front of the bench, it seemed as if he couldn’t express his overwhelming relief at the unexpected ending of the inning and their escape from a dangerous situation. He thumped Sanson on the back and poked Court in the ribs joyously. But when the first excited enthusiasm had passed he began to think of the inning yet to be played and to wonder how Ranny would get through it. Surely there was time to pull himself together, the boy thought. He hadn’t really lost control of himself except for a moment.