“That’s the way I like to hear a man talk,” said Lemblow. “I owe him a lot for the way he’s treated me, and so does every man here. We all hate him like poison. Then why don’t we do something? It ought to be easy enough for the four of us to figure out some way to put the kibosh on him.”
“It would be easy enough if he weren’t so much in the limelight,” said Hupft, uneasily. “If we put anything across on him, the whole country would be ringing with it. The League itself would spend any amount of money to run us down.”
“Bigger men than he is have got theirs,” rejoined McCarney. “It all depends on the way it’s done. Now, a scheme has popped into my head while we’ve been talking. I don’t know how good it is, but I think it may work. If it goes through, we’ll have our revenge. If it doesn’t we’ll be no worse off and we can try something else. Now listen to me.”
They put their heads together over the table, while McCarney in a low voice unfolded his scheme. That it was a black one was evident from the involuntary start the others gave when it was first broached. But as McCarney went on to explain the impunity with which he figured it could be carried out and the completeness of their revenge if it succeeded, they gave their adhesion to it. Iredell was the most reluctant of the four, but his drink-inflamed brain was not proof against the arguments of the others, and he finally acquiesced and put up his share of the estimated expense.
The next day witnessed another battle royal between the Giants and the Pirates. Jim pitched, and although his work was marked by some of the raggedness that Joe knew only too well the reason for, he held the Pittsburghs fairly well, and the Giants batted out a victory by a score of 7 to 3.
“Sure of an even break, anyway, on the series,” remarked Curry complacently, after the game.
“Yes,” replied Joe. “But that doesn’t get us anywhere. That only shows that we’re as good as the other fellows. We want to prove that we’re better. To play for a draw is a confession of weakness. I want the next two games just as hard as I wanted the first two. That’s the spirit that we’ve got to have, if we cop the flag.”
But though Markwith twirled a good game the next day and was well supported, the best he could do was to carry the game into extra innings, and the Pirates won in the eleventh.