The Purple Pennant

by Ralph Henry Barbour

“He’s safe!” declared the official.

The breathless Pete was extricated and pulled triumphantly to the bench while Norrisville, represented by catcher and pitcher and shortstop, who was also captain, gathered around the home plate to record their displeasure at the decision. But Mr. Cochran, physical director at the Y. M. C. A., discouraged argument and waved them aside politely but firmly and, while the cheering died away, Gordon Merrick went to bat. Clayton was shaken by that home-run and seemed absolutely unable to tell where the plate was, although the catcher despairingly invited him to come up and have a look at it! Gordon smiled serenely and presently walked to first. Captain Jones sent him to second with a nice hit past shortstop and Clearfield got ready to acclaim more tallies. But Scott’s best was a slow grounder to shortstop and he made the third out.

Five runs, however, was enough to win the game, or so, at least, the delighted Clearfield supporters declared. And so, too, thought the players themselves. As for their coach, Dick hoped the game was safe, but he meant to take no chances and so when in the next inning, after his own players had failed to add to the total, Norrisville began to show a liking for Tom Nostrand’s delivery by getting two safeties and putting a man on third before the side was retired, Dick sent Tom Haley to warm up.

There was no more scoring by either team until the first of the sixth. Then Haley had a bad inning. The first Norrisville batter laid down a bunt toward the pitcher’s box and Tom, fielding it hurriedly, pegged it far over Merrick’s head. The runner slid to second in safety. That mishap unsettled Haley and he filled the bases by passing the next two men. That Clearfield finally got out of the hole with only two runs against her might well be considered a piece of good fortune. In the last of the sixth Clearfield added one more tally and the score stood 6 to 2. Neither side scored in the seventh.

For my part, I’d like to lower the curtain. Clearfield should have had that game. But it wasn’t to be. Perhaps the home players were too certain. At all events, errors began to crop out at the most unfortunate times, and these, coupled with Tom Haley’s erratic pitching, were the Purple’s undoing. It was Captain Jones himself who booted an easy hit that might have been a double and instead of retiring the side in the first of the eighth, let two more runs cross the plate. Then Haley hit a batsman, donated a third base on balls and finally allowed a hard-slugging Norrisville man to slap out a two-bagger. When the worst was over the score was tied, and so it remained throughout the ninth inning and the tenth and the eleventh and the twelfth. And when that was over darkness had descended and eighteen very tired players heard with relief the umpire call the game. And several hundred spectators, rather stiff and chilly and hungry, went disappointedly home to supper.

“I knew mighty well,” declared Fudge as he and Perry made their way through the twilight, “that we could never win with that line-up! You heard me tell Harry so, too, didn’t you?”

And Perry, being a good chum, assented.

The next day it rained. Not enough, as Fudge bitterly reflected, to keep a fellow from going to church, but sufficiently to make sojourning out of doors in the afternoon a very wet and unpleasant business. It drizzled, but the drizzle was much more of a rain than a mist, and when, about three o’clock, Fudge went across town to Perry’s house he arrived in a fairly damp condition. Being damp affected Fudge’s naturally sunny disposition. It didn’t make him cross, but it gave him an injured and slightly pathetic expression and tinged his utterances with gloom and pessimism. He wasn’t a very cheerful companion to-day, and Perry, who had been having a rather comfortable and cozy time curled up on the black horse-hair lounge in the Doctor’s reception-room—also used as a parlor on extraordinary occasions—with a volume of Du Chaillu’s travels which he had happened on in the book-case, almost wished that his friend had stayed at home. They went up to Perry’s room and sat by the open window and watched the drizzle and talked desultorily of track and field work and yesterday’s game and of many other things. The affair of the “train-robber” was, it seemed by mutual agreement, avoided; it was not a day to inspire one to detecting. The “train-robber’s” window was open across the back yard, but no one appeared at it. Fudge had drawn the conversation back to shot-putting and was indulging in a few well-chosen disparaging remarks with regard to the overbearing manner of Harry Partridge when sounds came to them. Of course sounds had been coming to them for half an hour; the patter of rain, the quiet footfalls of Mrs. Hull below-stairs, the whistle of the three-twenty-two train crossing the bridge and such ordinary noises; but this was new and different. Perry drew Fudge’s attention to it and then listened puzzledly. At first it seemed to come from around the corner of the house, but presently they located it in the room occupied by the “train-robber.” They crowded their heads through the window and strained their ears.

“What’s he doing?” demanded Fudge in a hoarse whisper after a minute or two.