“All?” asked Dud sarcastically. “I’d say that was a whole lot for you to try, Jimmy.”
“Yes, sir, just let it get around that faculty got wind of the thing and, knowing your reputation as a scrapper, sent J. P. to forbid you to fight! Great stuff, that!” Jimmy laughed delightedly. “Why, it’s almost as good as the scrap!”
“Look here, Jimmy, I’m tired of the whole thing, I tell you. Let it drop, won’t you?”
“Sure! Only we’ve got to have the last word, Dud! Now don’t pester me any more. I’ve got to dig a bit.”
But if Jimmy really studied, appearances were deceptive, for when, during the next hour, Dud occasionally glanced across the table, it was always to behold Jimmy with his hands locked behind his head, his gaze on the ceiling and a thoughtfully rapturous smile on his face. After study hour was over he disappeared.
Dud asked no questions the next day. As he had truthfully told Jimmy, he was tired of the whole affair. He was still deeply resentful toward Star Meyer, but his anger had cooled and he had no intention of getting into trouble with the faculty for the scant satisfaction of being bruised up further by that youth. He was tired, too, of trying to become “a regular feller,” to use Jimmy’s descriptive phrase. What the latter liked to call “the campaign” had been, so far as beneficial results were concerned, a total failure. To be sure, Dud had enlarged his circle of acquaintances vastly; he was now on nodding or speaking acquaintance with fully three-fourths of the fellows; but what, as he asked himself disconsolately, was the good of knowing chaps if they didn’t like you afterwards? He could still count on the fingers of one hand the fellows who really showed any disposition to be friendly: Hugh Ordway, Ben Myatt, Guy Murtha, Roy Dresser and Ed Brooks. He tried in vain to find a sixth. There was Jimmy, of course, but Jimmy was understood. Of the friendly ones only Ordway and Dresser could be called disinterested, he decided. Murtha was friendly because he wanted Dud to make good as a pitcher, Myatt because he took a sort of proprietary interest in the younger twirler, and Brooks because it had fallen to his lot to catch Dud frequently, and there had sprung up between them a sort of comradeship that, so far, ended with each day’s work-out. As to Hugh Ordway, Dud suspected that that youth showed friendliness because he was naturally kind-hearted and had taken pity on him. So that left only Roy Dresser, and Dresser was much older than Dud and went with the football crowd and, in the natural course of events, their paths seldom crossed. It would have been perfectly feasible for Dud to call on Dresser, but that would have required an amount of assurance that the younger boy didn’t possess. No, judging by results, that “campaign” had not been a colossal success!
Just now, however, Dud didn’t care so much whether he was popular or not. He was very full of baseball and secretly consumed by the ambition to make good as a pitcher and win a place on the first team. For the present that provided sufficient interest. He didn’t really believe that he would succeed in his ambition; at least, not this year; but one may lack belief and still hope, and Dud was doing a whole lot of hoping. So far he had done as well as any of the “rookies” without, however, having distinguished himself in the least. He could flatter himself that neither Brunswick nor Kelly had been used more often than he, and he took encouragement from the fact. Sometimes he regretted that he had taken Ben Myatt’s advice and changed his style. If he hadn’t, he told himself, he might have showed a lot more by this time. Generally, though, he recognized the fact that Ben’s advice had really been very sensible and that eventually, if not this season, then next, he would find himself better off for having followed it. So far, though, the improvement that Ben had promised had developed very slowly, and he had days of discouragement. It seemed that what accuracy he had possessed before had quite left him. He could show speed and he could fool four batsmen out of five with his change of pace, but when the score got to be two-and-two and it was necessary to put them over he was as likely as not to be as wild as a hawk. Obeying Ben, he still avoided “hooks,” making up his mind to leave such things quite alone until he was able to put the straight ones where he wanted them. Plenty of pitchers will tell you that it is harder to pitch a straight ball than a curve, and it’s very nearly true. It is, in fact, entirely true in the case of a young pitcher who has started out pitching curves to the practical exclusion of straight balls. And Dud, having taught himself very largely, had begun his pitching career on the erroneous assumption that a wide knowledge of “hooks” and “curves” and “jumps” and other freakish things is a pitcher’s best asset. It is not, though, for the simple reason that no pitcher ever combined a large variety of deliveries with that most valuable of all assets, control. “Putting it where you want it” is what counts, and the pitcher who can put a straight ball just where it will do the most good can dispose of the batsman in far better style than one whose wide curves and drops and jumps refuse to break over the plate. All this Dud learned for himself eventually, but just now he was accepting it on faith, and his faith often failed him.
The day after Mr. Russell’s visit to Number 19 Dud very carefully avoided a meeting with Star Meyer. When he left his room he listened to make sure that his neighbor was not also about to emerge, and in School Hall he searched the corridors between recitations in order that he would not find himself embarrassingly confronted by Star. When you have earnestly vowed to make another fellow fight it is a bit disconcerting to have to pass him by meekly! Dud’s endeavors met with complete success until he entered the Field House in the afternoon to get into his playing togs. Then, as he feared, fortune deserted him. The first occupant of the room his eyes lighted on was Star, while, oddly enough, Star glanced across at the doorway at that instant and saw Dud. But that was all there was to it, for Star removed his gaze without a flicker of recognition, and Dud went to his own locker, fortunately the width of the room away from Star’s, and attended strictly to the matter of making a hurried change of attire. Some of the fellows who had learned of the encounter between the two the afternoon before watched them expectantly until Star, ready for work, left the building with Weston and Milford. Dud avoided the glances of the others as he pulled his togs on. They knew, he was certain, that he had sworn revenge against Star and were naturally viewing him disparagingly as a “quitter.” Had he overheard a whispered conversation in one corner of the locker-room, however, he wouldn’t have been troubled so much.
“Did you see Star sneak out?” chuckled Jones, a rather stout youth with ambitions looking toward a position in the first team outfield. “I’ll bet he’s mighty glad faculty read the riot act to Baker!”
“What was that?” asked Churchill, a third-choice shortstop.