“Oh, don’t go yet, fellows,” urged Teddy Rushton, Fred’s younger brother. “I haven’t had half enough baseball yet. I’m as full of pep as when I began.”
“Oh, come off,” retorted Bob Ellis. “Don’t you see where the sun is? It’s getting near supper time. It’s too late to start another game.”
“Who said anything about another game?” replied Teddy. “I’m going to do some fungo hitting. Get out there, you fellows, and I’ll knock you some flies. Go along, Jim, and I’ll take off another nail.”
“You’d better not,” grinned Jim, but scampered out just the same, followed by three or four others, whose appetite for the game, like Teddy’s own, had not been fully satisfied.
Teddy had a keen eye and a good arm, and there were few boys of his age who could hit the ball harder or send it further. Usually, too, he could gauge the distance and knock a fly so that it would fall almost in the fielder’s hands. But to-day the ball seemed to take a perverse delight in falling either too short or too far out, and the boys were kept on the run, with only an occasional catch to reward their efforts.
“Have a heart, Teddy!” shouted Jim, red and perspiring. “Put ’em where a fellow can get ’em.”
“Get a move on, why don’t you?” called Teddy in return. “I can’t help it if you run like ice wagons. I hit them all right.”
“Hit!” snorted Jim wrathfully. “You couldn’t hit the water, if you fell overboard.”
A little nettled by the taunt, Teddy looked about him. He caught sight of a stage, drawn by two horses, jogging along the road that ran beside the field. A glint of mischief came into his eyes and he gripped his bat tightly. Here was a chance to prove that Jim was wrong.
The stage coach was coming from the railroad station at Carlette, a mile away, where it had been to meet the five-thirty P. M. train. Business had not been very brisk, judging from the fact that the ramshackle old vehicle carried only one passenger, a rather elderly man dressed in black, who sat on one of the side seats with his back toward the boys. A bag of mail was on the front seat alongside the driver, a lank, slab-sided individual, in a linen duster that had evidently seen better days. He held the reins listlessly over the horses, who moved slowly along, as though they were half asleep. Coach and horses and driver were so dead and alive, so Rip Van Winkle-like, that the temptation was almost irresistible to stir them up, to wake them out of their dream. To Teddy, with his native love of mischief, it proved wholly irresistible.