“I reckon it’s a Cheyenne attack. Whew! Look at that! It’s a ball game.”
“No,” said Chet. “It’s Lame John pitching to his grandfather. Oh, look at that! Old Scarface has put on a glove and John is trying out his fast one.”
“Whew!” blew Dig. “I must take a peep at that. Some little old southpaw, John is. He can show ’em!”
It was a spectacle worth watching. The inhabitants of Hardpan were out in force to see it.
There was a level diamond and surrounding “garden” cleared in the open lot. The spectators were gathered back of the foul lines, and among them were the boys who had recently been playing.
Now John Peep had stepped into the box to throw a few exhibition balls. The governors of the school nine had refused to accept the lame Indian boy as one of their pitching staff; to the Hardpanites he was, nevertheless, something of a hero. He was winding up for another drive just as Chet and Dig appeared, and the spectators held their breath.
Behind the plate stood a gnarled, lean old man in ragged, fringed leggings and a miner’s cast-off shirt, with moccasins on his feet. His hair was as white as could be; but he was as alert and his eyes as bright as though he were a young man. Old Scarface, once a brave of the Cheyenne tribe, was over eighty years of age. When the ball smashed into his glove he threw it back to his grandson as smartly as any boy. His muscles were still supple and his eye true.
Although Chet and Dig did not know it, ball playing was not a strange sport to the American Indian. Most of the tribes were playing ball before Columbus discovered the New World. Only, of course, the rules of the game were entirely different from those of our own baseball.
“Say! the old man is great,” declared Chet, reining in Hero.
“But look at that ball whiz!” murmured Dig, as John Peep sent in another one. “Why didn’t the other fellows want him to play on the team? He could have somebody run for him; and he can bat, even if he has a short leg.”