Chapter XXXIV: The Evil Transition

Sick at heart, all his recent fears revived, Lefty watched his friend step into the box and prepare to pitch. To the best of his knowledge and belief Savage had not touched liquor for ten days, and his breaking over now seemed to the southpaw like the beginning of the end. Whether it was the cause or effect of that hateful change of personality, Locke did not know; but he always associated drink with the evil side of the busher’s character, and he could not now shake off the feeling that the worst was happening.

Savage’s first delivery was a swift inshoot that cut a corner of the pan, and was pronounced a strike. He followed it with two coaxers which were disdained. Then came another shoot at which Billy Olds swung in vain, and Lefty was conscious of a growing sense of wonder mingled with that hope which is so hard to kill utterly.

Could it be possible that he had been mistaken? Savage’s manner was not what it had been earlier in the game, to be sure. He had lost, in a great measure, the snap and vim and swiftness of action shown up to now――had become almost irritatingly deliberate. Also, his expression had changed from keen, light-hearted gayety to heavy-lidded somberness. But Locke had never seen the man pitch in a real game before. For all he knew, this might be simply the prelude to a blow-up such as comes to many pitchers at about this stage of a contest. Perhaps he had felt it coming, and resorted to liquor in a desperate effort to brace himself and stave it off.

All of this was unlike the man Locke had come to think so much of, but the southpaw’s reluctance to believe the worst made him ready to seize upon any possible explanation. Even when Olds fell upon the next ball handed up and smashed it out for a safety, he did not lose hope. The same thing had happened more than once in each of the previous innings.

Moore, next batsman, hit a slow bounder to Lewis, who made the mistake of waiting for the ball, and was then forced to throw hastily. That throw was wide, and dragged Ogan off the cushion, permitting Moore to make the base by a single stride.

Savage took the ball from Ogan, and turned to glare angrily at the shortstop. His lips moved, and for a moment it seemed as if a burst of heated denunciation would break forth. In another second, however, his teeth came together with a snap, and he stepped back into the box, frowning heavily.

“Don’t blame him for being sore,” muttered Lefty to himself. “If he’s on the verge of a blow-up, that sort of thing certainly gets a fellow’s goat. Keeping his mouth shut shows he’s got some self-control left.”

The portsider was further heartened by the manner in which Savage took the next batter in hand. Allaire did his best to bunt, but the pitcher kept the balls high and close, and two fouls resulted, the second of which came down back of third, giving Palsifer an opportunity to make a circus catch.

Unfortunately these encouraging symptoms were of short duration. Locke could not fail to observe that Savage’s work became slower and more labored with each delivery. He started by handing “Brick” Forbes two balls in succession. A single strike followed, then another ball, and the pitcher was in a hole.

There was no similarity now to the debonair coolness with which the Westerner had met the same situation several times before. His face was set and tense, the mouth a single gray line. His lids drooped until they seemed almost closed. His wind-up was dragging, as if each movement was an effort.

Forbes swung savagely as the ball came across the pan, lifting a high fly to center.

“Duoro will grab that,” murmured Lefty, his eyes following the white spot sailing across the vivid blue. “He can’t miss it.”

The young fielder had ample time to get under the ball. It looked like a certainty, and the base runners ducked back to their bags. Unfortunately, by one of those inexplicable slips usually caused by overconfidence, the horsehide struck Duoro’s mitt and trickled over the edge to the ground.

Olds stretched himself for third, and a sarcastic chorus arose from the infield, in which Locke could plainly distinguish the voice of Savage, raised in a roar of fury. Olds made his base, getting there ahead of Duoro’s throw.

The damage was done.

Still growling inarticulately, his face an angry crimson, Savage sent over a ball which the captain of the Tigers lined out for a two-bagger, scoring Olds and Moore. Sam Vogt fell on the second ball pitched to him, smashing out a line drive between second and short. Laughing Larry pulled off a marvelous mid-air catch, following it with some ground flipflaps, from which he recovered in time to make a throw to the plate that nailed Forbes in an attempt to score after the pill was captured.

Lefty drew a long breath and glanced sidewise at Kennedy, who had scarcely stirred during the entire inning. The manager’s face was dark, but, beyond the fact that he was far from pleased at the progress of events, his expression told nothing.

The southpaw’s troubled gaze veered swiftly back to the figure of the busher moving slowly toward the bench. In spite of what he had been trying to make himself believe――that this was simply the natural manner of a man struggling against an inevitable breakdown――there was dread in his heart, which increased swiftly as he studied that forbidding face with its lowering brows, drooping lids, and twitching lips.

Savage came straight on, head bent, slapping his glove at intervals against his thigh. He passed Lefty without as much as a glance, heading for a point a little to one side of the bench. The portsider stepped forward. The continued suspense was growing intolerable. He must know, one way or another, how matters stood.

“Brace up, old man, and don’t take it so seriously,” he said, with forced lightness. “We all make a bull now and then.”

Like a flash the fellow whirled on him with a movement which suggested the sudden snapping of hardly won self-control.

“Bull!” he snarled, his eyes gleaming through narrow slits. “That’s what you call it, is it? Let me tell you this, Locke: I don’t want any of your sympathy. You can save that for those bonehead friends of yours who play ball like a bunch of bushers. What’s more, you can keep out of my way from now on. I told you once before that I didn’t like your brand, and I meant it. I pick my friends, and you’re not one of ’em, nor ever will be. Get me?”

His eyes were wide open now, and from their baleful, evil depths came a gleam of bitter hatred which sent a sickening sense of failure surging over the man on whom they rested for a second before Savage turned and walked away.

Lefty had found out what he wanted to know. His efforts to stave off this moment had been without avail. The evil transition had come again. The very worst had happened.