Rufus M. (8 page)

But where was the visiting team? Or Nancy's, for that matter?

Rufus began to feel impatient. Here were the captains. All right. Let the teams come then. "Why not have the punch instead?" he asked. But nobody paid any attention to him. It seemed to Rufus as though the game were off, and he decided, Fatal Four or no, to go and find something else to do. Over in a corner of the field some men had started to dig a cellar to a new house. This activity looked interesting to Rufus and he was about to investigate it when along came two girls, arms linked together. So Rufus stayed. There was always the possibility that the Fatal Four might switch from baseball to punch and cookies. Either was worth staying for in Rufus's opinion.

"These girls must be Busy Bees," said Nancy.

They
were
Busy Bees. They both admitted it. However, they said they wished they could join the F. F. instead. They liked the name of it. They had heard many rumors as to what it stood for. Most people thought it stood for Funny Fellows. Did it?

"Of course not!" said Nancy, and Jane clapped her hand over Rufus's mouth before he could say the Fatal Four and give away the secret. No matter what it stood for, the girls wanted to join it and be able to write the F. F. on all their red notebooks.

While the discussion was going on, three more girls arrived, three more Busy Bees. It seemed they, too, wanted to join the F. F., so they could write the F. F. on their notebooks also. Nancy and Jane looked at the captain. She must feel very badly at this desertion. But she didn't. She said she wished she could join the F. F., too.

"Oh, no," said Nancy. "You all better stay Busy Bees. What team would there be for us to beat if we let you join ours?"

So that settled the matter and Busy Bees remained Busy Bees. Now they lined up at the home plate, for they were to be the first at the bat. At last the game began.
Thank goodness, Rufus is here behind me,
thought Jane, pounding her fist into the big catcher's mitt. For it really took two Moffats to make one good catcher. If one of them was she, that is.

Nancy's team did not get off to a good start. Nancy had been practicing her curves more than ever, and they swung more and more sharply to the left. If they had not had such a good left-handed backstop as Rufus, goodness knows where the balls would have landed. In order that they would not crash through a window of the library, the girls rearranged the bases many times.

Of course, there was no danger of the balls crashing through the library windows from hits. The danger lay in Nancy's curves. So far she had not been able to strike the Busy Bees out. They were all walking to base on balls. And the balls were flying wild now. Rufus had dashed across the lot to take a look at the men who were digging the cellar to the new house and he was sorely missed. Jane, who had had enough trouble catching in the old days, before Nancy cultivated her curves, was becoming desperate.

Right now happened to be a very tense moment. The captain of the Busy Bees was at the bat. There were men on all bases. They'd gotten there on walks. The captain had two strikes against her, however. She had been striking at anything, for she evidently had grown tired of just walking to base. If Nancy could strike her out, it would break the charm and maybe the Fatal Four team would have a chance at the bat. So far the Busy Bees had been at the bat the entire game. The score must be big. They had lost track of it.

Besides wanting to strike Captain Allen out, Nancy was trying especially hard to impress her. She came over to Jane and said in a low voice, "They'll think they have a better team than we have, and I bet that pitcher can't even throw curves! I've just got to strike her out!"

"Yes," agreed Jane, who was anxious to bat herself for a change.

"Watch for a certain signal," Nancy said. "When I hold my two middle fingers up, it means I'm going to throw a curve, a real one. It'll curve out there by the library, and then it will veer back, right plunk over the home plate. She won't strike at it because she'll think it's going over the library. But it won't, and she'll miss it and that's the way I'll put her out."

Jane nodded her head. Another curve! Of course curves made it real baseball and not amateur. She knew that much. All the same she wished she had said, "Why don't you pitch 'em straight for a change?" But she didn't have the courage. Nancy was the captain and the pitcher. She certainly should know how to pitch if she was the pitcher. Nancy wasn't telling Jane how to catch. She expected Jane to know how to catch since she was the catcher. She didn't tell her anything. So neither did Jane tell Nancy anything, and she waited for the signal and wished that Rufus would return and backstop for this very important pitch.

Now Nancy was winding her arm around and around. Then she stopped. She held up her middle two fingers. The signal! Jane edged over to the left but Nancy frowned her back. Oh, of course. This curve was really going to fly over home plate. Nancy crooked her wrist and threw! The girl at the bat just dropped to the ground when she saw the ball coming and she let it go. And the ball really did come right over home plate only it was way up in the air, way, way up in the air and spinning swiftly toward the library window, for it did its veering later than calculated. Jane leaped in the air in an effort to catch it but she missed.

"Rufus! Rufus!" she yelled, and she closed her eyes and stuck her fingers in her ears, waiting for the crash.

Just in the nick of time Rufus jumped for the ball. He caught it in his left hand before it could crash through the window. He sprinted over with the ball.

"We'd better move the bases again," said Nancy. And they all moved farther away from the library.

"Stay here," said Jane to Rufus, pleadingly. So Rufus stayed and he said since he had caught the ball the girl was out, and why not have punch now? Jane gave him a nudge. This was real baseball and he mustn't think about anything else. The girl said it didn't count that Rufus caught the ball, for he was the backstop and not on the team. Even so, she graciously permitted Nancy's team a turn at the bat now, because the Busy Bees had had a long enough inning. They had run up such a big score she was sure the F. F. could never come up to it.

That's the way with baseball,
thought Jane.
Whoever is first at the bat usually wins.

Nancy was the first one up of the Fatal Four. The captain of the Busy Bee baseball team did not throw curves. Nancy struck at the first ball. It was a hit. She easily made first base. Now Jane was at the bat. Rufus, who decided to play backstop for the foreign team as well as Jane's, was pounding his fist into his mitt to get some real atmosphere into this game.

While the pitcher was winding her arm around and around, Jane was busy, too. She was swinging the bat, limbering up. At last, she thought. At last she was at the bat. That's all she liked to do in baseball. Bat! And so far she hadn't had a chance. And she swung herself completely around in her enthusiasm. Unfortunately the bat flew out of her hand and it hit Rufus on the forehead.

Rufus was staggered and saw stars. However, he tossed it off saying, "Aw, it didn't hurt," even though a lump began to show. Jane rubbed his forehead, and thereafter she swung with more restraint. Even so, the catcher and Rufus automatically stepped back a few paces whenever Jane was at the bat, taking no chances with another wallop.

But now the pitcher pitched. Jane, still subdued and repressed, merely held the bat before her. Bang! The ball just came up and hit it and rolled halfway toward the pitcher. Both the pitcher and the catcher thought the other was going to run for the ball. Therefore, neither one ran, and Jane made first base easily, putting Nancy on second. Now the bases were full because that's all the bases they had. And it was Clara Pringle at the bat.

The situation was too grave for Clara. She did not want to bat. How could she ever face Nancy if she struck out? Nancy and Jane might never speak to her again if she struck out. Besides, she had hurt her wrist pulling up a stubborn pie-weed when she was in outfield. She looked at Jane, who was dancing toward second, and Nancy, who was dancing toward home, impatiently waiting for the hit that would send them in. Clara gulped at her position of unexpected responsibility. When she joined the Fatal Four she had never envisioned being in a spot like this. She raised her hand to make a request.

"Can Rufus pinch-hit for me because I hurt my wrist?" she asked timidly.

Rufus did not wait for anybody to say yes or no. He threw his mitt at Clara and seized the bat, pounding the ground, the home plate, and an old bottle. That's the way he warmed up, and if Jane had been vociferous at the bat, Rufus was nothing short of a tornado.

"Stand still!" yelled the pitcher. "You make me dizzy."

Rufus swung at imaginary balls.

"Hey!" exclaimed the pitcher. "He's left-handed."

"Sure," said Jane. "Why not?"

"You call 'em southpaws," said Nancy. "I pitch good to him myself."

"Well, here goes," said the pitcher. "It just looks funny if you're not used to 'em." And she swung her arm around and around again.

While she was warming up and while Rufus was stomping around, swinging the bat, waiting for the ball, Spec Cullom, the iceman, came along Elm Street. Evidently he saw in an instant that this was a real game and not just practice, for he stopped his team, threw down the iron weight to anchor his horse, Charlie, and strode into the lot and straddled the nearest log in the bleachers to watch. Rufus saw him and became even more animated with the bat.

At the same moment the twelve o'clock whistle blew. Now all the children were supposed to go home to lunch. The Busy Bees were in favor of stopping, but the Fatal Four protested. Here they were with all bases full and they should certainly play the inning out at least.

So the pitcher pitched and Rufus struck. Crack! He hit the ball! Up and up it sailed, trailing the black tape it was wound with behind it like the tail of a kite!

As it disappeared from sight in the pine grove, Nancy ran to home plate and Jane ran to second base, and then home, and Rufus tore to first, and then to second and then home. And so it was a home run that had been hit.

"A home run!" everybody yelled in excitement. It was surprising that that hit had not broken a window, and the outfielder of the visiting team ran in search of the ball. But she couldn't find it and Clara joined her, for she was an experienced outfielder, but she couldn't find it, either. Then the whole Busy Bee baseball team ran and looked for the ball, but they couldn't find it. So they all went home. The captain, impressed by the home run, yelled to Nancy that the score must have been a tie and they'd come back in a week or so to see who was the champ.

Jane and Nancy ran over to the pine grove to look for the ball. They hunted in the corner of the lot where skunk cabbage grew thick and melon vines covered a dump, covered even the sign that said DO NOT DUMP. They searched through the long field grass on this side of the library, trying not to get the thick bubbly looking dew on their bare legs. Was this really snake spit as Joey and Rufus claimed? Jane wondered. If it was, where were all the snakes? She'd never seen a single snake. But where was the ball? That was some home run!