It was the custom in Catalpa for the storekeepers to hang out at their doors a little blue flag when they wanted the services of an errand boy. Seeing this signal at the door of Jason Elderkin’s dry-goods store, Rough and Ready, wearing in the heats of summer as in winter his coonskin cap, shambled in and asked what was wanted. Jason lifted his spectacles from his nose and said, jocularly: “Why, Rough and Ready, I thought you had gone up to Galena to see the match between the boys and the Galena Club.”

“No sir-ee,” replied the old man, “I have stayed at home to keep the town in order. Me and Jedge Howell, we have to look after the boys at home, you know, or some of these frisky young colts like Jase Ayres would get away with the town whilst we were gone.” And the old man chuckled as he added, “Cap. Heaton, he and his boy Al have gone together, and they do say that Mrs. Heaton is just wild because she can’t keep the old man at home when baseball is going on. Well, it does beat all natur’, don’t it? Here’s Al kept out of the Nine because it isn’t high-toned enough for Mrs. Heaton; and here’s father and son gone a-galivanting up to Galena to see the show.”

“I hear that Al has sent a despatch to the Judge’s daughter saying that the Catalpas are going to carry off the honors this time, and no mistake,” said the storekeeper. “How’s that, Rough?”

“Seein’ as how this bundle is going over to Boardman’s, I’ll jest drop in at the Jedge’s house on my way back, and see if Miss Ally has got any news from the seat of war, as it were, and if she has, she’ll be sure to tell me. Oh, she’s clear grit, too, is that gal, and she knows that I set a heap by Larry. Larry! why, it was him what give my boy all the points he has got in the game, and you may lay your bottom dollar that that boy is goin’ to be the all-firedest batter in the Stone River country; and you put that down to remember.”

The garrulous old man shouldered his bundle as he spoke and plodded down Bridge Street and so across to the north side of the town. It was the day for the first game of the championship at Galena. The hot sun poured down into the Stone River Valley with great power, and the bleached surface of the old wooden bridge shimmered with undulating lines of heat as Rough and Ready toiled on his way. The roar of the dam had a cooling sound, and the group of cottonwoods and willows on the little island above were green and refreshing to the eye. But no breeze drew up the river, and all of the north side was steeped in liquid sunshine, the trees standing motionless and the yellow road glaring in the blinding light. The toll-keeper’s dog panted in the shade of the tollhouse, lolling his tongue as old Rough and Ready passed by, without stopping for a word of gossip with the keeper who dozed within the doorway.

The old man paused, when halfway across the bridge, to lift his furry cap from his head and wipe the servile drops from off his burning brow. While he rested his bundle on the guard rail of the bridge, Miss Anstress Howell, the Judge’s aged sister, came mincing along from the North Catalpa side, cool and fresh as if she had never before been outside of a bandbox.

“I wonder ef it will be safe to tackle her for news from Galena?” muttered the old man to himself. “She’s a dangerous team to fool with. Mebbe she’ll get away with me, but I’ll try it.”

“Good arternoon, Miss Howell. Fine hot day. Good growin’ weather, as the farmers say. Hev you heerd that any of your folks got a despatch from Galena givin’ any account of how the ball opens?”

Miss Howell’s manner stiffened a little as she said, with a slight toss of her head, “Judge Howell, my brother, is holding court in Pawpaw, today, for Judge Sniffles, and nobody else but the Judge would be likely to have any despatches concerning baseball.”

“Well, Miss Howell, I heerd over in town that Miss Ally had a message of some kind, no offence to you, marm, and I want to hear from the boys powerful bad, you see, and so I make bold to ask if Miss Alice mayn’t hev a despatch, or something from Larry, I mean Al.”

“There is altogether too much nonsense about this baseball business in Catalpa, Mr. Rough⁠—excuse me, I forget your other name. It does seem to me as if the people had gone crazy, and the weather so hot too! Excuse me, I don’t know anything about what is going on in Galena, no more than a child, I may say, and if any grown people want to begin over again and make children of themselves with playing ball, they have my sympathy.”

So saying, and flirting off an imaginary fleck of dust from her gown with a spotless handkerchief, Miss Howell resumed her deliberate walk across the bridge. Rough and Ready replaced his cap, and looking after her said, “Sarves me right! I might hev knowed that I should get the worst on it in a talk with her. My grief! But she is a teaser. Has forgot all about the time when she was a young gal, it’s so long ago. P’raps she never was young.” With this, the old man shouldered his bundle and slowly made his way northward.

But Alice had received a telegram from Galena, and as Rough and Ready climbed the slope by the Judge’s house, a sunny head was popped from one of its upper windows and Alice’s cheerful voice cried, “Oh, Roughy⁠—excuse me for calling you Roughy, but I’m so glad!⁠—Albert Heaton has telegraphed to me that the Catalpas have made ten runs in the first three innings and the Galenas only one! Isn’t that perfectly splendid? Does anybody over in town know anything about it?”

“Bless your bright eyes! Miss Ally, no; the whole town’s asleep. It’s a hot day, you know, and there’s nobody stirring. All the farmers are busy with their crops, and the streets are as lonesome as a last year’s bird’s nest. Ten to one, did you say? By the great horn spoon! I must go back and wake up the folks.”

Suiting the action to the word, the old man tossed Mrs. Boardman’s bundle of sheeting over the fence and made his way back to town as fast as his rheumatic legs would carry him. Halfway across, he met Lewis Morris who was on his way over to verify the rumor that he had caught concerning the early success of the Catalpas in Galena.

“Hooray for our side!” cried Rough and Ready, exultingly. “I have heard it from the gentle Miss Ally. Our boys have made ten runs in the first three innings, and the Galena fellows have made one⁠—one whole one.”

“Then I’ll turn right around and tell the news in town!” said Lewis, with excitement. “I’ll have to stir the people up, for the whole town has gone to sleep, except Dr. Selby, and he was sweating at every pore, as I came by the drug store, for thinking of another defeat for the Catalpas.”

Rough and Ready gazed after the rapidly retreating form of the young man who turned and stepped swiftly across the bridge. Then, putting his hand to his coonskin cap, as if trying to recall something to his mind, he murmured, “If I didn’t go and leave that ther bundle of sheetin’ in the Judge’s dooryard! ’Pears to me as if that pesky baseball had knocked my wits clean out.” And, smiling at his own feeble joke, he retraced his steps to the North Catalpa side of the river.

When Lewis Morris reached the center of the town, he saw a knot of men and boys gathered around the bulletin board of The Leaf. “Just my luck,” he muttered. “Downey has got the news out, and they have taken the edge of it off before I could get back.”

But Lewis forgot his little disappointment when he eagerly scanned the bulletin which the editor had posted during his brief run across the bridge. This was what he read:

An overwhelming victory for our nine! In the contest today, the Catalpas were the victors by a score of 13 to 3. Great enthusiasm prevails and the visiting nine are now being cheered by the excited populace. The result has astonished everybody, none more so than the defeated nine and their immediate friends. Our esteemed fellow townsman, Mr. Albert Heaton, Senior, has telegraphed to The Leaf the score by innings, as follows:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	total
Catalpas	5	4	1	0	0	2	1	0	0	13.
Galenas	1	0	0	2	1	2	1	0	1	3.

Errors, Galenas, 13; Catalpas, 1.

“Here’s Lew Morris!” cried brawny Hank Jackson, “Glory enough for one day! hey, Lew? Everybody in Galena was astonished, they say, and so was everybody in Catalpa, for that matter. Why, I was just coming along the street with Andy Brubaker, and we was a-talking about the chances of our nine’s giving up the season if they got cleaned out in Galena, when I heard Mr. Downey tell Dr. Selby that the home nine had beat the Galenas on the first six innings, and says I to him, ‘If that’s so, Mr. Downey, why don’t you put it on the bulletin?’ Sure enough, he went up them stairs, five at a time, to have it done, and no sooner had he got up there than he put his head outen the winder and screeched, ‘The Catalpas have won the game by thirteen to three!’ Gosh! you should have heerd the whoop that the boys gave! And there it is, as big as life.” And Hank regarded the bulletin board with an affectionate interest.

The fact was that the community of Catalpa was unprepared for any such victory as that which had dropped in upon them, as it were, like a bolt out of a clear sky. The defeat at Bluford had unnerved all but a few faithful and undaunted spirits, and the usual dull current of town life had resumed its sluggishness until the unexpected news from the north had startled the townsfolk into new alertness. It was a great achievement, as the Galenas were famed for their prowess in the Diamond Field. They were reckoned as first in the number of batters in their nine. One of them, Devoy, stood very near the head of the list of champion batters in the state, and another, Shallcross, was not far behind him in his general average. Yet the Catalpas had “got away with” the famous players. It was marvellous how the news flew through the town and out upon the prairie, so that by the time the moon rose, red and full, over the bluffy banks above Catalpa, in innumerable cabins and farmhouses, far out on the distant wheat-farms, and over many an evening meal, the details of the triumph and its probable effect on the fortunes of “our nine” were discussed with a glow of pride, or with a lively curiosity.

“The boys,” in Galena, resting from their labors, and withdrawn from the admiring attention of the citizens of the town, lounged in a big bedroom in the Quapaw House, and told, over and over again, the stirring incidents of the day⁠—incidents on which so much depended that they now became almost like ancient history in importance. They were not too tired to play another game right then, so exhilarated were they by their unwonted success. There was no murmuring, no jealousy, and no nagging in the party now. Every man was elated and flushed with a sense of his own value as a factor in the game that had been played, as well as in that which was to be played on the morrow.

“Somehow, boys, I feel it in my bones that we are going to beat tomorrow,” said Larry Boyne, who had won fresh laurels in the field, that day. And Larry’s bright eyes sparkled anew as he spoke.

“Well, that’s a new role for you to play, Larry,” said Al Heaton who was admiringly hanging over Larry, whom he regarded as the rising player of the country. “You always were a croaker, you know, Larry, old boy, and for you to say that you feel confident of victory now, makes me almost shudder. It seems as if you were losing your head; only I know you are not.”

“No, old chap, I am not losing my head. But you know I am rather superstitious; at least, my mother says so, and I have a queer notion, tonight, that we are going to do as well tomorrow as we did today.”

“That’s an encouraging sign, Larry,” broke in Captain Hiram Porter. “But you fellows must all do your level best, all the same, and we mustn’t let any notion of our superiority run away with us, for we are not superior, perhaps except that I do think that we are better fielders than the Galena boys.”

“Whatever happens tomorrow, Al,” said Larry, as they broke up their sitting for the night. “Put it down that I said that we were to win the second game in this championship series.”

“And if we lose, you will charge it to some adverse fate, won’t you, Larry?”

“In the bright lexicon⁠—you know the rest, Al.”

By a singular coincidence, at that very hour, Miss Alice Howell, writing to her father the glad news, added a postscript thus: “You will think me overconfident, but I am sure the Catalpas will win the championship.”