Page:Baseball Joe on the School Nine.djvu/193

Rh coach. "Why didn't you have a little mercy, Joe?" he asked of the young scrub pitcher.

"I will next time—maybe," was the laughing answer. Luke and Hiram scowled at him as they passed. They would have witnessed with pleasure his withdrawal from the school. But Joe was going to stick.

"What are we going to do?" asked Luke of Hiram as they walked on.

"About what?"

"The nine. We've just got to win these two games."

"Well, we'll have to do some more shifting, I guess, and Brown and Akers have got to tighten up on their pitching. We'll try some more shifting."

"Oh, you make me sick!" exclaimed the captain. "Always changing. What good does that do?"

"Say, I'm manager of this nine!" declared the bully, "and if you don't like the way I run things, you know what you can do."

Luke subsided after that. He was afraid of Hiram, and he wanted to remain as captain. The two discussed various plans, but could come to no decision.

The inevitable happened. In the game with