Page:Lefty o' the Bush.djvu/274

 manager, "it's dollars to doughnuts they'll get his goat for fair."

The Kingsbridge pitcher looked ill as he found the slab at the beginning of the fifth; his face was pale and set, and there was something like a glare in his eyes. He seemed to be in haste to hand Pat McGovern a pass, pitching one ball after another without pausing to steady down, though both Oulds and Stark begged him to take more time; and not one of the four he threw for Pat even grazed a corner.

Following this, he bored Bernsteine in the ribs, and two men were on the sacks, with no one down. Remembering the first game Locke had pitched on that field, the Kingsbridge crowd declined to be frightened.

"He'll steady down in a moment," they said. "Just watch him."

But in a moment McGovern and Bernsteine each moved up a sack on a weirdly wild pitch to Lisotte.

Hutchinson turned quickly to Ringling.

"Shake the kinks out of your arm, Ring," he directed. "Hurry up about it."

Oulds had called Locke, meeting him a few steps in front of the pan.

"What's biting you now, son?" he growled, heedless of the howling Bancrofters, who were de