Never in the most threatening moments of the rough crowd’s clamoring, however, had Hoover turned a hair. Always through it all he had sneered and grinned contemptuously, apparently inviting assault, and showing disappointment when the better element among the crowd, who cared for the sport as a sport, and knew the harm to the game that a pitched battle must bring, succeeded in holding the hot-headed and reckless ones in check. Biting off the end of his cigar, Riley stood watching Hoover meditatively. Out on the field the locals were getting in the last snappy bit of preliminary practice, and the game would begin in a few minutes. The manager’s eyes had left Hoover and sought “Butch” Prawley, one of the other two pitchers, when a hand touched his arm, and some one spoke to him. Rolling his head toward his shoulder, he saw “Fancy” Dyke standing on the other side of the rail. Francis Dyke, a young sporting man of Bancroft, was one of the backers of the team. To him a baseball game on which he had not placed a wager worth while was necessarily slow and uninteresting, even though well fought and contested to the finish. Son of a horseman who had won and lost big sums on the turf, Fancy, apparently inheriting the gaming instinct, had turned to baseball with the decline of racing. His nickname came through his taste for flashy clothes. “Don’t you do it,” said Dyke, vapory bits of bluish cigarette smoke curling from his thin lips as he spoke. “Do what?” grunted Riley in surprise. “Run in Prawley. You were thinking of letting Hoover squat on the bench.” “How’d you know that?” asked the manager, still more surprised. “Saw it on your face.” “If my mug gives me away in that fashion, I’ll trade it for another,” growled Mike, in displeasure. “But why not pitch Prawley? He can swaller that bunch, one after another, without greasin’. This is our first game here, and Jock ain’t so pop’ler in this town.” “What do you care about that? It’s our first game here, and we want it, to hold first place. If they should happen to trim us to-day, they’d have us tied.” With the mutilated and lifeless cigar gripped in his coarse teeth, Riley pulled down the corners of his big mouth disdainfully. “Trim us――with that bunch of scrubs and has-beens! Why, they couldn’t do it if I went in and pitched myself.” “Take it from me, ’tain’t wise to be so cocksure. I’ve been watching their new pitcher warm up. He’s a southpaw.” “And a green one from the scrub pastures somewhere. The boys will send him to the stable in about three innin’s.” “Perhaps. But I walked over in range while he was limbering his flinger, and he’s got a few good benders, not to mention some speed. You don’t want to forget that we’ve got five left-hand batters, and a southpaw that can really pitch may bother ’em some. I reckon that’s just why they’ve raked in this feller Locke.”