“Everybody and his grandmother turned out. The town knocked off business altogether. The weather was fine for ball, with this exception, the wind blew strong up-field. That was dead against _us_, though it helped their pitcher mightily, as he was weak on curves, and pitching into the wind added at least a foot to his range. With our man, Fitzeben, it was different; he had a tremendous knack on curves; blamed if he couldn’t almost send a ball around a tree, and the extra twist threw him off his reckoning so badly that he lost all command of the ball, and finally got so rattled that we had to put another man in, in the fifth inning. They were slaughtering us then--the score was fifteen to two. We picked up a little after that, and in the ninth it looked as if we might tie them, if we had barrels of good luck. “Falk went to bat. I cautioned him to wait for his chance; but you know what a grand-stand player he was; he had the gallery in his eye all the time. He was a big, fine looking feller, in a way, but stuck on his shape beyond all reason; so, instead of taking it easy, he swipes at everything that came, keeping up a running fire of brag all the time that made everybody very tired. “Just before the last ball crossed the plate, he gave the folks to understand that he was going to belt the cover off it, and the remains would land down by the river. He made a fierce pass at it; missed it a mile, caught his toe and waltzed off on his ear. He got a dirty fall and everybody was glad of it. We all laughed ‘Haw! Haw!’ just as loud as we could. Falk got up, boiling mad. He looked at us as if he’d like to eat us raw; but there wasn’t any one round there he felt safe to make trouble with, until his eyes fell on old Ripping-Thunder, sitting up straight in his new clothes and specs and plug hat and cane, and laughing as fine as anybody. Then that big Dutchman did the cowardliest thing I ever saw; he walks up and smashes poor Rip in the face, just as hard as he could drive. ‘Now laugh! you d--d Injun!’ says he. There was a riot in a minute, and I had to keep the fellers off of Falk, though the Lord knows my mind was different! The other captain refused to play the game out. He didn’t want any truck with such people, he said, and, while our boys were crying hot, we couldn’t do a thing but let ’em go. “I picked up old Rip and asked him if he was hurt. He tried to smile--although his mouth looked like an accident to a balloon, where that big lubber hit him--and told me no, not hurt.