Mr. Bickett, first pausing to draw slowly and languorously on a cigarette before casting it into the gutter, makes some easy, quiet and non-committal answer which satisfies Mr. Sluder completely, since he is paying no attention to him, anyway. Immediately, he claps the chewed cigar which he is holding in his stubby fingers into his mouth, and nodding his head briskly and vigorously, with an air of great decision, he stammers out again:
“Well—I—I—I just believe that’s what he’s going to do: I—I—I don’t think he’s afraid of that fellow at all! I—I—I think he knows he can strike him out any time he feels like it.”
The boy knows everyone in the crowd as he looks around him. Here are the other boys of his own age, and older—his fellow route-boys in the morning’s work, his school companions, delivery boys employed by druggists, merchants, clothiers, the sons of the more wealthy and prominent people of the town. Here are the boys from the eastern part of town from which he comes and in which his father’s house is built—the older, homelier, and for some reason more joyful and confident part of town to him—though why, he does not know, he cannot say. Perhaps it is because the hills along the eastern borders of the town are near and close and warm, and almost to be touched. But in the western part of town, the great vistas of the soaring ranges, the distant summits of the Smokies fade far away into the west, into the huge loneliness, the haunting desolation of the unknown distance, the red, lonely light of the powerful retreating sun.
But now the old red light is slanting swiftly, the crowd is waiting tense and silent, already with a touch of sorrow, resignation, and the winter in their hearts, for summer’s over, the game is ending, and October has come again, has come again. In the window, where the red slant of the sun already falls, Ben is moving quickly, slipping new placards into place, taking old ones out, scowling, snapping his hard, white fingers in command, speaking curtly, sharply, irritably to the busy figures, moving at his bidding on the floor. The game—the last game of the series—is sharp, close, bitterly contested. No one can say as yet which way the issue goes, which side will win, when it will end—but that fatality of red slanting light, the premonitory menace of the frost, the fatal certitude of victory and defeat, with all the sorrow and regret that both can bring to man, are in their hearts.
From time to time, a wild and sudden cheer breaks sharply from the waiting crowd, as something happens to increase their hope of victory, but
