t got any steam. An'
he ain't got much nerve. Now every feller who goes up to bat wants to
talk to Muck. Call him a big swelled stiff. Tell him he can't break a
pane of glass--tell him he can't put one over the pan--tell him it he
does you'll slam it down in the sand bank. Bluff the whole team. Keep
scrappy all the time. See! That's my game today. This Natchez bunch
needs to be gone after. Holler at the umpire. Act like you want to
fight."

Then Daddy sent his men out for practice.

"Boss, enny ground rules?" inquired Bo Stranathan. He was a big,
bushy-haired boy with a grin and protruding teeth. "How many bases on
wild throws over first base an' hits over the sand bank?"

"All you can get," replied Daddy, with a magnanimous wave of hand.

"Huh! Lemmee see your ball?"

Daddy produced the ball that he had Lane had made for the game.

"Huh! Watcher think? We ain 't goin' to play with no mush ball like
thet," protested Bo. "We play with a hard ball. Looka here! We'll
trow up the ball."

Daddy remembered what he had heard about the singular generosity of the
Natchez team to supply the balls for the games they played.

"We don't hev to pay nothin' fer them balls. A man down at the Round
House makes them for us. They ain't no balls as good," explained Bo,
with pride.

However, as Bo did not appear eager to pass over the balls for
examination Daddy simply reached out and took them. They were small,
perfectly round and as hard as bullets. They had no covers. The yarn
had been closely and tightly wrapped and then stitched over with fine
bees-waxed thread. Daddy fancied he detected a difference in the
weight of the ball, but Bo took them back before Daddy could be sure of
that point.

"You don't have to fan about it. I know a ball when I see one,"
observed Daddy. "But we're on our own grounds an' we'll use our own
ball. Thanks all the same to you, Stranathan."

"Huh! All I gotta say is we'll play with my ball er there won't be no
game," said Bo suddenly.

Daddy shrewdly eyed the Natchez captain. Bo did not look like a fellow
wearing himself thin from generosity. It struck Daddy that Bo's habit
of supplying the ball for the game might have some relation to the fact
that he always carried along his own umpire. There was a strange
feature about this umpire business and it was that Bo's man had earned
a reputation for being particularly fair. No boy ever had any real
reason to object to