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With seven innings of exciting play passed, with both teams on edge, with the bleachers wild and the grand stands keyed up to the breaking point, with everything making deliberation almost impossible, Billie Sheldon had remorselessly waited for three balls and two strikes.

“Now! . . . Now! . . . Now!” shrieked the bleachers.

Steele had not tired nor lost his cunning. With hands before him he grimly studied Billie, then whirling hard to get more weight into his motion, he threw the ball.

Billie swung perfectly and cut a curving liner between the first baseman and the base. Like a shot it skipped over the grass out along the foul- line into right field. Amid tremendous uproar Billie stretched the hit into a triple, and when he got up out of the dust after his slide into third the noise seemed to be the crashing down of the bleachers. It died out with the choking gurgling yell of the most leather-lunged fan.

“O-o-o-o-you-Billie-e!”

McReady marched up and promptly hit a long fly to the redoubtable Crane. Billie crouched in a sprinter’s position with his eye on the graceful fielder, waiting confidently for the ball to drop. As if there had not already been sufficient heart- rending moments, the chance that governed baseball meted out this play; one of the keenest, most trying known to the game. Players waited, spectators waited, and the instant of that dropping ball was interminably long. Everybody knew Crane would catch it; everybody thought of the wonderful throwing arm that had made him famous. Was it possible for Billie Sheldon to beat the throw to the plate?

Crane made the catch and got the ball away at the same instant Sheldon leaped from the base and dashed for home. Then all eyes were on the ball. It seemed incredible that a ball thrown by human strength could speed plateward so low, so straight, so swift. But it lost its force and slanted down to bound into the catcher’s hands just as Billie slid over the plate.

By the time the bleachers had stopped stamping and bawling, Curtis ended the inning with a difficult grounder to the infield.

Once more the Kansas City players took the field and Burns Carroll sang out in his lusty voice: “Keep lively, boys! Play hard! Dig ’em up an’ get ’em!” Indeed the big catcher was the main- stay of the home team. The bulk of the work fell upon his shoulders. Dalgren was wild and kept his catcher continually blocking low pitches and wide curves and poorly controlled high fast balls. But they were all alike to Carroll. Despite his weight, he was as nimble on his feet as a goat, and if he once got his hands on the ball he never missed it. It was his encouragement that steadied Dalgren; his judgment of hitters that carried the young pitcher through dangerous places; his lightning swift grasp of points that directed the machine-like work of his team.

In this inning Carroll exhibited another of his demon chases after a foul fly; he threw the base- stealing Crane out at second, and by a remarkable leap and stop of McReady’s throw, he blocked a runner who would have tied the score.

The Cowboys blanked their opponents in the first half of the ninth, and trotted in for their turn needing one run to tie, two runs to win.

There had scarcely been a breathing spell for the onlookers in this rapid-fire game. Every inning had held them, one moment breathless, the next wildly clamorous, and another waiting in numb fear. What did these last few moments hold in store? The only answer to that was the dogged plugging optimism of the Denver players. To listen to them, to watch them, was to gather the impression that baseball fortune always favored them in the end.