Longarm ate quickly. Which was pretty easy to do since by the time the plates and bowls and platters reached his end of the table there wasn’t much left on them to slow a fellow down with excess chewing.
Fortunately he was still too tired to be hungry, even after a cool bath, so it didn’t hurt his feelings much to be overlooked when it came to the groceries.
Quick as Longarm was to finish some of the other boys who’d started sooner got done even quicker; this was not a crowd to linger over coffee and pleasant chitchat. As soon as a plate was clean, its user was on his feet and away. Longarm ate what he could and then left the table.
On his way to the outhouse he took a shortcut through the kitchen to reach the back door but he stopped when he stepped through the connecting door from the dining room only to find one of his teammates standing half in and half out the back door, whispering fast and furious to someone Longarm couldn’t see in the shadows on the back porch.
Longarm saw the left field slugger named Nat when the guy turned his face in response to the motion of Longarm’s arrival and shut his mouth in a big hurry when he saw he wasn’t alone in the kitchen. Longarm wasn’t positive but he thought Nat waved the guy outside away, gesturing with one hand that was partially hidden by his body.
The person on the porch shook his—or her, Longarm couldn’t see for sure—head and looked like he/she wanted to protest the dismissal, but Nat scowled and reached out the door to give the person a slight shove.
Before Longarm could get a look at who was out there, the shadows moved. And became empty. Whoever Nat was talking with was gone.
And damned curious behavior it was, Longarm thought.
Dumb bastards. Longarm wouldn’t have thought a thing about the incident if the guy on the porch had come inside so the two parties could stand there in the lamplight and talk over whatever it was they wanted to discuss.
But this … this seemed damned suspicious.
Was Nat connected with the robbers? Giving them information about the team movements? Or whatever?
At the moment Longarm had no answers to those questions nor to very many others.
But he was sure of one thing. From now on he intended to keep a particularly sharp eye on young Nat, the slugger in the opposite field.
Chapter 14
The dawning of game day found Longarm—he could hardly believe it—downright apprehensive.
It wasn’t like this was anything of genuine importance, for crying out loud. But there it was anyway. His gut had that twisting, turning, churning sensation in it, and the more he thought about standing out in the middle of a ball field with maybe several hundred people peering at him the more nervous he became about the whole thing.
He would rather be in a gunfight than … well, almost rather. At least that was something he was familiar with, something he’d done before.
This baseball shit was something else again.
But then with any kind of luck McWhortle wouldn’t go so far as to send him out in front of everybody. After all, it was pretty well established by now that Longarm couldn’t catch a batted ball for sour apples.
The team slept in late and was served a huge breakfast. “Remember to pack your bags and bring them downstairs when you’re called to go to the field,” the manager told everyone while he had them at the table. “Jerry will have a cart out front ready for you to load everything onto. We’ll be going straight from the ball field to the train station, won’t be back here again, so don’t leave anything behind.”
Longarm wasn’t sure if the reminders were mostly for his sake as a newcomer or if McWhortle went through this same spiel at every stop.
“Get some rest now. I’ll call you down about eleven. The game is at one o’clock sharp. Any questions? Any problems?”
No one said anything and after a few moments the manager released them with a wave of his hand. Longarm hung back behind the others. He wandered over to McWhortle and asked, “Is there anything special I need t’ watch out for?”
“Not that I know of,” McWhortle admitted. Then the man grinned. “Are you ready to play some ball today, Mr. Short?”
Longarm rolled his eyes. Then went upstairs and stretched out on his bed to catch a few spare winks while he had the chance.
Longarm yawned and by habit reached for an inside coat pocket in search of a cheroot. Except of course he wasn’t wearing a coat and there was no place in or on a baseball uniform suitable for carrying fragile cigars. Dammit.
Out on the field things were going just fine for the visiting team. In the sixth inning the Capitals were up on the locals by a score of 11 to 3, and by now Longarm was familiar enough with the team’s play to realize that the boys from Texas were loafing.
A chubby, yellow-haired man who should have been old enough to know better than to mess in kids’ games was up to bat for the home team. The Caps’ pitcher, the one named Dennis something-or-other, sent one in low and hard and the fat boy bashed it. The ball dribbled across the infield to the second baseman Watt who scooped it up and held it several long seconds before he tossed it on to Hoosier, the first baseman.
Watt timed his throw to arrive about half a heartbeat ahead of the charging, puffing fat man. Hoosier caught the ball, putting the batter out, but he wasn’t satisfied with that. The batter was already committed in a hard run and didn’t have time to pull up if he tried. Hoosier could have stepped out of the way and let the fat guy run on by, but he didn’t. Instead he dropped his shoulder and braced himself, and the much older and softer local slammed into him like a berserk rooster running full tilt into a barn wall.
There was a cloud of dust and some serious squealing and the fat blond fellow wound up rolling around on the ground clutching himself like he’d been kneed in the nuts. And hell, maybe he had. Longarm hadn’t particularly
