noticed amid all the other activity.
There were screams of protest from the crowd—five hundred folks or more, Longarm calculated when he looked them over—and the local team’s manager came running out to protest to the umpire.
McWhortle came out to protest the other team’s protest, and for a while it was all shouts and curses and loud accusations.
Longarm thought the visiting crowd was finding it all pretty funny. And apparently pretty normal, too.
No one, not even his own manager, was paying much attention to the fat guy and after a bit he dragged himself to his feet and stumbled back to the home team bench to try and get some air back into his lungs. He looked pale and on the verge of puking, Longarm thought, but the guy took it straight up and never joined into the complaining.
All in a day’s fun, Longarm thought a trifle sourly. Or was this supposed to be work? He was never quite sure which was supposed to be which with these people.
“Jerry.”
“Yes, Mr. Short?”
“Where’s that cart, son? I need to go get a smoke.”
The equipment boy told him where to find the cart with all their gear piled onto it, and Longarm got up, stretched hugely, and went off in the direction Jerry indicated.
Chapter 15
Longarm sucked the smoke deep into his lungs and held it there, savoring the taste of it for a moment before he reluctantly exhaled. There is nothing that can quite compare with the flavor of a good cigar. Or so he often claimed. At other moments, of course, he might find himself induced to consider certain other pleasures even finer. At the moment, however, it was a cheroot he had in hand and so at this moment it was the smoke that he found most enjoyable.
When finally he exhaled he did so onto his match, extinguishing the flame in the process. He snapped the spent matchstick in half and dropped it onto the ground beside the baggage cart, then took another deep drag on the cheroot before turning back in the direction of the playing field where the Austin Capitals were lazily destroying the local nine.
“You!”
It took Longarm a moment to remember who the idiot was.
“You son of a bitch,” the boy accused.
“Still blaming me for your own stupidity, eh, sonny?” Ben. That was the kid’s name, he recalled now. Lousy poker player and a hothead too. That was a pity, Longarm thought.
“You ain’t carrying a gun to threaten me with this time,” the poor loser crowed.
“It’ll be a cold day in Hell before I need one to take care of a pup like you,” Longarm told him.
“You son of a bitch.”
“Try an’ be a little original, will you? You used that one once already.”
“Son of a bitch,” the boy repeated.
“Leave it alone, son. You play poker badly enough without showing yourself off as a horse’s ass too.”
“You damn ball players. Come in here and strut around. Make fun of us. Cheat us and steal our money and our women too. I’m gonna teach you a lesson, mister. You and all them other sons of bitches too.”
Longarm sighed. “I let you off easy the last time, sonny. You might not be s’ lucky this time around. Now let it be while you still can. Take some good advice an’ go home. All right?”
Damn-fool kid still had that same lump in his pocket and the bulge still looked to Longarm like the sort of thing that would be caused by, say, a short-barreled hideout revolver. The dumb little SOB stuffed his hand into his pocket to go after the thing.
Longarm had no idea what the young imbecile thought his intended victim was supposed to do while he was fishing inside his overalls for the gun. Panic maybe or else faint away in a dead fright.
Neither of which Longarm was much inclined to do.
Longarm was carrying his derringer but didn’t want to use it. After all, everybody is born stupid. The trick is to let them grow and learn long enough to get over that handicap. While Ben was groping inside his britches, Longarm stepped in close to him and clamped an iron grip around the wrist of the hand that was buried inside the pocket.
With his other hand Longarm hopped the kid—not even all that hard—briskly across the bridge of his nose.
Ben’s eyes widened and his nose began to bleed like a major artery had been slashed wide open.
Which was the idea to begin with. Lots of fuss and fury to get the kid’s attention but no real damage done.
Apparently, though, young Benjamin wasn’t accustomed to seeing his own blood.
He looked down with horror at the scarlet stain spreading over his shirt and the grubby bib of his overalls.
And he screamed.
Not just a yelp. A real hog-sticker of a scream. A king-sized, throat-ripping, mind-numbing, rip-roarer of a scream it was.
It damn sure was enough of a scream to command the attention of all the hundreds of people gathered around that field for the ball game.
