Trudy recoiled, jumping off his lap and backing away toward the door. “Mr. … Mr. Short, please.”
“Did I say somethin’ t’ scare you, honey? Now I never meant t’ do that. Come here, honey. Gimme a big kiss.”
Trudy squealed. And bolted through the door, leaving it standing open as she scrambled up the ladder to the loft so fast he wasn’t sure she bothered to use the rungs. She might just have flown up the thing.
Longarm laughed silently and took a few more puffs on his cigar. He finished it at his leisure and dropped the butt out the window, then eased the window shut again.
When he went to rise so he could close the door and go to sleep, he discovered that once more he was not alone.
This time his visitor was somewhat harder to see in that he was wearing a nightshirt made of some dark fabric.
“Evening, Hugo. I thought you was asleep.”
“My wife, she is the sound sleeper. Not so, me.”
“Uh huh.” Longarm could still hear the buzzsaw drone of snoring coming from the Schultzes’ bedroom.
“I got good ears, you know?”
“Uh huh.”
“At first I don’t know what you are doing. Then I do. Trudy, she feels good about herself now, ja?”
“I hope so. Nice kid. I didn’t want to hurt her.”
“Ja, so I understand. You want a little drink, Mr. Short? I got a bottle put by where the frau pretends she don’t know where to find.”
“I’d like that, Hugo. If you’d agree to call me, uh, Chester. I’d be proud t’ have a drink with you. Uh, would you like a cigar t’ go with our drink, Hugo?”
“That I vould, Chester. That I vould.”
All in all, Longarm concluded afterward, his overnight stay with the Schultz family proved to be downright comfortable.
Chapter 22
Longarm couldn’t believe it. There were half again as many people turned out to see the ball game here as there had been back in Medicine Lodge. And here there wasn’t hardly town enough to justify stopping at.
“Why?” he asked, gesturing at the hundreds of people who stood, or sat on the grass, all around the flat pasture that was designated a playing field.
McWhortle grinned and looked around for a moment before answering. “It’s something I caught onto a couple years ago. A crossroads like Hoskin here doesn’t even get a circuit preacher but three, maybe four times a year. And there’s no professional entertainment whatsoever. No traveling theater troupes or circuses, none of that. So when somebody does stop, somebody like us, everybody comes out. We are the one and only big entertainment of the year, and there isn’t a soul within ten or fifteen miles who would miss the chance to be here.”
“I’ll be damned,” Longarm said in admiration and amazement. “It sure does work.”
“Does for a fact, doesn’t it? Assuming nobody steals the gate this time, that is.”
“I’ll kinda keep an eye on things if you like,” Longarm offered.
“Do that,” the manager hesitated half a second for emphasis, “Short. But you’ll have to do it while you’re busy with baseball too.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I mean John Charles has a bellyache this morning. I understand the family he was with last night overfed him and he’s miserable this morning. You’ll play right field the whole game today.” John Charles, J. C. Corcovan, was the regular right fielder. And in no danger whatsoever of being beaten out of his job by Custis Long.
“Sounds like a plot t’ me,” Longarm mumbled, remembering the tongue-in-cheek accusation he’d thought of about the Schultzes, fine folk that they were, last night.
“What?” McWhortle asked.
Longarm shook his head. “Nothing.”
McWhortle grunted and walked off among the players, having a word with one here, giving a pat on the back there. He also pulled out his lineup and passed it around. Longarm discovered that he would be hitting ninth in the spot usually reserved for the pitcher … who was generally counted on to be the worst batter on the field. Longarm gathered that no one on the Capitals, including the manager, had a whole helluva lot of confidence in his abilities.
Which, he conceded, was probably downright sensible of them.
“Play ball,” the Hoskin blacksmith and sometime baseball umpire shouted, and things got underway.
Longarm kept one eye on the tent where tickets and refreshments were being sold and the other eye on the Schultz crowd, the whole mob of which was sworn to cheer for their very own. Even a rather subdued Trudy timidly wished him luck early this morning, not knowing that her attempted first tryst had been overheard by her daddy the night before.
When Levi Watt grounded out to the Hoskin second baseman to end the top of the first inning, the Schultzes waved and shouted ferociously as Longarm trotted out onto the field. He felt like a warrior taking the lists on behalf of adoring patrons. Or something. For sure it made him want to do well so as to justify their faith in him.
And that made it all the more embarrassing when the third Hoskin batter hit a towering fly ball to right.
