The crack of horsehide on hardwood was crisp and sweet to hear, and the ball soared toward the clouds in search of eagles to fly with.
The Hoskin center fielder never bothered to take a step back. There were those who said later that the ball went so high and so far that it caused rain over a three county area and broke a critical drought. But Longarm wasn’t sure if he should take credit for that or not.
The Caps won the game seven to six, and afterward Longarm found himself hip deep in small blond Schultzes clamoring to ride on the shoulders of their own personal hero.
Chapter 23
“Short.”
“Yo, boss.”
“I need you to run an errand for me.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Longarm let McWhortle draw him away from the rest of the boys, who were sitting on, over, around, and through a set of loading chutes waiting for a westbound train to carry them all to the next scheduled game.
“Trouble,” the manager said in a low voice once they were away from the players.
“Not another theft of the gate receipts,” Longarm said. mean, I wasn’t watching every second, not hardly, but I never noticed …”
“It wasn’t that,” McWhortle said, “but the Hoskin post office was broken into and robbed this afternoon.”
“Shit,” was Longarm’s heartfelt opinion of the news.
“Yeah,” McWhortle agreed. “Look, I thought you would want to go do, well, whatever it is you do in a situation like this.”
“Hell, I didn’t even know Hoskin was big enough to have a post office.”
“It isn’t much,” the team boss explained, “just a counter and set of pigeonholes inside the mercantile. The proprietor, I suppose he’s the postmaster, too, is the man who was in charge of the host committee. We went back to his store to count the gate and divvy up the money. That’s when he found the breakin.”
“I better go talk to him,” Longarm said.
“While you’re there you’d best pick up something that the boys can see you bring back to me since this is supposed to be an errand you’re going on.”
“Right.”
“The train is due in an hour and a quarter.”
“I’ll be on time,” Longarm promised.
The store was one of those crowded, dusty affairs that sells a little bit of damn near everything. There were plowshares and smoked hams hanging from the rafters, barrels of nails sitting beside barrels of flour, and bags of mortar piled next to bags of salt. There was corn oil, coal oil, whale oil, linseed oil, and oil of camphor. Bacon and bullet molds, hen eggs and darning eggs. Whatever a man needed he could likely find in Howard Jefson’s store.
Except answers, that is.
“Who knew the store would be closed during the ball game?” Longarm asked.
“Everybody who does business here. Which includes everybody who lives within twenty miles of Hoskin,” Jefson told him. “I’ve had a notice to that effect posted for at least the past month.”
“So any local bad boy would have known the coast was clear,” the marshal—he still felt like a clown in the baseball uniform, but there hadn’t been time to change into something more befitting a United States deputy marshal in the pursuit of official duties—suggested.
“Sure,” Jefson agreed, “but nobody has stolen anything around here since last fall. I mean nothing, marshal. Zero.”
“This robbery last fall …?” Longarm prompted.
Jefson grinned, and Longarm got the impression the local man had been waiting for just that question. “Lou and Agnes Brumbauer’s five-year-old twins snitched some candy outa that jar over there. And that, mister, is the biggest crime we’ve had in Hoskin since the town was founded.”
“If it comes t’ that I suppose I can have the Brumbauer twins brought in for questioning,” Longarm said with a deadpan expression, which earned him another grin and perhaps some approval from the storekeeper/postmaster/ball game organizer. “Seriously, d’you have any thoughts on who might’ve done this?”
“Seriously, I wish to hell that I did, marshal.” Jefson shook his head and looked sadly around. “I lost a lot more than just the postal receipts, you know.”
“I’m sure.”
Whoever hit the post office broke in by the simple expedient of prying the back door open and walking in. The padlock that was supposed to secure the door was of top quality and in fact did the job it was designed to do. The lock remained strong and inviolate. Unfortunately the hasp it was supposed to secure snapped in two under the pressure of a pry-bar. The marks left by the bar—a big one—were clearly visible on the wooden doorframe.
“Easy as pie, wasn’t it?” Longarm said.
“Too damned true, it was.”
“They knew where the money was?” Longarm asked.
Jefson shrugged. “How could you tell? The store receipts were in a steel box under the counter there. That was
