rip.
Douglas McWhortle went out to tell the umpire that a pinch hitter would be coming in to replace Jason Hubbard and a man with a megaphone announced to the crowd that Chet Short would be batting.
Longarm found a reasonably clean towel to wipe his face and neck, lifted his cap to let a little air reach his scalp for half a second and then used the towel to swab off the grip of the bat he’d picked up.
Most of the boys were particular about what bats they used, but Longarm couldn’t much tell one from another. He just picked up whichever one was closest to him. It kind of pissed some of the fellows off that his indifference worked so much better than their superior knowledge and general fussiness.
The Jonesboro pitcher, the third they’d used so far in the game, was a short, fat old boy who looked even hotter and more miserable in this weather than Longarm felt. Which hardly seemed possible but appeared to be true nonetheless.
Longarm took his place in the batter’s box and stood there watching while the fat boy threw a few past him. He wanted to size up the aim and speed of the fat boy’s throws before he hit the ball.
With the count at two balls and two strikes Longarm figured he’d better pay some attention this next toss. He waggled the bat a few times like he’d seen the others do, spat once for luck and waited.
The fat boy reared back and wound up like he was setting a spring, then flung the ball right down the middle.
Huh. It seemed hardly sporting the way the ball sailed along smooth and steady.
Longarm was in no hurry. He judged the timing of the throw, took half a step forward with his left foot … and waled the beejabbers out of the horsehide.
The ball left the bat with a rather nicely satisfying crack and took off like it was fixing to punch holes in the nearest cloud.
No doubt about it. Longarm knew he had another of those home run hits before his bat ever connected. Hell, this one seemed high and far even to him.
There was a mighty groan from the crowd—it was natural enough that they would all be rooting for Jonesboro, all but a few locals who’d been sensible enough to place some money on the visiting professionals—and Longarm started to trot down to first base.
He wasn’t halfway there when he heard the first gunfire from the direction of town.
One shot, two more close behind, and then a regular fusillade so thick and fast it was impossible to tell how many shots were fired.
Longarm sorted the sounds into categories. There were the sharp, light thumps of revolvers, a few cracks of rifle shots and, ending the fury, a succession of the dull booming reports of shotgun blasts.
Without needing to think about what had to be done he veered hard left and ran across the baseball diamond toward the refreshment canopy.
Chapter 49
As he’d expected, he found Jerry still hanging close to the ladies’ skirts. The boy with the clubfoot looked worried.
“What was that, Chet? What’s wrong?”
“It’s okay if you want t’ call me Longarm now, Jerry. The masquerade is over and I can be myself again.”
“What’s that? I don’t understand.”
Longarm shrugged and said, “That gunfire was your friends being brought to justice, Jerry. Either they’re in custody or else they’re dead. We’ll know how it turned out when the town marshal gets here.”
“I don’t understand,” Jerry repeated.
“Sorry, kid, but the game is over. Your pals are under arrest and now so are you.”
“May I ask what this is about?” Fancy injected.
Longarm reached under his shirt and extracted the badge he’d been carrying—and none too comfortably either if the truth be told—hidden there since morning. “I’m a United States deputy marshal, ma’am. The name is Custis Long, not Chester Short. Sorry to’ve deceived you.”
If anything Fancy looked rather pleased. Like she’d managed to count coup over her girlfriends who merely screwed baseball players while she had herself a real live federal lawman in the sack.
“Don’t go sidling off like that, Jerry. You’re under arrest, remember.”
“I still don’t-“
“Hell, boy, you tipped it off your own self the other day. Remember back in Sorrel Branch when your buddies made their break after robbing the ticket booth? Afterward I got to asking myself a couple questions. One of them was why those boys, prepared as they obviously were, would bother to hit a lousy ticket booth when the pickings at the post office in town would certainly have been a hell of a lot better. Didn’t make sense. Unless they somehow already knew there was an ambush waiting for them in that little no-law burg.
“Then I asked myself why a bunch of fleeing felons would go out of their way to detour through an alley and shoot hell out of the very bush I’d been sitting behind until the shooting tolled me out onto the street.
“The answers to both those questions just had t’ come back to you, Jerry. After all, you’re the only person in this whole wide world that knew the post office was being covered. And where I was setting t’ do that job. Those friends of yours hit the booth because it wasn’t guarded, and they swung by and tried to kill me so as to get me off their backs. And the only way they could have known to do either one of those things, Jerry, was if you told them to change the plan. Because you were the only one who could tell them.”
“But I thought you agreed with me that no one could ride from Sorrel Branch to Jonesboro in time to pull a robbery here,” Jerry said. “I thought you weren’t expecting there to be any trouble here.”
