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.
And then as if to punctuate the grandeur of that fine scream, the idiot youngster compounded it with an involuntary squeeze of both hands … one of which happened to have hold of the little gun that was still in his pocket.
The gun went off with a sharp if somewhat subdued crack—the noise of it wasn’t a patch on the quality of the scream that preceded it—and the kid shifted from a magnificent scream into a terrified wail that shuddered and shifted and ululated like a warbling buzzard gone mad.
Longarm glanced down and saw why. Now, in addition to the harmless flow of blood from the kid’s battered nose, there was another and perhaps more sinister flow from high on his thigh. Damn youngster had gone and shot himself when he jerked off a shot inside his own pocket. Well, Ben hadn’t yet shown cause why he should be awarded any medals for intelligence.
“Look, kid, if you’ll be quiet for a minute we’ll see can we find a doctor to-“
“Murder! Murder! He’s trying to kill me. Help!”
The little fucker was shouting that as loud as his first scream had been.
And as for attention … he sure as hell had it now.
Some of the rowdier elements among the crowd of baseball fans, many of them with the contents of pint bottles already safely stowed away inside their bellies, began to pay attention to the pleas of their beleaguered comrade.
One at a time, then quickly in pairs and trios and whole damn gobs, they came rushing to the rescue of a hometown boy who they saw as being assaulted and perhaps even shot at by some smart-ass out-of-town baseball professional from that team that was humiliating their own fine boys.
No doubt these fine young men thought it their civic duty to defend the honor and the person of this poor innocent who was being so foully abused by the bigger, taller, stronger stranger. And seeing their duty they rushed to do it, fists balled and throats quickly becoming hoarse from the fury of their shouts. Oh, shit! Longarm thought.
He had just about time enough to form that thought.
Then the wave of enraged humanity reached him with all the impact of a storm wave crashing onto a rocky shore. And rolled right over him.
Chapter 16
Didn’t these people ever bathe? Longarm’s face was mashed tight against the belly of some farmer whose shirt smelled—tasted too for that matter—of assorted types of sweat including what Longarm guessed as being human, mule, milk cow, and with maybe a hint of goat thrown in for good measure.
It was uncomfortable as hell. On the other hand it could have been worse. The good thing was that there were so many of them, and they were piled so deep on top of him, that there wasn’t room enough for any of them to get any decent punches landed. The dozen or so who’d swarmed over him just kind of wallowed around and got in each other’s way while Longarm was buried at the bottom of the heap trying to get some breath into his aching lungs.
The guy on top of him shifted to one side and sort of slid off and next thing Longarm knew there was someone’s hairy ear in his face. He bit it.
The aggrieved party howled in pain and raised up enough that Longarm could gulp some fresh air before the pile closed in again.
Above the din of disorganized combat that raged above and about him, Longarm could hear a new chorus of shouts and threats and whatnot.
He thought he recognized some of the voices. Was sure of it when bodies began flying off him. Soon he could see the Capitals, every one of them, including the undersized and presumably more-dignified-than-this manager, laying into the crowd of locals with fists, feet, and whatever else came to hand.
No bats though, Longarm noted as he scrambled to his feet. No bats. That was good. He ducked underneath a roundhouse swing thrown by a burly man in a black suitcoat and batwing collar and reacted to the fancy-dan with a left jab that would leave one proud-looking shiner before the next morning.
“Ouch,” the man protested.
Longarm shrugged. And popped him one on the other eye. Might as well make it a matched pair.
Something slammed into Longarm’s back square between the shoulder blades. He was driven to his knees, and he swiveled to meet his attacker and came up swinging. The blow caught the fellow in the gut and doubled him over, gasping for breath that just wouldn’t come. Meanwhile the other man, the one with the twin soon-to-be black eyes, took careful aim with an entirely too solid right that rattled Longarm’s teeth. Longarm grunted, spit out a little blood, and returned the favor by dropping the Kansas boy with a hard shot that caught him flush on the jaw and blew his lamp out slick as greased snot.
While this was going on, the rest of the Caps were having their own tussles. Men were shouting, bleeding, cursing, kicking, throwing and ducking punches, and in general having a fine old time of it.