There was something about the two of them, Nat on the one hand and the newcomer on the other, that made Longarm freeze in place, watching them from his unintended hiding point nearby.
Although they obviously thought they were alone in the car Nat looked nervously about, as if to satisfy himself on that score.
Then Nat pulled his shirttail out of his baseball uniform trousers and reached beneath it for a packet he’d secreted inside his waistband.
The stranger responded by producing a small package of his own.
This was getting interesting-er and interesting-er, Longarm thought.
He wasn’t a lick inclined to step out and show himself as just another of the boys now. He stayed where he was and watched as the two packets changed hands.
He had no idea what might be in the tiny box—or whatever—that Nat received. It could have been almost anything small enough to fit into a space roughly the size of a jewelry box.
But there wasn’t a whole helluva lot of doubt in Longarm’s mind about what Nat was giving to the other guy.
That flat little bundle was just exactly the size and shape of a tightly wrapped sheaf of currency. No telling how much was in there, of course. And no telling what for. But Longarm had no doubt in his mind, none, that Mr. Nathaniel whozitts was buying something here, or paying off a split, whatever, that he damn sure didn’t want his teammates to know about.
And wasn’t that downright interesting just minutes after Douglas McWhortle informed the team that they weren’t gonna be paid for this ball game because some SOB went and stole all the gate receipts that they’d worked for these past days.
Real interesting indeed, Longarm thought.
He shifted to the back of the narrow niche behind the stack of crates and waited patiently for Nat and his pal to leave.
But he was thinking the whole while he waited.
Chapter 20
The next town on the schedule was a half-horse—it wasn’t big enough to justify calling it one-horse—burg named Hoskin. It really seemed more a freight siding than a village, and as far as Longarm could tell there was neither local law to notify about potential danger nor anything for miles around worth stealing even if there had been a Hoskin police force.
The community consisted of a freight ramp and telegrapher’s shack, but no actual station, and a grand total of two, count them, two, commercial establishments. One was a general mercantile, the other a smithy where plows and scythes and the like might be repaired, mules shod, and similarly exciting happenings take place.
Longarm doubted the community could muster enough people—never mind people with cash to spare—to bother staging a game before. But then the scheduling hadn’t been his responsibility. Fortunately. A place like this, he figured, must surely be an embarrassment to Douglas McWhortle, who probably made up his touring schedule blind by mail or telegraph with no real idea what they would find when they got to some of these whistle-stop places.
When he mentioned something of the sort to the manager though, McWhortle only shrugged and said, “Let’s wait and see what happens tomorrow afternoon.”
At least there wouldn’t be days of layover and practice in Hoskin, Longarm was pleased to note. For the next couple weeks the travel and the play would be almost nonstop.
“There isn’t any hotel around here that I can see,” he mentioned, politely, he thought.
“Don’t worry, Short. We won’t make you sleep on the ground.”
“Alone, maybe, but not on the ground,” the baby-faced young pitcher Dennis Pyle put in.
True to the manager’s word, no one was obliged to sleep outdoors. As the ball players unloaded from the narrow gauge train there were folks gathering. Longarm suspected they were springing up from underground burrows or something because there damn sure didn’t seem enough houses around to hold them all. But from whatever hidden sources they did appear. In twos and threes, by wagon and buggy and a good many afoot, the Hoskin folk gathered.
And one by one the Austin Capitals disappeared.
With no hotel or even a regular boardinghouse to accommodate them, the players were doled out among the townspeople and taken into private homes.
“We’ll meet back here at noon tomorrow,” McWhortle reminded each man before he was allowed to wander off with his host family. “The game is at one, lunch and team meeting before. Mind you don’t be late.”
Longarm received the same reminder as everyone else and was sent off on foot with a family that consisted of a huge, red-faced farmer named Hugo Schultz, his plump Frau Gertrude, and enough tow-headed kids in assorted sizes to make up their own ball team if they’d been so inclined … complete with substitutes and a smattering of pinch hitters if needed.
Hugo might not look like so much in his bib overalls and flannel union suit, Longarm thought, but the man was a potent breeder, that was for damn sure.
“Come now, Herr Short. Supper be on the table when we get home,” Frau Schultz invited with a huge welcoming smile.
Longarm touched the brim of his Stetson and tried to pick up his bag—it was snatched away from him by a young behemoth who at twelve or so looked like he could have carried the whole team’s luggage, complete with rail station baggage cart, without raising a sweat—as he joined the family on their march home.
This could, he thought, prove to be much more comfortable than some sterile, impersonal hotel.
Chapter 21
No thanks, I couldn’t, really, it was mighty fine but I couldn’t hold another bite, thank you.” He damn near had to fight the girl off to keep her from adding another slab of pie to his plate. And good though the dried apple pie was, his belly was already groaning from the punishment it’d taken.
These Germans did know how to eat.
Frau Schultz had said the meal would be ready as soon as they got to the house, and the woman hadn’t lied. The crowd that came into town to fetch home their own personal baseball player turned out to be only part of the Schultz clan. The rest of the bunch, the daughters, stayed at home cooking.
Actually, Longarm suspected, they and their mother, too, must’ve spent the last solid week doing nothing but preparing the meal they’d just stuffed into him.
It occurred to him, somewhat too late to do anything about it, that this whole thing might be a plot designed to incapacitate the visiting ball players. Make them all eat so much that they couldn’t move and the amateur home club would have a walk-over come tomorrow afternoon. He decided he would check with the other boys in the morning to see if everyone of them’d been treated as rudely by their hosts as he had by the Schultz family.
In the meantime what he figured he needed was about a half hour rocking in one of those high-back chairs he’d seen on the porch. A little rocking and a good smoke and maybe the pressure in his belly would ease up a mite. He stood, biting back a groan, with the thought in mind to excuse himself and make for the porch.
“It is late,” Hugo announced before Longarm could speak. “Time now we close the doors unt vindows and all go to sleep, ja?”
If early to bed was the virtue it was cracked up to be, Longarm thought, then this bunch was virtue on the hoof.
But this wasn’t his household to administer, and if old Hugo ordered everyone onto the sheets, then bedtime it would have to be.
Frau Schultz gave directions, obviously by prearrangement. Longarm was given the lean-to that normally housed the three daughters. The girls were sent up the ladder to the loft where the boys usually slept. And the boys were chased out to the hayloft where they no doubt would spend most of the rest of the night taking this opportunity to raise a little mild hell. Schultz inre et pre—or whatever the German equivalent of that would be—had their own bedroom to disappear into and were the only ones on the farm who would be sleeping in their own beds this night.
Confusing, Longarm thought, but plenty gracious and considerate of them to treat a stranger so kindly. He thanked everyone in sight and retired to the lean-to.