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“Let’s go look for folks t’ talk to,” he told Jefson.

Chapter 24

No way in hell was Longarm going to get on that train, by himself, in broad daylight, wearing a baseball uniform. He said his latest round of good-byes to the Schultz clan and got Howard Jefson to open his store shortly past dawn the next morning so Longarm could shuck the uniform and dress himself in a fifty-cent cotton shirt, a dollar pair of used Levis, and a two-bit soft cap. The price seemed a mite stiff. But preferable to spending the day being stared at by total strangers.

The train ride, thanks to his badge, didn’t cost anything though, and that was something.

He settled onto the cinder-pocked cushions of a seat in the smoking car and enjoyed a cheroot while he pondered the little he’d learned from his unexpected overnight extension in Hoskin.

It hardly seemed worth the bother.

Jefson had had time to go over his records and as far as the man could determine he’d lost a little over eight hundred in store receipts plus something in excess of twelve hundred in postal funds. The total take in the breakin was close to twenty-one hundred.

As for who might have done it, they hadn’t learned much of anything.

No one Longarm and Jefson talked to the previous evening remembered seeing anything or anyone out of the ordinary of late.

The only strangers reported were a threesome of cowboys seen camping in a live oak grove along a stream the locals called Three Mile Creek. And Milt Warner, the farmer who saw them, said they seemed innocent and ordinary as could be.

“Did they try and hide from you when you spotted them?” Longarm had asked Warner.

“Naw, not a bit of it. In fact when I first seen them they was waving to me. They was cooking some squirrels they’d shot, making a right nice-smelling stew, and first thing they done was invite me to eat with them. They mistook the land for mine and asked permission to spend the night there. I told them to go ahead and bed down, that I knew Ralph … he’s the fellow owns that piece of ground … I told them I knew Ralph wouldn’t mind and for them to make themselves to home. They said they was on their way home in Texas someplace … I forget exactly where they said they was from … after delivering a herd of stock cows to a fellow up near Manhattan.”

“I thought the days of cattle drives being welcome in Kansas were over,” Longarm said.

“Beef shipping is pretty much done with because of the fevers those Texas cows bring with them. But if a man don’t mind the time and money to have his cattle dipped for ticks and inspected he can still make out selling breeding stock. The steers they mostly drive on the government trails on west of here, but there’s a good market yet for breeders,” Warner explained. “I bought some myself off a fella from Beeville, Texas, just, let me see, two years back it will be this August. Decent cows too. They accept my bulls just fine and have easy birthing with them fine-boned little calves. Little buggers grow fast once they’re on the ground, too. Convert their feed real nice, they do.”

The farmer was obviously more interested in talking about livestock and probably crops, too, than he was in the things that were of interest to Longarm.

As for the cowboys, he’d shrugged and said they seemed like nice young fellows to him and he hadn’t any reason to be suspicious of them, not then and not now.

“They was carefree young’uns, not a mean bone among the three of them is what I’d say,” Warner concluded. “I wouldn’t think of them in connection with anything like Jefson’s robbery.”

Longarm pretty much had to agree. After all, the cowboys had been in the vicinity of Hoskin two days ago. At pretty much the exact same time the ticket receipts were being stolen down in Medicine Lodge.

And considering the string of previous thefts, he had to figure all of the incidents were connected.

He slumped in a corner of the swaying smoker bench and sucked on his cheroot.

The only real suspect he had—and that was on thin ground—was Nat Lewis and his mysterious meetings on two separate occasions.

But, dammit, Longarm himself saw Nat involved tooth and toenail in the brawl with the locals down in Medicine Lodge. And the man was right there on the ball field in plain view of Longarm and about five hundred other citizens at the approximate time the Hoskin post office was being broken into.

A man would have to work real hard at knitting those facts into a blanket of guilt.

Longarm scowled at the ash on his cigar and conceded that the only thing he knew for certain sure was that he didn’t know hardly anything.

He closed his eyes and waited for the Plains and Pacific to catch him up with the rest of the team.

Chapter 25

“Where in hell have you been, you miserable, skirt chasing, ball dropping son of a lowlife bitch?” The team manager winked at Longarm—which the rest of the boys weren’t in a position to see—and expanded considerable on the theme already established.

Chet Short, it seemed, was due for a proper tongue-lashing for missing yesterday’s train out of Hoskin.

After several minutes of loud invective—pretty good stuff, too, if Longarm did say so—McWhortle appeared to calm down a mite. He snatched Longarm by the elbow and led him off a little ways, dropping his voice so the others could no longer hear although they continued to look on in amusement and no doubt also in some appreciation for the fact that it was this Denver newcomer who was getting the needle and not themselves.

Once they were well clear of the team members, McWhortle said in a perfectly calm and controlled tone, “Sorry, but I think you understand.”

Longarm nodded and tried to maintain the look of a man who was in the process of getting his ass chewed.

“How did it go yesterday?”

“Didn’t learn much, dammit. No clues t’ who’s behind all this.”

“None at all?”

Longarm shook his head without having to give the question so much as a moment’s thought. And if he happened to have a suspicion or two, well, that wasn’t anything like being the same as having an actual suspect. And if he did come up with a genuine suspect it still wouldn’t be any of Douglas McWhortle’s nevermind.

The truth was that Longarm thought McWhortle was straight and clean. But he didn’t exactly know that for a certain fact, did he.

And about the only human being U.S. Deputy Marshal Custis Long would be willing to confide unconfirmed suspicions with would be United States Marshal William Vail, anyhow.

Longarm wasn’t even tempted to mention the strange goings-on involving Nat Lewis. Not until or unless they turned out to mean something.

“What’s the deal with this place here?” he asked instead of responding to the manager’s question.

“The game is tomorrow afternoon at half past noon. This time in a field behind the livery stable over there.” McWhortle pointed. “You already missed lunch, I’m afraid, and the boys would find it very strange if I offered to buy you a meal off the menu. We won’t eat again until eight tonight. In the hotel dining room, of course. They will have a big table set up for us.”

“Can’t get in any earlier’n that?” Longarm asked. He hadn’t eaten on the train and could feel the beginning of some rumbling in his gut.

“Go in and order something any time you’re willing to pay for it yourself,” McWhortle said. “But the price I worked out for the ball club says we all eat together and all get the same dinner.”

“Cheap,” Longarm said.

“Cheap,” McWhortle concurred.

Longarm knew what that would mean. A hotel equivalent of boardinghouse food. Lots of starches and damn little in the way of meats or sweets. Beans, potatoes, gravy made sticky with too much flour. Yeah, a prospect like that would make a man’s mouth water all right. “We gotta practice this afternoon?” he asked.

“Of course. We were just getting ready to go over to the field. Jerry left with the equipment already.”