The House of Daniel by Harry Turtledove

isn’t a sporting house, even if it sounds like one. The meat they serve there’s already cooked—falling-off-the-bone barbecue, some of the best anywhere. I was going to tell the House of Daniel fellas about it if they didn’t already know, but they did.
    Bathroom in the roominghouse was down at the end of the hall. Yeah, one of those places. By the time my turn came—I was low man on the totem pole, naturally—the salamander that hotted up the water was plumb tuckered out. On a May afternoon in the Texas Panhandle, you mind that less than you would some other places.
    Some of my fake whiskers came off in the tub, but nowhere near all. I went back to my room looking like a sorry case of mange. “Have anything to make your blasted spirit gum say uncle?” I asked Eddie.
    â€œTry some of this. Rub it on a cloth and then over your face.” He handed me a bottle of greenish gunk. When I pulled the cork, it smelled something like witch hazel and something like what a colored herb woman’d cook up if she didn’t like you so much.
    But it worked, whatever it was. “Thanks,” I said, and started to give it back to Eddie.
    â€œHang on to it,” he told me. “You’re the one who’ll be using it till your own whiskers get long enough so you don’t need the false ones.”
    So we ate. And we ate. And we ate some more. By the time we got through, you could’ve built a cow and a pig and a flock of chickens from the bones on the table. Miss Louise had smiled when we came in. She’d said, “Good to see y’all. Not a lot of folks with money to spend.”
    â€œEven in an oil town like this?” Harv asked.
    â€œThings are better here than some places,” Miss Louise said, “but they ain’t what you’d call good. People hunker down, fix their own eats—it’s cheaper’n goin’ out. So customers are hard to come by.”
    Pampa was better off than Ponca City, no doubt about that. The oil wells here were newer, and paying better. But if a place as good as Miss Louise’s had trouble staying full, it was hurting, all right.
    I rubbed my stomach. If I ate like that all the time, I wouldn’t fit into Double-Double’s uniform for long. “Where do we go next?” I asked. I figured maybe Borger northwest of Pampa—the two little towns get along like Ponca City and Enid. Anything one does, the other reckons it does better. When the Eagles played Pampa, they usually played Borger the same weekend. Not even forty miles from one to the other.
    But Harv said, “Amarillo. We’ve got a game tomorrow against the Metros.”
    â€œAll right.” I sounded as easy about it as I could. Amarillo’s not a great big city. It’s bigger than Enid, but not by a lot. The Eagles never dared square off against the Metros, though. They were out of our league too many ways.
    Back before the Big Bubble popped, the Metros played in the Western League for a couple of years. That’s real pro ball—Class A, same as the Texas League, the league where the Steers wouldn’t sign me ’cause I wasn’t good enough. Even after they didn’t stick, they barnstormed against teams in both those circuits.
    I must not’ve been as calm as I tried for. Harv kind of grinned at me. “If God wants us to beat ’em, we’ll beat ’em,” he sad. “And if He’s got other plans, His will be done.”
    â€œAmen,” Eddie Lelivelt said, and some of the other guys nodded.
    I knew the House of Daniel was a churchy team, but they hadn’t done any preaching to the heathen that I’d seen. They hadn’t done any preaching at me. I knew that for sure. I’m not a heathen, but I’m on that road. Hey, anybody who’s seen a salamander or a dust devil knows there are Powers. Just what those Powers are and Who calls the shots amongst ’em—that’s