Longarm shifted position. He was perched on the flat of an upended nail keg that had been discarded in the alley that ran behind the mercantile building. Longarm had dragged it behind a screening Jump of tall weeds—the greenery was too ugly to have been deliberately planted, and anyway who would plant shrubbery in an alley—and was sitting there waiting.
It wasn’t a bad place, but the iron-bound rim of the keg was cutting into the cheeks of his ass and threatening to put his whole hind end to sleep. And he couldn’t stand upright and move around any because the weeds he was lurking behind weren’t tall enough. Couldn’t smoke here either lest that serve as a tell-all and give his position away. Just in case someone happened to be alert for signs of the law. Which he damn sure hoped would prove to be the case here.
He stifled a yawn.
Then came alert and bolt upright on the keg, the miseries in his butt forgotten as there was a flicker of movement down at the far end of the alley.
A hint of motion. Then nothing and then …
A scrawny white and tan bitch with her jugs hanging down to knee level came stepping into view and began sniffing through the alley trash in search of something edible.
Dammit.
Longarm shoved his Colt back into its holster—he hadn’t consciously thought to draw the gun but had it in hand just the same—and once more allowed himself to slouch into a more comfortable position atop the miserable damned keg. If only he could have himself a smoke …
Chapter 38
Longarm sprang to his feet as three—no, four now—dull reports marred the clamoring of the baseball crowd.
Gunshots. Two, then one, then a pause of several seconds and the fourth shot.
The sounds came from down the street to the west. From the ball field. Longarm was almost positive that was where the disturbance was. He scowled. Dammit. Dammit!
Here he sat defending the post office, and some son of a bitch was down the street holding up the ticket booth.
Longarm ran along the side of the mercantile and burst out onto the main street of Sorrel Branch just in time to see three horsemen riding low on the necks of their horses come sweeping toward him from the direction of the ball field.
There wasn’t a whole helluva lot of doubt that these were the boys he was interested in.
The flour sack masks they wore over their heads kinda gave them away. The sacks had red and black printing to advertise some brand of flour—Longarm was much too far away to read just what kind it was—and eye and mouth holes cut out. The masks were held in place by floppy hats jammed tight over them.
And the horsemen had revolvers in their hands.
They were riding fast but controlled and in fact seemed to be paying damned little attention to the street where Longarm had run into view.
At virtually the same time that he reached the street and saw them, the leader of the trio reached the cross street at the end of the block and turned to motion the others to follow as he reined his mount hard left into the side street.
Longarm had no time to aim and shoot before the last of them wheeled around the corner and out of sight. Cursing, Longarm started forward, then stopped again as the sound of flying hoofs once again seemed to be approaching.
But something did not seem right about it.
Then he realized. The riders were not on the next street over paralleling Main.
For some crazy reason the robbers were streaking through the alley behind the mercantile.
Longarm snarled and cursed his luck. If he’d stayed where he was to begin with they would have blundered right past him.
As it was, they were half a block away and …
About the time he figured out what the hell was happening the first of the men galloped past the narrow opening Longarm had just raced through to reach the street. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the first rider and close behind him each of the others as they ran their horses through the alley.
There was a booming of gunshots, the sounds trapped and reverberating between the buildings, as the men fired at something—Longarm couldn’t figure out what—back there in the alley.
He heard the shots and the tinkle of falling glass and then the hoofbeats faded as the riders reached the next cross street and turned north away from what little town there was to Sorrel Branch.
It was way the hell and gone too late for him to do anything now but Longarm couldn’t help but run to the end of the block and look north toward the dust the robbers left behind.
The riders charged out of town and across a field of oat stubble, then cut due east again just as they reached the screening line of crack-willow that grew beside a ditch to the north of town.
Damn them, Longarm thought. Damn them anyway.
Dispirited and grumpy as hell now, he shoved his Colt back into leather and started the long walk that would tell him how much the bastards got away with. Damn them.
Chapter 39
“We’re just about tapped out, boys,” Douglas McWhortle announced to his ball players at the railway station late that afternoon. “That’s twice we’ve had our pay snatched out from under us lately, and I’m frankly not sure if I have enough cash in hand to carry us. For sure there won’t be any game pay handed out. We don’t play again until Saturday so we won’t be paid again until then. Whether we can make it or not depends on whether we can get credit at the boardinghouse in Jonesboro. If anyone wants to cut loose and find his way home on his own, well, I won’t hold it against you.”
There were long faces at that suggestion but no takers. But then probably no one had enough money for a train ticket home even if that was what he would want, Longarm suspected. The robbery of the gate receipts had made this a glum crowd indeed.
“At least our fare to Jonesboro is paid,” McWhortle said on a slightly brighter note, “and the passage includes a box lunch for each of us. You won’t go hungry tonight.”
The team members filed silently onto the P and P passenger coach, leaving behind an equally solemn crowd in Sorrel Branch.
There was talk of getting a posse together, but with neither law nor organized leadership in the community that idea would likely remain in the talking stages. Regardless, it was already much too late to put anyone on the trail of the robbers. They already had several hours’ head-start and soon it would be dark. By now the trio of gunmen—it was only dumb luck that kept anyone from being wounded … or worse—could be considered long gone.
“Psst!”
Longarm glanced over his shoulder as he was preparing to climb the steel steps into the rail car. Jerry, who should have been back in the baggage car, was standing there.
“Psst. Sir.”
Longarm dropped back onto the platform and let Caleb Jones board ahead of him while Longarm made as if to light a cheroot and kind of accidentally moved closer to Jerry. “What is it, son?”
“Shouldn’t you … I mean, aren’t you going to do something about those awful people?”
“Like what?”
“Like … I don’t know. I heard some of the men in town say they’re putting a posse together. Shouldn’t you take charge of that? I mean, you are a deputy marshal and all that.”
“Which you are s’posed to forget all about, right?” Longarm said as he dipped the tip end of his cheroot into the flame of a Lucifer.
“Well yes, but …”
“Thanks for the suggestion, son, but let me take care o’ this.”
“I just thought …”
“I know. It’s all right.”
“I heard somebody else say we won’t be bothered by them robbers no more,” Jerry put in this time, obviously unwilling to let go of such an exciting topic of discussion. And with a real life federal lawman at that. The kid might not be able to brag and bluster his secrets around the other members of the Capitals, but Longarm was another story.