“Hell!” Longarm said fervently.
The shots were dying away, and they came to a stop as Longarm strode angrily toward Nowlan’s body. “Long!” Harrelson shouted. “Are you all right, Long?”
“Over here,” Longarm called in return. “I got Nowlan.”
The dust was settling, and Longarm saw Harrelson’s bulky shape coming toward him through the thinning clouds. Harrelson stopped beside Nowlan’s body and looked down at the corpse with a frown. “We were supposed to take him alive,” he said.
“We were supposed to hit the front and back at the same time too,” snapped Longarm. “What happened?”
Harrelson’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “We made more noise taking care of the guards out front than I intended. Figured we had already tipped off anybody inside that something was happening, so we decided to get on in here while we could.”
That was reasonable enough, Longarm supposed, although he thought that after warning him to be quiet, Harrelson should have taken a little more care himself. Still, what was done was done, and the dead would stay dead.
There had been seven men in the warehouse besides Nowlan, and five of them had been killed in the fighting. The other two were badly wounded but might live. Truelove was sent outside to check on the unconscious guards. Bud Seeley had caught a slug in the fleshy part of his right arm, but the wound wasn’t serious. Harrelson reported this to Longarm as the rangy deputy from Denver knelt next to Nowlan’s body.
“I don’t reckon we’ll get anything really useful from the ones still alive,” Harrelson went on. “They’re just flunkies. Nowlan ran things. You finding anything?”
Longarm was going through Nowlan’s pockets. He pulled out a cheap watch, a handful of coins, a receipt from a Chinese laundry, a ticket to a horse race, and a wallet bulging with folded bills. Longarm slid the money out part of the way and riffled the edges of the bills.
“Queer, more than likely,” Harrelson said as he looked down at the money.
“No, I think it’s the real thing,” Longarm said. “From everything we’ve been told, Nowlan didn’t pass the stuff. He just printed it.”
“Well, we’ll let somebody else sort it out.”
Longarm tucked Nowlan’s wallet back into the dead man’s coat and stood up. His long-legged stride carried him through the rubble of the fallen crates toward the printing press, which appeared to be unharmed except for a silver streak on one side of it that had probably been left by Longarm’s bullet ricocheting off it.
This wasn’t the first counterfeiting operation Longarm had helped bust up. He knew how to take the plates from the press, and within minutes, he had removed them and wrapped them up in a piece of paper torn from a massive roll of the stuff, so that he wouldn’t get ink all over his hands. He hefted the little package, which was heavy for its size, and said, “These’ll have to go back to Denver.”
Harrelson nodded. “Damn right. We can post guards over what’s in these crates until somebody figures out what to do with so much phony money, but those plates ought to be with us at all times.”
Horace Truelove had come up in time to hear the last comment. He said, “The next train back to Denver isn’t until tomorrow evening. What’ll we do until then?”
Longarm looked down at the paper-wrapped bundle in his hand and grinned humorlessly. “Looks like we’re going to be doing some baby-sitting, boys,” he said.
Chapter 2
The Albuquerque police had been told of the planned raid, so when they arrived at the warehouse a few minutes later in response to reports of gunfire, they were prepared for what they found. The guards outside had managed to run off during the shootout, but the two wounded counterfeiters remaining were loaded into a wagon and taken to the hospital, where some of the local star-packers would stand guard over them. The bodies were carted off to the undertaker’s. Bud Seeley’s arm wound had already been roughly bandaged by Horace Truelove, and the two deputies departed to seek out a doctor who could take a look at the injury. That left Longarm and Jim Harrelson to protect the plates.
Longarm didn’t say anything to the police about those valuable little items. He already had them stowed away in a small valise he had found underneath one of the desks where the other deputies had taken cover during the shootout. It wasn’t that Longarm didn’t trust the local authorities; he just didn’t want to place any temptation in their way.
Those plates would be worth a fortune to the right people. They were literally a license to print money.
Despite the weariness that gripped him as midnight came and went, Longarm knew that the counterfeit bills in the crates had to be counted. He and Harrelson and a police captain named Bishop worked on that chore until two o’clock in the morning. When they were finished, Harrelson sighed and shook his head. “Nearly two million dollars worth of the stuff,” he said. “Damn, this is some haul!”
“You can count on us to protect it,” Captain Bishop declared. “I’ll assign my best men to the job.”
“You do that, Captain,” Longarm said dryly. “Just make sure none of ‘em have sticky fingers.”
Bishop gave him a cool stare. “If I didn’t know you were just doing your job, Marshal, I might be offended by that statement.”
“No offense meant,” Longarm assured him. He hefted the valise containing the printing plates. “I reckon Marshal Harrelson and I will be going back to the hotel now.”
Bishop gestured at the valise. “Do you mind telling me what’s in there?”
“Evidence,” Harrelson answered curtly. “This is federal business, Captain, not local.”
This time Bishop was offended, and he didn’t bother hiding it. But he didn’t ask any more questions, and Longarm and Harrelson were able to leave the warehouse and head back to the hotel.
Longarm lit a cheroot and took a deep draw on it as he and Harrelson walked back to the main street. Harrelson said, “I don’t know about you, Long, but I could use a drink.”
“Some Maryland rye would go down mighty nice right about now,” Longarm agreed, “but I reckon we’d better keep our heads clear until we get back to Denver and turn those plates over to Billy Vail.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Harrelson didn’t sound completely convinced, though, and Longarm suspected the man would sneak a swig or two from the flask he carried as soon as he got the chance. Longarm hoped that wasn’t going to cause a problem before he got the plates back to Denver.
He blew out a cloud of smoke and said, “We’d better stay in the same room tonight, but don’t worry, old son. I ain’t getting sweet on you.”
Harrelson let out a bark of laughter. “I didn’t figure you were. You don’t want to leave one man alone with those plates, do you, Long?”
“I trust you, Jim,” Longarm said, “and I damn sure trust myself. But I think we’ll both be more trustworthy when we’re together. Same goes for Bud and Horace.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Harrelson said with a nod. “Losing two million has got to hurt, but with those plates and a printing press, a fella could have that much again and more in a matter of a few days.” He let out a low whistle. “Most men would say a chance like that was worth almost anything. It’d even be worth killing for.”
That was what Longarm was afraid of.
The peskiest thing in the world, Longarm thought the next morning, was to have something buzzing around in the back of your head, an idea that wouldn’t quite come into focus, yet persisted in prodding your brain.