Longarm on the Thunderbird Run

Longarm shook his head. The lunacy with Paul Markham had never progressed far enough to think about information like that.

“I don’t know how much the others are having shipped, of course, though I could take a guess. Our payroll alone, though, is more than fifteen thousand. Plus there’s a payment due this month to the old boy who made the initial discovery here. He isn’t so dumb as most of those backwoods prospectors. He cut a deal for royalties on top of a finder’s fee, and it’s paid to him every quarter. In cash. He insists on it. Says he doesn’t trust bank drafts. I happen to know from worrying about the security that his payment this time will be over forty thousand. And with what should be coming to the other outfits”— Thomas whistled softly —“hell, Marshal, the total in that car should be in the neighborhood of seventy thousand dollars.”

“That’s serious money.”

“Damn right it is,” Thomas agreed.

“Fortunately it’s being carried in a mail car. That makes it my business as well as yours, Jack.”

“And glad I am for that, Marshal.” The man paused and frowned. “Look, uh, Marshal Long—”

“Longarm,” he corrected.

“Yeah, thanks. Okay, Longarm, it isn’t really my place to say anything, but if you are counting much on the sheriff helping you with—”

“So I’ve discovered,” Longarm interrupted. “No point in going into details now, but whatever I do next will be independent of your local authorities.”

Thomas nodded and looked like he approved of that decision.

“For whatever it’s worth, Marshal, you can count on the full cooperation of me and every one of my boys. We aren’t a bunch of guntoughs or anything like that, but my people are all honest, decent men, and I’ll vouch for each one of them. If I wasn’t willing to say that about every last man of them, why, that man wouldn’t be drawing pay from Arrabie.”

“Good. I couldn’t ask for more.”

“And if you want to call in boys from the other mines, I’d have to say that they are every bit as good at the other outfits. We each have our own veins to follow, and any competition between us is the kind that you show in Fourth of July drilling contests and like that. There’s nothing cutthroat between the mining companies here.”

“Fine. But whatever we decide to do will have to be done on the quiet. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about these White Hoods, but—”

“I have. Too damn much, in fact.”

“That simplifies things. They’re a careful bunch, and we don’t want to do anything to spook them. We’ll have to set this up so nothing looks out of place.” Longarm grinned. “And so the sheriff and his worthy deputies don’t spot anything funny either.”

Jack Thomas snorted with amusement. Apparently the picture did not have to be drawn any fuller than that for him to understand what Longarm was saying.

“You just tell me what you want, Longarm, and I’ll make sure you have it.”

“But on the quiet,” Longarm said. “I have to think there’s an inside connection here somewhere, or a bunch like the White Hoods wouldn’t choose to take the train down at this end of the canyon. They have a good reason for what they’re doing. They always do. So we have to keep it slow on who knows the truth.”

“Speaking for my own boys, Longarm, they know better than to say anything out of school. For that matter, I can set them up one by one and put them where you want them, when you want them there, so that they won’t know there’s an operation in the works. They don’t ask questions for the hell of it, and they know if there’s anything I want to tell them I’ll say it right out front. Otherwise, there’ll be a reason for it and they won’t balk. Now what is it you want me to do?”

Longarm knew the answer to that one readily enough. It was the plan he had worked out through the night and would have used with the local authorities if there had been any local authority in Thunderbird Canyon worth using.

He bent forward again and began to speak.

Jack Thomas began to smile when he was halfway through the idea, and by the time Longarm was done the

Arrabie security chief was grinning like a shit-eating possum.

“I take it you think it has possibilities,” Longarm said when he was finished outlining his plan.

“Yeah,” Thomas said with a chuckle. “I guess you could say that.”

The big man pulled a watch from his vest pocket and checked the time. “Look,” he said, “that train is due in an hour and a half. That’s plenty of time for me to set up everything you want. And if you don’t mind my saying so Longarm, you look like hell. I’ve got a cot in the back room for when things get busy. Why don’t you stretch out on it for an hour while I tend to my play in this. I’ll shake you out in plenty of time to be down at the depot.”

“Jack, I can’t remember when I’ve had a nicer offer. I’ll take you up on that.”

Thomas stood and reached for his hat. “By the time you wake up, Longarm, we’ll have a surprise set and waiting for the gentlemen of the White Hood Gang.”

Longarm yawned and grinned. Just thinking about a rest was enough to make him start feeling better. That and the impression of eager competence that Jack Thomas gave.

“I’ll see you in an hour,” Longarm said as Thomas departed.

Chapter Seventeen

Jack Thomas had done his job mighty well. Or not at all. The point was, whichever of the depot loafers belonged to Thomas and Arrabie Minerals, Longarm couldn’t spot them.

Sheriff Markham’s crew was something else again. Enough to be laughable, really, if this weren’t so damned serious.

Chief Deputy Roland Mayes was lurking inside the telegrapher’s shack with a long-barrelled scattergun clutched in his hands and a lot of sweat beading his brow. Every few seconds he would peek out through a corner of the window and look at everybody else on the platform. The man looked like he was hoping the whole thing would go sour and the White Hoods not show up. The amazing thing to Longarm was that the man was still sober enough to find the window.

Deputy Charles Frye was a teenage gawker sitting barefoot and happy on the rim of one of the big ore hoppers extending out over the tracks where the Thunderbird Run would arrive. It wasn’t something he had to pretend to be. The role fit him just fine. He still didn’t have a weapon that Longarm could see, although maybe he had something tucked out of sight in the hopper. Either that or he was expected to chuck rocks at the White Hoods if and when they showed.

Thomas’s people, though, were damned well hidden somewhere in the vicinity. Longarm did not go looking for them. The White Hoods were probably already among the other loafers on the platform.

There was the usual assortment of people waiting to meet the train. A man with a light, mule-driven spring wagon there to carry some expected package or cargo. A middle-aged couple who looked like they were going to greet someone due to arrive today. A drunk or two just come to see the sights.

The only group in evidence was a bunch of rowdy miners who were off shift but who still wore the grime and dust of a tour underground. The miners, there were ten or eleven of them, were half soused and waving bottles in the air, breaking out in song now and then, the words of which were making the woman half of the middle-aged couple blush. The delegation of miners were carrying a sign made out of a window shade nailed to a wooden slat. On the sign was painted Welcome Fifi and Lola and the Girls. There wasn’t much doubt as to what they were so happy about.

Longarm gave up trying to figure out where Jack Thomas’s boys were hiding—he did not want to be obvious about his interest in the question—and wondered instead whether the White Hoods were present.

With a sharp intake of breath and a narrowing of his eyes, he realized suddenly that the group of miners making such a show of meeting a passel of new whores were not all they seemed to be.

Once he paid attention to them, Longarm could see that the men were doing much waving of their bottles but not a hell of a lot of drinking from them.