Longarm on the Thunderbird Run

Even those who were staggering and singing and seemingly drinking from their bottles were carrying bottles that remained full no matter how frequently the owners “drank.”

And while not a single man carried a gun in sight, there were some suspiciously sagging coat pockets and not a few bulges where shoulder holsters might ride.

Son of a bitch, Longarm thought.

That crowd of so-called miners would be the White Hood Gang. Even the size of the bunch fit. He counted. Ten men.

It was them! It had to be!

Son of a bitch! It was all he could do to keep from dragging iron and throwing down on them right then and there. Instead, forcing himself to a calm he did not feel, he sauntered over to a bench under the covered platform and sat.

Far down the tracks he could see a plume of white smoke and hear the hollow, echoing sound of the train whistle announcing the arrival of the Thunderbird Run.

While he waited, the tiny locomotive coming into sight now, Longarm concentrated on memorizing the face of every man in that crowd of bogus rowdies. The bastards might wear hoods during their robberies, but right now they were playing the part of innocents, and every one of them had his bare face hanging out in the breeze.

Longarm took a last look around the platform—no sign of Sheriff Paul S. Markham, he noted in passing—and then once again bent to the study of those faces. Any of them who managed to get away today would be damn sure vulnerable tomorrow.

Because as far as everybody told him, there was no way out of the canyon except by rail. And if the least member of the White Hoods got away now, tonight the tracks would be guarded by Jack Thomas’s boys, and tomorrow there wouldn’t be a speck of dust leaving on the morning outbound until Custis Long had personally inspected the thing and given his approval for it to move to Meade Park.

This, by damn, was going to work.

Longarm leaned back on the bench and laced his hands over his stomach. The position looked innocent enough, but it also happened to put his right hand only inches from the butt of the big Colt in its crossdraw rig.

He should still have been tired, he knew, but right now he was so keyed-up and ready he did not care if he ever got a moment’s sleep again.

Two hundred yards down the track the Thunderbird Run hooted, and the brakemen set the screws to bring the slow-moving train to a stop.

The mail car was the tender behind the wood car. It was close enough now that Longarm could see the open door behind which would be the safe containing a small fortune in hard cash. A man wearing sleeve garters and an eye-shade was leaning out of the doorway waving to someone.

Longarm tensed as the train shuddered and jolted to a stop practically in front of him.

Now!

Chapter Eighteen

The middle-aged couple ambled down toward the end of the train where the passengers would disembark from the lone coach. Before they reached it a handsome girl in the kind of frock that almost had to be a school uniform got off and ran up the tracks to meet them with hugs and kisses.

The telegrapher came out of his shanty and went to the mail car to help unload.

Charlie Frye was flushed with nervous excitement. He bent to grab something out of the hopper behind him, lost his balance, and toppled down onto the load of ore waiting to be transferred into the rail cars.

The rowdies on the platform quit their make-believe drinking and sign waving and stood as if uncertain what to do next. What they didn’t do was grab iron and head for the mail car. Nor did they pay any attention to the passenger coach end of the train, which was where any newly arriving whores would have been. In fact, none of them did very much except stand there.

There was no sign at all now of Chief Deputy Mayes. No peeping out of the window now. Nothing. The man had simply vanished once the train arrived.

The middle-aged couple and their pretty daughter linked arms and went walking happily into the center of town.

Jack Thomas stepped out of the telegrapher’s shack and Longarm motioned to him

“Yeah?” Thomas asked.

Longarm leaned closer and whispered, “Alert your boys, Jack. That must be the White Hoods right there with those phony signboards. Has to be them. Something’s tipped them. We’ll go ahead and take them now.”

Thomas looked amused. “You got a charge to bring against them?”

“No, but

hell, I’ll think of something. Jesus, Jack, we can jug ‘em for loitering, or spitting on private property. Some damn thing. Then I’ll see if I can’t get a charge to stick later.”

Charlie Frye climbed up onto the rim of the hopper again, this time holding a battered old percussion shotgun that had wire wrapped around the breech to keep the ancient thing from blowing up when it was fired. Or at least try and keep it from killing the shooter along with the intended victim. Frye looked dusty and disheveled after his swim in the crushed silver ore.

“Uh, I kinda hate to tell you this, Longarm,” Thomas said with poorly concealed humor.

“What’s that?”

“Those people you’re wanting to arrest?”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t call my boys to take them in, Longarm.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Longarm.” Thomas grinned now. “Those are my boys. I, uh, figured I’d hide ‘em in plain sight.”

“Aw

shit!” If Longarm had had something in his hands to throw he damn sure would have thrown it. “So where are the fucking White Hoods?”

Jack Thomas shrugged. “Beats the hell outa me, Longarm. There isn’t a man on this platform that I haven’t known for at least the past year and a half. The only stranger I see anywhere around here is you. And I don’t guess you’re the damn White Hood Gang all by yourself.” He snickered. “By the way,” he added, “you know our good sheriff’s chief deputy?”

“Sure.”

“I just left him in the shack there. He’s all huddled up in a corner looking ready to puke from being scared so bad.”

“Well, tough shit,” Longarm complained.

“Yeah,” Thomas agreed. “Look, why don’t we go over and help unload the payroll shipment. What I think is that we better put it all under guard tonight until the disbursements tomorrow. Just in case your White Hoods are still hanging around wanting the stuff.”

Longarm nodded. “I agree. We don’t know what scared them off this afternoon, but whatever it was, there’s no guarantee they won’t make a try for it yet.” He sighed. “My hopes sure were high, though, Jack.”

“I know what you mean, Longarm. I know what you mean.” The two men walked toward the mail car, where the mail clerk was taking sacks of coin out of the safe and dropping them at the doorway for Thomas’s people—who by now had quit their drunken-miner act—to carry off to the small, stone-walled building that served Thunderbird Canyon as a bank.

Charlie Frye crawled down off the ore hopper and lent a hand. There still was no sign of either Roland Mayes or Paul Markham.

Chapter Nineteen

Now that the nervous energy of anticipation had all come crashing down into the despair of futility, Longarm felt like he was ready to collapse.

It was Friday afternoon and he’d had

what?

two or three hours of sleep since he woke up in Morey and Eugenie Fahnwell’s guest room on Wednesday morning.

Lances of sharp pain were shooting through his head from sheer fatigue, and he felt fuzzy and groggy-minded. like a man coming off a ten-day drunk. This wasn’t his idea of a fun time, and there was still some work to be done before he could find a bed to drop into.

Sheriff Markham and Chief Deputy Mayes put in an appearance in time to oversee the transfer of the payroll shipment to the bank. Obviously both men thought it safe now to appear on the streets again. Neither of them commented on their conspicuous absence when the White Hoods were supposed to hit.

If the idiots wanted to take charge and act tough now, Longarm decided, let them. The ambush was blown anyway. And, thank goodness, Thunderbird Canyon’s petty political problems were no worry of his. All Longarm wanted right now was to clear up a few other matters and get the hell gone on the first available train.