Longarm on the Thunderbird Run

He peeled one of the documents out of the bunch and held it for the gentlemen to see.

“This one is a record of a purchase made through a man known as Daniels. I expect this Daniels will be on our wanted list directly. Your good sheriff here bought a thirteen-year-old girl named Maria, and a seventeen-year-old named Concepcion for twelve Kennedy repeating rifles and half a case of .45-60 ammunition.” Longarm winked at Markham. “Naturally we’ll want to see if you and this Daniels fella had a trader’s license. If you didn’t, Sheriff, there may be some other federal charges for you to answer.”

The man who had been quiet stayed that way, but the one who was too dignified to hump whores looked like he was about to have a stroke. He slapped his whiskey glass back onto Markham’s desk like he thought the thing was contaminated.

“Really!”

“Yeah,” Longarm agreed pleasantly. “Really and truly.”

The man stood, stuffed his chin high into the air, and marched out of the office without a backward glance for his dishonored “friend.”

The other one at least had the good grace to give Markham a sympathetic shrug. Then he too left. Longarm could hear their shoe soles thumping on the staircase.

“I think you don’t have many friends here anymore, Paul.”

Markham did not answer. He looked too shattered to speak or even to hear now.

Longarm took him by the arm and led him to the second borrowed cell. He cuffed the sheriff to one of his own cell bars, just in case Mayes or Frye should return and want to free their boss, and locked him securely inside the cell before he dropped the keys into his coat pocket and left the two prisoners to themselves.

It was over now, all of it, and Longarm’s ass was truly dragging as he stumbled into the street in front of the courthouse and turned toward the hotel.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Whu—?”

Longarm snapped from deep sleep straight into action, his hand sweeping for the Colt no amount of fatigue could keep him from having positioned by his head before he went to bed.

“Easy, sir, it’s only me.”

Longarm blinked, the big Thunderer already pointing toward the intruder almost before he realized that he was not alone in the hotel room, and recognized Charlie Frye holding a glass-globed lamp and looking ready to run for it at the sight of the .45.

“Oh. It’s you.” He sat up, running his palm over eyes that had not yet had near enough sleep. Anger replaced the sense of groggy unreality, and his jaw firmed as he shoved the Colt back into its holster. “What the fuck are you doing waking me up in the middle of the night?”

“It’s just past eleven, sir,” young Frye said, as if Longarm gave a crap what time it was. “And

and there’s trouble, sir. Big trouble. I thought I should wake you.”

“Well, you’ve done that for damn sure.” Longarm was still feeling more peeved than concerned. Damn these locals anyhow. He swung his legs off the side of the bed and reached for a cheroot and a match. “Now what is so important that it couldn’t wait till morning?”

“The

the bank’s been blown up, sir. There’s all kinds of people dead. And I can’t seem to find the sheriff, sir. I just thought

”

“The sheriff is in one of his own cells, damnit, right there in his own office, and

” Longarm jerked, fully awake now for the first time. “You said what!”

Young Deputy Frye fussed nervously with the lamp and swayed from one foot to the other. “I

I said the bank was blowed up, Marshal.”

“Blown up?”

Frye nodded miserably. “Just a bit ago. There was

there was Chief Deputy Mayes in there guarding. And Mr. Jack Thomas from the Arrabie, he was there too. An‘ a guard from Tyler Mining an’ another man from the Huckman mine. It’s a mess, Marshal. They’re dead. All of ‘em dead. Blowed ’most apart, they are.”

Longarm felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. “What about the money?”

“Just what you’d expect, Marshal. The vault, what’s left of it, is empty as empty can be.”

Longarm stood and reached for his clothes. There would be time enough for sleep sometime, but that time was not now.

“You was saying that Sheriff Markham was s’posed to be in a cell, Marshal?”

“That’s right,” Longarm said while he stepped into his trousers and stamped his feet into his boots. He expected Frye to ask why the sheriff should be in one of his own cells.

Instead, the young deputy said, “I was just over to the office, Marshal. That’s the second place I looked for the sheriff. But there wasn’t nobody there, sir. Just the night lamp burnin‘ and all the cell doors standing empty.”

Longarm felt ready to spit and start screaming.

Was there any other damn thing that could go wrong tonight?

The one thing, the only thing, that Longarm felt absolutely certain about right now was that if there was anything else that could fuck up, it would.

He finished dressing and followed Deputy Charlie Frye out into the night.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Half the population of Thunderbird Canyon, everybody who wasn’t on shift underground, seemed to be gathered around what was left of the bank building.

A few were engaged in pulling the rubble away from the ruins. The others seemed interested in seeing how far they could exaggerate the latest rumor but still allow the tale to remain remotely believable. Longarm ignored the bystanders and pushed his way through to the heap of rock that had been a building.

The bank had been a narrow, two-story affair constructed of native stone. Now both floors were occupying a single, ground-level space. Several blanket-covered bodies were laid out on the ground nearby. Longarm checked. One of them had been Chief Deputy Mayes. The other man he did not recognize.

“Who did you tell me was dead, Deputy?” he asked Frye, who was still trailing at Longarm’s elbow with a helplessly lost expression on his beardless face.

“There was the chief deputy, like you see there, an‘ Long Louie, that’s him lying there, and Mr. Thomas, and a fella from the Huckman.” Frye thought for a moment, then nodded. “I think that’s everybody.”

“Where are the other bodies?” Longarm asked.

Frye pointed to the mound of rock. “Under there someplace, I reckon.”

“But how do you know who was in the building, and who died, if the bodies haven’t been recovered yet?”

“Oh. I was there just five, ten minutes before the thing blowed up, Marshal. I got me some sleep an‘ woke up a bit ago and come by to see if the chief deputy wanted to be relieved early. I seen everybody then, but the chief deputy tol’ me to go get some breakfast before I took over the guardin‘.” Frye shuddered. “If he hadn’t sent me off’t’ eat

”

Longarm could understand the young man’s distress, of course. Frye could easily have been inside the bank when the explosion ripped it apart. Right now, though, Longarm needed information more than Frye needed sympathy. “You also said the bank vault is empty, Charlie. How would anybody know that?” Longarm pressed.

The deputy pointed toward a back corner of the mess. “Over there, Marshal. The top of the vault’s sticking up outa the flooring from upstairs. C’mon, and I’ll show you.”

Frye led as they picked their way over loose rubble and timber, the way lighted by a hundred lanterns hastily brought by the men who were looking for possible survivors. Everyone knew there was no chance of finding anyone still alive under all that rock, but the miners were making the effort every bit as seriously as they would have tried to rescue comrades trapped by a cave-in underground. This sort of thing was something they had more experience with than any of them likely wanted.