Longarm on the Thunderbird Run

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Soft tapping on his door and a low, urgently repeated, “Marshal. Marshal Long?” brought him reluctantly awake. The knocking and the whispering continued.

He sat up, his head still aching from sleep promised but as yet unfulfilled, and rubbed his eyes.

“Marshal Long? Please, sir?”

The fool out there continued to whisper. Why the hell he would do that, Longarm couldn’t figure. Was he afraid of waking Longarm or something? Hell, that was why he was here, wasn’t it?

“Come in,” Longarm groaned.

“Door’s locked,” the whisper came back.

“Oh.” Longarm yawned, reached for a cheroot and shuffled slowly across the hotel room to the door.

He was beginning to think he’d have gotten more rest on this case if he’d set up his bed in the middle of a railroad station. Kansas City’s, for instance. There would’ve been fewer visitors and passersby pestering him there.

The young man in the hallway looked apologetic but eager. “Good news, Marshal.”

Longarm grunted and stepped aside to let the man in, then took his time about lighting his smoke. Good news right now would be about twenty uninterrupted hours of sleep. “What is it, uh

?”

“Tim Blaisdell, sir. I work for Mr. Sawyer at the Tyler mine.”

Longarm granted again. He still felt half asleep.

“It’s the White Hoods, sir.”

Longarm blinked.

“We caught one of ‘em, sir.”

That cleared the last of the cobwebs. Longarm was fully awake now. Early morning sunlight was streaming through the single window in the hotel room, so he could not have slept long. After that news, though, he did not need more. “Tell me about it,” he said, reaching for his hastily discarded clothing from the night—morning—hour or two— before.

Blaisdell was grinning now. “It was the boys down along the tracks that caught him, sir. Just where you posted ‘em. This ol’ fella came slipping along through the rocks just afore dawn. They hunkered down where they was

Bully Ryan, who’s in charge down there, he thought they should set up kinda out o‘ sight, y’ see

so they stayed where they was and let this fella come to them. An‘ he did. Walked right into ’em and throwed his hands high when he seen he was caught.”

“And you’re sure he is one of the White Hoods.”

“Yes, sir,” Blaisdell said with a grin and a bob of his head. “Had a hunnert dollars gold in his pockets an‘ a folded flour-sack hood stuffed in the same pocket, sir.”

“A flour-sack hood?”

“Yes, sir,” the grinning security guard affirmed. “Eye holes cut outa the cloth an‘ everything.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” Longarm said. “Now wasn’t that a piece of luck.”

“Yes, sir. The whole plan worked just like you figured.” Blaisdell looked about as pleased as a pup with a new kid to play with.

Longarm finished dressing and belted the Colt in place at his waist, then stamped his feet to settle them inside his boots. His damned socks felt clammy and moist, but he hadn’t exactly had time to get laundry done lately. “Let’s go meet this man with the white hood, Tim.”

“Yes, sir.” Blaisdell acted like this was about the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. And probably it was.

Longarm stopped downstairs in the hotel long enough to order a breakfast prepared and sent over to the jail—for himself, not the bastard with the hood in his pocket—then followed the guard to the courthouse.

The White Hood was a man in his twenties, large and heavily muscled and badly in need of both a shave and a bath. His nose showed signs of considerable battering in the past, and there were small scars laced over and through his eyebrows and on his cheekbones. A small-time prizefighter somewhere in the past, Longarm concluded. And not a very good one at that to be so badly marked. This time, though, he himself was the prize, and his captors were congratulating themselves loudly.

“You haven’t left the tracks unguarded, have you?” Longarm asked.

“No indeed. We got a full crew down there still.”

“Good.” Longarm gave the prisoner a thorough looking over through the bars of the cell door, then said, “The rest of you assigned down on the tracks can go back now. I’ll handle this gentleman.”

The guards looked disappointed, but they were still happy enough about their success that this would not keep them down for long. They gave a few last looks at the White Hood and left.

“Tim,” Longarm said before Blaisdell disappeared in the hallways.

“Yes, sir?”

“If you would be so kind, Tim, stop at the hotel, please, and ask them to double that breakfast order for me.”

“Yes, sir.” Blaisdell thumped down the flight of narrow stairs, leaving Longarm alone with the prisoner.

The man looked apprehensive, as if he expected to be beaten now that there were no witnesses present. He sat on the flimsy cell cot with his back to the door and head hanging.

Longarm fingered through the things that had been taken from the prisoner’s pockets when they brought him in. There were the five gold double eagles Blaisdell mentioned, a handful of loose change amounting to eighty-three cents, a pocketknife with a badly nicked blade, and a bright pebble.

The pebble was rose quartz. It had a clear, clean tint of pink through the translucent stone, was not at all cloudy, and was a pretty thing even though it was of no actual value.

The hood that lay beside the other items was as Blaisdell had described—originally a sack intended to hold probably twenty pounds of flour. The cloth had not even been washed, and a dry, dusty powder of ground wheat clung to the corners where the sack had been sewed by machine. Eye holes had been hacked out of the cloth, and a drawstring intended to contain the flour remained in place where it could be tied loosely around a man’s neck to keep the hood in place. A man wearing such a hood would be effectively concealed. The rig was simple but efficient.

Longarm tossed it back onto the desk and picked up the pebble. He crossed the small room to stand in front of the cell and extended a hand through the bars.

“I think this is yours?”

The prisoner looked at him with suspicion.

“A good-luck piece?”

The man shrugged.

“You can have it back if you want.”

This time the man smiled. He came forward and took the bit of quartz from Longarm. He handled the pebble with a degree of tender concentration and pleasure that was surprising. Longarm got the impression that the prisoner felt much better now that he had the pebble in his possession again. There was something here that was slightly askew, not quite right, but Longarm could not nail it down.

“My name is Long,” Longarm told him.

The prisoner smiled and nodded. He cupped the pebble in one palm and stroked the pretty stone with the fingers of his other hand.

“What’s your name?”

“Donald James Potter,” the prisoner said. His voice was

odd. Almost with a hollow sound to it.

The name meant nothing to Longarm. He was sure he had never seen it on any poster or wanted notices.

“Have you had breakfast, Donald?”

Potter shook his head. “I’m hungry.”

“Me too. The hotel will send something over soon.”

Potter grinned and looked about as happy as a bee in blue clover. Now that he had his pebble back and breakfast was on the way, Potter looked like he hadn’t a care in the world.

Longarm cocked his head to the side and studied the man for a moment. Donald James Potter seemed poor pickings for a desperado.

‘Tell me about yourself, Donald,“ Longarm suggested.

Potter shrugged and continued to admire the cool, pink depths of the quartz. He stroked it again and smiled.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Longarm said softly to himself. Potter ignored him, giving his full concentration to the stone in his hand.

Donald James Potter was simpleminded.

Was this how the leader of the White Hoods had been successful for so very long? By using carefully directed men with mush for brains who hadn’t the wit or initiative to get out of line or give things away? Or for that matter, to demand more than what they were given?