Longarm on the Thunderbird Run

“I have a job for you that I think the local law should handle, Charlie,” he said.

“Yes, sir?”

Longarm removed the cheroot from between his teeth and aimed it at the telegraph operator’s chest. “What I want you to do, Charlie,” Longarm said pleasantly, “is to place that scummy son of a bitch under arrest on eight counts of murder and”—he grinned—“we’ll add more to it shortly.”

The telegrapher went pale. Charlie Frye blinked in confusion.

“Go ahead and try to run for it if you want,” Longarm told the operator calmly. “I won’t shoot you in the back. In the knees, but not the back. And it won’t bother me a lick.”

The telegrapher began to shiver. A dark, damp stain spread over the front of his trousers as he wet himself.

Chapter Forty-One

The telegrapher’s name was Jamison Carter, and he did not give the impression of being a particularly brave individual. Longarm had Frye cuff him and take him up to the jail where Donald Potter’s body still lay untended. Frye got quite a start out of seeing it.

“You can take care of that later,” Longarm told him. “Right now I want you to go downstairs to the next landing. I want you to stay on those steps and not let anybody up here. Nobody, you understand me?”

Frye nodded, though he was still staring at the dead man in the cell.

“No matter what you hear from up here, I don’t want you or anybody else coming up those stairs, Deputy. I don’t want any witnesses, you understand, and I’m making you responsible for that.”

“Uh

yessir.” Frye said dubiously. “I won’t let nobody up until you tell me.”

“Not even the county supervisors.” Longarm said. “Nobody.”

“No, sir. Nobody.”

“That’s good. Now, do you have any spare handcuffs?”

“We got some in the bottom of that cabinet over there.”

“Good. Take your set and one of those extras and cuff Mr. Carter here to the bars with both hands so that he’s kind of spread-eagled on his feet.”

Frye looked like he could not believe what he was being told to do, but he did it. He got out a set of spare handcuffs and a key for them. “Do you, uh, want him facing out or in, Marshal?”

“I want him facing into the cell so he can look at Potter while

uh

while I’m talking to him.”

Carter looked like he might faint. For that matter, Charlie Frye did not look very far from it himself.

“And while you’re switching that first set of cuffs from his wrist to the bars, Charlie, have the prisoner take off his shirt, would you, please?”

“Yes, sir.”

Carter was shaking so bad the trembling could be seen from all the way across the room.

Longarm reached for another cheroot and took his time about lighting it.

“Downstairs now, Charlie. And remember, I don’t want anybody coming up here to bother me, no matter what you hear. Anybody wants to complain about the noise, I’ll take it up with them after. All right?”

Charlie Frye looked damned glad to be able to leave the room and rush down the stairs.

Jamison Carter was facing away, pinioned to the steel bars by the handcuffs on his wrists. He could not see Longarm. But he could imagine much. That, in fact, was what Longarm was counting on.

Longarm took a comfortable seat in the chair that had belonged to the now-dead—there seemed to be a lot of that going around Thunderbird Canyon lately—Paul Markham and took a pull on his smoke.

“Want to tell me all about it, Carter?” he asked in a low, mild voice.

“I

I don’t know anything to tell you, Marshal.”

“Uh-huh,” Longarm said. “For instance, you don’t know why the battery for your telegraph wire has been disabled or how it could be that no one in Meade Park has received any traffic from here in several days?”

“I

” Carter shook his head, but with a gesture that was more nervous than stubborn.

“It might interest you to know that I reconnected the battery. We have communication with Meade Park again.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“You don’t know anything either, I suppose, about why the operator in Meade Park never received any of the messages I told you to send. You remember. The ones you told me you did send.”

Carter’s knees sagged.

“Before we get down to the good parts of this interrogation, Carter, it’s probably only fair to tell you that I’ve got most of this figured out by now. Including whose orders you’ve been taking. What did he promise you, Carter? Five thousand? Ten?”

“I never killed anybody, Marshal. I swear to God I never,” Carter blubbered.

“He might believe you, Carter, but I damn sure don’t. Your boss in this couldn’t have killed Donald Potter. You’re the one who did that. And you were a part of the bank murders too. It really doesn’t matter who actually lit the fuse, you know. But you don’t have to take my word for that. The judge will tell you the same thing. Before he hangs you.”

“Oh, God, Marshal, I can’t hang. I

I couldn’t stand that.”

“You’ll manage,” Longarm assured him. “Unless some judge is damn fool enough to let you off with just a prison sentence. Like if you were to cooperate and help me find your boss and the money.” Longarm chuckled. “Except that I don’t need your help, Carter. The money is in the bank basement. I can find it all by myself.”

Carter began trying to wrench his hands free of the steel handcuffs, jerking from side to side so that the steer bracelets bit into his flesh. He began to moan and soiled himself again.

Longarm stood and slipped up behind Carter so he was immediately behind the man’s ear. “Where is he?” he roared.

Carter jumped so hard he fell and for a moment was hanging by his wrists. Longarm took a fistful of hair and hauled him back onto his feet.

“Where?” Longarm demanded.

“He

he’ll kill me if I tell you.”

“A judge will kill you if you don’t. Tell me and I might, just might, keep him separate from you when I haul your ass off to prison. Keep it to yourself, Carter, and when I do find him, man, I’ll tell him it was you who told me where to look.”

“God, Marshal, you can’t do this to me,” Carter wailed.

“Oh, but I can,” Longarm said calmly. “If you don’t mind a suggestion, though, I think it’s a little late to be thinking about God. I expect He’s pretty disappointed in you by now. Now are you going to tell me or not?”

“Yes,” Carter sobbed. “I’ll tell you where to find him.”

Longarm listened patiently while Jamison Carter blubbered out everything he knew and probably somewhat more. Only then did the angry deputy release the creepy weasel from the handcuffs and shove him into a cell.

“Frye!” Longarm bellowed down the staircase. “Go get Arnold Batson. Tell him to bring some of his people and meet me here on the double.”

Young Frye looked confused again. He had been expecting screams and all he heard was some crying and babble from upstairs. But he did as he was told.

Chapter Forty-Two

Batson motioned for them to stop, then leaned closer to Longarm. “That’s it, Marshal. The Pearly Number Two. You can see from the size of it that they never got far developing it. Low-grade ore and getting worse as they went in, so they quit before they had even more money sunk in it and wasted. There’s probably not more’n a half mile of tunnel in there.”

He made that sound like it wasn’t much, although to Longarm a half mile of digging through solid rock was one hell of a lot. Still, he knew that an active, established mine could have literally miles of tunnels and shafts underground.

Longarm frowned and tried to get a better look at the area. It was dark, somewhere past nine o’clock, and the moon was obscured by cloud cover.

The mouth of what once was the Pearly Number two yawned dark against the mountainside. Some regular shapes laid out on the ground would have been where buildings once stood, but their wood had long since been carried away and put to other uses. Now there was only a more or less level clearing in front of the tunnel. And damned few places where a man could take cover if it came to a gunfight. Longarm hoped he could resolve it without that, though.