Longarm & the Bandit Queen

“I don’t know how he could!” Susanna retorted. “He started to say something, then all of a sudden he died! That’s all!”

Longarm came up, took Susanna’s arms, and led her away from the table. She was trembling but not crying. He took her outside to the porch and sat her down on the bench. In the house, he heard Floyd say to Belle and Sam, “By God, he’s dead, all right.”

“Too bad,” Belle said. “Damned if you’re not having rough luck, Floyd. Maybe we’d just better call off that job we figured on. Seems to me like there’s a jinx on it.”

“No, by God!” Floyd replied angrily. “We’re not calling off anything, Belle! I’m holding you to your word! We’ll find somebody to fill in for Mckee and Lonnie, even if you and Sam have to take their places.”

“Now that’s something to think about,” Belle said slowly. “I’ve dressed like a man before; I don’t see why I couldn’t do it again. Borrow a pair of Bobby’s pants and a shirt, paste on a false horsetail mustache. I guess I could still carry it off.” Sam said quietly, “I don’t think you could, Belle. You’ve got pretty big in the ass lately.”

“Well, damn you, Sam!”

There was the sound of a slap, and Sam came running out the door, clattered across the porch, and disappeared into the barn. Belle came to the door after him.

“Where’d he go?” she asked Longarm. “No husband of mine is going to make snide remarks about my figure! You think it’s all right, don’t you, Windy? You don’t think my butt’s too big?”

“You look just fine to me, Belle,” Longarm said. He thought he might divert her from pursuing the luckless Sam. “Of course, I never did see you before just recently, so I don’t know what you used to look like.”

“Well, I haven’t changed all that much,” Belle snapped. She pulled her skirt tightly around her hips and swayed in front of Longarm. “See?”

“I don’t know what you’re all thinking about!” Susanna burst out. “Lonnie just died, and everybody’s fighting and arguing! Windy, is there somewhere around here that you can take me where I can just be quiet a little while?”

“Sure, Susanna. I’ll walk you down to my cabin. You’re tuckered out anyhow, and you need to rest up awhile.”

Belle said, “Listen, missy. You’re new at this game. I’m Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, and I’ve seen a lot of men die, including a husband or two. You’ll find out, after you’ve been around awhile, that when something bad happens, you can’t waste time mourning over it. You grit your teeth and laugh if you can, and you go on living!”

“Well, it seems real heartless to me!” Susanna said. Her eyes were still dry, but her mouth was drawn down at the corners and her chin was trembling.

“You’ll think differently after you’ve lived a little bit longer,” Belle said. Then, turning to Longarm, “Go ahead, Windy. Take her down to your place and let her sleep a while; that’s what she needs. You come back when you get hungry. Sam’s going to have breakfast ready pretty soon.”

As they walked across the rough, rock-strewn soil of Younger’s Bend to the cabin Longarm was supposed to be occupying, the lawman realized that Susanna was suffering from exhaustion as well as from a delayed reaction to Taylor’s death. She stumbled several times on pebbles during the short walk from the house, and, halfway there, her legs began to tremble and her body to wobble.

“Help me, Windy!” she pleaded. “I don’t think I can walk the rest of the way by myself.”

Longarm put an arm around Susanna and supported her until they got into the cabin. He led her to one of the bunks. She slumped down on it, and he lifted her legs onto the tattered mattress. “Thank you, Windy,” she said. “All of a sudden, I’m so… soo… sleepy…”

Her words trailed off with a sigh. Her breathing, which had been ragged, almost spasmodic, settled down into the easy regularity of sleep. Longarm stood for a moment, looking down at her.

Now, in real light, he could see that she must be past her mid-twenties. At the corners of her eyes, fine lines promised crow’s-feet soon to show. Delicate lines were also faintly visible running from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth. The mouth itself was almost perfectly circular, with lip-peaks and corners almost imperceptible; her lips were virtually the same width all the way around the small, slightly protruding teeth that showed when her lips were parted with her breathing. Her chin was round, like that of a child whose face is just settling into adulthood. Under her thin dress, the twin globes of firm, round breasts jutted high. Her long ashen hair lay tumbled around her head and shoulders.

Longarm left Susanna sleeping and walked back to the house, where the argument had shifted from the job planned by Floyd to a dispute over who was going to dig Taylor’s grave.

“Damned if I’m going to push that shovel into this hard dirt ever again!” Floyd proclaimed. “Mckee was my partner a long time. Taylor I don’t hardly know.”

“You’ll have to bury him then, Sam,” Belle told Starr, who had apparently returned from the barn. “But if you can get Floyd to help you carry him up to the grove, you can put off digging his grave until Yazoo shows up to help you.”

Longarm waited outside until Starr and Floyd came out, carrying Taylor’s body between them. He’d learned the army lesson that began somewhere in the dim past, with Attila’s hordes or Caesar’s legions, never to volunteer. When Floyd and Starr rounded the corner of the house on their way to the grove, he went inside.

Belle sat in a chair at the table, staring at the bloodstained tabletop. “You’ll have to wait until Sam gets back and scrubs the table before we can have breakfast,” she said. “Unless you want to wash it yourself.”

“I’ll wait,” Longarm told her curtly. “I want a drink before I eat, anyhow.”

“There’s coffee on the stove and some whiskey left in the bottle,” she informed him. “Take your choice.”

“Meaning no offense toward your whiskey, Belle, but I’ve got what’s left of a bottle of Maryland rye out in the barn. I’ll just step out and get it.”

“What’s wrong with Younger’s Bend whiskey?” she demanded. “Yazoo is as good a whiskey-maker as any you’ll find in a regular distillery.”

“Oh, there ain’t a thing wrong with your liquor, if a man relishes corn whiskey. Just happens I’ve got a taste for rye.”

“Have what you choose,” she said curtly. “I don’t give a damn.”

Not wanting to offend her further by bringing his bottle of rye into the house, Longarm had a sip in the barn, lighted a fresh cheroot, and had a second sip before going back. Yazoo was there, and relatively sober. His eyes were rheumy, but his speech was plain and unslurred by liquor.

The old man nodded. “Morning, Windy. I hear things got sorta roiled up again down here last night.”

“A little bit,” Longarm agreed. “Maybe that’ll be the last of it, though.”

“It better be the last of it!” Belle said. Her voice was sharp with anger. “I don’t want Younger’s Bend getting a reputation as a place where people go to die!” She stamped into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

“Belle gets that way now and again,” Yazoo chuckled. He saw the whiskey bottle; there was only a half-inch of liquor left in it. “Just what I need to tide me over until breakfast.” He tilted the bottle and drained it.

“You make pretty fair moonshine up at your stillhouse, Yazoo,” Longarm observed. “Turn out a lot for sale, I guess, besides what Sam and Belle use around the place here—them and Belle’s guests?”

“Three barrels a week,” Yazoo boasted. “Got customers coming to get it from as far off as Shawnee and Pawhuska and Talequah and Talihini, and a lot from Fort Smith. Yessir! Belle’s got a real good business going here!”

“It’s a wonder the feds don’t come after you,” Longarm said. “At your age, I’d hate to face up to going to the pen.”

“Shit!” Yazoo spat. “I been turning out moonshine for a long spell, Windy, and I never spent a day in the pen for making it. Closest I come was one time up in Wyoming Territory. Had me a big still up on Horse Creek between Cheyenne and Laramie, and got hauled in. Didn’t do time, though. Judge let me go. I figured he’d drank the evidence, from the way he looked.”

Something clicked in Longarm’s memory. Now he recalled where he’d seen Yazoo before. He’d been waiting in federal court to give evidence in another case when the old man—younger, then, and looking a lot different—had gone on trial.

To get Yazoo’s mind off his story, he said quickly, “I looked for you to be drawn down here to the house last night, what with all the ruckus that was being raised.”

“I didn’t hear a bit of it,” Yazoo said. “Slept the night through like a baby.” He looked at the empty bottle that he still held. “I guess while I’m waiting for Sam to fix breakfast, I’ll go back up and bring down a few more bottles for the house. Walk along with me, if you want a look at my still.”

“No. No, thanks, Yazoo. I done all my running around last night.”

“Suit yourself.” Yazoo shook his head. “Damn me, every time I talk to you, Windy, it almost comes back to me where I run into you afore. I’ll recall, one of these days.”

Yazoo ambled out the door and headed for the stillhouse. Longarm felt like sighing with relief. He’d had a nervous moment when he realized that Yazoo’s memory of his old arrest might be all that was needed to remind him of the time when his track and Longarm’s had crossed before. He was almost glad to see Starr and Floyd come in. Starr went directly to the stove and began clattering pots and pans in preparation for cooking breakfast. Floyd picked up the empty whiskey bottle and stood looking at it for a moment, then he turned to Longarm, scowling.

“Damn you, Windy! You guzzled the last of the moonshine, and I was saving that drink for when I got back from carrying Taylor up the hill!”

Floyd drew back the hand holding the bottle, and was just about to throw it into the corner of the room when Belle came in.

“don’t do that, Floyd.” Her voice was low, but it had the lash of a whip in it.

Floyd lowered the hand holding the bottle. “Windy got the drink I was saving for myself!” he complained.

“No, he didn’t,” Belle said. “Windy told me he doesn’t especially like corn whiskey. He went out to the barn and had a drink from his own bottle of rye.”

“You don’t say! I guess you followed him and watched, since you’re so damn certain?”

“I didn’t have to. I heard Yazoo talking in here a few minutes ago. And I don’t want you to sass me anymore, Floyd. Just remember who you’re talking to from now on.”

Starr paid no attention to the exchange between Belle and Floyd. He brought a pan of water to the table and began scrubbing away the bloodstains left by Taylor.

Longarm said, “Yazoo’ll be back in a few minutes. He went up to get some more whiskey. You won’t have to wait long for your drink, Floyd.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Floyd snapped.

Belle stamped her foot. “Another thing, Floyd. I want you to stop trying to pick a fight with Windy. He’s been holding back, I can tell that, to keep from arguing with you. Now, I want you two to get along together, Floyd. Remember, you’re going to need somebody to take Mckee’s and Taylor’s places if you expect to pull off that job we’ve been working up.”

“Oh, now hold up a minute, Belle! You don’t expect me to take Windy in on that! Not after he killed Mckee!”

“It was a fair shootout,” Belle said. “And I told you right after it happened that it wasn’t any of your affair what kind of grudge there was between Mckee and Windy.”

“It sticks in my craw, just the same,” Floyd protested. “Anyhow, I thought it was all settled for you and Sam to fill in for Mckee and Taylor.”

“We might, and we might not,” Belle replied. “I haven’t made up my mind yet. But I’ve seen Windy in action. I know what he can do.”

“Now let’s stop this kind of talk right here,” Longarm said firmly. “I feel just about like Floyd does, but maybe not for the same reasons. Belle, before you start including me in any job you and Floyd or anybody else has cooked up, you better find out first if I want to be cut in.”

“I just haven’t gotten around to it yet, Windy. But it’s a big job, and there’ll be good money in it for all of us.”

“That’s as it may be. But I don’t know anything about Floyd or Steed or Bobby. Or, come right down to it, about you and Sam, except for what I’ve heard here and there. I don’t say I won’t talk about getting in, but I don’t let anybody put me up for anything before I say yes.”

“Strikes me you’re just a mite too damn particular for us to fool with, Windy,” Floyd said.

“Maybe I am, but I’m still walking around, and I aim to stay this way. I won’t go into anything blind,” Longarm said flatly.

Sam Starr interrupted the discussion by dropping plates with a clatter on the tabletop. “Breakfast’s ready,” he announced. “Sit down and eat before it gets cold.”

“We’ll talk about things later,” Belle said as she moved toward the table. She might have been addressing either Longarm or Floyd. “Let’s get breakfast over so Sam can clean things up. He’s got a job to get to right away.”

Halfway through the silent, strained meal, Yazoo joined them. He came in with two bottles of whiskey under each arm, and set a bottle at each end of the table before depositing the other two in one of the KC Baking Powder boxes.

Floyd drank corn moonshine instead of coffee throughout the meal. The liquor, on his almost empty stomach, made him sleepy. He finished first and stood up unsteadily. “I’m going to get myself forty winks,” he announced to the table in general. “You go ahead and have your talk with Windy, Belle. Then you and me will sit down and settle things, once and for all.” When he’d gone, Belle said to Longarm, “We’ll have that talk while Sam and Yazoo are up at the grove burying Taylor. And don’t worry about Floyd. You can see how he’s coming around.”

Longarm didn’t see, but he wasn’t going to tell Belle that he hadn’t noticed much of a change in Floyd’s attitude. He’d be suspicious if Floyd did welcome him in on whatever illegal project Belle had come up with. In fact, the minute Floyd agreed to add him to the group, it would be a signal that the surly outlaw had decided to accept Longarm and use him in carrying out the job, with the idea that there would be a back-shooting or a fatal accident when things were over, which would keep Longarm from being on hand to claim a share of the loot. Bandits had been known to kill other bandits for no more reason than that, and in Floyd’s case there was the extra motive provided by Longarm’s killing of Mckee.

All of them had just about finished eating when Floyd left. In a few minutes, Sam Starr stood up and said, “Whenever you’re ready, we’ll go on up and do our job, Yazoo.”

“Guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.” The old man stood up. He picked up one of the bottles from the table and put it under his arm. “I’ll just take this along, Sam. Grave-digging gets to be real dry work.”

“And don’t forget Steed and Bobby,” Belle reminded Sam. “I told them you’d bring some breakfast up to them.”

“I haven’t forgot,” Starr replied. “I’ll take care of them, Belle. You don’t have to worry.”

“We’ve got the place to ourselves until noon,” Belle told Longarm after Sam and Yazoo had gone. “Plenty of time for a private talk and a chance to get better acquainted.”

“Let’s get down to business, then,” Longarm said. “You know I’m not looking around for something to do right now. It ain’t like I was broke and needed to put a stake together.”

“I know that, Windy,” Belle broke in. “I saw that poke you’re carrying, remember, when you paid your rent yesterday. You must’ve pulled off a big job. It’s funny, though, I haven’t heard about any really big hauls lately. Where were you working?”

“Far enough away so the news wouldn’t have reached here yet. And in my regular line, there’s a lot of things I do that are kept quiet.”

That, Longarm thought, was the real truth.

“That money you’ve got won’t last forever, Windy,” Belle pointed out. “You’d be better off adding to it while you’ve got the chance than letting this job of mine slip by you. It’s big enough to interest you, I know. What I’ve got planned-“

“Now hold on a minute, Belle.” Longarm didn’t want to seem too anxious to learn the details of Belle’s scheme. He’d maneuvered her into inviting him in, and right now she’d reached the point where nothing in’the world was going to stop her from telling him all about it. The less interested he appeared to be, the harder she was going to try to get him in, which meant that she’d spill all the details of her plans, once he let her get started talking.

Longarm went on, “I better tell you first off that I’m not much for partnering. When a man works by himself, he’s got nobody to split with. And when the job’s finished, there’s nobody who can point a finger at him and say he did it.”

“Oh, I can understand that. I’ve only had one really good partner myself, and that was my first husband-” Belle stopped and then added hastily, “First except for Cole Younger, that is. Of course, Cole and me hadn’t been married long when he got caught, and he’s been in the pen ever since.”

“I recall Cole had some bad luck,” Longarm told her. “But I never was around the places where the Jameses and the Youngers worked.”

Belle was still caught up in her sentimental reminiscences. “I don’t guess you ever met my second husband, either. He was the one I meant when I said I’d only had one good partner. Jim Reed.” She looked at Longarm and sighed. “Except that Jim was darker, you remind me a lot of Jim.”

“I’ve heard a little bit about him,” Longarm said truthfully. “Got cut down while he was getting away from a mail-coach job, didn’t he?”

“Yes.” Belle stood up and began to pace back and forth across the small room. “Poor Jim would still be alive if I’d been able to go with him to take that mail coach. I was carrying our baby, though, our boy, Ed.”

She picked up one of the bottles of t. “Ed’s in a private school back in Missouri right now, you know. So is my other baby, Pearl. That’s the beautiful girl I got from Cole. She’s dark, like me. Thank God, she didn’t turn out to be blonde and look like a floozie.”

Belle resumed her nervous pacing. “They’re why I’ve got to keep busy, Windy. You know, it costs a lot of money to keep both of them in the best schools there are.”

“Sure. I can see that, Belle,” Longarm replied. “And I know you’ve had bad luck with this job, coming up shorthanded the way you are.”

“Now, if Jim Reed was still alive, it wouldn’t bother me a bit.”

Belle took another drink. “You know, Windy, I guess one reason why I want you to be with us on this job is that you remind me so much of Jim. If your hair was just a little bit longer, and you didn’t wear your mustache so big…”

Longarm cut in, “If Jim Reed was going out on a job, would he have been fool enough to partner up with somebody carrying the sort of grudge against him that Floyd’s got against me?”

“No. Jim would get rid of Floyd.”

“I draw the line at that, Belle. The only time I throw down on a man is if it’s him or me.”

“I didn’t mean that the way you took it. But you don’t have to worry about Floyd, Windy, I keep telling you that. He’s not calling the shots, I am.”

Longarm frowned thoughtfully. “You said it’s a big job. I don’t know this country real well, but I can’t think of a small town around here where you’d find a whole lot of loose money. Are you sure you’re not aiming too high? I wouldn’t want to get caught up in a squeeze like the James boys did in Northfield.”

“Hell, some dirty skunk tipped off the local law in Northfield.”

Belle took another swallow from the bottle she was still carrying around as she paced. “That’s one thing we don’t have to worry about here. Even if somebody did pass on a tip, the local law wouldn’t do anything about it.”

Longarm studied the smug expression that had crept onto Belle’s face. Then he asked, “Are you telling me you’ve got the marshal or the sheriff paid off, wherever it is your bunch will hit?”

“How do you think I got to be Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen? Listen, Windy, I pay off the law—or enough of it to be safe—in most of the towns just outside this part of the Nation.”

“Well, now.” Longarm acted as though Belle’s boast had impressed him. “That might change my mind about things.” Then, as though he still needed more persuasion, he went on, “But I’d still want to know more about it. Outside of Fort Smith, which I hear is a pretty good-sized place, I’d say there’s not a bank in any town hereabouts that’d carry enough cash to make a good payoff for five or six men.”

“What’s wrong with Fort Smith?” Belle asked.

For a moment Longarm was so astonished that he forgot to carry on with his acting. He stared at Belle, surprised. Then he caught himself up and shook his head. “I don’t know all that much about the place, but from what I’ve heard, it’s too big for five men to handle. Or fifty, if you come down to cases.”

“There are two big banks there,” Belle said. “Both of them are big enough to make it worth the trouble.”

“I don’t know, Belle.” Longarm shook his head. “Sounds pretty risky. Hell, there’s bound to be too many marshals and deputies in a place like that for you to have all of them bought off.”

“You’d be surprised if you knew how many I could make jump if I just said froggy,” Belle said with a smirk. She was confident, now, that she was going to succeed in bringing Longarm into her scheme, and she showed it. “Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Oh, I won’t argue with that, Belle,” Longarm told her. “I’ll go this far, right now. You let me do a little thinking about it. And while I’m thinking, you do some talking with Floyd. If everything works out, I just might change my mind about throwing in with you on this job.”

“I thought you’d come around,” she said. “Let’s have a drink on it.”

She held out the bottle.

“I’ll drink with you, but I’ll go get my own whiskey, if it’s all the same to you. Corn liquor just hits my belly in the wrong place.”

Belle was miffed, but tried not to show it. She said, “That’s your choice, Windy. Go get your bottle.” Her voice dropped to a suggestive whisper. “I’ll wait until you come back.”

Footsteps grated on the hard ground outside and clumped on the porch. Longarm stifled a sigh of relief. It didn’t matter to him who was coming in; he wasn’t going to be caught by Belle.

Floyd said from the doorway, “Damn it, Belle, I couldn’t get to sleep for worrying about that job. Mckee, then Taylor. I’ve got the feeling our luck’s gone sour.”

Longarm spoke quickly. “You two’ll want to talk private, I can see that. Belle, we’ll have that drink later. I’ll get out of the way now, so you and Floyd can get things straightened out.”

Before Belle could object, Longarm was outside the house. He collected his gear from the barn. Taylor’s saddlebags caught his eye and he picked them up; there might, he thought, be something in them the girl would need when she awoke. With his bedroll, his Winchester, and the two pairs of saddlebags weighing him down, he walked the short distance to the cabin.

CHAPTER 10

Susanna was still asleep when Longarm entered the cabin. He moved as quietly as possible to avoid rousing her. He let his saddlebags slide quietly to the floor in the corner beyond the stove and put his bedroll beside them, then leaned his rifle against the wall just inside the door. He thought for a moment of going back up to the house and leaving Susanna to sleep undisturbed, but decided he’d be better off if he stayed clear of Belle, Floyd, Sam, and the rest of the Younger’s Bend bunch.

Stepping lightly on the wide floorboards, he pulled the almost empty bottle of rye from his saddlebag and put it on the table, then lighted a cheroot. He settled down in one of the chairs. It creaked when it took his weight. Susanna stirred and woke up. For a moment she stared at the ceiling, then the aroma of Longarm’s cigar reached her. She twisted her head on the pillowless bunk, looked at him, and sat up. Her long, tousled blonde hair cascaded over her shoulders, and her eyes were still glazed with sleep.

“Oh,” she said. “Windy. I guess I was a little confused for a minute. I sort of forgot where I am.”

“You feel better, now that you’ve had a good sleep?”

“Yes. At least I think I do.” Susanna yawned and stretched. “I guess I’m hungry, though. And I need to…” She stopped and looked around the bare little cabin. “I need to go to the outhouse.”

“It’s not far off. Up the slope a ways. It’s toward the house, and if you want me to go with you while you get some breakfast, I’ll be glad to.”

Her brows drew together in a frown. “I’m hungry, Windy, but I don’t think I could stand to sit down and eat off that table where I saw Lonnie die last night. I’d lose my appetite for sure.”

“Tell you what. We’ll walk up together and I’ll go get you some breakfast on a plate, and we’ll come back down here while you eat.”

“That’d be fine, if you don’t mind. I don’t mean to be a lot of trouble to you, but-well, even as hungry as I am, I just-I just couldn’t stand to eat off that table right now.”

“Come on, then, if you’re ready.”

Before they reached the house, they saw Sam Starr and Yazoo coming back from their unpleasant job in the grove. Longarm told Susanna, “You run on ahead. I want to have a word with those two.”

Yazoo greeted Longarm while they were still a dozen paces apart. “You’re the damnedest one I ever seen, Windy. Where in hell did you find that blonde-headed woman? Prettiest thing I seen since I been here at Younger’s Bend.”

“She’s Taylor’s woman,” Longarm told him. “I let her sleep in my cabin. She didn’t feel like staying in the house after Taylor died.”

“I got to give you credit,” Yazoo chuckled. “You sure didn’t let no grass grow under your feet.”

The oldtimer had obviously been lightening the job of grave-digging with a sip of corn for every shovelful of dirt, so Longarm let Yazoo’s remarks pass. He said to Starr. “I hate to put you to extra trouble, but Susanna’s hungry, and I don’t think there was much left from breakfast except a few biscuits. If you wouldn’t mind, could you stir up a bite for her?”

“I don’t mind, Windy. I’ll get at it right now, before Belle finds some new job for me to do.” Yazoo said, “I want a closer look at that yellow-haired girl. You get to be my age, Windy, you’ll find about all you can do is look. Now, you go on back down to the cabin with her, and I’ll bring her breakfast down there when I start back to the stillhouse.”

“I’d take that right kindly, Yazoo. Susanna’s still upset about last night, and I’d as soon not leave her by herself.”

“Now, I just can’t imagine why,” Yazoo chortled as he followed Starr toward the house.

Susanna joined Longarm a few moments later. Her face showed her disappointment when she saw he was empty-handed. “Wasn’t there anything for breakfast?” she asked.

“Don’t worry. We’ll just go back to the cabin and wait a few minutes. Your breakfast’s going to be coming right along.”

Susanna looked puzzled, but she walked with Longarm back to the cabin. She spoke only once, to ask, “Those two men—Mr. Starr and the old one—they were carrying shovels. Had they been…”

“They buried him up on the hill there. If you want, we can walk up and look, after while.”

“No. I don’t think so, Windy. Lonnie’s gone, and that’s that. It wasn’t-” She stopped short, shook her head. “I guess there’s not much else to say, is there?”

Susanna was thoughtfully silent while they waited for Yazoo, and maintained her silence while she ate. Longarm didn’t try to encourage her to talk. Susanna was young, she hadn’t seen enough of life yet to know that death is inevitable and comes in a fashion that seems arbitrary and undiscriminating and always unfair. He sat across the table from her, sipping rye while she ate.

Having cleared her plate, Susanna sighed and stretched. “I guess I was hungrier than I realized. It was—goodness, it seems like a year since I had anything to eat. But it’s really only been since yesterday.”

“You’ve been through an awful lot since then,” he pointed out.

“Let’s don’t talk about it, Windy, please. All I want to do is forget everything that’s happened since Lonnie first found me, there in Texarkana.”

“Maybe that’s what you think you want, but I ain’t sure it’s the best thing,” Longarm told her. “I’ve found out that the things you try to bury have got a mean way of popping up to plague you later on, when they ain’t welcome or wanted. Maybe it’d help if you was to get it all out of your system.”

Susanna thought this over for a moment. “You might be right, Windy,” she said slowly. “I tried to forget about things that had happened to me at home, after I’d left. I never could really put them out of my mind, though.”

“If you feel like talking, I’m ready to listen.” Longarm didn’t feel at all ashamed that he had an ulterior motive in making the suggestion. If Susanna began to tell him of her days with Taylor, she might let a few things fall that would help him.

She stood up and walked the length of the little cabin, then came back to the table before she answered him. “It might be too soon to talk about all of it. But there are a few things that keep bothering me.”

“Such as what?”

Susanna didn’t reply any more quickly this time than she had to his earlier suggestion. She went to the bunk and sat down, crossing her ankles in front of her on the mattress, Indian-style. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back. Her throat was a clean column from chin to shoulders, her long hair a stream of white framing her face. Her low-cut dress exposed the slope of her shoulders, and Longarm could see, in the hollows of her collarbones, the pulsation of her heartbeat.

Longarm didn’t try a second time to encourage her to begin talking. He waited patiently until at last she said, “Most of what bothers me is about me and Lonnie. I keep wondering if he might still be alive if he hadn’t taken me along with him. You see, if I hadn’t been with him, he wouldn’t have had to buy me a horse and clothes, and he’d have had enough money to get him to Younger’s Bend without his having to stop and steal some. Then the posse wouldn’t have been after him, and he’d have gotten here safe and sound.”

“You figure you’re to blame, some way or other?”

“Well, don’t you think I am?”

“Not for a minute, Susanna. It-“

“Windy,” she interrupted. “Do me a favor. Please don’t call me Susanna anymore. I left that name behind me too long ago. Anyhow, that’s what Lonnie called me. Susanna or Susie or Sue.”

“Whatever you want. Only I wouldn’t know what else to call you.”

“I told you last night. Maybe you weren’t listening. Dolly. That’s the name I’ve been going by almost from the time I left home.”

“Sure, I recall what you said now. Belle laughed you down, told you it was a made-up name out of a book. But if it makes you feel better, I’ll call you Dolly from here on out.”

“Thanks.” After a few seconds of thoughtful silence, she asked, “Why don’t you think I’m to blame for what happened to Lonnie?”

“Because a man’s going to live out his appointed time. It don’t matter if it’s two years or two hundred, he ain’t going to go a day sooner or a day later.”

“Do you really believe that, Windy?”

“I sure do. You’re too young to remember the War. But I saw men hit on one side of me and on the other, in front of me and in back of me. And there’s only one way I can see that explains why one of the bullets that took their lives didn’t hit me. It just plain wasn’t my time to go.”

“I never did think of it that way,” she said softly.

“You think about it, then. It’s a mighty comforting way to look at things. If it hadn’t been you that your old sweetheart ran into, he’d have come across somebody else.”

“Lonnie and I weren’t really sweethearts, you know,” she said. “Why, we weren’t more than about twelve or thirteen when we thought we’d just been made for one another. And then…”

Longarm waited until he saw that Susanna—Dolly, rather—wasn’t going to go on without encouragement. He said, “Go on, Dolly. Talk it all out of your system.”

“We grew up in the same little town, you know, Lonnie and me. But all we ever did was kiss a few times. Not even real kisses, either. I guess you know what I mean?” Longarm nodded and she went on, “Oh, I liked Lonnie all right, I guess, but it was somebody else that I fell for. Fell real hard. And I thought he fell as hard for me. I guess he did, but not the way I was thinking. He just had a hard-on for me. And all of a sudden I was pregnant. Fifteen years old, Windy. And Phil was already married.”

“So you had to run away.”

“Just about. I was lucky, even if I didn’t understand it at the time. He was well-to-do. When my family turned me away after they found out I was pregnant, he gave me enough money so I didn’t have a bad time while I waited for the baby. And then the baby didn’t live but a week. The thing was, I couldn’t go back home.”

“You said last night that you were working in a saloon when Lonnie bumped into you,” Longarm said.

“Yes. Phil’s money ran out, of course. I found a job, but I found that keeping the job depended on taking care of the boss. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I’d be better off just taking care of men, instead of working behind the counter ten hours and then taking care of one boss who was only paying me for my ten hours behind the counter. So that’s how Lonnie came to find me in a saloon in Texarkana.”

“Somewhere along the way, you’d picked up Dolly Varden for your name,” Longarm said.

“Yes. Damn Belle Starr and her education! She almost ruined that nice name for me. It’s not important, though, Windy. You know, for a while, up until last night, I almost went back to being Susanna Mudgett. That was because of Lonnie. But I intend to go on being Dolly Varden. Do you blame me?”

“Not if it’s what you want to do. I’d say Belle’s a mite jealous of you. You’re a lot younger and prettier than she is. It’s up to you whether you want to be Dolly or Susanna.”

“Right now, I feel like Dolly. I’ll tell you something I didn’t intend to. I don’t think I’d have stayed with Lonnie, even if nothing had happened to him. He made me remember how I was when I was Susanna, and I think I like Dolly better.”

“I’d say you’ve made up your mind, then. As long as you’re sure you won’t regret it.”

“I won’t. And now that I’ve decided to be Dolly, pour me a drink out of that bottle of rye, if you will, Windy. Dolly enjoys a drink. Susanna was always just a little bit of a namby-pamby.”

Longarm handed Dolly the bottle and she tipped it to her mouth. He said, “I don’t suppose you’ll be staying here at Younger’s Bend any longer than you can help.”

“No. For one thing, I don’t like Belle Starr. She’s a nasty old woman who’s pretending to be something she’s not.”

Longarm chuckled, and his respect for Dolly’s good sense rose several notches. Then he grew serious. “When Taylor told you about this job he was coming up here for, did he give you any idea where it was going to be pulled off?”

“No. I-I don’t think Lonnie really trusted me to keep my mouth shut about things like that. He didn’t even tell me where we were going until after he got shot. Then he knew I had to know how to find Younger’s Bend, in case he might not be able to tell me later.”

“And he didn’t tell you anything about Floyd or Steed, either?”

“Just their names. Except that he didn’t mention the young one—Bobby, isn’t that his name?”

“Yes. I don’t reckon Floyd would put a whole lot in a letter. Letters have got a way of getting lost, or going to somebody they weren’t supposed to.”

“Why, Windy? Why are you asking me all these things?”

“Just curious, Dolly. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do; I’ll make a dicker with you, if you’re interested.”

“What kind of dicker?”

“You already said you want to get away from Younger’s Bend. I’ll see that you do that, tomorrow or the next day, and see you on a train with enough money to pay your way to Texarkana or wherever you want to go, and a little bit extra.”

“And what do you want me to do in return?”

“For one thing, I want you to keep Belle Starr off me.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

“Act like you’re getting a case on me, falling for me. If I got Belle judged right, she’s not going to be so hot after me if there’s somebody younger and prettier than her giving her competition.”

“You said that’s one part of the deal. What’s the rest of it?”

“Pester me to take you to Fort Smith, to buy you some new clothes and pretties.”

“Why?”

Longarm shook his head. “If we’re going to deal, you’ve got to take my part of it on trust. I won’t say why.”

Dolly thought about Longarm’s offer for a moment. Then she nodded. “All right, Windy. I’ll hang onto your arm and make sheep-eyes at you whenever we’re around Belle. That won’t be hard to do, but I’ll enjoy it all the more because Belle’s the kind of woman she is. And I’ll certainly keep telling you that I want to go to Fort Smith, because I’d go just about anywhere to get away from Younger’s Bend, and the sooner the better.”

“We got a deal, then, you and me,” Longarm said. “Oh. One more thing. If you’ll take special note of any names you might hear Belle or Sam or Floyd or—well, any of them—any names they might let drop when I’m not around, try to remember and pass them on to me.”

“Just any kind of names?”

“That’s right, Dolly. People or places or whatever.”

The request plainly puzzled her, but she nodded. “All right. I guess that’s not too hard to do.”

“Good.” Longarm glanced out the door. The sun was already dropping down the sky toward late afternoon. “Now, I’ll tell you what. I don’t want to spend any time up at the house before supper. If you’d like to, we could walk down to the river and take a look at it, or throw rocks in the water, or whatever. Or we can stay here in the cabin and talk till supper, whichever you’d rather do.”

“Why can’t we talk while we watch the river?”

“No reason I can see why we shouldn’t.”

“Then lets walk down to the river.”

They spent two pleasant hours talking of nothing Much, just letting time flow by, sitting on the bluff above the Canadian, tossing in a rock and now and then a twig, just to see what the river’s uncertain currents did with it. When the sun dipped below the trees around them and began to shoot horizontal rays through the spaces between the trunks, Longarm said, “We better go on back. I didn’t eat anything at noon, and my belly’s telling me about it.”

“You missed eating on my account, Windy,” Dolly said self-accusingly. “I was telling you all my troubles when you should have been up at the house getting your meal.”

“You were feeling right low about that time,” Longarm said. “It looked to me like you needed somebody to listen to you a lot more than I needed vittles.”

“I was still being Susanna Mudgett then. I was feeling sorry for myself. I couldn’t quite make up my mind whether I’d stay Susanna or go back to being Dolly.”

“I didn’t look at it quite that way,” Longarm said thoughtfully. “But I sure noticed how you changed when you decided to be Dolly.”

“It’s made me feel so good, I can even stand going up to the Starr’s house to eat, even with Belle buzzing around. And I’m getting hungry, thinking about supper, so let’s go.”

As they reached the cluster of cabins, the door to Floyd’s cabin opened, and Floyd came out and walked toward them. Longarm was just about to tell Dolly to be ready to get out of the way if she saw Floyd going for his gun, when the outlaw stopped and spread his arms wide, his hands at mid-thigh. He was not wearing a gun.

Floyd raised his voice and called, “I want to talk to you a minute, Windy.”

Longarm waited until there was only a gap of five or six feet between them before he asked, “You mean, talk private?”

“Yeah. Just you and me.” Longarm said to Dolly, “You go ahead up to the house. I’ll follow along as soon as Floyd and me get through talking.” As the girl moved away, he asked Floyd, “You want to go inside, or just stay here and gab?”

“It won’t take long for me to say what’s on my mind.”

“All right, fire away.”

Floyd had trouble getting out the first words. “I-damn it, I don’t feel right yet about you gunning down Mckee. you might as well know that from the start.”

“I wasn’t looking for you to change your mind, Floyd, even if you know what was behind that as well as I do. Mckee wasn’t a man to forget taking a whipping.”

“He never told me anybody’d wiped him up in a fight.”

“You and Mckee partnered a long time, so I guess you’d know him pretty well. Would he be likely to tell you something like that?”

“No,” Floyd said slowly. “No, I guess not. Well, anyhow, I’ve cooled down about you and him. You and Belle both told me it wasn’t my affair, and I got to admit you’re right.”

“Glad to hear that. I wasn’t looking to have a run-in with you.”

“That ain’t what I wanted to say, though. If you’re of a mind to join me and Steed and Bobby in this job we’ve got set up, we’ll let you come in.”

“That your idea?” Longarm asked. “Or Belle’s?”

“It was Belle’s idea at the start. You know that damned well. Now that I’ve come to see things her way, I guess you can say it’s my idea, too.”

“I don’t know, Floyd. I’d just about made up my mind to move on,” Longarm said. “I still think I might.”

“This is about as safe a place as you’ll find, if you’re on the prod, Windy. If it was me, I’d stay.”

“Well, I ain’t decided yet. And I don’t know anything about this job of yours, so I can’t say yes or no to you about coming in.”

“It’s a big one. There’s going to be a lot of money to split. You might as well have a share of it.”

“If it comes off,” Longarm put in.

“It’ll come off,” Floyd said confidently.

“How many ways are you figuring to split?”

“If you come in, five. Me, Steed, Bobby, and you will take a full share each. Belle and Sam get one between ‘em.”

“How much are you figuring the take will come to? Because splitting nothing five ways leaves all of us with zero.”

“Belle say-“

Longarm broke in emphatically, “I don’t give a pile of hot cow shit for what Belle says. I’m asking you, man to man.”

“Seven thousand, at least. Maybe more.”

Longarm squinted as he did a quick calculation. “That’d make the split fifteen, sixteen hundred. That don’t hardly seem enough to make it worth my trouble, Floyd.”

“Belle says it could go as high as ten thousand. Anyhow, we’ll all be taking the same risk.”

“Belle talks like shit out of a goose that’s been fed green corn—hot and slick and plenty of it.” Floyd said earnestly, “Look here, Windy, I know Belle’s the biggest liar, but in this part of the country she’s money in our pockets.”

“I don’t see how you figure that.”

“Listen, I know as much as anybody does about Belle. I was with Jim Reed when we robbed the Austin mail coach outside of San Antonio. Belle did go out on a job or two with Reed. Then, after she settled down here with Sam, she done some rustling, mostly just buying up the rustled stock and switching brands and selling it up in Kansas or down in Texas. And she does some fencing too, for owlhoots who’ve picked up watches and rings and jewelry and whatnot, and need to turn it into cash. That’s how she got started paying off the marshals and deputies in the little towns just outside of the Nation. She’s got a lot of strings that keep the law tied up, that’s why Belle’s worth something to us.”

Longarm studied Floyd’s face for a moment, then nodded. “I see what you’re getting at, Floyd. Maybe I misjudged Belle. I had her down as a blowhard, all show and no go, riding around with those silver-plated pistols, calling herself the Bandit Queen… And you and me both know Belle nor no other woman ever rode on a job with Frank and Jesse James, like she claims to have done.”

“Sure Belle talks too much,” Floyd agreed. “But most of her and Sam’s split is going to pay for information and for having the marshal and deputies look the other way when we go out on this job.”

“Well, that puts another light on it. I might just change my mind about moving on.”

Floyd studied Longarm’s face for a moment, then he said, “Tell me something straight, Windy. What’s your real handle? The one the law knows you by?”

Longarm shook his head. “Not now, Floyd. It ain’t that I don’t trust you, but if I tell you that, you’ll have an ace on me and I won’t have a damn thing on you until after we’ve pulled a job together.”

Floyd didn’t like Longarm’s answer, and showed his displeasure in his expression. Then he grinned wolfishly and said, “I guess that’s a reasonable way to look at it. And you sure as hell know your way around. Well, how about it? Are you coming in?”

“Maybe, after I’ve heard a little more than I know now.”

“More, meaning what?”

“If you don’t see that, Floyd, you’re not as smart as I took you to be. Tell you what. Right now, I’m as hungry as a bitch wolf right after cubbing. Let’s you and Steed and the boy and me set down and jaw with Belle after supper. If I like what I hear, I’ll tell you then whether I’m in or out.”

CHAPTER 11

There were too many at supper for the table to accommodate. Belle put Longarm, Dolly, Floyd, Steed, and Bobby at the table, and held a place for herself. Sam and Yazoo ate, bending forward uncomfortably in their Chairs, over one of the benches that had been brought in from the porch and placed near the stove. Sam pieced out a meal in quick gulps between jumping up in response to Belle’s frequent calls for him to replenish the dishes on the table.

Longarm was sure that Belle knew of the talk he’d had with Floyd; the outlaw had held a whispered session with her in one corner of the room before they’d sat down. He’d looked for the air to be cleared by his grudging half-decision to join the gang in their job, wherever and whatever it was, but the atmosphere still stayed taut.

There was very little conversation during the meal, in spite of the tongue-loosing that might have been expected from the drinks poured by Floyd and Steed from the fresh bottles of corn liquor Yazoo had brought with him from the stillhouse. Longarm filled a glass out of politeness, but took only the smallest sips possible. Despite the whiskey they consumed, though, Floyd and Steed were unusually silent.

What talk did pass around the table was dominated by Belle. She had been cheerful until she saw Dolly doing as Longarm had requested, clinging to him and lifting her face to him with admiring glances, then she had frozen up. She chattered at length about her children, Ed and Pearl and their problems with the schools they were attending in Missouri. As though by al consent, unhappy subjects such as the deaths of Mckee and Taylor weren’t mentioned.

Longarm grew more and more disgusted as the meal progressed. He’d thought that, with Floyd’s unexpected thawing-out, there would be enough table talk to give him a pretty good idea of the kind of outlawry that was in the offing.

“We’ll go out on the porch,” Belle announced when she saw that everyone had finished eating. “Sam’s going to need to clean up in here and wash the dishes. Yazoo, you’d better help him, since there’s such a pile of them.”

Outside, the air was cool in the early, moonless night. Lamplight from the door spilled out as they found places. Belle and Floyd took the remaining bench; Longarm, with Dolly doing her duty by clinging to him, stood in a corner of the porch, where he could see the other four in the best light. He wasn’t looking for trouble, but knew by instinct that getting a good position in a chancy situation could be the difference between winning and losing. Steed and Bobby settled down on the step; their faces were the only ones that caught the lamplight. Those of the others were vague, whitish blurs in the dark.

Belle said, “I’m glad you finally made up your mind, Windy. Of course, if you hadn’t decided to come in, Sam and I would have gone along. But now that-“

“Wait a minute,” Steed broke in. “If we’re going to talk about the job, what about the girl there?”

“What about her?” Longarm asked. “She’s with me.”

“I’m sure all of us noticed that,” Belle said acidly.

“You know what we decided,” Steed went on. “No talking except amongst us, Belle. No outsiders.”

“I’m not an outsider,” Dolly said. “Lonnie was coming here to join up with you, and he wouldn’t have brought me if he hadn’t thought it was all right.”

“Taylor’s one thing,” Steed insisted. “Me and Floyd knew him. We don’t know a damn thing about Windy.”

Longarm didn’t see much point in setting everybody’s temper on edge with an argument at the very beginning. He said, “All right. She’s not going to be here long, anyhow, but if you don’t want her around while we’re talking, I guess she won’t mind going back to the cabin.”

“I’ll go if you say so, Windy.” There was sugar in Dolly’s voice, and she leaned back to look sweetly at Longarm.

“If Floyd and Steed don’t want her around, she’d better go,” Belle said. “What we’ve got to talk about won’t take long.”

“Go on, then, Dolly,” Longarm nodded. “I’ll be along after while.”

“Now, then,” Belle began when Dolly had flounced off, “I guess we’re all glad that Windy’s going to ride with us.”

“He is?” Bobby asked. “I didn’t know that.”

“I just hadn’t had time to pass the word to you,” Floyd told him. “Go on, Belle. Windy still ain’t sure. Says he wants to know more about how much we figure the take’s going to be and where we’re expecting to get it.” Longarm said curtly, “I don’t buy a pig in a poke, Belle. I made that plain to Floyd when we talked before supper.”

“Don’t worry,” Belle replied confidently. “There’ll be a good split. Crops are coming in at this time of the year, you know, and all the banks keep a lot of cash on hand. Farmers pay back what they’ve borrowed, and the factors that buy the big crops need money to operate with. There’s not a bank across the Arkansas line that won’t be good for ten to fifteen thousand if it’s hit inside of the next month.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Longarm said, “provided you know which bank to pick out. And if you’re damn sure which one’s going to be the easiest to take.”

“I told you not to worry,” Belle retorted. “I know which of the banks in Fort Smith-“

“Fort Smith?” Longarm interrupted. “That sounds awful damned risky. A lot of town marshals there. Sheriff’s deputies too, and a whole big bunch of federal marshals. At least that’s the way I heard it.”

“I explained to him how you’ve got strings out on a lot of the law, Belle,” Floyd said quickly. “But Windy still ain’t satisfied. Maybe you can tell him more than I could.”

“I’m sure I could, but I don’t intend to,” Belle said tartly. She swiveled on the bench to face Longarm. “I just wanted to see what you’d say when I mentioned Fort Smith, Windy, but I’m like you—I wouldn’t look at that place twice. No, we won’t be taking one of the banks there, not with just four men. We’ll go to one of the little places. There’s three or four towns a little way over the Arkansas line where there’s only one bank, but it’ll have close to twenty thousand in the safe for the next month. And it’s in the little towns where I’ve got the marshals hogtied.”

“I like that better,” Longarm told her. “Now, when will we be riding?”

“Not for a few days.” Belle frowned. “Maybe a week. I’ve got to hear from my friends across the line before I’ll know when the right time will be.”

Longarm nodded. “That suits me fine. I’ve got a little business of my own that I need to take care of. I can tend to it and get back in plenty of time.”

“What kind of business?” Floyd asked; suspicion dripped from his words.

“Not anything real important. I promised Dolly I’d take her to the train so she can go home.” He dropped into a deprecating tone and added, “She’s getting to bother me. I can’t afford to have a woman like her hanging on me, you men know that.”

“Yeah,” Floyd replied. He seemed relieved. “well, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Do you, Belle?”

“No. I’ll be as glad as Windy will be to get her away from here. Taylor made a mistake in bringing her along with him in the first place.” Steed asked Longarm, “It’s all settled, then?”

“If you men and Belle are satisfied, so am I.” He turned to Belle. “We’ll be coming back here to Younger’s Bend to hole up after the job, I expect? I don’t feel like I want to go back on the prod right away.”

“That’s something else you won’t have to worry about, Windy,” Belle said. “You make a clean getaway without any federal marshals chasing you into the Nation, and you’ll be safe from the law here as long as you feel like staying.”

“All right. It’s settled as far as I’m concerned, then.” Longarm stood up. “Now I’ll go down to the cabin and tell the girl to get ready to ride into Fort Smith tomorrow. And as soon as I get her on the train to Kansas, I’ll be back.”

“You guarantee we can count on that?” Floyd asked.

“You damn sure can, Floyd,” Longarm said feelingly. “This is one job I don’t intend to miss out on!”

An excited, sparkling-eyed Dolly greeted Longarm at the door of the cabin. She said, her words tumbling out all over each other, “Come look what I’ve found, Windy!”

She took Longarm’s hand and led him to the table. A pile of currency rose from its center. Around the edges were a half-dozen items: a sheath knife, a pile of pistol cartridges, two pairs of socks, several bandannas, a tin cup, three battered cigars with split wrappers, a block of matches, a bag of ground coffee, and some scraggy scraps of jerky. The heap of greenbacks dominated everything, however.

“Looks like there’s quite a wad there,” Longarm said.

“Nearly a thousand dollars. I counted it.”

“It’s out of Taylor’s saddlebags, ain’t it?” Longarm asked.

“Yes. I wanted to bathe, and looked in them for some soap. And there it was, all that money.”

“Must be what he got when he left you in that cave.”

“Of course. I’m sure it is. He held up a bank, I guess. I don’t know where, or anything about it. Lonnie didn’t tell me. But that doesn’t matter, Windy. I want you to have it. You’ve been so good to me.”

Longarm looked at the money thoughtfully. If he took it, he’d see that it got back somehow to the place Taylor had stolen it from. He’d just hand it over to Gower and let him see to returning it. But he couldn’t tell Dolly that, and felt he ought to press her to keep it. A false step now might endanger the image he’d created with Belle and the outlaws.

He said, “I don’t need a dead man’s money, Dolly. You’re entitled to it. You’ll need it. We’re going out tomorrow to Fort Smith, and I’ll see you on a train for wherever you feel like heading.”

“No. It’d remind me of Lonnie and Susanna Mudgett. I want to forget both of them.”

“All right. If you’re sure you don’t want it, I’ll keep it, and I thank you most kindly.”

“You said we were going out tomorrow? That’s something else I have to thank you for.”

Dolly threw her arms around Longarm and raised herself on tiptoe to kiss him. He bent to meet her, expecting the kiss to be only a friendly one. It turned into something more. Dolly’s tongue pushed his lips apart, and Longarm responded as any man would. He caught Dolly up in his arms and pulled her to him. Her hips pushed against his groin and he felt himself getting hard.

Dolly broke the kiss to whisper, “It’s getting late, and if we’re going to start traveling tomorrow, we’ll need to rest tonight, Windy. Don’t you think it’s about time you blew out the lamp so we can go to bed?”

“If you want to,” Longarm replied. Then, as an afterthought, he asked, “This ain’t something more like the money, is it? You ain’t asking me just because you feel like you owe me something?”

“No. I wanted you to come to bed with me when I woke up this morning and saw you looking at me. I’ve wanted all day for you to grab me up and hold me and kiss me, but you never did make a move to.”

Longarm blew out the lamp before he said, “I guess I figured it was too soon after-“

“After Lonnie?” she finished for him. “I guess it would be, for Susanna. But I’m Dolly now, remember?”

Side by side in the sudden darkness, they groped along the cabin wall until they reached one of the bunks. Longarm heard the soft rustling of cloth as Dolly drew her dress over her head. She pushed against him and the delicate fragrance of freshly soaped woman-skin wafted to his nostrils. He felt her fingers find his as he unbuckled his gunbelt and laid it beside the bunk, then she was working at the buttons of his trousers as he undid his shirt. He stepped out of his pants and stripped off his balbriggans. Then Dolly’s flesh pressed against his.

The hard nipples of her round, soft breasts brushed across his chest, and her hands ran down his lean hips and found his growing erection. She guided it between her thighs and closed her legs. Pulling his head down, Dolly found Longarm’s lips while she moved her hips gently back and forth.

Longarm was hard now, but Dolly seemed in no hurry, and he was contented to let her set the timing. He cupped his hand around her breast. His calloused fingers moved back and forth between their close-pressed bodies, rubbing a nipple almost as hard, now, as his fingertips.

Dolly changed the motion and rhythm of her hips. She began rotating them while still rocking back and forth. Longarm lifted her and eased her to the narrow bunk, lowering himself on top of her.

“No, Not yet,” Dolly said. She squeezed her thighs tightly together and whispered, “Here. Let me show you.”

Longarm felt her hands at his hips, raising them. He let her guide him, and she pulled his hips forward. He crawled on his knees until his spread legs straddled her waist. Dolly’s hands moved from his hips to grasp his erection, and she arched her back, setting herself below him. Soft warmth surrounded him and he realized that she’d tucked his hard length between her breasts and was pushing them together. Her knee came up and prodded his back. Longarm began to move back and forth in the valley between her breasts. “I like to feel a man on me for a while first,” Dolly said huskily. She bent her head forward, and each time Longarm reached the end of one of his strokes, her tongue darted out in a gently rasping caress. As Longarm continued his steady stroking, he came to expect the moist, wet contact on his tender, distended tip. He tried to speed up, to experience it more often, but Dolly turned her head aside and squeezed her breasts harder together to narrow the passage between them and slow him down.

“Slow,” she told him. “Don’t hurry things.”

“If that’s how you want it,” he replied.

There was a hypnotic effect to the measured rhythm he was keeping. Longarm lost track of time, but it seemed to him that he’d been straddling Dolly for hours when she suddenly released the pressure on her breasts and turned beneath him to lie on her side. Longarm felt abandoned without the caresses he’d been enjoying. He put a hand on her shoulder to turn her on her back again.

“Lie down behind me,” she told him. “We’ll rest awhile.”

Longarm was more than ready to move on to more conventional caresses, but he did as she told him. Dolly raised her leg and trapped him between her thighs once more. For a long while she did not move, and as the cool air touched his shaft, he felt his erection beginning to fade. Dolly must have felt him softening too, for she began to caress him with her fingers, softly circling him at first, then suddenly curling her fingertip to bring a fingernail into play. The sensation mingled pain and pleasure. Longarm wasn’t sure he enjoyed it, but his erection returned very quickly, and with it, his desire to go into Dolly deeply and fully.

“Let’s stop playing games, Dolly,” he said. “I know you’re doing your best to pleasure me, but I’m ready for the real thing now.”

Wordlessly,Dolly spread her thighs and pushed him inside her. Longarm lunged, intending to bury himself in her with a single, hard thrust. But to his surprise, Dolly was not moist, and her fingernail caresses had made him so tender that he was forced to stop. He refused to give up. He pushed slowly and patiently, and, little by little, felt her growing moist and opening to accept him.

Now Longarm could thrust. He drew his hips back and plunged full-length, and Dolly quivered and sighed. Again and again he drove in, feeling her respond with quick backward jerks of her hips as he reached the greatest depth of his penetration. The long preliminaries had their effect. Longarm felt himself building sooner than usual, but the narrow bunk bothered him; he felt as though he was going to tumble to the floor each time he drew back to make a full penetration.

Buried as deeply within her as he could push, Longarm stopped. Dolly stirred and half-turned her head inquiringly, but said nothing. Longarm worked a hand under her hips, picked her up, and pulled her into an all-fours position. He brought his own body erect, grasped Dolly with a firm hand on each of her hips, and started stroking again. This time there was no feeling of falling off the narrow bunk to inhibit his long lunges. Dolly was wet and hot now, and she was beginning to squirm in his grasp. Longarm maintained the speed of his thrusts until his time ran out and he let himself go.

“Only a little bit longer,” Dolly cried. “Just a little bit, Windy?”

He held himself rigid, plunging in full-stroke again and again and yet again, until Dolly cried out in a thin scream that faded into soft sighs, and her hips, under his hands, gyrated for a few mad moments, then stopped as she went limp and folded up in a heap on the tattered mattress. To give both her and himself room, Longarm withdrew, and went and sat down on the bunk against the opposite wall. The cabin was so small that he was only an outstretched arm’s length from her.

Dolly unfolded her body and lay straight, on her side, facing him. They could see one another dimly in the faint skyglow that the tiny, high window allowed to trickle into the cabin.

“Do you think I’m pretty bad?” she asked him.

“Now, that’s a Susanna Mudgett question,” he answered.

“I don’t mean bad, like a bad woman. I mean bad as a woman to make love to.”

“No. Sort of unusual, though. You waste a hell of a long time before you get down to the real part of it.”

“I have to, Windy. If I don’t, it doesn’t do a thing for me except hurt because I’m so dry inside. But if I fondle a man and feel him a long time—longer than I did with you, Windy—then I moisten up, and it doesn’t hurt me.”

“I’ve known women who liked to feel me up. But none of them ever took as long as you, or handled me the way you did.”

“In one of the places I worked, there was a girl who taught me that trick.”

“You ought to tell a man why you’re doing it. If he’s any kind of man, he won’t mind.”

“It makes most men mad when I try to tell them. They start to droop, and I lose a customer.” She shook her head; Longarm could just see the movement in the gloom. “You know, Windy, you’re the first man in more than a year who’s brought me off?”

“How about your old hometown sweetheart?”

“Lonnie? I wasn’t sweet on him. When he ran into me there in Texarkana, I thought for a while I could go back to being Susanna Mudgett. But I couldn’t. And he didn’t do anything at all for me. All I felt was him prodding around in me.” Dolly sighed. “I guess it’s really my fault.”

“Maybe. But maybe you just never started right.”

She frowned. “I guess I don’t know what you mean.”

“Come over here, Dolly.”

Dolly didn’t question his invitation. She got off the bunk and took the half-step necessary to reach Longarm. He took her hand and pulled her gently down onto his lap. Dolly relaxed with a contented sigh, and tried to curl up when his arms went around her, but he ran one hand down over her breasts and stomach in a long, sweeping, soft caress that ended when he reached her thighs and pressed on them with just enough force to keep her body straight.

Bending his head down, Longarm began to kiss Dolly’s breasts, circling their nipples in turn with his lips and, between kisses, brushing over them with his chin and mustache. Her skin erupted in gooseflesh when the sharp hairs of his beard rasped across her nipples. Longarm slipped a hand between her thighs, buried his fingers in her silken pubic hair, and started to rub gently within her soft and still-moist folds. Dolly’s body, so relaxed when she’d first settled down on his lap, began to grow stiff.

So did Longarm, but he waited until he was completely hard before lifting her around. He stretched his legs and brought them up between hers as he moved her. Then he lowered Dolly until he could feel her dewy fur against his erection. He held her suspended for a moment, her hips swaying, and lowered her even more slowly while sliding into her. He let her body descend by fractions of an inch, each movement putting him in her deeper and deeper.

Even while Longarm was only half-buried inside her, Dolly began to breathe irregularly. His hands, in her armpits, could feel the expansion and contraction of her ribs. When he’d gone in almost all the way, Longarm released Dolly’s body. As she slid down the final few inches of his erection, he brought his own hips up with a sharp, quick snap to stop her descent. The shock of this final penetration brought from Dolly’s lips an involuntary gasp of surprised pleasure.

She fell forward against him, her head lolling on his shoulder, and whispered, “Oh, that was wonderful. I’ve never had a man go into me so deep, or fill me up the way you do.”

Longarm stood up. He let Dolly ride him as he shuffled his feet, turning around. He held her to him while they dropped to the bunk, and when their bodies met the thin, tattered mattress, he thrust hard. Dolly whimpered, a jagged little cry, as his weight drove in. Involuntarily she raised her legs and locked her ankles around his waist.

“I’m starting to build up already,” she told him in a low voice. “Just stay with me as long as you can. I think this is going to be something I’ve never had happen to me before.”

Longarm began easing himself in and out with slow, deliberate strokes. When he felt himself beginning to build, he stopped and pressed hard against Dolly. She squirmed with impatience while she waited for him to begin thrusting again, but Longarm took his time. He let her build with him until, at last, she began to gasp deep in her throat while her body shivered in rolling spasms and her upward thrusts grew frantic. Then he let himself go, pounding hard and fast, driving into her relentlessly.

Only after she’d begun to fall back and lie limp, accepting his thrusts but unable to respond to them any longer, did Longarm speed, with a few quick jabs, to his own orgasm. Then he let himself down on her gently while her body continued to quiver, and now and then to shake in a little convulsive spasm. He lay on her, still buried in her depths but flaccid now, almost as drained as she was.

At last Dolly said, “I’m half asleep, but I still want to feel you in me, even if you’re not stiff hard.”

“Go to sleep, if you want to,” he told her. “I’ll stay here until you do.”

He kept his promise, waiting until Dolly’s breasts rose and fell beneath his chest in deep, regular breathing. Then Longarm left her, moving softly so that he wouldn’t wake her. He stepped over to the other bunk and stretched out. He lay there for a short while, listening to the soft rhythm of Dolly’s breathing. He was too relaxed and pleasantly exhausted to think about the long ride they’d be making the next day, and the problems he’d be facing during the days that would follow. Soon he fell asleep too.

CHAPTER 12

Longarm noticed Dolly studying him over the rim of her raised coffee cup as he lighted a cheroot. He’d looked up before she had expected him to, before she could blink the sadness from her eyes. Through the swirl of blue smoke that shimmered between them, he asked her, “You sure you’re doing what you really want to, Dolly?”

“I’m doing what I think best, Windy. I never will go back to Yates Center. My family turned me out once, and I don’t intend to give them a chance to do it again.”

“And you’d sooner go back to…” he hesitated.

Dolly finished the thought. “To whoring in a saloon? I’m used to it, and it’s not a bad life. Oh, sure, I’d like to stay with you, at least right this minute, but I know I can’t. I’d always be afraid I’d slow you down at some time when you couldn’t afford it, like I did Lonnie. Or I might turn out to get like Belle Starr. So I’ll go back to Texarkana for a while. Sooner or later, I’ll move on. Who knows? We might run into one another again sometime.”

“We might at that,” Longarm agreed.

They were sitting in the dining room of the Union Depot in Fort Smith. The day before, they’d left Younger’s Bend before daylight and ridden steadily. At Little Juarez, they’d been in time to stop at the general store and buy Dolly a cloak to cover the somewhat battered dress that was the only garment she’d had left after losing her horse and saddlebags while escaping from the posse that had been chasing her and Taylor. Longarm tried to persuade her to get a new dress too, but she’d refused. She was wearing the cloak now, of a light blue that brought out the almost white sheen of her long hair, which fell down her back in rippling waves.

After getting off the ferryboat that had taken them across the Arkansas to Fort Smith, they’d learned that the first train Dolly could take to her chosen destination wouldn’t pull out until mid-afternoon of the following day, so Longarm had taken a room for them at the Fenolio Hotel. It had been a long night and, predictably, neither of them had gotten much sleep. Dolly had been insatiable, and Longarm had kept responding to her urging for just one more time. Now, with only a few minutes left before the southbound train was due, they faced the inevitable parting that always convinces casual lovers they haven’t had enough time together.

Longarm saw Dolly’s eyes shift past him and her eyebrows pull together in a frown. He asked, “What’s the matter?”

“Windy, is the law here in Fort Smith looking for you?”

“Not that I know of. Why should they be?” Then, realizing his mistake as soon as he’d asked the question, he added quickly, “There hasn’t been time for me to get on the wanted list here in Arkansas, and I never have pulled any kind of job close to Fort Smith. Why?”

“There’s a man over by the wall there who’s been watching us. I thought once or twice he was going to come over to our table, but he never did.”

Longarm swiveled in his chair to look where Dolly’s eyes had been fixed. He saw nobody who seemed especially interested in them.

Dolly shook her head. “He’s not there now. When I looked away from him to talk to you, he just disappeared.”

“I don’t reckon it amounts to anything. Could be he mistook one of us for somebody he knew.”

“I guess that was it. And he left when he saw he was wrong.”

“Something like that.”

Outside the depot, the whistle of an approaching train sounded. Longarm said, “That’d be the Frisco southbound coming in; it’s the only train that’s due. Maybe we better get out on the platform. It only stops here for about ten minutes, just long enough for the baggage to be unloaded and the passengers to get on.”

“I’d like to stay with you, Windy. You know that.”

“Sure. I’d like for you to. But both of us know it just ain’t in the cards, Dolly.”

“No. Well…”

Dolly stood up. Longarm dropped fifteen cents on the table and they walked through the depot and out onto the platform. The train was just coming into sight. The engine passed them with a loud whoosh of steam from its cylinders as it slowed for the stop. The baggage cars slid by, and the porters and handlers began dragging their high, four-wheeled carts along, keeping abreast of the cars they’d be working. Passengers waiting to get aboard started shifting their positions to be where the day coaches and Pullmans would stop. From the coach windows, as the train finally halted, faces pressed against the windowpanes as those traveling beyond Fort Smith gazed out to scan the boarding passengers.

“Let’s walk back to the observation car,” Longarm suggested. “There’s not usually anybody on the last car when a train makes a stop. It’ll be a little bit more private than saying goodbye with all those people gawking at us.”

Dolly slipped her arm through Longarm’s as they walked slowly toward the back of the train. She said, “I don’t know how long I’ll be in Texarkana, but if you’re ever down that way-“

“Don’t worry, I’ll stop in.”

She smiled. “You don’t even know which saloon I’ll be at.”

“Won’t make any difference. Texarkana ain’t all that big a town. I’ll find you, if I come that way.”

Dolly suddenly became serious. “I’ll never see you again, will I, Windy?”

“It’s hard to say. A man in my line of work don’t know where he’s apt to turn up from one day to the next.”

“I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

“You don’t need to thank me for anything. You already have.”

A pair of short blasts sounded from the locomotive’s whistle, and the voice of the conductor called from the center of the train, “Boa-ard! All aboard!”

Longarm assisted Dolly up the steps of the observation platform, then followed her and stood on the bottom step. Dolly bent forward to kiss him goodbye. Their lips were still pressed together when the train began to inch forward. Longarm held his place until the observation car reached the middle of the station platform, then stepped off. Dolly lifted her arm to wave at him, and her expression changed from one of almost tearful sadness into a look of alarm.

“Windy!” she called. “Behind you! The man who was in the cafe!”

Longarm whirled. A burly man stood a dozen paces away, half-hidden by one of the latticed ironwork pillars that supported the roof over the platform. He was drawing a pistol from a shoulder holster.

Longarm drew as he dropped off the platform. The burly man had not yet cleared his revolver from its holster when he saw Longarm’s lightning-fast move. He stepped behind the pillar. Longarm had anticipated the move. He held his fire, and when his booted feet hit the cinder roadbed a foot or more below the level of the platform, he curled his legs under him and leaned to one side. The edge of the wooden platform now hid him from the stranger.

Down the track, the train was rounding a curve. Longarm was vaguely aware of Dolly, who still stood on the observation platform, a blur of blue cloak and white face, as the train moved on out of sight.

On his hands and knees, Longarm scuttled along the tracks, keeping his body low so that his movements would be invisible to his assailant. The stranger was thinking fast too. A shot cracked, and a slug plowed through the thick planking of the station platform, a foot or two behind Longarm.

Longarm stopped. A second shot rang out and lead ripped into the platform behind him, beyond the point where he’d been when the unknown shooter had first seen him. The stranger was bracketing shots at Longarm’s cover, trying to pin him down. Longarm looked at the platform. There wasn’t room enough under it for him to squeeze through; heavy supporting timbers came down to within a few inches of the roadbed. On the other side, parallel to the depot, was the tracks, creating a wide, bare swath that was totally without any protection.

From the platform above his head, Longarm heard a man’s voice shouting. “All you people get in the depot! I’m a railroad detective and there’s a dangerous outlaw over there by the tracks! There’ll probably be more shooting! All of you get out of the way! Clear the platform!”

Taking a chance that the man who’d identified himself as a railroad detective was more occupied with getting the spectators out of the way than with watching for him, Longarm raised his head above the edge of his protective bulwark and looked at the scene. People were scurrying toward the depot doors and toward the ends of the station. The gun-wielding yard dick was still standing close to the latticework pillar behind which he’d taken shelter when Longarm first saw him. Longarm dropped back below the edge of his shield and reversed his direction, crawling back toward where he’d started from.

As he edged along, he tried to plan a way out of his precarious situation. His wallet, with his badge in it, was still in his boot top, where he’d been carrying it since he’d gotten close to Younger’s Bend. He didn’t want to show the badge unless he was forced to. For all he knew, the man on the platform might be one of those being paid off by Belle Starr. At the same time, he didn’t want to get into a shootout with a yard bull.

Crawling on his hands and knees, still holding his Colt in one hand, Longarm wondered how the detective had come to single him out for attention. The reason came to him in a flash. It had been Dolly, of course. She’d been seen by the posse that had been chasing Lonnie Taylor after Taylor had carried out whatever robbery he’d staged to get the cash he needed. There would have been no very accurate description of Taylor circulated, but Dolly, with her long ash-blonde hair, had almost certainly been described, and there weren’t all that many natural ash-blondes along the Arkansas border.

It all holds together, old son, Longarm told himself as he continued his crawl behind the cover of the platform. That fellow must’ve been prowling around the depot and seen Dolly with me. Just because we were together, he figured I was Taylor. Then why the hell didn’t he make his play there in the restaurant?

He puzzled over that while covering the next few feet in the direction of the platform’s end, and the answer came logically.

Damn! He must’ve ducked out of the restaurant to send somebody after help. Didn’t want to run the risk of trying to take me by himself. He waited till the last minute, figured I was going on the train with her, and threw down on me when he saw me step off the car. Which means this place is going to be mighty uncomfortable in a few minutes, as soon as the real law gets here.

Instinct or habit had kept Longarm looking back occasionally as he crawled. He saw the end of the platform a few yards ahead, and glanced back over his shoulder just in time to catch a flicker of motion along the area he’d just passed. He dropped flat and rolled to bring his Colt into action. The flicker turned into the gun hand of the railroad detective as he extended it over the edge of the boards. Longarm tossed off a shot, aiming short of the pistol. A chunk of the platform’s edge exploded in a shower of splinters and the hand holding the gun disappeared.

Longarm couldn’t be sure that his pursuer hadn’t peered along the platform while he wasn’t looking back. He speeded up his crawl, but it was slow at best. A pillar rose to the awning’s edge at the corner just ahead of him, where the platform ended. Longarm reached it and rose behind it. It didn’t shield him completely. He hadn’t quite gotten his feet under him when a bullet clanged on the ironwork and ricocheted off toward the tracks.

Longarm didn’t want to fire, but he had no other choice. He broke cover long enough to spot the pursuing yard bull, and sent a slug into the platform at the man’s feet. The detective dived for the protection of the closest pillar. It didn’t shield him fully, any more than the one Longarm was behind shielded him, but as long as the man stayed behind the iron support, he wouldn’t be able to shoot accurately, if at all.

A baggage cart loaded with wooden barrels stood at the platform’s edge. Longarm measured the distance to the cart. He didn’t give the fellow who was after him very high grades for marksmanship, but he wasn’t going to underestimate the man, either. He’d used up only two of the five rounds his Colt carried in its cylinder. The yard bull had also shot twice, so they were neck-and-neck on ammunition. Longarm debated reloading before he moved, concluded that speed was worth more than two shots, and dived for the baggage cart.

He hit the ground midway between the pillar and the cart. He landed rolling, and the shot triggered by the detective skittered off the brickwork that extended from the platform’s edge to some fifteen or twenty feet beyond it, to the end of the Railway Express office that stood at one side of the depot.

The sliding door of the office was open. A man stood in it, peering curiously toward the area where he’d heard shooting. Longarm reached the baggage cart and stood behind it long enough to lift its yoke from the supporting arm and turn the cart in the direction of the open door. With any luck, he’d find a back door that he could get out of before the yard bull caught up with him.

As Longarm pulled the cart, walking backward, depending on the stacked barrels and iron-spoked wheels to protect him from his assailant’s fire, the railroad detective snapped off three fast shots. They slammed into the barrels. Liquid began spurting from them, and the acrid scent of spoiled cottonseed oil filled the air.

Longarm stopped long enough to pull a match out of his pocket and flick it into flame with his thumbnail. He tossed the match on the ground and, to buy time, leaned out from behind the barrels and triggered a shot in the general direction of the pillar that shielded his pursuer.

When he pulled the cart forward, the oil from the leaking barrels splashed on the burning match. A sheet of flame rippled slowly toward the depot, and a cloud of dense smoke billowed up. The smoke shielded Longarm while he abandoned the baggage cart and ran flat-out for the open door of the Railway Express agency. The agent was still standing in the doorway, staring goggle-eyed at the flames that were rising from the oil.

“Hey, you can’t come in here!” he called when he saw Longarm heading for the door.

“Like hell I can’t!” Longarm replied, brushing past the man into the building.

He looked around. The place was more a shed than anything else. A waist-high counter ran half of its length, and a scale stood at the and of the counter. Bundles, bags, bales, boxes, and barrels were scattered and piled around the floor. There were windows, but they were set high in the walls, just below the eaves. They were long and narrow and fitted with iron bars. He spotted the back door and saw that it was not only closed tightly, but barred with a thick iron strap held by a swivel-bolt at one end and a massive padlock through a shackle at the other.

“Open that door!” he ordered the agent.

“Not on your life!” the man retorted. He ran out the door and disappeared.

Longarm covered the distance to the barred door in two long strides. He stood aside, aimed carefully, and shattered the padlock with a bullet. The staple through which the lock passed was torn out of the wall, and the bar swung down with a clatter.

For a moment the door resisted Longarm’s tugging. Then it slowly started moving on the rollers that ran in a track above it. Longarm stopped when he’d cracked it wide enough for him to slip out. He peered around the edge. The railroad detective was just coming up to the back of the express office; apparently he’d detoured through the depot to avoid the flames.

Longarm pulled his head back quickly, hoping the man hadn’t seen him. He’d glimpsed the gun his pursuer was carrying in his hand. Shielded by the door, he saw the yard bull go past the slitted opening and head for one corner of the express office. He gave the man a minute or so to get around the corner, then slid through the cracked-open door and started across the open ell between the agency office and the depot. He’d taken only three steps when a harsh command stopped him.

“Hold it! You take another step and I’ll cut you down!”

Longarm stopped. He didn’t want a bullet in the back.

“Now,” the railroad detective commanded. “Keep your hands right where they are and turn around so I can look at you.”

Shuffling his feet, Longarm turned. He faced the railroad detective and didn’t like what he saw. The man was only a dozen feet distant, standing at the corner of the express office. His fingers were wrapped so tightly around the butt of his Remington-Beals.44 single-action that the knuckles were white. His forefinger twitched on the trigger. Longarm felt better when he saw that the gun’s hammer wasn’t drawn back.

Still, Longarm didn’t feel easy about his position. Yard bulls normally did little more police work than chasing hoboes off freights and keeping the railroad yards clear of sneak-thieves and drifters. A few of them were former sheriffs’ deputies or town marshals or one-time Pinkerton men who could no longer pull their weight in regular law-enforcement jobs.

A lot of them were bullies who enjoyed beating up the helpless bums they dragged off freight cars, and some of them had been forced out of regular jobs because they were habitual drunks. The more Longarm thought about railroad detectives, the less inclined he was to surrender to the one holding him at gunpoint and then clear things up by showing his badge.

There were a lot of yard bulls who cooperated with crooks. They got more money than their jobs paid them by tipping off outlaws and boxcar thieves to special shipments that made a robbery profitable. Belle Starr, Longarm thought, would have to be paying off a lot of railroad workers in order to carry out her felonious specialty of selling rustled cattle.

By now the railroad detective had scrutinized Longarm from hat-brim to boot toes. He nodded with satisfaction. “Yep. You’re the one, all right.”

There was only one thing Longarm could see to do: play for time. He suggested, “Suppose you tell me which one you’re talking about, friend, because I damn sure don’t know.”

“Like hell you don’t! You’re the son of a bitch who stuck up the bank in Midland four or five days ago.”

“You’re dead wrong. I’ve never been to Midland.” Longarm moved his left hand a hair’s breadth, and the yard bull drew back the hammer of his pistol. Longarm froze instantly. He hoped the weapon didn’t have a hair trigger.

“I told you not to move!” the man barked. “I’d as soon shoot you as look at you! The reward notice said dead or alive, so you’re worth five hundred dollars to me whether you walk in or I drag you in.”

“You’re making a mistake,” Longarm protested. He was careful to keep his voice to a level, conversational tone. “Four or five days ago I was over in the Cherokee Nation. I don’t even know where that town you mentioned is located.”

“That’s about what I’d expect you to say,” the yard bull said with a nervous nod. “You sound real convincing too, I’ll credit you with that. I might even believe you if I hadn’t seen you with that blonde woman in the depot restaurant. The reward notice described her a lot better than it did you. A man’d have to be blind not to spot her.”

Longarm weighed his alternatives. The cocked revolver held by the yard bull reduced them drastically. He was very sure the railroad dick had sent for help as he detoured through the depot, and even if he hadn’t, somebody must have reported the gunfire out on the station platform. Unless the yard bull had reloaded, which Longarm didn’t think was very likely, he had one round left in his pistol. That was just what remained in Longarm’s Colt.

“Looks like you’ve got me dead to rights,” he told the railroad detective. “But there’s not any reason for you to settle for a little chicken-shit five hundred dollars for taking me in. I’ve got a thousand in my inside coat pocket. It’s worth every dime of it to me if you’ll say I got away from you.”

“A thousand?” the yard bull’s eyes narrowed covetously.

Longarm could almost read the man’s mind. There wasn’t any reason to settle for five hundred or a thousand either. If he shot now, he’d take the thousand off Longarm’s body and then claim another five hundred as his reward. “A thousand,” Longarm repeated. “Here, if you think I’m lying, I’ll show it to you.”

Longarm raised his left hand as though to reach inside his breast pocket. The yard bull’s eyes followed the movement. Longarm brought his Colt up and fired. The railroad dick’s dying reflex triggered his own gun, but Longarm was flat on the ground by the time the hammer fell, and the slug whistled through the air over his head.

Longarm had started to scramble to his feet when a fresh voice barked commandingly, “Stay right there on the ground, mister. You move a finger and you’re a dead man!”

By rolling his eyes, Longarm could see who’d spoken. This time it wasn’t an inexperienced, greedy railroad detective. The man standing at the corner of the depot wore the uniform of the Fort Smith city constable’s force. And the gun he held, with its muzzle pointed at Longarm, wasn’t a revolver, but a sawed-off shotgun.

CHAPTER 13

Even if there’d been another live round in his Colt, Longarm wouldn’t have argued with the scattergun. He said, “You’ve got me, mister. Just don’t get an itch in your trigger finger.”

“Let go of your gun and move your hand away from it,” the uniformed constable ordered.

Longarm obeyed. The command itself, and the tone in which it was delivered, told him the man knew what he was doing.

“That’s fine,” the constable said. His voice was cool. “Now roll over, away from the gun, and lay quiet until I tell you different.”

Once again, Longarm did as he was told. He rolled, stopping on his back so that he could see what the Fort Smith officer was doing.

At the moment, the policeman was still standing where he’d been covering Longarm with the shotgun. It was a hammerless double, and Longarm couldn’t see from his position whether the safety was off or on.

Not that it would make much difference, he thought ruefully. Only a damned fool makes a move when he’s in the kind of fix I’m in right now.

Moving deliberately, without taking his eyes off Longarm, the constable picked up Longarm’s Colt. He dropped it into the capacious side pocket of his uniform coat, then he said, “All right. You can stand up now.”

Longarm got to his feet. He was once again faced with the same problem that had stopped him from surrendering to the railroad detective. For all he knew, and based on what Andrew Gower had told him, half of the Fort Smith constables might be on Belle Starr’s payoff list. He’d gotten by this far without the risk of revealing his identity to anybody except Gower, and with the end of his job in sight, he didn’t propose to waste the effort he’d already put in on the case.

Though he hadn’t quite decided just how he was going to handle things in this new situation, Longarm still stalled for time. He said, “If you’ll just listen to me a minute, officer, I’ll explain what this was all about.”

“I don’t need any explanation from you,” the constable said curtly. “I got here just as Castell was dropping. That’s all I need. You can give your explanation to the judge when you stand up to face a murder charge.”

“Castell? That’d be the fellow who was trying to hold me up?” Longarm asked.

“If you mean the man you just killed, his name’s Castell and he was a railroad bull for the Frisco. And if he was holding a gun on you, he must’ve had a reason to.”

“Sure he did. He wanted the money I’ve got in my coat pocket.”

“How’d he find out you’re carrying enough money to make him draw his gun on you?” the officer asked suspiciously. “That won’t wash worth a damn, mister. We got a report there was a gunfight going on here at the depot. That was quite a while ago. You and Castell must’ve been swapping shots for some time.”

“He mistook me for somebody else,” Longarm said. “That’s how the trouble started.”

“I think you’re lying. Castell can’t tell his side, and I’m damned if I’m going to let you get away with killing somebody, even a half-assed yard bull.” The constable shifted the shotgun in order to get to his handcuffs, which were dangling from a strap on his wide uniform belt.

Longarm took the only chance he was likely to get. With the speed of a striking snake, he whisked his hand along his watch chain to get the derringer that nestled in his vest pocket. Before the Fort Smith officer could bring his shotgun around, Longarm’s derringer was jammed into his throat.

Longarm said, “Now it’s your turn to keep quiet and follow orders, mister. First off, I’ll take that scattergun you’re holding.” He took the shotgun and slid the breech-lock aside with his thumb. The action opened and he held the gun up to drop its shells on the ground. “Now hand over your pistol,” he ordered. He gave the Smith & Wesson revolver the same treatment, breaking its breech to let the ejector ring lift out the shells, then upending the weapon to let the shells fall out. He handed the revolver back to the constable. “Here. Put it in your holster.”

“You mind telling me what you’re going to do?” the officer asked.

“I was just about to. If this depot’s like most I’ve seen, there’s likely a hack or two outside. We’re going to walk around the station to the sidewalk, and you’re going to tell the hackman to drive us along to Front Street. And that’s all you need to know right now.”

For a moment the constable seemed on the verge of refusing, but Longarm applied a bit of extra pressure with the derringer’s muzzle, and the man shrugged.

“all right,” he said. “If that’s what you want, I guess you’re the boss right now.”

As they walked around the back of the depot, Longarm moved the derringer from his captive’s throat to his ribs. The constable didn’t make any effort to escape or to slow their progress. As Longarm had anticipated, there were several livery rigs standing beside the sidewalk in front of the depot. He poked the man’s ribs with the derringer. The constable called to the hackman on the seat of the last carriage in line, “Police business! Take us down Front Street until I tell you to turn off.”

“You paying the hire?” the hackie asked suspiciously.

“I told you it’s police business,” the constable growled impatiently. “Now do what I said. Drive us along Front Street.”

Inside the hack, Longarm told the constable, “I’ll just take your handcuffs and keys now.”

Under the threat of the mean-looking little derringer, the officer passed the cuffs and keys to Longarm. He made no objection when Longarm handcuffed his hands behind his back and put the key into his own pocket. Then Longarm felt in the constable’s hip pocket and found the bandanna handkerchief he’d been pretty sure would be there. The bandana went around the constable’s mouth, silencing him.

The hack had been moving slowly up Front Street. Longarm looked out just in time to see the federal office building as they passed it. He retrieved his Colt from the constable’s pocket and cracked open the sliding panel behind the hackman’s head.

“You can pull up here long enough for me to get out,” he told the driver. “Then the officer wants to go on out Front to—what’s that big street, quite a ways on east?”

“You must mean Division Street,” the hackie said. “It’s about a mile further on up Front Street.”

“That’s the one,” Longarm agreed. “You just go right along, and then go out Division Street.”

“What about my fare?” the driver asked, reining up.

“You heard what the officer said. This is police business.”

Longarm closed the panel and jumped out of the hack then started back to the federal building in a brisk walk. Before he turned off the sidewalk into the building where Andrew Gower’s office was located, he looked over his shoulder. The hack was moving on along Front Street at a good clip. Longarm hoped the constable wouldn’t succeed in attracting the hackman’s attention too soon. He closed the door of the federal building behind him and started down the short corridor to Gower’s office.

From the anteroom of the chief marshal’s office, Longarm could see Gower at his desk, absorbed in reading a letter. He pushed past the protesting clerk and went in, closing the door behind him.

Gower looked up from the letter. “Long! What in the hell are you doing in Fort Smith?”

“I figured you’d better know what’s in the wind, so you can get ready to move when the time comes.”

“Damn it, you’re supposed to be at Younger’s Bend, getting the evidence I need to clean things up around here.”

“I was, until yesterday.”

“You sure didn’t spend a lot of time there. Let’s see was it just a week ago you left Fort Smith?”

“More or less. I’ll be going back right away, if you can fix things up with the constabulary’s force so I can get out of town without them throwing me in jail.”

“Jail? Why would they want to do that?”

“Well, it’s sort of a long story.”

Gower sighed. “I guess I’ve got time to listen to it. Sit down, Long.” He took out his sack of Bull Durham and began rolling a cigarette. Longarm fished out a cheroot and lighted it, waiting until Gower was ready for him to start. The chief marshal touched a match to the twisted tip of his cigarette and said, “All right. Billy Vail warned me you’d be into one thing right after another. What did you do to get crossways with the local constables?”

“Well, for one thing, I took a pistol and a scattergun away from one of them, down at the Union Depot a little while ago. I don’t imagine they’ll let that pass by without taking notice.”

“Maybe I can get the chief constable to smooth things down. What’s the name of this man you disarmed?”

“We didn’t exactly trade introductions. If you want me to ask him, I’ll have to chase down the hack that’s taking him out of town.”

Gower found the patience to ask, “Why did you have to take his weapons away?”

“Well, I didn’t want him to toss me in jail for murder, and put you to all the trouble of getting me out. Figured it’d be better to stay out in the first place.”

“Murder!” Gower exploded. “Who got killed?”

“One of the Frisco’s yard bulls. The constable mentioned that his name was Castell.”

Gower stared at Longarm. Then, in a voice that he was obviously keeping calm with a great deal of effort, said, “Long, I think you’d better start at the beginning and tell me everything that happened.”

Longarm gave the chief marshal a condensed version of what had taken place from the time of his arrival at Younger’s Bend. When he’d finished, Gower was staring at him across the desk, wordless and wide-eyed.

“Billy Vail said you had your own ways of doing things,” the chief marshal said thoughtfully. “It seems to me you’ve pretty well crippled Floyd Sharpless and his bunch. I remember him, we’ve had fliers on him. He’s wanted for a dozen different jobs. I can’t quite place Steed, and the boy seems like a greenhorn doing his best to get started the wrong way.”

“I’d say it’s Bobby’s first big job,” Longarm agreed. “He’s the only one of the three I don’t feel right about.”

“Don’t waste any sympathy on him, Long. He’s bad to begin with, or he wouldn’t be running with Sharpless and Steed.”

“I guess. There’s a lot left for me to do, though. I got to dig out the names you want, the lawmen on Belle Starr’s payoff list. So, as soon as you can square up things with the constables here, I’ll be riding back out to Younger’s Bend.”

“I suppose you’ll have to,” Gower said after a moment’s consideration. “And you’ll have to find away to get word to me about this bank holdup they’re planning. Where and when, and anything else.”

Longarm shook his head. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know myself. Belle’s cagey. She was talking about Fort Smith, but I let her see that didn’t take me in. Then she went on to tell about big banks in little towns close to the border.”

“I don’t suppose she mentioned any names?”

“Not Belle. And if I got her figured right, she won’t say where the job’s going to be until we set out to do it.”

“She’d take no chance of the word leaking out,” Gower said. “You’ll have to narrow it down, then, Long. I sure can’t put men in every town within striking distance.”

“All right, I’ll do the best I can. Now let’s see how I’m going to get back there and do some more prodding.”

Gower made another cigarette and lighted it before he answered. Then he said, “Well, Castell’s no great loss to anybody. He came to me when he first got here, asking for a deputy’s badge. I sent a wire back to the Pinkertons, where he’d been working, and found out they’d thrown him out for taking payoffs. I can see to it that the railroad doesn’t raise too much fuss. Too bad, though. If you hadn’t been so quick on the trigger, he might have told us something.”

“He was all ready to finish me off, to get the money I told him I was carrying,” Longarm reminded the chief marshal. He reached into his breast pocket and took out the cash Dolly had found in Taylor’s saddlebags. “Here. There’s not anywhere near the whole bundle, of course. Not quite a thousand. But it oughta go back to that bank in Midland.”

“I’ll see that it’s returned, and get the reward offer on Taylor pulled down. Now, you go find a place to stay tonight. I’ll have a talk with the chief constable and see if I can’t get you out of town without any more gunplay.”

“I stayed at the Fenolio Hotel last night,” Longarm told Gower. “I didn’t check out, because I had more than half a hunch that I wouldn’t want to start back to Younger’s Bend until tomorrow, seeing as how the train left as late as it did. I suppose it’d be smart of me to go right on over to the hotel now, and keep out of sight till you get things fixed up.”

“If you hadn’t offered to, that’s what I was getting ready to tell you to do,” Gower said. “Just don’t let the Fort Smith constable get hold of you until I’ve had a talk with their chief. Murphy’s a pretty good man. He’s as worried about these payoffs as I am. Go on over to the Fenolio and stay out of trouble. I’ll stop in after I’ve talked to Murphy.”

Longarm slept until Gower knocked at his door; it was a bit after ten. Gower saw the bottle of Maryland rye on the bureau and looked at it yearningly.

“Help yourself,” Longarm invited.

“Thanks.” The chief marshal poured himself a sizeable slug, took a sip, and sat down. He rolled and lighted a cigarette before picking up the glass again. “Well, I’ve got your problem solved, Long.”

“Sort of figured you would.”

“But it was damn dry work, arguing with Murphy. First Irish cop I ever knew who won’t take a drink.” Gower sipped appreciatively. “Now. After I explained to him what happened, he agreed to keep Milford quiet.”

“Who’s Milford?”

“He’s the constable you kidnapped.”

“Hell, if he’s smart, he wouldn’t want anybody to know about that, anyway.”

“That’s how Murphy looked at it. He didn’t want one of his men to be laughed off the force.”

Longarm looked at Gower speculatively. “You might as well trot it out. What’s Murphy want me to do?”

“Help him get one of his men in at Younger’s Bend. He’s had the same suspicion I have about payoffs to some of his fellows by Belle Starr. There’s been a rash of house burglaries here in Fort Smith lately, and you know as well as Murphy and I that sneak thieves can’t operate unless they’ve got a place to get rid of the stuff they pick up. Jewelry, watches, things of that kind. And a fence can’t operate without protection from somebody inside the law.”

“Damn it, Gower, I’m not in solid enough with Belle Starr to bring in somebody else in with me.”

“That’s what I told Murphy you’d say. He gave me another choice, but I told him that’d be up to you.”

“What’s the other choice?” Longarm asked suspiciously. He had a pretty good idea what Gower was leading up to.

“Get the information he wants yourself.”

“Now hold up, damn it! I got enough on my plate, just finding out what you’re after. Let your friend Murphy do his own job.”

“No. I can’t do that, Long. I’ve already made a trade with him.”

“What’d you trade him?”

“A way to set you in solid with the bunch at Younger’s Bend.”

Longarm looked narrowly at Gower. He needed a minute to think this one over, so he got up and poured himself a fresh drink and topped off the glass the chief marshal was holding.

“Go on,” he said, after he’d returned to his chair. “I’d like to know just how he figures to do that.”

“You mentioned that Sharpless and Steed were still suspicious of YOU.”

“Not what you’d call suspicious. Floyd’s still mad at me because I had to gun down one of his old sidekicks. And Steed just plain don’t like anybody.”

“Murphy’s scheme might ease things for you,” Gower suggested. Murphy’s in very solid with the newspaper here in Fort Smith. And, if he makes a big fuss, the editor will write a story that’ll make Castell’s killing compare with the assassination of Abe Lincoln. And he’ll see that the story says the man who shot Castell got away. That’ll clean your skirts completely with the bunch of Younger’s Bend.”

Longarm took a swallow of rye while he considered Gower’s suggestion. He could see that it might ease the strain that existed between him and Floyd. Finally he nodded.

“I won’t guarantee to get your friend Murphy what he’s after,” he said carefully. “But I’ll make a stab at it. That’s about the best I can do.”

“That’s all he can expect,” Gower agreed. “I made it plain to him that as long as you’re wearing a federal badge, our case comes first.”

“Let’s leave it that way, then,” Longarm said. “When’s this newspaper piece coming out? It’ll have to be soon, if it’s going to do me any good.”

“It’ll be in tomorrow morning’s paper,” Gower promised. “And I sure as hell hope it works!”

“So do I,” Longarm agreed. “But we won’t be no further behind than we are now, if it don’t.”

A stack of newspapers stood on the hotel’s registration desk when Longarm went by the next morning on his way to breakfast in the dining room. He picked one up. It still smelled of printer’s ink. He glanced at the glaring headlines. The editor of the Fort Smith Elevator had pulled out all the stops.

RAILROAD POLICEMAN FOULLY MURDERED! the top headline proclaimed. In only slightly smaller type, the line below read, FLEEING DESPERADO SOUGHT BY OFFICERS!

Chuckling inwardly, but keeping his face impassive, Longarm folded the paper under his arm and read the story while waiting for his breakfast to be cooked and served.

Fort Smith’s good citizenry is appalled by the latest outrage perpetrated by the desperadoes who slink into our fair and law-abiding community from their privileged sanctuaries in the Cherokee and Choctaw Nations. The latest victim of their foul misdeeds is the heroic Julius Castell, a policeman employed by the St. Louis & San Francisco Railway Co. Officer Castell was shot to death behind the Union Station yesterday just before the supper hour by a vicious killer who is even now being pursued in the direction of Van Buren by the dedicated men of our proud constabulary.

It is not known how Officer Castell allowed the desperado to “get the drop” on him. Officer Castell was known to be of an utterly fearless nature and an excellent shot with the pistol, having been formerly an investigator for the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency. The murdered victim’s revolver was found beside him, with all of its six shells fired, when his body was discovered by Officer Milford of the Fort Smith force. Chief Constable Murphy is of the opinion that there was an exchange of gunfire in which the heartless miscreant who slew Officer Castell was wounded. A large force has gone in search of the killer, who is reported to have been witnessed slinking from the scene of the crime in a northerly direction. The good Chief has sworn that no stone will be left unturned, no nook or cranny in which the desperate outlaw murderer might hide will be overlooked, until the bloodthirsty fiend who perpetrated the foul misdeed has been brought before the Bar of Justice, where he is expected to be sentenced to a well-deserved hanging.

Well, old son, Longarm chuckled to himself, That chief sure did deliver what he said he was going to. Why, hell, if I didn’t know what really happened, I’d be right tempted to jump right up and start chasing myself.

Folding the paper, Longarm tucked it into his coat pocket and gave his attention to the platter of steak and eggs the waiter set before him. An hour later, when he’d claimed his horse and gear from Hare’s Livery Stable on the Texas Road and started for the ferry, he transferred the newspaper to his saddlebag. As he rode toward Younger’s Bend after crossing on the ferry, he felt less like he was going naked to stir up a hornet’s nest.

CHAPTER 14

Because Longarm didn’t relish the idea of being mistaken for someone else and getting potshot at in the dark, he slept beside the trail after his late start, and arrived at Younger’s Bend in broad daylight. Sam Starr was carrying a bucket of water from the well to the house when Longarm rode up.

“Hello, Windy. What’d you do, ride all night last night, getting here at this time of day?” Starr asked.

“No. Slept along the trail. Got a late start out of Fort Smith.”

Longarm dismounted and led his hammerhead bay to the barn.

Starr put the bucket of water on the steps and followed him into the barn. He said, “We looked for you yesterday.”

“And figured when I didn’t show up that I might not be coming back?

That ain’t my way of doing business, Sam.”

“Well, there was a lot of conversation. Floyd’s still a little bit upset about Mckee, you know.”

“Damned if that man don’t let a thing stick in his craw worse than anybody I ever met.” Longarm took the saddle off the bay and tossed it across one of the stall partitions to air out. He threw his saddlebags over one shoulder, his bedroll over the other, and picked up his Winchester.

“I guess nobody’s moved into my cabin while I was gone?”

“Of course not. Listen, Windy, if you’re hungry, I can fix you a bite. It won’t be a bit of trouble.”

“Oh, I had breakfast when I got up this morning, Sam. Thanks all the same, but I can hold out till noon.”

“I guess the girl got off on the train all right?”

“Yep. She’s on her way. Hell, she’s probably already back in Texarkana by this time.”

“Belle was thinking-” Starr stopped abruptly. “Well, it ain’t important.”

“What you started to say was, Belle was thinking I might decide to go along with the girl, and not come back?”

“Something like that,” Starr replied. He added quickly, “She’ll be glad to know you’re back, though.”

Longarm looked around questioningly. “Where is Belle, anyhow?”

“She’s gone with Yazoo to deliver a load of whiskey. I generally go too, when we’re making a delivery, but this time Floyd said he’d enjoy a little boat ride. And Steed and Bobby rode into Eufaula; they said they wanted to look the town over.”

“Boat ride?” Longarm’s brow creased. “Hell, Sam, I didn’t even know you had a boat around the place.”

He hadn’t paid much attention to Belle’s moonshining operations. Even though she was breaking a federal law by making untaxed liquor, the Cherokee Nation was still only marginally under direct Federal jurisdiction. It was a matter of common consent that the Indian police would take care of controlling the hundreds of illicit stills that operated on what the local residents called “whiskey ranches.” Longarm hadn’t given much thought to the manner in which Belle delivered the whiskey Yazoo produced; he’d just assumed that the customers came after the liquor and hauled it away themselves.

Sam said, “Well, Belle don’t like for the whiskey-buyers to come here to the place. We got a boat down at the foot of the bluff, and Yazoo poles it across the river, drifts downstream a couple of miles, and there’s the customer, waiting at his regular place with his wagon, on the other side of the Canadian.”

Longarm nodded his understanding. From a moonshiner’s standpoint, making delivery at some anonymous spot along a riverbank made more sense than having wagons beat a well-defined track to the still.

“Well, then,” he said, “I guess I’ll go on down to the cabin and settle back in.”

“You’re sure you don’t want me to fix you a bite to eat?” Sam asked. “Dinner’s going to be late, because Belle and Floyd and Yazoo likely won’t be back by noon.”

“No, thanks. I’ll hold out all right. No need for you to take extra trouble.”

“Oh, I don’t mind doing something a little extra for you, Windy. Which is more than I’d say for most of Belle’s guests. There’s times when-” Starr stopped abruptly. “Well, never mind. You just come on back when you get hungry.”

“I’ll do that,” Longarm promised as he started for the cabin.

Apparently no one had been inside the place during his absence. There was dust on everything, and the bottle of Maryland rye that he’d left standing on the table still had a drink or two left in it. Longarm had part of the whiskey while he undid his bedroll and took a few of his possibles—including a supply of cheroots and a fresh bottle of rye—from his saddlebags. The folded newspaper came to hand, and he put it on the table to take up to the house with him when Belle and the others returned. Since he had nothing else to do, he stretched out on the bedroll and devoted himself to thinking while he rested. The job he’d promised to take on for Murphy required a little bit of planning.

Noon came and passed with no solution having presented itself. Longarm was beginning to get hungry. He stood up and stretched, finished off the almost empty bottle, and led the hammerhead bay up to the house. Starr was sitting on the porch, cleaning his guns. Longarm noticed that the quiet, browbeaten husband of the ebullient Bandit Queen handled his weapon with professional skill, and gave them the sort of care that any sensible man who depended on guns for his livelihood, if not for actual survival, might be expected to give them.

“Getting hungry?” Starr asked.

“A mite. But you go on with what you’re doing. My belly’s telling me it’s there, but it ain’t yelling at me yet.”

Starr gave the barrel of his Spencer carbine a final rub with an oil rag, and propped the weapon up beside the bench he was sitting on. “I haven’t started dinner yet, because Yazoo usually puts out a line when he takes the boat to make a delivery, and brings back a mess of fish.” He looked at Longarm curiously. “You ever remember where you ran into Yazoo before, Windy?”

Longarm shook his head. “Hell, Sam, you know how it is. A man gets around a lot, pretty much moving fast and not staying anyplace too long. He sees a lot of faces. And it ain’t likely Yazoo looks like he did, wherever it was we bumped into each other.”

“Sure. Not unless it’s somebody he’s partnered with, or had trouble with.” Starr looked obliquely at Longarm. “You didn’t have much trouble remembering Mckee.”

“Mckee looked just like he did when me and him had our run-in. And when you’ve got a grudge between you and somebody, you ain’t as likely to forget him as you would a man you just bad a drink with, or sat in a poker game with somewhere.”

“I guess you know Floyd and Steed are still edgy because you won’t give them your real handle.”

“I can’t say I blame them,” Longarm replied. “But I told Floyd I wasn’t about to give him anything on me until I had something on him. He ought to understand that.”

“Oh, I guess he does. Up to a point. But he’s still edgy.”

“He’ll get over it. I didn’t ask him and Steed to take me in on whatever job it is they’re cooking up. It was their idea—or Belle’s, I disremember which.”

“Sounds like Belle’s. I don’t recall being around when it first came up.” He stared challengingly at Longarm and added, “Belle’s got a lot on her mind, you know. She’s always figuring something out ahead of time, and now and then she’ll forget to tell me things.”

“How’d you and Belle happen to meet up, Sam?” Longarm asked.

“Jim Reed was a good friend of mine. Cherokee blood in both of us, you know. We were on a few jobs together before Jim and Belle got married. Then, after Jim got killed, it was a while before I saw Belle. And when I did, we hit it off right well, so we married up. You know, while Jim and Belle was married, they stayed on the run most of the time. Down in Texas, here in the Nation, up in Missouri for a while, then to Arkansas, and back to Texas. That’s not good for a woman trying to bring up a couple of kids.”

Longarm had difficulty picturing the soft-spoken, mild-mannered Sam Starr riding with an outlaw who’d gotten the kind of reputation Jim Reed had for ingenuity, daring, and cold-bloodedness. Sam seemed to be the kind of man who fitted best into the role he now filled, as the subservient husband of a domineering wife. And he had more than a hunch that it had been Belle who’d done most of the wooing in their romance. He wondered just how big a part Sam’s land at Younger’s Bend had played in her decision to marry him.

“So you settled down here.”

“Well, I had the land from my tribe’s allotment. And even if Belle did send the children back to Missouri to get a good education, it’ll be here for them to come back to when they’re older. And it’s a nice place to live. Convenient and private.”

“That’s sure the truth,” Longarm agreed. He was tempted to ask about the naming of Sam’s land for Belle’s first lover, but he’d began to feel sorry for Starr. As long as Sam was contented to walk in the shadow of his wife, that wasn’t Longarm’s affair.

Beyond the cabins, Longarm saw Belle, Floyd, and Yazoo coming across the level area between the house and the bluff. Yazoo was carrying a string of fish.

“Oh-oh,” Starr said, his eyes following Longarm’s. “Time for me to put on the skillet. I hope you like catfish rolled in cornmeal and fried in bacon grease ‘till they’re nice and crusty on the outside.”

“To tell you the truth, Sam, it’s been such a while since I’ve had anything much but steak that I sort of disremember what fresh catfish tastes like.”

“If I had the time, I’d cook up a stew the Cherokee way, with some gobo root and ramp and dowall in with the fish. But that’d take too long, and I’d have to go pick the other things I need. Frying’s faster.”

Starr stood up. “I’ll go poke up the fire and get the grease heating up. Belle’s going to be hungry. She won’t feel like waiting long.”

“Well, Windy, I’m glad you got back all right,” Belle greeted Longarm when the trio got close to the house.

“Me too,” Yazoo chimed in. “If you and Sam ain’t et already, I got a right good string of fish here for dinner.”

“We waited for you,” Longarm said. “Sam’s inside now, getting ready to cook.”

“See, Floyd?” Yazoo said. “Told you I better stop there at the river and gut out these fish. I knew Sam’d expect me to bring in a mess. Now we won’t have to wait; they’re all ready to go in the pan. I’ll take ‘em in and they’ll be ready afore you know it.”

Floyd’s only acknowledgement was a nod. He was studying Longarm. “You get the girl sent off all right?” he asked.

“Sure, why? Didn’t you expect me to?”

“I thought you took a damn fool chance, going into a place as big as Fort Smith, with a fresh want out on you.”

“Well, I did have a mite of trouble,” Longarm admitted straight-facedly, his voice casual.

“Somebody spotted you?” Belle asked anxiously.

“in a way.”

Floyd snorted. “What the hell kind of answer is that? Either they spotted you or they didn’t.”

“It wasn’t me they spotted,” Longarm explained. “It was the girl. Then, because I happened to be with her, they figured I was Taylor. There was a reward out on him for that bank he robbed on the way up.”

“You just told us the girl got on the train all right,” Floyd said suspiciously. “How could they spot you with her, if you wasn’t on the train too?” Longarm said patiently, “It happened at the depot, Floyd. I’d just put Dolly on the train. I was standing there watching it pull out when she yelled at me to look out.”

“Well, what happened?” Belle demanded.

“We had a little set-to.” Longarm knew that Belle and Floyd wouldn’t be satisfied with that. They’d want a complete explanation, but he had cultivated a reputation for being close-mouthed, and didn’t intend to volunteer anything they failed to drag out of him.

“Damn it, Windy, you’re the tightest-lipped man I’ve ever run into!”

Belle complained. “I guess you deserve your name. Go ahead and tell us what happened!”

“Yeah,” Floyd seconded. “Whoever seen you must’ve been trying to throw down on you, for the girl to tell you to watch out.”

“Oh, he was. Had his gun out.”

“And you out-drew him?” Floyd’s tone, if not his words, as much as called Longarm a liar.

“I was right at the edge of the platform. I jumped off it before he shot.”

“And then you got him?” Belle frowned.

“Not right away. We waltzed around a little bit first.”

“But you did get the son of a bitch?” Floyd insisted.

“Oh, sure. He’s deader than hell right now,” Longarm replied.

“Who was it thought they recognized you?” Belle asked.

“Railroad bull.”

“Well, that’s not as bad as the real law,” Belle said, “At least you won’t have every little tin-badge town marshal and deputy sheriff along the border on the look out for you.”

“Why, Belle, there’s not anybody going to be on the lookout for me,” Longarm told her. “At least, not any more than there has been before now.”

“How do you figure that?” she asked.

“Because nobody saw me.”

“Oh, shit!” Floyd blurted. “In a place like a depot, in a town as big as Fort Smith? There’s people around depots all the time, day and night!”

“I’m of the same mind Floyd is,” Belle said slowly. She frowned and went on, “Somebody must’ve seen you.”

“I guess so. But nobody noticed me that much.”

“You’ll have one hell of a job convincing me of that,” Floyd said.

“Oh, I can prove it, Floyd,” Longarm told him in a quiet voice, almost a whisper.

“I don’t see how.”

“Just keep a curb-rein on your curiosity until I’ve had a chance to go down to my cabin. I’ve got all the proof you could ask for,” Longarm said confidently.

“I can’t wait to see that,” Floyd said. He was almost sneering.

Longarm didn’t have to respond, because at that Moment Sam Starr stepped out onto the porch and called, “Dinner’s ready! Come on and eat before it gets cold!”

Although fried catfish wasn’t something he’d have ordered at his favorite steak house in Denver, Longarm had to admit that Starr’s version of it was very tasty indeed. Under a thin, crisp crust, the tender white flesh of the virtually boneless fish flaked off, moist and toothsome. The fluffy brown biscuits that went with the meal did double duty; after the fish had all been eaten, biscuits and warm honey provided an ample dessert.

After they’d eaten, Floyd said, “Well, Belle, maybe you and Sam and Windy and me better sit right here and finish up planning that bank job.”

“What about Steed and Bobby?” Longarm asked.

“They’ll do what I tell ‘em to,” Floyd replied. “Me and Steed’s worked together before. We won’t have any trouble. But with two or three new ones coming in-“

“Not now, Floyd,” Belle broke in decisively. “We’ll talk about the job after supper. Steed and Bobby will be back from Eufaula then, and we can get it all settled without having to go over everything two or three times. Besides, Sam and I have to spend the afternoon up at the stillhouse with Yazoo. He’s got to start a fresh batch of mash cooking in a day or so, and we’ll need more sugar for it. We need bottles too. We’ll be going to Eufaula tomorrow to pick up what we’ll have to have.”

“That’s right,” Yazoo piped up. “I got every barrel and keg filled plumb to the brim up there right now. I can’t keep making moonshine unless I got what I need to work with.”

“After supper suits me,” Longarm said. “We better get things settled pretty soon, though. I can’t hang around here forever.”

“You better hang around long enough to do what you’ve said you will,” Floyd snapped. “And another thing—you said you could prove that yarn you were spinning us a while ago, about what happened in Fort Smith. I’d like to see you do that, before we start planning a job you’ll be in with us on.”

“I’ll bring along my proof when I come up for supper,” Longarm promised. “Now, if everybody’s going to be busy, I’m going down to the cabin and get some shut-eye.”

Steed and Bobby had returned when Longarm came up to join the group for supper. He brought along the copy of the Fort Smith Elevator, keeping it folded so the headlines wouldn’t show. Floyd challenged him as soon as he walked into the house.

“Well, Windy? I told Steed and Bobby about that crazy yarn you handed me and Belle today. They want to see how you figure to prove it, too.”

“Sure.” Longarm unfolded the paper and held it up. “Read it yourself.”

There Was silence for several minutes while everyone in the room bent over the newspaper. Belle was the first to finish. She looked up at Longarm and started laughing.

“Well, by God, Windy, you’re as good as your word! You really did cut down that railroad bull And got away with it!”

Steed asked, “Did the son of a bitch really get off five shots at you before you knocked him Over?”

“Couldn’t help that, Steed,” Longarm explained. “He kept jumping behind one of those iron posts, there outside the depot. Wasn’t much way I could get a clean shot at him until I worked him around out in back.”

“I guess it happened just about like you said it did,” Floyd finally admitted. “Windy, the way that newspaper write-up reads, you’ll fit in with us just like gravy goes with potatoes.”

Bobby stared at Longarm goggle-eyed. “You really did kill a policeman, Windy? Shot it out with him, right there in the depot?”

“You read what the paper says, Bobby,” Longarm replied.

“Well, I got no more reason to hang back,” Steed announced. “If Windy’s notched himself up a cop, even just a railroad bull, he’s with us all the Way.”

“That’s how I’ve felt all along,” Belle told them.

“Now, we can get down to business after supper and finish up our plans.”

Supper was the first really cheerful meal that Longarm remembered having eaten at Younger’s Bend. Before, there had always been Floyd’s suspicion, or Belle’s badly hidden jealousy, or some kind of strain or pall hanging over the table. Two or three times, Floyd tried to bring up the impending job, but Belle put him off with a reminder that there’d be time to talk and plan later on. When they’d finished, Belle told Yazoo to go up to the stillhouse and bring back two or three fresh bottles of whiskey, and as soon as Sam had cleared the table, she indicated that she was ready at last for them to get down to business.

“We’ll have to make up our minds tonight which day we’re going to take the bank,” she began.

“What’s the hurry?” Floyd asked.

“I’ve found out that the bank’s going to get a shipment of gold and currency from the New Orleans mint in the next three or four days,” she replied. “If we go in on the fifth or sixth day, we’ll get most of it. We don’t want to be there before the shipment gets in, and we don’t want to wait too long, or a lot of it will have been handed out to the factors buying up the farm crops.”

“Just how’d you get the news of that mint shipment, Belle? If you don’t mind telling me, that is,” Longarm asked.

“My whiskey customers pay me in more ways than with money, Windy. They carry messages, too.” Belle smiled wisely. “I can’t be riding into Eufaula every day just to pick up mail. Besides, I don’t trust the mail. How do I know the federal marshals and the post office don’t work in cahoots?”

Longarm could have told her that nothing could be further from the truth. He remembered a half-dozen times when a look at a piece of suspected mail might have saved a case for him, but Billy Vail had never been able to get the cooperation of the postal officials in allowing mail going through their hands to be opened. He said nothing, of course, just nodded understandingly.

Floyd said, “So that’s why you went along with Yazoo today! Damn it, Belle, you might’ve said something before now. Me and Steed have been wondering all along just how you was going to find out when this job ought to be pulled.”

“I don’t tell everybody my business,” Belle said tartly. “If everybody knew what I know, or how I work things out, I’d lose my edge.”

“All right, never mind that now,” Floyd told her. “If the bank’s going to have all that money on hand in three or four days, we’d better get cracking.”

“We’re still going to be short a man, even with Windy joining in,” Steed pointed out.

“No. Sam’s going with you,” Belle said. “We’ve known all along the job needs five men. There’ll be one at the end of the block on each side of the bank, and three to do the inside work. What you and Floyd and Windy have got to work out is who’s going to go in and who’s going to be the outside guards.”

“Mat’s easy enough,” Floyd said. “It’s just good sense for me and Steed and Windy to handle the bank. Now that my mind’s at rest about Windy, I figure he’s the equal of me and Steed any day. He’ll keep cool and move fast, and if there’s shooting, he’ll handle it quick and straight.”

“Oh, now wait a minute, Floyd!” Bobby protested. “I was in with you and Steed before Windy come along. It seems to me it’s only right that I’d go inside. That’s where the fun will be.”

“Hold up there, Bobby,” Longarm told the youth. “This ain’t no play-party we’re going on. It’s business.”

“You think I don’t know that, Windy?” Bobby shot back. “And I can do anything you can, as good as you can. Sure, Floyd and Steed think you’re right big of a much now, because you killed that officer in Fort Smith. Well, that don’t make you one bit better than me!”

“That’s enough, Bobby!” Floyd commanded. “You and Steed both agreed when we started out on this job that I was going to have the last word. All right, I’m giving you the last word now. You and Sam will be the outside guards. Me and Steed and Windy will take care of the inside work.”

Bobby didn’t look happy, but he subsided. Longarm turned to Belle. “I still don’t know where this bank is we’re going to take.”

“You don’t, do you, Windy? Well, neither does Floyd or Steed or Bobby. Or Sam, either, for that matter. The only one who knows that is me, and I’m not going to tell anybody until the very last minute.”

“Now wait a minute, Belle!” Floyd flared. “You never said that before. That’s no goddamn way to work! I’m with Windy. I want to know where we’re going, how long it’s going to take us to get there, what we can look for, and how we’ll get away.”

“I’ll give you part of it, Floyd,” she answered. “But not everything.”

“You better tell us the whole layout, Belle,” Longarm said. “I told you once before, I don’t buy a pig in a poke.”

Longarm was anxious to get the whole picture. He still had a few days during which he could manage to find a way to get word to Gower where the gang planned to strike, and set up the trap that would catch the entire bunch. With Sam in custody, he was pretty sure that either Belle or Sam would talk.

“This is one pig you’ll buy without seeing it,” Belle said. The emphasis she gave her words left no doubt in Longarm’s mind that she couldn’t be argued around. She went on, “Now, you don’t need to know where the bank is, not yet. The fewer people who know that, the less chance there is of word getting out about the job.”

“You might be right about that part of it, Belle,” Longarm began.

Belle cut him off short. “I know damn well I’m right about the whole plan, Windy. Now shut up, all of you, and I’ll tell you what you need to know. You can find out the rest later on.”

All of them listened intently while Belle explained the layout. “There would be no marshals or sheriffs deputies around to interfere, she guaranteed. There were only three in town, one deputy sheriff and two marshals, and she had two of the three in her pocket. They could be counted on to get the third man out of the way.

As for the bank, it was in the middle of the block. The two men outside could guard the street in both directions and keep anybody from getting close while the holdup was taking place. The outside men would hold the reins of the horses ridden by the three who’d go in. There might be a private guard inside the bank; some of them hired a man when there was a lot of extra money on hand. Handling him would be up to the men who went in. They’d also have to get the tellers and bank officers away from their desks, because all of them had weapons close at hand.

At ten o’clock, the time set for the holdup, the bank would have been open two hours, so the vault was sure to be open. The inside men would divide the loot among themselves; she’d see that they had sacks to put it in. The whole job shouldn’t take more than four or five minutes, and then they’d all be riding out.

Their approach and escape routes would be mapped out for them by Sam, the night before. They’d be stopping at a place she and Sam knew well. At that time, they’d also work out what to do in the event they had to separate during their getaway.

“So that’s the way it’s going to work,” Belle said firmly as she concluded her explanation. “Now, what day do you want to move, Floyd?

I’ll have to send a letter to the man who’s handling things for me, when I go to Eufaula tomorrow.”

“No use putting it off.” Floyd didn’t speak with quite as much authority as he had earlier. Belle’s dominance of their discussion had somehow diminished his stature. “If it’s all the same to everybody, we’ll give the money shipment three days to get to the bank. We’ll pull the job on the fourth.”

“Sounds all right to me,” Steed agreed. “I guess so,” Bobby said, when Floyd looked at him. “Whatever you say, Floyd.”

“Windy?” Floyd asked Longarm.

Longarm nodded.

“All right,” Belle said succinctly. “It’s settled, then.”

Longarm told Belle, “I intend to go into Eufaula with you and Sam tomorrow, if you’ve got no objections to my company. I need cigars, and I’d sort of like to look the place over, since I’ve never been there.”

“If you want to,” Belle said. “We could use somebody to give us a hand with the mules.” She looked at the others. “You can see there’s not one thing for you to worry about. When Belle Starr plans a job, it’s done right. I don’t leave anything to chance. You just handle things the way I’ve told you to, and it’ll come off as smooth as silk!”

CHAPTER 15

Although the sky was clear when Longarm, Sam, and Belle started from the house shortly after daylight, a line of low, black clouds showed to the northeast when they came out of the ravine and started along the trail leading to Eufaula. Each of them led a pack mule, which clopped behind them on a lead-rope and slowed the progress of the longer-legged horses. By the time they’d covered half the distance to the little town, the clouds had crept closer and there was a smell of rain in the air.

Belle scanned the sky anxiously. She’d put on what Longarm supposed was her regular going-to-town costume; at least it was what she’d been wearing the first time he’d seen her, when she and Sam had just returned from a visit to Eufaula. For this trip, Belle wore the same long green velvet dress with a full, flowing ankle-length skirt and a white scarf tucked in and drawn high around her neck.

Her hat was the same one, a wide-brimmed white Stetson with one side of the brim caught up by a pin that held a streaming plume. Around her waist, Belle had strapped on her polished gunbelt with its twin holsters carrying pearl-handled, silver-plated Smith & Wesson.32s. She wore the belt high on her waist. Belle rode in a silver-trimmed sidesaddle, as though to underscore the fact that, while she might be the Bandit Queen, she was still a perfect lady.

“I hope you remembered to put my slicker in your saddle roll,” she said to Sam as the trail widened so the three of them could ride abreast. “And brought enough tarps, too. If a rain comes up, half the sugar will be melted away by the time we get back, unless the bags are covered.”

“I smelled the rain coming last night before I went to bed,” Sam replied patiently. “Your slicker and all the tarps we’ll need are lashed across the packsaddles.

Longarm said, “Maybe it won’t rain hard. It don’t look to me like those clouds are moving very fast.”

“It’ll rain,” Sam told him. “Maybe not until late, and maybe not very hard. It’s early in the season for a real downpour, but we’ll get at least a drizzle before we get back.”

“If we hurry, maybe we can get back before the rain starts,” Belle fretted. “I just hate to think of my nice dress and all that sugar getting wet.”

“Stop worrying, Belle,” Sam said. “If it rains, there’s not a damned thing we can do to stop it. It’ll just have to rain, won’t it?”

Signs of settlement increased as they drew closer to Eufaula. For the first five or six miles of the ride, the trail had curved along a northern crook of the Canadian River. Then the trace became more clearly defined and the first houses began to appear. The houses were small when the trail swung northeast and left the river, and the land had been only partly cleared. The transition from a wooded path with cottonwood and blackjack oak growing thickly along its sides had been sudden when they changed direction. The first small fields and shacks dotted the roadside for a short distance, then gave way to wider cornfields and bigger houses. The fields were stubble-dotted from the recent harvest, and the narrow trace turned quickly into a wheel-rutted road beaten in the red soil.

Eufaula appeared ahead. It was a straggling town, stretched out in a single line of stores widely spaced along the road, which curved into the settlement. Even at a distance, the false fronts that rose above most of the awnings failed to hide the fact that except for two or three of the bigger buildings, the structures had only a single story. Red was the dominant color. Barn-red paint covered all but a few of the stores, and in most cases, the painting had been confined to their fronts. The sides had only the dark patina laid on them by sun and rain to distinguish their raw wood from the shining yellow pine boards of the newer buildings.

Even Longarm’s sharp eyes couldn’t make out the wording on the signs above the stores until they got within pistol-shot of the community. Most of the signs were small, their lettering straggly and thin. The stores were concentrated on one side of the main street—a continuation of the road—and on the less closely built side, there was an unusually large area vacant except for the big barn and corral of a livery stable. In the bare space, a number of unhitched wagons, buggies, and sulkies stood, their tongues slanting to the ground. Eufaula’s residences were scattered, without the regularity imposed by streets, in well-defined half-circles on both sides of the main road. Longarm was surprised at their number; there must have been a hundred houses.

“It sure ain’t such a much of a town,” he remarked as they got close enough for him to read the signs. “But I guess it’s a lot better for you that it ain’t.”

“We Like it the way it is,” Belle replied curtly. “But even if it grows, it still won’t be big enough for any law to move in and bother us at the Bend for a long time to come.”

They reined in at the hitch rail in front of the general store. A few doors farther on, another sign proclaimed the presence of yet another general store; it was in a newer building, still unpainted.

Belle said to Sam, “I guess you’d better take a mule and start rounding up bottles. I’ll do the trading while you’re taking care of that.”

“If you ain’t got anything you need for me to help you with, I’ll just find me a nice quiet saloon and sit down with a sip of Maryland rye until you’ve done your business,” Longarm said. “I can get my cigars before we ride out; I’ve got enough in my pocket to tide me over for a while.”

Belle laughed mockingly. “Your memory’s too short, Windy. I guess you haven’t been in the Nation long enough to remember that saloons are against the law here.”

Longarm frowned. “Now wait just a minute. That little town on this side of the Arkansas across from Fort Smith, the place they call Little Juarez. There’s plenty of saloons there.”

“And they pay plenty to stay open, too,” Belle retorted. “So do the saloons you’ll find in the Nation right on the Missouri border up north, and on this side of the Red River, down on the Texas line, where there’s a town on the other side.”

“Belle’s right, Windy,” Sam said. Bitterness crept into his tone as he went on, “Our Great White Father back in the East doesn’t think us Indians can hold our liquor. You know, we go crazy wild when we take a drink, and start killing all you white people.”

Belle added, “So the only liquor you’re going to find here in Eufaula is what we make out at the place, or what comes from one of the little whiskey ranches in the brush farther east And it’s none of it as good as the whiskey Yazoo turns out.”

Longarm turned to Sam. “But you’re going to buy bottles. Where from?”

“Jugs,” Sam told him. “We’ve got to save all the bottles we can get our hands on to send over into Arkansas. We deliver the whiskey here in jugs, and the customers bring their own bottles.”

“I’ll be damned,” Longarm said, shaking his head. “I never heard of such a damn fool thing.”

“Oh, we like it that way,” Belle told him. “The moonshine we make at the Bend pays the freight and a lot more. The jobs we pull off are all gravy.”

Longarm saw his plan to get away from Belle and Sam going up in smoke. He’d intended to work things out so that he’d have a few minutes by himself, enough time to Mail to Gower the note he’d written last night, telling him that the bank job had been set and advising him that as yet he hadn’t been able to learn which bank in which town would be the target.

He said, “Well, if that’s the way of it, I guess I’ll just walk around and stretch my legs while you two tend to your business.”

“You can help me, if you’ve a mind to,” Belle suggested. “Two of those mules have to be loaded with hundred-pound sacks of sugar. It’ll hurry things along if you’ll give the storekeeper a hand, and we might get started back to the Bend in time to miss getting caught in the rain.”

There wasn’t any way Longarm could see of avoiding Belle’s request. “Why, sure, Belle,” he said. “I’ll be glad to.” Sam said, “I’ll be on my way, then. It’ll take me an hour or more to make the rounds. I’ll meet you here at the store, and we can get some cheese and crackers and eat them before we start back.” He looked questioningly at Longarm and added, “If that’ll tide you over until supper, Windy. That’s about the best we can do here. There isn’t any restaurant.”

“That’ll suit me fine,” Longarm replied.

Starr untied the mule from his saddle-strings and set off on foot, leading the animal. Longarm watched him until he turned between two of the buildings and was out of sight, then he followed Belle into the store.

Longarm found the general store no different from a hundred others he’d seen in towns like Eufaula. Its interior was a wild jumble of goods arranged with little logic. Calico dresses crowded farming tools such as rakes and hoes. Shoes and bolts of cloth shared the same table. Patent medicines jostled cans of peaches on shelves behind the counter. Harness straps and horse collars hung on the walls beside slabs of bacon. Hams dangled by their curing-cords from the rafters, next to heavy work shoes suspended by their knotted laces. There was the inevitable wheel of cheese standing on the counter next to the tobacco cutter.

A short, bald man in a soiled, striped apron made of mattress ticking came from somewhere in the dimness at the back of the store. He said, “Well, Belle, I was wondering when you’d be coming for that sugar you ordered. It’s been here for almost a week.”

“I’m ready for it now, Eleazar,” Belle said. “And I’ve even brought somebody to help you load it on the mules.”

“Good, good. Now that the boy’s back in school again, I’m a little shorthanded.” He looked at Longarm. “Well, I’d say you ought to be able to lift a sack of sugar without too much trouble.”

Longarm grinned but made no reply. The thought flashed through his mind that he might be able to entrust his note to the storekeeper to mail, but, judging from the gossipy exchange between the man and Belle, he’d be a fool to take a chance. His note to Gower might wind up in Belle’s hands if he risked giving it to the storekeeper to mail.

Belle said, “There are some other things I need besides the sugar, Eleazar. A sack of scratch-feed—the eggs haven’t been very good since I ran out a few days ago—and matches, we’re running low. If you’ve got a fresh comb of the red clover honey, put it in a bucket for me to take back. Sam might want something else, I don’t know. Flour, or something like that. He’ll tell you when he comes back from picking up the bottles. And I guess we’d better load the sugar on right away. It looks like it might be getting ready to rain.”

“Be a shame if it spoiled the blowout for the newlyweds,” the storekeeper said. “You’ll be going, I guess?”

“What blowout?” Belle asked, frowning. “And who’s getting married? I haven’t heard anything about a wedding.”

“Why, Sam’s Aunt Lucy’s girl, Sairey. She’s marrying young Fred Mayes. Thought sure you’d heard.”

“Sam’s kin don’t pay much attention to us out at the Bend,” Belle said shortly. “But I don’t guess we’ll go to the wedding, since we didn’t get invited.”

“You’d be too late for it, anyhow,” Eleazar told her. “They had that this morning early. But the shindy’s just about getting started good right now, and it’ll probably go on most of the night.”

“Well, you and Windy go ahead and load the sugar,” Belle said. “Be sure it’s covered good, Windy. Sugar’s too dear to let the rain get to it and melt it away.”

“I’ll look after it, Belle,” Longarm assured her. He watched Belle go out the door, one hand holding her velvet skirt above her ankles to keep it from dragging on the dusty floor. Then he turned back to the storekeeper.

“I’ll make sure the saddles on the mules are clear, then we can start toting the sugar out.”

There were five one-hundred-pound sacks of sugar to be loaded, and Longarm lashed three to one mule, two to the other. He covered the sacks carefully with the tarpaulins that were tied to the packsaddles. It was easier to do the job right than to have Belle jawing at him, he thought as he tied off the last cross-hatch on the heaviest load. The other load wouldn’t be lashed down until the rest of the supplies had been added to it.

Belle came up just as he was finishing. She inspected the completed load carefully before nodding her satisfaction.

Longarm said, “Think I’ll walk around and stretch my legs. I’ll be back before you’re ready to leave.”

“If you run into Sam, don’t tell him about his cousin’s wedding,” Belle cautioned. “We don’t get along with that side of Sam’s family, but if he hears about the shindy, Sam’s going to want to look in on it.”

“I’ll keep quiet about it,” Longarm promised.

He walked quickly down to the post office and mailed his note to Gower. A barbershop across the street caught his eye as he came out. He crossed over after fingering his stubbled chin, deciding that a good shave would improve his spirits. He didn’t think Belle and Sam would have any trouble locating him if Sam showed up and they got ready to start back.

While the barber was rubbing in the last drops of bay rum on Longarm’s now-smooth face, he saw Sam leading the third mule, loaded now with bulging tow sacks, in the direction of the store. He got out of the barbershop as fast as possible, and walked into the store just in time to hear Belle exclaim, “Get some sense into your head, Sam Starr! We’d be just about as welcome at Aunt Lucy Suratt’s as a case of smallpox!”

“Not when there’s a party going on to celebrate a wedding,” Sam retorted. “They’d get madder if they found out we was in town and didn’t come to it than they would if we was to show up.”

Longarm left them to argue it out, and walked over to the counter where cigars were displayed. To his surprise, a partly emptied box of his favorite cheroots stood among three or four other kinds on the shelf. Pointing to the cigars, he told the storekeeper, “If you got a full box of that kind, I’ll buy it off you. Or if you ain’t, I’ll take what’s left in this box.”

“Take what’s there and welcome,” Elezear said. “I’ve only got two customers buys that kind, I just keep ‘em on hand to oblige.”

“I’ll leave a few, if it’s going to put your customers out,” Longarm offered.

“If you want all of ‘em, take ‘em. I can’t sell something but once.”

Eleazar counted the number of cheroots left in the box and handed it over to Longarm. “Does this go on Belle’s bill?”

“No.” Longarm tossed a half eagle on the counter. “Take the price out of that.” He saw that Belle and Sam were winding up their argument. “Well?” he asked. “We going to the shindy or back to the Bend?”

“We’ll go say our hellos to Aunt Lucy and the rest,” Belle replied. She made no effort to keep the anger from her voice. “I can’t make Sam see he’s just poking his head into a hornet’s nest. You don’t have to come unless you want to.”

“I’ve got nothing better to do. And I’ll be right there handy when you get set to go back.”

“All right. We’ll load the rest of the order and go stay at the shindy a half-hour or so, then head for home. We’ll get wet before we get home, but Sam’s got his head set.”

“If we get wet, we get wet,” Sam said curtly. “Come on. If we’re going, we might as well finish up here and get to Aunt Lucy’s before the food runs out.”

They could hear the music a quarter of a mile before they got to the festivities. The twanging of a guitar, the scratchy high notes of a violin or two, and the thumping of a drum accompanied them as they wound along a dirt road well past the town itself to a house that stood isolated in a grove of mixed sycamore and sweet gum.

When the road straightened out enough for them to look down it, they saw that a board platform, only inches above ground level, had been raised for the dancers who stamped and spun to the music. At one side, long tables were heaped with food. Longarm judged that there must be thirty or more people there, counting those at the tables and on the dance floor and the few who sat on the porch of the house where it was shady.

Off the road, there were wagons, buggies, and saddle horses, as well as a few saddle mules, tethered in a glade far enough from the house to keep the flies from swarming over the entertainment area. Sam had been leading the way, with Belle riding just behind him and Longarm bringing up the rear. Sam reined in and surveyed the crowd.

“Looks like the whole damn family’s here,” he told Belle over his shoulder.

“Not including your cousin Henry, I hope,” she snapped. “If that renegade shows his face at one of your family parties, and I’m there too, I intend to shoot his head off.”

“Now, Belle,” Sam said. “You just leave it to me to settle with Henry.”

Longarm had drawn abreast of the Starrs. He asked Sam, “You sure I’m going to be welcome here? Because from the way you and Belle have been talking, I got the idea your family’s sort of split up, and don’t get along any too well together.”

“Oh, you know how families are,” Starr said. “There was a big split long years back, between the ones who were for and against John Ross, the Cherokee chief who signed the removal treaty. But that was fifty years ago, and Ross has been dead for a long time.”

“That doesn’t seem to make any difference to the Starrs and the Wests and the Suratts,” Belle said. Her voice was sharp. “And that’s got nothing to do with Henry West. He’s the son of a bitch who turned Sam and me in to the federals on a cattle-stealing charge.”

“Just the same, my family’s big enough to forget fusses when one branch or another’s throwing a shindy,” Sam said confidently. “Come on. We’ll pull in and leave our animals here with the others, and walk up to the house.”

As far as Longarm could tell, Sam and Belle weren’t openly snubbed by anybody as they circulated around the edge of the dance floor. There were some who returned short, stern-faced replies when Belle and Sam greeted them, but there were about as many others who seemed glad enough to see the Starrs of Younger’s Bend.

Longarm tried his best to do the impossible: make himself inconspicuous and still act as though he felt at home. He was introduced to a number of Starrs and Wests and Suratts and others whose names he didn’t catch, young and old, male and female, and all of them seemed to accept his presence there as normal.

It was difficult for Longarm to realize that all, or almost all, of those at the gathering were from the same family. As far as he could see, there was no common trait among the three clans. He met a variety of Starrs and Wests and Suratts who might have been pure Anglo-Saxon, full-blood Cherokee, or part Spanish or part black. The more of the family he saw, the more confused he got.

He stubbed his toe with Belle just after they’d completed the circuit of the porch, where the elder members of the group had gathered. She said, “All right, we’ve done what you wanted to, Sam. Now let’s go home.”

“Home? Damn it, Belle, this place right here’s home for the time being. We just got here. We can’t up and leave like we think we’re too good to mix with ‘em.”

“You mix, then.” She turned to Longarm. “Come on, Windy. Dance with me. I might not look it, but I’m one hell of a fine dancer. Used to dance professionally, you know, over in Dallas and out in California.”

“I’d be real proud to lead you out on the floor there, Belle,” he replied. “But all I’d do is make you look like a fool. I got two left feet when it comes to dancing.”

“Oh, hell, you’re just bashful!”

“No. I’m telling you the truth. Seems like the music goes to my head and gets my feet all mixed up. I end up falling on my face and making my partner mad. After that happened a time or two, I swore I never was going to try to dance anymore.”

“Oh, you’re just no good for a woman at all, Windy!” Belle snapped. “Well, if Sam’s so dead set on staying, I intend to have as much fun as I can.” She looked around, and saw a young man close by. “Jim! Jim July!

Come on and dance with your old Aunt Belle!”

For a moment the youth seemed on the verge of refusing, but then he smiled, showing big, yellowed teeth, and took Belle by the arm, and then they were stamping and whirling with the others on the dance floor.

Sam said to Longarm, “Well, Belle’s taken care of, so I’m going to do some dancing myself. Go help yourself to vittles, Windy. There’s whiskey under the tables. Just lift up any of the tablecloths and pick up a jug.”

Left to himself, Longarm sampled the food. There were ham and chicken and spareribs and beef, cornbread and biscuits and a variety of vegetables, few of which he recognized, not being much of a vegetable fancier. There were fried squirrel and rabbit and possum, beans of several kinds, pickled crabapples, and tiny orange persimmons wrinkled into sweetness. There were some pots of stew that smelled appetizing, but which Longarm left alone because he wasn’t sure what might have gone into them.

While he ate, he studied the shifting crowd. Fresh faces were constantly appearing, but Longarm couldn’t tell whether they belonged to new arrivals or people he hadn’t noticed before. He saw that Sam had gone onto the dance floor, but wasn’t dancing with Belle. She was still twirling around with the young Cherokee she’d called Jim, and Sam had taken a short, chubby, middle-aged woman for his partner. A young couple, their faces flushed and perspiring, pushed past him, heading for the tables. Longarm stepped aside and bumped into someone behind him.

“Beg pardon,” he said, swiveling around.

He glanced at the woman he’d jostled, and then opened his eyes wide for a better look. She was strikingly attractive in a regal sort of way, even with her face twisted into a grimace of dismay as she juggled the bowl of stew she was carrying. Longarm grabbed her by the shoulders and steadied her in time to keep the stew from slopping over the side of the bowl.

“Thank you,” she said, flashing him a smile.

“Maybe I better walk in front of you to keep somebody else from bumping into you like I did,” he suggested.

“That’s not necessary. I’m just taking this to my aunt, over there on the porch.”

“Mrs. Lucy Suratt?” Longarm fished up the name of the only aunt he’d heard mentioned.

“No. My Aunt Sarah. Aunt Lucy’s my aunt once removed, if I remember the family tree correctly.”

She started toward the porch, and Longarm walked ahead of her, clearing a path. They rounded the corner of the dance floor just as Belle came rushing up. “Windy!” Belle panted. “Have you seen Sam?”

“Not since a few minutes ago. He was out dancing, then.”

“He’s not on the dance floor. I’ve looked.”

“You trying to find him and talk him into going home now?”

“I’m trying to find him to get him away before there’s big trouble. Frank West just got here.”

“You don’t figure Sam would start anything, do you? Not after-“

“Sam might not. Frank might. They’ve both said they’re going to shoot the other on sight. Go around that way, Windy. See if you can find Sam.”

Longarm started in the direction in which Belle had pointed. He pushed through the crowd, skirting the dance floor, but when he got to the side of the floor nearest the house, he saw that Belle had found her husband first. He walked up to them in time to hear Sam say, “I don’t give a damn what you want me to do! If Frank’s here and wants to settle things, I’m ready!”

“Sam, listen to me!” Belle was almost shouting. “I know you’ve got a good gun hand, but so has Frank!”

“Then we’ll just have to see which of us is best!” Sam snapped.

Belle appealed to Longarm. “Windy, help me get Sam to be reasonable!

I don’t want him t-“

“No, Belle. You and Sam settle things between you. It’s your family.” Sam said, “Windy’s right. Damn it, Belle! Most of the time I listen to you, but this time I’m not going to!” In a calmer tone, he went on, “Frank’s my kin, not yours. I’ve got to face him myself. You stay out of it.”

A hush began rippling over the dance floor. The music faltered and died away. The dancers began moving off the board square, clustering at the corners. Longarm looked across the deserted boards. He saw a man—Frank West, he supposed—standing on the opposite side, staring fixedly at Sam. West was not making any threatening moves. He simply stood there, looking. Sam said, “Windy, get Belle out of the way!”

“I’m going to stand with you!” Belle exclaimed.

“You are like hell! My people call me a squaw man! They’ll start calling me a squaw if I don’t stand up to Frank by myself!”

Belle tried to grab Sam’s arms, but he was the quicker of the two. He shoved Belle into Longarm. Longarm grabbed her upper arms. Sam took a step or two away from them. His face was set. Longarm thought he’d never really seen Sam Starr until now.

Starr sidled along the edge of the dance floor, his stare matching that fixed on him by Frank West. Longarm didn’t see which of the two drew first; he was watching Starr. Their two shots rang out at almost exactly the same time.

Sam’s leg buckled, but he stayed on his feet. West was bringing up his revolver for a second shot when Sam fired again. West got off the round just as his body jerked to the impact of Sam’s slug. West’s bullet tore into Sam, who staggered.

Sam began limping toward West. He shot once more as West crumpled slowly. West still had enough strength for one more shot, and Sam went to his knees as the slug tore into him. His gun was still leveled. He fired, hitting West, who jerked and twisted to one side. Starr lurched forward on his face. He used his left hand to push himself up and get off a last shot before his muscles failed him.

Then both men lay prone and motionless as the echoes of their final shots died away and the clearing fell silent.

CHAPTER 16

Belle ran to her husband, who lay face down at the edge of the dance floor. Longarm was a step behind her. He could see at a glance that Starr was dead.

Across the bare planks of the deserted floor, Frank West’s body twitched. Longarm went to check on him. West lay with his head twisted to one side. The eye that Longarm could see was sightless and beginning to glaze. West’s arm was folded under his body; only the tip of his revolver’s muzzle was visible.

Going back to Belle, Longarm said, “Sam sure did what he said he was going to. West’s dead.”

“So is Sam, damn it!” Belle’s voice rasped in her throat.

“You can’t do a thing for him, Belle. It’s finished.”

By now, others were beginning to gather around them. Longarm knelt beside Starr’s body and turned it over. Sam’s dead eyes were fixed upward, his lips twisted in death’s grin. Belle took off her scarf and draped it over the dead man’s face. Longarm asked her, “Is there an undertaker here in town?”

“No. Folks in Eufaula take care of their own dead.”

A ring of people had formed around them now, but none of them were talking. Across the dance floor, Longarm could see a similar circle around Frank West’s body. As far as he could tell, the two groups were about equal in number. He wondered if it was a division by family ties, and if an argument was going to break out among the kinfolk.

Belle said, “Will you get Sam’s horse from the glade, Windy? I’m not going to ask these people to lend me a wagon. I don’t intend to be beholden to them for anything at all.”

“You’ll bury Sam at the Bend, then?” he asked. When Belle nodded silently, he said, “What about the law? A judge or somebody?”

Belle shook her head. “No. I guess the only ones who’d have any say are the Cherokee Tribal Council, and they’re up in Talequah. That’s a long way from here.”

“I guess we’d better-“

Longarm was interrupted by a burly man wearing butternut jeans and a pink calico shirt, who detached himself from the crowd and strode over to them.

“Belle,” the man said. He jerked his head in the direction of the bodies. “I see Frank and Sam finally found each other.”

“Yes,” Belle said tonelessly.

“And did what both of them swore they would,” the man went on.

“Frank started the fight,” Belle flared. “He called for Sam to come out and face him.”

“That don’t matter much now, does it?” the man asked.

She said to Longarm, “Windy, this is Robert West, Sam’s uncle.”

“Frank’s too,” West said. He dismissed Longarm with a jerk of his head, and turned back to Belle. “You going to bury Sam on his land?”

“Yes. We’ll be going back right away.”

“Well see to Frank. Bury him this evening, I suppose. You won’t stay for the funeral?”

Belle shook her head. “No, Robert. It wouldn’t look right.”

West nodded slowly. “I guess you’re’right, Belle, but I don’t feel that way and neither will Sarah and the rest of the family. When will you be putting Sam away?”

Belle looked around the clearing. The sun was slanting below the treetops, and shadows were creeping over the dance floor, where a few people stood talking. She said, “We won’t get back in time to bury him tonight. Tomorrow I suppose.”

“I’ll bring the family out. Early or late?”

“I haven’t thought about it, Robert.”

“Sarah and Henry and John will want to be there,” West said. “We’ll bring our own tucker. Look for us sometime right about noon. You’ll put us up for the night, I guess? It’d be too late for us to come back home after Sam’s buried.”

“You come ahead,” Belle said. “I suppose Sam would have wanted it that way.”

West nodded and walked back across the street, and Belle asked Longarm, “Can’t we get started right away, Windy? I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to.”

Longarm nodded. “Go on the porch while I get Sam’s horse up here. It won’t take long,” he told her. “Unless you want me to come along and we’ll bring back the mules too, and save stopping again.”

“No. You go ahead. I’ll wait.”

Longarm walked to the glade and led Starr’s horse back to where Sam’s body lay. A small group had gathered around the dead man. Longarm started to lift the corpse, and two of the men stepped forward and helped him. Sam’s revolver lay in the center of the bloodstains, his hat a foot away. Longarm went over and used the hat to pick up the blood-covered revolver, and tucked both in the saddlebags on Starr’s horse. Across the dance floor, men were carrying Frank West’s body into the house. Longarm watched for a moment, then went on with the job Belle had asked him to do.

With the sun slanting on their backs, Longarm and Belle rode back to Younger’s Bend. It was a silent trip. Belle led Sam’s horse, with the blanket-wrapped body lashed across the saddle, and Longarm led the mules, strung out behind in single file.

Belle spoke only once, when the trail widened and Longarm pulled up beside her to ask if she was all right. “Yes. Sam’s not the first husband I’ve had to bury, Windy. But I don’t guess you ever get used to it.”

“No, I guess a body don’t.”

“I should have stayed long enough to send a note to Pearl. And to Ed. They liked Sam.”

“Your kinfolks will be out tomorrow; you can send whatever mail you’ve got back with them.”

“Sam’s kinfolks!” Belle flared. For a moment she was once more the Bandit Queen, short-tempered and snappish. “I wish I’d just told them to stay away from Younger’s Bend! I don’t want to have them around tomorrow, Windy. They’ll blame me for what happened!”

“That was between Sam and his cousin, Belle. Hell, it wasn’t your fault.”

“They’ll go back beyond the shooting. You don’t know how the Cherokees think, Windy. Sure, it was Frank’s fault for turning Sam and me in to the law. But they’ll go farther back than that. They’ll think that if Sam hadn’t married me, he wouldn’t have been doing anything the law would be after him for. They won’t admit that Sam was outside the law before I ever met him. Hell, if Sam hadn’t been pulling stagecoach and bank jobs with Jim Reed before I ever married Jim, I never would’ve met Sam.” Longarm finally got the sequence sorted out. He asked, “You’re saying these kinfolks of Sam’s feel like you set him outside the law?”

“They always have. And they’ll be resentful because I’ll inherit Sam’s allotment land, instead of it going back to the family.” Belle shook her head. “Cherokees carry grudges backward a long way. Robert didn’t want to bring the family out tomorrow because of me. He just couldn’t stand to see Sam’s kinfolks disgraced because they aren’t there when he’s buried.”

Longarm didn’t bother to point out that Cherokees weren’t alone in holding grudges. He remembered some of the feuding that went on during his own boyhood in the hardscrabble hills of West Virginia. He didn’t think Belle would be much inclined to listen to anything he said, though. She was thinking her own thoughts. Ahead, the trail narrowed. Longarm reined in to let her ride ahead, and dropped back to the position he’d held most of the time since they’d left Eufaula, behind the horse bearing Sam Starr’s body. Before they’d gone much farther, the rain began, a slow, irritating drizzle.

Belle took charge as soon as she dismounted at Younger’s Bend. She answered the questions that flowed from those who’d stayed behind, but cut her explanations as short as possible. When Floyd and Steed and Bobby tried to offer condolences, she brushed their efforts aside. Dry-eyed and determined, her thin lips pinched even thinner as she concentrated on what had to be done, she overrode the reluctance of the men to do household work, and kept them busy far into the night getting things in readiness for the arrival of Sam’s kinfolk.

Laying out Sam’s corpse was the first job. Belle did most of that herself. She had to have help in stripping away the bloodstained, bullet-torn clothes Sam had been wearing when he died, but she shooed the others away while she washed the body with vinegar water and dressed it in the best clothes Sam had owned. She brushed the dead man’s hair and smoothed away the contorted smile that had frozen on his face during the moments of death. The only time she called on the others for help was when she was unable to force Sam’s stiff Sunday boots on. It occurred to Longarm while he and Floyd worked at sliding the boots onto Sam’s limp legs that he still hadn’t seen Belle shed a tear over her husband’s death, and her eyes showed no signs that she’d done any private weeping.

While Belle devoted her attention to the corpse, she put the men to work moving the horses and mules from the barn up to the corral. There was more room in the barn for mourners, and the rain-freshened air that circulated through the slat-rail walls made it a cooler place to keep the corpse than the small house. They raked the floor clean and smoothed it where necessary, then spread a thick layer of fresh straw. In the center they placed a pair of sawhorses with planks across them, and covered the boards with the blankets in which Sam would be wrapped for burial.

Only after these jobs had been finished did Belle allow them to stop for supper. Darkness had already come when they ate their pickup meal, standing around the kitchen table, munching whatever scraps and bits they’d been able to unearth of cheese, dry biscuits, a few pieces of hard corn pone, and some fried chicken that had been sitting in a dish for two or three days. They washed it down with Yazoo’s corn squeezings.

“I ain’t much on cooking,” the old man volunteered as they chewed, “but I can turn to in the morning and cook up some grub for the folks you said is coming tomorrow, Belle.”

“They’ll bring their own food,” Belle said. “Enough for them and us too. Besides, you’re not going to have time to cook tomorrow morning, Yazoo. None of you are. There’s Sam’s grave to dig and the house to clean up, and all that sugar to carry up to the stillhouse. There’s more than enough to keep everybody busy. I want this place to be ready by noon, before Sam’s kinfolks get here!”

At daybreak they started again. Belle had wrestled a breakfast of sorts from the kitchen range: soggy biscuits and bacon and coffee. She hurried them through the meal, urged them to haste in carrying the sugar and other items up the slope to the still, then designated Yazoo and Bobby to handle the housecleaning chores while Longarm, Floyd and Steed went up to the grove. They started the grave a short distance from the still-dark mounds of the other two so recently filled.

“For a hell of a lot less’n two cents, I’d call off this fucking job,” Steed panted. They’d just broken through the hard surface crust; the rain had passed over during the night, barely moistening the earth. Steed took a swallow from the bottle they’d brought with them to ease the digging and went on, “Damn job’s been jinxed from the start. Mckee, then Taylor, now Sam. I can’t keep from wondering if I’m next.”

“That ain’t no way to talk,” Floyd told him. “The job didn’t have one damned thing to do with what happened to them, Steed.”

“So you say.” Steed drank again and passed the bottle to Floyd. “Just the same, we’re a man short again.” Longarm said nothing, but kept plying his shovel.

Floyd offered him the bottle, but Longarm shook his head. “Thanks. I’ll wait till I can drink rye.”

“Well, damn it, how do you feel about the job, Windy?”

“Same as always.”

“Maybe you better tell us just what that means,” Steed said.

“Means I don’t give a damn. Call it off, go ahead with it,” Longarm replied levelly. “I don’t think it’s jinxed, even if you do.”

Longarm realized he was taking a chance in saying what he had, but it was another of those risks he couldn’t avoid if he intended to keep up the front he’d been presenting the outlaws.

Floyd took a second swallow from the bottle and handed it to Steed, saying, “We’re not calling off the job! If what Belle’s told us about the bank layout is right, we can get by with one outside man.”

“You mean Bobby?” Steed asked. He spat, then drank. “Shit! The kid’s green, Floyd. We couldn’t be sure he might not panic.”

“Instead of us hashing this over, we’d be better off talking to Belle,” Longarm suggested. He held out his hand for the bottle. Even though corn whiskey always tasted too sweet to him, digging was dry work. He took a sparing sip. “Maybe she’d know somebody who could take Sam’s place.”

“Not in the time we got left,” Floyd said. He reached out his hand for the bottle and drank, then grinned mirthlessly. “I got a better idea. Belle’s always bragging and blowing about how she’s the Bandit Queen. Let’s just tell her flat out she’s got to take Sam’s place.”

“Me, go on a job with a woman?” Steed shook his head. “Not likely!”

“Wait a minute, Steed,” Longarm said. “Floyd’s idea might not be so bad. Belle knows the country. If she stood lookout with Bobby, we wouldn’t be worried about him being green. She’d keep him on the mark.”

It had suddenly occurred to Longarm that, with Sam gone, the use of Younger’s Bend as an outlaw rendezvous would end if Belle was put behind bars. So would her payoffs. A bank holdup would bring a sentence that would keep her in the pen for years.

“See there, Steed?” Floyd asked. “Maybe you better think again.”

“Thinking won’t change a thing,” Steed retorted. “I don’t want any part of a woman on any job I ride out on.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to talk to Belle about it,” Longarm insisted. “We’re damn sure going to have to change our plans anyhow.”

“Well…” Steed drawled out the word so that his doubts dripped from it almost visibly. “I’ll go as far as talking, but sure as shit stinks, I won’t change my mind.”

They fell silent and finished their job. The morning was passing, breakfast had been skimpy, and they were anxious to be at the house when Sam’s kin arrived with the food Belle had said they would bring.

A larger number of relatives than Longarm had expected arrived shortly after the trio returned to the house. The men rode in on horses; there were eight of them, and it seemed to Longarm that twice as many women were in the spring wagons that followed the horsemen. There were two of the wagons. The women sitting in them held plates and platters on their laps, and steadied big pots in the wagon beds with their feet.

Belle had stationed herself on the porch when she heard the wagons creaking up. She’d found time to change into a black velvet dress. It was ankle-length, like the green one, and very much the same in cut, with a high collar to hide the creases and loose skin of her neck. She hadn’t put on her hat, but had arranged her dark hair in a curving bang that hid her high-domed forehead. In spite of the occasion, or perhaps because of it, she wore her silver pearl-handled pistols.

Yazoo, obviously drunk but still able to navigate, skipped out of sight into the house when he heard the relatives arriving. Longarm, Steed, Floyd, and Bobby retreated toward the cabins with their bottle, but stopped just beyond the well to watch the wagons as they pulled up and men swung off their horses. There seemed to be a protocol the relatives observed. Robert West, uncle of both of the dead men, was the first to step up on the porch. He bent over Belle, said a few words in a low voice, then stood beside her while the men filed past and stopped for a word or two before moving on. The women followed. They were a bit more demonstrative, but only words passed between them and Belle; there were no embraces or hand-clasps. The procession wound into the barn. When the last of the guests—a girl not yet in her teens—had disappeared into the barn, Belle rose and stepped inside the house. Yazoo came out with her almost at once. He carried a gallon jug of whiskey in each hand, and went into the barn.

Steed said under his breath, “When are they going to start dishing up the grub? I’m damn near starved.”

“So am I,” Floyd agreed. “You reckon they’ll eat before the burying?

Or wait till it’s finished?”

“I’m as hungry as the rest of you, I guess,” Bobby said. “What you reckon they got in all them platters and pots?”

“It’d better be food,” Steed told him. He took another swallow from the almost empty bottle. “My belly thinks my throat’s been cut.”

Several of the older women came from the barn and sat down near Belle. They stared silently ahead. The other women began carrying the food from the wagons into the house.

“I sure hope that grub they got is fit to eat,” Floyd said. He caught Longarm’s eye and winked broadly. “Let’s see, Sam was part Cherokee. Ain’t it the Cherokees that likes dog meat, Windy?”

“Oh, most of the redskins I know about eat dogs,” Longarm replied. “Sioux, Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Comanche. I guess the Cherokees do too.”

“Dog meat?” Bobby gasped. “Is that what we’re going to have to eat?”

“Oh, you don’t have to eat if you don’t want to, Bobby,” Floyd said. “Or you can pass up the meat and fill your belly with bread and potatoes and garden truck.”

“You and Floyd are funning me, aren’t you, Windy?” Bobby asked. “Those folks don’t even look like Indians. They don’t really eat dogs, do they?”

“Well, they’re all of them part Cherokee, Bobby,” Longarm answered. “But I reckon they’ve given up a lot of their Indian habits.”

“Dog meat or not, I don’t aim to wait any longer for some grub,” Steed said suddenly.

Longarm looked at the outlaw. Steed was weaving on his feet; the whiskey on his empty stomach was proving to be more than he could handle. Before anyone could stop him, Steed staggered over to the wagons. There was only one woman in sight. She was lifting out a heavy pot. Belle and the woman on the porch had moved into the house. “You think you better go bring him back?” Longarm asked Floyd.

“Ah, Steed won’t hurt the woman. He’s just gone to find out when we’re going to be fed.” Floyd was feeling the liquor almost as much as Steed.

Longarm watched as Steed approached the wagon. The woman heard him coming up and half-turned, having balanced the pot on the edge of the wagon’s side. Steed said something to her, and the woman shook her head. He gestured at the pot. His wild arm-waving overbalanced him, and Steed lurched heavily into the woman.

Longarm saw trouble looming and started to move. He got to the wagon just as Steed grabbed the woman’s arm. She kicked at his shins, still trying to hold onto the pot, but almost dropping it.

“Don’t put your hands on me!” she said as Longarm came up.

“Now, listen, you damned-” Steed began.

Longarm cut off whatever Steed had been about to say by grabbing his shoulder and whirling him around. “Leave the lady alone, Steed,” he ordered sternly. “This ain’t a time or place to stir up a ruckus.”

“Let go of me, Windy—or by God-“

Longarm increased the pressure of his steel-hard fingers on Steed’s collarbone. Steed broke off his intended remark to say, “Damn you, turn me loose! That hurts!”

“You’ve had a drink too many,” Longarm told the outlaw. “Go on back over there with Floyd and Bobby and cool off.”

Steed sobered up quickly as he got the message from Longarm’s hard voice and crunching grip. The memory of Mckee may have helped speed his recovery. He protested, “I wasn’t aiming to hurt her. All I want is a bite of something to stop my belly from griping!”

“Then wait, like the rest of us. Now come on. Let’s go back over there with Floyd and Bobby.”

Longarm swung Steed around. He hadn’t really looked at the woman, intent as he was only on hustling Steed away from a situation that could create trouble. They’d gotten several steps from the wagon when she called, “I still don’t know your name, but thanks for the second time!”

“You’re welcome,” Longarm replied. He turned as he spoke, and looked back. He recognized her then. It was the woman he’d bumped into at the shindy. As they had the day before, Longarm’s eyes widened. Her face was one of the prettiest he’d seen in a long time, now that he got his first good look at it when it wasn’t pulled into a grimace. There wasn’t any special feature that drew his attention, just a general impression of mature beauty.

He said, “My friend didn’t mean any harm, ma’am. We just put in a morning’s work digging Sam’s grave, and we’re a mite starved out.”

“There’ll be plenty to eat as soon as Cousin Sam’s buried,” she said. “It wouldn’t be respectful if we made him wait until after we’d eaten, though.”

Longarm nodded. “We’re not all that hungry. We can wait.” In a lowered voice, he told Steed, “You were acting like a damn fool. If that woman had yelled, you’d have had all of Sam’s men kinfolk piling out of that barn and onto you.”

“Hell, I didn’t mean anything, Windy. I only wanted to see if I couldn’t get a bite to eat.”

“Just the same,” Longarm began. He stopped as a drumbeat sounded from the barn, then another. He nodded and said, “I guess we’ll be eating soon enough. It sounds to me like Sam’s funeral’s just started.”

CHAPTER 17

To the measured beat of the drum, Sam Starr’s body was carried from the barn on the shoulders of four of his kinsmen. The drummer led the way. His drum was small, less than a foot in diameter, and he carried it at eye level, bringing a surprisingly resonant note from it with his fingertips.

The corpse lay on a single wide plank. The board was not quite wide enough to accommodate the dead man’s shoulders, which protruded over its edges on both sides. Behind the bearers came the remaining men. All except Robert West wore hats. West had on a wide headband. As the tiny procession passed the house, the women trooped out and took up their places behind the men. Belle walked at their head, with a much older woman.

Longarm, Floyd, Steed, and Bobby followed some distance behind the women. Halfway to the grove, Longarm heard the scraping of feet behind them and looked back. Yazoo had appeared from somewhere and was following them.

Not until the men carrying the body reached the graveside and lowered their burden to the ground did Longarm see that Sam’s face had been covered with a featureless mask, made of some sort of tanned animal pelts. The drumbeats stopped when the body touched the ground. Robert West leaned over the corpse and lifted the mask off. In the short interval that elapsed before West pulled around the dead man’s face a fold of the blanket on which the corpse lay, Longarm saw that the face had been painted. A single band of black ran from ear to ear, covering both eyes and nose, and a pattern of thin red lines and small circles had been drawn over the mouth and chin.

After he had covered Sam’s face, Robert West knelt. The other men followed suit. West said a few short phrases in a low voice, almost a whisper. He stood up, lifted his face and spread his arms, and raised his voice in a brief chant in Cherokee. He nodded, and four of the men lowered the body into the earth. All of the men then filed past the open grave, each of them dropping into it a small square of cornbread. West motioned toward the waiting shovels. The men took turns working with the shovels until the grave was filled and mounded. During the brief ritual, the women stood at one side, watching with impassive faces. Belle stood a little apart from the others. When the mound had been formed, West led the group back to the house.

“You reckon we’re supposed to go in and eat with them?” Steed asked as he and the others fell in at the end of the straggling line. They carefully kept a bit of space between themselves and the relatives.

Yazoo answered him. “Yep. Belle told me to tell you to come on in and fill up after the burying. Them kinfolks of Sam’s has brought enough vittles to feed a whole damn army.”

“What-what kind of food, Yazoo?” Bobby asked hesitantly.

“Hell, I don’t know.” Yazoo was just drunk enough to be cheerful. “There’s roasting ears and venison steaks and whole pots of stews and garden truck. I just got a look at it while they was unloading the wagons.”