Longarm on the Thunderbird Run

“I’m coming.” He pulled on his trousers and crossed the room barefoot—the place had not been swept since he checked in, and the floor was cold and gritty underfoot— to unlock the door.

He did not know the man in the hallway, but he was unarmed and seemed inoffensive enough. Longarm pointed the muzzle of the Colt down toward the floor and let him in.

“Sorry t‘ bother you, Marshal.”

“No problem.”

“I’m a loader at the Arrabie, Marshal. Morris, Jim Morris.” He stood with his hat in his hand and bobbed his head. “Mr. Batson asked me’t‘ run ahead and tell you they’re comin’ in now.”

“They have Markham?”

“Yes, sir. That’s exactly what I’m s’posed’t‘ tell you, sir. Mr. Batson an’ two other fellas. They’re bringin‘ him down now.”

“Alive?”

“I wouldn’t know about that, sir, but I seen that they’re‘ havin’ to carry him. If he ain’t dead he’s at least shot up some.”

“Thank you, Jim. Tell them I’ll meet them at the courthouse.”

“Yes, sir.” Morris bobbed his head again and backed toward the door, tugging his hat on and in a hurry to complete this chore.

Frankly, Longarm did not particularly give a damn if Paul Markham was brought in living or otherwise. It startled him to realize it, and he reflected on it as he dressed.

Markham was a sick, venal, mean, and petty son of a bitch, and the thought of the former sheriff was disgusting to Longarm. But in truth the man’s sins were minor compared with the murders of perhaps half a dozen men in the bank explosion, and the loss of more than seventy thousand dollars of uninsured cash. Longarm simply did not care if Markham died here or lived out the rest of his days in a federal prison. The kind of man who would force unwilling girls into short lives of pain and anguish was not deserving of consideration beyond the minimum required by duty and decency.

Longarm finished dressing, felt of his chin and decided not to take time for a shave. He went down to the street and toward the courthouse in time to meet Arnold Batson and two of his men struggling down the steep hillside with a makeshift litter.

Paul Markham was in the litter. Longarm did have to look twice to determine that the one-time sheriff of Thunderbird Canyon was quite thoroughly dead. He had been torn apart by numerous gunshots fired at close range.

“You think you shot him enough, Arnold?” Longarm asked sarcastically. He was beginning to wonder if sending Batson to find the fugitive had been such a good idea after all.

“What? Oh.” Batson frowned.

Now that he was paying attention to the living rather than the dead, Longarm could see that the security man was pale and looked about half sick.

“We

uh

got kinda excited, I guess.” Batson admitted.

“Tell me about it.”

The men carrying the litter with Markham’s body on it set their burden down. All three, Batson and both his helpers, looked haggard and unhappy.

“We cornered him easy enough,” Batson said. “I mean, a man that don’t know this country’s pretty much got no place to go, Marshal, like I told you before. Take a wrong trail, and you won’t get anywhere. For that matter, take the right trails and there ain’t but so far you can go. So we were onto him pretty easy.” He paused. “Say, d’you have a smoke we could share? We run out this morning while we were trying to get him down here.”

“Sure.” Longarm handed cheroots to each of the three and lighted one for himself as well.

“Thanks. Anyway, like I started to tell you, we got onto him real easy. He seen us coming

no way to avoid that up above timberline where we was

and he went to ground in a prospect hole on the north face of Mount Norman. Had a good field o‘ fire down the only trail we could use to get to him, and he had a revolver to hold us off with. Didn’t get any of us as you c’n see, but he scared hell outa us a few times and sprayed Johnny there with some rock chips. So we had a kind of standoff for a while.

“Paul knew he was cornered, o’course. There wasn’t any way for us to shag him outa there, but there wasn’t anyplace for him to go neither. I remembered that hole, and it wasn’t but forty, fifty feet deep into the rock. An‘ even if he’d got out of there, the trail he’d been on only went another couple hundred yards up the mountain an’ petered out at another prospect hole.”

Longarm drew on his cheroot and nodded.

“So anyway, after a bit he hollered out that he wanted to talk. Johnny stayed back in the rocks out o‘ sight, and Lew and me walked up to where we could talk.” Batson smiled without humor.

“Turned out the son of a bitch wanted to try and buy his way out. He said he had eleven thousand dollars cash on him, and he’d share it with us if we made out that we couldn’t find him. Not that I know where he thought he’d go if we did turn back, but he gave it a try. Started out offering to give us half an‘ ended up trying to give us all of it if we’d just pretend we never found him.” A grimace showed what Batson thought about that. “As if we could be bought. You know?”

Longarm muttered something and waited for the man to continue.

“Anyway, Marshal, I expect there’s some folks as can be bought and some as can’t. I’m proud to say that these fellas with me are the can’t-be kind. We listened, an‘ then we tried to talk him out of his hole. At one point he even came out in plain sight, right there in front of us, an’ showed us a wad o‘ cash money. Folding stuff, you see. Shoved his pistol down behind his belt and held the money out for us to look at, like that would tempt us more or something.

“Well, it didn’t. And then I guess I did something stupid. I mean, prob’ly you would known how to handle it better if you’d been there, but I up and told him that me and my boys weren’t for sale and that we were placing him under arrest.”

It was becoming clear from Batson’s expression and from the beads of sweat that were showing on his forehead that this was a painful recollection for him. “You did the right thing,” Longarm assured the man.

“Thanks.” Batson hemmed and hawed for a moment, staring down toward his scuffed, dusty boots instead of looking Longarm in the eyes now. “Maybe I did wrong, Marshal, but I was concentrating on telling him that we’d not hurt him and that he was under arrest and all like that, and I guess I just didn’t pay close enough attention or something. Anyway, he ups and drops the money. Just opened his hand and turned loose of it. And naturally me and Lew looked at all that wad of money fluttering in the wind. And Markham, he hauls out his pistol and fires. Fired point-blank right into my face he did.”

Batson pushed the hair back from his left temple and displayed an ear that was red and some stubble of hair that had been singed by fire. “Damn close,” Batson said calmly enough, “but I guess he was excited then as we was, and the powder flash got me but the bullet missed. Got my attention, let me tell you. Scared shit outa all of us. But then me and Lew got untracked and grabbed for our guns, and Johnny started shooting and

we just kept shooting. It was awful, Marshal. I mean, none of us ever shot at a human person before, much less ever kilt anybody, and I guess we was scared and nervous, and we kept on shooting even when we didn’t have to anymore.”

Batson looked embarrassed. “I know I emptied my gun at him and then kept on cocking an‘ pulling the trigger even after the thing was empty, until Lew took me by the shoulder and got me to realizing what I was doing. I

I’m sorry about not being able to bring our prisoner in for you, Marshal.”

“You did fine, Arnold,” Longarm said. He meant it, “I couldn’t have done any better myself.”

“I feel awful dumb, though, trying to shoot an empty gun like that and being so scared I hardly knew what was going on or anything.”