Longarm on the Thunderbird Run

“If we try and go in now,” Longarm whispered, “we’d only be silhouetted against the sky. A man inside there could pick us off without hardly working up a sweat. I think we’d better lay up nice and easy until three, four o’clock in the morning. He should be asleep then for sure. He’s got no reason to be expecting a visit. So we’ll lay low for now, and when I think it’s safe I’ll go in by myself and see if I can’t have a gun to his head when he wakes up.”

“I think I should be the one to go in, Marshal,” Batson said grimly, and Longarm was reminded anew that Arnold Batson was one decent man. He hated killing, as he proved with Paul Markham, but he was willing to put himself on the line again now when he believed it was his duty to do so.

“No, Arnold, this is my job. I’ll handle it. I want you and your people to stay out here on the ready just in case I trip over a bucket or something and give myself away.”

“I still think—”

“No. And that’s the end of it. Just to be safe, though, I want you to send two of your boys over to that side of the tunnel and put the third man up over the top of it. Cartridges chambered but keep the rifles uncocked. We don’t want any accidents, and we sure don’t want to alert him that we’re out here waiting for him.”

Batson hesitated for only a moment, then nodded. He crept back to where the Arrabie guards were waiting and whispered to them. One moved silently forward toward the tunnel opening while the other two started across the clearing.

Without warning a rifle shot rang out of the tunnel, splitting the darkness with its flame, and one of Batson’s men dropped his Winchester clattering to the ground and fell, grabbing his leg.

The other guard turned, snatched his fallen companion up, and ran with him toward the far side of the clearing as two more shots spat out of the tunnel toward them.

Longarm returned the fire, emptying his Colt into the mouth of the tunnel without aim, but in the hope that a ricochet might find a mark in there.

He reloaded, not at all minding that neither Batson nor any of the three guards had returned the murderer’s fire. It would be damned difficult for them if they had to, and he hoped he would be able to avoid the need for it still.

Batson, though, took a deep breath, aimed in the direction of the dark tunnel mouth, and fired.

“It’s all right, Arnold,” Longarm said, in a normal voice now that they had been discovered. “I’ll do any of that that’s necessary.”

Batson nodded. There was enough light from the sky that Longarm could see the pain that was in his expression. Batson took his Winchester down from his shoulder. “Thanks.”

Longarm moved forward, keeping to the side of the tunnel as well as he was able, and shouted, “Jack. Jack Thomas! You have nowhere to run, Jack. It’s over. Put your gun down and come out now.”

“Is that you, Longarm?” The voice sounded slightly hollow as it emerged from the enclosing rock, but Thomas sounded cheerful enough.

“It’s me, Jack,” Longarm called.

“I’ll be go to hell. How’d you find me?”

“It wasn’t that hard once I got it figured out, Jack.”

There was a slight pause. Longarm suspected the Arrabie security chief was changing position inside the tunnel. “I sure thought I had it covered, Longarm. What’d I do wrong?”

“You stole a bunch of money and killed a bunch of people, Jack.”

“Aw, come on, Longarm. You know what I mean.” The voice did not sound quite so hollow now. Longarm was sure Thomas was moving closer to the mouth.

“Yeah, I know what you mean, Jack. You want me to tell you how clever you are?”

“No. I really want to know how I fucked up. Aside from doing it to begin with, that is.”

Longarm eased down until he was lying on his belly with the Thunderer stuck out in front of him and held ready. “It was the explosion more than anything, Jack,” he shouted.

“What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t so hard to work out that it had to be somebody local behind it since there weren’t really any White Hoods. Hell, they’re too smart to get themselves bottled up in a canyon with only one way out. So I worked on that some, but I got to admit I had trouble spotting you for the one behind it. After you got yourself killed and all.”

The sound of Thomas’s laughter drifted out of the tunnel.

“Like I said, Jack, it was really the explosion that tipped me to it. It didn’t make sense. Killing all those people that particular way. And I happen to know how hard it is to really blow a human body into pieces. That’s a damned unusual thing, Jack. Pretty much had to be deliberate. And an awful big charge of dynamite. So I got to thinking about that. Like how even in a mining camp just any-old-body would excite some interest if he wanted to buy that much explosive without any obvious need for it. And how hard it is to steal dynamite from a mine. Then it occurred to me how it was you, Jack, that suggested we keep all the money together so we could guard it overnight and not distribute it until morning.

“Not that I thought anything about that when you were dead, Jack. But then when I got to wondering why anybody would want to blow those men up, Jack, it occurred to me that maybe those two things were connected. And maybe you weren’t quite as dead as everybody thought.

“And of course you didn’t have much support in the guts or brains department in that partner you picked. Carter couldn’t tell me everything fast enough once I got him started.”

“Yeah, that son of a bitch. I needed him, though. Needed him to get that fake telegram sent so everybody’d blame the White Hoods and I could get it to fall into place.” Thomas’s voice sounded quite close to the front now, and Longarm took a fresh grip on his Colt and readied himself. He was betting that Thomas would count on his untried guards to hold their fire against a friend—the same friend, of course, who had blown several other friends to bits—and try to take Longarm and make a break for it.

“Actually,” Longarm said, “you could have taken a trip out of the canyon and bribed some other operator to send your phony message.”

There was a pause, then a sound of laughter. “Shit, Longarm, I never thought of that. That would’ve been better, wouldn’t it?”

“Naw, I’d‘ve nailed your butt anyway, Jack.”

“I don’t know, Longarm,” Thomas called.

“I do,” Longarm said softly to himself.

“I guess we have a standoff here, Longarm.”

“I guess we do, Jack.”

“What say we try and negotiate this, Longarm? I have seventy-two thousand dollars in here with me.”

Longarm could hear Arnold Batson stirring behind him. The second attempt to bribe him in as many days would likely be having him pretty thoroughly pissed off, Longarm suspected. It just could be that Jack Thomas was counting more on a former friendship than Arnold Batson would be willing to deliver.

“Bullshit,” Longarm said. “The money was hidden in the basement of the bank. I figure you had it transferred down there by the same fellas you killed. What’d you do, tell them that would hide it and keep it even safer?”

“Yeah, but

”

“I’m not bluffing you, Jack. You hid it in the steamer trunk behind the file cabinets in the southest corner of the place. It’s already been found, counted, and turned over to the proper owners.”

“You son of a

Never mind that now, Longarm. I still think we can negotia—”

He came out of the tunnel hard and fast, driving forward in a rolling fall, a Winchester held in his hands, its muzzle sweeping at belly level toward the place Longarm’s voice had been coming from.

Thomas’s finger tightened on the trigger, and the Winchester spat lead through the air where Longarm would have been if he had been standing upright.

Longarm took his time for careful aim and was surprised to see Jack Thomas’s head jerk backward a fraction of a second before Longarm fired to send a second, but unnecessary, bullet into the man’s brain.