Longarm on the Thunderbird Run

The damned drummer was laughing again.

“Now look down,” Russable suggested.

Longarm shrugged. If it made the fool happy.

The river appeared quite small now. They were a good two hundred fifty, three hundred feet above it and still climbing. But except for that

“Off the back of the platform,” Russable said.

Longarm shrugged again and returned to the rear of the platform.

There was nothing under his feet but distance and white water. Somewhere down there, beneath rails and ties that seemed suspended in thin air, he could see a runty juniper clinging to a crack in the stark, barren rock.

In spite of himself, Longarm felt his stomach lurch, and he grabbed tight to the railing until his knuckles whitened.

“Like I said,” Russable said calmly, “used to scare the shit out of me.” He was still grinning.

“Jesus,” Longarm whispered.

Now that the train was well onto this stretch and there was some track behind that he could examine, Longarm saw that the original mule trail would have been barely wide enough for a pack animal to negotiate. No wonder Morey Fahnwell had said it used to be a hell of a trip where some mules were lost now and then. One misstep off that ledge, and it was a straight shot down for a hell of a distance.

In order to build the rail bed here the engineers—Longarm damn sure would not have wanted to work on that piece of road—had had to cantilever half the damn road out over the edge with stout steel braces set into the rock.

The entire outer half of the train was running over empty space, held up by steel supports and wooden ties.

“Oh, shit,” Longarm muttered.

“Yeah,” Russable agreed happily. “I never thought I was scared of heights neither, until I started to come up here.” He reached inside his coat and pulled out first a pair of the nasty rum crooks, then a silver flask. “Join me?”

Longarm accepted the drink and the smoke with thanks.

“It isn’t far like this,” Russable told him. “A quarter mile or so. We’ll be back over solid ledge in another minute or two.”

Longarm didn’t answer, but he did take another welcome, warming swallow of the salesman’s liquor.

“Shee-it!” he said.

Russable chuckled and recapped his flask.

The train jolted and shook at an unusually abrupt junction of the rails.

“There. Now you can look down again without risking your linen.”

Longarm looked. Under his feet this time there was once again the comforting presence of rock and cinders and ties buried solidly in crushed ballast.

“Whew!”

“Yeah,” Russable agreed.

“If I’d known that was coming I think I’d‘ve stayed inside and played with the brats.”

“It isn’t so bad from here in,” Russable told him. “I guess I should’ve warned you, but

” He laughed.

Longarm shook his head and smiled. “If I knew you better, Mr. Russable, I might punch you in the mouth. Instead, how about I treat for a drink after we get to town? Hell, maybe I’ll get to know you well enough that I can punch you in the mouth.”

Russable threw his head back and roared. “You’re on, Mr. Long. Say, the hotel bar a seven?”

Longarm grinned at the man. “I’ll see you there.”

Chapter Nine

Thunderbird Canyon was a typical mining camp, not a particularly large or prosperous one, set along the sides of the canyon that gave it its name, and extending in a narrow strip on both sides of the stream that had carved the gorge through so much solid rock.

There was so little room at the bottom of the canyon that virtually none of the ground there was level. Even the twin streets that flanked the small, churning river canted at a slight angle, and every house or building in the camp had to be built with its back to the rock and the front end supported by pilings and reached by steep stairs.

It was the sort of place where if a man walked in his sleep he would likely tumble out of his own window and fall onto the next fellow’s roof.

There was not room enough for a railroad turntable, and no room either for much in the way of shunt rails. Apparently the train remained pretty much made up the way it was, and the little locomotive had to back the whole way down to Meade Park on the morning downruns.

There were two sets of mine buildings—crushers and separators and whatever else—starting high on the east wall of the canyon and dribbling down the mountainside, along with the tailings dumps of pale waste rock from the shafts that extended somewhere inside the mountain. To the west there was another mine, making three in all.

The two on the eastward mountain were able to use simple gravity to transfer their ore into hoppers to feed the rail cars, while ore from the western-side mine had to be hauled across a bridge and loaded onto the cars with much more labor.

Between the mines and the buildings below were several sets of huge, barnlike buildings that probably were the company boarding houses for the underground miners.

Down below, close to the river, were the saloons, restaurants, whorehouses, stores, public buildings

everything else that was needed or that would turn a profit for someone.

Longarm did not have to fret himself with choosing a hotel. There was only one. It simplified things.

He carried his things across the muddy planks of the bridge and checked into the hotel, Jonas Russable ahead of him.

“Room seven,” the clerk said. “Second floor rear.”

“I’ll have it to myself, I hope,” Longarm asked.

The desk clerk gave him a look that was close to being pitying. “Glory, mister, if there ain’t anybody else already, there damn sure ain’t gonna be anybody later. Couldn’t be till tomorra’s train run.”

“I keep forgetting,” Longarm said.

Surely the camp couldn’t be that isolated.

“Nobody to share with tonight,” the clerk assured him. “If you want a promise o‘ privacy tomorra night it’ll cost you extra. But I won’t charge you that till tomorra, and you don’t hafta tell me what you decide till the train’s due tomorra afternoon.”

“That sounds fair.” Longarm collected his key and paid for the room in cash. A voucher would have been more convenient, but that would have tipped the clerk and anyone the man chose to tell that there was a federal deputy in town.

When he signed the register, Longarm scanned the book for the names of other recent arrivals, even flipping it back a page. None of the names were familiar. And there were not all that many, anyway. If the White Hoods were already in place in Thunderbird Canyon, they were either one damned small gang these days or they had a local contact they could stay with.

“Looking for somebody in particular?” the clerk asked.

“No. Just a habit. You know how it is when you’re on the road. Always looking for a friendly face. That’s all.”

“Yeah, if you say so.” Longarm gathered that the hotel clerk was not much of a traveling man himself.

“Up the stairs an‘ to your right,” the man said.

“Thanks.”

The room was nothing much, but it was reasonably clean and the sheets were fresh. Longarm had stayed in worse.

The lock on the door was a flimsy thing that damned near could be picked with a thumbnail, and there was no bolt on the inside. Longarm put his bag and Winchester in a tall wardrobe and placed a few telltales after he closed the doors. Not that he expected trouble here, no one in town knowing who or what he was, but a little caution never hurt.

The telltales, of course, would not stop anyone from robbing him if they wanted to, but at least he would know if anybody was interested in his baggage but did not want him to find out about it.

It was late afternoon, and he debated between rest after last night’s ride and eating. Sleep won out. He could eat later when he went down to meet Russable in the bar. He kicked off his boots and stretched out on top of the bedspread.

Normal procedure called for a courtesy visit to the local sheriff or town marshal, whichever turned out to be appropriate here, but that could wait too. Right now he needed to get some of the pounding out of the back of his head and some of the grittiness out of his eyes. His ass was dragging, and that was the simple truth of it.