Tabor Evans (21 page)

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."