“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!”
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.”
