they’d been able to unearth of cheese, dry biscuits, a few pieces of hard corn pone, and some fried chicken that had been sitting in a dish for two or three days. They washed it down with Yazoo’s corn squeezings.
“I ain’t much on cooking,” the old man volunteered as they chewed, “but I can turn to in the morning and cook up some grub for the folks you said is coming tomorrow, Belle.”
“They’ll bring their own food,” Belle said. “Enough for them and us too. Besides, you’re not going to have time to cook tomorrow morning, Yazoo. None of you are. There’s Sam’s grave to dig and the house to clean up, and all that sugar to carry up to the stillhouse. There’s more than enough to keep everybody busy. I want this place to be ready by noon, before Sam’s kinfolks get here!”
At daybreak they started again. Belle had wrestled a breakfast of sorts from the kitchen range: soggy biscuits and bacon and coffee. She hurried them through the meal, urged them to haste in carrying the sugar and other items up the slope to the still, then designated Yazoo and Bobby to handle the housecleaning chores while Longarm, Floyd and Steed went up to the grove. They started the grave a short distance from the still-dark mounds of the other two so recently filled.
“For a hell of a lot less’n two cents, I’d call off this fucking job,” Steed panted. They’d just broken through the hard surface crust; the rain had passed over during the night, barely moistening the earth. Steed took a swallow from the bottle they’d brought with them to ease the digging and went on, “Damn job’s been jinxed from the start. Mckee, then Taylor, now Sam. I can’t keep from wondering if I’m next.”
“That ain’t no way to talk,” Floyd told him. “The job didn’t have one damned thing to do with what happened to them, Steed.”
“So you say.” Steed drank again and passed the bottle to Floyd. “Just the same, we’re a man short again.” Longarm said nothing, but kept plying his shovel.
Floyd offered him the bottle, but Longarm shook his head. “Thanks. I’ll wait till I can drink rye.”
“Well, damn it, how do you feel about the job, Windy?”
“Same as always.”
“Maybe you better tell us just what that means,” Steed said.
“Means I don’t give a damn. Call it off, go ahead with it,” Longarm replied levelly. “I don’t think it’s jinxed, even if you do.”
Longarm realized he was taking a chance in saying what he had, but it was another of those risks he couldn’t avoid if he intended to keep up the front he’d been presenting the outlaws.
Floyd took a second swallow from the bottle and handed it to Steed, saying, “We’re not calling off the job! If what Belle’s told us about the bank layout is right, we can get by with one outside man.”
“You mean Bobby?” Steed asked. He spat, then drank. “Shit! The kid’s green, Floyd. We couldn’t be sure he might not panic.”
“Instead of us hashing this over, we’d be better off talking to Belle,” Longarm suggested. He held out his hand for the bottle. Even though corn whiskey always tasted too sweet to him, digging was dry work. He took a sparing sip. “Maybe she’d know somebody who could take Sam’s place.”
“Not in the time we got left,” Floyd said. He reached out his hand for the bottle and drank, then grinned mirthlessly. “I got a better idea. Belle’s always bragging and blowing about how she’s the Bandit Queen. Let’s just tell her flat out she’s got to take Sam’s place.”
“Me, go on a job with a woman?” Steed shook his head. “Not likely!”
“Wait a minute, Steed,” Longarm said. “Floyd’s idea might not be so bad. Belle knows the country. If she stood lookout with Bobby, we wouldn’t be worried about him being green. She’d keep him on the mark.”
It had suddenly occurred to Longarm that, with Sam gone, the use of Younger’s Bend as an outlaw rendezvous would end if Belle was put behind bars. So would her payoffs. A bank holdup would bring a sentence that would keep her in the pen for years.
“See there, Steed?” Floyd asked. “Maybe you better think again.”
“Thinking won’t change a thing,” Steed retorted. “I don’t want any part of a woman on any job I ride out on.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to talk to Belle about it,” Longarm insisted. “We’re damn sure going to have to change our plans anyhow.”
“Well…” Steed drawled out the word so that his doubts dripped from it almost visibly. “I’ll go as far as talking, but sure as shit stinks, I won’t change my mind.”
They fell silent and finished their job. The morning was passing, breakfast had been skimpy, and they were anxious to be at the house when Sam’s kin arrived with the food Belle had said they would bring.
A larger number of relatives than Longarm had expected arrived shortly after the trio returned to the house. The men rode in on horses; there were eight of them, and it seemed to Longarm that twice as many women were in the spring wagons that followed the horsemen. There were two of the wagons. The women sitting in them held plates and platters on their laps, and steadied big pots in the wagon beds with their feet.
Belle had stationed herself on the porch when she heard the wagons creaking up. She’d found time to change into a black velvet dress. It was ankle-length, like the green one, and very much the same in cut, with a high collar to hide the creases and loose skin of her neck. She hadn’t put on her hat, but had arranged her dark hair in a curving bang that hid her high-domed forehead. In spite of the occasion, or perhaps because of it, she wore her silver pearl-handled pistols.
Yazoo, obviously drunk but still able to navigate, skipped out of sight into the house when he heard the relatives arriving. Longarm, Steed, Floyd, and Bobby retreated toward the cabins with their bottle, but stopped just beyond the well to watch the wagons as they pulled up and men swung off their horses. There seemed to be a protocol the relatives observed. Robert West, uncle of both of the dead men, was the first to step up on the porch. He bent over Belle, said a few words in a low voice, then stood beside her while the men filed past and stopped for a word or two before moving on. The women followed. They were a bit more demonstrative, but only words passed between them and Belle; there were no embraces or hand-clasps. The procession wound into the barn. When the last of the guests—a girl not yet in her teens—had disappeared into the barn, Belle rose and stepped inside the house. Yazoo came out with her almost at once. He carried a gallon jug of whiskey in each hand, and went into the
