“It wasn’t because I meant to be,” Yazoo grunted. “But except that you’re a goddamn dirty sneaking conniving federal marshal, which makes you a first-class son of a bitch in my book, you’re a right decent fellow, Windy—or Longarm or whatever you want to call yourself. You mind giving me a drink before you stuff that gag in my guzzle? My mouth’s terrible dry.”
“Sure. Where’s your water bucket?”
“Water! Who wants water? Hand me that bottle of whiskey from over there.”
Longarm held the bottle while Yazoo drank deeply. Then he finished the job of gagging him, and started for the door. Halfway there, he turned and said, “Oh, I nearly forgot, Yazoo. Belle said I was to tell you to sleep down at the house while she’s gone.” climbing into the saddle, he returned to the house. The others were just mounting. By common consent, they let Belle lead the way. She turned east as they came out of the long passage through the narrow ravine, and for the first part of the journey, the trail they took was one familiar to Longarm; he’d followed it before, when he came to Younger’s Bend originally, then back and forth between the Bend and Fort Smith. They rode silently.
Noon passed without a lunch stop, and Longarm rummaged in his saddlebag for some jerky. His breakfast had been less filling than the one eaten by the others.
Belle led them across the ford above the juncture of the Arkansas and the Canadian. On the east shore of the Arkansas she struck off on a trail less clearly defined than the main route to Fort Smith. The sun had been at their backs for the better part of an hour when they crossed the ford. It kept sliding down as they rode on in single file, until the thick maze of woodland through which they traveled took on the gentle haze that comes to such country in the period just before sunset.
Darkness was closing in fast when Belle abruptly turned off the trail. With the four men following, she wove her black gelding in and out among the tree trunks for almost a mile. There was no trail through the woods that Longarm could see, but Belle rode confidently, as though completely certain of the route. Suddenly the trees opened. A wide, shallow gully yawned in front of them. Belle followed its rim for a short distance, then urged her horse down its gently sloping side.
A tinkling white-water creek fanned over mossy rocks In the gully’s bottom. The smell of woodsmoke hanging low to the ground reached Longarm’s nose. In a few moments they saw light flickering ahead. A second light joined the first as they drew closer—the yellow, wavering glow of a lantern. The light shining in their faces hid what lay behind it until Belle reined in. Then Longarm saw that they’d stopped beside a slab-bark shanty, and that the man holding the lantern was dark and stocky. He wore overalls and an undershirt that, even in the uncertain light, was obviously long overdue for a visit to the washtub. His features were blunt and formless. He could have been Indian, Mexican, black, white, or any mixture of the four.
“Belle Starr,” he said. He looked at the riders. “Where’s Sam?”
“Sam’s dead,” Belle said. She offered no explanation, but went on, “I’ll tell you about it later. We need supper and a place to sleep, and breakfast early in the morning.”
“Sure,” the man said. “Get off and come in.”
“Chano will feed us,” Belle told the others. “There’s enough room inside for us to sleep. The horses will be all right out here.” She dismounted. “We’ll go over everything after supper.”
“How far we got to ride tomorrow before we hit the town where the bank is?” Floyd asked.
Longarm had been wanting to ask that question himself, but didn’t think it would have been wise for him to try to find out anything from Belle at that stage.
“Not far,” Belle said. “We’ll have to swing north a few miles to get around a big, sharp hook in the Arkansas. Then we’ll just follow the river down-” She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and added, “I guess it doesn’t make any difference, since we’re this close, whether I tell you now or wait until after supper. The bank’s in a little town about ten miles north of Fort Smith, but on this side of the river. The town’s called Van Buren.”
A bright mid-morning sun in a cloudless sky sent sparkling glints from the surface of the river and defined the white painted houses and storefronts of the little town ahead of them as Belle drew up and the others halted behind her on the riverbank.
“All right,” she said as Floyd, Steed, Longarm, and Bobby pulled their horses up around the black gelding of the Bandit Queen. “There’s the town. Take a look at it now, and figure out which way you’ll be riding if something goes wrong and we can’t get out in a bunch.”
Van Buren was a bright town,.Longarm thought as he joined the others in scanning it carefully from their vantage point, a high spot a half-mile from the first houses. They could see that the town’s main street ran roughly parallel to the river. It was a long, narrow town, not a small, compact square or rectangle, but rather a crescent that curved along the course of the stream. Almost all the buildings and houses were white. A few were gray, and one or two of the stores had ventured into red or green paint.
Belle pointed to a buff-colored structure near the center of the main street. “There’s the bank. It’s brick, so don’t worry about a rifle slug going through the walls if any shooting starts.”
“There won’t be any, if you done your part right,” Floyd told her. He was edgy, as were all of them, and his voice showed it.
“I’ve done what I said I would, don’t worry. Now study the way we’re going out, then we’ll ride in and do it,” she said. Before going to bed, they’d spent two hours rehearsingtheir moves. Belle had given them the general layout of the countryside around Van Buren. If they had to scatter, each of them would take a different route back to Younger’s Bend. If there was no trouble, they’d leave as a group and get across the border into the Cherokee Nation, stop as soon as it was safe, divide up the loot, and separate.
Longarm had his own ideas about what was going to happen if his own plan worked out. He’d been at the disadvantage of being unable to evolve much of a scheme in advance, before he’d actually seen the town and the bank. He’d decided that the best thing he could do would be to get behind Floyd and Steed as soon as the three of them were inside, immobilize them with the threat of his Colt, and then depend on the bank’s workers to complete the capture while he went outside and took Belle and Bobby.
It wasn’t much of a plan, he’d told himself while they were riding along the river an hour earlier, but it was about all he could come up with under the circumstances. He had to let the robbery actually get under way. Longarm looked on juries as highly unpredictable. He’d seen too many spellbinding lawyers convince twelve good
