cross street and turned north away from what little town there was to Sorrel Branch.
It was way the hell and gone too late for him to do anything now but Longarm couldn’t help but run to the end of the block and look north toward the dust the robbers left behind.
The riders charged out of town and across a field of oat stubble, then cut due east again just as they reached the screening line of crack-willow that grew beside a ditch to the north of town.
Damn them, Longarm thought. Damn them anyway.
Dispirited and grumpy as hell now, he shoved his Colt back into leather and started the long walk that would tell him how much the bastards got away with. Damn them.
Chapter 39
“We’re just about tapped out, boys,” Douglas McWhortle announced to his ball players at the railway station late that afternoon. “That’s twice we’ve had our pay snatched out from under us lately, and I’m frankly not sure if I have enough cash in hand to carry us. For sure there won’t be any game pay handed out. We don’t play again until Saturday so we won’t be paid again until then. Whether we can make it or not depends on whether we can get credit at the boardinghouse in Jonesboro. If anyone wants to cut loose and find his way home on his own, well, I won’t hold it against you.”
There were long faces at that suggestion but no takers. But then probably no one had enough money for a train ticket home even if that was what he would want, Longarm suspected. The robbery of the gate receipts had made this a glum crowd indeed.
“At least our fare to Jonesboro is paid,” McWhortle said on a slightly brighter note, “and the passage includes a box lunch for each of us. You won’t go hungry tonight.”
The team members filed silently onto the P and P passenger coach, leaving behind an equally solemn crowd in Sorrel Branch.
There was talk of getting a posse together, but with neither law nor organized leadership in the community that idea would likely remain in the talking stages. Regardless, it was already much too late to put anyone on the trail of the robbers. They already had several hours’ head-start and soon it would be dark. By now the trio of gunmen—it was only dumb luck that kept anyone from being wounded … or worse—could be considered long gone.
“Psst!”
Longarm glanced over his shoulder as he was preparing to climb the steel steps into the rail car. Jerry, who should have been back in the baggage car, was standing there.
“Psst. Sir.”
Longarm dropped back onto the platform and let Caleb Jones board ahead of him while Longarm made as if to light a cheroot and kind of accidentally moved closer to Jerry. “What is it, son?”
“Shouldn’t you … I mean, aren’t you going to do something about those awful people?”
“Like what?”
“Like … I don’t know. I heard some of the men in town say they’re putting a posse together. Shouldn’t you take charge of that? I mean, you are a deputy marshal and all that.”
“Which you are s’posed to forget all about, right?” Longarm said as he dipped the tip end of his cheroot into the flame of a Lucifer.
“Well yes, but …”
“Thanks for the suggestion, son, but let me take care o’ this.”
“I just thought …”
“I know. It’s all right.”
“I heard somebody else say we won’t be bothered by them robbers no more,” Jerry put in this time, obviously unwilling to let go of such an exciting topic of discussion. And with a real life federal lawman at that. The kid might not be able to brag and bluster his secrets around the other members of the Capitals, but Longarm was another story.
“Why’s that, son?”
“They said the robbers were seen heading east. We’re going west and by a fast train. There’s no way they could turn around and catch up with us again now.”
“Even though we’ll have three days in Jonesboro?” Longarm asked.
Jerry looked crestfallen. “I never thought … say, how fast can a horse run anyhow?”
“It ain’t a question of how fast they are. A train can outrun a horse any time. It’s a matter of how far a horse can travel one day after another.”
“And to Jonesboro?”
Longarm thought about it a moment, then smiled and reached out to tousle Jerry’s lank hair. “I reckon it’s far enough we won’t have to worry about seeing the gang there in just three days. They might come after us at the next stop or the one after that, I wouldn’t know. But I expect it’s fair to say we won’t have t’ worry about them in Jonesboro.”
Jerry looked considerably relieved after that assurance. “Thanks, Marshal.”
“Huh uh. I’m Chet. Remember?”
“Yes, sir. I mean … Chet.” The kid grinned and trotted—well, hippety-hopped would be more like it but it was what passed for a trot on his bum foot—back down the train in the direction of the baggage car where he always was stuck watching over the team’s things.
“Boooo-ard!” the conductor called as coupling pins crashed and steam whistles shrilled. The P and P train
