“Any volunteers?” asked Harrelson.
“I’ll do it,” Longarm said. Coming in from the back would be just as dangerous as busting into the warehouse from the front, so he didn’t feel like he was ducking a bad job. If anything, he would be in even more danger than the others, because he wouldn’t have anybody to watch his back. He would be on his own.
Of course, that was the way he liked it.
Harrelson nodded. “All right. Long goes in the back, the rest of us take the front. In … what, ten minutes?”
“Ought to be enough time,” Longarm said. “where’s the back door?”
“Far left-hand corner of the building,” Harrelson replied. “You can go down the next alley and get to the lane that runs behind the warehouse.”
Longarm nodded. He had already figured out that much, since the warehouse where Nowlan had gone was on the same side of the street as the doorway where this clandestine meeting was taking place.
“Best check your watch,” Harrelson added.
Longarm slipped the timepiece out of his vest pocket and opened the case. On the other end of the watch chain was a two-shot, .44-caliber derringer instead of a fob. The little gun had saved Longarm’s bacon more times than he liked to think about over his years of service as a deputy marshal. Harrelson was still smoking the cigar, so he leaned closer to Longarm and drew on the tightly rolled cylinder of tobacco, making the tip glow a bright red. By that faint light, Longarm saw that the time was twenty minutes past ten.
“I’ll come in at ten-thirty,” Longarm said as he snapped the watch closed and put it away.
“Good enough,” Harrelson said. “We’ll wait until then to make our move. If you run into any guards—and you likely will—dispose of ‘em as quiet-like as you can.”
No, thought Longarm, I figured I’d have a brass band playing while I clout the son of a bitch over the head with the butt of my pistol.
He kept the sarcasm to himself and simply nodded again. Then he slid out of the shadows of the doorway and moved along the boardwalk, staying close to the building. When he reached the alley, he stepped down from the walk and moved into its even deeper shadows.
Longarm kept his left hand on the wall of the next building, using it as a guide in the stygian blackness. His right hand was on the butt of his gun. A part of his brain was counting off the seconds as he cat-footed along the alley. By the time he got to six hundred, he needed to be in position by the rear door of the warehouse.
Less than a minute had passed when he reached the lane that ran along behind the warehouses. It was narrow and filthy—what he could see of it in the dim light that came from a quarter-moon and a sprinkling of stars in the heavens overhead. He would have to be careful as he made his way along it, lest he knock over some of the trash that had accumulated back there.
He moved out of the alley mouth and started toward the back of the warehouse. It was two buildings away, and as he drew closer, he paused and listened intently, hoping that if any sentries were around, they would do something to give away their position. The little voice in the back of his head continued counting.
The tally was at two hundred when Longarm suddenly heard a soft cough from up ahead of him somewhere. He listened some more, and heard a faint scuff of feet, saw a subtle shifting in the shadows next to the back of the warehouse.
Would the gang have put more than one guard on the back door? That was the question Longarm had to answer, and he had to do it quickly. The count was at two-fifty.
He slid along the wall, using every bit of skill he had picked up over the years from various red men who had been kind enough to teach a clumsy-footed white man how to walk without making quite as much noise as a silver- tip grizzly drunk on fermented berries. As a matter of fact, Longarm wasn’t making much sound at all as he approached the warehouse. Even the whisper of his gun coming out of its holster couldn’t have been heard more than a foot away.
So the counterfeiter on guard duty back here was more than likely surprised as all hell when Longarm tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Howdy.”
The man turned instinctively toward the sound, and as his head came around, the butt of Longarm’s .44 came crashing down. The blow dented the crown of the man’s hat, which softened the impact a little. Longarm had to hit him again before the man slumped forward into his arms, out cold.
“Five hundred,” Longarm said aloud. He was there with more than a minute and a half to spare.
That was when all hell broke loose inside the warehouse.
At the sound of the first gunshot, Longarm said, “Shit!” dropped the unconscious gent he had been lowering to the ground, and drove the heel of his boot into the door just below the lock. The wood around it splintered, but it took another kick before the door sprang open and hit the inside wall with a bang.
Longarm went through the opening fast, in a crouching run. There was a short, narrow corridor inside, with another door at the end of it. One kick was enough to open that one, and then he was in the warehouse proper, a huge room with a ceiling two stories high. There were stacks of crates around the walls, and more crates had been used to form partitions in the room, creating several smaller areas. Gunshots and shouted curses came from behind some of those crates. The bullets and the profanity weren’t directed at Longarm, however, but rather at the front of the building, where Harrelson, Seeley, and Truelove had found some dubious shelter behind a pair of desks. They were returning the fire.
Despite the fact that he was in a better position than his fellow deputies, Longarm didn’t have a clear shot at any of the men behind the crates. The sound of their shots seemed to have drowned out the noise he’d made busting into the place, because no one was shooting at him yet. He went to his left, hoping to get behind the gang before he was spotted.
So far there had been no time to worry about why the raid had been launched early, and that trend continued. Longarm heard a yell of alarm, and one of the pistol barrels behind the crates swiveled toward him. He threw himself to the side as death winked orange from the muzzle of the gun.
Longarm’s left shoulder landed hard on the sawdust-littered floor, sending pain shooting through him. He bit back a curse and scrambled behind another stack of crates, snapping a shot toward the gang as he did so. When he
