Longarm on the Thunderbird Run

Longarm shrugged. If it made the fool happy.

The river appeared quite small now. They were a good two hundred fifty, three hundred feet above it and still climbing. But except for that

?Off the back of the platform,? Russable said.

Longarm shrugged again and returned to the rear of the platform.

There was nothing under his feet but distance and white water. Somewhere down there, beneath rails and ties that seemed suspended in thin air, he could see a runty juniper clinging to a crack in the stark, barren rock.

In spite of himself, Longarm felt his stomach lurch, and he grabbed tight to the railing until his knuckles whitened.

?Like I said,? Russable said calmly, ?used to scare the shit out of me.? He was still grinning.

?Jesus,? Longarm whispered.

Now that the train was well onto this stretch and there was some track behind that he could examine, Longarm saw that the original mule trail would have been barely wide enough for a pack animal to negotiate. No wonder Morey Fahnwell had said it used to be a hell of a trip where some mules were lost now and then. One misstep off that ledge, and it was a straight shot down for a hell of a dis­tance.

In order to build the rail bed here the engineers?Longarm damn sure would not have wanted to work on that piece of road?had had to cantilever half the damn road out over the edge with stout steel braces set into the rock.

The entire outer half of the train was running over empty space, held up by steel supports and wooden ties.

?Oh, shit,? Longarm muttered.

?Yeah,? Russable agreed happily. ?I never thought I was scared of heights neither, until I started to come up here.? He reached inside his coat and pulled out first a pair of the nasty rum crooks, then a silver flask. ?Join me??

Longarm accepted the drink and the smoke with thanks.

?It isn?t far like this,? Russable told him. ?A quarter mile or so. We?ll be back over solid ledge in another min­ute or two.?

Longarm didn?t answer, but he did take another wel­come, warming swallow of the salesman?s liquor.

?Shee-it!? he said.

Russable chuckled and recapped his flask.

The train jolted and shook at an unusually abrupt junc­tion of the rails.

?There. Now you can look down again without risking your linen.?

Longarm looked. Under his feet this time there was once again the comforting presence of rock and cinders and ties buried solidly in crushed ballast.

?Whew!?

?Yeah,? Russable agreed.

?If I?d known that was coming I think I?d?ve stayed inside and played with the brats.?

?It isn?t so bad from here in,? Russable told him. ?I guess I should?ve warned you, but

? He laughed.

Longarm shook his head and smiled. ?If I knew you better, Mr. Russable, I might punch you in the mouth. In­ stead, how about I treat for a drink after we get to town? Hell, maybe I?ll get to know you well enough that I can punch you in the mouth.?

Russable threw his head back and roared. ?You?re on, Mr. Long. Say, the hotel bar a seven??

Longarm grinned at the man. ?I?ll see you there.?

Chapter Nine

Thunderbird Canyon was a typical mining camp, not a par­ticularly large or prosperous one, set along the sides of the canyon that gave it its name, and extending in a narrow strip on both sides of the stream that had carved the gorge through so much solid rock.

There was so little room at the bottom of the canyon that virtually none of the ground there was level. Even the twin streets that flanked the small, churning river canted at a slight angle, and every house or building in the camp had to be built with its back to the rock and the front end sup­ported by pilings and reached by steep stairs.

It was the sort of place where if a man walked in his sleep he would likely tumble out of his own window and fall onto the next fellow?s roof.

There was not room enough for a railroad turntable, and no room either for much in the way of shunt rails. Appar­ently the train remained pretty much made up the way it was, and the little locomotive had to back the whole way down to Meade Park on the morning downruns.

There were two sets of mine buildings?crushers and separators and whatever else?starting high on the east wall of the canyon and dribbling down the mountainside, along with the tailings dumps of pale waste rock from the shafts that extended somewhere inside the mountain. To the west there was another mine, making three in all.

The two on the eastward mountain were able to use simple gravity to transfer their ore into hoppers to feed the rail cars, while ore from the western-side mine had to be hauled across a bridge and loaded onto the cars with much more labor.

Between the mines and the buildings below were several sets of huge, barnlike buildings that probably were the company boarding houses for the underground miners.