now he and the distinguished-looking but unbelievably stupid sheriff had been up all the damned night again arguing over details of how they were supposed to trap and capture one of the slickest damn robbery gangs to come down the pike since Bert the Poet.
Jesus!
Markham?s entire force consisted of himself, Chief Deputy Roland Mayes?who Longarm wouldn?t trust to wipe his own ass correctly?and a Deputy Charlie Frye, who looked to be fifteen, and a damned innocent fifteen at that. The kid was a skinny little bit of a thing with biceps like twigs and no armament more serious than a whittling knife. Longarm suspected that no one in town would trust the boy with an actual firearm. And Longarm couldn?t blame them. If he was given a revolver to carry he likely wouldn?t be strong enough to lift and aim the thing.
?Look,? Longarm said again, repeating territory often covered through the predawn hours, ?there is no way this local force of yours is going to have enough firepower to make the White Hoods do any more than laugh when you jump out to face them. We have to get some help from the mine security people. We just have to, that?s all.?
?Now, damnit, Marshal Long,? the sheriff had not been invited to address Longarm by nickname, ?you told me yourself, right up front, that this has to be a job with inside connections. Otherwise, why try and take the train here. It has to be an inside operation, and there has to be some plan for the getaway that we haven?t discovered yet. Although, of course, we shall as soon as we have some of those gents in our cells. Then, sir, we shall get the truth out of them.?
?And I am telling you, Sheriff, that four guns??
?Three,? Markham interrupted. ?My forte is administration, actually. But three men properly placed and properly armed can cow any group of sneak thieves. I am convinced of this.?
Markham seemed quite unperturbed by the thought of sending Longarm and two useless yokels after the whole damned White Hood outfit when that train arrived in just a few hours.
What did disturb him, Longarm was convinced, was the idea of sharing the glory with any private force of mine security guards. The man would rather risk losing the White Hoods than share the political benefit of the capture. There was no point in asking it outright, of course, but Longarm would be willing to bet his next year?s pay that someone heading one of the mine security forces was hoping to challenge Paul Markham come the next elections.
Longarm still couldn?t decide, though, if the dumb bastard really believed his pitiful pair of deputies could help. Maybe he thought Longarm was going to be able to bring in the whole bunch on his own. Then again, maybe the idiot would rather put on an unsuccessful fireworks show for the benefit of the voters, and lose the White Hoods, than give his election opponent the leverage of participating in the capture.
Whatever the truth of the matter?and Longarm would probably never know where that truth lay?Markham was resisting him at every suggestion.
The chief deputy was not helping either. Mayes spent most of his time glaring at Longarm in sullen silence. The rest of the time he was looking for excuses to step out into the hall or over to the cells so he could take a nip from the pint bottle he was carrying. Longarm could not believe the man thought he was fooling anyone about the bottle. The thing was crammed into a pocket that was too small, and the weight of it pulled his coat down half off his shoulder.
Come to think of it, Longarm realized, maybe Mayes was fooling Markham and young Frye. If they did see it, they certainly were able to successfully pretend otherwise.
By the time the train arrived from Meade Park, Longarm fully expected Roland Mayes to be passed out drunk whatever they decided to do by then.
Longarm rubbed aching eyes and tried again. ?The White Hoods are a gang of ten, twelve men, Sheriff. They know what they?re doing. They hit hard, they hit fast, and no man who?s ever seen one of their faces has every sur vived the experience. They aren?t afraid to kill people for their own protection. They are good, I?m telling you, and they could make hash of any force of just three or four men. Even three or four of our federal deputies.? That part was just so much bullshit, of course. If Smiley and Dutch were here to back him, or Billy Vail and Henry even, Longarm would have no doubt at all about the White Hoods heading for the cells. But there was no point to telling Sheriff Paul Markham that. Smiley and Dutch and Henry and the marshal were not here, and that was the end of that.
?And I am telling you, sir, that my force of deputies can handle this matter. Which, I hasten to mention, is within my jurisdiction. I am in charge of this operation, Marshal Long. Any interference by you, sir, and I shall make an immediate protest to your superiors in Denver and in Washington, and
?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Longarm had heard all that before, more times than he could count or wanted to. The man was farting through his teeth. Longarm?s attention wandered while Markham continued to spout off.
The only reason Longarm hadn?t put all three of them and a bottle to keep them all company into one of their own jails and gone off to make his own arrangements with the mine security people was that that asshole Mayes had already as good as said he would fuck up the whole deal with a lot of public armwaving if Markham didn?t get his ignorant way. Even though the case was under federal jurisdiction.
If Markham didn?t get to set the rules, nobody was going to be allowed to play the game. Talk about taking your toys and going home
And that was one thing about the damn White Hoods. They were good, all right. And wary. The least hint of anything being out of place in their plans, and they would fade off into the distance so slick nobody would ever know for sure if they?d been there or not.
Once before, Longarm remembered, a particularly efficient sheriff down in New Mexico got a tip on them, passed along by a disgruntled whore who overheard some talk. The White Hoods were supposed to be hitting a bank just before dawn one moonless night. The local sheriff had pulled in all his deputies and set up an ambush hours ahead of time.
Turned out the badge-carrying ambushers sat on their butts until the bank opened for business the next day, and then everybody went off to have breakfast and catch up on missed sleep. There was never a peep out of the robbers.
Later that day the sheriff heard from a man with a weak bladder that when he had gotten up in the night he had heard a dozen riders sifting quietly out the other end of the town.
The bastards had been there, all right. They had been planning to bust open the bank. But somehow they spotted the ambush and just melted away. A week later a bank in a neighboring town was hit just before dawn and cleaned out completely. Two men who heard the explosion of the safe being blown and came out to see what was
