?The sheriff is in one of his own cells, damnit, right there in his own office, and
? Longarm jerked, fully awake now for the first time. ?You said what!?
Young Deputy Frye fussed nervously with the lamp and swayed from one foot to the other. ?I
I said the bank was blowed up, Marshal.?
?Blown up??
Frye nodded miserably. ?Just a bit ago. There was
there was Chief Deputy Mayes in there guarding. And Mr. Jack Thomas from the Arrabie, he was there too. An? a guard from Tyler Mining an? another man from the Huckman mine. It?s a mess, Marshal. They?re dead. All of ?em dead. Blowed ?most apart, they are.?
Longarm felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. ?What about the money??
?Just what you?d expect, Marshal. The vault, what?s left of it, is empty as empty can be.?
Longarm stood and reached for his clothes. There would be time enough for sleep sometime, but that time was not now.
?You was saying that Sheriff Markham was s?posed to be in a cell, Marshal??
?That?s right,? Longarm said while he stepped into his trousers and stamped his feet into his boots. He expected Frye to ask why the sheriff should be in one of his own cells.
Instead, the young deputy said, ?I was just over to the office, Marshal. That?s the second place I looked for the sheriff. But there wasn?t nobody there, sir. Just the night lamp burnin? and all the cell doors standing empty.?
Longarm felt ready to spit and start screaming.
Was there any other damn thing that could go wrong tonight?
The one thing, the only thing, that Longarm felt absolutely certain about right now was that if there was any thing else that could fuck up, it would.
He finished dressing and followed Deputy Charlie Frye out into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Half the population of Thunderbird Canyon, everybody who wasn?t on shift underground, seemed to be gathered around what was left of the bank building.
A few were engaged in pulling the rubble away from the ruins. The others seemed interested in seeing how far they could exaggerate the latest rumor but still allow the tale to remain remotely believable. Longarm ignored the bystanders and pushed his way through to the heap of rock that had been a building.
The bank had been a narrow, two-story affair constructed of native stone. Now both floors were occupying a single, ground-level space. Several blanket-covered bodies were laid out on the ground nearby. Longarm checked. One of them had been Chief Deputy Mayes. The other man he did not recognize.
?Who did you tell me was dead, Deputy?? he asked Frye, who was still trailing at Longarm?s elbow with a helplessly lost expression on his beardless face.
?There was the chief deputy, like you see there, an? Long Louie, that?s him lying there, and Mr. Thomas, and a fella from the Huckman.? Frye thought for a moment, then nodded. ?I think that?s everybody.?
?Where are the other bodies?? Longarm asked.
Frye pointed to the mound of rock. ?Under there someplace, I reckon.?
?But how do you know who was in the building, and who died, if the bodies haven?t been recovered yet??
?Oh. I was there just five, ten minutes before the thing blowed up, Marshal. I got me some sleep an? woke up a bit ago and come by to see if the chief deputy wanted to be relieved early. I seen everybody then, but the chief deputy tol? me to go get some breakfast before I took over the guardin?.? Frye shuddered. ?If he hadn?t sent me off?t? eat
?
Longarm could understand the young man?s distress, of course. Frye could easily have been inside the bank when the explosion ripped it apart. Right now, though, Longarm needed information more than Frye needed sympathy. ?You also said the bank vault is empty, Charlie. How would anybody know that?? Longarm pressed.
The deputy pointed toward a back corner of the mess. ?Over there, Marshal. The top of the vault?s sticking up outa the flooring from upstairs. C?mon, and I?ll show you.?
Frye led as they picked their way over loose rubble and timber, the way lighted by a hundred lanterns hastily brought by the men who were looking for possible survivors. Everyone knew there was no chance of finding any one still alive under all that rock, but the miners were making the effort every bit as seriously as they would have tried to rescue comrades trapped by a cave-in underground. This sort of thing was something they had more experience with than any of them likely wanted.
As they reached the back of the bank building Longarm could see the flat steel top of the old vault protruding from a pile of floorboards and filth. The ornately decorated door, painted in gold scrollwork, stuck up ten or eleven inches out of the pile. It was easy to see at a glance that the door was partially open. Longarm called for a lantern, and one was handed to him. He leaned forward and directed the light inside the vault as best he could.
Young Frye had been right about that, at least. The floor of the vault was littered with dust and fallen papers, but there was no sign of the bags of cash that had been deposited there earlier in the afternoon.
?Son of a
? Longarm started to mutter. He was interrupted by a flurry of excited voices from his right.
?Over here,? someone was calling. ?We found another over here.?
