Longarm and the Bandit Queen

by Tabor Evans

  As he edged along, he tried to plan a way out of his precarious situation. His wallet, with his badge in it, was still in his boot top, where he'd been carrying it since he'd gotten close to Younger's Bend. He didn't want to show the badge unless he was forced to. For all he knew, the man on the platform might be one of those being paid off by Belle Starr. At the same time, he didn't want to get into a shootout with a yard bull.

  Crawling on his hands and knees, still holding his Colt in one hand, Longarm wondered how the detective had come to single him out for attention. The reason came to him in a flash. It had been Dolly, of course. She'd been seen by the posse that had been chasing Lonnie Taylor after Taylor had carried out whatever robbery he'd staged to get the cash he needed. There would have been no very accurate description of Taylor circulated, but Dolly, with her long ash-blonde hair, had almost certainly been described, and there weren't all that many natural ash-blondes along the Arkansas border.

  It all holds together, old son, Longarm told himself as he continued his crawl behind the cover of the platform. That fellow must've been prowling around the depot and seen Dolly with me. Just because we were together, he figured I was Taylor. Then why the hell didn't he make his play there in the restaurant?

  He puzzled over that while covering the next few feet in the direction of the platform's end, and the answer came logically.

  Damn! He must've ducked out of the restaurant to send somebody after help. Didn't want to run the risk of trying to take me by himself. He waited till the last minute, figured I was going on the train with her, and threw down on me when he saw me step off the car. Which means this place is going to be mighty uncomfortable in a few minutes, as soon as the real law gets here.

  Instinct or habit had kept Longarm looking back occasionally as he crawled. He saw the end of the platform a few yards ahead, and glanced back over his shoulder just in time to catch a flicker of motion along the area he'd just passed. He dropped flat and rolled to bring his Colt into action. The flicker turned into the gun hand of the railroad detective as he extended it over the edge of the boards. Longarm tossed off a shot, aiming short of the pistol. A chunk of the platform's edge exploded in a shower of splinters and the hand holding the gun disappeared.

  Longarm couldn't be sure that his pursuer hadn't peered along the platform while he wasn't looking back. He speeded up his crawl, but it was slow at best. A pillar rose to the awning's edge at the corner just ahead of him, where the platform ended. Longarm reached it and rose behind it. It didn't shield him completely. He hadn't quite gotten his feet under him when a bullet clanged on the ironwork and ricocheted off toward the tracks.

  Longarm didn't want to fire, but he had no other choice. He broke cover long enough to spot the pursuing yard bull, and sent a slug into the platform at the man's feet. The detective dived for the protection of the closest pillar. It didn't shield him fully, any more than the one Longarm was behind shielded him, but as long as the man stayed behind the iron support, he wouldn't be able to shoot accurately, if at all.

  A baggage cart loaded with wooden barrels stood at the platform's edge. Longarm measured the distance to the cart. He didn't give the fellow who was after him very high grades for marksmanship, but he wasn't going to underestimate the man, either. He'd used up only two of the five rounds his Colt carried in its cylinder. The yard bull had also shot twice, so they were neck-and-neck on ammunition. Longarm debated reloading before he moved, concluded that speed was worth more than two shots, and dived for the baggage cart.

  He hit the ground midway between the pillar and the cart. He landed rolling, and the shot triggered by the detective skittered off the brickwork that extended from the platform's edge to some fifteen or twenty feet beyond it, to the end of the Railway Express office that stood at one side of the depot.

  The sliding door of the office was open. A man stood in it, peering curiously toward the area where he'd heard shooting. Longarm reached the baggage cart and stood behind it long enough to lift its yoke from the supporting arm and turn the cart in the direction of the open door. With any luck, he'd find a back door that he could get out of before the yard bull caught up with him.

  As Longarm pulled the cart, walking backward, depending on the stacked barrels and iron-spoked wheels to protect him from his assailant's fire, the railroad detective snapped off three fast shots. They slammed into the barrels. Liquid began spurting from them, and the acrid scent of spoiled cottonseed oil filled the air.

  Longarm stopped long enough to pull a match out of his pocket and flick it into flame with his thumbnail. He tossed the match on the ground and, to buy time, leaned out from behind the barrels and triggered a shot in the general direction of the pillar that shielded his pursuer.

  When he pulled the cart forward, the oil from the leaking barrels splashed on the burning match. A sheet of flame rippled slowly toward the depot, and a cloud of dense smoke billowed up. The smoke shielded Longarm while he abandoned the baggage cart and ran flat-out for the open door of the Railway Express agency. The agent was still standing in the doorway, staring goggle-eyed at the flames that were rising from the oil.

  "Hey, you can't come in here!" he called when he saw Longarm heading for the door.

  "Like hell I can't!" Longarm replied, brushing past the man into the building.

  He looked around. The place was more a shed than anything else. A waist-high counter ran half of its length, and a scale stood at the and of the counter. Bundles, bags, bales, boxes, and barrels were scattered and piled around the floor. There were windows, but they were set high in the walls, just below the eaves. They were long and narrow and fitted with iron bars. He spotted the back door and saw that it was not only closed tightly, but barred with a thick iron strap held by a swivel-bolt at one end and a massive padlock through a shackle at the other.

  "Open that door!" he ordered the agent.

  "Not on your life!" the man retorted. He ran out the door and disappeared.

  Longarm covered the distance to the barred door in two long strides. He stood aside, aimed carefully, and shattered the padlock with a bullet. The staple through which the lock passed was torn out of the wall, and the bar swung down with a clatter.

  For a moment the door resisted Longarm's tugging. Then it slowly started moving on the rollers that ran in a track above it. Longarm stopped when he'd cracked it wide enough for him to slip out. He peered around the edge. The railroad detective was just coming up to the back of the express office; apparently he'd detoured through the depot to avoid the flames.

  Longarm pulled his head back quickly, hoping the man hadn't seen him. He'd glimpsed the gun his pursuer was carrying in his hand. Shielded by the door, he saw the yard bull go past the slitted opening and head for one corner of the express office. He gave the man a minute or so to get around the corner, then slid through the cracked-open door and started across the open ell between the agency office and the depot. He'd taken only three steps when a harsh command stopped him.

  "Hold it! You take another step and I'll cut you down!"

  Longarm stopped. He didn't want a bullet in the back.

  "Now," the railroad detective commanded. "Keep your hands right where they are and turn around so I can look at you."

  Shuffling his feet, Longarm turned. He faced the railroad detective and didn't like what he saw. The man was only a dozen feet distant, standing at the corner of the express office. His fingers were wrapped so tightly around the butt of his Remington-Beals.44 single-action that the knuckles were white. His forefinger twitched on the trigger. Longarm felt better when he saw that the gun's hammer wasn't drawn back.

  Still, Longarm didn't feel easy about his position. Yard bulls normally did little more police work than chasing hoboes off freights and keeping the railroad yards clear of sneak-thieves and drifters. A few of them were former sheriffs' deputies or town marshals or one-time Pinkerton men who could no longer pull their weight in regular law-enforcement jobs.

  A lot of them were bulli
es who enjoyed beating up the helpless bums they dragged off freight cars, and some of them had been forced out of regular jobs because they were habitual drunks. The more Longarm thought about railroad detectives, the less inclined he was to surrender to the one holding him at gunpoint and then clear things up by showing his badge.

  There were a lot of yard bulls who cooperated with crooks. They got more money than their jobs paid them by tipping off outlaws and boxcar thieves to special shipments that made a robbery profitable. Belle Starr, Longarm thought, would have to be paying off a lot of railroad workers in order to carry out her felonious specialty of selling rustled cattle.

  By now the railroad detective had scrutinized Longarm from hat-brim to boot toes. He nodded with satisfaction. "Yep. You're the one, all right."

  There was only one thing Longarm could see to do: play for time. He suggested, "Suppose you tell me which one you're talking about, friend, because I damn sure don't know."

  "Like hell you don't! You're the son of a bitch who stuck up the bank in Midland four or five days ago."

  "You're dead wrong. I've never been to Midland." Longarm moved his left hand a hair's breadth, and the yard bull drew back the hammer of his pistol. Longarm froze instantly. He hoped the weapon didn't have a hair trigger.

  "I told you not to move!" the man barked. "I'd as soon shoot you as look at you! The reward notice said dead or alive, so you're worth five hundred dollars to me whether you walk in or I drag you in."

  "You're making a mistake," Longarm protested. He was careful to keep his voice to a level, conversational tone. "Four or five days ago I was over in the Cherokee Nation. I don't even know where that town you mentioned is located."

  "That's about what I'd expect you to say," the yard bull said with a nervous nod. "You sound real convincing too, I'll credit you with that. I might even believe you if I hadn't seen you with that blonde woman in the depot restaurant. The reward notice described her a lot better than it did you. A man'd have to be blind not to spot her."

  Longarm weighed his alternatives. The cocked revolver held by the yard bull reduced them drastically. He was very sure the railroad dick had sent for help as he detoured through the depot, and even if he hadn't, somebody must have reported the gunfire out on the station platform. Unless the yard bull had reloaded, which Longarm didn't think was very likely, he had one round left in his pistol. That was just what remained in Longarm's Colt.

  "Looks like you've got me dead to rights," he told the railroad detective. "But there's not any reason for you to settle for a little chicken-shit five hundred dollars for taking me in. I've got a thousand in my inside coat pocket. It's worth every dime of it to me if you'll say I got away from you."

  "A thousand?" the yard bull's eyes narrowed covetously.

  Longarm could almost read the man's mind. There wasn't any reason to settle for five hundred or a thousand either. If he shot now, he'd take the thousand off Longarm's body and then claim another five hundred as his reward. "A thousand," Longarm repeated. "Here, if you think I'm lying, I'll show it to you."

  Longarm raised his left hand as though to reach inside his breast pocket. The yard bull's eyes followed the movement. Longarm brought his Colt up and fired. The railroad dick's dying reflex triggered his own gun, but Longarm was flat on the ground by the time the hammer fell, and the slug whistled through the air over his head.

  Longarm had started to scramble to his feet when a fresh voice barked commandingly, "Stay right there on the ground, mister. You move a finger and you're a dead man!"

  By rolling his eyes, Longarm could see who'd spoken. This time it wasn't an inexperienced, greedy railroad detective. The man standing at the corner of the depot wore the uniform of the Fort Smith city constable's force. And the gun he held, with its muzzle pointed at Longarm, wasn't a revolver, but a sawed-off shotgun.

  CHAPTER 13

  Even if there'd been another live round in his Colt, Longarm wouldn't have argued with the scattergun. He said, "You've got me, mister. Just don't get an itch in your trigger finger."

  "Let go of your gun and move your hand away from it," the uniformed constable ordered.

  Longarm obeyed. The command itself, and the tone in which it was delivered, told him the man knew what he was doing.

  "That's fine," the constable said. His voice was cool. "Now roll over, away from the gun, and lay quiet until I tell you different."

  Once again, Longarm did as he was told. He rolled, stopping on his back so that he could see what the Fort Smith officer was doing.

  At the moment, the policeman was still standing where he'd been covering Longarm with the shotgun. It was a hammerless double, and Longarm couldn't see from his position whether the safety was off or on.

  Not that it would make much difference, he thought ruefully. Only a damned fool makes a move when he's in the kind of fix I'm in right now.

  Moving deliberately, without taking his eyes off Longarm, the constable picked up Longarm's Colt. He dropped it into the capacious side pocket of his uniform coat, then he said, "All right. You can stand up now."

  Longarm got to his feet. He was once again faced with the same problem that had stopped him from surrendering to the railroad detective. For all he knew, and based on what Andrew Gower had told him, half of the Fort Smith constables might be on Belle Starr's payoff list. He'd gotten by this far without the risk of revealing his identity to anybody except Gower, and with the end of his job in sight, he didn't propose to waste the effort he'd already put in on the case.

  Though he hadn't quite decided just how he was going to handle things in this new situation, Longarm still stalled for time. He said, "If you'll just listen to me a minute, officer, I'll explain what this was all about."

  "I don't need any explanation from you," the constable said curtly. "I got here just as Castell was dropping. That's all I need. You can give your explanation to the judge when you stand up to face a murder charge."

  "Castell? That'd be the fellow who was trying to hold me up?" Longarm asked.

  "If you mean the man you just killed, his name's Castell and he was a railroad bull for the Frisco. And if he was holding a gun on you, he must've had a reason to."

  "Sure he did. He wanted the money I've got in my coat pocket."

  "How'd he find out you're carrying enough money to make him draw his gun on you?" the officer asked suspiciously. "That won't wash worth a damn, mister. We got a report there was a gunfight going on here at the depot. That was quite a while ago. You and Castell must've been swapping shots for some time."

  "He mistook me for somebody else," Longarm said. "That's how the trouble started."

  "I think you're lying. Castell can't tell his side, and I'm damned if I'm going to let you get away with killing somebody, even a half-assed yard bull." The constable shifted the shotgun in order to get to his handcuffs, which were dangling from a strap on his wide uniform belt.

  Longarm took the only chance he was likely to get. With the speed of a striking snake, he whisked his hand along his watch chain to get the derringer that nestled in his vest pocket. Before the Fort Smith officer could bring his shotgun around, Longarm's derringer was jammed into his throat.

  Longarm said, "Now it's your turn to keep quiet and follow orders, mister. First off, I'll take that scattergun you're holding." He took the shotgun and slid the breech-lock aside with his thumb. The action opened and he held the gun up to drop its shells on the ground. "Now hand over your pistol," he ordered. He gave the Smith & Wesson revolver the same treatment, breaking its breech to let the ejector ring lift out the shells, then upending the weapon to let the shells fall out. He handed the revolver back to the constable. "Here. Put it in your holster."

  "You mind telling me what you're going to do?" the officer asked.

  "I was just about to. If this depot's like most I've seen, there's likely a hack or two outside. We're going to walk around the station to the sidewalk, and you're going to tell the hackman to drive us along to Front Street. And t
hat's all you need to know right now."

  For a moment the constable seemed on the verge of refusing, but Longarm applied a bit of extra pressure with the derringer's muzzle, and the man shrugged.

  "all right," he said. "If that's what you want, I guess you're the boss right now."

  As they walked around the back of the depot, Longarm moved the derringer from his captive's throat to his ribs. The constable didn't make any effort to escape or to slow their progress. As Longarm had anticipated, there were several livery rigs standing beside the sidewalk in front of the depot. He poked the man's ribs with the derringer. The constable called to the hackman on the seat of the last carriage in line, "Police business! Take us down Front Street until I tell you to turn off."

  "You paying the hire?" the hackie asked suspiciously.

  "I told you it's police business," the constable growled impatiently. "Now do what I said. Drive us along Front Street."

  Inside the hack, Longarm told the constable, "I'll just take your handcuffs and keys now."

  Under the threat of the mean-looking little derringer, the officer passed the cuffs and keys to Longarm. He made no objection when Longarm handcuffed his hands behind his back and put the key into his own pocket. Then Longarm felt in the constable's hip pocket and found the bandanna handkerchief he'd been pretty sure would be there. The bandana went around the constable's mouth, silencing him.

  The hack had been moving slowly up Front Street. Longarm looked out just in time to see the federal office building as they passed it. He retrieved his Colt from the constable's pocket and cracked open the sliding panel behind the hackman's head.

  "You can pull up here long enough for me to get out," he told the driver. "Then the officer wants to go on out Front to--what's that big street, quite a ways on east?"

  "You must mean Division Street," the hackie said. "It's about a mile further on up Front Street."