Longarm and the Bandit Queen

by Tabor Evans

  "They'll bring their own food," Belle said. "Enough for them and us too. Besides, you're not going to have time to cook tomorrow morning, Yazoo. None of you are. There's Sam's grave to dig and the house to clean up, and all that sugar to carry up to the stillhouse. There's more than enough to keep everybody busy. I want this place to be ready by noon, before Sam's kinfolks get here!"

  At daybreak they started again. Belle had wrestled a breakfast of sorts from the kitchen range: soggy biscuits and bacon and coffee. She hurried them through the meal, urged them to haste in carrying the sugar and other items up the slope to the still, then designated Yazoo and Bobby to handle the housecleaning chores while Longarm, Floyd and Steed went up to the grove. They started the grave a short distance from the still-dark mounds of the other two so recently filled.

  "For a hell of a lot less'n two cents, I'd call off this fucking job," Steed panted. They'd just broken through the hard surface crust; the rain had passed over during the night, barely moistening the earth. Steed took a swallow from the bottle they'd brought with them to ease the digging and went on, "Damn job's been jinxed from the start. Mckee, then Taylor, now Sam. I can't keep from wondering if I'm next."

  "That ain't no way to talk," Floyd told him. "The job didn't have one damned thing to do with what happened to them, Steed."

  "So you say." Steed drank again and passed the bottle to Floyd. "Just the same, we're a man short again." Longarm said nothing, but kept plying his shovel.

  Floyd offered him the bottle, but Longarm shook his head. "Thanks. I'll wait till I can drink rye."

  "Well, damn it, how do you feel about the job, Windy?"

  "Same as always."

  "Maybe you better tell us just what that means," Steed said.

  "Means I don't give a damn. Call it off, go ahead with it," Longarm replied levelly. "I don't think it's jinxed, even if you do."

  Longarm realized he was taking a chance in saying what he had, but it was another of those risks he couldn't avoid if he intended to keep up the front he'd been presenting the outlaws.

  Floyd took a second swallow from the bottle and handed it to Steed, saying, "We're not calling off the job! If what Belle's told us about the bank layout is right, we can get by with one outside man."

  "You mean Bobby?" Steed asked. He spat, then drank. "Shit! The kid's green, Floyd. We couldn't be sure he might not panic."

  "Instead of us hashing this over, we'd be better off talking to Belle," Longarm suggested. He held out his hand for the bottle. Even though corn whiskey always tasted too sweet to him, digging was dry work. He took a sparing sip. "Maybe she'd know somebody who could take Sam's place."

  "Not in the time we got left," Floyd said. He reached out his hand for the bottle and drank, then grinned mirthlessly. "I got a better idea. Belle's always bragging and blowing about how she's the Bandit Queen. Let's just tell her flat out she's got to take Sam's place."

  "Me, go on a job with a woman?" Steed shook his head. "Not likely!"

  "Wait a minute, Steed," Longarm said. "Floyd's idea might not be so bad. Belle knows the country. If she stood lookout with Bobby, we wouldn't be worried about him being green. She'd keep him on the mark."

  It had suddenly occurred to Longarm that, with Sam gone, the use of Younger's Bend as an outlaw rendezvous would end if Belle was put behind bars. So would her payoffs. A bank holdup would bring a sentence that would keep her in the pen for years.

  "See there, Steed?" Floyd asked. "Maybe you better think again."

  "Thinking won't change a thing," Steed retorted. "I don't want any part of a woman on any job I ride out on."

  "It wouldn't hurt to talk to Belle about it," Longarm insisted. "We're damn sure going to have to change our plans anyhow."

  "Well..." Steed drawled out the word so that his doubts dripped from it almost visibly. "I'll go as far as talking, but sure as shit stinks, I won't change my mind."

  They fell silent and finished their job. The morning was passing, breakfast had been skimpy, and they were anxious to be at the house when Sam's kin arrived with the food Belle had said they would bring.

  A larger number of relatives than Longarm had expected arrived shortly after the trio returned to the house. The men rode in on horses; there were eight of them, and it seemed to Longarm that twice as many women were in the spring wagons that followed the horsemen. There were two of the wagons. The women sitting in them held plates and platters on their laps, and steadied big pots in the wagon beds with their feet.

  Belle had stationed herself on the porch when she heard the wagons creaking up. She'd found time to change into a black velvet dress. It was ankle-length, like the green one, and very much the same in cut, with a high collar to hide the creases and loose skin of her neck. She hadn't put on her hat, but had arranged her dark hair in a curving bang that hid her high-domed forehead. In spite of the occasion, or perhaps because of it, she wore her silver pearl-handled pistols.

  Yazoo, obviously drunk but still able to navigate, skipped out of sight into the house when he heard the relatives arriving. Longarm, Steed, Floyd, and Bobby retreated toward the cabins with their bottle, but stopped just beyond the well to watch the wagons as they pulled up and men swung off their horses. There seemed to be a protocol the relatives observed. Robert West, uncle of both of the dead men, was the first to step up on the porch. He bent over Belle, said a few words in a low voice, then stood beside her while the men filed past and stopped for a word or two before moving on. The women followed. They were a bit more demonstrative, but only words passed between them and Belle; there were no embraces or hand-clasps. The procession wound into the barn. When the last of the guests--a girl not yet in her teens--had disappeared into the barn, Belle rose and stepped inside the house. Yazoo came out with her almost at once. He carried a gallon jug of whiskey in each hand, and went into the barn.

  Steed said under his breath, "When are they going to start dishing up the grub? I'm damn near starved."

  "So am I," Floyd agreed. "You reckon they'll eat before the burying?

  Or wait till it's finished?"

  "I'm as hungry as the rest of you, I guess," Bobby said. "What you reckon they got in all them platters and pots?"

  "It'd better be food," Steed told him. He took another swallow from the almost empty bottle. "My belly thinks my throat's been cut."

  Several of the older women came from the barn and sat down near Belle. They stared silently ahead. The other women began carrying the food from the wagons into the house.

  "I sure hope that grub they got is fit to eat," Floyd said. He caught Longarm's eye and winked broadly. "Let's see, Sam was part Cherokee. Ain't it the Cherokees that likes dog meat, Windy?"

  "Oh, most of the redskins I know about eat dogs," Longarm replied. "Sioux, Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Comanche. I guess the Cherokees do too."

  "Dog meat?" Bobby gasped. "Is that what we're going to have to eat?"

  "Oh, you don't have to eat if you don't want to, Bobby," Floyd said. "Or you can pass up the meat and fill your belly with bread and potatoes and garden truck."

  "You and Floyd are funning me, aren't you, Windy?" Bobby asked. "Those folks don't even look like Indians. They don't really eat dogs, do they?"

  "Well, they're all of them part Cherokee, Bobby," Longarm answered. "But I reckon they've given up a lot of their Indian habits."

  "Dog meat or not, I don't aim to wait any longer for some grub," Steed said suddenly.

  Longarm looked at the outlaw. Steed was weaving on his feet; the whiskey on his empty stomach was proving to be more than he could handle. Before anyone could stop him, Steed staggered over to the wagons. There was only one woman in sight. She was lifting out a heavy pot. Belle and the woman on the porch had moved into the house. "You think you better go bring him back?" Longarm asked Floyd.

  "Ah, Steed won't hurt the woman. He's just gone to find out when we're going to be fed." Floyd was feeling the liquor almost as much as Steed.

  Longarm watched as Steed approac
hed the wagon. The woman heard him coming up and half-turned, having balanced the pot on the edge of the wagon's side. Steed said something to her, and the woman shook her head. He gestured at the pot. His wild arm-waving overbalanced him, and Steed lurched heavily into the woman.

  Longarm saw trouble looming and started to move. He got to the wagon just as Steed grabbed the woman's arm. She kicked at his shins, still trying to hold onto the pot, but almost dropping it.

  "Don't put your hands on me!" she said as Longarm came up.

  "Now, listen, you damned-" Steed began.

  Longarm cut off whatever Steed had been about to say by grabbing his shoulder and whirling him around. "Leave the lady alone, Steed," he ordered sternly. "This ain't a time or place to stir up a ruckus."

  "Let go of me, Windy--or by God-"

  Longarm increased the pressure of his steel-hard fingers on Steed's collarbone. Steed broke off his intended remark to say, "Damn you, turn me loose! That hurts!"

  "You've had a drink too many," Longarm told the outlaw. "Go on back over there with Floyd and Bobby and cool off."

  Steed sobered up quickly as he got the message from Longarm's hard voice and crunching grip. The memory of Mckee may have helped speed his recovery. He protested, "I wasn't aiming to hurt her. All I want is a bite of something to stop my belly from griping!"

  "Then wait, like the rest of us. Now come on. Let's go back over there with Floyd and Bobby."

  Longarm swung Steed around. He hadn't really looked at the woman, intent as he was only on hustling Steed away from a situation that could create trouble. They'd gotten several steps from the wagon when she called, "I still don't know your name, but thanks for the second time!"

  "You're welcome," Longarm replied. He turned as he spoke, and looked back. He recognized her then. It was the woman he'd bumped into at the shindy. As they had the day before, Longarm's eyes widened. Her face was one of the prettiest he'd seen in a long time, now that he got his first good look at it when it wasn't pulled into a grimace. There wasn't any special feature that drew his attention, just a general impression of mature beauty.

  He said, "My friend didn't mean any harm, ma'am. We just put in a morning's work digging Sam's grave, and we're a mite starved out."

  "There'll be plenty to eat as soon as Cousin Sam's buried," she said. "It wouldn't be respectful if we made him wait until after we'd eaten, though."

  Longarm nodded. "We're not all that hungry. We can wait." In a lowered voice, he told Steed, "You were acting like a damn fool. If that woman had yelled, you'd have had all of Sam's men kinfolk piling out of that barn and onto you."

  "Hell, I didn't mean anything, Windy. I only wanted to see if I couldn't get a bite to eat."

  "Just the same," Longarm began. He stopped as a drumbeat sounded from the barn, then another. He nodded and said, "I guess we'll be eating soon enough. It sounds to me like Sam's funeral's just started."

  CHAPTER 17

  To the measured beat of the drum, Sam Starr's body was carried from the barn on the shoulders of four of his kinsmen. The drummer led the way. His drum was small, less than a foot in diameter, and he carried it at eye level, bringing a surprisingly resonant note from it with his fingertips.

  The corpse lay on a single wide plank. The board was not quite wide enough to accommodate the dead man's shoulders, which protruded over its edges on both sides. Behind the bearers came the remaining men. All except Robert West wore hats. West had on a wide headband. As the tiny procession passed the house, the women trooped out and took up their places behind the men. Belle walked at their head, with a much older woman.

  Longarm, Floyd, Steed, and Bobby followed some distance behind the women. Halfway to the grove, Longarm heard the scraping of feet behind them and looked back. Yazoo had appeared from somewhere and was following them.

  Not until the men carrying the body reached the graveside and lowered their burden to the ground did Longarm see that Sam's face had been covered with a featureless mask, made of some sort of tanned animal pelts. The drumbeats stopped when the body touched the ground. Robert West leaned over the corpse and lifted the mask off. In the short interval that elapsed before West pulled around the dead man's face a fold of the blanket on which the corpse lay, Longarm saw that the face had been painted. A single band of black ran from ear to ear, covering both eyes and nose, and a pattern of thin red lines and small circles had been drawn over the mouth and chin.

  After he had covered Sam's face, Robert West knelt. The other men followed suit. West said a few short phrases in a low voice, almost a whisper. He stood up, lifted his face and spread his arms, and raised his voice in a brief chant in Cherokee. He nodded, and four of the men lowered the body into the earth. All of the men then filed past the open grave, each of them dropping into it a small square of cornbread. West motioned toward the waiting shovels. The men took turns working with the shovels until the grave was filled and mounded. During the brief ritual, the women stood at one side, watching with impassive faces. Belle stood a little apart from the others. When the mound had been formed, West led the group back to the house.

  "You reckon we're supposed to go in and eat with them?" Steed asked as he and the others fell in at the end of the straggling line. They carefully kept a bit of space between themselves and the relatives.

  Yazoo answered him. "Yep. Belle told me to tell you to come on in and fill up after the burying. Them kinfolks of Sam's has brought enough vittles to feed a whole damn army."

  "What-what kind of food, Yazoo?" Bobby asked hesitantly.

  "Hell, I don't know." Yazoo was just drunk enough to be cheerful. "There's roasting ears and venison steaks and whole pots of stews and garden truck. I just got a look at it while they was unloading the wagons."

  "Did any of it look like dog-meat?" Bobby asked the old man.

  "Dog? I couldn't say about that, Bobby. You put meat in a stew, it all looks pretty Much alike." Bobby said, "I guess I'll pass up the stews, then. But that roasted venison sounds pretty good to me."

  There was hardly room to move in the house. Belle was nowhere in sight, and the door to the bedroom was closed, so Longarm imagined that she'd gone in there. The food was plentiful, and he helped himself to venison roast, two ears of corn, and the only other meat he recognized, some pieces of fried squirrel. He took his plate outside and looked for a place to eat. Floyd, Steed, Bobby, and Yazoo had disappeared, probably to the cabins, Longarm thought. He wondered if they'd had the same feeling that had dogged him all the time he was in the house; Sam Starr's relatives seemed to be avoiding looking at him or getting close to him.

  Wandering outside, Longarm walked over to the well and sat down on its curb. The thigh-high coping of planks made it a comfortable height for a seat, and the wide horizontal top board gave him a place to rest his plate. Longarm ate slowly, his eyes busy.

  From the well, he could look into the barn. The men were gathered in there, and he saw the glint of the whiskey jugs being passed from hand to hand and tilted. He contemplated going to his cabin for a sip of rye, but the exertion of grave-digging had diminished his ambition to do much besides sit still. He finished eating and lighted a cheroot. A woman carrying a bucket came out of the house and walked toward the well. Longarm started to rise and leave when he recognized her as the unusually pretty one he'd noticed earlier. He changed his mind about leaving in favor of getting a closer look at her. As she drew near, he saw that she was a bit older than he'd thought. Her amazingly perfect cast of features masked her age effectively.

  Longarm stood up when she reached the well. She said, "You don't have to move. I can draw from the other side."

  "I've finished eating, ma'am. It won't bother me a bit to give you room. Here." Longarm dropped the wooden bucket that stood on the coping into the well and waited for it to fill. He drew it up, the pulley creaking from lack of oil.

  She said, "I never did really thank you for taking your drunk friend away while I was unloading the wagon."

  "I didn't e
xpect thanks. All I was doing was trying to keep any trouble from starting."

  "Yes. If the men had looked out and seen your friend, they'd have jumped to the wrong conclusion and probably would have rushed him."

  Longarm studied the woman covertly while he drew up the heavy water bucket. Her face was a perfect oval, and her large brown eyes, fringed with long lashes, added to its symmetry. The line of her nose gave her face a squareness that kept it from looking too plump. Her lips were perhaps a bit overblown, her mouth a trifle wide, but this did not detract from the regularity of her features. She wore her hair long, in loose, thick braids that dropped down her back.

  He swung the bucket over to the coping and lifted it to fill hers. She asked, "Are you one of Sam's friends? Or one of Belle's?"

  "Neither one, I'd say. I never saw Sam or Belle until I pulled in here about a week ago."

  "Then, are you-" She stopped short. "No, I mustn't ask you any questions. Cousin Robert said that was something we should be careful not to do."

  "You can ask." Longarm smiled. "There ain't any law says I got to answer you."

  "Of course. But it's better if I do what Robert says."

  Longarm noticed that her eyes kept returning to his freshly lighted cheroot. He asked, "My smoke bother you, ma'am?"

  "No. Just the opposite. I'm wishing I could have one myself. That's the kind I smoke. I stopped at the store as we passed through Eufaula, to buy some, but Eleazar said he'd sold out." Her eyes widened and she added "Why, you must be the one who bought them! You're the man who was with Belle and Sam yesterday!"

  Longarm nodded. He said, "Yes. Too bad about your cousin. I guess the other fellow was a cousin of yours too?"

  "Yes." She shook her head. "It's a little bit unnerving, two funerals in two days, and the long ride out here. Even if I didn't know Frank except to nod to, and met Sam just once."

  Longarm took a cheroot from his vest pocket and offered it to her. "Maybe this'll help settle your nerves, then."

  "Are you sure you won't run short?"

  "Take it, ma'am. I bought all the storekeeper had. If you want another one or two, I'll be glad to-"