Longarm 420 by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2013-09-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

First Merchants’ Bank of El Paso. It was only three blocks from the telegraph office and should be perfect for cashing a draft. Assuming Henry sent one. Which Longarm certainly hoped and expected he would do. It was either that or abandon the assignment down here and take the next available transportation north.

With time left to kill before he could reasonably expect an answer to his wire, Longarm wandered over to the bank and let himself in.

It was a small bank, paneled with dark wood and with a cozy, homey feel to it. The clerk there could never in his life have seen Longarm before that moment and certainly did not know him, and yet the man welcomed him with a smile.

There were two matronly ladies waiting to see the teller. Longarm fell in line behind them, thinking to ask the friendly man whether he would be able to cash the draft against the telegraph company’s accounts.

Neither of the ladies was anything much to look at, but they smelled nice and reminded Longarm—he needed such reminders every now and then—that there really was a polite and pleasant society where guns and crime had no place and where the most drastic thing a woman had to do was to decide which hat would best go with her dress.

He yawned and smiled and patiently waited his turn.

The first lady completed her business, whatever it was, and stepped aside to wait for her friend. That one called the teller Earl. Their conversation suggested that the lady and her family attended the same church as Earl and his.

A little bell over the door tinkled merrily, and two men walked in wearing floor-length linen dusters.

There was nothing unusual about that.

But there was something decidedly unusual about the double-barrel shotguns they exposed once they were inside.

“Everybody freeze,” the lead man ordered. “If you move, you die.”

The lady at the counter fainted dead away. Longarm caught her under the arms and lowered her gently to the floor.

Her friend had somewhat more mettle. That one drew herself up to her full height of perhaps five feet and practically snarled at the robbers. She clutched her handbag to her chest and gave the men a defiant glare.

“You,” the first robber ordered. “Hand it over.”

The woman did not say anything. But she did not relinquish her bag either. Longarm had been close enough to hear that she just withdrew twenty dollars from her husband’s accounts, and she was not going to give it up.

“Give them what they want, Rose,” Earl advised from his window. “Just . . . give it to them.”

“Look, bitch,” the robber snarled, “you either hand it over or I’ll shoot you down dead.”

He aimed his shotgun at the lady’s more than ample bosom and the purse she was clutching to it, but she still did not budge.

Judging from her expression and the way she held herself stiffly erect, Longarm suspected she was terrified but trying not to show it.

The robber, Longarm noticed, had not yet actually cocked his shotgun.

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