Powder Keg by Ed Gorman Read Free Book Online Page A

good priest,” he laughed.
    “Tell you what I will do, though. How about having supper? There’s that café down the street. I see they’re advertising Swiss steak in the window for tonight.”
    “That sounds pretty damned good.”
    He stood up before I did. Now that he’d told me about the bank statement, his demeanor had changed. He wasn’t some exultant braying fool. But damned if he didn’t look a few years younger and a lot less ashen; and damned if he didn’t have that old-Tom smile on him.
    I cuffed him on the shoulder. “See you at five.”

Chapter 11
    T om didn’t make it to the café. You know enough drunks, you know that at least 50 percent of the time they don’t keep their word.
    I gave him twenty minutes and then went ahead and ate without him. Swiss steak and mashed potatoes wasn’t the kind of meal I expected in a mountain town but I was glad to get it.
    I figured the café had about half again as many customers as it could handle. There were cowboys, workers, day laborers, drummers of every description, and a few folks who felt they were too far away from their ranches and farms to risk traveling. The smoke from cigarettes, cigars, pipes, and the grill put a fog-heavy haze across everything. And every single syllable uttered seemed to be about the weather, a subject I was thoroughly sick of hearing about.
    Tom had been right about the train, anyway. We wouldn’t be getting out of there for a few days. And if the mountain passes got bad, I might not make it back to Denver for a week or more.
    The man next to me got up from his counter seatand another man took his place. We didn’t look at each other or speak. He ordered the Swiss steak and got his coffee fast from a sweaty and desperate waitress. She deserved a few days off after that night.
    I had a piece of apple pie. I ate it in gulps. I wanted out of there. That press of people plus the smoke was starting to make me tense. I’m not much for crowds. I’ve seen a few of them turn on people and it’s always ugly. I’ve never seen a lynching but I have seen a crowd beat and stomp a man very close to death while six drunks held me so I couldn’t go to his rescue. Later on that night, in back of a saloon, I decided for no particular reason to kill the man who’d stirred up the crowd. Like most competent lawmen, I knew how to plant a gun so it looked like self-defense.
    The man next to me at the counter said, “If you go after Mike Chaney, mister, I want to go with you. Name’s Jeremy Long.” He offered a massive hand and I took it. “I just want to see his face when we bring him in. Thinks he’s the big hero.”
    Even with the din, Long’s voice was loud and angry. He was a fleshy man, short, balding, middle-aged, wearing a sheepskin over his work shirt. I don’t suppose he was all that tough when something personal wasn’t driving him. But there was obviously something between Chaney and himself that made him dangerous.
    “I won’t be going after him, Mr. Long. Once the trains can run again, I’m leaving town.”
    “Kip over to the sheriff’s office told me you was a federal man.”
    “I am. But I’m not in town because of Chaney.”
    He just watched me the way a human watches a type of animal he’s never seen before.
    “Why ain’t you after Chaney?”
    “I’m working on a different case.”
    “You know what he done?”
    “From what I hear, he robbed a bank.”
    He sneered. “Oh, he done a lot more than that, mister. A whole lot more than that. One of the banks he stuck up—one of Flannery’s banks, of course—Flannery fired one of the clerks. Blamed him for not putting up a fight when Chaney robbed the place. Even kind of hinted around that the clerk might be in cahoots with Chaney. You know how old that clerk is? I’ll tell ya. He’s twenty-three. You know how many little ones he’s got runnin’ around? I’ll tell ya that, too. He’s got six little ones runnin’ around. And you know what else? He’s got a