Read Thieves Dozen for Free Online Page A

can’t do a diversionary explosion outside a ranch or use the fire escape or break through the roof. You can’t time a horse’s movements.
    Well, you can, actually, but not the way Dortmunder meant. The way Dortmunder meant, this horse heist was looking less and less like what the newspapers call a “well-planned professional robbery” and more and more like hobos sneaking into back yards to steal lawn mowers. Professionally, it was an embarrassment.
    “Careful where you walk,” the old coot said.
    “Too late,” Dortmunder told him.
    Dortmunder’s ideas of farms came from margarine commercials on television and his ideas of ranches from cigarette ads in magazines. This place didn’t match either; no three-story-high red barns, no masses of horses running pell-mell past boulders. What you had was these long, low brown buildings scattered among the railed-in fields, and what it mostly reminded Dortmunder of was World War Two prisoner-of-war-camp movies— not a comforting image.
    “He’ll be in one of these three barns,” the old coot said. “I’m pretty sure.”
    So they entered a long structure with a wide central cement-floored aisle spotted with dirt and straw. A few low-wattage bare bulbs hung from the rough beams above the aisle, and chest-high wooden partitions lined both sides. These were the stalls, about two thirds occupied.
    Walking through this first barn, Dortmunder learned several facts about horses: (1) They smell. (2) They breathe, more than anything he’d ever met in his life before. (3) They don’t sleep, not even at night. (4) They don’t even sit down. (5) They are very curious about people who happen to go by. And (6) they have extremely long necks. When horses in stalls on both sides of Dortmunder stretched out their heads toward him at the same time, wrinkling their black lips to show their big, square tombstone teeth, snuffling and whuffling with those shotgun-barrel noses, sighting at him down those long faces, he realized that the aisle wasn’t that wide after all.
    “Jeepers,” Kelp said, a thing he didn’t say often.
    And Dire Straits wasn’t even in there. They emerged on the other side, warm, curious horse breath still moist on Dortmunder’s cheek, and looked around, accustoming themselves to the darkness again. Behind them, the horses whickered and bumped around, still disturbed by this late-night visit. Far away, the main farmhouse showed just a couple of lights. Faint illumination came from window openings of nearer structures. “He has to be in that one or that one,” the old coot said, pointing.
    “Which one you want to try first?” Dortmunder asked.
    The old coot considered and pointed. “That one.”
    “Then it’s in the other one,” Dortmunder said. “So that’s where we’ll try.”
    The old coot gave him a look. “Are you trying to be funny, or what?”
    “Or what,” Dortmunder said.
    And, as it turned out, he was right. Third stall in on the left, there was Dire Straits himself, a big, kind of arrogant-looking thing, with a narrower-than-usual face and a very sleek black coat. He reared back and stared at these human beings with distaste, like John Barrymore being awakened the morning after. “That’s him,” the old coot said. More important, a small sign on the stall door said the same thing: DIRE STRAITS.
    “At last,” Kelp said.
    “Hasn’t been that long,” the old coot said. “Let me get a bridle for him.” He turned away, then suddenly tensed, looking back toward the door. In a quick, harsh whisper, he said, “Somebody coming!”
    “Uh-oh,” Dortmunder said.
    Turning fast, the old coot yanked open a stall door—not the one to Dire Straits—grabbed Dortmunder’s elbow in his strong, bony hand and shoved him inside, at the same time hissing at Kelp, “Slip in here! Slip in!”
    “There’s somebody in here,” Dortmunder objected, meaning a horse, a brown one, who stared at this unexpected guest in absolute astonishment.
    “No