by Tabor Evans
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Teaser chapter
Sharpshooting Señorita
Longarm peeked over the windowsill and watched as Casey and the four gunmen rode into the yard.
When they were within fifteen yards of the prostrate Jed Dodson, Longarm moved away from the window to the door. All five men dismounted and stared at Dodson, who looked dead.
Longarm distinctly heard Casey say, “Roll the old bastard over. I want to see if I got him in the heart.”
One of the gunmen stepped over to the body and reached down to turn Jed over onto his back. That’s when the old rancher yanked his gun up and shot the gunman squarely in the face.
Longarm saw Casey and the other three men go for their guns, and he jumped out on the front porch and squeezed off both barrels of the shotgun. The thunder was so loud and the recoil so powerful that it knocked him a step back into the doorway. A huge cloud of smoke billowed outward, and then Addie opened fire, her bullets smashing through the front window of Jed’s log house . . .
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THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts
Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him . . . the Gunsmith.
LONGARM by Tabor Evans
The popular long-running series about Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.
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LONGARM AND THE WYOMING WOMAN
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
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Jove edition / September 2008
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Chapter 1
Custis Long walked swiftly past the U.S. Mint while bent into a cold November wind that was sweeping off the Front Range of the snowcapped Rocky Mountains. This bitter and blustery Monday morning he was on his way to the Federal Building, where he worked as a deputy United States marshal. As usual, Longarm was running about an hour late. He was impatient as he stopped and waited for an opportunity to sprint across Colfax Avenue, but then he heard a woman screaming for help.
Longarm twisted around in the hard, biting wind and lost his flat-crowned hat, which went sailing up into the sky. Like all of his clothing, the Stetson was expensive, and he would have gone after it had it not been for the shrill cry of distress. His blue-gray eyes swept the morning crowd of workers huddled in heavy clothing as they also looked this way and that to find the source of the trouble. Finally, and just out of the corner of his eye, Longarm saw two large men in wool coats dragging a struggling young woman off the street toward a dark alley.
Longarm was a big man, born and raised in West-by-God-Virginia. Tough and ruthless in a fight, nevertheless he possessed the deeply rooted instincts of a true gentleman of the old school. That meant, no matter what the odds, he would never turn his back on a woman in need.
Longarm wore his double-action Colt revolver on his left hip, and he also carried a hideout twin-barreled .44-caliber derringer that was attached to his watch chain. The derringer wasn’t an accurate weapon, but it was deadly at close range. Now, however, he chose the revolver and with gun in hand, he went charging after the two muggers and the girl who had disappeared between a pair of brick buildings.
Longarm was tall and he had the foot speed of a natural athlete, so it only took him a few moments to reach the alley’s entrance. He stared down the narrow and dimly lit corridor littered with rubbish, empty whiskey bottles, and dented trash barrels. About fifty yards down the alley where it opened up, he saw that the two brazen muggers ha
d the woman down and were intent on either raping or robbing her on the spot. Maybe they wanted to do both despite the cold wind and weather. The victim’s screams were weaker now, and Longarm suspected that the woman had already been knocked half-senseless.
“Freeze, you sonofabitches!” Longarm shouted as he raced forward with his gun in hand.
The muggers glanced up suddenly, and one of them fumbled for a gun on his hip. Longarm skidded to a halt, took a split second to aim, and shot the man through his forehead. He went over backward, heels kicking at the hard dirt and loose garbage.
The second mugger was much wiser. Abandoning his victim, he grabbed her purse and ran for his life.
“Stop him!” the woman cried, pushing herself up on one elbow. “He’s stealing all my money!”
Longarm hurried up to the young woman, who was trying to climb to her feet but was obviously dazed and in shock. She was very lovely, probably in her mid-twenties, and she wore fashionable clothes that were now ripped and soiled. Her dress and petticoat had been pushed up to her hips, confirming his suspicion that the two would have raped her in the next few minutes. Her legs were long and very white, but he saw that both of her knees were scraped and bleeding. When Longarm reached her, she was struggling to pull her dress and undergarments down to her ankles at the same time that she was frantically attempting to get away from the dead man and his blood, which was forming a dark pool beside her.
“You shot him to death!” It wasn’t an accusation, but there was a hint of disbelief in her voice that told Longarm she was unaccustomed to witnessing such sudden and violent death.
“Yes, I shot him before he could shoot me and good riddance.” Longarm knelt beside her and helped her cover her bare legs. “Miss, I’m a federal law officer. How bad are you hurt?”
She used her tongue to taste her own bloody lips. In a voice that trembled, she said, “I’ll be all right. Please get my purse back!”
Longarm glanced up the alley. The second mugger was escaping. “I’m more concerned about you right now.”
“You don’t understand! I had just over two thousand dollars in that purse and it’s all the money I have in this world.”
It was a ridiculous amount of cash for anyone to carry on the street. “Two thousand dollars?”
“Yes!” She began to cry. “Those two must have seen me leave the bank and . . . he’s getting away! If I lose that money, my father will be ruined!”
“I’ll try to catch and arrest him,” Longarm said, helping the woman to her feet. “Can you manage to walk back to Colfax? It isn’t safe to leave you here alone.”
“I can! Now go after him! Please!”
Because the woman sounded so desperate and the amount of her loss was so large, Longarm took off after the second mugger. He had no doubt that he could outrun the man despite his big head start. Longarm was concerned that, if the mugger ducked back onto Colfax or one of the other streets, he would quickly mingle with the morning crowd on its way to work in downtown Denver. Once that happened, the odds were that he would make good his escape and be two thousand dollars richer.
The mugger, probably thinking that there was not going to be a pursuit, paused to catch his breath about a hundred yards ahead at the exit from the alley. He was bent over gasping for air, and Longarm could tell that he was badly winded and in poor physical condition despite his size. Longarm didn’t say a word as he ran forward as silently as possible in the hope that the mugger wouldn’t look back until it was too late to escape.
But the mugger did look back, and when he saw the broad-shouldered federal officer coming at him with a gun in his fist, the man whirled and disappeared. Longarm rounded the corner exiting the alley back on to Colfax just in time to see the mugger knock over a couple of pedestrians and then vanish into the morning crowd.
“Hey, stop!” Longarm shouted, knowing that the man wasn’t about to stop. A moment later, Longarm got lucky when he saw the mugger try to cross the busy downtown street and then get struck by a buggy. The mugger was knocked down, but got up and started limping toward a nearby park in the direction of Cherry Creek. Longarm knew that that was a place where many of the worst dregs in Denver tended to congregate.
“Stop,” Longarm ordered again as he swiftly overtook the mugger. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
The mugger was limping badly and had run as far as he was able. Realizing he was about to be overtaken, he stopped and twisted around. He shouted a curse that was lost in the wind, and then he grabbed an old woman and used her as a shield, holding his gun to her head.
For a moment, everything froze in time. Longarm skidded to a halt, and the most striking thing he noticed was the old woman’s eyes, which were filled with terror.
“You go away or I’ll blow her damned brains out!” the mugger cried at Longarm. “I mean it! Turn and get away from here now!”
Longarm studied the man’s face. It was dirty, scarred, and twisted with anger rather than raw fear or panic. This, Longarm knew from past experience, was a man that had nothing to lose.
“All right,” Longarm said, lowering his Colt revolver until it rested by his leg. “Just take it easy, mister. There’s no point in getting anyone else killed. Not over a stolen purse.”
“You shot my friend back there in that alley!”
“We both know that I had no choice . . . it was self-defense,” Longarm said, trying to figure out how he was going to defuse this situation enough to save the old woman and yet still gain the upper hand.
“Are you a lawman?”
“Yes. I’m a federal officer. Drop the gun and you’ll only go to jail for a while.”
But instead of surrendering, the mugger cursed and cocked his pistol. The old woman was frightened and she fainted dead away. The mugger had her in a throat lock and the barrel of his gun was pressed tightly to her skull as he shouted, “I ain’t goin’ back to jail or any prison. Never again! You got just two choices, turn around and go away . . . or watch me blow out this old lady’s brains.”
“You win,” Longarm said, realizing that this man would do exactly what he had threatened. “I’m going away, but first let go of that woman.”
“Move!” the mugger shouted.
Longarm turned and walked off expecting a bullet in the back. His heart was pounding when he rounded a street corner, and then immediately turned and pressed himself to the building to see if the mugger was going to do as he’d promised.
The mugger dropped the unconscious woman to the sidewalk, then with his gun still raised in case anyone else planned to interfere, he looked frantically around and started backing in between two buildings. Longarm could see that the man was going to return to the same alley that they’d exited only a few minutes earlier, so he ducked his head and sprinted down the dark corridor between a nearby set of buildings.
A cat that he almost trampled screeched, rats scuttled through piles of garbage, but Longarm was too focused to notice until he came back to the alley. He bent over for a moment to catch his breath, then heard the pounding of running feet and smiled with cold satisfaction. The mugger was coming closer, not moving farther away.
Gun up and with five beans still in the can, Longarm stepped out and the mugger almost collided with him. The light was poor, the air was cold, and the early winter wind was cutting through the corridors of brick and stone and making an eerie, shrieking sound. The mugger cried out in surprise, then tried to reverse direction and run away, but he slipped and fell. Rolling hard with a painful grunt, he turned and tried to get his pistol up and shoot.
Longarm figured that he’d given the fellow enough chances to live another day. The distance being close, he didn’t need to aim as he shot the mugger twice in the chest. The man cried out, and then fell back on the dirty alley floor still trying to pull off a shot.
Kicking the gun from the dying man’s fist, Longarm held his fire and watched the mugger gasp his last few breaths as the front of his dirty woolen coat began soaking up a large quantity of fresh
blood.
“What’s your name, mister?” Longarm asked, kneeling beside the dying mugger. “You don’t deserve it, but if you have family, I’ll do my best to see that they know you’re gone.”
The mugger stared up at Longarm, rolling his head back and forth. With bloody froth on his lips, he hissed, “I’ll see you in hell!”
“Could be, but you’ll be there for damned certain.”
The man tried to spit on Longarm, but instead coughed up blood and then went still.
Longarm collected the young woman’s stolen purse and the mugger’s pistol. It only took a moment to search the mugger’s pockets and, as he’d expected, he found no identification.
Just before leaving the body, Longarm studied the man a moment and said, “Somewhere, you have family . . . and maybe they’re even good, churchgoing people who have always loved and forgiven you. . .but I expect that you’d just as soon not have them know that you died in this filthy alley after attempting rape and robbery.”
Longarm reloaded his gun. “Don’t worry. Whatever family you and that other sonofabitch came from will never know how you met your sad and well-deserved end.”
And with that, Longarm turned and headed up the alley back toward Colfax Avenue. He would find the beautiful young woman and return her purse and money. Then he would go on to the office and his boss would wonder why he was especially late this cold, bitter Monday morning. Marshal Billy Vail would just naturally assume that Longarm had been delayed by a woman. A young and beautiful woman who would want one more vigorous bout of lovemaking before sending Custis off to work.
