Longarm and the Lone Star Legend

by Tabor Evans

  Longarm watched him swing himself into his saddle. As Ki wheeled his horse around, he called down, "I swear to save you both." He rode off.

  Longarm mounted up and loped off in the direction of the mystery riders. His one slim hope was that he could catch Jessie before the riders caught her. Men like those wouldn't kill a pretty girl like her right off. No, they would take their time…

  If those riders have harmed a hair on Jessie's head, he vowed, there won't be anything left of them for Ki by the time he catches up…

  Chapter 15

  It had been easy for Jessica to slip away during the confusion. When the two riders rode out of town, she was mounted up and ready to follow them. She'd pulled her Colt .38 rig from her saddlebags, and strapped the gunbelt around her waist. In her riding jacket's pocket was the strange pistol Ki had earlier turned over to her, and that newspaper clipping that explained so much.

  The clipping told of the origins of the awesome weaponry that had been turned upon her town; Longarm would be interested in that, no doubt, since it was now clear that those same guns had been used to cut down her father. But what was important to Jessie was that she now knew who had ordered those guns turned on her father.

  Ki had missed it during his cursory examination of the foreign-made handgun, but that was understandable. A family crest, the symbol of European nobility, would mean nothing to a man raised in an Oriental culture. As for the initials WD, the monogram of ownership carved below the family crest, the design had been cleverly worked into the filigree, and besides, no one could know what those initals stood for. Her daddy had told no one but her, and she had told no one at all, not even Ki. That way, when the opportunity to avenge her father's death presented itself — as she'd always known it would — she would have time to kill the man before anyone interfered.

  Time to kill the man, Jessie thought as her horse followed the trail through the dark night. But not much time. Both Ki and Longarm would be on her heels by now.

  Ki and Longarm — she loved them both, in totally different ways. But neither of them could understand the depths of her passion concerning this feud that had destroyed the Starbuck family. She had to be the one to kill the blond man, the owner of the pistol. It was fitting. It was the wheel of karma, making one more complete cycle as it spun around and around, endlessly.

  And after it's done? What then, Jessie? she asked herself. You are a woman, made for love, not for killing…

  She slowed her mount, to ascertain that she was still on the trail of the riders. It wasn't hard. There was a sliver of moon to see by, and the riders, confident, had made no effort to camouflage their direction. Jessie knew the area surrounding the Circle-Star spread. She had already surmised that the riders were heading toward an old grouping of buildings situated at the base of a marble quarry. The ramshackle compound of buildings, long abandoned, had once been occupied by stonecutters digging out the marble used in the construction of several buildings in Sarah. The marble had run out very quickly. Once sufficient stone had been dug out for Sarah's needs, the operation had been closed down. But there was wood for fires nearby, and a pure water well. It would be the ideal spot to hide a gang of men.

  Jessie rode on. She had been careful earlier, letting the third rider pass her while she kept herself and her horse concealed. This third rider, once he'd joined the others up ahead, would make at least a half-dozen men she was following, and maybe more than that. She couldn't be sure how many horses were making the jumble of tracks, but she could certainly tell that the number was considerably greater than three…

  When the third rider had passed, Jessie had heard him moaning as he tried to clutch at something sticking into the back of his shoulder. There was a dark, shiny patch running down the back of his canvas duster. It had looked like Ki's work.

  That Ki would help Longarm, Jessie had no doubt. What she had told Longarm about her relationship with Ki was true. She looked up to and worshiped the man as if he were her older brother. But sisterly love was one thing, and passionate love was quite another. Longarm was the only man she had ever truly loved, as a woman…

  Mrs. Custis Long… The thought made her giggle out loud. She scolded herself for acting so silly while engaged in such a dangerous activity as trailing a band of armed outlaws. That alone was proof enough to her that Longarm had wrought miraculous changes!

  Mrs. Custis Long… Longarm wouldn't be an easy stallion to rope, but if there was any woman on earth who could do it. it would be Jessica Starbuck. She'd never known anyone remotely like him, except for her father, perhaps, and of course Ki. She'd let this vendetta rest in exchange for Custis Long's love and companionship for the rest of her life — let it rest after this last violent night, for she fully intended to avenge her daddy's murder by the coming dawn. Then she would docilely accept Longarm's rebuke and use her womanly wiles to turn his anger around into passion. They could begin a new phase in both their lives, leaving their days of hatred and violence behind as they made love and began to make plans for their future together.

  Mrs. Custis Long… Lord, wouldn't that be something. Not that there wouldn't be problems. A man like Longarm would most likely stomp the first man who referred to him as Mr. Jessie Starbuck, but after Longarm had taught all such men their manners, and told them that a fellow didn't need wealth to be a real man, things would smooth down. But she'd still have to reconcile her role as this proud but poor man's wife with her duties as the head of the Starbuck business empire.

  One thing she could do would be to assign control of the day-to-day decisions to her daddy's trusted advisors. Why not? They were making most of the decisions now, she only reserving the final say on the most important ones. She and Longarm could concentrate on the cattle business. He knew cattle. He could take the Circle-Star over and run things, the way a man ought to…

  Jessie giggled once again as she let her horse pick its way along the narrow trail through a dense grove of pecan trees. The biggest problem she and Longarm would have would be managing to leave their bed long enough to see that business was taken care of…

  "You hold it right there, lady!" came a shout from Jessie's right.

  She peered into the darkness, but whoever was calling to her had himself well hidden among the tree trunks and shadows of the night-dark grove. She set off at a gallop, her Colt .38 in her hand. Damn! She'd ridden right into a trap! Ridden into it mooning and daydreaming over her lover like some silly adolescent…

  "I said hold it!" the man yelled at her. He was one of the riders dressed in a canvas duster, his hat pulled low, his face masked by a bandanna. That strange weapon that the newspaper article had dubbed a "coffee grinder" was resting across his saddle. The rider was not trying to kill her, but head her off.

  "Back off, or I'll shoot!" Jessie warned.

  The man just laughed. "Cool down, little lady," he said, smirking, as her horse instinctively slowed to avoid colliding with his.

  "Laugh at me, and you're a dead man," Jessie swore. This was one of the men who had tried their best to destroy the town her father had built in her mother's memory. Who knew how many citizens of Sarah had been killed by this man alone? Who knew whether it wasn't this man who had willingly obeyed the order to ambush her father?

  "Don't you threaten me, you bitch," the masked rider spat. "I know what you need." He reached out to grab the reins from her.

  Jessie shot him once, in the chest. The man gasped in surprise, then fell off of his horse. One boot stayed caught in his stirrups, so that when his panicked horse trotted off, it dragged the rider's body behind it like a sack.

  Another mystery rider broke cover to intercept her. His "coffee grinder" was also secured across his saddle, but he'd drawn his revolver from beneath his duster.

  "Don't kill her!" somebody else shouted. "The boss wants her alive!"

  Jessie leaned forward over her saddle and rode hard. Her one chance was to get through the grove and into open country where she could goad her horse into a flat-out ru
n. She was lighter than the men persuing her, and her horse was fresher. There was a good chance she could outrun them.

  As the second rider closed in, Jessie fired at him. He groaned, dropping his pistol as he slumped. His mount slowed in confusion as its reins went slack.

  The end of the grove was in sight. Jessie began to think that she just might make it. No other riders were trying to stop her. She holstered her Colt and concentrated on riding.

  Blue flame suddenly licked out. The harsh, nasty, chittering sound of a "coffee grinder" enveloped her, and her horse screamed in pain and terror as the bullets stitched along its belly and hindquarters, literally disemboweling it. Jessie kicked free of the stirrups as the horse, eyes rolling upward, began to stumble. She jumped clear as the horse somersaulted forward to crash to the ground. It quivered, its stiff legs kicking in the air, and then lay still.

  Jessie broke her fall the way Ki had taught her, slapping the ground with her arm and keeping her body curved, to roll with the impact. The strong tweed cloth of her jacket and skirt, and her high leather boots, protected her from cuts and scrapes, but her momentum had been such that she lay stunned. She was conscious, but the wind had been knocked out of her. She protested feebly, and tried to struggle as men bent over her, stealing away her Colt and taking the foreign-made handgun from her jacket pocket.

  "What are our losses?" muttered the man who seemed to be in charge of the party. Through dazed eyes, Jessie had a glimpse of him standing above her, wrapped in his duster, his weapon's long barrel jutting up into the sky.

  "She killed the first and lung-shot the second," came an answering grumble from somewhere beyond her field of vision. "Damn, that girl can shoot."

  Jessie smiled. "You bet I can," she began, but her voice faded; talking was just too much effort. She tried to hoist herself up on one elbow to get a better look at her captors, but even that slight movement set her head to spinning. She flopped back down and closed her eyes. The spinning increased, tightening into a fast downward spiral. The blackness behind her eyelids deepened…

  Mrs. Custis Long, she mused giddily. Well, it looked as if thoughts of marriage had been a bit premature. If you want me, you'd better save me, Longarm, she thought, but then even thinking became too difficult, and she lapsed into a dream that faded into darkness…

  "She's passed out," one of the men looking down at her said.

  "Get her across one of the horses," the leader instructed. "One of you double up for the rest of the ride."

  Two men hoisted Jessie's limp form up, and set her belly-down across a saddle. One of the men furtively tried to slide his hand beneath her skirt, but before he could, he felt a rough hand gripping his coat collar and pulling him backward.

  "None of that now," the leader gruffly reprimanded. "You know he's waiting for her."

  "Just wanted a little feel," the other rider shrugged.

  "Is that what you want me to tell him?" the leader asked.

  Shaking his head, the man hurried off. "Let's go, then," he said hastily.

  "We'll have plenty of time for taking our pleasure after he talks to her." The leader pulled down his bandanna mask, to reveal a scarred, unshaven face and a mouthful of broken teeth just now split into a dog's grin. "He'll give her to us, till he's ready to slit her throat." He turned toward his own horse, calling out, "Let's ride!"

  Chapter 16

  Longarm rode hard until he came to the pecan wood grove. Even before he'd reached Jessie's shot horse, he'd smelled the harsh, throat-drying tang of cordite handing in the air.

  He dismounted, pulling his Winchester from its saddle boot and levering a round into the chamber. Everything looked quiet, but he reckoned it had looked quiet to Alex Starbuck the day he was ambushed, and to Jessie, who, from the looks of things, had been ambushed just a short while ago. Alex Starbuck had been killed. Was Jessie dead?

  Longarm felt a sick feeling building in the pit of his stomach.

  Don't think about it that way! he told himself. He squared his shoulders. Don't think about her that way. Right now he had to be a professional manhunter, a lawman, just like always.

  Over his years as a deputy U.S. marshal, Longarm had built up a tough shell to protect his own heart. Maybe Jessie was hurt — maybe she was even dead, he mused grimly as his eyes traced the line of bloody bullet holes puckering the horse's carcass. Maybe he himself felt like grieving.

  But he wasn't going to. He was going to get on with doing his job. That was the difference between foolish amateurs like Jessie and Ki, and professionals like himself. A professional lawman knew enough not to take anything personally. A lawman couldn't afford to love anybody. Hell, he couldn't afford even to like anybody. People close to a lawman had a way of getting hurt, and the problem was compounded when those people were damned amateurs playing this professional's game of manhunting.

  Jessie — an image of her as she'd been that one blissful night, in front of the fireplace, came into his mind. Longarm felt his loins stir. It made him want to laugh, or maybe cry, he wasn't sure which. He was surrounded by danger. He was forced to contemplate the awful possibility that she was dead or dying. He was a man who knew the many faces of death and violence better than he knew any man or woman. He lived by the gun, and he would most likely die by it, and yet…

  And yet, as callous as he was trying to be, as cold and as cynical, just the thought of her, as she'd been that night in his arms, forced him to swell and fill the front of his pants. Just the thought of her proved to him that he was a flesh-and-blood man, alive, and that there was goodness in this hard-as-nails world…

  She was not dead! Longarm suddenly knew it, the knowledge as certain as his ache to touch Jessie, to hold her in his arms She was not dead, and so he would find her and have her again. And God help any man who had touched her…

  Longarm froze as his horse whinnied softly, snorting and tossing its head. Now he suddenly knew something else, as well. He was not alone in this grove.

  Horses had a way of calling to each other, especially at night, when the darkness combined with a steed's instinctive tendency to run with a herd, and in that way gain safety from the world of predators that craved horseflesh. His borrowed mount was an experienced cow pony, but it had already been panicked by the carrion smell of Jessie's dead horse.

  Chances were, the horses of the ambushers surrounding him were not too thrilled about being in such close proximity to one of their own kind, dead. Longarm figured that there were at least two ambushers. In situations like this, two men had a way of comforting one another. One man alone, waiting in the darkness to ambush, had a way of becoming jumpy.

  Longarm wanted to get it over and done with. If he started things off, maybe he could get his bushwhackers to reveal their locations by returning his fire.

  Longarm fired into the woods at random, at the same time crabbing sideways into the trees. He saw a flash of blue fire as one of those "coffee grinders" opened up, sending rounds tearing into the corpse of Jessie's horse. The gun was positioned across the trail directly opposite Longarm. The damn fool was counting on his awesome firepower to keep Longarm pinned down and unable to fire back. That tactic could work, but only if the gunner was positive as to the location of his target.

  Longarm brought his rifle up to his shoulder and fired once, aiming just above the blue flicker coming from the weapon's barrel. He caught a glimpse of that flashing muzzle rising toward the night sky as the gunner fell back. Then the blue flame w inked out and the chattering gunfire ceased.

  Longarm caught only a glimpse of this because he'd already begun rolling last away from his position. He was just in time, for three shots from a more conventional weapon, a rifle, plowed into the fallen tree trunk he'd been hiding behind. He saw the muzzle flash this lime as well, but held off firing back. Chances were, the nun had already moved from his position. It Longarm fired now, he'd hit nothing, and give away his new hiding spot.

  There was another reason he did not fire back. He wanted one of t
hese men alive, and he'd already shot the first. He needed to know what had happened to Jessie, where she'd been taken. Blindly following the trail left by the other riders' horses could easily lead him on a wild-goose chase, or right into another ambush.

  He heard his man moving through the undergrowth. The fellow was trying to circle around him and come up from behind. Longarm began to move silently to cut across the other's path. He ran parallel to the trail, to avoid the chance of making any unnecessary noise.

  The rounds thudded into a tree behind him, even as he heard that firecracker chatter. That damned gunner with the "coffee grinder" wasn't out of commission after all.!

  "Pin him down for me!" screamed the other ambusher. The man operating the "coffee grinder" answered by turning the cranks on his weapon. This time he restricted his fire to short bursts as he moved and bobbed, weaving in and out among the trees, so that Longarm did not have a steady target.

  "There he is!" shouted the man across the road as he sent a burst of rounds Longarm's way. "Hurry up! Finish him off! I'm hurt bad! The bastard hit me before!"

  Longarm rolled and twisted on his belly like a snake run over by a wagon. He tried to ignore the bullets kicking dirt into his face. A miss is as good as a mile, he reminded himself.

  He twisted around as the man on his side of the grove came rushing at Longarm from behind. If Longarm fired at him, he'd exactly pinpoint his own position for the other gunner. Longarm was between the two men, cut off front and rear…

  Longarm smiled. It just might work…

  Leaving his rifle behind. Longarm hurled himself up to run toward the man who was rushing at him. Confused by Longarm's tactic, the man brought up his own rifle and levered off several rounds, but he'd aimed too high. Before he really knew what had happened, Longarm had managed to thrust himself beneath the other's field of fire.