by Evans, Tabor
But it was not at the federal lawman that the fancy Dan triggered off six shots in quick succession. Longarm watched in astonishment as the fancy Dan very neatly and efficiently blew six small branches off the end of a larger cottonwood branch about forty yards away from him, near where the creek flashed in the rising morning sun.
As the last shot echoed around the near ridges, Dickie twirled the fancily scrolled silver popper on his finger and stepped back, chuckling his relief and wagging his head. “Oh, I’m so relieved to hear that, buttercup. I mean,” he added quickly, “I’m so glad they didn’t soil you. Er . . . you know . . . that you weren’t soiled . . . !”
“You mean badly injured?” she asked, smiling up at him cheerfully.
“Yes, of course that’s what I mean!” Dickie grabbed his buttercup again and held her against him passionately. “I’m so glad they didn’t injure you, dear, and that the wedding can happen as planned.”
Longarm had a flash of memory of himself and Dickie’s buttercup last night—Longarm driving her hard against the ground as he hammered away between her widely spread legs—and he heard himself groan his intensifying incredulity while at the same time wondering what it was, exactly, that this lovely little witch had up her sleeve now.
“Of course it can, dear,” said Lacy, placing a hand on her chosen one’s cheek. “I’m not injured at all . . . thanks to Longarm.”
She turned to him, smiling wickedly.
“Oh, where are my manners,” she said. “Custis Long, meet the man I’ve been promised to—Dickie . . . er . . . Richard Shafter. Captain Richard Shafter of the United States cavalry stationed at Fort Riley, on the Brazos River in Texas.” She frowned up at the dandy curiously. “Or so last I heard . . . ?”
Longarm had risen and was now holding his rifle straight down by his side. As the ostentatiously attired captain strode toward him, officiously puffing out his chest, he said, “Yes, indeed, dear, I’ve been stationed at Fort Riley for the past year, but fortunately I was able to obtain a two-week furlough to come visit you. I was going to write but decided to make it a surprise. However, I was the one to be surprised when, only seconds after my stage pulled into Jawbone, I was told of the unfortunate turn of events at the bank and your kidnapping at the hands of the vile road agents led by Heck Gunn and Orlando Cruz.”
He stopped in front of Longarm, squared his shoulders, clicked his heels together, ringing the jinglebobs on his spurs, and offered his long, pale hand. “Marshal Long, I will be forever in your debt for everything you’ve done for my fiancée, Miss Sackett.”
Longarm shook the man’s hand and glanced around the mustachioed dandy at his shrewdly beaming future bride. Or so the little bitch thought. If Lacy Sackett thought she was going to finagle her way out of being arrested, however, she had another think coming.
“Oh, I reckon it wasn’t nothin’ Marshal Beamer shouldn’t have done,” Longarm said, shaking the man’s hand. The captain wore a gold ring inset with a green stone etched with two numeral eights. “The Double Eight Connected,” Longarm said, releasing the man’s hand. “That’s a sizeable spread near Jawbone, ain’t it? Run by a family of Shafters?”
“Oh, indeed, it is, Marshal,” said Captain Shafter. “My father, Ezekial Shafter the Third, moved his herd up from eastern Texas just before I was born. I was raised out at the Double Eight Connected.” He turned to smile at the smiling Lacy. “And I aim to raise my own family there, as well . . . once I’m out of the army and Lacy and I can be married, as we’ve intended since April of last year.”
“You have, have you? Miss Lacy never told about no future weddin’.”
“Why would I?” Lacy said, chuckling as she walked over and wrapped both her arms around one of Captain Shafter’s. “I mean, we hardly know each other, Marshal. Now, since Dickie . . . I mean, Captain Shafter and several of his most capable men from the Double Eight Connected are here to see me safely back to Jawbone, you can go after Hell-Bringin’ Heck Gunn and his gang, and retrieve the money they stole from my father’s bank.”
It was Longarm’s turn to chuckle, which he did as he picked up his hat and set it on his head at the angle he preferred, tipped a little over his left eye. “Oh, you think so, do you, Lacy . . . er . . . Miss Sackett? Well, I got me another idea.”
Chapter 5
“What idea is that, Marshal?” asked Captain Shafter. “I would think you’d want to run those owlhoots to ground. Why, if it weren’t for my wanting to see Miss Lacy safely back to Jawbone, I’d go after them myselves. Bring them kicking and screaming back to Jawbone to hang from Beamer’s gallows!”
Longarm almost chuckled at the dandy’s ire, not to mention at the purple ostrich plume jouncing atop his hat.
“Yes, that’s exactly what you should do,” Lacy said, staring at Longarm, her green eyes and sharp and determined. “Marshal Long, you should go after those men and bring them to heel after what they did to me.” She crossed her arms on her all-but-exposed breasts, then quickly glanced at her chosen one. “I mean, what they nearly did to me . . . and certainly would have done when they got to Mexico.” Her cheeks colored a little as she held her gaze on Longarm, the only one in the group who knew she was lying. Brazenly lying. The only one who knew that she’d used her heavenly body on Heck Gunn in similar fashion to how she’d used it on Longarm.
To get what she wanted.
But why had she gone with a man like Heck Gunn when she could have been married to dear Dickie and likely inherited a Texas fortune?
Puzzling . . .
“Yeah, I’m sure they would have passed you around like a lone bottle amongst ’em, once they got to Mexico,” Longarm said, shoving his Winchester into the grullo’s saddle scabbard.
He turned a faintly cunning smile on her. “But I do believe I’ll help see you safely back to Jawbone, Miss Lacy.”
Despite that Shafter was watching him closely, a vaguely puzzled expression on his face that appeared to always look slightly puzzled, he let his eyes flick boldly across the girl’s breasts to let her know he knew at least part of what she was up to, and that she wasn’t going to get it.
“You and I have shared so much . . . er, I mean we’ve come so far away from the gang, I’m sure their trail’s gone cold. Besides, ole Gunn’s robbing the Jawbone bank is a local matter, not federal. Nah, I’ll head on back to Jawbone, send a telegram to my superior in Denver, and see what his orders are. If I were to go after the Gunn and Cruz Bunch all legal-like, I might have to get sworn in by Town Marshal Beamer or the county sheriff.”
Lacy tightened her arms across her breasts and glared at him, lips making a straight line across her mouth. Her pretty nostrils flared.
Longarm saw no reason in inviting possible conflict by informing Captain Shafter of his intention to incarcerate the man’s wife-to-be until they got to Jawbone. If Lacy wasn’t going to, why should he?
He looked at Shafter regarding him with that perpetually puzzled expression, red-blond brows furrowed over large, cobalt-blue eyes. “Why don’t you and your men water your horses, Captain,” the federal lawman suggested. “Then let’s start the trek back to Jawbone.”
Shafter nodded, then turned to the men still sitting their mounts behind him. “Court, we’d better water our horses. We’ll start back to Jawbone in a minute.”
When Shafter and the others had led their mounts over to the creek, Lacy turned to Longarm. “Well, I hope you’re satisfied.”
Longarm just stared at her with the faintly incredulous expression he’d realized was his customary expression whenever she was around.
“He’ll kill me,” she said, staring toward where Shafter and the men led their horses through the cottonwoods flashing gold. “Slower than Gunn, for sure, but he’ll kill me just the same.”
“How in the hell do you figure that?” Longarm said with a disbelieving chuff. “He looks as tak
en with you as every other man you show your tits to and wag your pretty little ass at.”
Ignoring the question, she turned back to Longarm with a threatening look. “I could tell him of your intentions, you know. I could even tell him you took me by force last night. You saw how good with that pistol he is. His men are almost as fast and accurate as he is.”
“Go ahead.” Longarm gave a challenging grin. He knew she wouldn’t tell the earnest, beplumed Dickie about last night. Hell, Shafter would more likely shoot her than Longarm.
She gave a groan of frustration and raked her hands through her hair angrily until that golden mass looked like freshly spun honey.
A half hour later, Longarm, Lacy, Captain Shafter, and the captain’s four moodily silent trail partners were on the trail back toward Jawbone, a little town tucked between the Sawatch Range and South Park, along the Arkansas River.
The San Juan Mountains were directly behind them now to the south, and the Sangre de Cristo loomed high and mighty, like a long, giant backbone, to their right. The terrain they rode through was low rolling hills spotted with buckbrush and sage, with cottonwoods sheathing hidden creeks and piñons crawling up the slopes of buttes and shelving mesas.
The Sawatch towered ahead of them like gray-green, white-tipped clouds, ghostly in the bright sunshine and under a sky of liquid cobalt.
“Cigarette, Marshal?” Captain Shafter asked as he rode off Longarm’s right stirrup. Lacy was on the other side of the captain, and the three of them rode point, the four cold-steel artists riding behind.
Longarm glanced at the small pack the man extended toward him in a gauntlet-gloved hand. On the package was a picture of a French soldier in a plumed metal helmet. The plumage looked similar to that of Shafter’s own ostrich feather.
“Cigarette, eh?”
Shafter shook one partway out as their horses clomped leisurely along the trail. “Handy little things. Allen and Ginter’s Sweet Caporals are the finest currently sold, to my mind. A mix of both Virginian and Turkish tobaccos. They’re manufactured in New York City. A business associate of my father’s sends them to me in exchange for stories of my skirmishes with the savage Comanche.”
He chuckled as Longarm plucked one of the slender, immaculate-looking cylinders out of the pack. “A very fair trade, indeed—wouldn’t you agree? I enjoy the taste, and I believe it lends an air of savoir faire.”
Longarm sniffed the cigarette, which smelled a little like pumpkin pie to his sniffer, which was more accustomed to the cruder but cheaper three-for-a-nickel cheroots. “Wouldn’t think a man would have much need for savoir faire down at a cavalry fort in Comanche country. Or anywhere in Texas, for that matter,” Longarm added with a laugh.
The captain wasn’t smiling, however, as he struck a match and leaned over with both hands, cupping the flame as he held it to Longarm’s fancy-Dan coffin nail. “Well, damn,” Longarm said, sucking a draught deep into his lungs and blowing it out as he studied the cigarette’s neat little coal. “Different, but not bad.” It sort of tasted like pumpkin pie, as well. One that someone had accidentally dumped pepper in. But it really wasn’t a bad smoke if a man didn’t mind looking like a damn fool while he smoked it.
“I hope you enjoy it, Marshal,” Shafter said, bowing his head and cupping a flame to his own smoke.
“Hell, since you’ve given me one of these fancy coffin nails, an’ all,” the lawman said, “I reckon you might as well call me Longarm.” He glanced across the fancy Dan at Lacy, riding with both hands atop her saddle horn, both eyes sternly on Longarm, her wonderful lips pursed disgustedly. “All my friends do.”
She wore a striped blanket across her shoulders loosely, as the air was chill. Her breasts bounced strikingly as she rode.
“In that case, call me Richard.”
“Will do.”
Longarm glanced over his shoulder at the four men riding behind them—all dressed in denim and leather, and all with features carved from weathered granite, emotionless eyes set deep in hard, dark sockets beneath low hat brims. “What’ll I call these fellas ridin’ back here and lookin’ so serious?”
They all scowled at him from beneath their hats, broad shoulders swaying easily with the gentle lurching of their long-legged ponies, pistols and knives glinting in the high-country sunshine.
“Forgive me,” said Shafter. “Where are my mannners? From right to left, Goose Fallon, Orrin Brennan, Yance Studemyer, and H. G. Ryan. Gentlemen, say hello to Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long.”
Even before the dandy had named the four men in his posse, Longarm had recognized two faces, possibly three, from wanted dodgers. As well armed as they were, and by the way their hands never strayed far from a sheathed weapon, he wasn’t surprised they wore bounties instead of halos.
The hiring of gun hands on large, sprawling cattle ranches owned by men as land- and water-hungry as he knew Zeke Shafter to be was the way of the country. Wanted as all four of these cold-steel artists probably were, Longarm wouldn’t lock horns with them on this trip. He had larger fish to fry here in the country south of Jawbone—namely, Lacy Sackett, who was probably more of a danger than all four of her husband-to-be’s gun dogs put together.
A wolf in the fold, the girl was. If he left her to her own devices, who knew what other brand of cutthroat she’d throw in with without anyone in Jawbone being the wiser?
Captain Shafter took a long drag off his Sweet Caporal, blew the smoke out his fine patrician’s nose, and said, “As soon as I pulled into Jawbone and heard that Heck Gunn and that jasper, Orlando Cruz, had taken Lacy, I sent for my father’s four top hands straight away! Not but the finest for my buttercup.”
The dandified Captain gave Lacy a wink, which set her to beaming.
“Howdy, fellas,” Longarm said with a disarming smile, pinching his hat brim to Fallon, Brennan, Studemyer, and Ryan. “Since we’re all gonna be trailin’ together a few days, you might as well call me Longarm.”
The dull looks they gave him caused him to make a mental note to sleep lightly and keep a close eye on his back.
* * *
They rode until an hour before dark and made camp along a creek that ran out from the Sangre de Cristo to carve a meandering path across the San Juan valley. No one said much of anything—at least no one amongst Longarm and Shafter’s four cold-steel artists, though they infrequently spoke amongst themselves tonelessly, half-grunting, half-speaking in clipped phrases, eyeing Longarm darkly.
Lacy and her Dickie, however, spoke plenty though only to each other. Long before they’d made camp, Longarm had grown nearly physically ill at their carrying-on like a couple of schoolchildren—the whispers, snickers, quick kisses, Shafter’s intimate chuckles and Lacy’s responsive giggles or playfully chiding swipes across his shoulder.
The way she was acting, as though she still intended to marry Richard Shafter, made Longarm wonder why she didn’t. Or at least hadn’t intended to marry him and had thrown in with Heck Gunn and Orlando Cruz.
She’d said Shafter was going to kill her, but from what Longarm could see, the man was about as starry-eyed about her as a man could be about a girl. For chrissakes, the dandy was making a fool of himself in front of Longarm and his four stony-eyed pistoleros! He couldn’t help himself, it seemed.
Maybe Lacy Sackett was not only diabolical but crazy, as well.
After they’d all had a supper of roasted rabbit and coffee, Longarm checked on his horse once more where it was tended with the others, then took a wide swing around the encampment to make sure there were no interlopers skulking about. He wasn’t entirely convinced that Heck Gunn and his kill-crazy compañero, Cruz, had continued on south when their three bushwhackers hadn’t returned with Lacy.
Men like Gunn and Cruz didn’t cotton to losing battles. And most certainly not women. Especially not ones who filled a blouse the way Lacy Sackett di
d.
Finding nothing more threatening than a couple of coyotes hunting a wash that branched off from the main creek, Longarm headed back to the campfire. As he did, he spied Shafter and Lacy walking arm in arm along the creek, the last dying rays of the day glistening in the girl’s hair as well as in the ostrich feather bobbing and weaving atop the captain’s tan kepi.
She had her striped blanket wrapped around her bare shoulders. In the heavy night silence, he could hear them muttering little annoying intimacies into each other’s ears and snickering like a nine-year-olds with foot fetishes playing doctor in the wood shed.
Longarm walked on back to the camp where the four gunslicks were lounging against their saddles on one side of the fire, playing poker and muttering amongst themselves though in decidedly less intimate tones than those of Lacy and the captain. No one invited Longarm to join the game, so he had another cup of coffee laced with rye, sitting by himself a ways from the camp, then rolled up in his blankets.
He slept with one ear skinned and one eye almost virtually open but had still managed to drift into a restful slumber when he was awakened suddenly by Lacy’s shrill, echoing screech.
Chapter 6
Longarm bolted to his feet, Colt in hand.
Heart thudding, crouching, feet spread, ready for action, he looked around. Shafter’s four gunmen were all in similar poses, one or two pistols extended by each. The fire had burned down to umber coals, casting them all in silhouette.
The night beyond the fire was inky black though as Longarm’s eyes slowly adjusted, he could make out a few details—trees, branches, leaves, pale rocks, the silvery-blue line of the creek about thirty yards beyond the camp. The shallow, slow-moving stream made a gentle murmur. Otherwise there were no sounds except the breathing of the four gunmen and the faint crackling of the fire’s coals.
