by Evans, Tabor
Leading the grullo into the forest left of the trace, Longarm tied the reins around a low pine branch, then unbuckled his saddle’s belly strap and slipped the bridle bit from the animal’s teeth, so it could blow and forage. Longarm slipped his Winchester from its saddle sheath, quietly levered a cartridge into the chamber, off cocked the hammer, and strode slowly out of the trees. He paused at the edge of the clearing, studying the terrain around him, appraising the shack that was a purple shadow glazed with silver moonlight.
Ghostly puffs of smoke continued to rise from the hearth. Otherwise, there was no other movement the lawman could detect from this vantage.
He turned to his left and strode as quietly as possible along the edge of the clearing, staying close to the dark, towering pines whose silhouettes, he hoped, concealed his own. He resisted the urge to move more quickly. Getting himself shot by a hidden gunmen wasn’t going to do Lacy Sackett any good . . .
It took him nearly twenty minutes to circle the clearing and to hunker down nearly directly behind the cabin. He could see it better now—at least its backside against which cut logs had been stacked. There was a privy, as well. He’d been right about the corral—it was off to his left. He could smell the horses on the cool, still air, hear one occasionally blowing or giving a soft nicker, probably having scented him.
The stream was no stream but a river. It was a good fifty yards across and bathed in moonlight, water flaring like silver stitches over and around rocks. There was a crude, flat-bottomed boat just behind Longarm, pulled up on shore and tied to a tree.
He stared over a boulder at the cabin. He couldn’t tell if the gunmen had posted a scout. So far, he hadn’t seen . . .
A shadow slipped around the cabin’s right rear corner. He was stocky man wearing a black hat with a Texas crease in its crown. His gray deerskin vest had a copper stud in each flap, and two holsters were tied low on his thighs, gutta-percha-gripped Smith & Wessons jutting forward for the cross draw.
H. G. Ryan.
Longarm drew his head down behind the boulder, then, doffing his hat, edged a peek out around the left side. The gunman was holding a carbine up high across his chest. He kept his back close to the cabin and was looking around cautiously, sidestepping very slowly along the rear wall and the stacked logs toward the door in the cabin’s center.
He must have heard something. When he got to the door he stopped in the depression worn in front of it. He stood there for a long time, holding the carbine and turning his head slowly from right to left and back again. He was bathed in silver and his shadow slanted back across the stacked wood and the cabin, the sashed windows of which were lit with a murky umber light.
Longarm waited, looking around him. There was only the murmuring stream bubbling over rocks. No breeze whatever. He and Ryan seemed to be the only two out here.
He glanced around the rock again. Ryan was still standing in front of the cabin. Had he spied him?
The gunman jerked his chin toward Longarm. Alarm bells tolled in the lawman’s head, and he swung around just as a tall, slender shadow stepped out from a tree near the stream. Starlight flashed off the barrel of the rifle the man held to his shoulder. Longarm threw himself forward over his own feet at the same time that the rifle flashed brightly and thundered loudly in the heavy silence.
The slug hammered the boulder against which Longarm had been sitting a half second before. As the man cursed and loudly racked another shell into the rifle’s chamber, Longarm rolled onto his right hip, raised his own rifle, raking back the hammer, and fired once, twice, three times, the empty cartridge casings winging back over his shoulder and clinking onto the gravel.
The tall man—Goose Fallon, most likely—flew back with a yell, triggering his rifle at the stars. As he hit the forest duff with a crunching thud, Longarm threw himself against the boulder again and snaked his rifle toward the cabin. He drew his head back when Ryan triggered two slugs into the ground around the boulder, blowing up dirt and gravel. Another slug loudly hammered the boulder, flinging stone shards.
There was a pause in the shooting, so Longarm snaked his rifle around the boulder’s other side. Ryan stood there crouched, boots thudding and men yelling in the cabin behind him.
“Come out o’ there, lawdog, and maybe we’ll give you a turn with the girl!”
As the cabin door opened behind him, Longarm squeezed the Winchester’s trigger. Ryan screamed and leaned forward, firing his carbine into the ground in front of him as he clutched his left knee, which Longarm had just hammered with a .44-caliber slug. Longarm fired again, higher, and Ryan fell back against the door frame as the door itself opened.
Longarm continued firing the Winchester through the open door until a grunt and a thud sounded.
He waited, staring through the wafting powder smoke. One man appeared to have fallen back inside the cabin. Ryan was hunkered down against the frame, groaning. Inside, the girl was screaming and a man was yelling raucously.
Longarm rose, flung his Winchester aside, as he figured he’d fired all nine rounds, then ran hard toward the cabin, palming his Colt and ratcheting back the hammer. He slowed as he approached the open door.
Ryan groaned, bleeding from the knee and his upper right chest. He slid his right hand toward one of his Smith & Wessons. Longarm kicked it out of his hand, then, spying movement inside the cabin, jerked back behind the cabin’s back wall, right of the door, as a gun barked inside.
The slug chewed splinters from the door frame.
Longarm peeked around the frame as he snaked his Colt around it. Orrin Brennan knelt on the far side of a small table in the middle of the room, beneath a hanging lantern. The table was covered with playing cards, paper money and coins, smoldering half-smoked cigars, tin cups, and an uncorked whiskey bottle. Brennan grimaced, showing his large, yellow teeth beneath a dark brown mustache, and triggered his two Remingtons over the table. Longarm triggered his Colt at the same time, then winced as both of Brennan’s bullets chewed into the door frame, spraying more splinters at him.
Longarm fired two more shots. Brennan cursed shrilly. Longarm bolted around the door frame and into the cabin. Ryan stood slumped against the far wall, beside a brass-framed bed upon which Lacy lay spread-eagled, her wrists and ankles bound to the frame. She was sobbing, turning her head toward the cabin’s front wall on her right. Her naked breasts rose and fell heavily.
“Please, please, please!” she cried. “Stop! Stop! Please stop shooting!”
Orrin Brennan stood with his hair hanging low over his eyes, a grimace painted on his face, showing his yellow teeth. His left arm hung straight down at his side, limp from the bullet wound that bloodied his sleeve up near his shoulder. He held the pistol in his right hand against Lacy’s head. He had his eyes on Longarm. A challenging grin quirked his mouth corners.
“Put down the shootin’ iron, star packer, or I’ll drill a hole through this nasty little bitch’s purty head!”
Chapter 8
“Go ahead,” Longarm said. “I’m right tired of her.”
Longarm held his cocked Colt on Brennan’s head, where the gunman’s thin, dark brown hair had parted to reveal three veins forking above his nose. Brennan’s lips stretched farther back from his mouth, revealing the gap of a missing tooth on one side.
“I’ll do it! You think I won’t, but I will! Now, drop that iron, Long, or I’ll drill her a new ear!”
“No!” Lacy screamed at Longarm, straining against the ropes holding her spread-eagled on the mussed bed. “Longarm, please—he’ll kill me.”
“Nah, he won’t,” Longarm said, grinning. “Will you, Orrin?”
“I will! I swear I will!”
The gunman held his pistol taut against Lacy’s head. Now he looked down at her, gritting his teeth. His eyes strayed down the length of her voluptuous form, taking in the jostling tits, furred snatch, and
bending knees. He ground his teeth harder, till Longarm could hear them cracking. Brennan shifted his dire, frustrated gaze between Lacy to Longarm several times, Lacy sobbing and begging for her life, the bed squawking beneath her straining, naked form.
Finally, Brennan gave a raucous bellow of expressed vexation and swung his pistol toward Longarm. Before he could get the weapon steadied, Longarm’s Colt barked three times quickly. Brennan slammed back against the wall, triggering his Remington wild, groaning and dropping his chin to look at the three holes lined up across his chest. Each one pumped blood out to dribble down his pin-striped shirt and brown leather vest.
“Ah, shit!” Brennan said as his knees buckled.
He hit the floor with a thud and fell forward on his face. He wagged his head as though he couldn’t believe what had just happened, and then he lay still.
Lacy screamed. Longarm wheeled, following the girl’s anxious gaze, to see Studemyer bringing a pistol up from the floor where a good half of his blood must have leaked out. His pistol roared a half second before Longarm’s pistol followed suit, hammering a quarter-sized hole through the middle of the man’s forehead. As Studemyer slammed back against the floor, into his own molasses-thick blood pool, Longarm winced at the icy-hot slice across his left side. He touched his hand to it, felt the greasy slickness of blood.
Just a burn. He’d tend it later.
He turned to the girl, who lay back against a pillow, sobbing. “Cut me loose. Oh, please cut me loose, Longarm. Those brigands! Did you see what they did to Dickie?”
“I saw.”
He took out his folding knife and cut the ropes, freeing her wrists and ankles. She rolled toward Longarm, dropping her bare legs over the side of the bed and wrapping her arms around his waist, burying her face in his belly.
“Thank you for coming after me! I didn’t think you would. I really didn’t think you would!”
“Oh, I got a feelin’ you did.”
He stared straight down at her, trying to ignore the push of her breasts against his groin. He couldn’t help asking, “Did they . . . ?”
She shook her head slightly, making his cock tingle. “They were playing poker for me. Winner was to have the first turn!” She sobbed, quivering against him and increasing his discomfort. “Oh, what savages!”
“Hey,” said H. G. Ryan, still crouched against the outside of the door frame, looking in. His voice was slurred, pinched with pain. “I’m in agony over here.”
Ignoring the wounded gunman, Longarm leaned down and drew a wool blanket over Lacy’s shoulders. “You’d best get some clothes . . .”
He let his voice trail off, cocking his head to listen. He’d heard something. He heard it again—a horse nickering in the corral. As he walked to the door, he flicked open the Colt’s loading gate, shook the empty shell casings onto the floor, and began refilling the chambers from his cartridge belt.
He opened the door slowly, listened through the crack.
“What is it?” Lacy whispered, stumbling around dressing.
“Stay here. Don’t poke your fool head outside ’less you want it shot off.”
“Oh, God—it’s Gunn and Cruz, isn’t it?”
“I said shut up!”
“Fuck you, you bastard!” she whispered.
“I’m dyin’ over here,” Ryan said in a low, mild voice. “If anyone cares . . .”
“Keep him quiet, too,” Longarm told Lacy. “If you have to beat him over the head with a log.”
Longarm opened the door wider and stepped out quickly. Drawing the door closed behind him, he put his back to the cabin wall right of it, hoping the wall’s shadow concealed him. He stood there looking around and listening for several minutes, hearing nothing more than a couple of the gunmen’s horses nickering and milling inside their corral.
Cautiously, Longarm moved out away from the cabin and started walking across the clearing. The moon had angled off behind the mountains to the west, and the clearing was dark. He held his Colt straight out in front of him, wishing he had his rifle, wondering if Gunn’s men were out here somewhere, maybe surrounding the cabin.
If they were, they were damn quiet.
Twice he paused and dropped to a knee, tension rippling up and down his spine as he looked around carefully. Both times, however, he decided that it had been some burrowing creature rattling dead leaves and brush in the black forest around him that had stopped him.
When he reached the edge of the forest, he continued into the gap in the trees that marked where the trail entered the clearing, and found his grullo standing where he’d left it. But the horse’s tail was arched slightly, and it was twitching its ears. As he walked up, the horse lurched with a start and whinnied.
“Shhh!” Longarm said, grabbing the bridle and placing a calming hand on the horse’s sleek neck. “Easy, boy. Easy!”
He slipped the bit back into the horse’s mouth, then buckled the belly strap. That seemed to settle the horse some. It stood, raking air in and out of its big lungs like a bellows, and its eyes were shiny, but it didn’t look like it was going to kick up another fuss, so Longarm stepped away from it quietly. He moved back out to the trail he’d followed here. In the shadow of a tamarack, he stood still, looking around, pricking his ears.
His breath jetted from his nostrils, waftng like smoke in the frosty air.
There was a flash from the darkness off the trail’s opposite side and at a slightly higher elevation. As the slug slammed into the tree about six inches above Longarm’s head, the gun’s clap reached his ears, echoing flatly between the ridges. He jerked into a crouch and automatically triggered the Colt at the place where he’d seen the gun flash.
Knowing the shooters would aim at his own flashes, he stepped sideways, fired twice more, then, as several more guns flashed and popped from the other side of the trail, he dove sideways and rolled behind a fir.
“Hey, lawdog—that you?” a man yelled when the shooting dropped off.
Longarm waited, breathing hard as he shoved fresh brass through his Colt’s loading gate.
“This is Heck Gunn. You send that double-crossing little bitch out here, and we’ll let you go—got it?” the man yelled.
Longarm paused for a split second, then punched the last cartridge into his pistol and spun the cylinder. “I don’t get it,” Longarm yelled. “How’d she double-cross you, Heck?”
A pause.
“She knows how,” Gunn said darkly.
Longarm thought about that. The statement didn’t surprise him, but he couldn’t help wondering how—in what sordid way—did Lacy double-cross the crooked bunch she’d thrown in with back in Jawbone. Slowly, he began to step straight back away from the fir, keeping his Colt extended, intending to get back to the grullo and hightail it for the cabin.
“Hey, lawdog,” another man said, this one with a Spanish accent. “You hear mi amigo, Heck—no? You send the blond puta out here, we let you live. You don’t, we come and get her and kill you slow, cut your ears and balls off and fry them up together in a hot skillet while you watch.”
Forbidding, disembodied chuckles rose from the forest’s inky darkness.
That last made Longarm wince. Damn, he thought, these boys were really sore at the girl. Again, he wondered just what in the hell she’d done to chafe these hard cases so badly that they’d come this far for her. He’d thought they’d turned back from their run to Mexico because they, like himself, rather enjoyed how she looked and performed without her clothes on.
But, no—somehow she’d planted a bee under their saddle blankets, as she had his own, and they were out to give the devil her due.
Longarm doubted threats would work, but why not give it a shot? As he backed toward his horse, putting one foot down carefully after another, he said, “You’re messin’ with holy fire here, fellas. I’m Custis L
ong, deputy United States marshal out of Denver. Lacy Sackett is my prisoner, and—”
“Longarm?” one of the voices interrupted him.
“That’s right.”
“Hey, I heard o’ you!” another owlhoot said.
“Then you know I don’t fool around. So, lessen you wanna hang—”
He was interrupted this time by a raucous, mocking howl accompanied by rifle and pistol fire. The guns flashed in the darkness, the bullets screeching around the lawman and chewing into tree boles and clipping branches.
So much for trying to reason with old Heck Gunn and Orlando Cruz, Longarm thought as he lunged for his crow-footing grullo. He tripped over a slender, fallen tree but managed to hoist himself into the saddle and rip his reins free as the horse gave a shrill whinny and turned toward the north, away from the gunfire.
“Hi-yahh!” Longarm grated out beneath the crackling of the Gunn and Cruz gang’s fusillade, crouching low in the saddle and ramming his heels hard against the grullo’s flanks.
The horse buck-kicked and galloped on through the trees, bulling through the thick scrub. Bullets slammed into the trees around it and Longarm, one burning across the top of his left shoulder and making him wince. As the horse bulled into the clearing, it hesitated, screaming and pitching, and Longarm gripped the apple as he twisted around and fired three shots back in the direction from which he’d come.
Then he rammed his heels hard once more against the grullo’s flanks, and horse and rider lunged toward the cabin lights glowing weakly on the other side of the clearing. Hunkered low and gritting his teeth, the gunfire softening behind him, Longarm turned the horse slightly right and left, making a zigzag pattern in an attempt to outrun the gang’s flying lead.
Finally, the gunfire dwindled to only one or two shots before dying altogether. Longarm checked the grullo down in front of the cabin, swung down, grabbed his saddlebags and bedroll off its back, and pushed through the cabin’s door.
