by Evans, Tabor
Longarm stopped as they passed a corral and small stable and faced the bearded, wandering-eyed man, squinting an eye to more forcefully get his point across. “Greer, I appreciate what you’re doin’ here, but let me make one thing clear. That girl in there may look like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But she’s evil. I don’t believe in witches. At least, I didn’t till I met Lacy. So, what I’m sayin’ is this—you and your boy stay away from her, hear? I tell you that for your own good.”
Greer studied him curiously, beetling his gray-brown brows and absently scratching the coarse beard carpeting his weathered, brown face. “Sure, sure, Marshal,” he said finally. “I understand.”
Longarm continued walking toward the cabin, and Greer fell into step beside him. “A witch you say? With a body like . . . I mean, with such an angelic-looking face?” The rancher/woodcutter wagged his head as though genuinely befuddled by the news. “Imagine that!”
The log cabin had a half story and a broad front veranda. Smoke was gushing from the stone chimney that rose along its right end. “Come on in here, now, Marshal,” Greer said, mounting the porch steps. “You just go right on in and make yourself at—”
He’d just opened the door but stopped in front of Longarm. The lawman immediately saw what had stopped him.
Lacy stood in front of the fire that was blazing in the hearth, her back to the crackling flames. She wasn’t wearing a stitch. Her clothes were draped over a couple of ladder-back chairs. Her full-busted, naked body was pink and perfectly curved. The big woman, May, knelt before her on a braided rope rug, massaging Lacy’s belly and crotch with a thick towel, making those perfect orbs jounce deliciously.
Lacy had heard Greer and Longarm on the porch. Longarm knew she had. She held Longarm’s gaze for a full two seconds before she gasped in feigned shock but did nothing to cover herself. May had been talking, but now she turned her head sharply to the door and said angrily, “Oh, for goodness sakes, you men! Give us girls another minute, will you?”
Greer stood frozen in the open doorway, one hand on the latch. His shoulders slumped a little, and his knees appeared to bend a bit. Longarm was afraid he’d pass out.
He gave the man’s arm a tug. “Come on, Mr. Greer. Like your sis says, we’d best give ’em a minute.”
As he led the shocked and confounded older man back out the door, Longarm glanced once more at Lacy. She smiled beatifically. Longarm ground his jaws and latched the door.
Chapter 13
“You gonna be all right there, Mr. Greer?”
“In a minute, I reckon.” The woodcutter swallowed hard, blinked at the porch floor.
“You look a little pale.”
“I . . . I’ll be all right.” Greer shuffled to the edge of the veranda and stared off across the sun-dappled yard that was rife with the tang of pine resin. He plucked a handkerchief from a back pocket of his patched trousers and used it to dab his forehead.
Longarm sat in a wicker-bottom chair and kicked one of his wet boots off. “Sorry you had to see that,” he said, grunting as he kicked the other shrunken stovepipe off his other foot. “I hope you don’t have a weak heart.”
“Whew!” Greer chuckled and glanced at Longarm. “That shore was a sight to behold.”
“I appreciate your sister’s tending the girl. She really got down to business, didn’t she?” Longarm unknotted his string tie and lay it over the veranda rail.
Greer flushed. “May—she’s sorta funny that way. Always has been. Never did get married.”
“I see, well . . .” Longarm had gotten the drift of May’s ways long before he’d opened the cabin door and seen her rubbing that towel across Lacy’s delectable body. “Greer, in the interest of my not freezing to death and getting these duds dried out as fast as possible, so Lacy and I can be on our way, I’m gonna go ahead and shuck down to as little as what my trail partner is wearing. I’m just gonna warn you ahead of time.”
Scowling at Longarm, who had peeled off both socks and was now standing and unbuttoning his shirt, Greer said, “You know, I reckon I best get on back to my woodcuttin’, Marshal Long.” He hurried down the steps, boots thudding on the age-silvered boards.
“Might be wise.”
“You go on inside soon as you can, Marshal, and get yourself warm,” Greer said, backing away across the yard. “I’m sure May’ll fix you coffee and a bite to eat. She may be funny in some ways, but she’s a right good cook, May is.”
“Much obliged, Greer,” Longarm said, tossing his shirt over the veranda rail.
Grumbling angrily about Lacy enjoying the hot fire inside the cabin while he was out here turning blue, every muscle and tendon quivering like a diamondback rattlesnake, he peeled his balbriggans down his arms and legs and lay those over the porch rail, as well. He angled the chair in the sun, then sat down in it, stretching his legs out and lacing his hands behind his head, leaning back and absorbing the soothing rays.
He’d just nodded off when he heard the door latch click and the hinges creek and Miss May said in her mannish rasp, “Oh, good Lord—you’re naked!”
“Yes, ma’am,” Longarm said, glancing behind him to see her standing there, nearly filling the open doorway and blushing. “Thought it best I didn’t catch my death of cold.” He couldn’t help keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
“I’ve tucked Miss Lacy into my bed upstairs,” May said, turning her eyes away from the naked man before her.
“Oh, you have, have you,” he said. “Well, don’t let her get too comfortable, ’cause she and I’ll be hitting the trail soon.”
“Oh, don’t be silly!” May objected. “After what she’s been through? No, sir—she must stay here today and get some rest. I’ve stoked the fire in my room to try to get the poor dear thawed out.”
She turned and walked farther back into the cabin. “I’ve put coffee and stew on the table, and also a bottle of blackberry brandy. Help yourself. I’m going to see if Miss Lacy needs anything!”
“I bet you are.” Longarm heard the woman’s heavy footsteps on the stairs that angled up the rear of the room, right of the small kitchen area. Something besides being left out in the cold nagged at him.
Could he be jealous of May?
He grabbed his clothes and went inside. He draped all the duds over the hearth or chair backs in front of the fire, set his boots on the floor just close enough to dry but not to shrink so tight they wouldn’t fit. He sat at the table and the delicious elk stew with crusty brown bread and washed it all down with coffee laced with May’s brandy. The rib-sticking meal and warming brandy-laced coffee made him feel less angry at Lacy and annoyed with May for doting on her as though the little witch were royalty.
He piled his dirty dishes in the dry sink, then, yearning for a cigar, he snooped around the place until he found some cheap cigars in an American Powder Mills gunpowder tin. He found a rag and some gun oil in a peach crate serving as a shelf. Sitting naked in front of the fire, where he could easily see the trail fronting the ranch through a window, he carefully took his Colt apart and wiped each piece down thoroughly with the oily rag.
While he worked, and the fire drew the chill river water out of his bones, May came down and, paying Longarm no attention whatever, began heating water on the fire for Lacy’s bath. She hummed as she stomped about the place, gathering soap and towels and a plate of food for Lacy, making the floor planks lurch and causing dust to sift from the rafters. Longarm merely chuckled to himself over the bath and continued to smoke and work on his guns and ammunition, keeping a close eye on the trail leading out under the log portal and off toward the river.
When he had the Colt cleaned and loaded, believing that none of the brass cartridge casings had leaked, he slid the gun down in its holster drying over another chair. His balbriggans were dry, so he put them on, and he was glad he had when, after what must have been a
couple of hours, he heard voices in the yard. He jerked to life, incredulous at the fading light outside the cabin, and grabbed his pistol.
He slid it back into its holster, however, when he saw that it wasn’t Gunn and Cruz come calling, but Greer and his son heading home in the lumber dray trailing the extra mule. May flanked them on the beefy mule. She must have finally allowed Lacy to rest and slipped out of the cabin with the naked man in it, to help Greer and Felix with the wood.
While they headed on past the cabin to the barn to tend the mules and their load of logs, Longarm dressed in his now-dry, soothingly warm clothes. He’d intended to head off today with Lacy in tow, but the swim must have taken more out of him than he’d thought.
He went upstairs to make sure Lacy hadn’t slipped out on him without his hearing, as May obviously had. No, she was sound asleep in the big lone bed near a small sheet-iron stove. She lay curled on her side, honey-blond hair sprayed out across the pillow, sound asleep.
She looked like a damn doll. Looks were deceiving. Her clothes hung from a rope strung across the room within about six feet of the fire that had burned down nearly to coals.
Despite himself, he tossed another chunk of split fir on the fire, then headed on outside though not before snagging another cigar from the American Powder Mills can. He’d leave the Greers a double eagle before he left here first thing in the morning with a couple of horses he hoped to borrow. In the mean time, he took a long walk around, seeing no sign that the Gunn and Cruz Bunch were anywhere around. That seemed odd. Had they figured they’d lost their quarry to the chill waters of the river?
As he strode back to the cabin, he met Harcourt Greer slouching toward the cabin from the barn. “No sign of them men after you?” the man said, shoving his sawdust-covered hat brim back off his forehead, his wandering right eye angling toward his nose as though to scrutinize the end of it.
“Not yet.”
“Closest place to ford the river is Sapinero, downstream a good twenty miles. We had a bridge but it got washed out in the spring flood, and, as you saw”—Greer chuckled—“the river’s been high all summer. Lots o’ snow in the high country slow to come down.”
“They mighta given up on us,” Longarm said, lighting Greer’s cigar that he’d only smoked half of earlier, studying the trail that angled off through the pines toward the river.
“If they do, you got nothin’ to worry about. I got guns and ammo in the barn, and me and the boy know how to use ’em.”
The woodcutter glanced at his muscular son slouching toward the cabin from the barn, a dreamy look in his otherwise dull gaze. Felix had probably been thinking about Lacy all day, as his old man probably had, as well, after that glimpse he’d gotten of her naked earlier. Longarm hoped he wasn’t going to have to hold them off all night when he already had Gunn and Cruz to worry about.
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.” Longarm puffed the cigar again as he turned to the woodcutter. “I’d like to borrow a couple of horses tomorrow morning, Greer. Uncle Sam will pay you for them. Also a good rifle if you have one. I personally will pay you for the grub and the cigars I’ve pilfered from your gunpowder can.”
Greer chuckled. “The smoke and grub is on the house, Marshal. We don’t get visitors out here often, and I’m just glad to see someone around besides my boys and ole May, God love ’em. I’ll set you up with a coupla fine hosses first thing tomorrow, and I’ve got a nice Winchester I’ll throw into the bargain.”
“I’d be obliged.”
“Come on in, Marshal. While May throws some supper together, you an’ me’ll sit out here on the porch and sip some brandy and palaver. What do you say? Like Felix said, we don’t get many visitors this far out.”
“Fine as frog hair,” Longarm said, giving his darkly expectant gaze to the trail to the river once more, hoping he and Lacy were the Greers’ only company this day.
* * *
Lacy didn’t come down for supper. Instead, May brought her a plate of elk steak with all the trimmings and stayed up there a lot longer than was necessary to deliver the plate, Longarm thought. He and Greer and the beefy but bashful boy ate at the table, only Longarm and Greer conversing.
When they were finished with supper, it was good dark. May hazed Greer and Felix off to the barn, where apparently they slept every night, leaving the entire cabin to May herself. However, she insisted that Longarm sleep in the cabin by the fire to “finish baking that old, cold river out of his bones.”
He decided to take the woman up on the invitation. A chill lingered deep inside his marrow. He’d like to stay as close as possible to a hot fire, and he’d like to keep a close eye on Lacy. He wouldn’t put it past her to try to slip away from him under cover of darkness.
When May had finished cleaning up the kitchen—she seemed to have boundless, jovial energy for a woman so large—and headed upstairs to bed with her sexy charge, Longarm threw down in the quilts she’d arranged for him in front of the fire. He slept long and hard, basking in the fire’s warmth.
A squawk from the stairs woke him. He lifted his head, looked around the dark cabin, saw a big shadow moving toward him. He started to slide his hand toward his Colt when May whispered, “It’s just May, Marshal. Fetchin’ a coupla logs for the upstairs fire.”
Longarm thought with a silent snort, Aren’t you and Lacy keeping each other warm enough?
Longarm lay his head back down on his flour-sack pillow. He lifted it again when he felt a draft, as though someone had moved past him. He could smell the must of an animal hide. As he looked up, he saw May standing over him. She wore a big, shapeless buffalo robe.
She gave a grunt and lurched toward him. “Take this, you dirty bugger!”
Longarm didn’t see the log she swung at him until he heard the loud clang of a bell, and then everything went dark.
Chapter 14
“Wake up, damn you, lawdog!”
Someone was none-too-gently slapping Longarm’s cheeks. The voice and the slaps brought him back to a world of pain and torment in his left temple. At first, he couldn’t remember what had put it there, but then he remembered the split pine log arcing toward him. And the pain that followed as he tumbled into a well of hot tar at the bottom of which waited a little man with a hammer.
The little man, grinning, had set to work hammering away at Longarm’s head until Longarm was sure that the little fucker had broken through the bone and was whacking his exposed brain.
“I said wake up, damn you, star packer!”
“All right, all right,” Longarm heard himself mumble drunkenly, trying to open his eyes.
When he got them open he saw a fist barreling toward him so quickly that he barely had time to take in the broad fingers and bulging knuckles bristling with gray-brown hair, the grimy thumb drawn up tight against the middle one, before it rammed against his chin. He gave a groan as the blow sent him straight back to the floor with another hard blow to his noggin.
It was then he realized he was in a chair. Tied to it with ropes that were cutting into his wrists. On his back like this, he could feel the planks across the back digging into him, the hard, hide-bottom seat digging into his thighs.
He opened his eyes again, grinding his teeth with pain and fury.
Harcourt Greer stared down at him, grinning, showing several gaps in his jaws. His lone eye was still staring as though in bizarre fascination at the end of his nose. The other frosty blue one bored into Longarm.
“If there’s anything I hate more than a lawman, I sure don’t know what it is.” Greer moved chaw around in his mouth.
May’s head, her hair pulled back severely from her big, bland, blunt-nosed face. Her eyes were pinched and dark. “Is he dead?”
“Not yet.”
Another face appeared in Longarm’s field of vision. This one belonged to Lacy. There couldn’t have been more
of a contrast between hers and Greer’s and May’s. Her shiny hair hung down, casting her cheeks in shadow. She wore her heavy coat and her hat, as though she were ready to go somewhere.
“Don’t kill him,” she said. “Let’s leave him for Heck Gunn and Cruz. They’ll take their time with him, kill him sloooowwww.” She formed a red circle with her mouth, then smiled like an angel but with a devil’s eyes. “Buyin’ us more time to get to those saddlebags before they can.”
“I’d sure like to kill him,” Greer said, running the back of his hand across his mouth hungrily. “I purely would like to drill a bullet through his head, Missy Lacy!”
“Do as Lacy says,” May said. “She knows best. Good head on her, that girl.”
“Ah, hell,” Greer said, slapping the woman’s arm. “Got some other things mighty good on her, eh, May?”
“Shut up, damn you, Harcourt! I done told you how many times to shut your goddamn trap about that?”
“Be quiet, both of you!” Lacy said. “Get finished packing so we can hit the trail as soon as some light shows!”
When Greer and May had disappeared from Longarm’s field of vision, Lacy knelt down beside him, gazing at him smugly. “It could have been you, helpin’ me go after the money. But, no, you had to be so damn obstinate. Had to be the man of integrity.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Now, I’m gonna have to cut up the take four ways instead of two.”
“I do apologize.”
“Tsk, tsk.”
“Who are those two, anyways? They ain’t really ranchers and woodcutters, are they?”
She smiled again, delighted with her wicked ways. “May said they’re from Texas. Bank robbers mostly. They was just hidin’ out up here, pretending they were salt-of-the-earth settlers ’cause the Rangers are after ’em.”
