Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats (13 page)

As Longarm walked through the gap between the large mercantile building and another, smaller structure beside it, he thought about the ­double-­barreled derringer snuggling inside his vest pocket, opposite his watch. His right hand twitched. He brushed it against his hip as he continued walking, glancing back at the man behind him.

Bright moonlight glinted off the barrel of the Remington the man was aiming at him.

The man rammed the gun against Longarm's back, shoving him forward. “What the hell you lookin' at? You just keep movin', mister. We'll see what Colt has in store for you. Whatever it is, after all our boys you killed, it ain't gonna be good.”

“They were tryin' to kill me,” Longarm said with a caustic chuff.

“You just hold your tongue an' keep walkin'.”

At the head of the gap between the two buildings, Longarm turned and began walking toward the saloon. He could see the dimly lit windows. A half dozen or so horses were tied to the hitch racks out front of the place. The closer he got to the Open Flat, the more shadows he could see moving around in front of the windows.

He thought about the women, and his gut clenched.

He envisioned the derringer residing in his vest pocket. His hand twitched. He brushed it across his hip again, and sweat broke out atop his upper lip, dampening his mustache.

His heart was beating faster. He had to do something before he got to the saloon, but getting himself killed wasn't going to help anything. The gent behind him had the Remington centered on his back. Longarm doubted that he could get anywhere close to sliding the derringer from his vest pocket, clicking back one of the two hammers, and getting himself turned around to aim the piece at the man behind him before a bullet flung from the Remington shattered his spine.

He had to wait for an opportunity.

Meanwhile, he reached the saloon and the horses standing wearily at the hitch ­rack—­a couple of pintos, a couple of duns, a piebald, a paint . . .

He glanced over the horses only absently. The hot, dusty beasts seemed ominous, standing there in front of the saloon, which could very well be the end of his as well as Cynthia and Casey's trail. Moonlight glinted on the saddles and in the eyes of one of the horses looking curiously back at Longarm.

The lawman walked up the porch steps.

He glanced once more over over his shoulder. The man behind was keeping a few paces ­back—­too far away for Longarm to try to swing on him before he'd almost certainly get a bullet in his guts.

Longarm crossed the dilapidated porch and stopped in front of the ­bat-­wings, looking over the doors and inside the saloon lit by several candles and two lamps. There were six or seven men in the place, and they were all sitting or standing around the tables about halfway between the front and the back.

Avriel Simms sat in a chair. Two of the outlaws stood around him and another sat in a chair facing him while leaning one elbow on a table flanking him. One of the men stood crouching over the old man, threat in the set of his shoulders. Just now that man slapped Simms with the back of his hand, whipping his arm fiercely. Longarm winced at the sharp crack and Simms's groan. Longarm bulled through the ­bat-­wings, teeth gritted.

“Leave the old man alone, you ­chicken-­livered son of a bitch!”

The man behind Longarm slammed the barrel of the Remington against the back of Longarm's head. It was a glancing blow, but it still evoked a tolling of bells in the lawman's head and caused his legs to buckle. His knees hit the floor with a thundering boom. All the outlaws in the room swung toward him, whipping hoglegs from holsters or reaching for rifles.

The outlaw sitting in front of old Simms turned his head toward Longarm. The lawman hadn't gotten a clear view of Drummond the other night, but this man had to be him. His face was wet and pale, and his lips were stretched back from his teeth in a living death grimace. The whites of his eyes were yellow beneath the brim of his ­funnel-­brimmed black hat with a hammered silver band.

“Who the fuck . . . ?” Drummond let his voice trail off as he turned the death grimace into a smile of sorts. He winced as he gained his feet and turned his stocky frame toward Longarm. His lower right side was bright with fresh blood. The stain extended halfway down the thigh of his right leg and across the front of his belly. There was another, drier stain higher up on the other side. That's where Longarm had shot him, but the lawman saw now that his own bullet must have only burned the killer. It was Casey's slug that was grieving ­him—­likely going to kill him soon.

Drummond stood ­stoop-­shouldered, haggard, ­pain-­racked—­like a wounded bull elk who'd found himself cornered in a box canyon.

“Longarm,” he said. “Shoulda known.”

Longarm frowned up at the man. He couldn't remember having run into the renegade before.

“Sure, I know you,” Drummond said. “You may not know me, but I know you. Big, ­brown-­haired, ­brown-­eyed hombre with a face like a mean, old bull buff, and a longhorn mustache. Hell, most of my kind's either seen or heard about the famous Custis P. ­Long—­deputy U.S. marshal!”

He said this last with extra venom, spitting the words out like sour grapes, so that the others could hear. They all looked with keen interest at the big man kneeling on the floor before them, canting their heads this way and that, grinning.

“­Longarm—­no shit, Colt?” asked a tall man with long, curly gray hair and black brows and mustache. He looked skeptically at Drummond.

“No shit, ­Frank—­that there is the Long Arm of the Law his own self. Should have known it was him followin' us. Who else could cut down as many men as he did, steal into our camp, shootin' me in the gut and leavin' me to die
slow
!”

He shouted that last, jerking his head up and down like a rabid cur.

Longarm smiled woodenly. “Oh, but if you remember,” he said jeeringly, “it was the girl's bullets ­that—”

“Shut up, you fuckin' liar!” Drummond was the only one in the room not holding a gun. He staggered toward Longarm, clenching his fists at his sides.

Obviously, he hadn't told his men that Casey had shot him with his own gun. That would have made him look foolish. Instead, he told them he was surprised by the big man stealing into their camp while he'd been giving the girl a good time, and then dragged her away.

“I'll deal with you later, Longarm. In my own creative way. Like maybe bury you ­neck-­deep in the street so's me and the boys can take target practice on your ears.”

“Jesus,” Longarm said, rubbing the back of his head, “that would hurt like hell.”

Just then two men appeared atop the stairs, each coming from a different direction and then dropping down the staircase. Each held a rifle. Drummond looked up at them. “Any sign of the girl?”

The first one coming down the stairs shook his head. “There's two tubs filled with hot water in a room up there, but no girl.”

Longarm slid his gaze from the two newcomers to Drummond, who turned to Longarm, frowning. “Who's your third rider, Longarm?” He smiled lasciviously through his ­tobacco-­stained teeth. “Not another girl, is it?”

Longarm shrugged as he gained his feet heavily. “Wouldn't you like to know?”

Drummond glanced at the two men who'd just descended the stairs. “Boys, tie this famous
lawman
to a chair. If we can't get where the girl . . . or
girls
 . . . are out of the old man, we'll start on him. Leastways, I wanna know where he is, 'cause later he's gonna do some howlin'.”

The two men headed for Longarm, swinging wide to get around him. He had no intention of being tied to a chair. That just meant he'd be dead soon, and there'd be nothing he could do about it. He aimed to move while he still could, even if it meant dying here and now.

At least he'd take some of these sons o' bitches with him.

Longarm sighed and feigned an expression of defeat as the two men approached from the stairs. When the first was three feet away, Longarm shoved his right hand into his vest pocket, and plucked out the derringer. He quickly thumbed back both triggers and sent one round careening through the left eye of the man nearest him and the second round through the forehead of the man behind the first.

He dropped the derringer, which dangled by its ­gold-­washed chain from his old railroad turnip residing in the opposite vest pocket, and was reaching for the rifle of the first man he'd just killed when the man behind him slammed his pistol across Longarm's head for a second time.

Longarm staggered forward, holding his head in his arms, fireworks flashing behind his ­squeezed-­shut eyes, and felt the floor come up to slam him hard about the chest and shoulders. He heard himself groan against the throbbing pain in his head.

“Oh, for cryin' out loud!” Drummond shouted, filling both his hands with the two ­long-­barreled revolvers he wore in holsters on his thighs. “I was going to give you some time, Longarm, but I see you just can't behave. Gonna have to put you down like the rabid cur you are!”

Longarm looked up. Drummond stood before him, about five feet away, extending both pistols straight out before him, angled down. “Let it be known from this day forward that Custis P. Long, known by friend and foe as Longarm, was killed this day by none other than Colt Drummond, his own mean an' nasty self!”

Something squawked near Longarm. He glanced to his right to see a two-by-­two-­foot door open in the ­faded-­green, wainscoted front of the bar, about six inches above the floor. Gerta Breckenridge's ­prune-­like, ­brown-­eyed face peered through the door.

The old woman hardened her jaws as she poked a ­double-­barreled shotgun out the dark opening, and squinted her eyes as she snarled, “Take this you ­limp-­dicked, ­woman-­rapin', tinhorn bastard!”

Longarm dropped his head to the floor as the old woman extended the shotgun over his prone body, and . . .

Ka-boommmm!

The entire room jumped as the first barrel's hammer slammed down on a wad of ­double-­ought buck. Longarm turned his head to see Colt Drummond hurled up and back, screaming and triggering both pistols into the ceiling. As he fell onto a table, breaking it in two pieces and tumbling to the floor, Gerta cut loose with the shotgun's second barrel.

It was like a giant slamming his fist on the room.

The man who'd hazed Longarm into the saloon went flying back out the ­bat-­wings, across the porch, and into the street.

Longarm saw a rifle lying on the floor five feet away. He probably wouldn't reach it before the others started cutting loose, but he shook off the searing pain in the back of his head, bolted off his heels, leaped for the rifle, and grabbed it in both hands. He rolled over, quickly jacking a round into the chamber, and extended the gun toward the rest of the gang, all of whom were now yelling and leaping into action, bearing down on both Long­arm and Gerta.

Longarm thought he might be able to get one before they sent him on over the divide, and he did, drilling the man in his right cheek, just above his shaggy patch beard and where a knife scar made a teardrop pattern. Then the rifles really started bellowing and Longarm squeezed his eyes closed, waiting for the lead shower that was sure to shred the skin from his bones, leaving nothing more than a pile of blood puddling on the floor where he now lie.

His hands kept working as though of their own accord and he was surprised as hell to find that he was able to aim the rifle from the floor once more and cut loose on the shooters. Only, there wasn't much use.

They were stumbling and flying and twisting around like a bunch of drunk Irish muleskinners at a Rocky Mountain hoedown. It was as though the floor were pitching around, knocking the killers from left to right and from front to back, and back again.

They were not the ones shooting.

Cynthia had bounded through the ­bat-­wings and firing from a crouch while Casey must have entered the saloon through the back door. She was cutting loose with her own Winchester, aiming quickly, triggering, ejecting the spent cartridge, aiming again, and firing.

Longarm stared in amazement at the two women and the billowing cloud of power smoke before him. To his right, Gerta Breckenridge was cackling like a witch and yelling, “You go, ­ladies—­shoot them killers down dead! Oh, this is too good for them! Oh, have it, ladies! Now, that's some fine ­old-­fashioned shootin' if I ever seen it!”

Longarm glanced toward where Avriel Simms had been sitting in his chair. Now the old man lay flat on the floor near the overturned chair, arms clamped over his head, wriggling around as though he were trying to squirm down between the floorboards.

The cacophony lasted for only about fifteen seconds.

Then the hammer of Cynthia's Winchester landed on an empty chamber. A second later, Casey's did, as well.

A silence fell over the room.

Longarm blinked as he stared over his own aimed rifle at the smoky room. The outlaws lay in bloody, ­bullet-­torn piles on the floor and across tables and overturned chairs. One man sighed and rolled from his shoulder to his belly, shook, and lay still.

And that was the end of them.

“Like I ­said—­that's some shootin',” Gerta said, crawling out the trapdoor in the ­bar—­which had probably been used for stocking the shelves beneath the bar when the saloon was booming with the rest of Open Flat.

She cackled and extended a hand to Longarm. “Wasn't it, Marshal Long? Say, you don't look so good.”

Longarm had pushed off a knee and was halfway to both feet, but the room was spinning like a top.

“Say, there, Marshal,” came Avriel Simms's voice from a thousand miles away. “Gerta's right. Why, you'd best . . .”

Longarm didn't hear the rest. Darkness overtook him. And then he was vaguely aware of scrambling footsteps and being eased to the floor before he was aware of nothing at all for about three ­seconds—­or what seemed like three ­seconds—­until he opened his eyes to see a bare breast with a perfect pink nipple jostling around in front of his face. He stared at the nipple, blinking, incredulous.