Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats (7 page)

Longarm continued on down the slope from the hanging dead couple.

He stopped and looked around again when he reached the bottom of the ridge, and then moved to his left, slowly tracing a broad circle around the cabin. He moved so slowly and purposefully, all his senses alive, that it took nearly a half hour to reach the rear of the small springhouse that sat nearly directly behind the shack.

He knelt beside the springhouse, holding his rifle down low by his side so that the bright, pearl moonlight would not reflect off the barrel.

He was only sixty or so yards from the cabin's rear wall and the split stove wood stacked nearly to the rafters against it. He was close enough that he should be able to hear voices from ­inside—­even through the stout pine timbers that the place had been hewn from. But there was nothing but silence save for the snorts and rustling of the horses in the corral left of the cabin.

Chicken flesh had risen between the lawman's shoulders. Something wasn't right. He knew that he ought to hightail it out of the yard, return to the ridge, and lead the posse away from the canyon until daylight. But he knew that McIntyre wouldn't go for that. Besides, a strong, urgent curiosity held him here.

Slowly, he stood, holding his rifle down low by his right leg. Quickly, he moved out away from the springhouse, jogging and crouching, until he'd gained the cabin's rear wall. He shouldered against it, leaned an ear to the rough, ­weathered-­gray timbers.

Still only silence.

There were no windows in the rear wall so he moved around to the cabin's right side. There were two windows in the north wall. He sidled up to the first one, doffed his hat, and slowly edged a look around the frame.

Over the window was a lacy, white curtain that distorted Longarm's view. Beyond lay a room lit by a single candle guttering in an airtight tin on a dresser. The candle cast eerie umber light and menacing shadows. Long­arm could see the dresser, a washstand, a chair, and a bed directly across from the dresser.

There was something large and lumpy on the bed, cast in shadow. It could have been a person lying there, or it could have been gear. Longarm tried to make it out, but then gave up and continued forward to the other window.

The view through this window was unobstructed. It showed a comfortably appointed sitting area and kitchen, the kitchen taking up about a third of the space near the hearth on the cabin's far side. The sitting room was nearest Longarm, with several large braided rugs and rocking chairs.

A wooden box stuffed with yarn and knitting needles sat under a table near one of the rockers, both arms and backs of which were ­hand-­carved from moose horns.

Nothing appeared out of place. There was no mess, no gear, no litter of whiskey bottles. Most puzzling of all, there were none of Drummond's men loitering about. The cabin appeared empty.

Longarm glanced to the back of the cabin, then to the front. He stared straight out toward where the ridge humped darkly in the north.

Still, there were only the occasional yaps of a coyote and the intermittent hoots of an owl.

He walked around to the front of the cabin. He pivoted on his hips, holding the rifle straight out from his waist now, his index finger drawn taut across the trigger. He crossed the porch, opened the screen door, then the inside door, and stepped slowly into the cabin.

He sidestepped, pressed his back to the front wall beside the open door so he wouldn't be shot from behind. The fire popped and crackled. There was no other movement. Longarm started forward, wincing when his left boot came down on a loose floor puncheon, causing it to squawk.

From somewhere down a hall just ahead rose a muffled grunt. Remembering the lump he'd seen on the bed, Longarm aimed his Winchester straight out from his right hip and moved across the cabin, between the kitchen and parlor areas. He entered the dimly lit hall, setting each boot down quietly.

There was a doorway on the left and one on the right. Curtains hung over each.

Another grunt sounded from behind the curtain on the left.

Longarm drew a deep breath and slid the curtain back with his rifle barrel. He peered into the dimly lit room, saw the long lump on the bed moved. It was someone breathing, concealed by the room's dense shadows.

Longarm paused, looked around carefully, making sure no one was stealing up on him, and then pushed through the curtain. He stepped over to the bed and saw the ­half-­naked girl with thick, long, curly blond staring up at him.

She had a thin blanket thrown over part of her, but a good half of her was bare, part of one breast exposed. She was tied ­spread-­eagle, each limb bound to a bedpost.

A neckerchief was tied over her mouth, gagging her. Her blue eyes peered up through the screen of her mussed hair, sharp with desperation. The ­girl—­she had to be Casey ­Summerville—­shook her head and fought against her stays as well as the gag, groaning.

Longarm leaned his rifle against the bed and dug into his pants pocket for his barlow knife. The girl grunted and groaned, straining with more vigor, pleading with her eyes. She seemed to want desperately to speak. Long­arm left his knife in his pocket and pulled the gag down onto her chin.

She lifted her head and, staring over his shoulder at something behind him, screamed,
“Look out!”

Longarm wheeled, instantly grabbing his .44. A man had entered the room behind him and was holding a rifle shoulder high, butt forward, the man's dark eyes wide with cunning. He gritted his teeth in a savage snarl as he thrust the rifle toward Longarm's head.

The lawman jerked to one side just in time. The steel butt plate grazed his left cheek a quarter second before he rammed his ­double-­action Colt into the man's gut and triggered it three times.

The shots were muffled by the man's body.

The man, wearing a long, tan duster and ­sun-­bleached brown Stetson, stumbled loudly backward, groaning and clapping his hands to his burning shirt. His shoulders and the back of his head smashed against the back wall and he dropped down the wall to his butt.

He lay on the floor, legs outstretched, his shirt smoking and sizzling from Longarm's gun flames, and dropped his hands to both sides. His eyes stared stupidly at Longarm as he gave one last, troubled sigh and lay still.

Longarm had just turned back to the girl when a rifle crashed in the distance. He whipped his head up and turned toward the curtained doorway at the base of which a pool of the killer's blood was spreading.

Another rifle cracked. Then another.

Men screamed.

The screams echoed and got lost amongst the veritable fusillade that had broken out on the ridge north of the cabin.

The blood sang in Longarm's ears, and the notion dawned on him at the same time the girl screamed,
“It's a trap!”

Longarm shoved his Colt into its holster, grabbed his rifle, and yelled, “I'll be back for you!” as he ran through the curtained doorway.

He crossed the cabin in five strides and bounded out the door. He dropped to a knee behind an awning support post and aimed his rifle straight out from his shoulder, toward the ridge where he'd left McIntyre and the others.

Against the ridge's velvety darkness, guns flashed like fireflies. Men whooped and hollered wildly as the rifles and pistols coughed and belched, and other men screamed and groaned. There was the wild, ­staggering-­running sounds of snapping brush and trilling spurs.

Trap . . .

Longarm leaped off the porch, hit the ground, and began sprinting straight north toward the ridge, angling just right of where he'd come down and entered the ranch yard.

To his left, a gun flashed. The slug plunked into the ground behind Longarm. He kept running hard, his rifle in his right hand, and sprinted into the trees at the edge of the yard.

The gun to his left flashed again. The shooter was up the slope but below where the battle was being ­waged—­if you could call it a battle, Longarm absently thought.

More like a slaughter . . .

He dropped behind a tree bole, aimed his rifle out to the left side of the pine, and fired two quick rounds at an inky shadow jostling toward him. He ejected his spent shell casing, levered a fresh one into the magazine, and held fire. He could no longer see the jostling shadow. No point in wasting precious lead.

He took off running up the slope, angling in the general direction of where the shooting was slowly dying, the gun flashes growing more and more intermittent. As he climbed his heart hammered. Cold sweat basted his shirt against his back.

Trap. It had been a goddamn trap. Drummond had done a good job of springing it.

Rage burned in the lawman's belly, his shoulders. As he ran up the slope, angling toward the scene of what had most certainly been a massacre, he squeezed his rifle until his right hand ached. When he'd climbed about three quarters to the top of the ridge, he paused, dropped to a knee beside a pine, and caught his breath.

Straight along the slope toward the west, where the guns had belched and flashed only a few minutes before, was only darkness. Men were talking loudly. Some were laughing. Beneath the talking and the laughing, Longarm could hear another, obviously wounded man groaning. Mewling like a ­gut-­shot coyote.

Longarm hardened his jaws, ground his molars. He raised his rifle, felt his index finger draw back against the Winchester's trigger. The finger twitched with his desperate, nearly irresistible compulsion to begin ­shooting and to keep shooting until he'd popped all his caps.

But he couldn't shoot in that direction without risking the lives any of the posse that weren't already dead.

There were two sharp pistol cracks. Longarm saw the lapping flames about fifty, maybe sixty yards straight off along the slope. They appeared to angle toward the ground. After the second shot, the wounded man stopped groaning.

Longarm drew a sharp breath, lowered his rifle. His mind swam. Likely, the rest of the posse was dead. He was one man against nearly twenty.

What next?

He thought about the girl, Casey. He should have taken her and tried to slip up and over the ridge to the horses, but his mind had been with the posse. There had been nothing he could do for them, however. And he'd done nothing for the girl. He'd left her tied to the bed.

There was no going back for her now.

He considered opening up on the killers whom he could hear thrashing around in the brush ahead of him, talking, snickering, spurs jangling.

He reconsidered. Getting himself killed wasn't going to do Casey any good. He had to try to stay alive long enough to pull her away from Drummond's bunch once and for all.

Footsteps grew louder. A man's voice said, “. . . .ver here somewhere. You fellas fan out. We'll . . .”

The voice was drowned by the snapping of branches and brush.

Longarm scuttled back behind the pine, pressed his back to it. He held his Winchester straight up and down between his legs, squeezing the barrel just above the ­forestock with his right hand, thinking it over. If he could take out one, two, maybe three of the gang without getting himself greased, he'd have that fewer to kill later . . .

He knew he should scuttle on up the ridge, but he rankled at the idea of hightailing it without sending a couple more of these bastards to hell.

He waited.

There were soft, crunching foot thumps straight along the slope to the west. He could hear at least two more men moving around downslope from him, between him and the ranch yard.

His pulse quickened as he continued listening, hearing the killers moving closer, closer . . .

He doffed his hat, turned his head to the right, pressing his cheek up against the side of the pine. Sap stuck to his cheek. The tang was heavy in his nose. In the corner of his right eye he could see a hatted shadow moving toward him, silhouetted by the moonlight.

Breath vapor plumed around the man's head. He was walking toward Longarm, meandering amongst the trees, crouched over a carbine that he aimed straight out from his left hip.

Longarm looked downslope. Two more inky figures, partly revealed by the moonlight, were milling around amongst the pines. One man on the downslope kicked something and cursed sharply but quietly. Another man to his left laughed.

They were a cocky ­bunch—­Longarm would give them that.

Anger was a flame burning just behind his heart. The prospect of whittling the gang down by at least three more caused his heart to skip a beat. He raised the Winchester, curled his index finger through the trigger guard. With his right thumb, he softly, slowly ratcheted the hammer back to full cock.

The three men were moving toward him. Their footsteps were much louder now. The one moving straight toward him along the shoulder of the slope was probably only about twenty, fifteen feet away.

Longarm gave him another five seconds and then twisted around the left side of the tree and aimed his rifle straight west. He'd been wrong. The man was only ten feet ­away—­so close that Longarm could smell his sweat. The man stopped, grunted.

Longarm's rifle barked loudly, echoing.

The man screamed. As he flew straight back, he triggered his rifle at the ground.

At the same time, Longarm racked a fresh round and fired at one of the two figures on the downslope.

Another scream.

He fired again, left of his last shot.

“Oh,
fuck
!” cried the third man as his own rifle flashed orange. The slug tore into the tree bole inches above Longarm's head, causing slivers of bark to rain onto his head.

The third man had dropped to a knee and was struggling to cock his rifle.

Longarm quickly rose and fired three more quick rounds down the slope and watched with satisfaction through his own wafting gray powder smoke as the third shooter was thrown backward and went cartwheeling on down the slope and out of sight in the darkness.

A voice yelled from downslope. “Rainey, ­George—­you fellas get him?”