Longarm and the Diamondback Widow (12 page)

A rifle cracked loudly. The bullet plowed into the log where Longarm had been sitting.

Longarm froze, then turned toward the cabin. The bearded gent he'd beat the shit out of in the Dragoon Saloon stepped out from behind the cabin, a rifle in his hands. He wore a bandage around the top of his head. Another, heavier bandage—and a neck brace—encircled his neck.

A second man stepped out from the cabin's opposite corner, to the bearded man's left. He wore a black hat and a cream duster.

This was the mustached gent, whose face was a blaze of purple around the white bandage splayed across his nose.

The mustached gent was aiming a rifle straight out from his shoulder at Longarm, angrily barking, “Go ahead and pull that hogleg, you son of a bitch! Do it! Please, do it! I got me an' itch that needs scratchin' real bad!”

Both the bearded gent and the mustached gent stared down their rifles at Longarm. The lawman glanced at his bay in the trees nearby. More specifically, he glanced at his rifle sheathed on the bay's right side.

The rifle was just then being slid from the scabbard by a man in a cream shirt, suspenders, and a billowy red neckerchief. He had another rifle in his right hand, aimed at Longarm from the man's right hip.

The man grinned, fresh chaw dribbling down from one corner of his mouth. Two other men stood in the trees around him, both tough nuts armed with rifles, one or two pistols holstered on their hips. All three wore chaps, which marked them as range riders.

Tanner Webster's men?

“Lookin' for this?” said the man holding Longarm's rifle.

Longarm felt a cold stone drop in his belly as he watched the three men in chaps walk toward him from along the creek. As they did, another man stepped out from behind a tree near the water and walked toward Longarm. He was lighting a fat cigar, but when he lowered his cupped hands from his face, blowing smoke, Longarm saw the wedge-shaped, dark red nose of the Diamondback attorney, Charles Mulligan.

Mulligan puffed the stogie, smoke billowing around his glowering craggy ruin of an alcoholic face and the black bowler hat tipped back off his forehead. As the three ranch hands approached Longarm, the two others moved out from the cabin, squinting malevolently down their rifle barrels, keeping the long guns aimed at the lawman's head.

Longarm held his hands waist high, palms out, mind racing to find a way out of his current predicament, but it didn't look good. Not good at all.

Should have sent that note to Billy before he'd ridden out here. Too late now.

“Well, well, Mulligan,” Longarm said. “You ride out here to admire your handiwork?”

The three men in chaps stopped about ten feet away from Longarm, between him and the creek. The other two men, with the swollen faces and glowing bandages, stopped just on the other side of the graves, aiming their rifles as though wanting desperately to trigger them. Mulligan stopped about six feet back from the men wearing chaps.

The lawyer shook his head slowly. “You should have gone on back to Denver, like you said you were gonna do. I knew you weren't, though. I knew where you'd head, sooner or later. Just so happens Tanner had three men in town today. Tanner's good about hirin' his men out for . . . special duties above and beyond the call of Webster's own brand, you might say.”

The lawyer smiled smugly.

“Just like the other two in town, eh? The two that got sent to their reward last night.”

“Mr. Webster didn't take kindly to that, Mr. Lawman,” said the man who had Longarm's rifle resting on his shoulder.

“I'll apologize when I see him.”

“Oh, you're not gonna have the honor of meeting Mr. Webster,” said Mulligan. “In fact, you won't be meeting anyone else . . . ever again. This is the end of your trail.” He shook his head, appearing genuinely frustrated. “Why couldn't you be convinced that this was too much for you? Why didn't you just go back to Denver and forget you'd ever heard of Diamondback?”

Longarm sighed. “I reckon I just don't like to believe that anything's too much for me. The stubborn sort, I reckon. But now I see that I chewed way too big a bite out of that apple. I sure did.” The longer he talked, the more time he figured he was buying—for what, he wasn't sure.

“You sure did.”

“So, who the hell's responsible for this, Mulligan?” Longarm glanced at the graves and hardened his jaws. “Four dead people—a family—their cabin burned . . .”

“Nasty business, isn't it?” The attorney removed his hat and ran his hand back through the four or five strands of coarse, sandy-gray hair on his liver-spotted head. “I'm afraid the entire family simply had to suffer for young George's transgression.”

“And what transgression was that?”

Mulligan stepped broadly around Longarm and stared down at the graves, a distasteful look on his craggy face. “The boy wouldn't leave my daughter alone. I rode out here with Sheriff Rainey one day, asked Bear-Runner myself to keep George from coming to town. He and my daughter—they were sneaking around behind my back. Bear-Runner refused to do anything about it, said it was none of our business. And then . . . Louise ended up in the family way.”

Longarm stared. When he was sure he'd actually heard what he thought he'd heard, he hung his lower jaw in shock. It took him a moment to get the words out. “You mean . . . to tell me . . . that you had this whole family . . . murdered . . . because their son and your daughter were in love?”

“The boy was a savage,” Mulligan snapped. “He . . . they wouldn't listen to me. I, Louise's father. This could have been avoided but neither one would listen to reason. I had to have her sent away.” He wrung his hands together as he continued to glare down at the graves. “Her mother and her aunt took her to Santa Fe . . . to see a doctor . . .”

“Christ!” Seething, Longarm balled his fists at his sides. It took every ounce of effort to keep from belting the old bastard. “You're crazy, Mulligan. And you're a cold-blooded killer.”

“You're obviously not a father.”

“Who did you have to burn the cabin—these two?” Longarm looked at the two men whose faces he'd rearranged and who had lowered their rifles slightly, keeping them aimed at the lawman's belly. They stood on the other side of the graves, looking eager as trained attack dogs.

“Lonigan and Muehler—that's right. They work for Richmond. He lent them to me for this special favor. They had no problem with killing savages, did you, boys?”

“Hell, no,” said the bearded hombre—Lonigan. “As long as the pay's right, we'll take care of any problem, large or small. That includes killin' us a federal lawman.”

“Be right satisfyin',” added Muehler, whose broken nose apparently required that he breathe through his mouth.

Longarm turned back to Mulligan. “So Rainey found out about the killings out here, and . . .”

“He would not have listened to reason,” Mulligan said. “He'd been in agreement with old Bear-Runner about this being none of my business.”

“And you had him killed.”

“Oh, I didn't.” Mulligan shifted his curious gaze between Lonigan and Muehler. “I assume Richmond did, knowing that Rainey would come after me. Rainey could be a stubborn old cuss. It was no secret he had a soft spot for the Bear-Runners. He'd been ignoring Tanner Webster's complaints about their rustling for the past two years.”

The attorney held his cigar out and tapped ashes onto one of the graves. “Richmond and I share half interests in the bank as well as in the Dragoon Saloon. If one of us went down, we'd both go down.”

Lonigan glanced at Muehler, shrugged. “Whoever killed Rainey, it wasn't me.”

“Me, neither,” Muehler said, also shrugging. “Richmond never told me to do nothin' regardin' Rainey.”

Longarm glanced at Tanner's three cowhands. They all shrugged, shook their heads. “We wasn't given no orders to kill the Bear-Runners,” the tallest of the three said, one leg cocked forward, boot heel resting casually atop a rock. “But Mr. Tanner sure didn't weep when he heard the news.”

Longarm looked at Mulligan. The man had no reason to lie, and neither did the others. As far as they were concerned, Longarm wouldn't be riding off the Bear-Runner ranch alive.

If none of these men had killed the sheriff, who did?

Longarm knew that the odds were stacked against him ever finding out.

“What do you want us to do with him, Mr. Mulligan?” asked Muehler.

“What do you think I want you to do?” Mulligan said, staring at Longarm with an amused expression, blowing smoke out his nostrils. “Shoot him. We'll haul him away and stow him where no one will ever find him—except for the carrion-eaters, that is. They gotta eat, too—don't they, Deputy Long? Then we'll ride over and talk to Dan Garvey about how I don't appreciate him talkin' to strangers.”

Longarm still had his fists and jaws clenched. “You're one sick son of a bitch, Mulligan.”

“Mind if we take our time with him?” This from Lonigan, wincing as he adjusted the heavy brace around his neck. “Doc says I'm gonna be wearin' this for the next two months. I'd like to get a little satisfaction for the pain.”

“Sure, sure,” Mulligan said, puffing the cigar and grinning wickedly, narrowing both eyes. “Why not? Might be fun. Best take his hogleg first. This federal boy ain't likely to fight fair.”

Lonigan glared at Longarm, thrusting his rifle out belligerently. “Raise them hands high and keep 'em raised.”

Facing the bearded hard case, Longarm raised his hands to his shoulders.

“Higher!”

Longarm raised his hands above his head. He stared at Lonigan, who said to Muehler out the side of his mouth, “Watch him, now,” and stepped up close to Longarm, crouching over his rifle. When he was within two feet of the lawman, Lonigan removed his left hand from his rifle and reached toward Longarm.

When he'd wrapped that hand around the handle of the lawman's holstered .44 and started to pull, Longarm, having nothing to lose, slashed his right fist down hard against Lonigan's right arm. The rifle discharged into the ground between the two men.

Longarm lunged forward and drove his right knee into the big man's crotch.

As Lonigan screamed and folded like a jackknife, Longarm drove his other knee into the man's forehead. Longigan flew backward, limbs akimbo, and ran into Mulligan, who gave a howl and twisted around and stumbled backward.

The two men fell together, Lonigan atop Mulligan. Longarm reached for the rifle lying near Lonigan. He'd just gotten one hand around the breech and started to pull it up off the ground, when Muehler rammed the butt of his rifle against the back of Longarm's head.

Red lights flashed in Longarm's eyes, and he released the rifle, stumbling forward and dropping to his hands and knees. Hammering agony screeched through his skull, setting up a tolling in his ears. He felt blood ooze through the hot gash the mustached hard case had opened in the back of his head, about six inches up from his neck.

Beneath the tolling in his ears, he heard Mulligan groan loudly, bellowing, “Oh, oh! I think you broke my leg you big lummox!”

Lonigan rolled to one side, groaning and covering his crotch with his big hands. Longarm saw a shadow slide over him, and he was about to roll over to face Muehler, who Longarm could tell by the man's shadow was about to ram the rifle butt against his head again.

“No!” Mulligan pointed warningly at Muehler. “Don't kill him. Oh, no! Not yet!” He was sitting on the ground, leaning back and stretching his lips back from his teeth. His leg was bent oddly at the knee.

“You all right, Mr. Mulligan?” asked one of the Tanner men.

“Do I look all right, you fool!” Mulligan drew a deep breath, groaned again, and threw his arms toward the Tanner men. “One of you take my arms. Another, grab my right foot, and pull. Knee—it's out of the socket. Gotta jerk it back in!”

Longarm rolled onto a hip and shoulder. He felt sick and dizzy from the clubbing, but he didn't think he'd lose consciousness. As he waited for the searing pain in his head to pass, he watched one of the Tanner men grab Mulligan under the arms and another grab his right foot. One man pulled one way while the other pulled the opposite way. There was a snicking, a wooden grinding sound, and when the one hand released the attorney's foot, the leg was straight again.

Mulligan flopped on the ground, panting like a landed fish, red-faced and sweating.

After a few minutes, the hard cases forming a circle around the attorney and Longarm, Mulligan cast his fiery-eyed gaze at the lawman. “Someone get a rope.”

“Gonna hang him?” asked one of the Tanner men.

Mulligan shook his head. “Dutch ride!” He snickered evilly, then winced and grabbed his knee.

“Dutch ride” was a ranch term for dragging a man behind a horse.

Longarm had endured Dutch rides before, but he hadn't liked them much. Most times, they meant a slow, violent, and agonized death. For him, because he'd been lucky, they'd only cost him a set of torn clothes and sundry scrapes, bruises, and thorn pricks.

But in most cases, they were fatal, as in most cases they were intended to be.

This one, of course, was intended to be fatal, as well. It was a neat trick. Longarm wouldn't mind treating Mulligan to it, but at the moment, with four rifles aimed at his head from six feet away in all directions, he could only sit there by the graves of the Bear-Runner family and wait for the third Tanner man to fetch his horse and riata.

Mulligan sat back against a tree, injured leg stretched out before him, the other one curled beneath it. He glared at Longarm, mopping sweat from his forehead and brow.

“That knee's gonna grieve me somethin' terrible for a long time to come, you son of a bitch,” he groused.

“You don't know how sorry I am.” Longarm grinned and got a boot in his ribs for his efforts.

The blow rolled him onto his back, where he lay gasping. The bearded Lonigan glared down at him. “That's for the knee in my balls, you bastard!”

Mulligan said, “Turn your horns in, Lonigan. He's about to pay . . . in the worst way imaginable.”

As though in support of the attorney's statement, hooves thumped on the far side of the creek. Longarm turned his head to see one of the Tanner men gallop across the creek, water splashing golden in the late-day sun.

Whacking his buckskin across the ass with a coiled riata, the rider—a tall man with a black, funnel-brimmed hat, red checked shirt, brown chaps, and green neckerchief—gave a triumphant whoop and came up the gentle slope and checked the buckskin down hard.

Dust wafted over Longarm. The horse shook its head and blew.

As the rider uncoiled the riata, shaking out a loop, Longarm felt a wicked intensity flood his veins. He had to make a move now—any move—or his chances for survival were slimmer than they'd been so far this afternoon.

He heaved himself to his feet, intending to grab for one of the rifles, but the braining he'd taken him had upset his balance. He stumbled.

Lonigan and Muehler grabbed him from behind and held him as the rider expertly cast his broad loop straight out over the buckskin's head. While Muehler pinned Longarm's arms behind his back, Lonigan caught the loop and jerked it down over Longarm's head and shoulders.

The rider backed the ranch horse up two feet, drawing the loop taut and pinning the lawman's arms to his sides. He backed the horse up again, more sharply, and Longarm flew forward off his feet and, unable to break his fall, hit the ground on his face with a grunt.

“Tie his hands!” shouted the rider, wide-eyed with glee. He was really going to have a good time now, giving a federal lawman a Dutch ride over rocks and cacti!

When one of the others had used a three-foot length of rope to tie Longarm's wrists together in front of him, and adjust the loop under his arms, Mulligan shouted, “Show him a real good time, now, Rance!”

Rance whooped and ground his spurs into the buckskin's flanks. Longarm grunted as his tied hands were jerked straight up above his shoulders. The rope under his arms cut into his armpits, and he was nearly pulled out of his boots as he shot forward behind the galloping buckskin.

He was dragged down the slope, bouncing and twisting and turning, and into the stream. The rocks of the streambed hammered every bone in his body. One smashed against the side of his head. A pointed one rammed against his breastbone, sending fiery lances of agony all through him.

The buckskin galloped up the opposite bank, and Longarm followed, soaked and bruised and bloody, at the mercy of horse and rider. As they cut through the trees, it was softer going in the grass. Out on the open ground, the clumps of sage and occasional rocks beat against him, dirt clods and dust from the buckskin's hammering hooves pelting him.

Longarm put his head down, heard the grunts and groans being pounded out of him as he bounced along behind the whooping rider. He tried desperately, futilely, to free his hands, but the rope binding his wrists was too tight. He felt as though the rope under his arms was going to rip his shoulders from their sockets.

There was a moment's reprieve as the whooping rider slowed the buckskin and swung it around. Longarm had come to a rolling stop. Now, dirty and muddy, his shirt, coat, and pants torn, he scrambled up onto his knees, fighting madly against the ropes binding his hands and trying to shrug out from beneath the loop.

He saw the black-hatted rider, Rance, whipping his rein ends against the buckskin's flanks as the horse whinnied, lunged off its rear hooves, and galloped hard back in the direction from which it had come, racing toward the trees and the creek and the men waiting by the graves. Longarm watched the rope lying on the ground before him and then steeled himself as it jerked taut.

He cursed sharply as he was pulled up and forward, his jaws slamming together, his chest and belly hammering the ground before he was jerked up again and forward, racing along about fifteen feet behind the buckskin's scissoring hooves and arched tail. Brush and cacti raked him raw. He bounced off rocks and then, as they approached the creek, he careened off several trees.

The creek was a quick bath, but he was promptly dirty and muddy again as Rance and the buckskin lurched him up the opposite bank. To his right, the other men stood whooping and hollering and waving their hats or their arms. Mulligan leaned against the tree, head back, mouth drawn wide as he laughed. Rance glanced back at Longarm and smiled, showing a line of dirty yellow teeth between his lips.

Longarm squinted his eyes against the dirt clods and broken weeds flying at him. All he could do was give himself over to it. Fighting didn't help. The horse would have to stop again. He hoped he was still conscious when it did, because he had to try something, anything.

He was glad when, looking up from beneath his dust-caked brows, he saw the buckskin slow and begin to turn. Rance was swinging it back around.

Hope was a feeble flame inside the beaten and bloody lawman. It grew a little larger when he saw an egg-shaped rock to his right. It was about four feet high, a little larger around than Longarm's own waist. He hoped it was well planted in the ground.

Longarm heaved himself to his torn and bloody knees and then his feet. As the rider whooped and slapped his hat against the buckskin's right hip, laughing and lunging once more toward the creek, Longarm ran around the rock one and a half times. The rope had just been drawn taut around the rock when Longarm dropped to a knee and shoved a shoulder hard against the stone, on the side opposite the creek.

He stared at the rope hugging the rock. It quivered, scraped dust and bits of dried moss from the rock. The horse gave a shrill whinny. Rance screamed. There was a loud thump and the violent rattle of a bridle chain.

Longarm looked over the rock to see the horse lying on its side atop Rance, who struggled to regain its feet. Dust billowed and wafted. The horse's saddle hung down the buckskin's right side. Rance was screaming and flopping his arms as the horse ground its rear hooves into Rance's belly and groin as it struggled back to all four feet.

Longarm lunged to a standing position and ran, stumbling, one and a half times around the rock, in the opposite direction from before. He ran toward where the horse stood by the rider flopping and mewling on the ground, in the dust cloud still billowing around him and the horse. The buckskin shook itself and looked down at Rance and then at the man running toward it.

“Don't run,” Longarm urged through gritted teeth, watching the other end of the rope where it was dallied around the saddle hanging down the horse's side.

But then the horse did run. The slack jerked out of the rope, and Longarm flew forward and braced himself for another hard ride. But then the gods smiled. The horse shook free of the saddle, and the saddle dropped to the ground about six feet beyond the bellowing Rance.

Longarm let the slack rope drop to his feet, and he stepped out of it. He ran over to the rider, who was trying to draw his pistol as he writhed, his anxious gaze on Longarm. The lawman kicked the gun out of Rance's hand and then rammed his boot hard into Rance's right side, rolling him over.

“Stop!” the man screamed. “I think my legs are broken!”

“That's a cryin' shame,” Longarm raked out, dropping to his knees and shoving both hands toward his left pocket, where he kept his folding barlow knife.

As he awkwardly shoved a hand into the pocket, he cast his gaze back toward the creek. The other men were running toward him. He could see their hatted heads jouncing just below the lip of the slope. They were about eighty yards away, moving fast and yelling.

Longarm slid the knife out of his pocket. He opened it, took the handle in his right hand, and angled the blade across his palm and onto the rope between his wrists. Using only the thumb and index finger of his right hand, he began to jerk the blade against the rope. He cast another nervous gaze toward the creek.

The four other men aside from Mulligan were running toward him, holding their rifles up high across their chests. They ran abreast, about six feet apart. As one stopped and raised his rifle to his shoulder, Longarm felt the rope between his wrists slacken slightly as the blade sliced through two strands.

He heard the whine of the bullet as it zipped past his right ear and then thumped into the ground behind him. A half second later, the crack of the rifle reached his ears.

Longarm threw himself forward, using the writhing man before him as marginal cover, and continued to saw desperately at the rope between his wrists.

Rifles cracked. Slugs plumed dirt around him, spanged off rocks, snapped sage branches. One seared across his left shoulder, mostly tearing his coat. Another made a near wet, cracking sound, and Rance stopped writhing.

Longarm looked at him and saw a fist-sized exit hole on the near side of Rance's head oozing brains and liver-colored blood.

The knife cut through the last rope strand, and Longarm's wrists came free. As the shooters continued running toward him, fanning out as they came, he made a mad dash to the dead man's saddle and slipped Rance's carbine from its scabbard. Pumping a cartridge into the chamber, he swung around and ran toward the rock behind him. A slug carved a shallow trough across the back of his left thigh, setting up a burning in his leg.

Another slug hammered the rock as he dropped behind it. Another thumped into the ground an inch beyond the toe of his right boot.

The shooters were moving too fast, and they were too anxious, for accurate shooting. They were near enough now that Longarm could hear their foot thuds and spur chings.

“Get around him, Lonigan—all the way right!” shouted Muehler. “I'll swing left!”

As soon as they got around him, they'd have him.

Time to make his move.

Longarm pushed off the rock and swung to his left, dropping to his left knee and firing the Winchester twice quickly, his first shot hammering the dead center of Lonigan's chest. His second shot had missed the man running behind Lonigan by a hair, but it had forced the man to stop and drop to a knee.

Longarm pumped and fired, painting a dark circle in the nub of the man's right cheek. The other two shooters—Muehler and the third Tanner rider—had been taken by surprise. They shouted and swung toward Longarm, but neither got off another shot before Longarm's dancing, smoking carbine sent them stumbling straight back and down, where they both flopped as the blood pumped out of them.

A heavy, dark wave of fatigue washed over Longarm. He dropped as though he'd been felled by a sledgehammer, and lay on his back, catching his breath. After he caught it, he continued to lie there. Muehler was moaning and groaning, but his moans and groans grew gradually quieter.

After about twenty minutes, they stopped altogether.

Longarm dozed, every bone, muscle, and tendon in his body calling out for mercy. His clothes hung on him in tatters. His bloody knees and elbows shone where his sleeves and pants had been entirely ripped away. His lips were cut. One eye was swollen partly shut.

But he had one more man to see to.

Then he'd head for Diamondback to continue the investigation, though in his current condition the idea felt like an anvil on his shoulders. So far, he'd found out who'd killed the Bear-Runner family and why, but he had no idea who'd killed Sheriff Rainey, and that's what he'd been sent out here to find out in the first place.

It had to have been Richmond. Had to.

The battered lawman heaved a weary sigh as he stepped around the body of the man who'd dragged him half to death, and made his way down the gradual slope toward the creek and, he hoped, Mulligan.