Longarm and the Wolf Women (22 page)

Stalling, Longarm glanced at Comanche John riding his dun behind them. “What'd they do to
you
, John?”

John removed his corncob pipe from his mouth, spat to one side, then returned the pipe to his teeth with disgust. “Just dressed my wound and let me sleep, goddamnit!” He stared at Longarm, narrowing his eye suspiciously. “
You?
”

Longarm hiked a shoulder and turned around, flushing slightly, letting his glance rake Merle riding to his left. “Same here . . . damnit . . .”

He booted the sorrel ahead and up a bald shoulder. At a narrow shelf, he dismounted and rummaged around in his saddlebags for his field glasses. He clambered up the side of a bluff, twisting around sunburned boulders and stunted shrubs, limping on his skinned and bruised feet, his headache returning as the whiskey wore off.

Near the crest of the bluff, he doffed his hat, then got down and crawled to within a foot of the crest.

As Merle and Comanche John climbed the slope behind him, Longarm glassed the funnel-shaped canyon below him, shielding the lenses with his hands.

On a shelf only about a hundred yards away, and about fifty yards below, stood a small log-and-stone cabin with woven pine branches forming the roof. The front of the shack faced down canyon, away from Longarm. The sun and the high-country winter had weathered it mercilessly. The logs were cracked and gray, the open shutters hanging askew, the tin chimney pipe jutting crookedly.

The hovel looked all the more stark for nothing but sunburned rocks and boulders lying around it. A wind-battered privy flanked the place. Constructed of slender, vertical pine logs, it leaned in the same direction the bristlecone pines leaned lower and farther down canyon—to the east.

Below the cabin, a mine portal shone in the canyon's right wall—a small, square opening flanked by a framework of peeled pine logs. Above the portal, Ute Mountain reached nearly straight up a good two thousand feet, the ragged, crenelated wall strewn with copper boulders of all shapes and sizes.

Longarm lowered the binoculars. At the mountain's base, and through the naked eye, the portal looked no bigger than a shoe box. Ute Peak cast it nearly entirely in shadow.

Another explosion sounded farther down canyon, the report echoing like a cannon blast. The two horses in the corral off the cabin's far side trotted around frantically, nickering and twitching their ears at the blast.

Longarm turned to Comanche John hunkered down on his left.

“Looks like Magnusson appropriated old Billy and Ralph Bailey's Ute Peak Mine.” John scowled. “I hadn't seen hide nor hair of either Billy or Ralph in nearly a year. Now, I reckon I know why . . .”

“Makes me a little sad I came when I did,” Merle quipped as she stared through Longarm's field glasses. “A little hard work might have done you boys some good.”

Longarm took the glasses away from her. “You're mouthy.”

She curled her lip. “I shoot good, too.”

“We'll check out the cabin first, then the canyon,” Longarm said, ignoring her. “I'm guessing all three are busting rock in the canyon, but I don't want any more surprises.”

“Remember the wolf,” Comanche John said. “That son of a bitch'll tear your throat out!”

When they'd retrieved their rifles and Longarm had returned his field glasses to his saddlebags, they tramped back up and over the ridge crest, spreading out to approach the cabin from the rear, hopscotching the flat boulders strewn down the bluff to within twenty yards of the privy.

Longarm walked farthest right, intending to check out the privy even though the front door hung open, its leather hinges squeaking faintly in the breeze. Merle walked twenty yards to his right, Comanche John another twenty beyond Merle.

Longarm was halfway between the butte crest and the privy when he heard something that wasn't the privy's squeaking hinges, his own footsteps, or the wind sifting over the hard, dry rocks. He stopped, whistled through his front teeth, and raised his left hand.

Merle stopped suddenly, then whistled to stop John who hadn't heard or seen Longarm's signals. Frozen on separate, wagon-sized boulders, Comanche John and Merle frowned at Longarm, holding their rifles up high across their chests.

The sound came again from the privy. A fart? Or was Longarm's battered head playing tricks on him?

Longarm signaled the other two to stay where they were. He leaped onto the next boulder four feet beyond, landing on the ball of his left foot. He continued forward, holding his rifle in his right hand, approaching the privy's sun- and wind-blistered rear wall. He leaped off the last boulder, stopped ten feet from the privy's left rear corner, and cocked his head to listen.

Hearing only the hinges squawking and the wind creaking the privy's pine frame, he continued forward, moving slowly, stepping lightly, aiming the Winchester straight out from his right hip. He could smell the sewage in the breeze blowing through the gaps between the slender pine poles. He walked along the privy's left side, stepping into the triangle of shade darkening the stones and red gravel.

A heavy-caliber rifle blasted.

Longarm winced and ducked as the ball carved the air three inches in front of his nose while wood slivers basted the right side of his face and his right shoulder. As the ball barked off a rock to his left, Longarm turned toward the privy, swinging his rifle at the smoking, silver dollar-sized hole blasted through the wall.

Before he could level his rifle, a huge body bolted through the wall. Split pine poles flew in every direction. In a bulky buffalo coat, wool shirt, and leather hat, and shielding his face with one raised arm and his Sharps rifle, Magnus Magnusson slammed into Longarm like a ton of gold ore.

Longarm triggered his rifle into what was left of the privy wall a half second before he hit the ground, Magnusson landing on top of him. The burly mountain man was raging like a lunatic in a blazing asylum, pounding Longarm's face with his forehead. Longarm tried to raise his rifle, but then remembered he'd already fired a shot, and he was in no position to work the cocking mechanism.

When Magnusson rose, grabbed a rock, then raised it with both hands above his head, intending to smash it down on Longarm, the lawman grabbed his pistol from his cross-draw holster, his hand moving automatically.

“Trespassin' on my fuckin'
territory
!” Magnusson roared, spittle flying from his mouth.

As he began slamming the rock toward Longarm's head, Longarm shoved his Colt's barrel into the man's bulging belly and fired. The man screamed like a poleaxed mule. Longarm twisted right as the rock slammed down where his head had been, the big mountain man sprawling on top of it, bellowing into the sand. Smoke and the fetid odor of burning flesh and wool wafted as the ground smothered the fire the shot had started on the man's shirt.

Rifles boomed behind Longarm.

Rolling out from under Magnusson, he turned to his left.

The wolf was bolting toward him from the cabin, snarling, its hackles raised, eyeing Longarm like supper. Merle and Comanche John were firing at the beast, but several boulders impeded their shots, the slugs tearing into the sand and rocks around the wolf's flying paws.

The wolf closed fast. It was within twenty yards when Longarm jacked a fresh shell into his rifle's breech, rose to one knee, and planted a bead on the thick, steel-blue fur of the animal's chest.

Two more slugs, fired from the direction of Comanche John and Merle, kicked up dust and gravel around the wolf's feet. Ignoring the shots, the snarling creature leaped toward Longarm, who squeezed the Winchester's trigger.

The wolf yipped shrilly as the slug slammed its left shoulder. Longarm threw himself right, rose to an elbow, and jacked another round. The wolf, growling and showing its teeth, had pushed off the ground and was wheeling again toward Longarm.

Longarm shot it two more times quickly, once through the middle of its chest, once through its head. The wolf flew back, twisting in the air, and fell in a heap.

Magnusson was still bellowing.

Longarm turned to the mountain man, who knelt holding one hand across his bloody belly while sliding a huge Bowie from his belt sheath. He'd barely gotten the knife raised to throw before Longarm drilled him once between the eyes, the slug jetting through his head to paint the sand behind him bright red.

He sagged straight back, eyes rolling back in his head, and lay still.

Longarm turned toward Merle walking toward him, angling her smoking rifle across her chest while Comanche John stood atop a boulder, staring cautiously out over the canyon south of the cabin.

“They dead?” Merle asked as she approached, raking her gaze between Magnusson and the bloody wolf.

“No thanks to you,” Longarm groused, pushing off his right knee. “I thought you could shoot.”

Merle opened her mouth to respond. Comanche John cut her off. “'Nuff snarlin', pups!” John was staring off down canyon. “The wolf women is headin' this way!”

Thumbing fresh shells into his rifle's loading gate, Longarm ran past the cabin. He stopped at the top of a low rise thirty yards before the shack and stared down canyon.

The wolf women were running toward him—fifty yards away and closing. A pack mule stood behind them, reins hanging, canvas packs bulging with what appeared to be raw ore.

The girls started up the gradual grade toward Longarm, hair bouncing wildly. The black-haired one held a rifle. A silver-plated pistol flashed in her sister's right hand.

The blonde looked up. Spying Longarm and Comanche John crouched atop a boulder to Longarm's left, she grabbed the black-haired girl's arm. They both stopped abruptly, moccasined feet sliding in the talus, hair falling over their shoulders and framing their dusty faces, their eyes glowing savagely.

They stared at him, shifting their eyes to John and Merle moving up from the cabin. Suddenly, the black-haired girl screamed like a she-lion, snapped her Spencer to her shoulder, and fired. The report boomed, echoing around the canyon, the slug whistling over Longarm's shoulder and blowing up rock behind him.

The girls wheeled, hair flying, and started running back the way they'd come. The mule brayed and fled past the mine portal.

“Hold it!” Longarm dropped to one knee and fired three shots at the fleeing girls' pounding feet.

Merle ran up beside him and raised her own Winchester. She snapped off two quick shots, then turned to rake a glowering stare between Comanche John and Longarm. “What—you two can't shoot
women
?”

Merle fired two more shots, the bullets spanging off boulders as the girls sprinted around a bend in the canyon, beyond the mine portal. “Well, I can!” Merle bolted forward, running down the grade after the wolf women.

Longarm glanced at Comanche John, who knelt atop the boulder, his Spencer's barrel resting on his left thigh. John hiked a shoulder and winced guiltily. “My trigger finger wouldn't move.”

Longarm cursed, ejected a spent shell, and ran after Merle, leaping rocks and mine tailings strewn from one side of the canyon to the other.

Rifle fire sounded ahead. Thirty yards down canyon and left, Merle was hunkered down behind a boulder. The wolf girls crouched behind an old, wheelless ore wagon ahead of Merle on the other side of the canyon, at the base of a rocky chute in the towering canyon wall.

Longarm ran toward a low, gravel mound in the canyon floor, where potentilla scrub protruded from upthrust rocks. Over the top of the wagon's weathered side panel, the dark-haired girl triggered another shot at Merle. Glimpsing Longarm from the corner of her eye, she swung the rifle toward him.

Smoke puffed around the barrel. Longarm winced as the slug nipped denim and skin from the side of his right knee. He dove forward, hit the ground, and crabbed up to the gravelly knoll, casting a glance through the potentilla scrub at the wagon.

Merle fired from around the boulder, the bullet chewing a divot from the side panel, the concussion making a hollow, wooden bark.

Both the black-haired girl and the blonde ducked out of sight.

Longarm heard Merle curse and fire again, the bullet sparking off the wagon's rusty rear axle.

The black-haired girl fired two more shots toward the Diamondback marshal, both slugs ricocheting off both sides of the long, V-shaped crack in the boulder.

As the black-haired girl swung her rifle toward Longarm, he triggered the Winchester. She grunted and jerked back, then ducked behind the wagon.

The blonde lifted her head above the side panel. Screaming like a witch loosed from hell, she extended the silver-plated pistol toward Longarm and fired, blinking with each shot, gritting her teeth.

The revolver slugs blew up dust a good two feet in front of Longarm's cover.

He and Merle cut loose with their Winchesters at the same time. After three shots, Longarm's rifle clicked empty. He ducked behind the knoll to pluck shells from his cartridge belt and feed them to the Winchester.

Merle fired several more shots; then, her own rifle apparently empty, she ducked back behind the boulder to reload. The black-haired girl swung her rifle toward Longarm, edged the barrel slightly to Longarm's left, and fired.

Behind Longarm, someone yelled, “
Fuck!
”

Longarm turned to see Comanche John clutching his right arm as he hobbled toward the lawman. Wincing and grunting, he dropped to his belly and doffed his hat angrily.

“Fuckin' bitches shot me
again
!”

“Ain't they a caution?”

“Shit, I could shoot 'em now!”

“Keep your head down!”