by Evans, Tabor
He lay still on the ground damp from his own piss—instantly dead of a broken neck.
One of the other two men stirred behind him, rasping, “What the hell was that?”
Chapter 10
Longarm grabbed the bowie knife from the dead man’s belt sheath, whipped around, and saw one of the other two men by the fire reaching for his rifle. The lawman bounded forward, past the tree, and flipped the blade by the end of its staghorn handle. Longarm hadn’t thrown a knife in a month of Sundays, but it was an automatic maneuver, and the knife flashed end over end through the tops of the dancing flames.
There was a thumping crunch.
The man on the other side of the fire wheezed and dropped the rifle as he looked down at the knife handle sticking out of his chest. Longarm didn’t wait to see the effects of his throw. The third killer, who lay to the far left side of the fire, had just lifted his head and was blinking his eyes. As he rose onto his arms, Longarm strode the last few feet. The man’s eyes widened when he saw the big man lunging toward him. Before he could even begin to reach for his rifle leaning against his saddle, Longarm swung his Winchester like a club. It smashed against the side of the man’s head with the sound of a branch breaking, crushing his skull.
The man whipped over onto his side and jerked as the life sputtered from his badly damaged brain.
Longarm slipped into the shadows just beyond the fire and dropped to a knee, looking around and listening for any possible pickets running back to see what all the commotion had been about. There were no sounds at all—not even the distant yips of a coyote or the screech of a hunting nighthawk. Even the horses that had been picketed beyond the fire stood still, all three looking toward Longarm, their eyes dully reflecting the fire’s glow.
One stomped, then stretched its neck to nibble something from its hip. Longarm almost snorted at the horses’ lack of concern for their dead owners.
He remained there on one knee, looking around, wanting to be certain he was alone out here before stepping back into the firelight where he’d be easy pickings with a rifle. Finally, he depressed the Winchester’s hammer, returned to the fire, and kicked dirt on it, dousing it almost instantly, leaving only the wood glowing like volcanic rock to offer what little light he needed.
Quickly, wasting no movement—he wanted to get back to the girl as fast as possible—he saddled two of the dead killers’ horses, setting the third one free of its picket line. He took one Winchester and a Colt .44 with handsomely carved peachwood grips and plundered a set of saddlebags for a spare box of .44 rifle rounds. With ten men on his trail, he could use all the extra firepower he could carry and still be relatively light on his feet.
Also amongst the men’s gear he found spare, relatively clean clothing for the girl, a food bag containing a field-dressed jackrabbit and a burlap pouch of pinto beans. He stowed the duds, food, and ammo in one pair of saddlebags, draped the bags over one of the two horses he intended to steal—a mouse-brown dun with a four-pointed star on its face—and rode out away from the camp, leading the second horse by its reins. As he’d expected the third horse followed, unwilling to be left behind.
To keep the noise down, knowing how far sound carried in the mountains at night, he walked the horses back into the narrow canyon in which his fire still burned, albeit much lower than before, just a few small flames licking at the charred branches in the fire ring. As he passed the bivouac, he saw the girl’s blond head lift from her saddle. She made a startled sound, and Longarm called to her, “All’s well. Custis Long here with a few more horses to add to our cavvy.”
He chuckled, not so much out of his finding humor in the situation but because his blood was up. Three men down.
Ten to go . . .
The next morning he got Miss Pritchard to eat a few bites of the rabbit he cooked on a spit he’d fashioned from two green willow branches. She accepted the cup of smoking coffee he gave her and watched him with mute interest for a time as they both ate.
Then she asked, canting her head up the narrow notch toward the five horses tied to his picket line, “So . . . where’d the three horses come from? Did you find a ranch out here?”
“Not exactly.” Longarm bit off a hunk of the stringy but flavorful rabbit and chewed.
She swallowed a bite of the meat, blew ripples on her coffee, and took a small sip. “Not exactly . . .”
“Found three of the Younger gang camped out yonder, in the big canyon.”
She stared at him over the steaming cup of coffee. It was false dawn, the hollow still filled with heavy shadows. It was as cold as it had been a few hours ago, but it would warm up fast as the sun climbed. Nearby, an owl hooted.
“And you . . . ?”
“Let’s just say they’ve harassed their last murder witness.” He thought of young Leroy Panabaker, and ground his jaws. “And burned their last town.”
She stared at him, lips parted. Longarm grabbed the coat he’d taken from the killers’ camp. In it, he’d wrapped some extra clothes. He tossed it across the fire to the girl. “There you go. Put those on. Keep you from catchin’ a chill up on the high divide.”
She looked at the bundle in front of her, then wrinkled a brow at Longarm. “High divide?”
“That’s where we’re headin’.”
“I thought I was going home.”
Longarm shook his head as he chewed. “They’ll be expecting us to head down the watersheds to Pinecone. We’re gonna do the opposite.” He jerked a thumb at the gradually lightening sky. “We’re heading up. Don’t worry—it won’t be for long. I figure they’ll get bored with this vengeance quest of theirs. I’m sure Babe was a right good leader, but I figure they’re mostly out here to terrorize you and anyone associated with you mainly for kicks and giggles. They burned the town, or part of the town, for the same reason. And meanness, of course. They’re a nasty bunch. But they’ll get bored out here after a couple of days, and head on back to Utah or wherever the hell they’re from, find someone else to bother until I can throw a loop around ’em.”
“What if they don’t get bored, Deputy Long? What happens if they keep coming after us? I find your having taken down those three last night right admirable. Damned impressive, even. But do you actually think, if we can’t outrun them, that you can kill them all?”
Longarm hiked a shoulder. “I reckon we’ll have to see.” He bit the last bit of rabbit meat off the leg bone and jerked his head toward the rocks rising on his left, near where the horses waited, swishing their tails. “Go on and put them duds on. Gonna get cold where we’re goin’, Miss Pritchard.”
She gave a frustrated snort and looked at him pointedly. “My mother and father are going to be very worried about me. Especially after they hear what happened to the town of Snow Mound.”
“Then they’ll be all the more relieved when they finally see you walk through the front door again.” He narrowed an eye at her. “That’s all I’m tryin’ to do, Miss Pritchard. Get you home safe and sound.” He decided to play a card he’d hoped he could keep in his sleeve. “You wouldn’t want us to lead that gang of town burners back to your hometown, would you? Maybe even to your folks’ front door?”
She considered this, folding her upper lip over the brim of her coffee cup. Finally, with a fateful sigh, she set the cup down and picked up the bundle. She untied the sleeves of the buckskin mackinaw, making a face. “Smells like sweat,” she sniped, then opened the coat and picked up the blue jeans. “Too long.” She draped the jeans over her knee and picked up the plaid flannel shirt. “Way too big.”
“The sleeves and cuffs you can roll up. I threw a rope in there—you can use that to keep your pants on. There’s gloves there, too. Even some extra wool socks.”
“Thought of everything didn’t you?” she said coolly.
Longarm hiked a shoulder.
She pressed her lips together and shot him a snide look. “I suppose you’d like to put them on me, too?”
“You’re a big girl. I figure yo
u can dress yourself.”
“I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at me.”
“Now, I can’t help that, can I? You’re damn nice to look at.”
“You’re a big, lusty man—aren’t you, Deputy Long? I suppose there wouldn’t be anything to stop you from having your way with me out here. There wouldn’t be much I could do. Would there?”
“Nope.” Longarm threw the last of his coffee back. “There’d probably be damn little you could do, except maybe kick and scream. But if I wanted to take you, I’d take you.”
He ridged a brow and narrowed an eye at her. “Now, I don’t mind you assuming the worst from me. I figure your experience with rough men has allowed you that. And make no mistake, I am a rough man. But I’m one of the ruffians on your side, and if you can’t see that, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
He glanced at the sky. “The sun’s gonna be up soon, and we need to get our tails on the trail. So, if you don’t go back behind those rocks and put those clothes on real quick-like, I will put them on you myself and throw your pretty little ass into the saddle.”
He stood and kicked dirt and rocks on the fire. “And, yes, I’d probably enjoy it!”
She gasped, picked up the clothes, clutching them and the coat to her breasts, and glaring at him over her shoulder, walked haughtily off into the rocks.
“Women!” Longarm raked out to himself as he began rolling up blankets and gathering gear. “Try to save their damn hides and they think you only want a piece of ’em . . .”
While he worked he glimpsed her head moving around behind the rocks as she dressed, tossing her hair across her naked shoulders. She met his glance once with a cool, defiant one of her own.
When he’d gathered up both of their saddles and saddle blankets, he walked past the rocks behind which she was dressing. She gasped, and out the corner of his eye he saw her clutch the coat to herself even though she was wearing the oversized shirt he’d brought her.
“Don’t worry—I’m not after your precious body,” he groused and continued over to the horses. He couldn’t help adding as he threw the blanket over the coyote dun’s back, “Not yet, anyways. Maybe I’ll be requirin’ payment a little later on.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it a bit,” she said, throwing her hair out from the collar of the big mackinaw.
When he’d helped her into her saddle, neither meeting the other’s gaze, he stepped into his own saddle and led the string down the narrow gorge and into the broader canyon beyond. He checked both ways carefully, to make sure no riders were about, then reined the claybank eastward along the valley, in the opposite direction from the camp in which the dead men lay, likely just now being pecked by crows and mountain jays.
As the sun rose, Longarm led the way along the valley until it intersected with another, then followed the other on a generally northward course, heading for a snow-mantled pass looming far above and ahead, at the top of a ridge cloaked in deep runnels, boulders, and clumps of pines and aspens that showed a lighter green than the conifers.
That was Grizzly Ridge—a famous landmark in this neck of the Colorado Rockies. A little mining town lay far down the other side—at least, there had been a town there when he’d passed north of the ridge a couple years ago—so there was a likely a way up and over the pass from here, or a canyon that led through it, though a quick perusal of his government survey maps showed none.
That was all right. If it was easy for him, it would be easy for the Babe Younger bunch. After a slow, careful look around while he and the girl paused to make coffee and rest the horses, he decided there was no better, wilder area in which to lose his pursuers.
Likely, they’d find the dead men soon, if they hadn’t already. They’d be on his and the girl’s trail within a couple of hours.
The sun was full up when Longarm discovered a notch in the side of Grizzly Ridge. It appeared little more than a vertical line sheathed in aspens, birches, and large boulders. But as he and the girl approached the bottom of the ridge two hours later, he saw that the crease was indeed the mouth of a winding canyon through which two small streams frothed down the canyon’s steeply pitched floor, at the base of both steep walls.
“We’ll rest and switch horses here,” Longarm said, stepping down from his saddle.
“Do you ever get tired of giving orders?” Miss Pritchard asked grouchily as she walked her own mount up next to his, leading the spare by its bridle reins. The third dead killer’s horse was still trailing them, afraid to be left behind, which was all right with Longarm. The spare was keeping up, staying close; he and the girl might need the rangy cream in a pinch.
Longarm looked at the girl. She looked wind- and sunburned, and her hair was a mess. A pretty mess, but a mess just the same. He didn’t blame her for being in a bad mood, and he felt a little guilty for being hard on her before, so he merely said, “I’ll take a look around, make sure no one’s close.”
“You do that.”
When he returned twenty minutes later, he was surprised to see that she’d built a fire and set coffee to boil. She’d also laid out a small pouch of jerky and some leftover rabbit. She sat back against a rock, her knees up, nibbling the jerky and sipping from a steaming tin cup.
Longarm walked over and squatted beside the fire. She’d set a cup out for him. He glanced at her. She looked away as she chewed, pointedly ignoring him. He picked up the cup as well as a leather swatch and reached for the coffeepot.
He’d only just touched the handle when a shot sounded—sharp and flat, like a slap against the sky.
The slug tore the coffeepot out of Longarm’s hands with an angry clang. The girl screamed.
Chapter 11
Longarm snaked his right hand across his belly for his Colt.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
The man’s voice came from behind him. As Longarm’s hand froze on the polished walnut grips of his .44, he glanced over his right shoulder.
Two men were crouched amongst the rocks about twenty feet up the opposite ridge. Both were bearded and clad in animal furs and skins. One had his Springfield rifle aimed at Longarm. The other, crouched behind a small, square boulder, was grinning idiotically at the girl.
“You bring your pistol up, hoss, I’m gonna have to shoot you,” warned the man with the aimed Springfield, in a thick southern accent.
Miss Pritchard sat across the fire from Longarm. She’d dropped her coffee cup between her legs and now sat with her hands on the ground to either side of her, back ramrod straight. She stared toward the interlopers with her lower jaw hanging, chest rising and falling sharply behind her bulky mackinaw.
“Easy,” Longarm told her. “No sudden moves.”
“Oh, God . . .” she groaned, as though at the end of her tether.
Longarm straightened and, lifting his hands to his shoulders, palms out, turned slowly toward the two men, both of whom were now carefully making their way down the steep ridge. The man with the rifle—tall and black-bearded and with a weird cast to his right eye—kept the rifle aimed at Longarm as he followed the shorter, quicker man down the ridge.
The little, grinning blond man, who also had a Spencer in his arms though he seemed too preoccupied with the girl to aim it at Longarm, gained the canyon floor first and came stumbling toward the fire. The other man said something too quietly for Longarm to hear, and the little man slowed his shambling pace, moving more consciously as he approached but his light blue eyes holding steady on the girl, lips stretched back from pointed, yellow teeth in a chilling leer.
“Oh, God, oh, God,” the girl gasped.
“Shhh.” To the men, Longarm said, “I’d offer you a cup of coffee, but you done shot a hole in the pot.” He smiled.
The little man stopped about ten feet in front of Longarm and slightly to Longarm’s left, regarding the girl like a dog slathering at a bone. The other man came up behind him and stepped to one side. The reason his eye had looked odd from a distance, Longarm saw, was that it was a milky col
or, probably blind. The knife scar through the brow above it and edging into the cheekbone below it explained the nature of the malady.
Mountain men, possibly prospectors, Longarm thought. They had that wild, paranoid look customary of both occupations. While he was somewhat relieved they were obviously not part of the Babe Younger’s vengeance-hungry killers, his relief was tempered by the savagery and depravity in both men’s eyes. The little man had an added edge of lunacy.
“That’s all right,” the big man said, his one good eye on Longarm, “we had some dandelion earlier.”
“Dandelion’s all right in a pinch,” Longarm said. “Personally, I prefer Arbuckles.”
“She’s purty,” said the little blond man, raking his eyes away from Miss Pritchard to grin at the big man to his left.
“Leave her alone here for now, Dawg.” To Longarm, the big man said, “What the hell you doin’ here? Hardly no one knows about this canyon. This is our canyon—Dawg’s and mine.”
“We’re not here to jump your claim,” Longarm said. “I’m a federal lawman. I’ll show you my badge as long as you don’t get jumpy about where I put my hands. The girl’s a witness to a murder. We’re on the run from the Babe Younger gang.”
“Never heard of no Babe Younger.”
“Don’t doubt it a bit.”
The little man said, “Can I have her, Tate?”
The big man looked at Miss Pritchard sitting, horrified, on the other side of the fire. He let his eyes roam across the girl—eyes that had likely not seen a woman in months, maybe years, let alone one as comely as Miss Pritchard even in her bulky, cold-weather attire.
“Yeah, you can have her, Dawg. We can both have her. But not yet.” He returned his look to Longarm and licked his lips. “Mister, you turn around and get down on your hands and knees.”
Longarm shook his head.
“You hear me?” the big man raged, aiming his rifle at Longarm’s head.