by Evans, Tabor
“Not gonna happen, Tate. I told you, I’m—”
“I don’t care who the hell you are. You could be ol’ Moses his ownself, fer all I care. All I know, we need someone to help out in our mine up yonder.” The big man glanced at the girl again. “And me an’ Dawg need a woman to cook an’ clean the cabin, and . . . uh, well, fer a few other things, too.” Again, he licked his lips.
Dawg screeched a laugh, showing all those stiletto-shaped, little, yellow teeth in his rotten, black-crusted gums. He jumped up and down on one foot, slapping his hands against his raised other thigh.
“Oh, God,” the girl yowled. “You’re both crazy!”
The little man gave another victorious whoop and lunged toward Miss Pritchard.
“Hold on!”
Longarm grabbed the man’s arm. At the same time, he closed his left hand around his pistol’s grips. He didn’t have the Colt half out of its holster before he saw the big man swing his rifle toward him. Longarm glimpsed the barrel arcing through the air over his head a half second before an aching numbness hammered through his right temple.
All went dark as his knees hit the ground.
Again, the girl screamed.
When the lawman opened his eyes again, he heard someone groan nearby. He blinked against the pain searing his skull and realized it had been himself who had groaned. His head ached miserably, and he had trouble drawing air into his lungs due in no small part to his current position—belly down across his saddle.
He was riding facedown, legs dangling down one side, arms down the other, across the claybank’s back. Automatically, he tried to straighten his own back, but he could only lift his arms a few inches. When he tried, he felt a tightening around his ankles.
He narrowed his pain-racked eyes to stare at his wrists, saw the rope binding them and snaking off beneath the clay’s belly. The other ends of the rope were obviously tied to his ankles on the other side of the gelding.
He looked to his right. Up past the clay’s head, the big man was riding a dun mule, his broad back facing Longarm. In his gloved right hand he held the claybank’s bridle reins. To his right, the little man rode a cream mule with a copper-spotted ass. He was leading the girl’s coyote dun, the girl sitting upright in the saddle, both her wrists tied to her saddle horn. She still had all her clothes on, and they looked intact, which meant she probably hadn’t been treated too badly.
Yet.
To the tails of his and the girl’s horses were tied the two spares he’d taken from the killers. A dead mule deer doe was tied over the back of the horse behind Longarm, which meant Tate and Dawg had likely been hunting for meat with which to fill their larder. The third, saddleless horse trotted along behind the group, eager-eyed, still desperate to not be left.
Longarm grunted as he tried to work his wrists free of the ropes. Miss Pritchard turned toward him. Her expression showed her relief that he was still alive and had regained consciousness. It was quickly replaced by a recriminating look before she turned her head back forward, jostling slightly with the sway of her horse.
Frustration bit hard at Longarm as he glanced at both the men ahead of him. Again, he tried to work his wrists free, and again he failed. They were tied good and tight. He turned his attention to his surroundings, wondering where in hell they were.
They seemed to be higher in the mountains now; crusty snow patches and half-melted drifts showed in the forest on the far side of the girl. They were moving along a narrow path through tall spruces and tamaracks from which moss swooped like fish netting. The cool air was rife with the aromatic smell of tree resin and the musk of forest duff.
Squirrels, chipmunks, and birds twittered and chattered around him, one particularly angry squirrel aggravating the throbbing pain in the lawman’s head. He gritted his teeth against it, then looked again at the big man leading his horse. From the man’s right coat pocket, the walnut grips of his .44 shone.
He glanced behind along the steep, rocky trail.
How far away was the Babe Younger bunch? Obviously, if the gang rode up on Longarm and the girl now, they’d be easy pickings. He felt the sting of the girl’s recent look. He’d been a fool for letting himself get taken down and hog-tied by these two cork-headed rock breakers. Somehow, he had to spring himself and the girl.
And he had to do it soon, before they made their plans for the girl come true . . .
They rode for another half hour before the trail flattened out and curved into a clearing abutted on the left by a monolithic chunk of weathered, gray granite that towered a thousand feet from the crown of the forested ridge, its jagged crest raking the clear, cerulean sky. A low-slung, brush-roofed log cabin sat near the base of the ridge. To its right lay a small stable and a pole corral. One mule stood inside the corral, hanging its head over the front gate, flicking its ears and braying as the newcomers moved toward it.
“Look what we got, Edgar!” yelled the little blond man to the mule. “A whole string of fine-lookin’ hosses, some rare female flesh, and a big fella to work the dig-gin’s fer us.” He grinned at his partner. “While me and Tate keep the girl busy. Ha! Ain’t that right, Tate?”
Both men wheezed with laughter.
As they approached the corral, Miss Pritchard gave Longarm a cold, pitiful look of bald condemnation. He looked at her from under his brows and then let his head sag back down against his stirrup fender, helpless as the proverbial fatted calf.
His and the girl’s captors halted their mules in front of the corral gate, and while Edgar and the mules the men were riding brayed raucous greetings, Tate and Dawg stepped down from their saddles.
Longarm seethed with fury but he kept his mouth shut, as well as his eyes, feigning unconsciousness, as the big man walked back to the claybank. He squatted down in front of Longarm.
“Hey, lawman,” he said. “You still awake?”
Longarm kept his eyes closed and his body slack.
“Ah, come on—I didn’t hit ya that hard!”
Chuckling, Tate stepped back and Longarm heard him slide a knife from a sheath. The man walked around to the other side of the horse and cut Longarm’s boots free of the ropes. The lawman slitted his eyes and lifted his head slightly, and watched the crazy blond gent walk over to Miss Pritchard’s horse and grin up at her.
He had a knife in his left hand. He set his right hand on her thigh, sort of rubbing it.
“Get your hand off me, you pig!” the girl cried.
“Don’t call me no names!” Dawg scolded, pointing an admonishing, gloved finger at her.
Behind Longarm, Tate slapped his rump. “Come on, lawdog. Come on down from there.”
Longarm kept his head down, his eyes closed.
As Dawg continued to reprimand Miss Pritchard while slicing through her ropes with his knife, Tate reached up the back of Longarm’s coat, grabbed the lawman by his waistband and cartridge belt, and tugged him down the horse’s left hip. Longarm rolled fluidly off the horse and hit the ground on his side, groaning now as he pretended to awaken from his stupor.
On the other side of his horse, Dawg chuckled lustily. The girl groaned and cried, and there were scuffling sounds. Suddenly, the girl’s protestations grew shrill.
“Dawg, damnit—can’t you wait till we get her inside?” Tate said.
The man hadn’t gotten the last word out of his mouth before Longarm, unable to contain his fury any longer, lifted his head and opened his eyes, scrambling to his feet. He bounded up off his heels and, putting his head down, bulled into Tate, who was half turned away from him, facing his scruffy partner and the girl.
Longarm rammed both shoulders into the man’s belly, just below the rifle he’d started swinging around, intending to smash it into Longarm’s head. Tate grunted as Longarm picked him up off his feet and drove him straight back into the ground so hard that he could hear the bones in the man’s back crack.
The Springfield barked, making Longarm’s ears ring. The bullet spanged shrilly off a nearby rock.
“Ohh!” Tate cried as thick blood burst from both nostrils.
“Hey, you dirty devil!” Dawg cried.
His boots thudded as he raced toward Longarm.
The lawman winced, knowing his mistake. He might have put Tate out of commission, but Dawg had him dead to rights. He felt the hair on the back of his head prickle as he waited for the imminent bullet.
Chapter 12
“No!” Miss Pritchard shrieked.
Dawg’s Spencer carbine popped behind Longarm. The slug tore a chunk of hard, high-country sod out of the ground to his left.
Dawg screamed, and there was the sharp smack of a gloved hand against flesh. Longarm saw Dawg’s shadow move on the ground as he heard the wicked rasp of a cocking lever. He rolled to one side pulling the groaning, bleeding Tate on top of him for a shield.
Smoke and flames stabbed from Dawg’s old rifle.
Longarm felt Tate’s body convulse as the slug plowed into the big man’s chest and exited under his arm, spitting blood into the short, wiry grass beside him. Using both his hands, Longarm dug into the jerking Tate’s coat pocket and pulled out his pistol, cocking the hammer back. As Dawg mewled and danced around, staring in wide-eyed shock at his dying partner sprawled back down atop Longarm, the lawman managed to slide out from beneath the big man just far enough to raise the pistol, draw a bead on Dawg, and squeeze the trigger.
The gun roared.
Dawg’s lower jaw dropped nearly to his chest as the bullet punched through his brisket, lifting him six inches off the ground and throwing him straight back against Miss Pritchard’s coyote dun. The horse sidestepped and whinnied. As Dawg fell to the ground, the horse kicked the crazy blond mountain man in the head with a solid thump.
Dawg rolled onto his side and jerked, kicking his feet like a child having a bitter tantrum, as he died.
Longarm kicked the legs of the dead Tate off of him and rose to his knees. The girl sat back on her heels. She stared at Longarm through the screen of her badly mussed hair. Even through the screen, Longarm could see the blush on her cheek where Dawg had smacked her.
“Are they dead?”
Longarm was breathing heavily as he looked from the big man to Dawg. “Yeah.”
He shook his head. The struggle had stirred up the throbbing in his brain plate. He closed his eyes and tried to repress the pain; he had work to do and nearly an entire gang of cutthroats to worry about.
When he opened his eyes again, the girl stood before him, staring up at him, deep lines cutting across her wind-burned forehead. “You look awful.”
“I’ll be fine in a minute.”
“I bet that ride belly down across your saddle didn’t do your head any good, did it?” She stepped around beside him, looking at the back of his head. “You got a nice goose egg there. And a gash. We’ll need to get that cleaned up.”
“More important things to do first.”
Longarm walked over to where the big man lay, and with both his tied hands, lifted the man’s coat above his cartridge belt from which a sheathed bowie dangled. The girl came over, crouched beside him, and slid the knife from the sheath. Longarm looked at her as, silently, chin down, she carefully sawed the blade through the rope holding his wrists together. The last strand was cut away, and Longarm drew his hands apart and flung away the rope scraps.
“How’re you doing?” he asked her.
She drew a deep breath, tossed her hair back away from her face, revealing the sunset-red cheek, and glanced fatefully at the cabin sitting beside the corral, at the base of the monolith-capped ridge. “I reckon I could be worse.”
“I reckon we both could.”
“What now?”
Longarm straightened and looked around, getting the lay of the place. “I reckon we’re about as far up the pass as I intended. Hard way to do it, but we made it. Might as well hole up here.”
“Suppose they track us?”
“The trail’s too rocky. Only an Injun could track us up that trace. Oh, they’ll find us if they want to bad enough.” Longarm stared across the clearing, at where the trail angled in through the forest. “I’m guessing they’ll give up by tonight, and start heading down to the low country. Why don’t you go on inside and start a fire for coffee? I’ll take care of these two and haul our gear in, cut up the deer.”
She frowned. “Your head must hurt.”
“No more than my pride.” Longarm gave a rueful snort, embarrassed about having been taken down by the two rock breakers driven loco by too many lonely winters up here, with nobody but their mules for company.
“I guess I could do that.”
When she’d walked over to the cabin, opened the stout timbered door, and disappeared inside, Longarm rubbed the goose egg at the back of his head, then opened the corral gate. He led all the animals inside and unsaddled them, hanging the dressed-out deer from a rope inside the open, lean-to shed on the corral side of the stable, where, judging from the blood on the straw-flecked, hard-packed ground, other such game had been suspended for butchering.
He considered what to do with the two dead men. They could wait. He was too worn out to haul them off until he’d rested and had had a few nips from his bottle. He found a knife amongst the miners’ gear in the stable and hacked a haunch off the doe and wrapped it in a burlap feed sack. Hauling it with his saddlebags to the cabin, he looked again toward the south, where the gap in the forest showed where the trail came in.
No movement out that way. No sounds whatever except for birds and tree boughs bending in the breeze. Tate had rung his bell, so he couldn’t really trust his judgment until he’d had a few drinks and some food, but he was pretty sure he and the girl were safe here. If the killers found the canyon in which Tate and Dawg had accosted Longarm and the girl, they’d be confused by the extra sets of shod hoofprints, if they could find any amongst the rocks. They might be thrown off the trail altogether.
All Longarm probably had to do now was hole up a few days and make certain that Babe Younger’s brigands had gone back to where they’d come from.
The cabin door opened. A cloud of dust and airtight tins flew out the opening, and Longarm heard the snick-snicks of a broom inside. He set the meat and the saddlebags down and, as the sounds of sweeping continued, fetched the rest of his and the girl’s gear from the stable. As he approached the cabin again, the girl came out behind another cloud of dust and tins and what appeared a dead mouse, and blew a lock of hair from her eyes.
“It’s like a bear den in there.” She continued sweeping the refuse out away from the cabin and into the yard. “Go on inside. I have coffee boiling.”
“I brought meat.”
“Good—I’m hungry. I’ll fry us up a couple of steaks.”
Longarm looked her over skeptically, vaguely wondering where the frightened, hysterical girl had gone, and where this stalwart homemaker had come from. He grabbed his rifle and the burlap sack with the venison and headed inside, setting both on the table before fetching the rest of the gear inside, as well.
He set his pistol on the table, intending to clean it, and glanced around the shack. It looked tight and sturdy enough. A big fireplace abutted the far right wall. There was a small iron range against the back wall, behind the table of halved pine timbers and chairs crudely constructed from pine logs and braided rawhide.
To the left were two good-sized cots covered with various animal skins. More hides and deer and elk antlers tacked to the walls served as the only decorations. There were no rugs on the knotted puncheon floor badly scuffed and scraped by hobnailed boots. There were a dozen or so shelves built from more halved pine timbers, and they bowed under the weight of an incredible clutter—everything from assaying scales and cyanide bottles to mouse traps and curry combs.
Cobwebbed and molding harnesses hung from
spikes. There was a rusty hurricane lamp on the four-by-four center post and, besides a few candles in airtight tins, that appeared all that Longarm and the girl would have for light once the sun had set.
The table was covered with tin cups, plates, food scraps, empty shell casings, ashtrays overflowing with cigar and cigarette butts. As Longarm stood looking around the place, the girl came back inside and cleared the table with two efficient sweeps of her broom, and swept it all out the door and into the yard.
“There.”
“You been right busy.”
“Coffee?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
She leaned the broom against the wall behind the door, where a pick leaned behind several fur coats, then walked over to the range where a black kettle bubbled, sending the smell of coffee into the room that otherwise reeked, as the girl had described the place, of a bear’s den. “Have a seat.”
Longarm dug his bottle out of his saddlebags and sat down in the chair. He looked across at the girl, who was filling two tin cups with the piping hot brew from the pot. He wasn’t sure he should mention it, somehow corrupt it, so he said haltingly, “You . . . seem, uh . . . different.”
She set his cup on the table in front of him, set hers on the table’s other side. “You mean, I’m no longer screaming?”
Longarm popped the cork on his bottle, splashed some of the tanglefoot into his coffee. “Something like that.”
“I don’t know what happened,” she said, standing and looking down at her cup. “I guess I got tired of being scared. Didn’t seem to be working. It was just after those two savages grabbed me.”
She jerked her chin toward the open door, toward where Tate and Dawg lay in the grass fronting the corral. “After they hit you, and I thought you were dead until you started groaning as they loaded you onto your horse.”
She continued to stare down at her steaming cup. Glancing up at him thoughtfully, she said, “I guess you set a good example, Deputy. You back down to no one, do you? Not even a whole gang of killers. I guess if I were you, I’d have left me where you found me and rode away.”