Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats

by Tabor Evans

  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?”

  Silence.

  Longarm couldn’t help but allow himself a savage grin.

  “No, they didn’t get me!” he shouted, listening to his own echo vault around the canyon. “But I’ll be back to get the rest of you sons o’ bitches! And when I do, there’ll be hell to pay and no hot pitch!”

  Longarm wheeled and quickly climbed the ridge, chuckling savagely.

  Chapter 11

  Longarm didn’t think any of Drummond’s men were coming for him. When he’d climbed to the top of the ridge, he paused and stared out over the canyon.

  Nothing but silence. He could see the flickering lights of the cabin, and little else. The moon had risen higher, shifting shadows.

  Longarm looked down the slope to the right, where he’d left McIntyre and the rest of the posse. Only silence from that direction, too. An eerie, ominous silence like that in a graveyard at midnight.

  Longarm hated to leave the posse, but he had no choice. Drummond might figure on him returning for them. He’d likely have at least one, maybe two men picketed over the dead men. Longarm couldn’t take the chance. He’d camp a ways away from the canyon for the rest of the night and return the next morning to see to both the posse and Drummond’s bunch.

  Weariness was heavy inside him as he made his way back to where he and the others had tied their horses. He’d untied the sorrel and was about to step into the saddle when he stopped. He looked back toward the ridge.

  He couldn’t leave the posse without one more look and listen. One or two might still be alive . . .

  He retied his horse and walked back up to the ridge. He dropped to a knee just below the crest, doffed his hat to make himself a smaller target, and waited, staring into the valley that was dark save for the lights of the cabin. He looked down the ridge into the trees. No movement. No sound. Nothing.

  Drummond’s bunch had most likely made sure they’d killed all of the posse members before heading back to the cabin.

  Longarm leaned his rifle against his shoulder and raked a gloved hand through his ­close-­cropped hair. He set his hat on his head and rose. He’d started back down the slope toward the horses when brush crunched and crackled behind him. There was a thump and a groan.

  Longarm wheeled, quietly racking a round into the Winchester’s breech and aiming straight down the dark slope from his right hip. He scowled into the darkness, waiting for a gun flash. None came.

  Another groan. About thirty yards down the slope, at the edge of the pines, a shadow moved.

  Longarm walked slowly, cautiously back up to the ridge crest and down the other side, keeping the rifle aimed from his hip. The shadow was a man writhing on the ground at the edge of the trees, groaning. Longarm quickened his pace. He knelt down beside the man, who lay belly down, trying feebly to rise to his hands and knees.

  It was McIntyre. Longarm could see the man’s thick, ­gray-­blond hair and mustache, the lanky frame clad in dark trousers, cream shirt, and brown vest. Longarm grabbed his arm.

  “Thrum!”

  The man jerked his arm away with a start and lifted his ­fear-­sharp eyes to Longarm. He blinked, relaxed. “Custis,” he rasped.

  “How bad you hit?”

  McIntyre shook his head. In a pinched voice, he said, “Not as bad as the others.”

  With Longarm’s help, the sheriff rose to his knees and sat back on his heels. There was a dark stain low on his right side. The moonlight glistened in it. “I . . . I went back to fetch . . . medicine from my . . . saddlebags. I’d just started back when I heard the shooting.”

  The old lawman wagged his head. His breath rattled in his throat. “I ran down to try to stop ­it—­I figured it was a bushwhack. Drummond was holed up in the trees ­yonder—­waitin’ to dry gulch us. I went runnin’ down through the trees, yellin’ to warn the others. Several of Drummond’s men fired on me though I don’t think they ever saw me. When I took this here bullet, I hid amongst some rocks.”

  “Can you stand, Thrum?”

  Breathing hard, McIntyre nodded. He gave Longarm his arm, and the fe
deral lawman helped the man to his feet. The man’s knees wobbled. Longarm wrapped an arm around McIntyre’s waist and led him up and over the ridge, heading back in the direction of the horses.

  “Goddamn, ­low-­down, dirty, ­dry-­gulchin’ bastards!” McIntyre rasped. “They musta been waitin’ in the trees, snuck around behind us.” He looked at Longarm, showing his teeth beneath his thick, gray ­soup-­strainer mustache. “They just walked down there and executed those men. Ten of my ­friends—­all good ­businessmen—­from Arapaho! Just like they was shootin’ sick cattle, Custis!”

  “Easy, Thrum. Don’t talk. We gotta get you to a camp, warm fire, see about tendin’ that bullet hole.”

  “Fuck the bullet hole. They killed my boy! They just killed ten of Arapaho’s most prominent businessmen!”

  “Nothin’ we can do about it now, Thrum.” They were almost back to the horses shifting around in the darkness, the mounts’ eyes reflecting the moonlight. “Later . . . after we get that hole tended.”

  Longarm helped McIntyre onto his buckskin and then he untied the other horses so they could roam and forage. Some area rancher would likely add them to his remuda. Longarm swung up onto his sorrel’s back and, leading McIntyre’s horse by its reins, rode back down the trail.

  Some of the other horses followed as he cut off the trail and headed nearly straight west, toward a sloping, forested ridge. The shrubs and junipers around him were silvered by moonlight, revealing a deer path, which he followed to the edge of the trees and then up through the trees toward a relatively flat, ­rock-­rimmed shelf in the ridge wall.

  He decided the shelf would be a good place to camp, as the fire he’d build to get McIntyre warm and to brew coffee would be concealed by the heavy pine growth.

  When he’d helped the old lawman out of his saddle and had eased him onto the ground, he unsaddled the horses, gathered wood, and built a fire. He gave his bottle of rye to the sheriff and told him to take several good pulls. McIntyre did so, weakly, as he sagged back against a rock outcropping, cursing between breaths.

  By the light of the fire, Longarm opened his friend’s shirt and inspected the wound. The ­thumb-­sized hole was oozing thick, red blood that looked black in the darkness tempered by the fire’s low flames. The blood ran down the sheriff’s side, staining his cartridge belt, holster, and pants.