by Tabor Evans
“She’ll be all right. She’s a lot like you.”
“How’s that?”
“She’s got sand. When I found her she’d just popped a couple of pills into Colt Drummond’s belly.”
Cynthia sighed and nodded as she looked toward Casey. “She told me all about it.”
“Everything?”
Cynthia looked at Longarm. “Everything.”
Longarm reached for the coffeepot. “Another cup?”
She shook her head. “Just the whiskey, if there’s enough.”
“There’s enough,” Longarm said, grabbing his bottle. “Thrum has a bottle in his saddlebags.”
“Where is the sheriff?”
“Dead.”
Cynthia sucked her cheeks in and looked down at her cup as Longarm poured whiskey into it. “So many killed. When will it stop?”
“When Drummond’s bunch is all dead.”
Cynthia sipped her whiskey and leaned her head on Longarm’s shoulder. “You’re not going after them alone, now, are you? There’s no point now that we have Casey back.”
“They’re wolves with blood-washed fangs. If they’re not stopped, they’ll keep on killing. But I don’t think I’m going to need to go after them.”
She set her hand on his thigh, slid her cheek around on his shoulder. “How’s that?”
“They’ll be comin’ after us. Matter of pride, if for no other reason.”
“I had a feeling that’s what you were going to say.”
“We’ll head on out of here at first wash of dawn. Travel the backcountry. If the gang starts to pull close, I’ll send you and Casey ahead and try to lead them off your trail, set up a bushwhack somewhere.”
Cynthia glanced at the starry sky. “We don’t have much time, then.”
“No.” Longarm pulled her close and kissed her forehead. “You’d better get some sleep. I’m gonna stay awake, keep an eye and an ear skinned.”
Cynthia slid her hand inside his thigh until her fingertips burned like lanterns against his crotch. “I had something else in mind.”
“Gotta keep my head clear.”
“Me, too.” She smiled up at him as she unbuttoned his fly. “Won’t take long. Just want to show my appreciation for saving my friend . . . as well as myself.”
“Cynthia, Christ,” he whispered, his heart thumping with desire as well as anxiety. He could feel her hands burning into his crotch as she finagled the buttons. He turned to gaze off down canyon, making sure an attack wasn’t imminent.
He doubted that the gang would come tonight and risk getting themselves ambushed in the darkness for the trouble. If they did, Longarm was confident the horses would alert him, as they had to Cynthia’s approach.
He sucked a breath when she reached through his open fly and into his balbriggans and wrapped a hand around his half-hard dong. She squirmed against him as she gently pulled it out of his pants and caressed it gently. It nodded its head, attentive to the girl’s ministrations, and stood up straight and tall.
Longarm glanced across the fire toward where Casey lay on her side, nearly covered by Longarm’s spare blanket. Her eyes glittered for just a second, and he canted his head and frowned over the shifting flames. He was sure that her eyes were closed now, but had they been open a second ago?
What else would have caused them to glitter like that?
“This ain’t exactly . . . um . . . private,” Longarm told Cynthia.
But then she lowered her head and dropped her hot mouth over the swollen head of his iron-hard organ, and he ceased to care about anything except for the playful proddings of the heiress’s tongue.
“Christ,” he grunted, leaning back against his saddle and extending his legs straight out in front of him.
Cynthia lifted her mouth from his cock and swallowed. “You like?”
“Jesus.”
She placed one hand around the base of his organ and held it steady while she lapped it like a heifer on a salt block. Longarm glanced once more at Casey.
The girl appeared to be sleeping. He must have only imagined that her eyes had been open. Now, as Cynthia twirled her tongue around on the tip of his bulging head, he closed his eyes and ground his heels into the dirt in front of the fire ring.
Cynthia slid her mouth down on him until he could feel her tonsils expanding and contracting against the head of his swollen mast. She gave a little gag and then lifted her mouth. She lowered it again, lifted it, gradually increasing her pace until the warm tingling spread upward from his crotch and into his belly and chest.
His throat constricted.
He ground his heels deeper into the dirt, tipped his head far back until his hat tumbled onto his saddle, and he cut loose with a groan that he tried like hell to stifle.
His seed geysered up out of his cock and down the girl’s throat. She kept sucking, choking, sucking, gagging until she couldn’t swallow any more of it, and then she lifted her head and pumped him with both hands.
The pearl fluid continued to ooze up over the head and down onto her hands. It crackled as she massaged him, her hands gradually moving slower and slower until she finally withdrew them and touched a finger to her lip and sucked it.
“You taste good,” she said.
Longarm opened his eyes. He frowned suspiciously when he caught that glitter of reflected light again on the other side of the fire. But when he studied Casey more closely, he saw that her eyes were closed.
He was so spent and sated that he no longer much cared.
Cynthia rose. “Shall we pay a little visit to the creek?” she asked.
Longarm swallowed the knot in his throat and caught his breath. He shoved his dwindling member back inside his pants and buttoned up. “Reckon we’d better,” he said and rose.
When Cynthia had rolled up in her blankets beside Casey, Longarm added another small log to the fire, keeping the flames about the size of a small afternoon coffee fire, and picked up his rifle. He lifted the collar of his frock coat against the mountain chill and walked back down the canyon.
He hunkered down in a nest of some rocks at the intersection of the two canyons and kept watch for about an hour. The only movement was the fluttering of the leaves, sage, and grass in the occasional breeze, the infrequent flicking past of a hunting night bird, and the steady, gradual sliding of the stars across the firmament.
Unable to keep his eyes open any longer, he dozed, resting his head back against the rock behind him. Something woke him so that he was instantly awake, shoving his hat brim up off his forehead and looking around.
He could tell by the dimming of the stars that it was false dawn. Birds were singing and fluttering in the aspens on the other side of the main canyon to his left. Straight ahead of him, down the west canyon, there was the high clack of a shod hoof striking a stone.
Then he could hear the thuds of more horses heading toward him. He frowned, staring into the misty shadows between canyon walls. Silhouettes shifted, jostled, bounced as the riders—a whole pack of them—moved toward him.
The group kept coming until the shadows separated and became individual horses and riders. The men were not talking but were riding in grim silence, leaning out from their horses to scour the canyon floor with their eyes.
Longarm hunkered lower in his stone nest, resting his rifle across his thighs. Very slowly, gritting his teeth, he pumped a fresh cartridge into the chamber. He slid his head to the left, edging a look around the rock in front of him, and then it drew it back behind the rock.
The riders were within fifty yards and approaching at a fast walk. Longarm’s heartbeat quickened.
If the gang discovered his trail leading into the side canyon, he’d have to open up on them. It was hard to tell in the morning shadows, but he thought there were ten or twelve of them. He’d thinned their ranks considerably the n
ight before, killing a few and wounding others, but the gang was still of formidable size.
He couldn’t get them all here—not with a nine-shot Winchester, a six-shot Colt revolver, and the two-shot derringer stuffed into a vest pocket and attached to his old Ingersoll by a gold-washed chain. But if they started up the side canyon in which the two women lay asleep, he’d have to give the gang all he had.
He listened to the loudening clacks and thuds of the horses. He heard the squawk of leather and the rattle of bridle chains and bits. A horse nickered softly.
Now he could smell the horses, hear one of the riders cough. Another grunted.
Then the gang was beside him, moving off behind him on his left. His heartbeat picked up its pace. If they’d seen the mouth of the side canyon, they were not heading into it!
He turned his head slightly left to see the group riding past his position—all holding rifles. One of the men at the front of the group said quietly, “How you holdin’ up, Colt?”
Longarm beetled his brows. Colt? He’d thought that Casey’s bullet would have sent the man to his reward . . .
“Doin’ all right, Dusty,” Colt Drummond said in a low, raspy voice. “Doin’ all right. Bullet must have just skidded off a rib. The second one just burned my other side. I’ll be all right.”
“Be even better once we find the girl and the son of a bitch who helped her, eh, Boss?” asked one of the men riding behind Colt Drummond, who was one of the two lead riders.
“You got that right, Skinny,” Drummond said, his voice dwindling now with distance as the gang rode on up the canyon, hooves clacking and thudding. “When I see her again, she’s gonna be a long time dyin’. A long time dyin’, a long time screamin’ . . .”
When they were out of sight, Longarm worked his way out of his nest of rocks and ran up the canyon. The fire was out, the young women still curled up in their blankets to one side of it.
Longarm reached down and grabbed the arms of each, and both gasped with starts as he said, “Sorry, ladies, but it’s time to pull our picket pins.”
“What’s happened?” Casey said, sitting up and sliding her tangled blond hair from her eyes.
“Drummond’s on the move,” Longarm said, grabbing his saddle blanket and saddle and hauling both over to his horse picketed nearby.
“Drummond?” Casey was incredulous. “You mean Drummond’s men.”
“No, I mean Drummond. He’s still kickin’. Prob’ly not so high, but he’s kickin’, just the same!”
“Damn!” Casey intoned, slamming her fists against her thighs. “I should have pumped one more bullet into that bastard’s bread basket!”
“That’s all right,” Cynthia said, quickly gaining her feet and grabbing her boots. “We’ll get him.”
Longarm tossed his saddle blanket up over the sorrel’s back. “We? I don’t think . . .”
“Yes, we,” Casey said, sitting down on the same rock as Cynthia, both women grunting softly as they pulled on their boots. “I want a hand in his killing. In the killing of all of them.”
Longarm opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off with, “I appreciate your saving my life back there, Longarm. But you’re not going to stop me from going after that bunch, same as you. Drummond and his cutthroats have taken too much away from me. The only thing I have left to lose is my life, and right now, without the man I love in it anymore, my life doesn’t look like much at all.”
Longarm glanced at Cynthia, who returned his look with a determined one of her own as she pulled on her second boot. The lawman merely shook his head and grunted as he continued saddling his horse.
When he was finished rigging the sorrel, he helped the women saddle their own mounts. He’d just helped Casey onto the back of McIntyre’s buckskin when the sorrel jerked its head down canyon and whinnied sharply. Longarm turned to stare in the same direction as the horse.
In the gray morning shadows he saw a dark, manshaped figure sidled up to a large rock, aiming a rifle. “Down!” Longarm shouted, reaching for his Winchester.
Too late.
The bushwhacker’s rifle crashed, stabbing flames toward the camp.
Cynthia had been tying her bedroll together by the cold fire ring. She screamed and flew forward over the bedroll, hitting the ground on her belly.
Chapter 15
“Cynthia!” Longarm and Casey shouted at the same time, a half second before the lawman dropped to a knee with his Winchester and triggered three quick shots.
His slugs blew the bushwhacker back away from the rock with a startled yelp, dropping his rifle and hitting the ground on his back.
“Cynthia!” Longarm ran over to where Cynthia lay sprawled belly down over her blanket roll.
“I’m all right,” the girl said in a thin, startled voice, lifting her head. “It just grazed me.”
Longarm saw the torn left shoulder seam of her leather jacket. No blood appeared. Cynthia shook her head. “Where did that come from?”
Longarm and Casey, who’d leaped out of her saddle and come running, pulled Cynthia to her feet.
“We got company,” Longarm said, leading Cynthia to her steeldust and staring back at where the bushwhacker lay unmoving behind the boulder at the side of the trail leading up from the main canyon. “You two mount up and get moving. I’ll be right behind you!”
“Custis, you come, too!” Cynthia yelled as he half flung and half hoisted her onto her steeldust.
“I’ll be right behind you—now haul ass!” Longarm slapped the steeldust’s hip, and the horse lurched into a gallop on up the side canyon. Casey ground her heels into her own horse’s flanks and followed Cynthia around a bend and out of sight behind the curving stone wall.
Longarm ran down toward where the dead man lay. He held his rifle in one hand high, ready to fire if he needed to. He looked around cautiously but saw no other movement.
He dropped to a knee beside the dead man, who lay staring up at him, eyes dull. One of Longarm’s shots had blown out his left temple. The other had taken him through a shoulder. Blood trickled out a corner of his mouth.
Longarm stared down canyon toward the main one and spied the shifting shadows of oncoming riders along the narrow, shadow-dense corridor. At the same time, he could hear the clacking of several sets of horse hooves on the canyon’s stone floor.
“Shit,” Longarm groused and picked up the dead man’s Winchester. The man had an extra cartridge belt around his waist, the loops filled with .44 shells. Longarm quickly removed it, hung it over his shoulder, and ran back up the narrow canyon to his sorrel.
He shoved the spare rifle into his saddle boot, wrapped the extra cartridge belt around his own waist, and stepped into the leather. A second later he was galloping on up the gently rising floor of the cut, casting a quick glance over his left shoulder.
The riders just then galloped around a slight bulge in the wall and reined up in front of the dead man. Longarm spied four riders—inky silhouettes against the gray-brown morning shadows.
They spied him at the same time, one pointing and yelling, “There!”
Longarm pulled the sorrel around a bend in the canyon wall and kept riding, climbing the narrow trail and caressing the hammer of his Winchester with his thumb. Ten minutes later, he closed on the women riding ahead between the steep ridge walls.
Cynthia stopped her horse and turned toward him. He threw his left arm forward, shouting angrily, “Go! Keeping going! What the hell you stopping for?”
“Are they coming?” she yelled back at him.
“Of course they’re coming!”
Having to worry about the two women—two headstrong beauties with revenge on their minds—had soured his mood. He felt as though he were herding a passel of young hellcats.
He and the women pushed on up the canyon. The sun was climbing
above the horizon by the time they reached the top of the canyon pass, where the stone walls dropped away and a fragrant forest took over. Longarm led the way along a breezy ridge and then swung away from the ridge and up and over a higher pass.
Now the sun was well above the horizon and the day was heating up.
He checked the sorrel down and told the two girls to keep riding. He’d catch up to them.
He rose in his saddle to see over the crest of the pass he’d just crossed and into the valley on the other side. The riders were just now making their way around an outcropping—four in all.
The gang must have split up, and these four had been the first to hear the scouting bushwhacker fire at Cynthia. The others had likely heard the shots, as well, and were a little farther behind.
Longarm wanted to rub these four off his trail and whittle the gang’s total number down to a more manageable size.
He sat back down in his saddle and stared down the slope, in the direction the girls were riding. Below and about a hundred yards away, the game trail they were following appeared to run through a large outcropping of limestone and sandstone—probably an ancient volcanic bubble that was all that remained of a more massive dike. It was a jumble of stone dominoes tossed this way and that, studded with cedars, piñons, and juniper, with a trail splitting it down the middle.
Longarm batted his heels against the sorrel’s ribs. He galloped on down the slope through sun-dappled pines smelling sharply of sap and caught up to the women just as they entered the outcropping, the stony walls rising on both sides of the trail.
“Are they still behind us?” Cynthia asked.
“Yup.”
“What are we going to do about that?” Casey wanted to know, reining her horse to a stop and turning toward Longarm. Her pretty blue eyes were resolute, urgent, even savage. She had a beautiful mouth, the lips red, the top one slightly upturned. Her nose was fine and long, her jaws straight and hard.
Yes, she had gravel, this one. After all she’d been through, all she could think about—maybe the only thing that kept her from thinking about what might have been had the Drummond bunch not ridden into Arapaho that day—was blood justice.