by Tabor Evans
“Oh, I’m not in the profession anymore, Longarm. I came up here as a guest of Avriel’s a couple years back—I’d retired in Amarillo, don’t ya know—and while I’ve been known to sing a few bars now an’ then on Saturday night when the cowboys pull through on roundups, mostly I just keep this old mossyhorn’s feet warm in his old age!”
Gerta Breckenridge glanced at the grinning Simms, tipped her head back, and cackled.
The old man wrapped an arm around her and beckoned to Longarm once more. “Go on and put your horses up in the barn behind my place. Plenty of grain an’ feed. Just had some hay and parched corn shipped in from Arapaho. Then you and the ladies come on inside for some of me and Gerta’s special whiskey and rattlesnake stew!”
“We don’t want to intrude,” Cynthia said.
“We sure don’t,” Longarm said, leveling a serious look at Simms. “Trouble’s doggin’ us. Couple hours back. The Drummond gang.”
“Intrude, hell!” Gerta said before Simms could speak. “A coupla purty young gals and a tall, dark drink o’ water like the one sittin’ the sorrel couldn’t intrude if you was bein’ dogged by the devil’s own yellow-fanged hounds! Now, ya’ll do as Avriel bids, and don’t dally. The whiskey’s still fresh, which means the rattlesnake venom hasn’t settled to the bottom of the bottles yet!”
Gerta and Winters roared in ratcheting, crow-like voices as they swung around together and pushed on through the bat-wings to be consumed by the saloon’s dense shadows.
Cynthia and Casey rode up to Longarm.
“What about the gang?” Cynthia asked.
“I figure we’re about two hours ahead of ’em. By the time they get here, it’ll be good dark. They won’t try anything till morning.”
“And when they do?” Casey said.
“We’ll be ready for ’em.” Longarm reined the sorrel around. “Come on. Let’s stable these horses and accept the old folks’ hospitality.”
Chapter 17
As Longarm followed Cynthia and Casey through the saloon’s back door and into the main drinking hall, the succulent smells of stew and fresh bread nearly laid him flat. His breath grew shallow, and an invisible fist inside him squeezed his belly. He salivated.
“Oh, my gosh,” Cynthia said. They’d been riding for a couple of days now on only jerky, peaches, coffee, and water.
“What smells so good?” Casey finished for her friend.
Avriel Simms sat at a table in the middle of the long room, the bar to his left. Gerta was working at a range behind the bar and left of a large, elaborate back bar mirror lined with shelves and glasses of all shapes and sizes.
Simms said, “That’s my dear Gerta’s rattlesnake stew and fresh bread. That gal could sing a lick or two in her day, but these days she can cook even better!”
“Ya’ll go ahead and sit down,” Gerta said, cutting up a long, oval loaf of crusty brown bread. “I’ll have the food over in a minute. Oh, this is just swell. Me an’ Avriel haven’t had a sit-down dinner with guests in a coon’s age. Just a coon’s age—ain’t that right, honey bunch?”
“It sure is, sugar.” Simms popped the cork on a whiskey bottle and winked at Longarm. “We get a little lonely out here, don’t ya know. But at least we have each other.” He held up the bottle. “We’ll break into the whiskey later. This here’s my very own special prickly pear wine. Goes right well with rattlesnake stew.”
There were five bowls and five small plates on the table. Two water glasses sat before each bowl and plate, one filled with water. Avriel filled the other glasses half full with the light, safflower-colored liquid that emanated the smell of alcohol and something akin to dandelions and watermelon. Longarm and the women set their rifles on a near table.
The lawman lifted one of the glasses that Simms had poured his elixir into and sniffed.
He tasted it. He’d sampled prickly pear wine only in Texas, and he’d found it tasty enough, though no match for his rye. This stuff slid easily down his throat and spread a warm glow through his chest and shoulders. “Avriel, this is damn good. You might be onto something here—Wine of Wyoming!”
Chuckling, Simms finished pouring the prickly pear wine into the glasses. Cynthia and Casey sat down as Longarm held their chairs in turn, and then he sat down himself at the end of the table opposite the bar. From here he had a good view of the front windows on each side of the bat-wings and the street beyond.
It was almost dusk, however. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to see much of anything out there.
Gerta came over and set a large, steaming pot of rattlesnake stew on the table and let everyone help themselves. Longarm thought he’d never eaten anything so delicious in his life—white chunks of rattlesnake mixed with potatoes, carrots, and peas, and all floating in a rich, pale gravy. He tore chunks of fresh bread from the loaf, and dipped the bread in the gravy, eating with his fork in one hand, bread in the other.
No one spoke during the meal. Longarm looked up a couple of times, keeping an eye on the street, and he saw both pretty women eating as hungrily as he was, shoveling the stew into their mouths and following it up with large bites of the gravy-dipped bread. Their mussed, trail-dusty hair and the color from the sun gave them a wild, desperate look that Longarm couldn’t help feeling aroused by. He looked away. This was no time for his billy-goat lust.
The Drummond gang—what was left of them—could be entering town at this very moment.
After the meal, Longarm wiped his mouth with a napkin and slid his chair back from the table. “Miss Gerta, I bet that meal was tastier than the Last Supper. We do appreciate it.”
The women chimed in, Cynthia reaching over and squeezing Gerta’s wrinkled hand while Gerta flushed and beamed and Avriel replenished the ladies’ cactus wine glasses.
“No more for me, Avriel,” Longarm said, donning his hat and grabbing his Winchester off the table. “I’ll be headin’ out to see if it’s as quiet and peaceful out there as it looks.”
Cynthia slid her own chair back. “I’ll join you.”
“Me, too,” said Casey, sipping from her refilled glass.
“You two stay and rest,” Longarm said. “If I need help, you’ll know soon enough. The way I figure it, when Drummond comes, we’ll separate, get outside the saloon, and move around, drawing each one of them killers to us. That way, we’ll have the upper hand, so to speak.” Longarm winked at both women. “If they show tonight, let’s just be careful not to shoot each other in the dark.”
He looked at Simms. “Avriel, I do apologize for bringing trouble. When Drummond shows, you best take Gerta somewhere safe—a pantry or a root cellar, something like that.”
“Don’t worry—I’ll take care of Gerta.”
“These young ladies could use a bath and a shot of whiskey,” Gerta said.
“That we could,” Casey said, looking at Longarm. “But there’s no time.”
Longarm shook his head. “You two take that bath Gerta’s offerin’. I’m headin’ out to look around. If there’s any trouble, you’ll hear the shots. Then you’d best grab your rifles and scramble.”
Longarm pinched his hat brim to the women, dug a cheroot out of his pocket, and pushed out through the saloon’s bat-wing doors. He dropped down into the street, letting the darkness absorb him.
He stuck the cheroot between his teeth but did not light it. He wanted the taste of the cigar following the meal, but he’d wait and smoke it later, when he figured it was safe to show the glowing coal.
There was only a little green light left in the sky and the first stars were sparking to life. The town was dark. The breeze had died, and a silence had fallen over the broad valley in which Open Flat lay.
He glanced at the saloon’s dimly lit windows behind him and then crossed the main street. At the other side, in the dense shadows of the vac
ant buildings, he walked back in the direction from which he and the women had ridden into the town.
The settlement stopped abruptly on the far side of a boarded-up mercantile with a broad loading dock sporting more missing floorboards than remaining ones. Here, at the base of the dock, Longarm stared off along the trail that curved across the flat—a pale tan line shrouded in the thickening darkness.
He scanned the terrain on both sides of the trail, pricking his ears. He flexed his hand around the neck of the rifle, which he held atop his right shoulder, and absently rolled the cheroot from one side of his mouth to the other.
Abruptly, he stopped rolling the cigar. He’d heard something to his right, and he turned his head to stare down along the mercantile to the rear shrouded in darkness. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d heard, but it had been something—a soft thud or a tap. Possibly someone walking around back there?
Longarm took his rifle in both hands. Slowly chambering a cartridge, he walked down along the side of the mercantile, weaving his way amongst the tumbleweeds caught up in tufts of sage and wild mahogany. He stopped at the rear corner, pressed his right shoulder against the building, and edged a look around the corner and into the dark gap behind.
He could see the weathered gray privy leaning slightly to the north and several low mounds of ancient trash that had probably been well scoured by scavengers. Beyond were several smaller buildings—sheds of a sort.
As he stared between two such structures, he saw a shadow move so quickly that he instantly wondered if it was merely the breeze jostling a branch and thus moving a shadow. But no. There was no breeze. The night was as still and quiet as an amphitheater, with shadows growing now as the moon began its rise above the southeastern mountains, spreading a faint sphere of lilac around it.
Longarm squeezed the rifle in his hands and, clamping down on the cigar in his teeth, stepped out into the mercantile’s backyard. Looking around carefully, walking on the balls of his boots, he strode past the privy and covered the twenty-yard gap between the privy and a corral against which many tumbleweeds had blown, forming a shaggy wall. There was a stable on the corral’s far side, with a small log cabin hunched to the stable’s left, with about a twenty-foot gap between the two buildings.
Longarm had seen the shadow move somewhere in there . . .
He proceeded slowly forward, peering into the corral and then into the gap ahead of him. Once inside the gap between buildings, he pressed his back against the stable and cast his gaze at the cabin.
It was a long, brush-roofed affair with a stone chimney on the far side. It appeared long abandoned, brush growing up along the foundations. The two windows facing Longarm—one on each side of the door—had been broken out. Something told Longarm to investigate it. But he’d taken only two steps before he heard a soft thump from inside the stable behind him.
He whipped around. The moon had climbed high enough that it shed some milky light over the stable, revealing that the plank board door stood about two feet open. Longarm glanced once more at the cabin and then moved toward the stable, lowering the barrel of his Winchester and extending the gun straight out from his right hip.
He nudged the door open with the barrel of his rifle, stepped quickly inside, tightening his finger on the trigger. Two small lights flickered before him, from about ten feet away. A shrill snarl rose, and Longarm drew back on the Winchester’s trigger just before he eased the tension, knowing in the back of his mind what he was confronting just before the lights—or eyes, rather—disappeared.
The cat’s head—he recognized the pointed, tufted ears of a bobcat—moved in front of a window on the other side of the stable. Then the head disappeared as the cat with its bobbed tail soundlessly leaped out the broken-out window to the ground.
Longarm heaved a sigh and lowered the rifle. At the same time, he told himself, “Wait—something scared the cat in here.” The admonition had no sooner passed through his mind than he threw himself back against the wall beside the open door as a rifle flashed and cracked behind him.
The report drummed raucously in the gap between the buildings. The slug careened through the open door to slam into the stable’s opposite wall. Longarm twisted around the door frame, poking his rifle outside.
A man-shaped silhouette stood in the open door of the cabin on the other side of the gap. Longarm fired the Winchester twice, both spent cartridges arcing over his right shoulder to clink together on the stable floor.
The bushwhacker gave a chuff and flew back into the cabin, hitting the cabin’s floor with a crunching thud and rattle of spurs.
He’d just slammed a fresh round into the action when something cold, hard, and round pressed against the side of his head, just beneath his hat. A low, resonant voice said, “Drop the Winchester.”
Longarm froze. He slid his eyes to the right and could see the shadow of the man holding the gun. He could hear the man breathing, smell the sweat-and-leather perfume wafting off of him.
“One more time,” the man said, dipping his voice in warning, “drop the Winchester.”
Longarm depressed the rifle’s hammer and tossed the gun onto the ground. The man holding the gun against his head reached around Longarm’s belly, released the keeper thong over Longarm’s Colt, and slipped the piece from the holster. He wedged it behind his own cartridge belt.
He pressed Longarm’s head sideways with the barrel of his own gun. “Now, let’s go see what’s cookin’ over at Ole Simms’s saloon. All right? Sound good to you, cowboy? I’m bettin’ there’s some scrumptious female flesh we should see about.”
Longarm turned his head to rake his eyes across the man—a little shorter than Longarm and wearing a black hat, a green neckerchief, and a self-satisfied grin—as Longarm turned and started walking forward along the gap, in the direction of the main street and the saloon.
Chapter 18
As Longarm walked through the gap between the large mercantile building and another, smaller structure beside it, he thought about the double-barreled derringer snuggling inside his vest pocket, opposite his watch. His right hand twitched. He brushed it against his hip as he continued walking, glancing back at the man behind him.
Bright moonlight glinted off the barrel of the Remington the man was aiming at him.
The man rammed the gun against Longarm’s back, shoving him forward. “What the hell you lookin’ at? You just keep movin’, mister. We’ll see what Colt has in store for you. Whatever it is, after all our boys you killed, it ain’t gonna be good.”
“They were tryin’ to kill me,” Longarm said with a caustic chuff.
“You just hold your tongue an’ keep walkin’.”
At the head of the gap between the two buildings, Longarm turned and began walking toward the saloon. He could see the dimly lit windows. A half dozen or so horses were tied to the hitch racks out front of the place. The closer he got to the Open Flat, the more shadows he could see moving around in front of the windows.
He thought about the women, and his gut clenched.
He envisioned the derringer residing in his vest pocket. His hand twitched. He brushed it across his hip again, and sweat broke out atop his upper lip, dampening his mustache.
His heart was beating faster. He had to do something before he got to the saloon, but getting himself killed wasn’t going to help anything. The gent behind him had the Remington centered on his back. Longarm doubted that he could get anywhere close to sliding the derringer from his vest pocket, clicking back one of the two hammers, and getting himself turned around to aim the piece at the man behind him before a bullet flung from the Remington shattered his spine.
He had to wait for an opportunity.
Meanwhile, he reached the saloon and the horses standing wearily at the hitch rack—a couple of pintos, a couple of duns, a piebald, a
paint . . .
He glanced over the horses only absently. The hot, dusty beasts seemed ominous, standing there in front of the saloon, which could very well be the end of his as well as Cynthia and Casey’s trail. Moonlight glinted on the saddles and in the eyes of one of the horses looking curiously back at Longarm.
The lawman walked up the porch steps.
He glanced once more over over his shoulder. The man behind was keeping a few paces back—too far away for Longarm to try to swing on him before he’d almost certainly get a bullet in his guts.
Longarm crossed the dilapidated porch and stopped in front of the bat-wings, looking over the doors and inside the saloon lit by several candles and two lamps. There were six or seven men in the place, and they were all sitting or standing around the tables about halfway between the front and the back.
Avriel Simms sat in a chair. Two of the outlaws stood around him and another sat in a chair facing him while leaning one elbow on a table flanking him. One of the men stood crouching over the old man, threat in the set of his shoulders. Just now that man slapped Simms with the back of his hand, whipping his arm fiercely. Longarm winced at the sharp crack and Simms’s groan. Longarm bulled through the bat-wings, teeth gritted.
“Leave the old man alone, you chicken-livered son of a bitch!”
The man behind Longarm slammed the barrel of the Remington against the back of Longarm’s head. It was a glancing blow, but it still evoked a tolling of bells in the lawman’s head and caused his legs to buckle. His knees hit the floor with a thundering boom. All the outlaws in the room swung toward him, whipping hoglegs from holsters or reaching for rifles.
The outlaw sitting in front of old Simms turned his head toward Longarm. The lawman hadn’t gotten a clear view of Drummond the other night, but this man had to be him. His face was wet and pale, and his lips were stretched back from his teeth in a living death grimace. The whites of his eyes were yellow beneath the brim of his funnel-brimmed black hat with a hammered silver band.