Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats
Page 14
“Who the fuck . . . ?” Drummond let his voice trail off as he turned the death grimace into a smile of sorts. He winced as he gained his feet and turned his stocky frame toward Longarm. His lower right side was bright with fresh blood. The stain extended halfway down the thigh of his right leg and across the front of his belly. There was another, drier stain higher up on the other side. That’s where Longarm had shot him, but the lawman saw now that his own bullet must have only burned the killer. It was Casey’s slug that was grieving him—likely going to kill him soon.
Drummond stood stoop-shouldered, haggard, pain-racked—like a wounded bull elk who’d found himself cornered in a box canyon.
“Longarm,” he said. “Shoulda known.”
Longarm frowned up at the man. He couldn’t remember having run into the renegade before.
“Sure, I know you,” Drummond said. “You may not know me, but I know you. Big, brown-haired, brown-eyed hombre with a face like a mean, old bull buff, and a longhorn mustache. Hell, most of my kind’s either seen or heard about the famous Custis P. Long—deputy U.S. marshal!”
He said this last with extra venom, spitting the words out like sour grapes, so that the others could hear. They all looked with keen interest at the big man kneeling on the floor before them, canting their heads this way and that, grinning.
“Longarm—no shit, Colt?” asked a tall man with long, curly gray hair and black brows and mustache. He looked skeptically at Drummond.
“No shit, Frank—that there is the Long Arm of the Law his own self. Should have known it was him followin’ us. Who else could cut down as many men as he did, steal into our camp, shootin’ me in the gut and leavin’ me to die slow!”
He shouted that last, jerking his head up and down like a rabid cur.
Longarm smiled woodenly. “Oh, but if you remember,” he said jeeringly, “it was the girl’s bullets that—”
“Shut up, you fuckin’ liar!” Drummond was the only one in the room not holding a gun. He staggered toward Longarm, clenching his fists at his sides.
Obviously, he hadn’t told his men that Casey had shot him with his own gun. That would have made him look foolish. Instead, he told them he was surprised by the big man stealing into their camp while he’d been giving the girl a good time, and then dragged her away.
“I’ll deal with you later, Longarm. In my own creative way. Like maybe bury you neck-deep in the street so’s me and the boys can take target practice on your ears.”
“Jesus,” Longarm said, rubbing the back of his head, “that would hurt like hell.”
Just then two men appeared atop the stairs, each coming from a different direction and then dropping down the staircase. Each held a rifle. Drummond looked up at them. “Any sign of the girl?”
The first one coming down the stairs shook his head. “There’s two tubs filled with hot water in a room up there, but no girl.”
Longarm slid his gaze from the two newcomers to Drummond, who turned to Longarm, frowning. “Who’s your third rider, Longarm?” He smiled lasciviously through his tobacco-stained teeth. “Not another girl, is it?”
Longarm shrugged as he gained his feet heavily. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Drummond glanced at the two men who’d just descended the stairs. “Boys, tie this famous lawman to a chair. If we can’t get where the girl . . . or girls . . . are out of the old man, we’ll start on him. Leastways, I wanna know where he is, ’cause later he’s gonna do some howlin’.”
The two men headed for Longarm, swinging wide to get around him. He had no intention of being tied to a chair. That just meant he’d be dead soon, and there’d be nothing he could do about it. He aimed to move while he still could, even if it meant dying here and now.
At least he’d take some of these sons o’ bitches with him.
Longarm sighed and feigned an expression of defeat as the two men approached from the stairs. When the first was three feet away, Longarm shoved his right hand into his vest pocket, and plucked out the derringer. He quickly thumbed back both triggers and sent one round careening through the left eye of the man nearest him and the second round through the forehead of the man behind the first.
He dropped the derringer, which dangled by its gold-washed chain from his old railroad turnip residing in the opposite vest pocket, and was reaching for the rifle of the first man he’d just killed when the man behind him slammed his pistol across Longarm’s head for a second time.
Longarm staggered forward, holding his head in his arms, fireworks flashing behind his squeezed-shut eyes, and felt the floor come up to slam him hard about the chest and shoulders. He heard himself groan against the throbbing pain in his head.
“Oh, for cryin’ out loud!” Drummond shouted, filling both his hands with the two long-barreled revolvers he wore in holsters on his thighs. “I was going to give you some time, Longarm, but I see you just can’t behave. Gonna have to put you down like the rabid cur you are!”
Longarm looked up. Drummond stood before him, about five feet away, extending both pistols straight out before him, angled down. “Let it be known from this day forward that Custis P. Long, known by friend and foe as Longarm, was killed this day by none other than Colt Drummond, his own mean an’ nasty self!”
Something squawked near Longarm. He glanced to his right to see a two-by-two-foot door open in the faded-green, wainscoted front of the bar, about six inches above the floor. Gerta Breckenridge’s prune-like, brown-eyed face peered through the door.
The old woman hardened her jaws as she poked a double-barreled shotgun out the dark opening, and squinted her eyes as she snarled, “Take this you limp-dicked, woman-rapin’, tinhorn bastard!”
Longarm dropped his head to the floor as the old woman extended the shotgun over his prone body, and . . .
Ka-boommmm!
The entire room jumped as the first barrel’s hammer slammed down on a wad of double-ought buck. Longarm turned his head to see Colt Drummond hurled up and back, screaming and triggering both pistols into the ceiling. As he fell onto a table, breaking it in two pieces and tumbling to the floor, Gerta cut loose with the shotgun’s second barrel.
It was like a giant slamming his fist on the room.
The man who’d hazed Longarm into the saloon went flying back out the bat-wings, across the porch, and into the street.
Longarm saw a rifle lying on the floor five feet away. He probably wouldn’t reach it before the others started cutting loose, but he shook off the searing pain in the back of his head, bolted off his heels, leaped for the rifle, and grabbed it in both hands. He rolled over, quickly jacking a round into the chamber, and extended the gun toward the rest of the gang, all of whom were now yelling and leaping into action, bearing down on both Longarm and Gerta.
Longarm thought he might be able to get one before they sent him on over the divide, and he did, drilling the man in his right cheek, just above his shaggy patch beard and where a knife scar made a teardrop pattern. Then the rifles really started bellowing and Longarm squeezed his eyes closed, waiting for the lead shower that was sure to shred the skin from his bones, leaving nothing more than a pile of blood puddling on the floor where he now lie.
His hands kept working as though of their own accord and he was surprised as hell to find that he was able to aim the rifle from the floor once more and cut loose on the shooters. Only, there wasn’t much use.
They were stumbling and flying and twisting around like a bunch of drunk Irish muleskinners at a Rocky Mountain hoedown. It was as though the floor were pitching around, knocking the killers from left to right and from front to back, and back again.
They were not the ones shooting.
Cynthia had bounded through the bat-wings and firing from a crouch while Casey must have entered the saloon through the
back door. She was cutting loose with her own Winchester, aiming quickly, triggering, ejecting the spent cartridge, aiming again, and firing.
Longarm stared in amazement at the two women and the billowing cloud of power smoke before him. To his right, Gerta Breckenridge was cackling like a witch and yelling, “You go, ladies—shoot them killers down dead! Oh, this is too good for them! Oh, have it, ladies! Now, that’s some fine old-fashioned shootin’ if I ever seen it!”
Longarm glanced toward where Avriel Simms had been sitting in his chair. Now the old man lay flat on the floor near the overturned chair, arms clamped over his head, wriggling around as though he were trying to squirm down between the floorboards.
The cacophony lasted for only about fifteen seconds.
Then the hammer of Cynthia’s Winchester landed on an empty chamber. A second later, Casey’s did, as well.
A silence fell over the room.
Longarm blinked as he stared over his own aimed rifle at the smoky room. The outlaws lay in bloody, bullet-torn piles on the floor and across tables and overturned chairs. One man sighed and rolled from his shoulder to his belly, shook, and lay still.
And that was the end of them.
“Like I said—that’s some shootin’,” Gerta said, crawling out the trapdoor in the bar—which had probably been used for stocking the shelves beneath the bar when the saloon was booming with the rest of Open Flat.
She cackled and extended a hand to Longarm. “Wasn’t it, Marshal Long? Say, you don’t look so good.”
Longarm had pushed off a knee and was halfway to both feet, but the room was spinning like a top.
“Say, there, Marshal,” came Avriel Simms’s voice from a thousand miles away. “Gerta’s right. Why, you’d best . . .”
Longarm didn’t hear the rest. Darkness overtook him. And then he was vaguely aware of scrambling footsteps and being eased to the floor before he was aware of nothing at all for about three seconds—or what seemed like three seconds—until he opened his eyes to see a bare breast with a perfect pink nipple jostling around in front of his face. He stared at the nipple, blinking, incredulous.
He must be dreaming.
But then he felt several hands caressing him with damp cloths and he turned to see another pair of breasts jostling at his side opposite the first pair. He looked up to see Cynthia smiling down at him.
“I think he’s coming around,” she said. She lowered her head, kissed his lips. “Easy, sweetheart. You just lay still and let Casey and I tend to you.”
He was as naked as the day he was born.
He lay in a bed with a charcoal brazier glowing nearby. He must be upstairs in the saloon. Two candles guttered on a dresser, shunting shadows this way and that. They slid gold-limned silhouettes across the young women’s naked bodies—still warm and damp from a recent bath.
“I’ll say he’s coming around,” Casey said.
Cynthia laughed.
Longarm looked down past his belly and saw that his cock was at half-mast and growing.
Casey touched the tip of her finger to the swollen head and arched a brow at Cynthia. “Do you mind?”
“Dear,” said Cynthia, “what better way to help you over this horrible tragedy. Besides, he’s way too good for me not to share him.”
The hellcats giggled and bounced around on their knees, making the bed shake. Casey glanced at Longarm, shook her long, blond hair back behind her shoulders, and lowered her head to his crotch.
“Mmmm,” she said, sucking and licking. “So good . . .”
Soon the head of his cock was causing her cheek to bulge.
Longarm ground his heels into the bed and groaned.
Watch for
LONGARM AND THE LYING LADIES
the 420th novel in the exciting Longarm
series from Jove
Coming in November!