Longarm 397 : Longarm and the Doomed Beauty (9781101545973) (11 page)

“Nope.” Longarm threw the last of his coffee back. “There'd probably be damn little you could do, except maybe kick and scream. But if I wanted to take you, I'd take you.”

He ridged a brow and narrowed an eye at her. “Now, I don't mind you assuming the worst from me. I figure your experience with rough men has allowed you that. And make no mistake, I am a rough man. But I'm one of the ruffians on your side, and if you can't see that, there's nothing I can do about it.”

He glanced at the sky. “The sun's gonna be up soon, and we need to get our tails on the trail. So, if you don't go back behind those rocks and put those clothes on real quick-like, I will put them on you myself and throw your pretty little ass into the saddle.”

He stood and kicked dirt and rocks on the fire. “And, yes, I'd probably enjoy it!”

She gasped, picked up the clothes, clutching them and the coat to her breasts, and glaring at him over her shoulder, walked haughtily off into the rocks.

“Women!” Longarm raked out to himself as he began rolling up blankets and gathering gear. “Try to save their damn hides and they think you only want a piece of 'em . . .”

While he worked he glimpsed her head moving around behind the rocks as she dressed, tossing her hair across her naked shoulders. She met his glance once with a cool, defiant one of her own.

When he'd gathered up both of their saddles and saddle blankets, he walked past the rocks behind which she was dressing. She gasped, and out the corner of his eye he saw her clutch the coat to herself even though she was wearing the oversized shirt he'd brought her.

“Don't worry—I'm not after your precious body,” he groused and continued over to the horses. He couldn't help adding as he threw the blanket over the coyote dun's back, “Not yet, anyways. Maybe I'll be requirin' payment a little later on.”

“I wouldn't doubt it a bit,” she said, throwing her hair out from the collar of the big mackinaw.

When he'd helped her into her saddle, neither meeting the other's gaze, he stepped into his own saddle and led the string down the narrow gorge and into the broader canyon beyond. He checked both ways carefully, to make sure no riders were about, then reined the claybank eastward along the valley, in the opposite direction from the camp in which the dead men lay, likely just now being pecked by crows and mountain jays.

As the sun rose, Longarm led the way along the valley until it intersected with another, then followed the other on a generally northward course, heading for a snow-mantled pass looming far above and ahead, at the top of a ridge cloaked in deep runnels, boulders, and clumps of pines and aspens that showed a lighter green than the conifers.

That was Grizzly Ridge—a famous landmark in this neck of the Colorado Rockies. A little mining town lay far down the other side—at least, there had been a town there when he'd passed north of the ridge a couple years ago—so there was a likely a way up and over the pass from here, or a canyon that led through it, though a quick perusal of his government survey maps showed none.

That was all right. If it was easy for him, it would be easy for the Babe Younger bunch. After a slow, careful look around while he and the girl paused to make coffee and rest the horses, he decided there was no better, wilder area in which to lose his pursuers.

Likely, they'd find the dead men soon, if they hadn't already. They'd be on his and the girl's trail within a couple of hours.

The sun was full up when Longarm discovered a notch in the side of Grizzly Ridge. It appeared little more than a vertical line sheathed in aspens, birches, and large boulders. But as he and the girl approached the bottom of the ridge two hours later, he saw that the crease was indeed the mouth of a winding canyon through which two small streams frothed down the canyon's steeply pitched floor, at the base of both steep walls.

“We'll rest and switch horses here,” Longarm said, stepping down from his saddle.

“Do you ever get tired of giving orders?” Miss Pritchard asked grouchily as she walked her own mount up next to his, leading the spare by its bridle reins. The third dead killer's horse was still trailing them, afraid to be left behind, which was all right with Longarm. The spare was keeping up, staying close; he and the girl might need the rangy cream in a pinch.

Longarm looked at the girl. She looked wind- and sunburned, and her hair was a mess. A pretty mess, but a mess just the same. He didn't blame her for being in a bad mood, and he felt a little guilty for being hard on her before, so he merely said, “I'll take a look around, make sure no one's close.”

“You do that.”

When he returned twenty minutes later, he was surprised to see that she'd built a fire and set coffee to boil. She'd also laid out a small pouch of jerky and some leftover rabbit. She sat back against a rock, her knees up, nibbling the jerky and sipping from a steaming tin cup.

Longarm walked over and squatted beside the fire. She'd set a cup out for him. He glanced at her. She looked away as she chewed, pointedly ignoring him. He picked up the cup as well as a leather swatch and reached for the coffeepot.

He'd only just touched the handle when a shot sounded—sharp and flat, like a slap against the sky.

The slug tore the coffeepot out of Longarm's hands with an angry clang. The girl screamed.

Longarm snaked his right hand across his belly for his Colt.

“I wouldn't do that.”

The man's voice came from behind him. As Longarm's hand froze on the polished walnut grips of his .44, he glanced over his right shoulder.

Two men were crouched amongst the rocks about twenty feet up the opposite ridge. Both were bearded and clad in animal furs and skins. One had his Springfield rifle aimed at Longarm. The other, crouched behind a small, square boulder, was grinning idiotically at the girl.

“You bring your pistol up, hoss, I'm gonna have to shoot you,” warned the man with the aimed Springfield, in a thick southern accent.

Miss Pritchard sat across the fire from Longarm. She'd dropped her coffee cup between her legs and now sat with her hands on the ground to either side of her, back ramrod straight. She stared toward the interlopers with her lower jaw hanging, chest rising and falling sharply behind her bulky mackinaw.

“Easy,” Longarm told her. “No sudden moves.”

“Oh, God . . .” she groaned, as though at the end of her tether.

Longarm straightened and, lifting his hands to his shoulders, palms out, turned slowly toward the two men, both of whom were now carefully making their way down the steep ridge. The man with the rifle—tall and black-bearded and with a weird cast to his right eye—kept the rifle aimed at Longarm as he followed the shorter, quicker man down the ridge.

The little, grinning blond man, who also had a Spencer in his arms though he seemed too preoccupied with the girl to aim it at Longarm, gained the canyon floor first and came stumbling toward the fire. The other man said something too quietly for Longarm to hear, and the little man slowed his shambling pace, moving more consciously as he approached but his light blue eyes holding steady on the girl, lips stretched back from pointed, yellow teeth in a chilling leer.

“Oh, God, oh, God,” the girl gasped.

“Shhh.” To the men, Longarm said, “I'd offer you a cup of coffee, but you done shot a hole in the pot.” He smiled.

The little man stopped about ten feet in front of Longarm and slightly to Longarm's left, regarding the girl like a dog slathering at a bone. The other man came up behind him and stepped to one side. The reason his eye had looked odd from a distance, Longarm saw, was that it was a milky color, probably blind. The knife scar through the brow above it and edging into the cheekbone below it explained the nature of the malady.

Mountain men, possibly prospectors, Longarm thought. They had that wild, paranoid look customary of both occupations. While he was somewhat relieved they were obviously not part of the Babe Younger's vengeance-hungry killers, his relief was tempered by the savagery and depravity in both men's eyes. The little man had an added edge of lunacy.

“That's all right,” the big man said, his one good eye on Longarm, “we had some dandelion earlier.”

“Dandelion's all right in a pinch,” Longarm said. “Personally, I prefer Arbuckles.”

“She's purty,” said the little blond man, raking his eyes away from Miss Pritchard to grin at the big man to his left.

“Leave her alone here for now, Dawg.” To Longarm, the big man said, “What the hell you doin' here? Hardly no one knows about this canyon. This is
our
canyon—Dawg's and mine.”

“We're not here to jump your claim,” Longarm said. “I'm a federal lawman. I'll show you my badge as long as you don't get jumpy about where I put my hands. The girl's a witness to a murder. We're on the run from the Babe Younger gang.”

“Never heard of no Babe Younger.”

“Don't doubt it a bit.”

The little man said, “Can I have her, Tate?”

The big man looked at Miss Pritchard sitting, horrified, on the other side of the fire. He let his eyes roam across the girl—eyes that had likely not seen a woman in months, maybe years, let alone one as comely as Miss Pritchard even in her bulky, cold-weather attire.

“Yeah, you can have her, Dawg. We can both have her. But not yet.” He returned his look to Longarm and licked his lips. “Mister, you turn around and get down on your hands and knees.”

Longarm shook his head.

“You hear me?” the big man raged, aiming his rifle at Longarm's head.

“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.