Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats (10 page)

Longarm built a fire while the women bathed in the creek.

He could hear them talking quietly, hear the water splashing softly, as he gathered wood and started a small fire in a ­well-­sheltered stone ring. A few times he heard Casey sob, but mostly the women talked, Cynthia consoling her friend, trying to quell the pain of all that she'd been through.

He had the fire burning well, the camp set up, and coffee brewing, when the women returned. They sat down on the blankets that Longarm had rolled out, and gathered other blankets around their shoulders, staving off the chill. Longarm glanced at Cynthia. She did not return the look; she seemed to be sheepishly trying to avoid meeting his gaze.

When the coffee was ready, Longarm poured them each a cup and added a liberal jigger of whiskey to each. He handed out the rest of the jerky, and they sat around the fire, nibbling the jerky and sipping the coffee. No one said anything. Casey stared sadly into the flames, as did Cynthia, who had one arm draped over her friend's shoulders.

Longarm took the time for only one cup of coffee. Then he grabbed his rifle and said, “I'm going to walk back down canyon a ways, see if we were followed.”

“And if we were?” Cynthia said, looking at him now, her eyes wide.

“Then we're in trouble.”

Longarm walked off, and he heard Cynthia say behind him, “He's angry with me.”

Casey said something but Longarm couldn't make it out, because just then the wind howled over the top of the canyon. It dwindled enough that he could hear Cynthia say, “Yeah, I think so,” in a wistful sort of way, looking toward him.

She thought what? he vaguely wondered as he continued walking down the canyon.

He didn't think about it long. There were too many more important things on his mind.

Carefully, he scouted the area around where the side canyon led off from the main one. Using a branch, he rubbed out his and the women's tracks where they led into the side canyon. A good tracker could still find them by the light of day, but it would be much harder now at night. He was glad he didn't smell the smoke from the fire he'd built.

After a half hour of sitting and watching the main canyon from a boulder nest, and concluding that Drummond's bunch wouldn't follow him until tomorrow, he headed back to the fire. Cynthia had added wood to it. He found her lying against his own saddle while Casey slept curled on her side beneath her blankets on the fire's opposite side, facing the flames.

Cynthia had hers and his blankets pulled up to her chin.

Longarm stopped near the fire, and looked down at her. She looked up at him, glanced at Casey who appeared sound asleep on the other side of the crackling flames, and pressed two gloved fingers to her rich lips.

Longarm leaned his rifle against a rock, knelt beside her, and said quietly, “I oughta rip that skirt off of you and strap your naked ass for defying me like this.”

She arched a brow. “We'd look silly if Casey woke ­up—­now, wouldn't we?”

Longarm glanced at Casey. “I doubt an earthquake would wake the poor girl.”

“She's my closest friend, Custis. I couldn't ride back to Arapaho and leave her out here.”

“You been following me the whole time?”

“I lost you early yesterday until I heard the gunfire a while ago. You and Casey crossed the trail in front of me, and I followed.”

“You're a sneaky one, Miss Larimer.”

Cynthia shook her head and glanced at her friend sleeping on the other side of the fire. “I just couldn't leave her. I really thought you'd find her dead, however. Thank God you didn't.”

“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 night 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!”