Tabor Evans

Synopsis:

Notorious Belle Star is holed up with a nest of desperadoes. And it looks like some crooked marshals are in cahoots with her. For a price, the law won't touch the robbers. 'Till longarm rides into the fugitive camp, posing as one of them. Longarm has to cross the law to round up the raiders and their velvet queen. 17th novel in the "Longarm" series, 1980.

CHAPTER 1

The icy bite of the twilight wind cut through Longarm's clothes and crept down inside the leather tops of his stovepipe cavalry boots, curling his toes and numbing them. He wondered if they might not be turning blue. His hands, on which he wore thin leather gloves--the only pair he'd found when rummaging in his saddlebags--felt like they were blue, too. Longarm wasn't about to pull the gloves off to find out. His fingers were so chilled that he was afraid one or two might come off with the gloves.

A stray gust sent an icy thread trickling down his collar to rustle the hair on his chest. Damn me for a double-dyed jackass! he thought as he pulled the lapels of his long, black Prince Albert coat closer together. If I'd thought it'd be this cold so far south along the Arkansas in September, I'd have brought my sheepskin instead of leaving it hang in Denver where it ain't doing nobody any good.

Letting go the reins of his Texas-bitted cavalry mount, Longarm slapped his palms together to bring back some feeling. They flexed enough, with a little beating, to let him slide one hand inside his tight-pulled coat lapels and fish a cheroot out of his vest pocket. He chomped his strong teeth over the tip of the cheroot, clamping the thin cigar in his mouth while he fumbled a match from his coat pocket.

He made two tries at flicking the match into flame with a thumbnail before remembering that he had on gloves. For all they're keeping your hands warm, old son, he told himself, you might as well not be wearing them.

Lifting a foot out of the stirrup, he hoisted his leg upward high enough to bend it, and struck the match on his bootheel. The puff of blue smoke that he loosed to mingle with the chill air, almost as visibly blue as the smoke itself in the fading light, made him feel a little bit better.

But not enough to mention, his thoughts ran on. Billy Vail's just too damn tight with voucher money lately, telling me to get a remount at Ft. Gibson instead of letting me stay on the train all the way to Ft. Smith and renting a livery horse there.

By now, the fragrant smoke from the cigar was beginning to soothe Longarm's spirits somewhat.

But I guess it ain't all Billy's fault. It's them damn pencil-pushers back in Washington. They set on their padded swivel chairs all day and figure how to cut off a penny here and whittle away a nickel there, and I wind up freezing my butt for fifty or sixty miles on a cavalry nag traipsing across the ass-end of the Cherokee Nation, when I still ought to be at least halfway warm in a coach seat on the damn train.

Which don't mean it ain't Billy's fault that I'm here in the first place. I got about as much business being down here between the Creek and Cherokee Nations, trying to pick up a smell of Jesse James's trail, as a butchering-sized hog has trying to fly. Seems like every day that goes by and the James boys stay hid out, the hotter everybody gets about finding them. Hell, I'll stand by what I told Billy when he put me on this case. I'll put up a mint-new double eagle against his plugged two-bit piece that Jesse's right close to where he calls home, over east in Missouri. And he ain't going to be found until those neighbors of his start flapping their jaws. Trouble is, nobody's listening when I try to tell them what only seems like good sense to me.

Ahead of him, Longarm caught the glint of a campfire's light flickering among the trunks of the big sweet gum and blackjack oak trees that grew thickly on both sides of the river trail. The trail meandered more or less parallel to the banks of the Arkansas River as it flowed sluggishly southeast toward the line between the Indian Nation and the state of Arkansas.

He picked up the reins and twitched them to send his mount in the direction of the promised warmth. There was still a good distance between him and the fire. He nudged his horse with a spurless bootheel to speed it up a bit, anxious, now that he'd seen the blaze, to stop and settle down beside it, and share its warmth with whoever had built it.

He'd covered most of the distance to the flickering spot Of light, zigzagging between the trees and skirting the heavy brush, when a scream Split the darkening night. For a moment, Longarm couldn't be sure there was a CONNECTION between the scream and the fire. He was still too far away to see anything but a suggestion of dark shapes silhouetted against the glow that spread around the fire. There were three or four figures moving around, but he couldn't tell whether they were those of men or women. Just to be on the safe side, though, he slipped his Winchester out of its saddle scabbard and flicked off the safety. Then he dug both heels hard into his horse's flanks, and the animal spurted forward.

Twenty seconds and two or three screams later, Longarm was close enough to get an idea as to what was going on around the campfire, as the diminishing distance sharpened the blurred edges of the shapes of four men and a woman. As the distance continued to lessen, he saw that the men had been chasing their companion, and as he watched them, the men wrestled the woman to the ground. Three of them held her--one holding each of her legs, the third Stretching her arms above her head. The fourth ripped away her skirt and underclothes, and fumbled at his belt.

By now, Longarm was close enough to see more than silhouettes. The men became defined as bearded, butternut-jean-clad individuals, but the woman was only a stretch of bare flesh, tinted deep pink by the lurid firelight. Dark pubic hair broke the sweep of her skin between waist and legs. The man who'd begun fumbling with his belt had let his jeans drop now, and Longarm could see his protruding erection as he dropped to his knees between the writhing woman's widespread legs.

Her screams increased when she felt him probing to enter her. She twisted as best she could, trying to avoid his eager efforts, and her body arched against the strain her captors were putting on her arms and legs. The kneeling man struck her with his fist, and the woman's screams stopped abruptly, as did her struggles. One of the men said something. Longarm was too far away to make out the words, but he heard the raucous laughter that followed the remark.

That was enough for him. Rape was rape under any circumstances, and rape wasn't something that Longarm's personal code would countenance. It was also against the law, and he was the law.

He pulled up the horse with a sliding of hooves. Shooting against firelight was tricky, as he'd learned through long experience. He caught the kneeling man in his sights, and squeezed the Winchester's trigger.

For a split second, the kneeling man froze, then the impact of the high-velocity.44-40 slug toppled him over. He fell across one of the woman's pinioned legs. His companions let go of the now-sagging limbs they'd been struggling to hold still, and clawed for their guns.

Longarm reduced the odds with a snapshot at the man at the group's head. His shot was quick, and the flickering firelight made sighting chancy. His target crumpled, then floundered on the ground. Longarm swung the Winchester, but the other two were on the move even before he'd started shifting his aim. Before he could trigger a third shot, the two remaining rapists were running into the deep shadows among the trees around the vest-pocket clearing.

While Longarm was searching the dappled shadows for a shot at the running desperadoes, the man who'd been his second target struggled to his feet and hobbled, bent double, into the sheltering woods. Longarm was in easy pistol range now. He sheathed the Winchester and dropped the horses reins over its nose. The cavalry-trained animal stood placidly.

Longarm dismounted, drawing his Colt, and struck off to one side of the fire. He had no way of knowing where the three men were, but instinct and experience told him they'd probably not gone far. The odds were that they'd taken shelter among the big bowls of the gumwood trees and thick foliage of the scrub oak that surrounded the little clearing.

Longarm could see them in his mind's eye, shielded behind a protecting tree trunk while they waited for him to enter the revealing circle of firelight to bend over the body of the woman, who still lay unmoving on the ground beside the blaze. The twilight had slid into darkness during the moments it had taken for him to reach the fire, and the ensuing minutes that had been consumed in his brief surprise attack. Neither moon nor starlight penetrated through the thin gray overcast that had veiled the sky when it had last been visible. Longarm stopped to let his eyes grow accustomed to the gloom, and to listen for sounds of movement.

There was a constant rustling in the wooded area. The wind was still brisk, and it whined softly as an undertone to the shushing it caused among the autumn-hardened leaves, still green and thick, but dry now after the sun of summertime. Bit by bit, his ears grew used to the forest murmur, his eyes to the freshly dark night. Directly in front of him, a twig cracked under the pressure of a booted foot. Slowly, Longarm edged ahead.

He felt his way, lowering each foot slowly as he stepped forward, putting his weight on the foot gradually, ready to pull back if the springiness of the loose leaves that blanketed the ground was interrupted by the hard line of a dry tree limb or twig. His caution saved him a bad fall, for he was still balanced on one foot when the foot he was advancing touched the ground briefly before the earth crumbled away under its pressure. Still, he had to shuffle to keep from pitching forward, and the sudden movement set up a soft rustling in the vegetation underfoot.

A line of fire cut the darkness in front of him, and the sound of the shot and the ugly, high-pitched whistle of lead zipping past, mere inches from his chest, sounded at almost the same instant.

Longarm hit the ground, squeezing off a shot toward the spot where he'd seen the muzzle blast as he fell. Two gunshots cut the night now, a few feet apart, but they were high. When he'd gone to the ground, Longarm had fallen into a shallow ditch. He rolled, measuring it by feel, finding that it was no ditch, but judging from its size and shape, a grave.

For that woman they were about to rape, he thought. Figured to get rid of her after they'd had all they wanted from her.

He lifted himself to his knees, and reached out one hand in front of him, encountered the earth that had been lifted from the grave. It was as good a breastwork as anybody could ask for. Longarm put a shot into the darkness from behind the shelter of the dirt pile.

Two shots replied, and he answered them instantly, shooting to the side of the muzzle blasts. One of his slugs found flesh. A cry of mixed anger and pain sounded from the darkness.

"Son of a bitch winged me!" a man's voice grated. "Shit on this!

Whoever that is, he's better than I am at sharpshooting in the dark! I'm getting the hell out of here!"

"Not without me, you ain't!" a second voice replied. "Come on! Lucky we didn't unsaddle before we went for the woman!"

There was a loud pounding of feet on dry leaves and the slapping of scrub-oak branches against bodies. The noises faded, then there was an angry exchange of words in tones too low for Longarm to make out what was being said. Finally, the drumbeat of hooves thudded noisily beyond the waning fire, then faded into the distance, telling Longarm that his antagonists had ridden off with more haste than caution.

Longarm waited until the hoofbeats died, to make sure that the three riders weren't going to regain their courage and circle back before he stepped out of the shallow grave.

Unreplenished, the fire had waned to little more than a bed of red coals from which an occasional flicker of bright flame burst when the heat ate into a sap-pocket. The woman was still unconscious. Longarm studied her with a frown.

She was young, younger than she'd sounded to him, but the noises she'd made had been dragged out of her in fear and rage. He put her age at somewhere in the middle twenties. Her face, in repose, was unlined--a square-shaped face, with a firm jaw under slightly over-full lips. Her nose was upturned and small, with wide nostrils, under full heavy brows. Her cheekbones were high, her brow unlined. She had thick black hair that grew in a half-circle around a narrow forehead, and streamed out loose on the ground under her shoulders.

Her clothing was still disarranged. Her white shirtwaist was rumpled, its collar ripped half off, and the corduroy riding skirt that had been pulled away by her attacker had fallen or been pulled high; it covered her breasts in a rumpled mass that hid their contour. Her body was bare from the waist down. A gently rounded stomach glowed in the firelight. Below a thick black vee of pubic hair, her thighs tapered plumply to calves still covered by high-laced boots, with thick stockings folded over their tops. Her knee-length underpants lay in a tattered wad at one side.

Across one of the woman's legs, the man whom Longarm's rifle slug had killed lay sprawled, his arms thrust upward. Blood stained the side and front of his butternut shirt, where the bullet had taken him. His narrow hips and buttocks were bare.

Longarm pulled one of the dead man's arms aside to get a clear look at his bearded face. It was not one that he recognized, either from a past arrest or from any of the wanted flyers at which he'd looked recently. In death, the face might have belonged to anybody, a storekeeper or a farmer. It had lost whatever villainy it might have possessed while the man was still alive.