Longarm 397 : Longarm and the Doomed Beauty (9781101545973) Read online

  The man, who was obviously the bartender of the saloon behind which he and the girls had taken refuge from the dustup, removed the stogie from his mouth, and said, “Younger’s boys are flingin’ lead at the hotel and that Pritchard gal and Marshal Scobie.”

  “Figured as much,” Longarm said as he pinned his badge on his vest. “How long the lead been flyin’?”

  “’Bout a half hour. Haven’t heard much shootin’ from the hotel, though. Might be that old Scobie finally bought it.” The barman scowled in disgust. “I told ’em they shouldn’t hold the trial up here. Not without enough lawmen to keep that girl from gettin’ perforated.” His scowl deepened. “Where the hell you been? I hope you ain’t alone!”

  “How many of the Younger gang are out there?”

  “Just three,” said one of the girls—a pale, green-eyed redhead. She looked scared as she huddled low against the saloon’s rear wall. “But there’s plenty more where they came from just down the canyon at Miss Barbara’s place.”

  “Just three, huh?”

  “Three of the worst of Babe’s whole gang,” warned the barman, grumpily puffing his stogie. “Damn near wrecked my place this mornin’, before they started pepperin’ the hotel with their pistols and rifles and howlin’ like banshees, scarin’ the whole damn town into heart strokes! Me—I been to the dance before. But the hoopleheads around here like things quiet!”

  “Yeah—me, too.” Longarm lowered his rifle and peered around the saloon toward the main street. “You all just stay here, mum as church mice. I’ll go see if I can’t quiet things down a bit.”

  He stole out from behind the saloon and headed through the break between the saloon and another building toward the thundering guns at the front.

  Chapter 6

  As Longarm made his way up along the saloon’s east wall, a man shouted from ahead, directing his voice toward the hotel on the other side of the main thoroughfare.

  “Hey, Scobie. I got me a feelin’ you’re outta bullets, old fella!” The man gave a wild, coyote howl. “You wanna throw that little bitch outta there now, and save your stringy, old hide? Or, how ’bout me an’ Willis and A. W. here burn the Snow Mound Inn right down to the street—you an’ the girl along with it?”

  The gunfire had died suddenly.

  Now, halfway up the saloon’s rough wooden wall, he stopped. Ahead, near a hitchrack, a man knelt behind a rain barrel, two smoking pistols in his brown hands. He was peering over the top of the rain barrel toward the hotel, the front of which Longarm could now see from his position. A man in a gray wool suit lay on the boardwalk fronting the Snow Mound Inn, belly down, one arm hanging off the boardwalk into the street. A bowler hat lay nearby. Blood glistened on the back of his coat.

  Another man stood to the left of the rain barrel, sauntering into the street. He held a bottle of whiskey in one hand, a burning hunk of stove wood in the other. A long strip of cloth dangled from the mouth of his whiskey bottle. He wore two pistols from holsters thonged low on his thighs.

  “Scobie—you hear me in there, old man?” he shouted, tipping his head back. A felt sombrero dangled from a thong down his back. He laughed and touched the burning stick to the wick dangling from the whiskey bottle.

  Longarm stepped forward, thumbing the Winchester’s hammer back to full cock. “Hold it there, you mushy-nutted dung beetles!”

  The man behind the rain barrel twisted around toward Longarm, bringing both his pearl-gripped pistols to bear and snarling like a frenzied wildcat. Longarm’s rifle barked. The man popped off both his pistols into the dirt between his spread, black boots, and slammed his head back against the rain barrel so hard that Longarm could hear the sharp crack of his skull.

  As the man with the whiskey bottle standing halfway out in the street turned toward Longarm, he dropped the bottle at his feet and slapped his hands to the two big Remingtons bristling on his leather-clad thighs. He must have forgotten that he’d fired the bottle’s wick, however. He hadn’t gotten either pistol clear of its holster before the bottle exploded with a whoosh as loud as a dragon’s belch.

  The bottle shattered, spraying the man from boots to knees with burning whiskey.

  Longarm held fire. No point in wasting a cartridge.

  As the flames leaped up around his legs, the man in the street screamed and dropped his guns and hopped around, brushing at the flames as though to douse them. The wild movement only fanned the hellish fire, however.

  The outlaw’s frantic cries grew louder and shriller. Then, when he saw that his dancing wasn’t working, he suddenly twisted around and started running eastward along the street for no understandable reason than maybe the creek was out there. The cold water was too far away. The man blazed past Longarm like an earthly comet until, a block away, he crumpled to the ground and lay still but for the helpless flopping of his arms and legs.

  Longarm swung his head back toward the front of the saloon, hearing the thuds of running footsteps. He ran up onto the boardwalk fronting the big, glass windows and batwing doors and gained the boardwalk’s other end in time to see the third gunman run around behind a feed barn about seventy yards behind the saloon, near the narrow-gauge rails. Longarm started after him, then stopped. The man reappeared on a big, gray horse, galloping off away from the barn and corral, flopping his arms like wings and glancing warily over his right shoulder.

  Longarm cursed, dropped to a knee, and raised his Winchester. The man was moving too quickly away in herky-jerky fashion for accurate shooting, but Longarm triggered a shot anyway. And watched the slug puff dust far wide and behind the retreating rider galloping toward the far, southern ridge.

  The lawman cursed again and walked back to the front of the saloon. The man he’d shot lay slumped on one shoulder, his eyes half open and glazed in death, blood dribbling in several rivers down his forehead and pumping out from the ragged hole in his chest.

  The other man had burned down to the size of a modest trash fire. A big collie dog had appeared in the street nearby, tracing a broad circle around the burning man and whining with its head down.

  Longarm turned toward the large, white hotel directly across the street from the saloon. The front door was closed, but its window as well as the rest of the glass in the building’s façade had been blown out. Only ragged shards remained. Most of the windows in the two upper stories had also been blown away, their curtains hanging in tatters.

  The man in the gray suit lay slumped and unmoving on the boardwalk fronting the place. A breeze had come up, however, and blown his hat beneath a loafer’s bench and pushed it snug against the hotel’s white clapboard wall where it remained, its crisp brim bending.

  Longarm cupped a hand to his mouth, and yelled, “Marshal Scobie? Federal lawman, here. It’s peaceable out here now!”

  Silence. The sun hammered the front of the hotel, reflecting off the broken windowpanes.

  “I’m comin’ in,” Longarm said and started forward.

  He stepped onto the broad, roofed boardwalk, pulled open the screen door, and tried the knob of the inside door. Locked. Letting the screen door slap shut, Longarm walked over to the window left of it and crouched to peer inside the hotel’s saloon.

  Dark in there, with several webs of powder smoke. Lots of bullet holes in tables and chairs and the mahogany bar and back bar to Longarm’s left. The back bar mirror was shattered, as were most of the bottles and glasses on its shelves. In the dinginess, near an overturned, bullet-riddled table, an old, gray-haired man in baggy duck trousers and suspenders lay facedown on the floor, in a broad pool of brown blood.

  A Henry rifle lay on the floor to his right, amidst countless empty shell casings.

  Longarm used his rifle barrel to break out a sharp, triangular glass shard from the window’s lower frame, then stepped through the window and inside the saloon. His boots crunched the broken glass on the floor. Holding his rifle straight out from his right hip, he looked around carefully.

  Something moved on his left, and he sw
ung his rifle toward the bar. A head ducked down.

  “Come on outta there!” Longarm ordered.

  “Don’t shoot!” came the tremulous reply.

  The head reappeared—just a cap of black hair and two brown eyes. Then the entire, black-mustached face rose from behind the bar, and the portly, round-faced man stood with his arms raised, his eyes dancing between Longarm’s rifle and the copper badge pinned to the lawman’s vest.

  “Who’re you?” Longarm said with a flint-eyed snarl.

  “Florin. I own this place.” The barman’s gaze flicked across the bullet-riddled room toward the broad, carpeted staircase rising at the rear. “What’s left of it . . .”

  “That Scobie?”

  The man nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you’d put that rifle down.”

  “You see the badge?”

  “I could find a badge. If I wanted one badly enough.”

  “Where’s Mrs. Pritchard?” Longarm said.

  “Upstairs.”

  Poor woman, Longarm absently mused. Because of the wooden leg, she’d probably had trouble finding a husband. On top of that misery, all this . . .

  “Anyone else here?”

  As if in reply to Longarm’s query, boots thumped in the ceiling, making their way across the second story over Longarm’s head, toward the stairs. Longarm raised his rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the top of the stairs.

  “Who’s that?”

  “That’s Leroy,” the barman said just as a young man with longish, curly blond hair appeared at the top of the stairs, starting down and holding a pistol in his right hand.

  “Found Kirby’s old six-shooter,” the kid said, hurrying down the stairs, one hand on the rail. “It was right where you said it was . . .” The voice stopped suddenly, and he let his voice trail off. His eyes had found Longarm and turned sharp with fear.

  “Drop the gun, Junior,” Longarm ordered, aiming down the Winchester’s barrel.

  “Ah, shit!” the kid intoned, crumpling his young face with fear and frustration. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Custis P. Long,” Longarm said. “Deputy U.S. marshal out of Denver. Go ahead and set that pistol down nice an’ easy, and we can continue the conversation more friendly-like.”

  “You a lawman?” the kid said, pulling his vest away to reveal the five-pointed star pinned to his shirt. “So am I!”

  “That’s Leroy,” said the barman, still holding his hands above his head.

  “Leroy Panabaker,” the kid said. “Deputy town marshal of Snow Mound, Colorado Territory.”

  “Just the same, Leroy, you’ll wanna stow that pistol somewhere. You don’t need it now. The three curly wolves out yonder are as dead as the gray-suited gent on the porch.” The kid didn’t appear much over fifteen years old. He was short and so thin that even his snakeskin suspenders were having a hard time holding his trousers up on his lean hips. The big Colt holstered on his right hip looked far too big for him to carry around without falling over, much less for him to handle safely.

  Deputy Panabaker’s close-set eyes flashed in surprise as he wedged the Schofield behind his cartridge belt, all the leather loops of which, Longarm noted, were empty. “You got ’em?”

  Longarm lowered the rifle. “That’s right. But not before they got your boss, looks like.”

  The kid came slowly down the stairs, his gaze growing dark as his eyes found the sheriff lying dead on the floor. “Poor old Marshal Scobie. He took a ricochet just before I went upstairs looking for another gun and more ammo.” The kid deputy shook his head sadly. “He’s the one that give me this job, nigh on two years ago, now. He saw I had a callin’ and he give me a chance.”

  “Two years ago?” Longarm said. “Good Lord—you must’ve been twelve.”

  “Fourteen. No one else in town wanted the job, and I may not look like much, Marshal Long, but I can shoot the white out of a hawk’s eye at four hundred yards.” He glanced at the barman, who’d finally lowered his hands and was walking out from behind his bar, looking around with a stricken expression on his soft, pale, black-mustached face. “Can’t I, Al?”

  “Look at my place,” said Al.

  “Where’s Miss Pritchard?” Longarm asked the kid as he shouldered his rifle and headed for the stairs.

  “Room seven up yonder,” Leroy said. “She’s awful scared, but she’ll be glad to know we done took care o’ them gunnies.”

  Longarm gave a wry snort and climbed the stairs. On the second floor he stopped in front of the door with a brass number seven adorning its top panel. Hearing quick footsteps on the carpeted stairs at the end of the hall, Longarm rapped on the door.

  “Uh . . . Marshal Long?”

  Longarm glanced back the way he’d come, saw the kid taking long strides toward him, an anxious look on his face. On the other side of the door facing Longarm, a pistol cracked. A slug hammered through the door’s upper panel.

  Longarm felt the air curl just left of his face as the slug continued on across the hall and into the red-papered wall on the opposite side. As the gun cracked again, chewing more slivers from the door, Longarm threw himself to the right and dropped to a crouch, scowling.

  “What the hell!”

  As though in reply, a female voice screeched on the other side of the door, “Go away, you savages! I have a gun, and I know how to use it!”

  “I forgot to tell you,” Deputy Panabaker said, crouching and holding one hand up, as though to shield himself from a bullet. “She’s got a gun, and she knows how to use it!”

  “Thanks for that valuable bit of information, Leroy!”

  Young Panabaker rammed his left shoulder against the wall and hotfooted it up to the edge of the woman’s door. He angled his left hand down low and rapped once on the door before jerking his hand back behind the wall. “Miss Pritchard—all’s well! We done greased all three o’ them owlhoots outside, and the coast is clear. You can come out now.”

  “Who’s out there with you?” came the crisp female voice from inside.

  “Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long out of Denver, ma’am. I have a badge, if you want to see it.”

  “What about the others?”

  “The other who?”

  “The other trail wolves,” cried the woman from behind the door. “You don’t think there are just three, do you? Oh, Lord—I’m doomed!”

  Longarm glanced at Panabaker cheeked up against the wall on the other side of the door and said, “Open the door, Miss Pritchard.”

  “It’s all right, Miss Pritchard,” Leroy gently assured the terrified woman. “Like I said, we done sent them three outside to hell with coal shovels.” He swallowed. “If you’ll pardon my French . . .”

  Longarm heard the squawk of a floorboard on the other side of the door. Likely, the poor one-legged, old thing was trying to compose herself as she headed for the door. Probably still trying to choke back a heart stroke. The lock scraped. The knob turned. The bolt clicked, and the door opened, hinges squeaking like red-winged blackbirds.

  “All right,” came the woman’s voice. “But you’d better be who you say you are.”

  Longarm looked into the room and blinked his eyes as if to clear them.

  “Like I warned,” said the incredibly gorgeous, young, full-bosomed blonde in a red-and-white, low-cut gingham dress standing about six feet back from the door, “I have this here gun. My boss gave it to me back in Pinecone, in case of just such a catastrophic situation as the one I find myself now facing.” She raised the gun in both her pale, slender hands. “And if you try anything at all untoward, I’ll drill you! I swear I will!”

  Chapter 7

  Longarm looked over the girl’s right shoulder, widened his eyes, and winced as though spying a threat in one of the room’s two windows. The girl fell for it. She’d no sooner turned her head to follow his gaze than he lunged forward and easily jerked the gun from her hand.

  She gave an indignant cry and, turning too quickly forward, lost her balance and dropped o
nto the edge of the bed. Silky locks of honey-blond hair tumbled enticingly across her face that appeared deftly chiseled by a master sculptor. “Oh, you bastard!”

  Holding her pistol in his hand, Longarm stared down at the girl, incredulous. “You’re . . . Josephine Pritchard?”

  She threw hair back and glared up at him through lime-green eyes in which copper sparks flashed. “Who else would I be? And give me back that gun, damn you. Mr. Cable from the Stockmen’s Bank in Pinecone gave it to me to defend myself with!”

  Longarm let his puzzled albeit appreciative gaze drift down the girl’s fine, cream neck. He allowed it to linger for a second or two on the well-filled bodice of her low-cut dress, noting a very light splash of freckles across her cleavage that owned the color of a nearly ripe peach. A primitive, involuntary warmth touched the lawman’s loins. He continued sliding his eyes down the girl’s flat belly to her legs, the fine outlines of which he could see beneath her long, gingham skirt. Both were long, slender, and supple.

  Obviously, neither was wooden.

  Longarm chuckled. Did Billy really know what the girl looked like, or had he been merely trying to prepare his senior deputy for the worst possibility? Likely, the former.

  Somehow, he’d gotten a description of the girl and, knowing Longarm’s weakness for the fairer sex, had decided to jerk the randy lawman’s chain. In Billy’s conniving way, the ruse had probably also been meant to warn Longarm to keep his hands, as well as other more insistent body parts, off and out of the girl.

  “Oh, God,” the girl cried, wrinkling her thin, blond brows as she stared up at the big lawman towering over her, raking his eyes across every inch of her. “You’re not only uncouth but crazy, to boot!”

  “Easy, miss,” Longarm said, poking her pistol into the waistband of his pants and regaining his composure. “I’m no more dangerous than your average coyote dog— as long as you don’t prod me with sticks or guns, I keep my hackles down.” He turned to Deputy Leroy Panabaker standing just inside the door, blushing as he stared in unconscious admiration at the beautiful, disheveled, young creature on the bed near Longarm. “How many more o’ them trail wolves, as Miss Pritchard calls ’em, is lurkin’ around out there, Leroy?”