Longarm 397 : Longarm and the Doomed Beauty (9781101545973) (6 page)

The night settled cold as a Dakota winter, the coffee smoking like a wildfire in Longarm's hands. Finally, he threw back the last of the bracing, satisfying brew, and relieved his bladder, his pee steaming amongst the pine needles.

He set his cup on a rock, built up his fire from the dry wood he'd gathered, and pulled his saddle and bedroll up close to the flames. He figured it was down around forty degrees or so. It would get down below freezing by midnight.

He removed his gun belt, coiled it around his holster, and set the rig within easy reach beside his saddle. He leaned his cocked Winchester nearby, then dug a hole under him for his hip, rolled up in his blankets, enjoying the heat of the snapping, crackling blaze. Folding his arms on his chest and rolling onto one hip, facing away from the fire, he willed himself into a shallow but badly needed sleep.

He started hearing rifle fire late the next morning, as he climbed a slope through blowdown spruce and aspen, heading toward a sun-splashed saddleback ridge. The pops and cracks were too distant for the shooting to be meant for him, but he reined the roan to a halt, just the same, and slipped his rifle from the saddle boot.

The shots were muffled by distance and seemed to be rising from the other side of the ridge looming ahead and above him. He cocked the Winchester, set the hammer to half cock, and rested the rifle across his saddlebows as he batted his heels against the roan's flanks, and the big horse lunged off its rear hooves.

The sporadic fire continued as Longarm and the stalwart horse climbed the ridge along the narrow trail slanting through stands of stunted spruce and Douglas fir. Near the crest, Longarm dismounted, grabbed his field glasses out of his saddlebags, ground-reined the roan, and tramped to the crest, negotiating a talus slide still patched with dirty winter snow.

He hunkered down behind a boulder. Up here, the cold wind bit him, threatened to rip his hat from his head. He raised his coat collar, pulled his hat down tighter, and peered down the other side of the ridge.

Snow Mound sat in a roughly triangular valley below him. It wasn't much of a town, but he could see several large stores—probably hardware shops or mining suppliers and saloons—and the narrow-gauge railroad crawling into the valley from a canyon mouth to Longarm's left. Near the tracks were stock pens, a large, wooden water tower on stilts, and several mountains of split firewood.

The town was set at an angle before him. In the bright, cool sunlight, he could see the smoke puffs of blasting rifles or pistols around one of the large buildings on the other side of the main street from him. Answering shots sounded from a large, three-story, white-frame structure on the side of the street nearest Longarm.

The cracks and pops of the gunfire reached Longarm's ears about half a second after each smoke puff. Men's shouts rose, as well. Aside from the shooters, Longarm saw no other movement anywhere in the town, as though the place were under siege and all citizens were cowering inside their hovels.

He rose from behind the boulder and ran across the slippery, clacking talus to the roan, gathered up the reins, stepped into the saddle, and urged the horse up and over the ridge and down the side facing the town. Halfway to the bottom of the slope that dropped toward the shaggy northeastern fringe of the village, he swung the roan left, continuing on down the steep hill but now heading toward the settlement's other side.

Instinct told him that the instigators of the gun battle were those shooting from the far side of the main street. He intended to work around behind them.

He was glad he hadn't misjudged the roan. The horse was as good at moving down a steep slope as it was at climbing one, picking its footing carefully but able to continue moving quickly, leaning deep on its stout forequarters and stumbling little.

Leaping occasional slash and weaving around stunt pine and shrubs, the horse gained the bottom of the slope, leaped a narrow creek, and galloped around to the town's southern end, in the direction of the narrow-gauge rails and depot building.

Still, Longarm saw no one except the shooters out and about. Obviously, the shacks weren't abandoned, as smoke twisted from chimney pipes and horses and other stock milled in pens and corrals.

Longarm urged the horse around privies and pens and finally pulled up near the rear of the large, unpainted frame building he'd figured to be a saloon and from the front of which the brunt of the gunfire issued, echoing around the near ridges. Behind a two-hole privy, he leaped down from the roan's back. As he made his way toward the main drag, he saw three brightly dressed and feathered girls crouching behind the unpainted building fronting the privy.

A man stood near the girls—a short gent in a pinstriped shirt, sleeve garters, and a green apron. He was casually smoking a cigar while the girls crouched anxiously, one sneaking a look around the rear of the building toward the front, where the guns were popping.

Longarm approached the group. The man narrowed a skeptical gaze at him, puffing smoke around his stogie. One of the girls turned toward Longarm, then gasped and fell back against the building with a start. The other girls saw him, then, too, and they nearly leaped out of their high-heeled shoes and low-cut gowns and corsets as they cast fearful gazes at the imposing figure in the snuff-brown hat and three-piece suit, and holding the Winchester on his shoulder.

Longarm touched two fingers to his mustached mouth, and dug his moon-and-star federal badge out of his vest pocket, holding it up for all to see. Keeping his voice low, he said, “Who's flingin' lead at who?”

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.

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 swung his rifle toward the bar. A head ducked down.