Longarm 397 : Longarm and the Doomed Beauty (9781101545973) (9 page)

Longarm wrapped a hand on both of hers that rested, one atop the other, on her saddle horn.

“You understand, Miss Pritchard? Otherwise, those killers are gonna win.”

She sucked a ragged breath, opened her eyes, and looked at him. Slowly, she nodded, then ran the back of her hand across her cheeks. “Okay.” She drew another bracing draught of the cool, dry air. “I'll follow. I'll keep up to you, Marshal Long.”

Longarm reined the claybank around and ground his heels into the beasts's flanks, moving off at a trot along the wagon trace that, according to the government survey maps he'd studied on the train, led to several small mining encampments dotting the mountains. He recognized several surrounding peaks, and used them to keep his bearings as the trail wound down another mountain shoulder, then flattened out in a fur-choked canyon.

They couldn't keep to the trail for long. Their sign was too obvious, too easily followed.

When he came to a narrow creek that crossed the trail and over which someone had built a simple, halved-log bridge, he reined the dun to another stop. To his left, the stream tumbled down a series of terraces, its source probably far up the mountain. To his right, the streambed shallowed and broadened as it carved a path through a crease between two slopes.

There was no trail there, other than game trails. Which made it a good route for two people on the run from a gang that badly outnumbered them.

“Come on,” he told the girl, and put the claybank into the stream.

“Why are we riding in the creek?” she asked behind him, as the horses splashed through the fetlock-deep water, in which the slender, dark shapes of trout darted away like shadows.

“Cover our sign.” He stopped the horse, dismounted, and broke a branch off a young pine, low enough down that the fresh wound in the trunk wouldn't be obvious. “Keep going,” he told Miss Pritchard, watching him dubiously. “I'll be along in a minute.”

As the girl batted her heels against the dun's flanks and went splashing down the rippling streambed, Longarm walked back up the stream. Without leaving the streambed, the cold water running over his boots and soaking his legs halfway up to his knees, he used the branch to obliterate their tracks, where they curved off the wagon trail and into the creek. Not a foolproof maneuver, but one that might buy them some extra time for losing the gang in the off-trail slopes and wooded canyons.

He tossed the branch into a chokecherry snag and removed his hat to look at the sky. The sun was a buttery-gold ball balanced atop the peak of a high, western ridge, sending javelins of shimmering rays eastward. The sun would be down soon—a good bit of luck. The diminishing light would be in Longarm's favor, as his and the girl's trail would be harder to follow. But it also meant the mountain cold was on its way, and he'd have to find a place to camp and build a fire. Miss Pritchard wasn't dressed for a cold spring mountain night.

Longarm tramped through the frigid water tumbling down the mountain. Just as he reached for the dun's reins, which he'd wrapped around his saddle horn, he froze. He'd heard something.

Turning to look over his right shoulder, toward the trail dropping down the timbered slope behind him, he heard it again—the clatter of galloping hooves. Men's voices rose, muted by the stream. Longarm's heart thudded. He stepped back from the horse, peering up the slope through the trees.

He couldn't see the riders, but their thudding hooves grew louder.

“Shit!”

He swung up into the leather and put the dun into a gallop upstream. The girl was ahead of him, walking downstream. She glanced over her shoulder as he approached, and her eyes quickly regained their old horror.

“What is it?”

“Follow me.”

He splashed past the girl on the coyote dun, following the stream as it turned slightly toward the right, dropping gradually but steadily. Up the left slope, a knob of granite jutted from the northern slope. Longarm put the claybank up the left bank and, glancing back to make sure the girl was still behind him, continued on up the slope through spindly birches and aspens cloaked in small, lime-green, spring leaves.

When he and the girl were behind the escarpment, Longarm dropped out of the saddle and shucked his Winchester from the scabbard. “Stay back,” he said as he scrambled along the pitted rock wall. “And keep down.”

“They're coming, aren't they?” she said tonelessly behind him.

He dropped to a knee beside the wall and glanced back at her. She sat the dun, half turned toward him. Her face was as white as a sheet. He tried to give her a reassuring look, quirking the corners of his mouth slightly, and pressed two fingers to his lips.

Gripping the Winchester tightly in his hands, and hearing the loudening thuds of the oncoming riders, he edged a look around the knob, staring back along the creek toward where the trail came down the slope and crossed the bridge. He didn't have to wait long before the first horsebackers came into view, riding hard down the slope, partly curtained by the forest of columnar lodgepole pines and firs.

The horses were blowing and snorting, legs scissoring. Their withers were lathered. The first two men were big and unshaven, and guns bristled about their buckskin or calico-clad frames. The man nearest Longarm was beefy, and he wore a blond beard and a high-crowned Stetson with a Texas crease. Cartridge bandoliers crisscrossed his chest. The brass shells flashed in the sunlight angling down the steep slope on the other side of the trail.

The man galloping beside him wore a shabby bowler hat and buckskins. Thick, dark muttonchops ran down the sides of his face. He carried a double-barreled shotgun across his saddlebows as he rode, leaning forward in his saddle and just now spitting to one side as he and the other man raced across the bridge.

They continued on across the creek and then disappeared behind the knob as they headed north along the canyon, the other riders following, occasionally yelling, their horses' racing hooves kicking up a rataplan cacophony in the wooded hollow, the thudding on the bridge sounding like sporadic drum rolls.

Longarm raked his gaze across the other men in the pack. He counted thirteen. All looked as savage and determined as the first two riders.

Longarm raked his thumb eagerly across the Winchester's hammer. He'd have loved nothing more than to raise the long gun and commence blowing the killers and town burners out of their saddles. But doing so would be suicide.

Eventually, the men would die. He'd have Billy assign a few more lawmen, building up a good-sized posse, and with them upping his odds, Longarm would hunt them all and kill them or send them to the gallows where they'd stretch hemp in the same fashion as their kill-crazy leader.

He was glad when they'd drifted on past the creek and his and the girl's position behind the granite scarp. The temptation to open fire was gone. Now, he needed to get the girl into a safe camping site and build a fire. Already, he could feel the cold descending as the light quickly waned.

He turned to her. She sat her horse as before, looking gaunt and pale. She was also shivering—he could see her shoulders jerking slightly under her short, rabbit-fur coat.

“Let's go,” he said, grabbing the claybank's reins and stepping into the saddle. “We'll keep heading up this canyon, find a place to hole up for the night.”

“Soon . . . they'll see we're no longer ahead of them,” she said, her voice brittle, toneless.

“Yeah, they will.” Longarm rested his rifle across his saddlebows. “But by that time it'll be dark as a glove down here, and they'll have no way of tracking us. Won't be a moon for several nights yet.” He offered another reassuring smile, trying hard to make it look authentic. “Come on, Miss Pritchard. We're gonna be all right.”

“There's so many of them,” she said in that same, depressed tone, staring with glazed eyes over Longarm's shoulder. “You're only one man . . .”

“Come on, Miss Pritchard,” he said, reining his horse back into the canyon. “Like I said, we're gonna be just fine.”

As he swung the gelding up canyon, he hated the uncertainty he heard in his voice.

The fire's glow flickered across the fine curve of the girl's naked leg. Longarm let his eyes roam down the smooth flesh, colored copper by the wavering light of the small fire he'd built in the hollow, a good five miles or so from where they'd entered the creek.

Longarm sipped the coffee he'd laced with rye and chuckled to himself. Wooden, eh, Billy? He swallowed the spicy, bracing brew, enjoying the heat of it flooding his stomach and sending the warmth all through his limbs, staving off the night's deep, frosty chill.

He leaned forward, admiring the leg once more, then drew the blanket down over it, keeping her warm. She'd been asleep for a couple of hours now. She hadn't accepted any of the jerky or bread or coffee that Longarm had offered, after they'd made camp here in this narrow, stone- and brush-choked canyon.

She hadn't spoken, either. Not a good sign, he thought. She was scared. But more than scared, she was horrified by what had happened as a result of her testifying against Babe Younger. He'd wanted to reassure her that she'd done the right thing, and that the killing of the Pinkertons and Marshal Scobie as well as the burning of the town of Snow Mound—had others died, then, too?—had not been her fault.

It had been the fault of those who had done the actual burning and killing.

But he knew that in her withdrawn sadness and terror, his words wouldn't have reached her. So he'd said nothing, only made a good soft bed for her of pine boughs and blankets, positioning her saddle for a pillow, and watched her roll up in the bed and drift into the sanctuary of sleep.

Up the narrow canyon a ways, one of the horses snorted. Longarm looked to see them both standing just beyond the edge of the firelight, one swishing its tail in relative contentment while the other stood statue still, brown tail hanging. He could see the soft clouds of their breath puffing above their heads.

It was a still, quiet night. Cold as the moon. The stars were so bright, seemed so close, that he should be able to reach up and grab them. The air smelled of cold stone and pine resin as well as the smoke from his fire. His coffeepot gurgled and chugged on a flat rock to one side. It was a small fire, one that couldn't be seen outside of ten or fifteen yards. The smoke was shredded about ten feet above, where a stone ledge angled out away from the ridge behind him.

He was relatively certain they wouldn't be discovered here. Not with the night as black as it was. Tomorrow would be another story. They'd have to move out early, at the first blush of dawn. He intended to hide out here in these mountains until he was sure the gang had given up on him, and then take the girl back to Denver.

He'd convince Billy she needed protective custody until Longarm and a well-armed, experienced posse could run them all to ground. She'd never be safe until every last one of the Babe Younger gang was kicked out with a cold shovel.

There was no point in taking her home, because she wouldn't be safe there. Denver was the only place. He hadn't told her that, and he wouldn't until he thought she could handle the information. Now, she likely only wanted the perceived safety of her home in Pinecone, and telling her she couldn't go back to her family, or whoever she had there, would probably only drive her over the edge.

Longarm sipped his coffee and stared at the girl. She lay curled on her side, facing away from him and the fire, her blankets pulled up around her neck. All he could see was her golden-blond hair, a little of her peach-colored cheek across which the fire's shadows played. He felt sorry for the girl. She'd been brave to testify against Babe Younger. Few men would have done such a thing. But she'd done her duty as a citizen, and she'd paid the price for it.

Unfortunately, it looked like she wasn't done paying for it.

Longarm owed it to her to keep her safe until he could return her safely home.

As though she'd just realized the long trek ahead, she sighed, blowing strands of hair out away from her cheek. She shifted a little in the blanket, which slid off her shoulder. Longarm stood, moved around the fire, and pulled the blanket up snug against her neck. She gave another sigh, and then her slow, heavy breaths resumed.

Longarm finished off his coffee and whiskey, set another small log on the fire, then grabbed his Winchester from where it leaned against the high, stone ridge. Time to have a look around. Rifle in hand, he walked quietly away from the fire so not to wake the girl and followed the game trail they'd followed in here, to the canyon mouth.

He dropped to a knee amongst the rocks that disguised the opening. The main canyon stretched perpendicular to the one he and the girl were camped in; it was as black as the bottom of a deep well. No sounds except for the distant hooting of an owl.

There was a distant flicker of light that Longarm first thought was the reflection of starlight off the stream that cut through the far side of the broader, main canyon. As he stared at it, however, he saw that it was not reflected starlight at all.

It was the orange glow of a campfire amongst the trees lining the stream about a hundred yards down canyon, to Longarm's right.

Longarm drew a deep breath, held it, then let it out slow. There was a good chance whoever was camped out there was not after him and the girl. Woodcutters or hunters or the like.

On the other hand, there was a good chance the gang had split up to comb the mountains, and the campfire belonged to one such faction. If the entire gang was camped out there, there would be more fires.

Well, there was only one way to find out. And possibly cull the pack some, maybe even gather a couple of spare horses to ease the strain on the dun and claybank young Panabaker had picked out for Longarm and the girl . . .