Longarm and the Banker's Daughter (9781101613375) (10 page)

Chapter 16

Longarm sat listening, holding the Winchester barrel up, butt pressed against his right thigh, index finger curled through the trigger guard. Another rifle shot cracked hollowly, the report turning shrill before fading.

Longarm eased the pressure on his trigger finger. The shooter was down in the valley on the other side of the ridge he was climbing. Maybe a hunter. Or maybe one of the Greers . . .

He depressed the carbine's hammer, rested the rifle across his saddlebows, and clucked the dun into motion. It continued following the slanting game trail up across the ridge and into the pines where chickadees and nuthatches peeped in the branches around him, and squirrels, interrupted in their work, scolded him raucously.

He gained the top of the ridge an hour later. The sun was a large, pink balloon in the west, hovering just above the ridgetops. The river that he and Lacy had had their adventure on lay to the north, on Longarm's right. He could see only slate-gray glimpses of it showing between ridges.

A couple of hours ago, the trail had swerved away from it, and now he figured he was somewhere north of the cabin from which he'd plucked Lacy from her dead beau's hard-case companions. To the west lay the gentle swell of a broad valley carpeted in evergreens, the far side rising to bald, stony ridges.

He could see little but the tops of the trees turning dark now as the sun set, but as he stared from a nest of rocks at the top of his own ridge, the coyote dun cropping grass contentedly behind him, he could see a thin tendril of smoke rising from the valley floor. He stared at the smoke. The goose egg on his temple pulsated expectantly.

Lacy and the Greers?

Damn possible. Of course, he wouldn't know for sure until he'd checked it out.

He climbed down out of his nest and walked over to the horse. He ran his hand down the dun's sleek neck, patted its wither. The horse blew softly, becoming more accustomed to the strange rider who'd been forking his saddle for the past eight hours.

“Come on, boy,” Longarm said, touching heels to the animal's flanks. “We'll rest soon. Might even have us a warm fire.”

His jaws set with purpose, the lawman put the horse down the ridge to the southwest, following the same game path he'd been following the past several hours. Tall trees and the tang of pine and deep, moist forest duff rose around him. He and the dun curved through the ever-darkening forest until they gained the valley floor. Then they followed a fairly straight line through the deep woods. They crossed a shallow creek, climbed a low ridge, and descended the other side.

A half hour later, near good dark, Longarm stopped the dun. The smell of burning pine touched his nostrils. The dun smelled it, too, and was about to give an eager whinny at the prospect of rest and a feedbag and fresh water, but Longarm, long used to the ways of horses, reached around its neck and clamped his hand over the beast's snout, rendering the whinny stillborn on the gelding's leathery lips.

“Patience, partner,” he said softly in the dun's twitching right ear.

He swung out of the saddle, tied the horse to a low branch, and shucked his carbine. He levered a shell into the chamber, then off cocked the hammer as a wolf howled somewhere on the far side of the valley over which the night was closing fast. The dun was staring in the wolf's direction with understandable interest, but the horse merely twitched its ears and did not whinny.

“Good boy,” Longarm whispered and strode forward, walking softly through the maze of black tree columns. Pine needles crunched beneath his boots, but he otherwise moved soundlessly, something he'd learned in his years of manhunting.

He followed the gradually intensifying smell of the wood smoke for a hundred yards, then crouched behind a ragged-topped tree stump. Ahead, across a shallow ravine through which a freshet trickled nearly soundlessly, the water reflecting the last of the green light drifting weakly down from the sky, a fire glowed. It was about fifty yards away, beyond a juniper snag. Longarm watched it through the inverted V of a tall fir and another that leaned against it as though to hold it up.

On the side of the valley, the wolf howled again. It was answered by another slightly west. Longarm tightened his jaws in hopes the dun didn't whinny and give its rider's presence away.

He couldn't see anyone around the fire, but he could see the vague shapes of several horses off to the left of it, tied to a picket line strung between two trees. Slowly, he rose and just as slowly moved down into the ravine and stepped across the water, trying to keep his feet dry. Wet boots squawked, and mud sticking to the bottoms also made it harder to move quietly.

Ten minutes later he dropped to a knee behind a mossy boulder at the edge of the firelight. Doffing his hat, he peered around the rock. A long, thick lump of a human figure lay on the fire's far side. Probably May. To the fire's left, Greer lay back against his saddle, hat tipped down over his eyes. He held a rifle across his belly in both gloved hands. It rose and fell slowly as he breathed.

There were two more bedrolls amongst the gear strewn around the fire, but they were vacant. Frowning, Longarm looked around. Where were . . . ?

He let the silent question trail off as he heard an indistinguishable sound somewhere off to his right. There was a whisper. He recognized Lacy's furtive voice.

Scowling, he rose from behind the rock and set his hat on his head. He'd wanted to get all four of his double-crossers together, where they'd be easier to corral, but it appeared that Lacy once again was going to do what she could to throw a hammer through his wheel spokes.

He traced a broad circle around the edge of the firelight, set one foot down after another, with painstaking delicacy, keeping to the shunting shadows just beyond it. The sounds he'd been hearing grew louder—sighs of various pitches, hushes whispers, grunts—and when he knelt behind a rotting blowdown slanting to the ground before him, he saw the two lovers moving together, their shadows sometimes merging.

Lacy and Felix. Had to be . . .

Jealousy no longer nibbled at the frayed edges of Longarm's dark soul. Or even at his lust. He'd had his fill of the girl, and he was just glad to see that she was doing to Felix what she'd been doing to him—luring him into her sweet little trap and fucking him seven ways from sundown.

On the other side of the valley, but sounding a little closer now, the wolves continued to howl—sometimes alone, sometimes together. Another one had joined the first two.

Longarm started to rise and move toward them but sank back down to his knee when Lacy said just loudly enough for him to hear: “You like this, Felix?”

“Oh, God, yeah!” the big younker rasped as she rose and fell over him, straddling him. Longarm could see the lightness of her hair in the starlight, very faintly touched by the light of the guttering fire.

Felix lay back against a log, chin up, head tilted back.

“We can do it a lot, if you want.”

“Oh, Christ . . . yeah!”

“Shhh!”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Lacy giggled softly and continued to bounce up and down on the big, cow-stupid son of Harcourt Greer. Amused, Longarm waited.

“You just think about . . . how much you like this . . .” Lacy said, grunting and sighing, riding the boy faster and harder, hair bouncing on her shoulders. “Tomorrow . . . after we retrieve the loot in the saddlebags, Felix . . . you just remember what we did here tonight. If we were alone. . . .”

“Huh?”

“You know,” Lacy said, “if it was just you and me . . . and the money.”

“Oh.” Felix grunted, sucked air through his teeth. “Yeah . . .”

Just then Longarm saw a dark figure move in the brush beyond Felix and Lacy. Before he could move, the figure rose up to May's full height, and the big woman said in her hoarse, mannish voice, “Why, you little double-crossing trollop!”

Lacy and Felix screamed as one. Longarm saw starlight flash off a pistol barrel. He bounded to his feet and rushed forward, extending the carbine straight out from his right shoulder, “Hold it, May!”

The big woman was aiming the gun at Lacy's head but now she jerked it toward Longarm, who triggered the carbine, which flashed and thundered. May's pistol popped, the slug flying wide. At the same time, her bulky, dark figure stumbled backward, away from the two cowering frolickers. As May twisted around and dropped to a knee, cursing at the tops of her lungs and clutching her upper right arm, Lacy yelled, “It's Longarm! He followed us! Shoot him, Felix. Hurry!”

The kid must have had a pistol nearby, because his hand jerked to one side and came up filled with steel that the firelight limned like a horseshoe glowing in a blacksmith's forge.

“Don't do it, Felix!” Longarm shouted, honestly not wanting to kill the kid.

“Goddamn lawdog!” Felix bellowed.

Longarm threw himself hard to the right as the kid popped off a shot, then rose up onto his shoulder and triggered the carbine twice quickly.

Boom! Boom!

Lacy screamed as she threw herself away from Felix, whose head slammed sharply back against the log he'd been leaning against. He dug his heels into the ground, lifting his naked midsection and arching his back, wheezing as the blood from both shots pumped out of his chest.

“Pa!” the kid screamed. “He done kilt me, Pa!”

Just then a bellowing roar rose from the direction of the fire, and Longarm turned to see Harcourt Greer standing in his balbriggans and socks, with two pistols in his hands.

The pistols roared, the slugs curling the air around Longarm's head and thudding into tree boles. He threw himself over the now-dead Felix Greer, rolled, and fired three times quickly over the log, sending Greer flying back away from the fire, triggering his last shot at the stars.

Longarm had no sooner fired the last shot than Lacy threw herself against his back and wrapped her arms around his neck, screaming, “I hate you! I hate you!”

She tightened her arms around him, trying to choke him, her naked body writhing against him, breasts pressing against his back between his shoulders. He dropped the carbine, peeled her hands off his throat, and feeling a rage not only for the attack but for the desire she could still ignite in his body after all she'd pulled, he twisted around, swinging an elbow. The elbow slammed against her left temple, and she gave a grunt as she fell against the log with a solid thud. She gave another groan, squeezed her eyes shut, then slumped to the ground, her pale, naked body slackening, breasts sloping to the side.

Breathing hard, still gritting his teeth, Longarm stared down at her. He'd hit her harder than he would have had he not lost his temper. Oh, well—at least he took the hump out of her neck. For now.

He glanced at the dead Felix beside him, then at Greer, who lay on the far side of the fire, unmoving, stockinged feet pointing skyward. Remembering May, he swung his gaze to brush where he'd last seen her, seeing nothing now but brush in the darkness.

He picked up the carbine, rose, stepped over Lacy, racked a fresh round in the rifle's chamber, and tramped slowly into the brush. His eyes swept the ground. Seeing no sign of May, he kept walking through the trees south of the bivouac. The light from the dying fire dwindled though he could hear the soft snapping and occasional popping of the flames.

He stopped, said, “May?” then dropped to a knee and aimed the rifle out in front of him, expecting to see the flash of a pistol.

Nothing.

He waited. Off in the woods before him, a rustling sounded. A low snarl. More rustling.

“No!” May screamed, her shrill voice echoing.

Longarm heard the thuds of several pairs of padded feet, the louder crunching and heavier, frantic thudding of one pair of human feet. A gun thundered twice, flashing on a slight rise maybe fifty or sixty yards away.

The thuds faded. May must have been running down the far side of the rise, the wolves following, trampling brush and snarling.

“Stay away!” May screamed. “Oh, heeelllpppp!”

The scream faded. Then there was nothing but the thrashing and the snarling almost inaudible from Longarm's position.

The lawman straightened, gave a satisfied chuff, then walked back over to where Lacy lay beside the dead Felix, in the same position as before. Longarm leaned the carbine against the log, picked the girl up in his arms, and carried her over to the fire. He lay her down in a bedroll, covered her with a blanket, then tossed a couple of branches on the low, guttering flames. They took to the wood instantly and grew, dancing, causing the orange light to shunt and shudder against the encroaching darkness.

Longarm walked over to where Greer lay on his back, eyes half open, blood oozing from one wound in his right cheek, another in his upper right chest. Two pistols lay just beyond him. One was Longarm's Colt. He picked it up and, looking around cautiously, plucked out the spent cartridge casings and replaced them with fresh from his shell belt.

He rolled the cylinder across his forearm as he continued to stare off in the direction from which he'd come. Were Gunn and Cruz out there? If they were anywhere within four miles of this valley, they'd likely heard the gunfire.

And they'd be riding toward it.

Longarm retrieved his carbine, glanced down again at Lacy, who was still out like a blown lamp. He prodded her lightly with his boot toe, checking to see if she was faking it. He didn't think so, but you never knew with her. He didn't trust her as far as he could hurl her uphill against a stiff wind.

He got rid of all the weapons in and around the camp, including Felix's old Remington, and tossed them into the darkness beyond the firelight, where she'd have a hard time finding them if she went looking. Then he strode off to fetch his horse. He had to get out of here.

He had to take Lacy and get out of here fast.

As he walked out toward where he'd left the coyote dun, he heard the wolves growl and snarl savagely as they fought over supper courtesy of May.