Longarm 245: Longarm and the Vanishing Virgin (10 page)

The stagecoach carrying Nora Canady was being held up by outlaws.

Even as that realization hit him, Longarm dropped the reins of the buckskin, jammed his heels into the flanks of the dun, and grabbed the stock of his Winchester as the horse lunged forward in a gallop.

Chances were, the outlaws would just steal the mail pouch, rob the passengers of any valuables, and ride off. But you could never tell what might happen in such a tense situation. One of the passengers might foolishly decide to fight back, or the driver could try to make a play, or one of the owlhoots might start shooting just for the hell of it.... The important thing was, Nora could be in danger.

He was too far away to have an effect on the outcome of the robbery, Longarm realized sickly. The outlaws' horses were already milling around, as if the gang was getting ready to ride off. Longarm saw several figures standing beside the coach, one of them a woman. Suddenly, one of the outlaws spurred his horse closer to her and bent over. Longarm was too far away to hear the scream she must have let out as the desperado wrapped his arm around her and jerked her off her feet, but the terrified cry echoed in his imagination. The hat the woman was wearing came off as the outlaw swung her onto the horse in front of him. Late afternoon sunlight flashed on long, honey-blond hair as it spilled free.

Longarm turned the air around his head blue with curses as he rode desperately toward the scene of the holdup. The outlaws were grabbing Nora, most likely to take her with them as a hostage. She was actually being kidnapped this time.

Longarm yanked the dun to a stop and brought the Winchester to his shoulder. He fired, deliberately aiming wide of the stagecoach and the men on horseback around it. He couldn't risk trying to shoot any of the outlaws, not while Nora was their prisoner and might get hit by a stray slug, but maybe he could spook the man who was holding her and give her a chance to slip away.

That didn't prove to be the case. The outlaws wheeled their horses and broke into a gallop that carried them away from the stage road to the east. Longarm slid the rifle back into its sheath. There was no point in throwing lead after them, not at this range. He heeled the dun into motion again.

Instead of following the outlaws directly, he rode on to the stopped stagecoach instead. It had occurred to him that maybe the woman the owlhoots had snatched hadn't been Nora. There could have been more than one woman on the coach, although he hadn't heard anything about that at any of the stations where he had stopped. He had to be sure, though, before he took off after the outlaws.

The middle-aged driver was waiting, along with three passengers, all men, when Longarm rode up. “Wish you'd happened along a mite sooner, mister,” the driver called up to him. “You might've spooked those bastards 'fore they cleaned us out.”

Two of the passengers appeared to be salesmen, while the third had the look of a cattleman. Longarm said to them, “That woman who was carried off, do any of you know her name?”

The question took them by surprise, but the rancher said, “I believe she told us her name was Cassidy.”

“That's right,” added one of the drummers. “Miss Nora Cassidy.”

The other drummer said, “She told us she was going down to Fort Davis to meet her fiancé, a lieutenant who's posted there.”

“You goin' after those boys, mister?” asked the driver.

Longarm nodded grimly. “I intend to get that woman back.”

“By God, I'll go with you!” exclaimed the rancher. He nodded toward the buckskin, which had trotted up following Longarm and the dun. “That is, if you'll loan me a horse.”

Longarm hesitated. The cattleman was past his prime, as evidenced by his white hair and mustache and the thickness of his waist. But his eyes flashed with outrage at the idea of a woman being kidnapped or mistreated in any way, and his rough, big-knuckled hands showed the signs of a lifetime of hard work. If he had established a ranch anywhere out here in West Texas, chances were he still had a lot of bark on his hide despite his age.

“All right,” Longarm said, coming to a decision. He might need someone to back his play when he caught up to the bandits. “I don't have an extra saddle, though.”

“Don't matter. Mine's in the boot.” The rancher started toward the rear of the coach, only to pause and extend a hand up to Longarm. “Name's Walt Gibson.”

“Custis Long,” Longarm told him as he shook hands. He didn't take the time to explain that he was a United States marshal.

While Gibson was getting his saddle from the coach's boot, Longarm untied the two bags of supplies from each other, then tied one onto the horn of his saddle. Gibson would carry the other one on the buckskin.

“What's the nearest town?” Longarm asked the driver.

“That'd be Monahans. It's our next stop, in fact.”

“Is there any law there?”

“County sheriff.”

Longarm nodded. “Good. Tell him what happened here, and that Gibson and I have gone after those outlaws. You happen to know who those fellas were?”

“Couldn't see their faces,” said the jehu. “They had bandannas pulled up over their mouths. But I'd be willing to bet it was the Heck Wallace gang.”

“Sounds like a bunch that's well known in these parts.” One of the drummers said, “You haven't heard of the Wallace gang, mister?”

“I ain't from around here,” Longarm said dryly.

“They've been holding up stagecoaches and robbing banks from Big Springs to El Paso for the past six months,” the driver said. “I was warned to be on the lookout for ‘em. They rode up out of a dry wash right over yonder, though, so I didn't even have time to whip up the team 'fore they had us surrounded.”

“I'm ready to ride,” Gibson announced. He swung up into the saddle on the back of the buckskin.

Longarm nodded. “Remember to tell the sheriff in Monahans what happened,” he told the driver.

“Don't worry about that, Mr. Long. His office is goin' to be my first stop!”

Longarm and Gibson trotted their mounts away from the stage road, heading east the way the outlaws had done. When Longarm glanced behind them, he saw that the coach had gotten underway and was rolling south again.

“I appreciate you coming along, Gibson,” he told the rancher. “Looked like there were seven or eight men in that gang. Hefty odds for only one man to go up against.”

“Yep, now it's only four to one,” Gibson said with a grin. Longarm couldn't help but chuckle at the anticipation he heard in the cattleman's voice. Gibson was obviously spoiling for some action.

“You have a spread around here somewhere?” Longarm asked.

Gibson nodded. “Down by San Solomon Springs, about fifty miles southwest of here. My foreman was going to meet me with some horses in Monahans. I took a herd up into New Mexico Territory and sold it, decided to come back on the stage instead of riding back with my cowhands.” He grunted. “Bad mistake. I was cut out for a saddle, not no bouncin', dust-choked contraption like that stagecoach.”

Longarm's liking for the man grew. He had never been overly fond of riding a stagecoach either. “You talk much to Miss Cassidy while you were traveling together?” he asked. It didn't surprise him that Nora had used a phony name. Too many people had heard of Bryce Canady and might connect her with him if she used her real name. That was more proof—as if he'd needed it—that leaving Denver had been Nora's own idea. She was running away and evidently didn't want to go back.

But he was sure she didn't want to be in the hands of a bunch of outlaws either.

“No, she was pretty quiet, kept to herself,” Gibson said. “Pleasant enough, just not the sort to talk much. We all respected that, of course.” The rancher's face and voice hardened. “Those bastards had best not harm her. If they do, every man west of the Brazos will want to hunt them down and string them up like the skunks they are.”

“I reckon they know that too,” said Longarm. That knowledge was the hole card he was counting on. The outlaws might use Nora as a hostage or even hold her for ransom, but there was a good chance they wouldn't molest her. Mistreating a decent woman was something that just wasn't tolerated on the frontier.

The riders Longarm and Gibson were trailing had left tracks that were plain to see. Evidently, they weren't worried about pursuit. Longarm thought about that for a minute, recalled some things about West Texas geography he had learned on previous visits to the Lone Star State, then said,

“We're heading toward those damned sand hills, aren't we?”

“I'm afraid so,” said Gibson. “Rumor has it that Wallace has a hideout somewhere in there.” He shook his head. “It's hellish country, I know that.”

So did Longarm. Mile after mile of sand dunes that constantly shifted under the push of winds that never stopped blowing. The almost-white sand reflected the sun and the heat until riding through the dunes was like traveling through a blast furnace. And the soft sand sank under the hooves of horses and the feet of men alike, so that walking through it was even worse than slogging through mud. Over the years, a lot of people had tried to cross those sand hills. The bones of many of them were still bleaching in the West Texas sun. An entire wagon train had even disappeared in there, Longarm recalled. The sands seemed to have swallowed it whole, wagons, mules, and dozens of immigrants all vanishing.

“There's water in there, if you know where to look,” Gibson went on. “The Comanches used to hole up in there. They never had any trouble finding water.”

“What about you?” asked Longarm. “Ever been across the sand hills?”

The cattleman shook his head. “Nope. Been on the edges, maybe a mile or so into them, but that's all. That was enough for me. It's a good seventy miles across there from west to east, and God knows how far they stretch to the north. Clear up into New Mexico, I reckon.”

“And if Wallace and his bunch get there before us, it'll be hard to track them. The wind will wipe out any sign in an hour or two.”

“That's right. That's why I'm hopin' we'll catch up to 'em before they get to the sand.”

Longarm hoped so, too. Nora Canady's safety—her very life—might depend on it.

And there was nightfall to contend with too. The sun was already low in the western sky behind them. The trail would be harder to follow once it got dark. Longarm wasn't the sort to give in to despair, but if he had been, he might be feeling it now. To have tracked Nora so far and come so close to her, only to have her snatched away from him like this...

He pushed that thought out of his mind and told himself to concentrate on the job at hand.

A few minutes later, he and Gibson both saw dust ahead of them at the same time. The rancher pointed it out and said, “Got to be them.”

Longarm leaned forward in the saddle. “Yeah. Come on.”

Both men heeled their horses into a run. The dun was getting tired, Longarm could feel that, but he hoped the horse had the stamina to stand up under the strain a while longer.

The riders who were kicking up dust in front of them seemed to be moving along at a pretty good clip, but nothing like the pace Longarm and Gibson set for themselves. The two pursuers rapidly closed the distance between themselves and the outlaws. They came in sight of their quarry just as the bandits were about to enter a wide, dry wash between two hills littered with boulders.

Longarm reined in sharply as he saw a glint of light from behind one of those rocks. Sunlight was reflecting off something hidden back there, and there was only one thing it was likely to be.

“Look!” Longarm's hand shot out and gripped Gibson's arm. “They're riding into some sort of ambush.”

Gibson's deep-set eyes, surrounded by wrinkles caused by years of squinting into the sun, did just that once again. He said, “Damned if you're not right. There are men hidin' behind those rocks, and Wallace is so damned confident he's ridin' right into their sights!”

Longarm's brain worked furiously. He knew that the Wallace gang had been raising hell in these parts for quite a while, and it was entirely possible that was a sheriff's posse or a troop of Rangers concealed there on the hills, having laid this trap for the outlaws without even knowing that the gang had just held up a stagecoach. The men waiting in ambush couldn't possibly know about Nora Canady being kidnapped either. The stage hadn't even had time to reach Monahans yet.

But surely they would see her and realize she was a woman. Surely they would hold their fire....

Because if they didn't, once the gang was in that wash, they would be easy targets for the riflemen concealed on the hillsides. The whole bunch might be cut down like a field of wheat before the scythe.

With only the glimmerings of a plan beginning to form in his head, Longarm reached for his Winchester.

“What're you doin'?” asked Gibson.

“Can't let that ambush go ahead,” said Longarm. “A stray bullet might hit the girl.”

“Yeah, but you can't interfere—”

“The hell I can't,” said Longarm as he brought the Winchester to his shoulder and began firing as fast as he could work the lever and jack fresh cartridges into the chamber.

He aimed high, sending the slugs well over the heads of the outlaws and into the dry wash in front of them. The sharp
crack!-crack!-crack!
of the rifle made the outlaws jerk their horses to a halt and whirl around to see where the shots were coming from. They stopped short of the wash that would have been their death trap.

Longarm's shots had another effect. Waiting to ambush somebody usually wound a man pretty tightly, and a couple of the posse members fired instinctively when they heard the rattle of shots. That was all the warning Wallace and his men needed. They spurred furiously away from the wash.