But that was all right, Longarm told himself. As long as he was still drawing breath, there was a chance for him and Molly to get out of this. Mighty slim, to be sure, but a chance nonetheless.
Whatever hopes Longarm had were quickly stifled. He and Molly were trussed up and shoved into one of the shacks, and Longarm knew without struggling against his bonds that their captors had done a professional job of tying them up. He might be able to work enough slack into the rope to worm his hands free--with a considerable loss of blood and hide in the process--but it would take too long. The outlaws who were preparing to leave the hidden camp planned to return before the coming night was over. Then they would have their fun with Molly and kill Longarm.
In the dimness of the shack, Longarm could see the pale blur that was Molly's face. "I really ruined things, didn't I?" she said miserably.
"Nope," Longarm told her. "Those fellas would have jumped me anyway. I knew I was walking into a lion's den right from the start, Molly. That's why I didn't want you along."
"But if I'd gone for help like you told me..."
Longarm sighed. There was no denying that their situation would look at least a little brighter right now if they had hopes of a bunch of Diamond K cowboys riding to their rescue. Unfortunately, it wasn't going to happen.
Molly had fallen silent, overwhelmed by the predicament in which they found themselves. They heard the sound of a lot of horses leaving the camp, and Longarm knew Flint, Barcroft, and the other gunnies had set out on their latest mission of destruction. After a few minutes, Molly said, "What was that Flint said about dynamite? And a dam?"
"I've been thinking about that too," replied Longarm. "The loggers built a dam on one of the upper creeks so that a pond would back up and give them enough water to run a flume down the mountain to the sawmill. I reckon Flint's going to blow it to kindling."
"A flume?" repeated Molly. "What's that?"
Longarm searched his mind for a way to explain the apparatus. "It's sort of like a creek on stilts," he said after a minute. "It's a big trough lined with pitch so it's watertight, set up on poles so that it runs in an elevated line down the mountain. The loggers let water into it through a sluice gate in the dam on a lake or a pond, and of course the water runs downhill. If you roll a log into the flume, it floats down too. It's a quicker, easier way to move the logs than hauling them out with mules or a donkey engine and cables. Timber companies use it when there's no stream nearby that's big enough to float booms of logs."
"Well, I'll take your word for it," said Molly, trying to inject a note of lightness into her voice despite their situation. "I was raised on a cattle ranch, and none of this logging business really makes sense to me. But if Mrs. Mcentire's men built that dam, why would Flint want to blow it up?"
"That much water, turned loose all of a sudden like that, will flood the logging camp and maybe drown some of the men. Maybe Flint's hoping that'll be the last straw for Mrs. Mcentire. All he really wants to do is run her off without hurting the operation too much. Of course, he don't seem to care how many men he kills along the way."
"He's a horrible man," Molly said with a shudder.
"Yep," agreed Longarm. "That he is."
"And... and... he's going to kill us." Molly's voice began to quaver, and Longarm could tell that her self-imposed calm was about to shatter.
He was trying to come up with something to tell her when he heard one of the guards who had been left outside the cabin say abruptly, "Hey, who's that old man? Hold it right there, mister! What're you doin' up here?" Another of the guards said scornfully, "Aw, take it easy, Jed. It's just an old Chinaman. Prob'ly a peddler."
"On top of a mountain? Not damn likely." Longarm heard the lever of a Winchester being worked. "I said stop, mister. What do you want?"
Longarm had felt his pulse jump when he heard the word "Chinaman," and now his hopes rose even more as a familiar voice said, "No pointee gun, please. Mist' Flint send me, tell you hurry down mountain. Much trouble below."
Wing. That was Wing out there, Longarm realized.
"What'n hell? Why would Flint send you with a message for us? I ain't never even seen you before, Chinaman."
"This humble one is cook in logging camp," Wing lied. "Helpee Mist' Flint much times before."
"Well... I don't know. I still ain't sure we ought to trust you. What do you think, Pete?"
The other guard was about to say something when Longarm heard a meaty thunk. Somebody yelled, "Son of a-" but then the startled shout died away in a hideous gurgle. Inside the cabin, Longarm and Molly looked at each other, wide-eyed with hope and surprise.
The door opened and Wing stepped inside, shaking his head so that his queue swung back and forth. He looked down at Longarm and Molly and said, "Missy Molly ver' naughty girl. Lucky old Chinese man follow in case she get in trouble."
"Oh, hell, Wing, stop talking like that and get these ropes off us," Longarm said urgently. "Are those guards dead?"
Wing nodded. "Yep, both of 'em. Are they the only ones Flint left behind?" He knelt beside Longarm and began using the knife he held in his hand to saw at the ropes binding the lawman's wrists. Longarm noticed that the slender blade was stained with blood.
"As far as I know," Longarm said. "I think all the others went with Flint to blow up a dam on a creek down the mountain." He grunted in satisfaction as the ropes came free. While Wing moved to his legs to cut those bonds, Longarm began rubbing the circulation back into his hands.
"Wing, what are you doing here?" asked Molly in amazement.
Wing finished freeing Longarm's legs and moved over to start on Molly's bonds. "As soon as Joe told me what he had told you," he said, "I knew you'd be following old Custis here. So I followed you."
"You came up that coulee on the side of the mountain?" asked Longarm.
"Yeah, but somebody was ahead of me. That fella Flint. I recognized him from that time the loggers attacked the ranch. You and him and that Miz Mcentire came riding up in time to keep anybody from getting hurt too bad."
"Flint led us on a so-called shortcut that day," Longarm said bitterly. "I figure he was really delaying us in hopes we'd be too late to stop a full-scale battle from breaking out. Luckily he didn't slow us down quite enough."
"You... you followed me," said Molly, still stuck on that point. Longarm wondered if she was worried that the Chinese cook had seen the two of them making love. Now that they weren't both about to die, she could spare some concern for something like that. Longarm didn't care overmuch, but he was pretty sure Wing knew nothing about that part of the afternoon. Wing had come up the coulee behind Flint, and by that time, Molly's deflowering had long since been accomplished. If Molly had gone on down the mountain as Longarm had told her to, in fact, doubtless she would have run right into Wing on his way up.
"That coulee was a busy place with folks coming and going today," Longarm commented as Wing helped Molly to her feet. "Now we've all got to get down the mountain again, as fast as we can. Maybe we can still stop Flint."
Wing slid a finger along the edge of his blade. "I'd like that," he said, and Molly stared at him, as if seeing him for the first time.
She was even more surprised and horrified a moment later when the three of them stepped out of the cabin and she saw the bodies sprawled face-down on the ground. One of the outlaws had a hatchet buried in the back of his head while the other was lying in a pool of rapidly drying blood that had gushed from his slit throat. Longarm looked at the corpses too, and said to Wing, "I reckon in your earlier days, you must've done a little work for some of those tongs down in San Francisco."
"Tongs?" repeated Wing, his face and voice emotionless. "This humble one is but a cook."
Longarm grinned tiredly and shook his head, knowing there was no point in carrying on with this conversation. No matter what Wing had been in the past, he was a good friend now. Hell, he had saved their lives, pure and simple, and he was going to help Longarm put an end to Jared Flint's schemes too.