“Well, I know, but I sure wish Milo would get his ass back up here.”
“He ain’t worth spit anyway, so quit frettin’ about him and keep your damned eyes peeled on our back trail.”
Longarm preferred to watch and listen for a while in the hope that the two unsuspecting train robbers would mention the location of their hideout. But when the pair suddenly stiffened, Longarm knew that he’d run out of time.
“Here they come!” one of the ambushers whispered. “Five of them.”
“Slim, you drill the first and third rider, I’ll take the second and fourth. Then we’ll both take care of the fifth. Make each shot count.”
“It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel,” Slim said, a wide grin creasing his brutish face.
Longarm raised his head. He saw Marshal Walker leading his pathetic little posse out of the trees. The marshal was also leading Longarm’s mount, and it would only be a moment or two before the ambushers figured out that one of the posse must have scouted on ahead.
“Drop your rifles!” Longarm shouted, six-gun trained on the outlaws.
The pair of outlaws swung around and tried to fire their rifles. Longarm shot one in the chest and fired at Slim’s legs in the hope of wounding the man rather than killing him outright.
“Ahhh!” Slim screamed, the rifle spilling from his hands as he took three slugs in his right leg and collapsed.
Longarm went over to remove the man’s side arm, but he didn’t need to hurry. Slim’s knee had been shattered beyond recognition by one big .44-caliber slug and Longarm’s other two bullets had riddled the outlaw’s thigh. Unfortunately, at least one of the slugs had severed a major artery and the man was bleeding profusely.
“You sonofabitch!” Slim cried. “I’m bleeding to death!”
Longarm untied the man’s bandanna, probably the same one that Slim had worn when he’d robbed the train. He twirled it around a few times and then tied it around the man’s leg above the wound to serve as a tourniquet. The bleeding slowed, but it wouldn’t stop.
“Slim, you’re finished,” Longarm grimly pronounced. “Why don’t you die with a clear conscience and tell me where the rest of your gang went.”
“Go to Hell!”
“You’re liable to go straight to Hell if you don’t do the right thing,” Longarm told the ashen-faced outlaw. “Where is your hideout?”
“Damned if I’ll tell you!”
“And that’s your final word?”
“Hell, yes!”
“Too bad,” Longarm said. “But I guess we’ll find them anyway. Can’t be far if they were holding supper for you. Maybe I’ll eat it instead.”
Slim’s lips pulled back to reveal rotting teeth. His face was dirty and unshaven, filled more with hate than fear. “You sonofabitch!” he choked. “You’ll never …”
But whatever last words he had were lost when Slim was seized by a sudden and violent convulsion. Longarm heard the man’s death rattle, and then saw his body relax as he expelled his final breath.
Ten minutes later, Marshal Walker and his badly spooked posse reached the rocks to gape at the dead outlaws.
“You killed all three of them?”
“I meant to take at least one of them alive,” Longarm admitted. “But I did overhear this pair say that they had a supper waiting at the outlaws’ hideout. That means that the rest can’t be too far ahead.”
“I’m all for going back to Auburn!” one of the posse members exclaimed. “We’ve already done more than our share and now we’ve lost Deputy Quaid. Dammit, I don’t want to be the next one to take a bullet.”
Then another man spoke up. “I got a wife and two kids. We need more men if we’re going to try and jump the rest of that gang. I say we ride back to Auburn and get some more volunteers.”
“No,” Walker said gruffly. “By the time we return, the outlaws will have cleared out. We know that they’re waiting supper tonight. I say we take our chances and finish them off while we have the element of surprise.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Longarm said.
“Well I disagree,” the first posse member railed. “I’ll take Quaid’s body back to town and try to get you some help, but this is as far as I’m riding.”
“Me too,” a third added. The others nodded in agreement.
“Then I guess it’s just you and me,” Longarm said to Walker.
“Yep,” Walker replied, staring at Quaid’s body. “We have to finish this.”
“Marshal Walker,” one of the posse members wheedled, “I sure do wish you’d change your mind. We could be back here with more men by, this time tomorrow. Can’t you just wait that long?”
“No,” Walker said, “we can’t. I keep seeing those young women’s battered faces and remembering the others that were raped and beaten. And there’s also Deputy Quaid. So you boys lay him across a horse and take him and these others back for burying. Me and Custis will push on and do whatever it takes to bring the rest of those outlaws to rope justice.”
“Marshal Walker,” Longarm said while grimly reloading his pistol, “I couldn’t agree with you more.”
Chapter 4
Longarm selected the best of the outlaws’ horses and ordered the four frightened posse members to return his ill-natured buckskin along with the bodies to Auburn.
“We’d sure like to come along with you and finish off those bastards,” one of the posse members swore as they were preparing to leave. “It’s just that-“
“Never mind,” Walker told the nervous merchant. “You volunteered and you’ve done yourself and our town a service. Nothing more is expected—or needed.”
“But you’ll be outnumbered! Marshal Walker, why don’t you just give us one day and-“
“So long, Jim,” Walker said. “When the folks in town ask, you tell them that Federal Marshal Long and I are finally going to put an end to this gang.”
“Sure thing,” Jim said, shaking Walker’s and then Longarm’s hand. “You don’t have a family, do you, Marshal Long?”
“No.”
“Well, if you did-“
“Thanks,” Longarm interrupted. “And we all need to get moving before we run out of daylight.”
“Yeah,” Jim said, mounting his horse. “So long!”
Neither Longarm nor Marshal Walker waited around to watch the posse members ride back down the mountain toward Auburn. They needed to find the outlaws’ hideout before darkness closed in on them or the gang members began to go their separate ways.
Longarm took the lead. Fortunately, the bar-shoe track was still among those continuing deeper into the mountains. And because there had been a lot of rain and snow during the winter, the ground was soft and the tracks easy to follow.
“Are there any lakes in these parts?” Longarm asked, twisting around to look back at Walker.
“There’s one or two, I believe. Used to be a lot of old gold camps up here too. All of ‘em abandoned by the early 1860s after the last of the placer gold petered out and everyone rushed over to the Comstock Lode to strike it rich.”
“Were you ever a prospector?”
“Oh, sure,” Walker said. “I came here with all the other fools during the Forty-Niner gold rush. It was one hell of a stampede, I’ll tell you. I arrived on a sailing ship from Boston that almost sank off Cape Horn. Got here in the fall of 1850, but all the best claims were already taken along the American, Bear, and Rubicon Rivers. Even so, I had my chances to be rich. Struck a few glory holes, but I pissed it all away on women and the gambling tables. Only vice I never had was a love of liquor. Always made me sicker than a dog. But I loved those pretty girls that come to the gold camps!”
“So how did you wind up a lawman in Auburn?”
“I was getting too old to prospect and caught pneumonia in the winter of ‘55. A lot of men died of it. Panning gold in those cold rivers and streams quickly took its toll on your joints. I was still young back then, but already creaking around like an old man. I started looking for healthier things to do.”