“Good night, Marshal.”
He started walking toward the barns again, puffing out his cheeks and then blowing out the air in a sigh of relief as he went. That had been a close call. Chances were, nothing would have happened if he had gone ahead and given Lady Beechmuir what she wanted. But he was damned if he wanted to go monster-hunting the next morning with a man he had cuckolded the night before. Especially since Lord Beechmuir would probably be carrying one of those big old elephant guns …
Something made Longarm pause suddenly and look over his shoulder. He thought he caught a glimpse of movement on the hill between the trees and the house. It might have been Helene going back in, he thought.
Or it might have been something else, and he wondered where that slippery-footed servant Ghote was right about now. Could the fellow have been spying on his mistress and seen and overheard what had happened in the grove? Longarm didn’t much like that thought, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He walked on quickly toward the barn, anxious to put the Rocking T behind him for the time being.
Longarm had told Benjamin Thorp that he wanted to get some sleep, but he wasn’t really tired enough to go up to his hotel room when he got back to Cottonwood Springs. The sound of piano music floating past the batwing doors of the town’s only good-sized saloon drew his attention, and Longarm realized that what he really wanted was a drink of good rye whiskey and maybe a hand or two of cards in a friendly poker game. That would relax him enough so he could get a good night’s sleep. He angled the Appaloosa toward the saloon, which was just up the block from the hotel.
The only trouble with his plan was that all hell broke loose before he got where he was going.
A scream suddenly overrode the strains of the piano, and a man hurtled out through the batwings to sprawl limply in the street in front of Longarm. There was a sound like a mountain lion’s howl inside the saloon, and it took Longarm a second to realize that the awful screech had come from the throat of a human being. Shouted curses and more screams filled the air, followed by the crashing of furniture and the unmistakable thud of fists against flesh.
Longarm reined in the horse and thought for a moment about turning around and going back to the hotel. He had seen probably a hundred saloon brawls in his time, and had participated in too damned many of them. With any luck, Mal Burley would be along pretty soon to break this one up before it got too serious.
But then a gun went off a couple of times inside the saloon and the screaming got worse. Longarm bit back a curse and sent the Appaloosa forward again. He had carried a badge for too blasted long to start turning his back on trouble now.
Longarm had heard only two shots, but there was no telling if that was a good sign or not. He swung down from the saddle, paused just long enough to loop the Appaloosa’s reins around the hitch rack alongside a dozen other horses, then stepped up onto the saloon’s porch with one stride of his long legs. His right hand reached across his body to make sure his Colt was loose in its holster before he slapped the batwings aside and stepped into the melee.
The first thing Longarm saw was a chair flying through the air at his head. He ducked frantically. The chair missed him and smashed into the batwings behind him, tearing one of the swinging doors loose from its hinges. Longarm heard that hideous howl again, and then a deep voice bellowed out over the confusion, “I’m Catamount Jack, and I’m a ring-tailed wonder!” The man the voice belonged to threw back his head and howled again.
Longarm could see that because the man stood taller than any of the knot of struggling figures around him. As Longarm watched, the man who called himself Catamount Jack reached out, snagged two of the combatants by the shoulders, and rammed their skulls together with enough force to knock out both of them. They slumped to the floor when the big man let go of them. At the same time, Catamount Jack was shrugging off the blows that rained in on him as if he didn’t even feel them.
He wore buckskins and a broad-brimmed, nearly shapeless brown hat. He was thin, appearing almost gaunt because of his height, but when his knobby fists snapped out into the faces of his opponents, there was plenty of power behind the punches. The blows sent men staggering backward or falling on their rumps when they landed.
Longarm saw a man in the silk shin, fancy vest, and cutaway coat of a professional gambler waving a pistol around. “Get out of the way!” the man shouted at the crowd around Catamount Jack. “I’ll plug the old bastard!”
Longarm figured the gambler was the one who had fired the other two shots. The man was already impatiently easing back the hammer for another try. Longarm moved fast, reaching over the gambler’s shoulder with his left hand. His fingers closed around the cylinder of the pistol, preventing it from turning.
“Let go, you son of a bitch!” the gambler yelled as he twisted toward Longarm. Longarm hit him then, a short punch that traveled no more than six inches but still possessed enough power to jerk the gambler’s head to the side. The man’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and he unhinged at the knees. Longarm plucked the gun easily from his grip as he fell. After easing down the hammer, Longarm stuck the pistol behind his belt and turned his attention once more to the fracas in the center of the room. There was no way of knowing what had started the battle, but evidently it was everybody else in the room versus Catamount Jack. Jack’s mallet-like fists had already laid out more than half a dozen of his opponents, but he was still outnumbered more than twenty to one.
Make that twenty to two, Longarm thought as he saw a man swinging a whiskey bottle at the back of Catamount Jack’s head, only to have a smaller figure in buckskins dart out of nowhere, kick him in the groin, then clout him over the head with a six-gun when he bent over in agony. Catamount Jack had at least one ally.
Or maybe two, Longarm grudgingly admitted, because no matter what the provocation, no matter who had started it, he didn’t like to see a fight this uneven. Even as he hoped he wasn’t making a mistake, he reached out, grabbed the shoulder of one of the men attacking Catamount Jack, and spun the gent around. Longarm slammed a fist into the middle of the man’s surprised face.
He was able to down two more of the brawlers before they realized what was happening. Then some of them turned away from Catamount Jack to deal with this new threat. Longarm buried his fist in the belly of one man and shoved him aside to backhand another. He was starting to absorb some punishment himself now, as some of the flurry of punches got past his guard and rocked him back a step. Somebody grabbed him from the side, and he drove an elbow into the man’s solar plexus. Another man got hold of his coat collar and jerked him off balance.
Longarm knew he couldn’t afford to fall down. Once you were on the floor, it was too easy to get trampled in a melee like this. He had seen men killed that way, stomped to death by other men who didn’t know or care who they were stepping on. He slapped one of his booted feet on the floor to steady himself, spreading his legs wide apart. He couldn’t see Catamount Jack anymore; the press of angry men around him was too thick.
Suddenly some of them fell back, and Longarm caught a glimpse of that smaller, buckskin-clad figure. The man had holstered his pistol and was wielding a broken chair leg now, lashing out around him and dropping his larger opponents left and right. Longarm grinned, grateful for the respite, and punched a gent in the jaw. The figure in buckskins jabbed another man in the belly, then slapped the makeshift club against the side of his head, dropping him. Longarm grabbed one of his opponents, head-butted him, then shoved him into two more men. Their feet and legs got tangled up and all three of them went crashing down. Longarm found himself bumping shoulders with the figure in buckskins.