One thing he was sure of, though. He did not intend to waltz up to those double doors and let himself in through them. No, thank you. If George still was anywhere inside, he would have Longarm silhouetted clean against the thin daylight and be able to put a slug into his belly with no trouble at all. Longarm figured he could get along just fine without that sort of welcome. He would just have to find another way in.
Since he happened to be on the ground anyway, he took that as a good suggestion and stayed low, holding the muzzle of his revolver out of the snow and crawling off to the side so as to avoid being seen from the doorway. Or wherever the hell George was hiding.
He reached the rails of one of the corrals and slipped through them. Using the solid wood of a feed bunk to shield him from view—and from bullets if it came to that—he approached the side wall of the tall barn.
Damn a man who would design a building without windows, Longarm thought. Still, there had to be a way in. Better yet, there had to be a safe way in.
With no access at ground level, he figured he would have to try elsewhere. Like through the loft. Normally there were loading doors at the front and rear where block and tackle could be used to lift baled hay or sacked grain into the loft and where hay could be tossed down to ground level for feeding in the corrals. Surely there was such an arrangement here. If he could only get to it.
Longarm made his way to the back of the barn, his leg still hurting like fire but continuing to respond to the demands he made of it. He could see the shutter-like hayloft doors high on the back wall. The back-end barn doors, a matching pair to the big ones up front, were tightly closed, which meant George could neither slip out of them himself without exposing himself to Longarm’s fire, nor see what was going on outdoors. That was to the good. But how the hell was Longarm going to reach a pair of doors at the second-story level when he had no ladder to use.
Where there was a will there was a way, he thought. And all that good crap.
If you don’t have what you want, then use what you have. He went back around the side of the barn and took a firm grip on the hay bunk there. He tugged and pushed at it a few times. And was relieved to feel the contraption rock back and forth on its skids. The bunk was not, thank goodness, frozen to the earth. There’d been plenty of cold, but not enough daytime sun or warming of temperatures to start any melting. The unrelenting bitterness of the cold was what had prevented any slight thaw that would have refrozen and attached the bunk solidly to the earth. Thus, the hay bunk could be moved.
Longarm put a shoulder to it and commenced pushing, bad leg and all. It hurt like hell, but it was a thing that had to be done. Once he overcame the initial resistance and got the hay bunk sliding, it was fairly easy to sled it across the frozen earth and around the corner to the yard at the back of the barn.
There he took a firm grip on one end and lifted, straining. He tipped the hay bunk on end. Immediately beneath the hayloft doors.
Then, quickly, he began to climb. Scaling the side of the upended bunk, he stood on what should have been one end of the feed trough and was able to reach the loft doors. He pulled, hard, and the door swung open on rusted hinges.
Now if only George was concentrating on the possible entry points at ground level and had not thought to climb into the loft to wait …
Chapter 27
It was a mite nervous-making. Longarm needed both hands to climb into the loft. Which meant shoving the .44 Colt back into its holster. Which meant if ol’ George was in there waiting, then Longarm was up the proverbial creek with not even a glimpse of a paddle.
Still, there wasn’t anything to gain by waiting, especially since Longarm’s balance atop the upended hay bunk was shaky at best. Quickly, before he had time to think of all the things that could go wrong with this move, he dragged the door open, took a grip on the ragged floorboards, and hauled himself bodily into the dark opening.
He scrambled inside, rolled once to his right, and came up onto a knee with the Colt once more in his fist.
All he lacked now was a target.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the relative darkness inside the loft. Loose hay was piled to the ceiling save for a V-shaped path down the middle of the loft where a man could walk through.
Longarm walked through, moving as quietly as he could between the walls of clean, sweet-smelling hay on either side of him. Toward the middle of the barn he could see a ladder and trapdoor leading down to the ground floor. The hay was less solidly piled in an arc around the ladder, obviously the result of some of the fodder having been forked down to the livestock below.
On the far side of the trapdoor he could see some large bins, presumably containing oats, shelled corn, or other such feed grains for use through the winter. There seemed to be a hopper arrangement built into the grain bins that would allow grain to be dropped down a chute to ground level for mixing and feeding. All very modern and scientific, he was sure.
Of course from Longarm’s point of view, the only thing of consequence here was the question of exactly where George was hiding.
Packed as the hayloft was, Longarm was reasonably sure no one was lurking on this second-story level.
Which meant he was going to have to quit hanging back and get on with doing what had to be done. In this case that meant moseying on over to that trapdoor and sticking his head into the opening so he could get a look at what-all was going on below.
The prospect was not especially inviting.
Still, all George had let loose at him so far was a small-caliber revolver. And not one the man was particularly accurate with. Longarm tried to find some comfort in those two facts. Damn near did too. Then he realized what a wonderful joke it would be on him if someone as inept as George managed to nail him with a peashooter like that little pocket gun the man carried.
Funny? Enough to make a man spit.
Longarm stretched himself belly-down on the loose, slippery hay that had spilled into the walkway, and slithered forward toward the gaping trapdoor.
He was perhaps a foot and a half from it when the gent below apparently heard the loft floorboards creak and groan under Longarm’s weight. That or some other sound tipped the ambusher to the danger above, and the son of a bitch went and did something about it.
With a shotgun, dammit, and not the little bitty noisemaker he’d been using up until now.
The scattergun went off with a roar, and a charge of heavy shot came tearing through the floor close enough in front of Longarm’s nose to fill his mustache with splinters. Helluva way for a man to get a trim.
Longarm jerked back involuntarily and rolled, that part of it deliberate, quickly to his left.
Down below the second barrel bellowed, and a hole the size of a demitasse saucer was punched out of the floor. More splinters rained down, but Longarm wasn’t paying any mind to them.
The shotgun pretty much had to be empty for the moment. Which was the way Longarm liked those things best. Temporarily useless. Damn right.
He quit moving left and hurled himself forward. He grabbed a ladder rung and let himself down hand-over-hand, hitting every second or third rung and moving fast and just barely under control as he dropped.
He heard the telltale ca-chunk of metal locking against metal as the shotgun tubes snapped shut over fresh shells. Time to move. Right-damn-NOW!
He was still four or five feet high on the ladder, but didn’t take time for an exact measurement. He pushed himself away from the ladder and ducked his shoulder as he hit the packed earth of the livery barn floor, rolling as he did so and diving for the protection of a stall. The fact that that particular stall was already occupied seemed unimportant at the time. Longarm slid underneath the bottom rail scant fractions of a second ahead of a charge of shotgun pellets.
The noise and stink of the gunshots did nothing to promote tranquillity among the barn’s residents. The stall where Longarm was lying housed a brown and white paint horse with a milky left eye and a mean disposition. The sonuvabitch tried to kick Longarm.