“I guess that I can find it.”
“Be better if you didn’t, and I can’t say for sure that is where they took the woman. But it makes sense. They wouldn’t have gone back to Mexico without getting a ransom. From what I hear, they got less than a hundred dollars off the banker before they shot him in the gut.”
“I hope he lives,” Longarm said.
“Not me. I owe him two hundred dollars.”
Longarm didn’t have a reply to that remark, so he had Blue hold Cyclone by the bit and then he climbed on, jammed his boots deep in the stirrups, grabbed the saddle horn, and said, “Point him in the right direction and get out of our way.”
The moment that Joe Blue released Cyclone, the pony jumped forward and took off like a bat out of hell. Longarm didn’t release the saddle horn until the pony finally became winded about three miles south of town.
“Well,” Longarm said, pulling the horse down to a trot, “I hope that you’ve run the piss and vinegar out of your system and that we can settle down and be friends. If you help me to save Miss Hathaway, I’ll turn you loose so that you can run free with mustangs.”
Cyclone laid his ears back and Longarm doubted that he understood, but that didn’t matter. He was going to keep the Indian pony moving until he reached Bass’s cabin in the trees and, after that, he wouldn’t need Cyclone anymore anyway.
Chapter 7
Longarm had a lot weighing on his mind as he rode southwest in search of Victoria Hathaway and the Bass gang. He was none too happy about having to ride an outlaw pony and wondered if he would ever get his federal money, which would have been wired and forwarded to Bernard Potter’s now shuttered bank.
Oh, well, he would worry about that later. The main thing now was to locate this cabin, sneak in, and then get the drop on Hank Bass and his bunch of cutthroats. Longarm chided himself for not taking the time to find out more about the Bass gang. For example, it would have been helpful to know how many men had been in on yesterday’s shootings and abduction.
It was almost sundown before he reached a fork in the road and noted a large, lightning-torched tree. Longarm gazed up a narrow, red-rocked canyon. Yes, this was where he ought to find the Bass gang. They were so brazen that they hadn’t even posted a sentry to guard the mouth of the canyon.
Being on the cautious side, Longarm reined the pony into a draw and then dismounted. He tied Cyclone to a tree and then decided to take both the Winchester and the heavy but very intimidating shotgun.
“Cyclone,” he warned, “don’t even think about whinnying or breaking free.”
In answer, Cyclone attempted to take a bite of his shoulder, but Longarm was too quick and managed to jump beyond the range of the pony’s snapping teeth.
“Dammit, I may put you out of your misery when this is over,” Longarm swore. “You just better hope these outlaws plug me before I plug them.”
Longarm felt a little better having given the pony a piece of his mind. He checked his weapons and then began to move toward the canyon, staying low and following a dry wash that would hide his approach. The wash was heavily choked with creosote bushes and sagebrush, and it seemed to lead all the way up into the canyon. Birds flitted through the heavy shrubs, and Longarm almost stepped on a brightly colored Gila monster that opened its big jaws and slowly backed away.
He might not have even seen the guard posted up on the side of the canyon if the man hadn’t lit a cigarette just as dusk fell. Longarm dropped flat and gazed up at the sentry. The man was about two hundred yards away and the fool was clearly bored to death. He was just sitting on a rock, gazing out toward the first colors of the sunset. But it would be a climb to reach him, and Longarm knew that plenty could go wrong. If he dislodged a rock, the guard would probably hear it move and then Longarm would be at a serious disadvantage being downslope and out in the open.
There was really no help for it, though. Longarm sleeved sweat from his brow and settled down to wait for complete darkness to shroud the canyon. He stretched out on a big flat rock, leaned his weapons against a bush, and admired the Arizona sunset, thinking that there were few better than the ones you got to enjoy in this southwestern territory. As for any kind of plan to rescue Miss Hathaway, he didn’t give it much of a thought. Longarm had found over the years that advance planning in cases where you had no idea what to expect was most generally a waste of mental effort.
The first thing to do was to eliminate the guard up on the canyon wall. After that, he would sneak along the rim of the canyon, locate the cabin, and make his way down to it sometime after midnight when the outlaws were almost certain to be asleep. If all went well, he could get the drop on them and that would be the end of this business. However, even if everything went wrong, he had the huge scattergun; the only thing he had to really worry about was not blowing Miss Hathaway to smithereens along with Hank Bass and the rest of his gang.
When the sunset finally played out and the sky grew dark, Longarm tugged down his hat, picked up the shotgun and rifle, then started climbing. Every nerve was tingling and he was very careful where he placed his feet, but after about fifteen minutes he stopped and heard snoring.
“Thanks,” he said, glancing up at the stars as he relaxed and climbed the rest of the way to the rim. There was plenty of moonlight to see the guard; the man was fast asleep. Longarm set his weapons down, unholstered his gun, and then pistol-whipped the sentry hard enough to make sure that he did not awaken for at least twelve hours.
“Consider yourself the lucky one this night,” Longarm said, leaving the unconscious sentry.
He only had to hike about a half mile before he saw a little one-room cabin. The outlaws were sitting outdoors around a blazing campfire. Longarm counted four. He tried but was unable to identify Victoria Hathaway and decided that she might be locked in the cabin.
“So what do you do now?” he asked himself. “Wait until late like you planned, or circle down in behind that cabin and try to sneak inside and rescue the woman? If you could get her out of harm’s way, then you’d have a hell of a lot less to worry about.”
That approach made a lot of sense to Longarm. His main objective was to get the woman to safety. After that, he would deal with the Bass gang. And frankly, with the old ten-gauge double-barreled shotgun coupled with the all-important element of surprise, Longarm figured the odds were yet in his favor.
He hiked about a mile before finding a good trail that would take him down behind the cabin. Thanks to the moonlight, it wasn’t too difficult, and Longarm could plainly hear outlaw laughter. Once, he thought he also heard Victoria’s voice crying out from the cabin, but he was not certain until he reached its back wall and then heard her sobs and the lusting grunts of one of the outlaws. There was a window but it was caked with dust. Longarm used the sleeve of his coat to rub a little clearing in the window so that he could look inside. A candle flickered but it gave off enough light so that Longarm could see one of the outlaws rutting on top of Victoria. The pig hadn’t even bothered to remove his pants but had instead just dragged them down around his boot tops and was now completely lost in his passion.
Rage filled Longarm and he moved swiftly around to the corner of the cabin. The campfire was only about thirty feet from the front door, but Longarm knew he had no choice but to try to get inside. Taking a deep breath and knowing that he could not handle both the Winchester and the shotgun at the same time, Longarm placed his rifle down, then slipped around the corner and into the cabin, almost certain that he would have to shoot the outlaw and then fight his way back outside.