The leader started backing down, and Longarm noted that, bullet-riddled hand or not, the man was going to do everything in his power to safely reach the streambed below. Longarm figured he’d probably make it, and then when he did, he’d make a grab for his fallen pistol and try to shoot Longarm.
It made a lot of sense. Longarm would then be the one at a big disadvantage. I ought to just shoot him and be done with it. After all, he gave Charley no warning. He and his outlaw friends shot Charley from ambush knowing that the coach would go over the side of the mountain and probably kill everyone inside. Go ahead and kill him, Custis!
But Longarm couldn’t. He’d never executed anyone. He’d taken an oath to uphold the law, not live by his own law. So he stopped his own descent and slowly turned with his gun pointed down at the leader. And sure enough, when the man jumped to the streambed below, the very first thing he did was grab his fallen pistol, roll over onto his back, and look up with every intent to blow Longarm off the rock.
Longarm drilled the man twice. Then, holstering his own gun, he very carefully descended the slippery fissure until his feet were again on solid ground.
All the outlaws were dead except for the one with a bullet in his hip, and he was dying from internal bleeding.
To hell with him, Longarm thought, remembering Esther’s dead, staring eyes as he hurried upstream. To hell with them all.
Chapter 7
Longarm found Miranda and Trent holed up under some boulders less than a quarter of a mile downstream. Like himself, they were shaking from the cold.
“What happened?” Miranda asked.
“They won’t be bothering us anymore,” Longarm answered, not wanting to elaborate.
“You killed all of them?” Trent asked with an expression of disbelief written on his pale, bruised face.
“I had the advantage of surprise and luck was with me,” Longarm explained. “But our troubles are far from over. We’ve got to figure out our next move. We need food as well as warm, dry clothes.”
“It seems obvious to me that we have to go back to the stagecoach,” Miranda said. “We need to get our bags and extra dry clothes. There’s also some food, if it wasn’t thrown out on the way down the Mountainside.”
“I agree.” Longarm looked up at the sky. “It will be dark soon. We can camp beside the stage and build a roaring good fire. Maybe someone traveling the road above will see our fire or smell the smoke and look over the side. We definitely need help.”
“I won’t leave Esther alone again,” Trent vowed, his voice as dead as his wife. “I won’t do it.”
“Of course not,” Longarm replied, worried about the man’s mental state. “We’ll carry her body out and see that she gets a proper burial in Durango.”
“Maybe she’d want to be sent back to her hometown,” Trent protested.
“No,” Longarm told the grieving man, “she’d rather be buried in Colorado near where you are staying.”
Trent didn’t agree, but he didn’t disagree either. Longarm helped them both out of their hiding place, and they walked back upstream, skirting the giant boulder and seeing the dead outlaw leader lying on his back with two crimson stains on his shirtfront.
“Are we just going to leave him like this?” Trent asked.
“What else can we do?” Miranda responded. “You weren’t thinking of burying the man, were you?”
“But there are wild animals around and it is possible that they could-“
“Look,” Longarm said, “our first obligation is survival. Later, I can send a party down here to recover the bodies and see that they are properly buried. But for now, let’s just push on back to the coach and make ourselves as warm and comfortable as possible.”
Longarm led the way back upstream, and when he came to the dying man he’d shot in the hip, Trent again objected, saying, “We can’t just leave this man here alone.”
“Then you carry him all the way back up to the coach,” Longarm snapped. “Because I don’t have the time or the inclination to do it myself.”
“I’ll stay with him,” Miranda offered. “A man shouldn’t have to die alone.”
“Suit yourself,” Longarm replied. “I’ll go up and see what I can find in the stage that will help us get through the night. I’ll build a fire and then come back down for you when I’ve done as much as I can.”
“I’ll go with you,” Trent said. “My first obligation is to my wife.”
“No,” Longarm corrected, “your first obligation is to take care of yourself and try to be useful. That’s what your wife would say.”
“You are right,” Trent agreed, “it is. And I suppose that it will get pretty cold down in this canyon tonight.”
“It will freeze. Trent, we’re going to need to collect a lot of firewood in order to keep dry and warm.”
Trent nodded with understanding, and Longarm was grateful. He had seen a lot of people who had lost someone they loved deeply, and knew that the best medicine was to keep them busy. Longarm would see that Trent was the wood collector and that he also was responsible for feeding tonight’s fire.
“Be back in about an hour!” Longarm called to Miranda, who had sat down beside the dying outlaw. “You stay back from that snake or he’s likely to try and kill YOU.”
“I will,” Miranda promised as she moved back even further out of the dying man’s reach.
Longarm hurried up to the coach, and then he quickly emptied it of everything useful including its curtains and cushions. There were no blankets, but at least they could wear all of their extra clothes. Besides, a fire would make all the difference in the world.
Trent spent some time beside the body of his young wife, and Longarm had to chide him into action. Finally, the kid began to gather armfuls of the readily available driftwood and stack it on a sandy beach. Longarm, meanwhile, took all the baggage out of the overturned coach and piled it neatly aside. His own bags had been rifled by the outlaws, but there didn’t appear to be much of anything missing. He changed out of his wet clothes into dry ones, and immediately felt better. He was glad that his things had not been sacked. No doubt the outlaws had been looking for valuables, and would have conducted a more thorough and extensive looting after they had disposed of the passengers.
“Trent?”
“Yes?”
“I want you to change into some dry clothes. You won’t be any good to anyone if you catch pneumonia.”
“Now?”
“That’s right. Change right now.”
“All right.”
Longarm searched the area, and even climbed a little ways up the Mountainside, searching to see if anything else could be found that might be of use. But he found nothing. He would remove the weapons and any valuables from the dead outlaws, and the money they had could be spent on helping Trent give his wife a handsome funeral.
The canyon shadows had begun to deepen when Longarm decided that it was time to go retrieve Miranda. The last thing he wanted was to be caught fumbling around in darkness after the sun went down. But there would be almost a full moon out tonight, and that would be some help.
“Trent, I’ll start a fire now. You stay close and make sure that it doesn’t get out of control.”
“Sure. But first, let me go get Esther’s body and bring her over here. I want her resting in the firelight, not lying out there in the dark, cold and alone. You can understand that, can’t you, Marshal?”
“Of course I can. I’ll help you.”
“No,” Trent said in a way that left no room for argument, “I’d rather do it myself.”
“All right. I’m going back for Miranda now.”
“What if that outlaw you shot in the hip is still alive? You can’t just leave him to die!”
Longarm started to remind the young Easterner that it was entirely possible that the wounded man had shot Charley in the head without even giving him fair warning or a chance to surrender. But then Longarm decided to just keep his grim words to himself.