It wasn’t late, but the night air was cool and pleasant. The sky was cloudless, and the stars were as brilliant as far-off gas lamps overhead. Longarm noticed the stars, but Buddy paid them no mind.
“Mr. Long?”
“Yes, son?”
“Do you like my ma?”
“Yes, I do, Buddy. Quite a lot.”
“She likes you too, you know. She told me she does.”
Longarm smiled. He shifted the tray he was carrying into the crook of one arm so he’d have a hand free, then reached over and tousled the boy’s hair so as to take any sting away from what he had to say. He could see what was coming—which explained why Buddy’d been so eager to help carry the dinner stuff this evening—and wanted to head it off before the youngster got to counting on things that wouldn’t ever happen.
“I like your mama a lot, Buddy. But there’s something I want you to know. The way I like her—and for that matter the way she likes me too, I’m sure—it ain’t the same kind of liking that a man and a woman have for each other when they go to getting married.”
“Oh.”
“The way I like your mama, and her back to me, is the kind of liking real good friends have for each other. Where we want good things for the other person an’ will do whatever we can to help see that that’s so. But not where we’d want to live together forever and ever as man an’ wife. You understand?”
“Kinda like me and Peppy?” the boy suggested.
Longarm smiled. “That ain’t exactly how I’d’ve thought to put it. But I suppose you could say that it’s kinda that way. Nice an’ friendly but not … you know.”
“No, sir, I don’t know. Not if you’re talking about the stuff grown men do with women.” He made a sour face. “That damn Rick, he says men put their pizzles in girls’ poop holes and pee inside there. Is that true, Mr. Long?”
Longarm laughed. He probably shouldn’t have, but he couldn’t help it. He ruffled Buddy’s hair again and said, “No, son, that isn’t even close to being true. An’ if I can make a suggestion, don’t pay too much attention to what all Rick tells you in the future. That boy don’t know half as much as he thinks he does.”
Buddy looked mighty relieved to hear that from a grown-up he obviously had come to trust. “That’s good, Mr. Long. But I think …”
Longarm never would know what Buddy thought.
The night was illuminated by a sheet of yellow flame that blossomed across the street to their right, and the peaceful quiet of the evening was shattered by the bellowing roar of a shotgun blast.
Little Buddy, walking between Longarm and the gun, cried out and lurched sideways, stumbling into Longarm and knocking Longarm’s gun arm askew before the boy fell to the ground.
Bowls, dishes, and small containers crashed to the ground as tray and pail alike were abandoned in midair, and with a flash of rage every bit as quick and every bit as deadly as that shotgun blast had been, Longarm clawed his Colt from his holster and dropped flat an instant before the second shotshell charge exploded from the mouth of an alley.
Chapter 26
As Longarm hit the ground he fired two quick shots about belt level in the direction the shotgun blasts had come from, and then quickly rolled to the side.
He was half blinded by the bright muzzle flashes. But so was the other guy, he figured.
A third gunshot came from the alley mouth, this one a much smaller flare of fire and a much lighter, sharper report. A revolver that would be, or a very small-caliber rifle. The flash came from the opposite side of the alley, not where the shotgun had been. So either the man with the empty shotgun had moved to avoid Longarm’s return fire, or there were two of them over there doing the shooting.
Longarm had no idea who was there or how many, but he saw no reason to take any chances. He triggered the big Colt again, one shot into the side of the alley where the small-caliber weapon had just fired, and another into the black, empty space where the shotgun had been moments earlier.
He would have appreciated a scream or maybe the sound of a body falling to the earth, but all he got was silence. Nearby little Buddy had begun to cry. Longarm hated that. But he sure as hell couldn’t take time out to comfort a kid or tend to his wounds, no matter what.
Longarm rolled again to get away from gunfire directed toward his muzzle flashes, then quickly shucked the empty brass from his revolver and thumbed fresh cartridges into the cylinder.
He blinked, trying to hurry the return of his night vision.
Well before he’d had time enough to begin to see properly again he was on his feet and, bent low to the ground, darted crab-like across the street, moving swiftly from one side to the other while he ran toward the alley where those shots had originated. He reached the corner of the building there and stopped to listen.
There was no sound of ragged breathing—few men are cold enough to be able to shoot at someone from ambush without getting worked up about it—but from somewhere deep in the alley he could hear footsteps retreating.
It was a gamble. Those footsteps could be the gunman. Or it could be one of a pair of gunmen while the other waited for Longarm to silhouette himself against the alley mouth. Or shit, the guy at the back of the alley could be some innocent drunk who’d been awakened by the commotion and was trying to get away now while the ambusher, with or without a friend to back him, waited for another shot.
A gamble, all right. If Longarm guessed wrong he could wind up dead. Or else let the attacker get away. Neither of those possibilities very much appealed to him.
Scowling, he took a fresh grip on the Colt, braced himself, and then with a loud roar calculated to startle any remaining ambusher launched himself around the corner and into the alley. He was greeted by … nothing at all. The goddamn alley was empty. The gunman, or gunmen, had gotten clean away.
Longarm took only a few scant seconds to investigate the trash-strewn corridor that contained a stray cat but no other living thing. Then he turned and ran back to Buddy’s side.
“Y’know,” Longarm reflected, “this here house could end up bein’ designated as Cargyle’s new hospital if this keeps up.” He winked at Buddy and, out of the boy’s sight, gave the kid’s mama a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder.
Buddy was propped up on his bed with feather pillows behind and the family’s extra-best-for-company quilt spread over him. He had a plate of cookies on one side of him and a glass of sasparilla soda on the other. He looked, in fact, pretty damn chipper.
The truth was that he’d barely been scratched by a couple of the shotgun pellets, just enough to sting like hell and draw some blood, and now he was making the most of it. By tomorrow noon, Longarm figured, Buddy Fulton would be the number-one hero among the boys of Cargyle, Colorado. Why, any kid who actually got himself shot in a gunfight, and lived to tell about it, would be the awe and the envy of every other kid for miles and miles around. He’d have bragging rights for years to come. And with luck a scar or two to show off whenever the subject came up.
One pellet had sliced across the boy’s right cheek. Another had pinked his upper arm just below the shoulder. A couple more had ripped up his shirt some without doing any harm—although those had sure turned that shirt into a trophy to be fingered and passed around while all the boyish talk was taking place—and a final pellet had hit square in the side of the boy’s head just above his right ear. That one could have been deadly if the range had been just a little shorter, the powder charge just a little heavier, or the size of the pellet itself just a little larger. That one was the only piece of shot Longarm had been able to recover, but it was enough to show him that the shells in the shotgun had been filled with a load suitable for the hunting of ducks, not men.