The door itself had been torn up pretty good by the shotgun blast. The thing was definitely in need of repairs. Better a slab of gray, weathered wood than Custis Long’s belly, though. Doors would be easier to replace.
He stood there for a moment and looked around the room. He saw what he wanted and, keeping well back from the door frame, made his way across the room to fetch it.
At the least, he figured, Angela’s robe was going to need laundering when this thing was over with. Well, he’d pay for the washing. The point was to be alive so he could pay.
He held his .44 ready in one hand, and with the other shook the robe out so it dangled full length to the floor. Then, with a sweep of his arm, he floated the dark green robe out the door. The garment sailed out like a ghost riding on a breeze.
The shotgun boomed again, and Longarm burst through the doorway at full speed. One charge of pellets smacked into the wall of the house just before Longarm flew out. Another punched into the wood just behind him as the gunman reacted without taking time for careful aim.
With both barrels expended Longarm was free to look for cover. Otherwise he’d have had to hit the ground and hope he could keep ahead of the shotgunner’s swinging muzzles.
He trampled clean over Angela’s fluttering robe and legged it around the corner of the shack long before the ambusher would have had time to reload. He ducked into a crouch and squeezed in between Peppy’s lean-to shelter and the back of the house. He still hadn’t had a chance to see where it was the shotgunner was hiding. And he didn’t want that information to come as any surprise when he did figure it out. Better to be cautious now even when he thought the shotgunner should be out of sight.
The Fulton place was one of a handful of similar shacks that had been built without pattern along the banks of the sluggish creek that passed through the Cargyle canyon. Longarm slipped around to the back of the place next door, and eased forward along its side wall until he could peer around the front corner and look for the shotgunner.
There wasn’t much to see. Another small clutch of shacks on the far side of the railroad tracks. A well with a rock wall around it and a windlass and bucket mounted overhead. An abandoned wagon box with weeds growing out of it. Peppy’s cart beside the Fulton place—Longarm had just run right by that cart without so much as noticing it was there—and across the way a trash heap that seemed to consist mostly of broken whiskey bottles.
There was no sign of the man with the shotgun. The guy might well have given up and run away by now. He’d done that last night. But then it is easier to get away from someone at night. In broad daylight he might figure he was committed and would have to stick through this to the end.
Longarm concentrated on examining every detail within his line of sight, no matter how insignificant it might seem at the moment. He let his unconscious mind work on that while at a conscious level he thought through what little he knew or could assume here. For one thing, this time it hadn’t been any accident that the gunman ran into him. This time the SOB had been lying in wait outside the Fulton house. This time the guy knew perfectly good and well where he could expect Longarm to appear come morning. The fact that there was only one door leading in or out had made it ridiculously easy for him.
So this time there was no possibility that it was an impulse sort of thing. It wasn’t some guilt-ridden fugitive seeing a federal deputy approach and wrongly concluding that because Longarm was there Longarm just had to be after him. That sort of thing happened fairly often. But not this time.
No, this time it was cold, it was deliberate, and it was premeditated. This time if Longarm took the man alive, there was a good chance he would hang for his trouble.
Longarm wondered if the shotgunner knew that. Probably. And if he did, then … That wagon box. An intuitive jolt leaped from Longarm’s unconscious into the forefront of his thoughts. In the wagon box across the road there were weeds growing high at the back of the box and all along two of the other sides. But along the near side and toward the front, up toward where there was a gap in the old and broken side boards, there were no weeds. Why? Was there some good reason why weeds would be growing everywhere else inside that wagon box except there? Or had weeds been growing there, and now were they being crushed to the earth by the presence of a body lying atop them?
There probably could be fifty perfectly good reasons why a weed wouldn’t want to grow on that spot over there. Longarm didn’t believe a one of them. His bet was that he’d found his gunman.
And while shotgun pellets will often break through lathing, so will .44 slugs punch through old planking. Not always, but sometimes. And hell, .44 cartridges are cheap. A lot cheaper than blood.
Longarm reached into his pocket and got a handful of loose cartridges in his left hand, then triggered two shots into the seemingly empty wagon box, aiming his first shots carefully into the gap toward the front where he thought those shotgun blasts might’ve come from.
He fired twice and reloaded, fired twice more and quickly reloaded, fired twice again and started to reload.
Six shots. If the shotgunner thought he was empty …
A figure popped into view as abruptly as one of those spring-loaded jack-in-the-box things jumping out at a child.
Longarm flattened himself against the side of the house where he was standing. A spray of buckshot splintered the dried-out wood, stinging Longarm’s wrist but doing no harm.
The sonuvabitch was quick. Lordy, he was quick. He had fired and was skeedaddling for cover about as quick as a man could blink.
Longarm snapped a shot at him, but couldn’t tell if he’d connected or not.
The shotgunner reached the protection of one of the houses across the way, and swung around to throw another load of buck toward Longarm.
Longarm had no idea where that blast went, but it wasn’t close enough to worry about.
The scattergun was empty now. But it wouldn’t stay that way more than a few seconds. Longarm took advantage of the time he had and dashed across the road and over the railroad tracks.
Too long. It was taking him too long, and he was exposed and vulnerable. Some inner sense or timing sent up a warning flag, and he dropped to the ground, rolling, an instant before the reloaded shotgun roared. A bee swarm of lead pellets cut through the air above him, and he scrambled on all fours for the cover of the trash mound.
Another blast from the shotgun sent shards of glass cascading through the air like a rainstorm of diamonds.
The SOB had plenty of shells with him today, Longarm reflected. And plenty of determination too.
Well, he was sensible to go at it that way, everything considered. For Longarm had recognized him by now. It was that miserable little shit of an ex-con who’d braced Longarm in the saloon yesterday. And who’d been let out of jail last evening, dammit.
If Longarm could’ve reached Harry Bolt’s throat right then, he would have strangled the shithead. And that just to get his attention. After that, by damn, he’d hurt the idjit.
So far Longarm didn’t know the little bastard’s name. But it wouldn’t be so hard to figure out. A talk with the warden up at Canon City would probably clear that up. And it didn’t really matter who the guy was anyway. The point was that Longarm knew him. There was no backing down for the ex-con now. He was committed to this until either he or Longarm lay dead on the ground.
Longarm braced himself, then burst onto his feet with the Colt barking in his fist.
Chapter 30
Longarm’s third shot, hastily thrown—but not wildly; there was a difference—ripped into the shotgunner’s elbow, slamming his arm backward and dragging the aim of the shotgun with it so that the charge of deadly buckshot intended for Longarm went harmlessly wide.