LONGARM AND THE ARIZONA AMBUSH
By Tabor Evans
Synopsis:
U.S. Deputy Marshall Custis Long is in the Arizona Territory, tracking a band of train robbers. As he approaches a line rider’s cabin, a rifle shot rings out and his horse is killed, leaving him afoot in the middle of the desert. The only real cover or protection from the brutal sun is in the cabin—along with the gunman. 204th novel in the “Longarm” series, 1995.
Jove Books New York Copyright (C) 1995 by Jove Publications, Inc.
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ISBN: 0-515-11766-8
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A Jove Book published by arrangement with the author Printing history Jove edition December 1995
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him … the Gunsmith. LONGARM by Tabor Evans The popular long-running series about U.S. Deputy Marshal Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice. SLOCUM by Jake Logan Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel. Mcmasters by Lee Morgan The blazing new series from the creators of Longarm. When Mcmasters shoots, he shoots to kill. To his enemies, he is the most dangerous man they have ever known.
Chapter 1
He had been able to see the little cabin for some distance as he’d ridden slowly across the harsh, flat prairie of southeastern Arizona.
Sometimes there would be a low place and he’d only be able to see the top half of the cabin, but then he’d strike a rise and be able to see the whole structure. It stuck out like a sore thumb in the vastness of the high plains which didn’t seem fit to nurture even varmints, much less human beings and their animals. It was the only thing in sight much taller than a man. Off in the distance, looking deceptively close, were buttes and single mountains that would rise to heights of five and six thousand feet, but the cabin was the only thing that bespoke the presence of man in any direction for miles and miles.
He was coming straight at the cabin, directly from the front. To his eye, it looked deserted. He had no intention, however, of making straight for the place without giving it a lengthy and thorough inspection. The man he was trailing was the worst kind; he was mean and he was smart. Mean wasn’t so bad, but mean and smart were a bad combination.
He continued on over the harsh ground. It was mostly dust and rocks with patches of buffalo grass and, here and there, bunches of the tough mesquite weeds. Occasionally there were small brakes of greasewood brambles and beds of thorny mescal cactus, but there wasn’t a tree in sight or a bush higher than a man’s waist. As he approached the cabin, he was uncomfortably aware of just how empty the country was with not a sign of cover in sight.
A half mile short of the place he pulled up his horse and sat staring at the cabin. He had a packhorse on a lead rope. Both the horse he was riding and the packhorse were thirsty and hungry and just about played out. If the cabin was occupied, there would be water and, perhaps, feed for his animals. But if it was, there would also be at least one very dangerous man inside. Maybe more than one. He had been on their trail for five days and the better part of two hundred miles.
His name was Custis Long, though most people referred to him as Longarm, and he was a deputy United States marshal. His base was Denver, Colorado, but his work took him wherever federal law felt the need of a man who didn’t mind going into dangerous situations and setting matters right. At least that was the view that his boss, Billy Vail, took. Longarm wasn’t so sure about not minding going into dangerous situations. He went, but it was not always with a high degree of willingness.
Now he sat his horse and studied the cabin. There was not a sign of life, but that didn’t mean anything. If Jack Shaw was in there, he was perfectly capable of sitting as still as a stone until he had some reason to react.
Longarm wanted to see the other side of the cabin. If there was a corral it would be at the back, and he wanted to see if there were any horses present. He could, he knew, have safely made a big wide circle to come up behind the cabin, but he wasn’t sure his horses could stand the extra work. It was June and it was hot. Longarm thought it was as hot as the door handle on a whorehouse. He could see little waves of heat shimmering off the prairie in every direction.
He figured the cabin was a line shack. In such poor country, where it took five hundred acres to feed one head of beef, ranchers erected such dwellings for their line riders.
Cattle tended to drift toward the south, especially in the spring, autumn, and winter. It was the line rider’s job to throw the cattle back up toward the north, driving them five or ten miles in that direction and then turning back to catch another bunch. The cabins were usually situated about fifteen miles apart down on the southern line of the property owner’s land. More than likely there was another cabin to the west of the one he was looking at, and another to the east. At this time of year, summer, the cattle would be on the northern ranges, in the foothills of the mountains, where it was cooler. If the cabin was occupied now, it wouldn’t be by a line rider.
Longarm felt as tired as his horses. His pursuit of the men who had robbed the train had been as relentless and hurried as the terrain and his horses would allow. He had slept only when it was forced on him by his body, and his meals had been snatched and incomplete. He had left the site of the robbery riding one horse and leading three others. Two he had turned loose as they had faded and failed, leaving them to make it on their own if they could in the rough, mountainous country he’d been through. Now he was down to just these two horses. More like one and a quarter, he thought grimly. He looked up at the sky, judging by the sun that it was about mid-afternoon, maybe earlier, maybe somewhere between two and three o’clock. He’d put his watch in his saddlebags for safekeeping. Some of the country he’d been crossing had been so rough and jumbled he’d expected the fillings to fall out of his teeth.
He sat, trying to figure out what to do. By his best calculations his locale was about seventy miles north of the Mexican border. The sign he’d struck as he’d come out of the last of the mountains had indicated he was close on to his quarry. If that was the case, then there was an excellent chance that the game he was hunting would be in the cabin.
But just how many of them there were, he could not say. Which was one of the reasons he wanted to get a look behind the cabin and see the number of horses there. Of course that might not necessarily tell him anything. There might be five horses behind the cabin, but that didn’t mean there’d be five men in the cabin. In fact Longarm felt pretty sure there wasn’t but one. But if it was the one he thought it was, then one was more than a handful.
He reckoned it to be Jack Shaw. And he half hoped it would be, while another part of him hoped that it wouldn’t be.
Jack Shaw was a former law officer gone bad. Longarm had known him for at least fifteen years, back when he, Longarm, was just getting comfortably settled into his role as a federal marshal and Jack Shaw was a man who specialized in pinning on a badge and cleaning up border towns. He’d become a legend, making things warm for outlaws in towns from Brownsville, Texas, clear on across New Mexico and up the border to Nogales, Arizona Territory, and on to Calixico, California. As far as Longarm was concerned, the Mexican border territory was about as bad as it got and to go in there as a town-tamer was seriously dangerous work. You had to be a hell of a hombre just to stay alive under such circumstances, much less hang and jail as many bandits as Jack Shaw had. Longarm had always wondered why a man would choose to work under such trying conditions. Jack Shaw had always said he simply liked it and it really wasn’t as dangerous as it appeared. But then had come faint rumors about this prisoner escaping or that outlaw vanishing from a jail, and about Jack Shaw having more money to spend than seemed right. Finally, after nine years on the job, Jack Shaw had shown his true colors. He’d robbed a bank in Del Rio, Texas, in the very town where he was marshal, and had escaped with better than twenty thousand dollars. After that had come a succession of robberies in towns where Jack had worked as a sheriff or town marshal. In some cases he had been identified; in others it had only been speculation that he had been involved. He was tough, he was daring, and he knew the ins and outs of both sides of the law. All in all he made a formidable adversary. Longarm could think of any number of men he’d rather go up against if the objective was to get out alive.