He heard something. A gasp. And then the sound of a hammer being cocked.
Longarm’s hand swept the Colt into his fist. But he had no target, dammit. Looking into the shadows of the woodshed was like peering into a coal bin at midnight. He knew there was something there, someone there, but he couldn’t see who or where.
He himself, he knew, was silhouetted against the gray background of the night sky and the town lights.
But he still had no target.
He also had no time to think about it, dammit.
He dropped to one knee an instant before a gun barrel discharged.
A sheet of flame the size and shape of a cast net illuminated the shed for half a heartbeat of time. For that quick eyeblink of time he could see by the light of the muzzle flash.
Two men! There were two of them, dammit. Crouched. Staring. Wide-eyed. He hadn’t time to think about whether he recognized either of them. Both held something. Dark, elongated objects. Shotguns, he thought.
Before he’d had time to assimilate the information the flash of light was gone.
A charge of heavy shot whistled through the air where Longarm’s head had been a moment earlier.
He responded with his own answering fire so quickly that the sound of the shotgun’s roar merged with the crisper, lighter report of his .44.
He was so close to the man the time of bullet travel was too short for him to be able to separate out the sound of his bullet striking flesh, but he heard a grunting cough that told him someone was hit. And likely hit in the body at that. The sound was that of breath being driven out of someone.
There were two of them, though. Two of them. By now the other one would be. ...
Longarm threw himself to his right.
Even as he moved there was another muzzle flash not ten feet in front of him. Buckshot whipped and tore through the air, once again seeming to fly head high. An amateur then. He hadn’t the knowledge or perhaps the nerve to place his shots with care.
Still, he’d had knowledge and nerve enough to get his shot off. There had been a second lightning sheet of fire and another rush of smoke.
Another half-seen, half-sensed image had burned onto the retinas of Longarm’s eyes.
Two men still, but this time one of them kneeling. Falling? The image Longarm saw had been frozen in time. In the light of the muzzle blast a tableau had been displayed, colorless but in full dimension like a stereopticon view made life-size. Longarm’s impression was that the one man, the one who was kneeling, was going down. The other was standing, in much the same posture he’d been in when the first blast had lighted up the shed.
Two men. Two shotguns.
More noise.
Behind? No, overhead.
Wood. Splintering wood. Collapsing. Damn!
The comer post of the woodshed had been lashed and shattered by the two shotgun blasts. Longarm heard the post crack and give way under the weight of the roof it supported.
He tried to gather himself. Wanted to spring to the side one more time.
Too late.
The roof came crashing down. He had time to raise his arms. Then poles and dry sod slammed onto him. Buried him. Knocked him flat beneath hundreds of pounds of roofing material.
Dust filled his nostrils, and he could hardly breathe.
The Colt was gone, swept out of his hand by the tremendous weight of the falling roof.
He could barely draw breath, and damn sure couldn’t move.
He felt stunned. His senses were overloaded. The smell of sunbaked dirt was thick inside his nose, and the taste of it was in his mouth. His head spun from an impact that hadn’t registered when he received it, but which he could feel now throbbing at the back of his skull. Hard sapling poles and heavy, broken sod crushed down atop him. His stomach churned sourly and he thought he might throw up.
Even so, he was struggling already to free himself from the fallen roof that could easily become a tomb. Without conscious thought he pulled and twisted and tried to scramble free of the weight.
He could hear. He could still hear. He could hear a footstep. And then another. A whisper. An anguished cry.
“You son of a bitch. You’ve killed him.” There was pain in the sound of the voice. The pain of deep emotion. “He’s dead, damn you. Dead.”
If the guy who was speaking was who Longarm thought he was, and if this guy was saying what Longarm thought he was ... well, good. Longarm only wished he’d gotten the both of them.
He felt on the ground for the Colt. Wherever it was, buried in the rubble or simply lost somewhere close by, he couldn’t find it in the dark. He gave up and tried to work his hand back to his chest. He still had the derringer in his vest pocket.
He heard footsteps again. Movement. The sound of wood being thrown or kicked aside.
“Damn you, you son of a bitch.” From the sound of the voice the live one was crying over the dead one. His voice was cracked and shaking. “Damn you to hell.”
Longarm tried to reach the derringer. His arm came up short, held back by a section of wooden pole that was somehow wedged between Longarm’s chest and his right arm. He jerked and pulled and twisted, but couldn’t reach the damn derringer.
Try with the left, he told himself. Gotta get to it. Use the other hand.
He heard the sound of a gun hammer being cocked.
“Damn you.”
He could see a little now. A dark figure loomed over him, in silhouette against the stars now that there was no roof. The standing, weaving figure held a short, stubby, double- barreled scattergun, its shape unmistakable. The man was crying. His shoulders shook, and he took a moment to wipe his eyes on the back of his coat sleeve.
“I’ll send you to hell behind him, damn you,” the man swore in a tremulous voice.
He raised the shotgun to his shoulder.
Longarm was still clawing with both hands. Trying to grab the derringer in his vest pocket. Trying to find the dropped Colt. Trying to wriggle the hell out of the way. Trying...
A muzzle flash illuminated the night once more.
The shotgun roared and spat its fire in a macabre halo of death and destruction.
Longarm snarled and cursed and continued his struggle.
After a moment it occurred to him that he was still alive to struggle. He stopped. Blinked.
There was a faint sound of scuffling. Very light. No more noise than that of a pair of rats mating in their nest. And then there was silence.
Longarm thought back.
The shotgun blast. It hadn’t been directed down at him. Although that was certainly where the man had been aiming a moment before. Instead, he thought, the gun had been pointing harmlessly into the sky when it fired.
And there had been a half-seen blur of movement a scant fraction of a second before. Or had he only imagined that part? He didn’t honestly know.
He tried to concentrate on listening to whatever the hell it was that was happening.
There was ... silence. Absolute silence. Nothing at all now except the silence of the night and, somewhere far
away, the sound of a barking dog. A few seconds more and even the dog became quiet.
Longarm began pulling and squirming and clawing at the debris that trapped him there. Whatever the hell was going on, he would feel better about it all once he could stand up and move again.
Chapter 29
For long, agonizing moments Longarm could see nothing, hear nothing. Then a dark figure rose off the dirt floor of the woodshed. A man’s figure seen in silhouette as before. Except now there was no shotgun. Longarm continued to struggle against his enforced confinement, desperate now to reach a gun—gun, hell, his knife would have been enough; that or a rock, the burning coal of a lighted cheroot, his own empty hands, any damned thing he could use as a weapon to defend himself—but the tangled debris held him captive as surely as manacles and leg irons could have done. The half-seen, half-sensed figure moved closer until it stood over Longarm while he continued to struggle futilely.