The scattergun was too heavy and cumbersome for the man to manage one-handed. He tried, but quickly realized the futility of the attempt and threw the gun down. His right elbow shattered and his right arm useless, he clawed for the Navy Colt with his left hand.
“Stop, dammit. You don’t got a chance,” Longarm shouted.
The ex-con was solid grit. Longarm didn’t particularly admire that in the son of a bitch. But he sure had to admit it was there. The man dragged iron left-handed and fumbled to draw the hammer back.
“Drop it right now or I shoot,” Longarm warned.
The man managed to cock the revolver and shakily tried to take aim.
“I mean it. No more chances.”
The man stared over his sights into Longarm’s cold eyes.
He had no choice, dammit. He really had no choice. Longarm fired a fourth round and a fifth. His sixth and final cartridge was unnecessary. The fourth impacted square on the ex-con’s breastbone, driving lead and splinters of bone into his racing heart. The fifth shot took him in the side of the neck, severing the big artery there and sending a bright spray of blood briefly into the air until the sudden loss of pressure slowed the flow to a trickle. By then it didn’t matter anyway. By then the man was face-down in the blood-soaked dirt, his eyes glazing and his limbs twitching and jerking in random spasms while his bowels and kidneys emptied. The stench of his shit mingled with the copper odor of the blood to form the peculiarly ugly stink of sudden death.
Longarm stood upright, weary now despite the early hour, and by long habit reloaded his Colt before he walked cautiously forward to make damn sure this man would no longer be gunning for him.
Before he had time to reach the body, doors began opening all around, and within seconds there was an inquisitive crowd beginning to grow. Longarm for the most part ignored them. He had little but contempt for the mindless assholes who were drawn to the sight of another man’s blood.
“You. Boy.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Rick, isn’t it?”
The boy acted like he wasn’t sure if he should be pleased that this deadly visitor remembered him or not. He swallowed hard and nodded.
“D’you still have that wagon?”
“I can get it.”
“Do that, boy. I want to hire you to haul something for me.”
“Yes, sir. Right away.”
Rick hurried off, and Longarm shouldered through the crowd of people without acknowledging any of them.
He knelt beside the body, careful to keep from getting any of the bright scarlet blood on his pants legs, and checked through the dead man’s pockets.
Interesting, he thought. Damned interesting.
When he’d booked this man into Harry Bolt’s jail yesterday afternoon the fellow, who’d stubbornly refused to give his name, had had damn little in the way of possessions. And while no one, certainly not the ex-con, had ever exactly said so, Longarm had gotten the distinct impression that what he had on and with him was all he owned. He would have come out of Canon City—if Canon City it was—with the gun and clothes he’d had when he was processed in and with ten silver dollars to see him on his way.
Yesterday he’d owned the gun, the clothes, and four dollars and—if Longarm remembered right—fourteen cents.
Today he had the gun and the clothes, twelve .38 rimfire cartridges loose in his right-hand pants pocket, eight shotgun shells marked single-ought size on the wadding, and cash totaling 187 dollars and ninety-six cents. Longarm counted it twice to make sure.
If he had to guess—and he supposed he did because this prick wasn’t going to tell him—sometime between when Longarm booked him into the jail and this morning when he met his maker, the man had been paid two hundred dollars and handed a shotgun. And told to go perform a job. Longarm could well imagine what that job of work was supposed to be.
During the interim the guy had spent, what, seventeen dollars? No, sixteen and change, Longarm amended when he thought about it a little more. Exactly how much didn’t matter. Plenty enough anyway for a box of .38s, a box of 12-gauge single-0 buckshot, and an evening of good times.
Longarm stood again and stared down for a moment at the curiously deflated-looking corpse at his feet. Sixteen dollars’ worth of good times. He kind of doubted it’d been worth it.
The boy Rick pulled up with the wagon, driving his team through the crowd without much regard for giving the men time to get out of the way, and brought the cobs to a halt close to Longarm.
“You, mister, and you. Give me a hand here. We’re gonna load the dead man into this wagon. You take the feet, if you please. You, mister, you grab hold of his hand there. I’ll get the other’n. Hold your horses steady now, Rick. They’re apt to booger once the dust settles an’ they get a sniff of the blood. Steady now. Steady. That’s good, thanks.”
Longarm gave the men who’d helped him a nod of thanks while he made short work of latching the end gate of the wagon in place.
The movement of the body caused some more fluids to be released, and blood began to trickle out of the back of the cargo box. A weak-stomached spectator found that somewhat more than he could handle for some reason and began puking in the grass. The sour smell of his vomit set off a couple others who were standing close by. As far as Longarm was concerned, it’d serve them right if it happened to all of them, but in fact those three were the only ones to show any distress because of the mayhem that had taken place.
“You know the Cargyle jail, Rick? I want you to take me there,” Longarm said as he climbed onto the wagon’s driving box.
Rick sent an unhappy glance over his shoulder toward the load he was carrying. But a job was a job. And the dead guy was already bleeding all over the place. Rick was going to have to wash the wagon out now whether he completed the job or not. “Yes, sir,” he said, and shook his lines to set the team into motion.
Longarm stopped by the Fulton place as they rolled past it, and roused Angela and Buddy from hiding. It appeared breakfast was going to be later than he’d figured, but he expected they would forgive him for the delay.
Then the wagon rolled on. Longarm reached for a cheroot and, his hand steady when he applied the match, settled back on the unpadded seat while the boy Rick took care of the driving.
Chapter 31
The jail was empty this morning. Not even Longarm’s pal the coal miner was in residence at the moment. Longarm scowled for a moment. Then grunted. “Back this thing up, will you? Right into the doorway there, just as close as you can get it.”
Rick gave him a strange look, but did as Longarm asked. There was no real ditch beside the road to have to negotiate, just a shallow depression that would more or less channel snowmelt and rainwater runoff along the side of the road. The boy swung the wagon away, and backed the team into place with a fair degree of skill.
“That’s good,” Longarm said when the back of the wagon box was very nearly close enough to the stone wall of the jail to bump into it. “Hold ‘em there.”
Again the boy’s look was questioning. But he didn’t voice the questions he so obviously wanted to ask.
While Rick held the horses steady, Longarm unlatched the low tailgate and dropped it. Without ceremony he reached in and took hold of the dead man’s ankle. One good yank and the body slithered out of the wagon and over the edge to fall in a bloody tangle directly in the doorway of the Cargyle jail.
“But …” Rick saw the look in Longarm’s eye and clamped down hard on whatever protest he might have made. The boy looked quickly away. Longarm walked around to the passenger side of the wagon and climbed onto the box. “Let’s go.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. Let’s go. Back down to Cletus Terry’s saloon.” He reached inside his coat for another cheroot.