Free Longarm #431 by Tabor Evans

in that direction, knowing there was almost no likelihood that it would connect with whomever it was that shot at him. He saw a spray of wood chips fly off the corner of Hatton’s Sundries.
    With the Colt in his fist, Longarm dropped into a crouch and charged straight at the alley.
    A second blast followed the first, this one going somewhere astray. He did not know who or what might have been hit by that shot, but it did not come close to him.
    Again he followed the attacker’s fire with a shot of his own. He fired while he was still running and was fairly sure his bullet came nowhere near the man who shot at him.
    Longarm heard footsteps receding through the alley. By the time he reached it and could see down its length, the gunman was gone, out of sight to either left or right at the far end of the alley.
    He stopped, leaned against the side wall of Hatton’s, and took time to reload the two chambers he’d already fired.
    Only then did he start his stalk through the alley.

Chapter 35
    Longarm reached up with his left hand, touched the new skin on the back of his neck where the unknown rifleman had creased him. The scabs were all gone now and he assumed the skin there would still be red and raw. One thing he knew for sure was that this being shot at was a bunch of bullshit. He’d had quite enough of it.
    He reached the end of the passage between Hatton’s and the haberdashery on the other side. The son of a bitch with the shotgun could have gone in either direction.
    His assailant almost had to be Timothy Wright’s brother. Longarm could think of no one else in Crowell City who might want him dead. Al Gray would, but Wilson Hughes would warn Longarm before Gray returned. Certainly no one other than Wright would be fool enough to come at him with a shotgun. And to shoot from so far away that the shot pellets had so little effect.
    The man was not terribly bright. Nor had his now dead brother been.
    But where was the surviving Wright now? That was the question.
    Longarm normally carried only five cartridges in his Colt and the hammer down on an empty chamber. That way there was no chance of an accidental discharge.
    In the past he had seen more than one unlucky son of a bitch who accidentally shot himself by dropping his gun. And one especially unfortunate bastard whose horse kicked him, the animal’s hoof striking the hammer of his Colt and firing a bullet into the poor sap’s leg.
    Now he flicked open the loading gate and dropped a sixth .45 cartridge in. Just in case.
    He did not really think Wright would have the nerve to stand up to Longarm face-to-face. But he could be wrong about that. This situation could come to a gunfight, and if it did, he would want that sixth cartridge in the cylinder rather than in his coat pocket.
    He took his hat off and peeked warily around the back corner of Hatton’s. There was no sign of Wright in the growing shadows in that direction, so Longarm looked the other way. Nothing there, either.
    It was nearly dark, and Longarm was not familiar with the town’s back alleys. At close quarters a shotgun is a devastating weapon. Both good reasons to back off and wait.
    Custis Long was not very good when it came to backing off.
    It looked like he was going to have to go hunting.

Chapter 36
    After more than an hour of prowling the alleys and looking into saloons, Longarm found no sign of Timothy Wright’s brother. Nor of anyone else wandering the streets with a shotgun and a grudge.
    Al Gray would have killed him without a qualm and laughed about it afterward. But Gray was not in town. Longarm was confident that marshal Wilson Hughes would tell him when Gray did return; the man wanted that second hundred-dollar payout that Longarm had promised.
    He sometimes wondered just what it was that the marshal thought Longarm wanted with Gray. Something far beyond the law to be sure, but Longarm had never said exactly what it was that he had in mind. And did not