Last Lawman (9781101611456)

Free Last Lawman (9781101611456) by Peter Brandvold

Book: Last Lawman (9781101611456) by Peter Brandvold Read Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Brandvold
her dress over her breasts.
    “No!” she shouted, fighting him.
    He was too strong for her. He swung her around and pulled her so brusquely toward the mercantile’s door thatshe nearly lost her footing. She heard the soft gasp of tearing fabric, felt the dress across her bosom slacken.
    “Ma!”
Jim cried.
    Horror rippled through her as she heard footsteps running toward her from the side street. She’d hoped that Jim had run off as she’d ordered, but now she turned to see the boy mounting the loading dock from the direction of the side street.
    “No, Jim—go!”
she shouted, hysterical now.
    Stanhope stopped in front of the door. Erin’s momentum sent her stumbling past him and into the closed door itself as Stanhope turned toward Jim, the sawed-off shotgun coming up in another blur of quick motion. Erin had just glimpsed the movement, her brain having no time to digest it, before the gun was up and out.
    Somewhere amidst the movement she heard the click of the shotgun’s hammer being ratcheted back.
    “Leave my ma alone, damn you!”
    Jim’s screeching shout was punctuated by what sounded like a boulder falling on a cabin. The explosion was a giant fist punching Erin’s head back against the door.
    Her vision swam. Whistles blew in her ears. Her knees turned to liquid. They struck the loading dock with a solid thump that she could distantly hear beneath the ringing in her ears. She glanced toward where Jim had been running toward her, and again she felt as though a stout fist was hammered against her face.
    There was a splotch of blood just above the steps on the north side of the loading dock, the side facing the street. She could see the underside of the sole of Jim’s right boot at the top of the steps. It was moving slightly.
    Twitching.
    “Ah, Christ,” she heard a man’s disgusted voice behind her.
    In the periphery of her vision, the outlaw leader pushedthe mercantile’s door open and disappeared inside, leaving her alone on the dock and staring at her son’s twitching boot.
    His name exploded out of her on a geyser of suddenly released horror. “Jim!
Jimmeeee!

    Erin scrambled to her feet and ran over to the steps and gasped when she saw her young son lying sprawled down them, his head brushing the ground at the base of the dock.
    Again, she screamed his name and ran down the steps. She sat on the bottom one and cradled his head in both her arms, rocking him gently. The blood pumping from the large, ragged hole in his chest was a savage, merciless fist hammering her again and again, knocking her senseless.
    “Oh, Jim,” she said. “Oh, Jim. Oh, Jim. Please don’t die. Please don’t be
dead
!”
    Then she started screaming for help—for someone, anyone to help her. She screamed for the town doctor, but as she continued to rake her gaze between her son’s inert face with its closed eyelids and growing pallor, she saw no one on the street except for the outlaws hauling goods of one kind or another out of the shops in burlap sacks that they lashed to their saddle horns.
    She jerked her terror-stricken gaze toward where the town marshal lolled dead in the stock trough, the ground around the trough darkly muddy. In the window just beyond the marshal was the face of Edgar Longbow staring out the front window of his drugstore. He looked like a ghost hovering there.
    “Edgar!” Erin screamed. “Help me!”
    The druggist shook his head, then reached up and pulled the shade down over his window.
    “Edgarrrr!”
the woman screamed, clutching her boy to her chest, squeezing him, feeling him growing cold, a deadweight in her arms.
    Time seemed to stop. She cried and rocked the dead child as she’d once rocked him to get him to sleep at night. Theworld around her became a blur. The whooping and hollering and sporadic gunshots grew distant, like some storm drifting off toward the next valley.
    Suddenly, she was aware of a strong smell of horse and man sweat. Hooves clomped. The heavy, unyielding

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