Free Longarm and the Banker's Daughter (9781101613375) by Tabor Evans Page B

“You hear
mi
amigo, Heck—no? You send the blond
puta
out here, we let you live. You don’t, we come and get her and kill you slow, cut your ears and balls off and fry them up together in a hot skillet while you watch.”
    Forbidding, disembodied chuckles rose from the forest’s inky darkness.
    That last made Longarm wince. Damn, he thought, these boys were really sore at the girl. Again, he wondered just what in the hell she’d done to chafe these hard cases so badly that they’d come this far for her. He’d thought they’d turned back from their run to Mexico because they, like himself, rather enjoyed how she looked and performed without her clothes on.
    But, no—somehow she’d planted a bee under their saddle blankets, as she had his own, and they were out to give the devil her due.
    Longarm doubted threats would work, but why not give it a shot? As he backed toward his horse, putting one foot down carefully after another, he said, “You’re messin’ with holy fire here, fellas. I’m Custis Long, deputy United States marshal out of Denver. Lacy Sackett is my prisoner, and—”
    â€œLongarm?”
one of the voices interrupted him.
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œHey, I heard o’ you!” another owlhoot said.
    â€œThen you know I don’t fool around. So, lessen you wanna hang—”
    He was interrupted this time by a raucous, mocking howl accompanied by rifle and pistol fire. The guns flashed in the darkness, the bullets screeching around the lawman and chewing into tree boles and clipping branches.
    So much for trying to reason with old Heck Gunn and Orlando Cruz, Longarm thought as he lunged for his crow-footing grullo. He tripped over a slender, fallen tree but managed to hoist himself into the saddle and rip his reins free as the horse gave a shrill whinny and turned toward the north, away from the gunfire.
    â€œHi-yahh!”
Longarm grated out beneath the crackling of the Gunn and Cruz gang’s fusillade, crouching low in the saddle and ramming his heels hard against the grullo’s flanks.
    The horse buck-kicked and galloped on through the trees, bulling through the thick scrub. Bullets slammed into the trees around it and Longarm, one burning across the top of his left shoulder and making him wince. As the horse bulled into the clearing, it hesitated, screaming and pitching, and Longarm gripped the apple as he twisted around and fired three shots back in the direction from which he’d come.
    Then he rammed his heels hard once more against the grullo’s flanks, and horse and rider lunged toward the cabin lights glowing weakly on the other side of the clearing. Hunkered low and gritting his teeth, the gunfire softening behind him, Longarm turned the horse slightly right and left, making a zigzag pattern in an attempt to outrun the gang’s flying lead.
    Finally, the gunfire dwindled to only one or two shots before dying altogether. Longarm checked the grullo down in front of the cabin, swung down, grabbed his saddlebags and bedroll off its back, and pushed through the cabin’s door.
    He stopped in the open doorway. Lacy stood before him, dressed in a heavy coat over her torn gray shirt and long skirt, and in a man’s battered Stetson, aiming a big Remington at him. The gun was cocked. Her hands were shaking.
    â€œNooo!”
she screamed as, closing her eyes and turning her face away from the gun, it leaped and roared in her hands, its kick sending her stumbling straight backward.
    Longarm had thrown himself hard left against the door as the girl’s bullet careened through the opening behind him. Pushing off the door frame, he hurled himself forward and onto the girl, turning to one side before they hit the floor together, Longarm ripping the Remington from her slender hands.
    â€œWhat the hell you think you’re doing, you damn crazy catamount?” he bellowed.
    She lay on her side, hair