Free Longarm and the Wolf Women by Tabor Evans Page B

window behind him while another barked through a metal handle on the dresser.
    The shooter bellowed with anger and pain. Then, as Longarm thumbed open his empty Colt’s loading gate, the man dashed past the door, clamping his left hand, which also held the Buntline Special, to his bloody right shoulder. He disappeared past the wall, boots pounding the floorboards.
    â€œGoddamnit, I’m out!” Longarm barked.
    â€œMe, too,” Merle shouted from the other side of the bed. She tossed Longarm’s Winchester onto the bed, then leaped onto the bed herself, running toward the chair over which her shell belt hung. “Don’t you federals keep your long guns loaded?”
    â€œAs poor as you’re shootin’ tonight, sweetheart, I reckon next time I better get ya a damn Gatling gun!” Longarm knocked the spent shells from his Colt’s cylinder then reached toward his cartridge belt.
    â€œPoor as I’m shooting? What were you aiming at—the wall ? Here!” Kneeling at the edge of the bed, breasts dipping toward the floor, Merle tossed her own Colt toward Longarm.
    He caught the revolver and flipped it so the grips were in his palm. “I reckon bein’ half-naked fouled my aim.” He tossed his own empty Colt onto the bed and ran out the door.
    â€œFinish that son of a bitch!” Merle shouted behind him.
    â€œWhat the hell you think I’m doin’—goin’ out for a smoke?” Longarm grumbled, sprinting barefoot down the hall toward the stairs, pistol held straight up in his right hand, balbriggans stretched taut across his chest and thighs.
    On the first floor, a woman screamed. A man shouted.
    Longarm dashed down the stairs two steps at a time, into the pale, buttery light shed by the chandelier at the bottom of the stairs and from lamps in the lobby to the right.
    When he was half-down, a gun barked. The slug chewed into the railing before him, peppering his balbriggans with wooden shards and splinters.
    Longarm ducked and extended his pistol over the railing.
    â€œI’ll kill her!” the tall hombre in the bowler and duster shouted, eyes bright with fury as he held the wife of the hotel’s proprieter before him, one arm around her neck.
    She flopped before him like a rag doll, gagging as he drew his forearm taught against her throat and snugged the end of the Buntline Special against her temple.
    â€œThrow the gun down, you federal son of a bitch, or I’ll blow this bitch’s brains all over this lobby.”
    Longarm never wore his badge unless he was arresting someone, but after the saloon shootings word must have somehow gotten out that he was a lawman.
    A foolproof way of getting turned down with a shovel was giving up your weapon to a badman. Longarm made as if he were about to drop the revolver over the railing, then gripped it once more, took hasty aim at the tall man’s head jutting over the hotelier’s wife, and fired.
    The hotelman’s wife screamed and the tall man bellowed as the slug sliced his left ear sticking out from beneath his bowler’s frayed brim. He released the woman and staggered back, dropping to one knee and facing the door, cursing loudly.
    The woman was on her knees between the man and Longarm, clutching one hand to her battered throat and gagging, her eyes bulging.
    â€œGet the hell outta the way!” Longarm shouted, waving his arm.
    â€œOhhhh!” the woman sobbed and threw herself right, crabbing toward the gap between the wall and the lobby’s front desk.
    Longarm squeezed off another shot, but the man crawled around the far side of the front desk, and Longarm’s shot plunked into an upholstered chair behind him.
    The man snaked his silver-plated pistol around the end of the desk and fired. The slug barked into a rail pillar to Longarm’s right.
    He fired again quickly.
    Longarm ducked. His right knee slipped off the step.
    He reached for the rail, missed it, and