Free Longarm 397 : Longarm and the Doomed Beauty (9781101545973) by Tabor Evans Page A

up here, however. The girl might be an enticing little morsel, but both she and Longarm had more important things to think about than fleshly satisfaction.
    Like, for instance, keeping their flesh free of lead.
    Damn, where was that kid and the horses . . . ?
    Longarm dropped his feet to the floor, stood, and walked over to the batwings. He looked around and saw the kid moving toward him from the east. Deputy Marshal Panabaker was riding a big, white-socked black gelding while leading a coyote dun and a claybank. Leroy’s black was fully rigged with a bedroll, saddlebags, and the scarred stock of an old Spencer rifle jutting from a leather scabbard tied to the saddle beneath the kid’s right leg.
    Longarm heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Josephine Pritchard descending the stairs, a carpetbag in each hand. She wore gloves and a little straw hat with fake berries and leaves, black boots, and a short-waisted rabbit coat.
    â€œThanks for the horses, Marshal,” Longarm said, removing his saddlebags from the roan’s back and slinging them over the back of the claybank.
    â€œYeah, these oughta do us.”
    Longarm had his back to the kid. To his left, on the other side of the street, the barman and the whores stood outside the saloon, watching him and the kid with mute interest. Up and down the street he saw three other people—shopkeepers in shirtsleeves and aprons—standing like sullen sentinels on their stoops or boardwalks, watching, likely just wanting Longarm and the girl to get on out of Snow Mound and leave them to the peace and quiet of this high-mountain town.
    He wished only to oblige them.
    He glanced at the kid sitting the black. “No ‘us’ in it, Marshal. Just me and the girl.” He glanced over at her standing on the boardwalk, casting wary glances up and down the street.
    â€œYou’re gonna need help, Marshal Long,” the kid said, trying to pitch his youthful-raspy voice with authority. “I best ride along and make sure you make it safe. Like I said, I can shoot the white out of a hawk’s eye—”
    â€œWith Marshal Scobie dead, you’re needed here,” Longarm said, taking the carpetbags from the girl and hanging both by their braided leather lanyards over the coyote dun’s saddle horn. “But I do appreciate the offer.”
    The kid scowled as Longarm returned to the boardwalk, grabbed the girl’s arm, and led her over to the coyote dun. When the young badge toter opened his mouth to press the matter, Longarm bit back a sharp retort and the urge to drag the kid out of his saddle and paddle the hell out of him, and said with a deferential smile, “I know the citizens of Snow Mound will be right happy to have you here when the Younger gang comes lookin’ for the girl. I reckon they’ll be too hard after us to cause much trouble, but I know my heart will feel lighter, having you here to sort of smooth things over.”
    â€œYeah, I . . . I reckon,” the kid said noncommittally, glancing around at the barman and the whores and the shopkeepers all staring toward him, Longarm, and the girl. “I reckon someone needs to stay here an’ take charge . . . with the marshal dead.”
    Longarm leaned down, picked the girl up in his arms, and set her in the saddle. The hem of her dress drew taut.
    â€œWe’re gonna have to rig you a ridin’ dress,” Longarm said, producing a folding barlow knife from his pants pocket. “Don’t be alarmed.”
    He opened the blade, pulled the girl’s dress out away from her fine, long, left leg, and quickly slit it with the knife. No, that leg wasn’t wooden, he saw, a cold stone of desire dropping in his belly. Not long by a shot!
    He didn’t look at Marshal Panabaker, but he thought he heard the kid groan.
    The girl gasped and quickly reached down to pull the cut material over her naked thigh. “You enjoyed that!” she