Free Longarm and the Cry of the Wolf (9781101619506) by Tabor Evans Page A

Longarm. “Shut up.” Then he pulled a trapdoor up out of the floor by a metal ring. He let the door fall back flat against the floor then went over to his desk for a lamp, which was already lit.
    Longarm glanced at the three- by three-foot hole in the floor and then at the three empty jail cells at the back of the room. All the cages were empty.
    â€œHold on there, pard,” he said to the marshal.
    â€œIt’s Calvin,” the man said in his rumbling, faintly raspy voice that owned not a note of conviviality. “Frank Calvin. Like I said, there’ll be a full moon tonight. And this hombre’s been bit by a wolf.” He shook his head tightly, showing his teeth below his mustache. “There ain’t no ifs, ands, or buts about it, he’s goin’ in the hole, like everybody else whose been wolf-bit around here. I’ll let him out tomorrow morning . . . if he hasn’t turned.”
    Goldie turned to Longarm, who’d found himself staring in hang-jawed disbelief at the town marshal of Crazy Kate, his brain slow to reassure him that his ears had indeed picked up what he thought they had. Goldie said, “He thinks I’m a fuckin’ werewolf!”
    Calvin stepped up beside the hole in the floor. He held the lamp in one hand. With his other hand, he held Emil’s Greener, the double bores aimed at the outlaw’s belly. Loudly, he clicked back one of the rabbit-ear hammers. “Get down in the hole, mister, or I’ll blow you in two with both wads, which I’ve filled with crushed silver ore.”
    â€œCome on, Calvin,” Longarm said, chuckling. “You don’t really believe that shit, do you?”
    Calvin looked at Goldie and wagged the barn-blaster at the hole. “Down.”
    â€œHoly shit!” Goldie said, edging up to the hole and staring into the black earth below.
    When Calvin held the lamp close enough to the hole that the outlaw could see a ways down a crude wooden ladder, Goldie stepped into the hole, turned to look up at Longarm fatefully, then dropped his head and began climbing down. When Goldie was out of Longarm’s sight, Calvin crouched down and ordered Goldie to step away from the ladder. Calvin started down, facing away from Longarm and aiming his shotgun past his feet at Goldie.
    When Calvin had disappeared into the earth beneath the marshal’s office, Longarm climbed down the rickety ladder, as well. Cool air rife with the smell of dank earth, stone, and mushrooms slid over him.
    At the bottom, he turned away from the ladder to see Calvin prodding Longarm’s prisoner through one of four heavy timber, iron-banded doors embedded in an earthen wall, on the right side of a narrow corridor that appeared to have partly caved in. The back wall was paneled with heavy pine boards.
    There was a small barred window in each heavy door. Calvin’s lamp offered the only light. It guttered and flickered and danced shadows around the small dungeon, showing a Windsor chair and a small wooden table with a deck of cards on it about halfway down the corridor.
    Furnishings for a guard, most likely.
    Goldie put his face up to the barred window in his door. His voice echoed loudly, eerily around the cavern. “Hey, you ain’t gonna leave me down here in this hole all by my lonesome, are you?”
    â€œSomeone’ll be down here later tonight,” Calvin told him. “To see if you turn. If you turn, you won’t need to worry about it no more. You won’t need to know about nothin’ no more. You’ll buy a load of silver buckshot an’ that’ll be the end of ya!”
    The town marshal of Crazy Kate tossed a small box through the barred window. “Them’s lucifers. To light the torch behind you with. Best keep it lit. Gets mighty cold down here.”
    Longarm sighed as he lifted his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “Come on, Calvin. This is craziness. You can’t tell