Free Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats by Tabor Evans

sat up and threw her arms around him, burying her face in his bare chest.
    â€œI’m sorry, Custis. I guess I acted a little impetuously when I rode out here. I just couldn’t stop thinking about Casey.”
    â€œYou never should have come out here, girl. Damn foolhardy.”
    â€œI just wanted to pick up their trail, so they couldn’t get away. I knew you had your hands full with the fire . . .”
    Longarm drew her more tightly against him and kissed her forehead. He pressed her badly mussed hair back from her face and looked at her. “You all right?”
    She nodded. “I think I’ll go wash in the creek.”
    â€œMe, too. Then we’d best pack up, camp a little farther upstream. The rest of the gang might have heard the shooting, might come to investigate. We don’t need to be taking on twenty men alone in the dark.”
    Cynthia nodded. Longarm rose, took her hand, and together they walked over to where the creek bubbled over rocks. They both knelt and cupped water to their faces and their privates, washing themselves.
    Longarm was aware of Cynthia casting occasional, furtive glances at him. He cast his own at her, sheepish and also incredulous about what had just occurred between them.
    Love bred by violence.
    He chalked it up to their anxiety, then took a long drink of the cool water, and returned to the camp and dressed. When Cynthia had also dressed, Longarm kicked dirt on the ­near-­dead fire, retrieved his horse from where he’d left it downstream, and then saddled Cynthia’s horse. He confiscated two of the dead men’s bedrolls and some coffee, jerky, and biscuits they had in their saddlebags, freed their horses, and gave Cynthia a hand up onto her steeldust’s back.
    They rode upstream about a thousand yards, at a narrow spot in the canyon, and set up camp in a small horseshoe of the creek, in a nest of rocks and junipers. Longarm did not build a fire. The light would only attract those of Drummond’s gang sent to investigate the shooting.
    He and Cynthia unsaddled their horses and spread their bedrolls in the soft grass, in the lee of their saddles. She sat down on her blankets, leaned back against her saddle, and drew her knees up. She wore a long, green wool riding skirt and ­high-­topped brown boots. She smoothed the dress down against her legs. The temperature had dropped down to the low fifties or so. Thin tendrils of vapor trailed around their heads as they breathed.
    â€œWhat those men were doing to me,” she said in a thin, pensive voice, staring off toward a ­powder-­horn moon climbing over a black ridge, “is probably what the rest of the gang is doing to Casey.”
    â€œDon’t think about it.”
    â€œOver and over.” Cynthia shuddered.
    â€œI’ll get after them in the morning, do everything I can to get her away from them coyotes.”
    Cynthia looked at him. “
We
will. I’m going with you.”
    â€œNo.”
    Longarm had dug his bottle out of his saddlebags. He popped the cork and handed the bottle down to her.
    She took the bottle. “Custis, I’­m—”
    â€œNo,” he said, putting steel in his voice. “Take a drink of that. It’ll warm you up and help you sleep.”
    Cynthia tipped the bottle back. She didn’t take a very large sip before pulling the bottle back down. She made a face as she swallowed, then ran the back of her hand across her mouth. “I don’t see how you drink that stuff.”
    She’d always been more of a port drinker.
    â€œIt’s not going to help me sleep.” She handed the bottle back to Longarm. “I won’t be able to sleep, knowing that Casey’s with those . . . men. Going through what she’s going through and knowing that Ryan is dead. I wouldn’t doubt it at all if she simply gave up, knowing that even if she does get away from those killers, she has