Free Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats by Tabor Evans Page A

nothing to go home to but heartbreak.”
    Longarm took a long pull from the bottle. He looked around, pricking his ears. Hearing nothing more than the horses breathing where they were tethered nearby, he took another pull from the bottle and then sat down beside Cynthia. He wrapped an arm around her, squeezed her reassuringly.
    â€œI know it’ll be hard, but try to get some sleep. It’s late. Mornin’ will be here before we know it.”
    She sighed and squirmed against him, wrapping both her arms around his waist and burying her face in his chest. She gave a sob, and then he felt her slump against him as her exhaustion overtook her.
    Soon he could tell from the lack of tension in her body, and her slow, regular breaths, that she was asleep.
    He leaned back against his saddle, holding her. A few times he dozed, but mostly he sort of half lay there against his saddle, holding her, watching and listening, thinking about how he was going to run down twenty men and pry a girl out of their viselike grip.
    If Casey was even still alive by the time he found her, that was. Men like those in Drummond’s bunch would likely use her and cast her away like an old newspaper. Longarm knew that it was entirely likely that he’d find Casey Summerville lying dead in a ravine somewhere along the trail to the Never Summer range.
    He looked down at Cynthia slumped against him, her eyes lightly closed, lips parted as she breathed in a deep, dreamless sleep. At least that hadn’t happened to Cynthia. He’d never given much thought to love before, but he figured that to have been as fearful as he’d been for the heiress’s fate, love must have found him, after all.
    At the first pale brush of the false dawn, Longarm slipped out from beneath the beautiful, sleeping girl and gentled her back against his saddle. Quietly, he scoured the brush for deadfall. He’d build a fire and make some coffee with the supplies he’d confiscated from one of the three men he’d killed.
    He could risk a fire now, with day coming on. Drummond’s bunch was most likely headed south toward the Colorado border and the maze of mountains beyond. They’d hole up amongst those rugged peaks and wait for their trail to grow cold before heading on out of Colorado, spending their loot all along the way.
    Then they hit another bank or a train, maybe a stage, take another girl or two . . .
    Longarm built a fire, filled a pot at the creek, and set coffee to boil.
    Dawn became a pale lamp gradually glowing brighter around him, and birds began chirping in the trees. He sat on a rock near his small, crackling fire, a cup of hot, black Arbuckles in his hand, and watched Cynthia sleep, one cheek pressed against the palm of an open hand.
    The girl stirred, lifted her head with a start.
    â€œEasy, girl,” Longarm said. “All’s well.”
    She blinked. When her frightened eyes found him, they softened, and she smiled. “That coffee smells good.”
    â€œDamn good. And just what the doctor ordered. I’ll pour you a cup.”
    Cynthia stretched, rose, winced, and pressed a hand to her back. “Stiff,” she said. “I can’t imagine how you sleep on the cold, hard ground as often as you do, Custis.”
    â€œYou get used to the creaks. No choice but to, I reckon.”
    As Longarm filled a second cup, Cynthia came over with a blanket draped around her shoulders. She hugged Longarm from behind, kissed his ear and his cheek. “I’m gonna go freshen up. Be right back.”
    He watched her walk away, her round rump swaying enticingly behind the tight, slitted riding skirt that offered a teasing glimpse of one long, pale leg. Her long, black hair hung free down her back to nearly her waist. The stygian tresses were prettily mussed and tangled, lending the refined young heiress an ever-so-vaguely savage air.
    Longarm remembered the mad rutting of the night before, her three