Free Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats by Tabor Evans Page B

attackers lying freshly dead around them. A vague guilt prodded him when his member stirred.
    Cynthia returned to the camp, and they had a cup of coffee together and chewed biscuits and jerky. When the golden sun was beginning to poke above the eastern horizon, sending buttery spears across the sky, they saddled their horses. Longarm slid his rifle into his saddle scabbard and then walked over to where Cynthia was adjusting her left stirrup.
    Knowing their parting was imminent, and that there was no way he was going to let her ride along with him on the trail of her kidnapped friend, Cynthia looked ­frustrated. Longarm wrapped an arm around her waist, kissed her cheek. “You head straight back to Arapaho, now, girl. Your aunt is probably beside herself.”
    â€œI want to ride with you in the worst way, Custis. Casey needs me.” She turned to face him. “But I know when you’ve made up your mind.”
    â€œDon’t let me catch you on my back trail,” he said, pointing an admonishing finger at her.
    â€œYou won’t,” Cynthia said, nodding. “I promise. I’ll ride straight back to Arapaho and wait.”
    Longarm engulfed the girl in his arms and squeezed her.
    â€œI just hope you find her alive, Custis,” Cynthia said.
    â€œMe, too.”
    Longarm helped her into her saddle and watched her ride off along the creek, heading northeast. He watched until she was out of sight, and then he climbed into his own saddle and reined the horse through the woods and onto the trail that angled southwest, toward the Colorado border.
    The tracks of many shod horses were still clear in the chalky dirt, with the occasional, relatively fresh horse apple. Longarm followed them, pushing the sorrel as fast as he dared, knowing that being set afoot out here in this wide open country, with ranches spread as wide as an old coyote’s teeth, would mean that he’d likely lose the gang as well as any chance of saving Casey Summerville, and he’d have a long walk back to Arapaho.
    The trail he followed through the morning forked in a couple of places, but it was not hard to see which tine the gang had taken. They continued heading southwest, toward the rugged, ­spruce-­green peaks jutting on the southern horizon.
    All he’d learned from the outlaw whom McIntyre had executed was that the gang was headed for a ranch cabin along Purgatory Creek in the Never Summers. Longarm knew that Purgatory Creek was a long, meandering creek that virtually split the Never Summers in two. Those mountains, barely distinguishable from several other ranges around them, were wild, savage country.
    If he lost the gang’s tracks, he’d have one bear of a time finding that ranch. There was a good chance that he never would.
    Around eleven thirty, hearing something, Longarm reined the sorrel to a halt and turned the mount sideways. He stared off down his back trail.
    He heard the sound ­again—­the intermittent drumming of shod hooves. He squinted as he stared toward the north and eventually saw a dust plume rising between two sandstone dikes. From this distance of nearly a mile, he could make out a ­thumbnail-­sized gob of brown pulling that dust plume along at a rapid clip.
    Several riders heading toward him.
    Apprehension tickled the back of the lawman’s neck. Had Drummond’s bunch circled around and picked up his trail? Were they now dogging
him
?

Chapter 9
    Quickly, Longarm reined the sorrel off the side of the trace and into some thick scrub behind a butte that became a rocky crag halfway from its bottom. Longarm tied the grulla to a juniper branch, slid his Winchester from its scabbard, and jogged to the crag. He began climbing the badly eroded slope, boots slipping in the loose dirt and gravel.
    Watching for rattlesnakes, he wended his way through the rocks until he was about fifteen feet from the top of the formation. He found a niche amongst the boulders