He knew when Van Horn rode in, far into the night, and roused Funderburk to go take his place as outrider. Van Horn curled up in his blankets, broke wind a couple of times, and fell asleep immediately. Nothing else disturbed the camp until the faint grayness that warned of dawn's approach began to seep into the eastern sky. Longarm let himself drift off completely then, and he slept soundly for an hour, waking to the smell of coffee being brewed.
Wallace was the only one who was up and about. He had rekindled the fire and had the flames leaping merrily again. The coffeepot was bubbling at the edge of the fire. The other outlaws were starting to stir. Longarm sat up, stretched, and reached for his boots.
As he did so, he glanced at Nora. She was lying down, but her eyes were wide open. She was staring at him. He wished she wouldn't do that. It looked suspicious, and if she kept it up, Wallace or one of the others might start to wonder why she was paying so much attention to him.
Longarm shook his boots out to make sure no scorpions had crawled into them during the night, pulled them on, stood up, and stamped his feet down in them good. The other men were all awake by now. Dutchy was sitting up and scratching himself. “Mornin', boys,” he mumbled.
Wallace had broken out the frying pan and bags of flour, sugar, and salt, along with a canteen of water. He began mixing batter for flapjacks.
Longarm wandered off behind one of the small dunes. He hoped that would serve a dual purpose. He needed to take a leak, and he hoped that leaving for a moment would get Nora's attention off him. They couldn't afford for her to be showing more interest in him than in any of the others.
When he had finished relieving himself, he buttoned his trousers and strolled back around the dune to the campsite. All the men were up now, some of them tending to the horses, others helping themselves to coffee. Longarm got his cup and joined them, taking the pot from Van Horn to pour himself some of the steaming brew. No one else was ready for coffee, so Longarm knelt to place the pot near the edge of the fire, so that the flames would keep it hot.
Nora sat up and said, “He's a lawman.”
Wallace's head jerked up, and the frying pan clattered against the rocks that had been ringed around the fire. “What?”
Longarm couldn't believe his ears. He must have imagined hearing what Nora had just said.
But then she said it again. “He's a lawman, a U.S. deputy marshal. He crawled over to my bedroll and told me so last night after all the rest of you were asleep.”
Longarm was still hunkered down by the fire. Wallace was only a few feet away staring at him with a mixture of disbelief, suspicion, and anger. Van Horn, Dutchy, and one of the other men stood nearby. Graydon and the others were over at the corral, and Funderburk hadn't come in from his stint of standing guard.
“Well?” Wallace said harshly. “What about it, Parker?”
“His name isn't Parker,” Nora said before Longarm could say anything. “It's Long, Custis Long. That's what he told me.”
Why the hell was she doing this? Why betray him, thought Longarm, when he was her best chance of getting out of this mess alive and unharmed?
“Long,” Wallace said, and then his eyes widened in shock as a realization hit him. “Son of a bitch, you're the one they call Longarm!”
For an instant, Longarm thought about trying to talk his way out of this, but then he realized he wasn't going to be able to do that. Wallace was already reaching for his gun. So Longarm did the only thing he could do.
He threw the potful of scalding coffee right in Wallace's face.
Chapter 13
Wallace howled in pain and clawed at his burned face with both hands as he fell over backward. In a continuation of the same motion he had used to throw the coffee at Wallace, Longarm swung the now-empty pot as he uncoiled from his crouch. Dutchy was within reach, and the pot clanged loudly as Longarm crashed it against the side of the stocky outlaw's head. Dutchy went down like a poleaxed steer.
The other men were shouting curses and grabbing for their guns. None of them were particularly fast on the draw, however, and Longarm cleared leather first, palming the Colt from the cross-draw rig and thumbing back the hammer as the barrel came level with his waist. He fired from there, flame licking from the muzzle of the revolver. The bullet drove into the chest of the man standing next to Van Horn. Longarm had never caught his name the night before, but that didn't matter. He had just killed the outlaw anyway.
Van Horn snapped a shot at Longarm that whistled past the big lawman's ear. Longarm fired again, but as he squeezed the trigger, Van Horn ducked aside. Longarm's slug still creased Van Horn's arm, knocking the owlhoot around in a half-turn. Longarm used the opportunity to step closer and swing a rock-hard left fist at Van Horn, planting the punch in the middle of the man's face. Van Horn dropped his gun and fell back, stunned.
Longarm had been mighty lucky so far, and he knew it. He threw a glance at Nora, who was sitting up and screaming, hands clapped over her ears to shut out some of the sounds of gunfire. Longarm started to take a step toward her, thinking about snatching her up from the ground, but Graydon was running toward Nora from the corral, gun drawn. Longarm knew he couldn't reach her before the outlaw did.
The horses were milling around in the makeshift corral, spooked by the shooting and the yelling. Two of the outlaws were still there, trying to calm the nervous animals. Longarm fired over the heads of the horses and bellowed at them at the top of his lungs, and sure enough, they bolted, surging against the ropes and bursting right through them. The two outlaws were caught in the miniature stampede and knocked sprawling.
Longarm lunged toward the horses as Graydon reached Nora and fired past her at the lawman, making her flinch and scream even louder. The slug burned across Longarm's right side, just above his belt. He stumbled, thrown off balance by the impact of the bullet, even though it had only dug a shallow furrow in his flesh. Pain flashed through him, but he thrust it away, ignoring it as he leaped for the dun.
He caught hold of the horse's mane with both hands and kicked off with his feet, trying to throw a leg over the back of the animal. The Pony Express riders had been able to mount up that way, but they had all been young and small and wiry. Longarm was big and rangy and no longer in the first flush of youth.
But he
was
desperate, and that desperation gave him speed and strength he might not have otherwise had. He slammed down on the dun's bony back and felt a twinge in his recently recovered balls. Then he was leaning forward, knees clamped to the horse's flanks, one hand tangled in the dun's mane, the other wielding the Colt. He yelled encouragement to the dun as he sent it straight toward the fire.
The dun jumped, sailing up and over the flames without hesitation. Longarm lashed out at Graydon as the horse came down next to the outlaw and Nora. The barrel of Longarm's pistol thudded against Graydon's skull. Longarm hated treating a perfectly good gun that way and hoped the blow hadn't bent the barrel. But Graydon folded up like a house of cards, and that was more important to Longarm at the moment. He bent down and looped an arm around Nora as she leaped to her feet. He had to use his gun hand to do it, but he was able to pick her up and pull her onto the horse with him as it surged past the fallen outlaw.
“Hang on!” Longarm shouted to Nora. “We'll get out of here!”
She twisted in his arms, clawed at his face with her fingernails, and generally started fighting like a blamed wildcat.
That surprised Longarm, but not completely. After all, she had already betrayed him to the outlaws this morning, for reasons that he still couldn't fathom. Obviously, she didn't want to go with him, didn't want to be rescued despite her fear of Wallace and the other men.
He struggled with her, trying to calm her, as the dun lurched up one of the sand dunes that surrounded the camp. A gun boomed somewhere behind them, and then Longarm heard Wallace bellowing, “Don't shoot! Don't shoot, you stupid bastards! You'll hit the girl!”
She was his ace in the hole, all right, thought Longarm.
Just then, she dug her elbow hard into the wound on his side.
Longarm gasped in agony and bent forward as the whole world seemed to turn black and red for a second. Mostly black, with bright streaks of red running through it. That was the color of pain, he thought.
Nora writhed in his grasp, then hit him again in the side, followed by ramming the heel of her hand under his chin. Her fighting was clumsy but effective. Longarm almost toppled off the horse. He caught himself at the last instant.
But he couldn't catch Nora. She tore free from him and fell off the back of the dun just as the horse crested the dune. She landed hard and started rolling over and over, tumbling down the steep slope of the sand hill. Still half-blinded by pain, Longarm yanked the dun to a momentary halt and hipped around to look back at Nora. The skirt of her traveling gown had hiked up over her hips as she rolled down the hill, and Longarm saw the flash of pale skin from her legs in the half-light of dawn. Van Horn and one of the other men were already running toward the base of the dune to grab her when her rolling finally came to a stop.
“Kill him! Kill the son of a bitch!”
That was Wallace giving the orders. Guns began to bang again. Now that he no longer had Nora with him, the outlaws had no reason not to shoot at Longarm. They opened up with a vengeance, their guns blazing as they sent lead whistling up the slope toward Longarm. He heard the all too familiar flat slap of a bullet passing close beside his ear as he turned and dug his heels into the dun's flanks. The horse leaped forward into an awkward gallop as it went down the far side of the sand hill.
The other horses had scattered, and that fact gave Longarm his only advantage. He was the only one mounted. It would take the outlaws quite a while to round up their frightened mountsâhe hoped. Longarm rode west, trying to keep the dun to the more solid ground so that he could make better time. With the lead he had, he at least had a chance to get away from the Wallace gang.
But he'd had to leave Nora behind, and that fact gnawed at his guts. Sure, turning around and trying to go back to rescue her right now would be suicide, just as sure as if he'd put the barrel of his own gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Wallace and the others would kill him on sight.
At least Nora was safe for the moment, as safe as she had been since Wallace had grabbed her off that stagecoach. He would just have to find some other way to get her away from those outlaws, Longarm told himself.
That was when a wave of dizziness and weakness hit him, and he almost toppled off the back of the dun.
Longarm caught himself, pulled himself upright again, and gingerly touched a hand to the wound on his side. His shirt was soaked with blood, more blood than Longarm had thought he was losing. That was the reason he had almost blacked out. Gritting his teeth, he reached through the gap in the bullet-torn shirt and explored the wound. It was a little deeper than he had thought. Blood was still oozing from it, but slowly now, barely a trickle. The injury wasn't life-threatening, not by itself. But under the circumstances ...
The sun had topped the horizon behind him. Its heat on his back told him that he was going in the direction he wanted to go. If he could get out of the sand hills, find the stage road, and follow it to Monahans, he could get help, both for his injury and for his next attempt to rescue Nora Canady.
Without him prodding it, the dun had settled down into a trudging walk through the sand. Longarm dug in his heels, urging the horse back to a faster pace. Wallace and the others might have caught their horses by now and could be coming after him. He was leaving a clear trail for them to follow. In the sand, there was no avoiding that.
On the other hand, they might not chase him. They might just take Nora and break camp, moving to somewhere deeper in the sand hills. That would probably be the smart thing for them to do. Wallace had successfully eluded pursuit for months now by hiding in the dunes. He could find another place to camp. Vengeance on Longarm would have to be weighed against the payoff the gang could get by selling Nora back to her tycoon father.
Longarm hoped greed would win out this time. He was in no shape to fight off a bunch of bloodthirsty owlhoots. He needed time ... time to heal, time to make plans....
The sun got hotter as it rose steadily into the sky behind him. Soon, it was like a hammer beating down on him. At least he had been wearing his hat when he escaped from the outlaw camp. The Stetson gave his head a little protection from the burning rays.
His mouth felt as if it was lined with wool, though. Even under normal circumstances, he would have been thirsty. With all the blood he had lost, he was in serious danger of passing out from lack of fluid.
And of course he had no canteen. That was back at the outlaw camp, along with his saddle, his rifle, and all the rest of his supplies. He had the dun, the clothes he was wearing, his Colt, and the dozen cartridges in the loops of his shell belt.
That would have to be enough.
The dun needed water too. Longarm knew that, but there was nothing he could do about it. All he could do was ride through the dunes ... up one, down another, zigzagging back and forth to try to avoid the steepest slopes, always heading generally to the west.
Only when he looked up and saw that the sun was directly above him did he realize how long he had been riding. It was the middle of the day. He had gone far beyond mere thirst now. His whole body was screaming for water. He would have to take a chance and stop the next time he came to some of those shin oaks. Maybe he could scoop out a hole around the roots of the trees and find a little moisture that way.