Longarm #431

A Close Shave . . .

Wright started to tip the barrel of his shotgun up toward Longarm.

Longarm's .45 roared, blowing the barber sheet outward and setting it ablaze where his bullet passed through ahead of its lance of fire.

Carl Wright looked down at his chest, his expression incredulous. Then he glanced over toward the pegs and all the guns hanging against the wall.

“They aren't mine, Carl,” Longarm said just as Wright dropped to his knees. And then forward onto his face.

His shotgun clattered hard on the floor, and Longarm flinched, fully expecting the impact to dislodge the hammer and fire the gun. Fortunately there was no discharge. He and the other men in the barbershop began to breathe easier.

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LONGARM AND THE SHARPSHOOTER

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

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PUBLISHING HISTORY

Jove mass-market edition / October 2014

Cover illustration by Milo Sinovcic.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

His head had already bounced twice off the ground before he ever heard the gunshot. He remembered coming off the horse but little else. He had had the lead rope of Alton Gray's horse in his right hand, but he could not recall what happened to that horse. Or to his prisoner. Now . . .

Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long lay quiet on the grass. He was comfortable. If anything he was more comfortable now than he could remember ever being. Ever. So comfortable he could not even feel his body.

That seemed off somehow. Not quite right. But he could not work out why. The hit on the head, no doubt.

He looked up at Gray. Longarm lay on his back. Gray stood over him atop the bay horse. The two of them seemed a mile high, sitting there above him.

“Serves you right, you son of a bitch.” Gray worked up a wad of spittle and let fly at him.

“Don't try an' get away.” Longarm had to pause to catch his breath. “I'll shoot you if you try.”

He was short of breath. It was a great effort to speak.

Gray reined the bay horse away and disappeared from Longarm's field of vision. Which at the moment seemed to be directly overhead.

Longarm wanted to sit up. Wanted to scratch his nose, too. He would do those things. In just a minute or so. For the time being he wanted to just lie here on his back and rest.

But the side of his nose did itch quite abominably. He thought he would reach up and scratch it.

But his arm. His hand. He could not feel them. Could not move them. Could not feel . . . anything.

Oh, Lord. He could feel nothing, not anything from his neck downward.

He was paralyzed!

•   •   •

“Hey!”

Longarm's eyelids fluttered and came open despite a buildup of glue-like secretion that bound them closed.

“Son of a bitch. You're alive.”

It was a woman. She was standing over him. She had a lead rope in her hand and he could see the head and enormous ears of a mule at the end of that rope.

Longarm was still lying on his back. He had been there . . . he did not know how long. Overnight, he was sure of that. At least one night, possibly more. Time had begun to run together for him as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

“I was . . . never mind,” the woman said. She had his wallet in one hand, so she really did not have to explain why she stopped.

“You've shit yourself,” she said. “Can't you move?”

He drew in as much breath as he could. “No.” The single word came out halfway between a whisper and a croak. “Help . . . me. I'm . . . deputy marshal . . . Long. Help . . . me. Please.”

“Well, you damned sure need help. Reckon it's up to me to give it.”

The woman was heavy built, stocky, wearing a man's bib overalls and a red pullover shirt. She had a wen the size of a hen's egg on the side of her neck. Her hair, beginning to go gray, was cropped off short just below her ears. He guessed her age to be somewhere in the fifties.

“What am I going to do with you, Deputy Long? I can't leave you here to die.” She sighed heavily, as if feeling terribly put-upon. “I suppose I'll just have to take you with me, damnit. Then you'll up and die anyway, but you won't be on my conscience when you do it. So come along, damn you.”

She took hold of his coat and half lifted, half dragged him beside the mule. Pushed and pulled and grunted with effort.

Longarm could see a little of what she was doing, could hear grunts and scrapes and the sound of something being dragged across gravel. But he could feel nothing. Absolutely nothing.

He closed his eyes and faded away into unconsciousness again.

The ceiling consisted of saplings laid close together. He could see thin tendrils of plant roots hanging down between the poles, so the cabin was roofed with sod. The walls were logs chinked with mud.

Longarm could turn his head to the side a little, but that was all the movement he could manage. He could see to the side a bit but could not lift his head to see toward his feet.

The place was small. Eight by eight was his guess. There was a folding, sheet-metal stove; the cot where he lay and a section of pine log about a foot across and two feet high sawed off flat to serve as a stool or a table. That seemed to be the extent of the furnishings.

He wondered how tall the woman was. However tall, she must have been powerful to get him loaded onto the mule and brought here.

She came inside from whatever she had been doing. Pulled off her woolen stocking cap and hung it neatly on a peg driven between two of the wall logs.

“You're awake,” she said. “Mayhap you can help me get those filthy clothes off'n you. I got a creek runs by the place. I can wash out your stuff there. In case you're wondering, you been shot. Creased, actually. Right across the back of your neck.” While she talked she worked, bending over him, unbuttoning and unbuckling, tugging and lifting and pulling at his clothes.

“Got to wash you, too, lest the stink from you make me vomit. You know how some men down south hunt wild horses? They crease them deliberate. Put the bullet just right, close to the spine it has to be, and it shocks them. Knocks them right down and paralyzes them. Except sometimes they shoot too close to the bone, and it kills them. Sometimes just in the meat not close enough and it doesn't do much of anything to them. But get it just right and they only stay down for a little while. After a spell they stand up, and the horse hunter has them bridled and ready to be broke. Now you, I figure whoever shot you thought he'd killed you. And mayhap he did. You could yet die from this wound. Or you could be up and around tomorrow, next week, one of these fine days. I don't know any way to tell.”

While she chattered on, she worked. Pulling his clothes off. Rolling him back and forth so that his cheek was pushed hard against a scratchy blanket first on one side and then the other.

“This water is cold, straight from the creek. Is it too cold for you?”

“No,” he grunted. Icy cold or boiling hot, he could feel nothing. He could see that she turned and picked up a basin and cloth and began washing him.

“My God, what a pecker you have, son,” the woman crooned. “Bigger even than the candle I've been using to pleasure myself.” She laughed, delighted. “What I wouldn't give to have some of that shoved up my twat, eh? Shit, I haven't had a man in . . . let me see . . . three years? Closer to four, I think. Not that you are in much of a condition to be fucking a girl. And more's the pity.” She laughed again.

A few minutes later she set the basin aside and said, “That is about as clean as I can get you, but try not to shit yourself any more. It isn't much fun to clean after you.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Longarm croaked.

“Sleep now. If you're going to heal, that is the best medicine for you,” the woman said. “And if you're going to up and die on me after I've brought you this far, do it in your sleep so you won't be bothering me with it, will you?”

She turned away and fed some fat pine into her sheepherder's stove and set a pot of water on top of the stove to heat.

Longarm wondered if she intended to feed him. Or just wait to see if he was going to die before she bothered with that.

He closed his eyes and, taking her advice, went to sleep.