Longarm was with John. He had had enough. His rifle filled with nine fresh shells, he rammed one into the breech and rose from his heels. He walked toward the wagon levering the Winchester from his right hip, pelting the far side panel with .44 slugs, aiming low enough to blow the brains out of the two cowering wolf women's lovely heads.
They stayed down, out of sight.
Longarm fired his last two shots as he bolted around the end of the wagon, and stopped as he shifted his empty Winchester to his left hand and palmed his Colt with his right.
The girls were gone.
There were only scuff marks in the ground where they'd crouched, shell casings glittering among the rocks and gravel.
A pistol popped, the slug tearing into the rocks off Longarm's right boot. He swung that way and lifted his gaze up a narrow, boulder-strewn trough in the nearly vertical ridge.
The wolf women were climbing the trough, the black-haired girl first, the blonde second. The blonde turned away from Longarm, her smoking Colt in her right hand.
Climbing, using their hands and feet, the two women disappeared around a bend in the trough.
Longarm cursed and reloaded his Winchester as Merle ran up behind him.
“They're climbing the damn mountain,” Longarm said, keeping his eyes on the shadow-filled trough.
“Shit,” Merle said. “You goin' afterâ”
Longarm was already bolting up the chute, scrambling over boulders with his rifle in one hand. In less than a minute, his lungs felt like sandpaper. He climbed over one boulder after another, ducking under ledges protruding from both sides of the trough.
His heart raced and his vision swam, his head pounding from the altitude as well as the braining he'd taken the night before.
Fifty yards up the mountain, he tramped around a dog-leg in the widening chute, ducked under a protruding thumb of rock, and looked up. The wolf women were climbing hard, skirts buffeted about their bare legs. There was a blood trail on the rocks. The blonde pulled her sister along by one hand, holding the rifle in the other.
Longarm dropped to a knee. He raised the rifle to his shoulder as the women disappeared around another, larger thumb of granite protruding into the trough.
“Christ!” Merle said, moving up beside him, her chest heaving sharply. “They must be used to this altitude. My lungs feel like raisins!”
Longarm drew a deep breath, wheezing. “I'm givin' up cigars.”
“Me, too.”
Longarm moved out, grabbing stone outcrops and boulders to pull himself forward and up. The sun reflected off the rocks to sear his face. A cool, dry wind blew straight down the trough, rife with the smell of bear grease.
Longarm stopped suddenly and looked up. The trough was empty, neither girl in sight. His heart beat faster. The smell of bear grease was too strong . . .
The thought hadn't finished sliding through his brain before a keening wail rose. The black-haired girl bolted out from behind a boulder and flung herself down toward Longarm.
A slender knife flashed in her upraised right fist.
From his belt, Longarm angled his rifle up and fired. He jerked back against the trough's jagged right wall as the black-haired girl's shriek rose, breaking on the highest note. She flew past him down trough.
He turned left as she hit the ground ten feet in front of Merle, who'd dropped to one knee, rifle aimed.
The black-haired girl rolled several feet then piled up against a boulder in front of Merle, a neat round hole leaking blood in her forehead, eyes wide and staring sightlessly up at Longarm. At the back of her head, thick, red blood and brain matter stained her hair.
Her face had lost its savageness, her lips' corners lifting slightly, brown eyes soft and lustrous. She looked almost angelic.
“Custis?” Merle shouted.
He ducked as a bullet slammed into the wall behind him, the rifle report resonating like thunder around the trough. Merle fired twice, firing and levering and firing again.
Longarm turned to see both of Merle's shots puff dust at the heels of the blonde climbing up trough then turning sharply left to crouch behind a boulder.
Longarm and Merle fired at the same time, both slugs blasting the rock before the blonde.
“Raven!” the blonde screamed, then snaked her rifle around the boulder.
She fired, cocked, and fired again, then withdrew behind the boulder once more as Longarm and Merle pelted it with .44 rounds. The blonde snaked her rifle around the boulder.
Longarm aimed up trough. When the blonde's head appeared, lips bunched with fury, Longarm snugged his cheek to his rifle stock.
The blonde jerked her head back behind the boulder, and Longarm lifted his own head away from his rifle stock.
The earth shuddered. Suddenly several stones dropped from the wall above him, peppering the trough before his boots. Up trough, a hub-sized rock bounced toward him, followed a second later by several more the same size.
The ground leaped and pitched under Longarm's boots.
He looked up trough again.
Two boulders the size of small wagons were rolling down the chute, as though made of India rubber. The blonde stood, facing them, her rifle in one hand, frozen in terror.
Longarm turned to where Merle crouched behind a box-like boulder in the middle of the chute, holding her rifle in both hands while lifting her gaze up the wall to her right.
Longarm shouted, “
Rockslide!
”
He bolted out from the right wall, angling across the trough and down. He swept Merle up with his right arm and half-carried, half-dragged her toward the opposite wall.
Boulders careened over and behind them. Several fell from the wall above to follow the others down the mountain. The cacophony made Longarm's teeth clack and his eardrums rattle.
Struggling to maintain his footing on the bouncing and heaving bed of the trough, he bolted into an alcove, dropping to his knees and pulling Merle down beside him as rocks flew past like giant hailstones.
As he crouched, tipping his hat against pelting debris, he saw the blonde fly past, hurled like a rag doll among the rocks, tumbling and rolling in a curtain of billowing dust. In seconds, she was gone.
Longarm hunkered down beside Merle, shielding her from the slide and squeezing his eyes closed against the dust. He felt Merle's arms close around his waist, her head press hard against his chest. She shuddered in his arms, but he couldn't tell if she were shaking or being shaken.
The slide continued for several minutes. It stopped gradually, like a late-summer squall, the last few rocks clattering like raindrops on a tin roof.
Silence.
Longarm turned toward the trough. So did Merle, keeping her arms around him. Dust wafted, swept by the breeze down canyon. Except for the dust, the trough looked much as it had before, the debris rearranged.
Longarm looked down at Merle. The first several buttons of her loosely woven blouse were undone, a good bit of cleavage showing behind her lacy chemise.
She looked up at him, then followed his gaze to her breasts. She lowered her arms, pulled away, and, scowling up at him with mock reproof, buttoned her blouse.
Turning back to the trough, she muttered, “Shit . . . close one . . .”
On their way down the dusty corridor, they looked for signs of either wolf woman but found nothing but cracked boulders, strewn talus, and sifting dust. The wolf women had no doubt been pulverized in the slide. They'd be forever part of the canyon.
Longarm took Merle's hand as they made their way over the last few yards of crushed rock and cracked boulders jumbled at the mouth of the trough, virtually sealing the canyon. Dust still wafted, as though a twister had blown through.
Merle looked around. “Uncle John?”
She and Longarm turned down canyon, picking their way among the freshly strewn rubble, blinking against the dust, calling for John.
They both stopped when someone coughed on the other side of a sifting dust cloud.
Longarm said, “John, you son of a bitch. Are you still kicking?”
Comanche John staggered through the dust cloud, his Spencer's barrel resting on his right shoulder. With his left hand, he adjusted his eye patch and ran a dirty finger over his lone eye's dusty lid.
He coughed. “What the
hell
did you two
do
up there?”
Longarm glanced at Merle. He moved forward, clapped Comanche John on the shoulder, then headed up toward the cabin.
“Finished it.” He spat dust from his lips. “Let's mosey.”
Watch for
LONGARM AND THE BAYOU TREASURE
the 342
nd
novel in the exciting LONGARM series from Jove
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Coming in May!