Since he wasn't the local law, he only eyed the three as he shucked his Winchester from his saddle boot, then laid the barrel across his shoulder as he stepped onto the saloon's porch and pushed through the batwings.
Standing just inside the door, he raked his eyes around the room, taking in the five men sitting negligently around two tables against the far right wall, and two more men occupying the shadows at the rear. Two of the men from the larger group were sipping from coffee mugs, while the others in the group had beer schooners or shot glasses before them.
The coffee drinkers were playing checkers. The three others appeared to be taking turns cutting a card deck Red Dog style. They all glanced at Longarm with passing interest before returning their attention to their games.
Longarm didn't see a marshal's star among them.
He sauntered up to the bar, where a tall, burly gent with short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and frosty blue eyes was trimming his nails with a Bowie knife. He seemed reluctant to take his eyes off the two men sitting in the room's rear shadows.
“I'm lookin' for the marshal,” Longarm said, setting his rifle on the bar top and casting another look over the batwings, at the three men before the tonsorial parlor. They were staring menacingly toward the saloon.
The blue-eyed barman glanced at him, mild annoyance in his gaze, then jerked his head to indicate the two at the rear.
“Sorta
occupied
at the moment,” the man muttered.
Longarm peered into the shadows. The two men sat at a table between two square-hewn ceiling joists. On the papered wall behind them was a large painting of a naked brunette riding a tall, black horse in a lush tropical jungle, a lion eyeing her hungrily from the dense foliage.
The man facing Longarm, his back to the wall, had long, blond hair, a deerskin jacket over a cream shirt, and an olive green slouch hat. From this distance and because of the smoky shadows, Longarm couldn't tell much about his face, but he seemed medium-sized, possibly slightly delicate-featured.
A tin star peeked out from under his jacket flap.
The man who sat with his back to Longarm was short and stocky. He wore black slacks and a black vest over a red shirt. His black hat was on the table before him, and his longish, black hair was slicked straight back from his forehead. Wearing two pearl-gripped pistols in tied down holsters, he leaned forward across the table.
His head bobbed as he spoke in low but vehement tones.
The blond-haired gent sat casually back in his own chair, a boot on a knee, head canted to one side, as if only vaguely interested in the black-haired gent's conversation.
“I'll take a rye while I wait,” Longarm told the barman. “Got any Maryland?”
The big man frowned. “Any
what
?”
“Never mind.” Longarm was glad he'd packed his own bottle in his saddlebags. You couldn't get much but coffin varnish out here in the tall and uncut. “Just give me a shot of whatever you got that won't blind me or take the thunder from my gun, if you get my drift.”
Casting another glance toward the room's rear, the big man reached under the bar, automatically poured out a shot, and flicked the glass toward Longarm. The glass snugged against the Winchester's forestock. Longarm picked it up and sipped it.
It tasted like horse piss, chicken scratch, tin, and gun-powder. He'd tasted worse.
When he'd tossed a couple coins on the counter, he took another sip from the shot glass and peered again into the room's smoky back shadows. The marshal's jaws were moving, as if he was now doing the talking, though he was keeping his voice so low that Longarm couldn't make out a word.
Longarm turned away, then turned back quickly as the black-haired gent bounded straight back in his chair, both hands reaching for the pearl-butted pistols adorning his hand-tooled holsters.
He shouted, “Have it your way, you fuckin'â!”
The marshal bolted to his feet, blond hair bouncing on his shoulders as he lifted the table and shoved it into the black-haired man's chest. “
Ahh!
” the man raged, having raised his .45s only belly-high before the table slammed against him, sending him stumbling straight back.
A revolver popped twice, and Longarm saw two oval divots chew through the table's scarred, varnished surface. The black-haired gent lowered his head, throwing his shoulders forward and jerking, bellowing like a poleaxed mule as gunsmoke puffed up from the other side of the table.
Amid the sudden din, the blue-eyed barman ducked, yelling, “
Shit, I knew it!
”
Behind Longarm, someone shouted, “Fer chrissakes,
git
that badge-totin' ringtail!”
As the five gents sprang to their feet, clawing iron, Longarm slammed his shot glass down on the bar and reached for the Winchester. He rammed a shell into the breech. “Hold onâfederal law!”
The words had about as much effect on the hard cases as spit would have on a prairie twister.
They were all shouting now, drawing iron, aiming at the back of the room, where the black-haired gent was flopping around on the floor like a landed fish and the marshal was giving the table a final toss to his left.
A bull-necked, red-haired gent seemed to have the drop on the local badge-toter. Longarm snapped his rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired.
The slug slammed into the big gent's left arm. He howled and fired his Schofield into the picture on the wall behind the marshal, who dropped to one knee and extended his own silver-plated Colt Navy.
The standing four hard cases all fired their revolvers at the same time, but Longarm's shout and shot had distracted them, and all shots peppered the wall behind the marshal, drilling more holes through the canvas and shattering a bracket lamp.
Longarm cocked and fired the Winchester. The hard case closest to him bellowed and spun, triggering a shot into the wagon-wheel chandelier over his head as he fell. The smell of kerosene mixed with powder smoke.
Meanwhile, the marshal took out one of the others, his shot punching the man through the long, vertical window in a shower of breaking glass.
Longarm flinched as a bullet curled the air over his left temple. He shuttled his gaze to the redhead he'd winged. The man was on his side near the player piano, raging above the angry, intermittent pistol pops and gritting his teeth as he thumbed back his revolver's hammer and aimed down the barrel at Longarm.
Longarm snapped the Winchester to his shoulder and drilled a neat, round hole through the man's freckled forehead, just above the bridge of his nose. The man lowered his gun, tripping the trigger, the slug slamming into the ass of a man the marshal had shot, evoking a scream the likes of which Longarm hadn't heard outside a pig lot on butchering day.
Longarm ejected the smoking spent shell, seated a fresh cartridge, dropped to a knee, and jerked his gaze right and left and back again.
All the hard cases were down, blood pooling, smoke wafting, howls rising to the rafters.
To his left, the marshal shouted, “
Falcon!
”
Longarm turned to see the black-haired gent hobbling up the wooden stairs at the back of the room, heels pounding the wood, spurs chinging.
The marshal aimed his Colt Navy at the stairs, tracking the fleeing black-clad gent. “Stop, goddamnit!”
Falcon disappeared over the top landing.
The marshal cursed again and ran to the stairs. As his long legs took the steps two at a time, his deerskin jacket winging open, Longarm saw shadows moving beyond the two front windows. He ran to the door and pushed through the batwings.
Stopping just outside the doors, he spread his feet and aimed the Winchester straight out from his hip.
The three who'd been sitting in front of the tonsorial parlor were walking toward the saloon, two holding pistols, the thirdâa curly-haired hombre in a checked shirt and rabbit-fur vestâholding the sawed-off shotgun straight out from his belly in both hands.
The three stopped suddenly, gazes locking on Longarm.
“You three are headed in the wrong direction,” the lawman warned mildly. “A long, healthy life is either that way or that way.” Keeping his eyes locked on the three hard cases, he jerked his head first to the left, then to the right.
He curled his upper lip and squeezed the rifle in his hands. The curly-haired hombre began edging his shotgun's barrel toward Longarm. “Who the fuck're you?”
“Custis Long, Deputy United States Marshal. And if the maw of that gut-shredder keeps inching my way, I'm the last son of a bitch you'll ever meet.”
The man held the shotgun still. He glanced at the men on either side of him, then stared hard at Longarm.
Finally, he spat to one side and stretched his lips back from his teeth. “Shee-it.”
He glanced at the man to his right and jerked his head to indicate the horses tied before the tonsorial parlor, from the front door of which poked the head of a bespectacled, mustachioed gent with pomaded hair and a wary look in his eyes.
The curly-haired gent rested the barrel of his gut-shredder over one shoulder and turned. The two others both followed suitâa Mexican and a bull-legged stringbeanâheading back toward the horses.
The curly-haired gent hadn't taken two steps before he swung back around, dropping the shotgun's barrel to his left hand, and aiming it straight out from his belly at Longarm, a devilish smile slashing his face and making his gray eyes glitter.
Longarm, who'd kept the Winchester aimed at him, squeezed the trigger. He'd aimed at the center of the man's chest, but the man dodged right just enough to send the slug ripping across the top of his right shoulder, puffing dust from his shirt.
Longarm stepped forward, quickly levering a fresh shell and dropping to his knees as the Mexican triggered his Colt. The slug barked into the hitchrack near Longarm at the same time he drilled a .44 slug through the Mexican's right arm.
The bullet spun the man around to face the curly-headed gent. The curly-headed gent had dropped to one knee, cursing, face bunched with fury. Involuntarily, he squeezed both his shotgun's triggers.
Ka-boooom!
Both barrels of double-ought buck carved a pumpkin-sized hole through the Mexican's middle, lifting him two feet off the ground and throwing him straight back toward the saloon. His gut spewed viscera as he landed crossways atop a stock trough, screaming and thrashing like a tick impaled on the end of a pin.
As Longarm ejected the smoking shell casing, he snapped the Winchester to his shoulder, aiming quickly at the stringbean. The man had fired one round into the saloon's batwings behind Longarm and was thumbing back his Remington's hammer for another shot.
Longarm drilled one bullet through the slack of the man's vest as the man wheeled back and sideways, triggering a slug into the window behind Longarm, then running toward a stock trough on the other side of the street.
Longarm dropped to one knee, tracked the man with his Winchester, and fired. The stringbean screamed and reached for his right calf as he dove behind the trough. Spewing epithets salty enough to make the devil blush, he lifted his head, snaking his Remington over the stock trough's lip.
He hadn't gotten the barrel leveled before Longarm squeezed the Winchester's trigger once more.
The man jerked as the .44 round plunked into his forehead. Blood and brains painted the porch post behind him as he fell backward, losing his flat-brimmed hat and sagging against the steps climbing toward a women's clothing shop. His chin dropped, and his body jerked as though he'd been struck by lightning.
From the saloon's second story, boots pounded. There was the thud and crash of furniture and glass. A man shouted, “Merl, goddamnit!”
As Longarm raked his eyes from the smoky street and the three dead men, a body burst through a second-story window. Glass screamed as it rained toward the street, sheathing the black-clad gent called Falcon, who hit the ground boots first and rolled onto his belly as more glass rained down atop and around him.
His back rose and fell sharply.
Above him, the marshal poked his head through the broken window. The lawman angled his silver-plated Colt toward the street and fired, the report echoing off the store facades and jerking several shopkeepers back inside their front doorways.
The bullet spanged off a rock just left of Falcon, who jerked his head up and shook it, as if to clear the cobwebs.
When Falcon just lay there, propped on his arms, breathing hard and grunting, the marshal triggered another shot into the dirt to his right. The bullet sent up a little dust puff. Smoke wafted from the broken second-floor window.
Falcon cursed, rose first to his knees, then to his feet, and lumbered off toward the two horses remaining at the saloon's hitchrack, the others having ripped their reins free and galloped out of town during Longarm's dustup. Falcon walked, his torso twisted to one side, his left hand clutching his bloody right shoulder.
His face looked like raw burger. Broken shards dropped from his torn clothes like sleet from a late-autumn storm.
The very picture of misery, he ripped a claybank's reins from the hitchrack. Grunting, sighing, and cursing through gritted teeth, he took a good fifteen seconds getting his left boot into the stirrup, then another ten hauling himself into the leather.
Finally, he reined the claybank away from the hitchrack. Slouched low in his saddle, he booted the horse eastward, past the shopkeepers and townsmen who ventured back onto the boardwalk, muttering and exclaiming at the carnage.
“Don't let me catch you in town again, Falcon!” the marshal called from the broken window.