Longarm 397 : Longarm and the Doomed Beauty (9781101545973) by Tabor Evans Read Free Book Online

butt plate of his Winchester against his right hip, gloved thumb caressing the cocked hammer. Had men passed this way? He could see no signs of horses, though the night was so dark they’d be hard to pick out. On the other hand, the voices might have come from the opposite ridge. The incline there was too steep for horses, but not too steep for men working their way down from the ridge crest, intending to steal up on Longarm’s camp.
    He glanced over his shoulder to look back up the slope. His fire made a low, flickering glow in the darkness, not much brighter than a lamp from this distance and vantage.
    A sound from across the creek made him swing his head forward again. A rock or something tumbled down the ridge and plopped into the water. Directly across from Longarm, two copper lights no bigger than his thumbnails glowed with primal menace. A cat’s shrill cry assaulted his ears.
    He stumbled back with a start, raising his Winchester. As his eyes lowered and he could see the silhouette of the cat’s square head with the triangular ears sticking up—the wildcat appeared to be crouching, preparing for a leap from the ridge—Longarm squeezed the rifle’s trigger.
    The gun’s roar slashed across the silent night, drowning out the stream. At the same time, Longarm’s right boot heel rolled over a rock. The lawman lost his balance. He tore his left hand from the rifle, throwing it out for balance a half second before his ass hit the ground hard, cracking a branch. He grunted against the jarring reaching up through his hip and prickling his ribs.
    Quickly, sitting there on the soft earth with the branch prodding his rump, he spread his legs slightly, lifting his knees, and levered a fresh round into the Winchester’s breech. He raised the rifle to his shoulder and aimed at the spot between rocks where he’d seen the glowing copper eyes.
    They were gone.
    More stones tumbled down the ridge to plop into the water. He glimpsed a shadow moving out from behind a rock farther up the ridge and to his left, and then there was the crack of a branch snapping, and the shadow, too, was gone.
    Again, except for the stream’s murmur, silence.
    Longarm ejected the hot shell from the Winchester’s breech, saw it flash in the starlight as it arced out over his left shoulder to hit the ground with a soft snick, then racked a fresh round and waited.
    Had it been the hunting cat’s mewling he’d heard, mistaking it for men’s voices? He could have sworn that what he’d heard had been human murmurings, but it might have only been his imagination playing tricks on him. He knew from experience that nights in the mountains were weird times. The air was so light and dry that you’d swear you could hear the stars crackling overhead, from billions of miles away. The trickling of the river could build in a man’s imagination until it wasn’t moving water at all but a whole cavvy of rampaging Utes.
    Longarm heaved himself to his feet. He looked around and listened for another five minutes. When he heard nothing more but that which he’d heard before, in addition to a wolf expressing his loneliness from a faraway ridge to the north, he dropped down and took a long drink from the stream.
    The water was so cold he thought his molars would splinter, but it tasted good and refreshing. When he’d had his fill, he shouldered the Winchester, tramped back up the incline to where his fire had burned down to a low glow, poured a fresh cup of coffee, and laced it from his bottle of Maryland rye.
    He left the fire low, and sat away from it for a time, sipping his coffee and whiskey and staring out across the starry valley. The wolf continued to howl, stopped, and then two from separate ridges resumed the dirge.
    The night settled cold as a Dakota winter, the coffee smoking like a wildfire in Longarm’s hands. Finally, he threw back the last of the bracing, satisfying brew, and