Sundance by David Fuller Read Free Book Online Page B

him. Sandy was gut shot, his long underwear mottled and bloody with dark chunks of something stuck to the fabric. His eyes blinked to a beat, and Longbaugh heard his gasping intake of breath.
    How had it come to this? Neither he nor Butch would ever have considered behaving this way, and would never have tolerated it fromtheir gang. He was disgusted, appalled that these two men thought this was the way to emulate their role models.
    Sandy the cook saw Longbaugh and knew he was saved. He relaxed and waited for Longbaugh to charge in and cut him loose. The gentleman rolled his eyes over and blinked red at Longbaugh, and he saw the stamp of horror, the ugly thing the man had witnessed that was now branded onto his everyday future. The gentleman snarled at him with boarlike ferocity, but when Longbaugh made no move, the gentleman went on with his nasty business. Sandy smiled, waiting. The gentleman finished and climbed into the front seat and started the motorcar and the vehicle jerked forward. Sandy the cook’s eyes bulged, his intake of breath was cut off, and his feet left the ground quite suddenly, his forehead thumping the branch. The gentleman turned in the driver’s seat to watch him wrench and shudder and kick and slam his forehead again and again against the branch, tongue swelling out of his mouth. His movements slowed, his body sagged, and his sphincter and bladder released.
    Longbaugh did not look away as the man died. The gentleman turned to him, as if he might be next. Longbaugh met his gaze and saw something die in there.
    The woman lurched to her feet, leaving her daughter sitting on the ground wrapped in the blanket. She moved to where their picnic basket had been overturned, picked a red apple off the ground, stood straight, then hurled it as hard as she could directly at Longbaugh. The apple fell short of where he sat on his horse. She continued to glower at him, breathing heavily, hands at her sides, her eyes full of a deep, coarse hatred.
    He turned his horse and rode away from all that.

3

    W ilhelmina Matthews commanded her front porch like a ship’s captain on a quarterdeck, keeping Joe LeFors standing on the dirt, looking up, two members of his posse posing behind him with rifles. One of his boys rested his foot on a rock so he could lean the buttstock of his rifle on his knee and aim the barrel at heaven. The other held his across the crook of his arms with fingers folded over the magazine.
    â€œWe have no idea, ma’am,” said LeFors, “if it’s your brother-in-law or not. But you’re his nearest relative in these parts.”
    â€œYou brought all these men because you think it’s not him?” said Mina.
    â€œOnly got eighteen, ma’am.”
    â€œTwenty,” said the man on his right.
    â€œTwenty, well,” said Mina, “then it’s a fair fight.”
    LeFors and his boys looked at one another, not sure if it had been a joke.
    Mina, her little sister’s name for her, struggled with her emotions, as she was a naturally obedient woman who trusted authority, yet she found these men and their mission distasteful.
    LeFors had the cocksure look of a man with a grand idea, waiting for it to pay dividends. “I could take him alone, ma’am. But I hid all those men in the trees to make sure nobody gets hurt.”
    â€œHow very equitable of you,” said Mina coldly. She tapped her foot in annoyance, caught it, and forced herself to stop. She was unaware that her fingers continued the tapping on her upper arm to the same beat.
    â€œWhen does your husband return?”
    â€œMy husband is deceased, Mr. LeFors.”
    â€œI am grieved to hear it.” He was not. “I wonder if living on a ranch this far outside Denver is safe for a woman on her own.” He leaned in so that she would not miss his meaning.
    She glared at him and he backed up in surprise. She turned away, at which LeFors waved his men back to the trees.
    Mina