Longarm 382, page 12
Ira took one glance and looked away quickly.
“Have you ever seen him before?” Longarm asked.
Ira nodded. “I saw him a couple of times in Holbrook. He was riding with Horn, but I don’t know his name.”
“The mortician is awful busy inside preparing the bodies of the townspeople that were shot. I wonder if he even checked this man’s pockets,”
Ira shrugged.
“I’ll check his pockets just in case there is any identification,” Longarm said, fighting off the smell of decaying flesh.
A quick search revealed no papers of any kind, which was not all that surprising.
“What do you want to do now?” Ira asked, having walked off some distance.
“I think that I’d like to know if anyone recognized a woman among the gang. I’d sure like to know if Veronica was with them when they hit this town.”
“If they wore masks and the woman is as thin as we’ve been told, I doubt that anyone here would even have realized there was a woman among them,” Ira reasoned.
“You’re probably right,” Longarm said. “But at any rate, we need to wait for the women to catch up.”
“Do we?” Ira asked, raising an eyebrow in question.
Longarm understood what this man was saying, and he’d given considerable thought to the idea of just outdistancing the former slave women. But the more he’d been around them since leaving Horn’s trading post, the more he was beginning to understand that those women meant business and that they were not wilting flowers who would quit or run away in fright when the bullets started to fly. Rather, they were angry and filled with a need to exact a terrible revenge on Fergus Horn and his men.
“We need them,” Longarm said. “And I promised they would be in on the showdown.”
“What are we going to do here until they arrive?”
“Grain our horses, clean our weapons and take a nap. Sounds like a plan to me,” Longarm said.
Ira smiled. “Yeah, that does sound good.”
The former slave women came riding in about four hours later, and when they saw Ira’s pinto and Longarm’s sorrel in a livery corral, they hurried right on over to wake the two men who were taking a nap in the barn.
“You shouldn’t have left us!” Josie said, her voice quavering with anger. “How come you rode off and left us?”
“We needed to get here ahead of you women and ask some questions,” Longarm said by way of what he knew sounded like a pretty lame explanation. “And I just figured that you’d be coming along not very far behind.”
“What questions?” Rosa demanded.
Longarm explained what he and Ira had been up to since arriving in Elk Creek. He ended by saying, “Ira recognized the one dead bank robber that was laid out behind the mortician’s office building. I got a feeling that the thief’s body was pretty badly abused by the angry crowd of townspeople. My guess is that the man won’t even rate a pine coffin. He’ll probably just be thrown in a shallow hole and covered up without any words read over him.”
“What did he look like?” Juanita demanded.
Longarm described the dead bank robber and all of the women said his name was George Ballard, and that the world was a whole lot better off without him. “Ballard was a pig,” Josie spat. “I’m glad that he’s dead.”
“You women get some food at the café down the street and rest up for an hour or two, and then we need to take up Horn’s trail,” Longarm told them. “And, if any of you are ready to quit for whatever reason, I’ll understand. In fact, it might be the smartest thing you could ever do for yourselves.”
The four women exchanged glances, and when Teresa spit in the dust, it was clear that they had reached a mutual and unspoken agreement to see this hunt out to the very end.
“All right then,” Longarm told them as he consulted his railroad pocket watch. “In two hours we leave.”
“What about saddles?” Rosa asked. “We could sure travel a lot faster with saddles on those Indian ponies.”
“Yeah, you’re both riding saddles, so we should, too,” Juanita said.
“I’ll see if I can find four saddles,” Longarm promised. “They won’t be new or much to look at, but they’ll sure be more comfortable to sit on than the sharp backbone of a pony.”
“I’ll miss the feeling,” Josie said, grinning.
Longarm was confused. “What . . . ?”
Suddenly he understood what the “feeling” was for these women whose pubic area rested on a bareback pony’s withers. Longarm had heard that this could be very pleasurable for women . . . and now he blushed as he realized this was actually true.
“Your choice, Josie. Bareback or in a saddle. Either way you’re going to have to ride hard and fast if we intend to overtake Horn and his gang of bank robbers.”
“I want a saddle,” she told him. “I can get you to do the other thing when we make camp tonight.”
The women cackled with ribald laughter, and that sent Longarm and Ira headed out the barn door.
Chapter 17
The citizens of Elk Creek soon learned that a federal marshal from Denver was in their midst, and at first they were jubilant and ready to sign up with him and go “kill all them thievin’, murderin’ sonsabitches.” But when they learned that the federal lawman had taken on a half-breed as his deputy, they were angry and baffled. And a short time later, when they discovered that Longarm was taking four tough-looking women along with him to either kill or arrest the gang that had robbed their bank, the citizens of Elk Creek became outraged.
“Marshal Long, are you completely out of your mind!” a man yelled as they rode up Elk Creek’s main street. “What kind of idiot are you?”
Longarm rode side by side with Ira. He knew that an angry and disbelieving crowd was following him and the trading post women, and perhaps he should have reined in his horse and tried to explain. However, the more that he’d heard from the citizens, the more he realized that there was nothing he could say or do that would soothe their outrage and grief except to bring Fergus Horn and his gang to justice.
“You’re gonna all be shot to shit!” a woman shouted from the front of a saloon. “You and those stupid women are going to be killed the minute that the gang sees you! You’d better hope you never find that bunch or you’ll be feeding the vultures!”
“I’d say that these people don’t have much faith in us,” Josie said to Longarm as she trotted up to join Longarm and Ira. “They think we are all crazy.”
“Let them think whatever they want,” Longarm replied as they neared the end of the street. “But when we come back with the dead bank robbers, we’ll suddenly be heroes.”
“And exactly what are our chances of doing that?” Josie asked.
“Slim to none if we don’t catch Fergus Horn and his gang by surprise and then shoot first and fast.”
“I can damn sure do that,” Josie assured him. “How about you, Ira? Are you as dangerous as you look?”
Ira ignored Josie, and soon they were out of town. The insults and taunts fell away and they began trotting along at a steady and ground-covering pace. Longarm had bought cheap used saddles for all the women, and they were making far better time than before. They still had two Indian ponies in reserve, but they were all thin and Longarm knew they wouldn’t be able to outrun Horn’s pursuit if the fight went bad and they had to retreat.
As if reading his mind, Ira said, “Those ponies aren’t going to hold up for a long hunt.”
“I know that,” Longarm said. “And as thin and small as they are, they probably couldn’t outrun a cow. But they’re all that we have and the women aren’t giving them up, so we’ll do the best that we can.”
“Then we’ll just have to catch the gang and take them by surprise,” Ira figured out loud.
“That’s the way I’ve seen it from the start,” Longarm told him.
“Here’s where Horn and his men ambushed the posse,” Ira said, galloping up a little ways and dismounting to study the ground. “You can see where the bodies fell, and those dark stains in the dirt are blood.”
Longarm also dismounted and surveyed his surroundings. It was a narrow defile in the rocks, and he could tell at a glance that Fergus Horn had set up his men for a perfect ambush.
“Ira,” Longarm said, remounting his sorrel, “the wonder of it is that any of the posse lived to get out of this trap alive.”
Ira nodded his head in agreement. The women caught up and looked around the area, knowing what they were seeing and not asking any questions.
Longarm turned to them and said, “Horn and his bunch are seasoned killers and expert shots. What happened here was like shooting fish in a barrel. If we have any chance at all of coming out on top of Horn and his men, we’re going to have to set a trap just as deadly as the one that we’re looking at right now.”
“We’ll follow your lead, Marshal,” Juanita said. “We figure that this is your business and you’ve done this before.”
“I have,” Longarm admitted. “But there are always things that can and do go wrong. The important thing is that none of us panic or lose our nerve when the bullets and blood starts to fly. Gunfights are won or lost mainly on who is steadiest under fire, and I’m counting on every one of you women to stand your ground.”
“We’re not cowards, and we’ve also seen death,” Rosa told him. “The men we’re chasing abused us in every way possible, and we want them to pay for that. So don’t worry, Marshal, we won’t run if the fighting turns against us and we get shot up.”
“Glad to hear that,” Longarm said. “Horn and his bunch have already pretty much wiped out a posse, so they won’t be expecting any more pursuit. That’s to our advantage and I mean to make the most of it.”
“Any idea of where they’re going?” Josie asked. “Because unless I’ve lost my bearings, they’re not headed straight back to Horn’s trading post.”
“I know,” Longarm answered. “If I were to venture a guess, I’d say that they’re heading southwest, back onto the reservation but not toward the trading post. I’m thinking that Fergus Horn has a gold mine that he’s working somewhere up ahead.”
“Can we have some of that gold if we kill them all?” Rosa asked. “God knows that we have that much coming after what they’ve done to us.”
“You can have some gold,” Longarm said. “But let’s just focus on winning the fight we’re riding into. Otherwise, gold means nothing if we die. Now, let’s ride!”
All through the rest of that day and the next they followed the gang’s tracks. Late on the third day after leaving Elk Creek, Ira pointed ahead, calling, “Look!”
Longarm squinted into the afternoon sun, trying to see what Ira was excited about. He’d already figured out that the half-breed had exceptionally keen eyesight and could see things that were invisible to the rest of them. “Is it Horn and his men?”
“No. It’s some Navajo women and children.”
Ira pushed his horse into a gallop and Longarm followed suit. The women whipped their thin ponies into a trot.
Ira rode up to a band of old women and children who were weeping and wailing in sorrow. He spoke to the old women in their language and they kept pointing to the southwest and shaking their bony fists.
“What happened?” Longarm asked.
Ira scowled. “These people were traveling to a healing ceremony when Horn and his gunmen chanced upon them. They only had a few old black-powder pistols and rifles, and it quickly became obvious that if they offered resistance, the white men would shoot them all dead. So they threw down their weapons and surrendered to the gang.”
A very old Navajo woman was crying and talking fast, and she kept pointing her finger to the southwest.
“Did Horn and his gang take some of them away?” Longarm asked.
“Yes. This woman says that the white men took three of their men as slaves. She says they put nooses around their necks and dragged them off.” Ira dismounted and walked off in the direction that the woman was pointing. He moved around in the brush and then stopped, bent down and studied tracks for a moment before returning to Longarm and the women.
“I can see the tracks of the hostages. They’re heading exactly toward where the woman is pointing.”
“Ask her if she recognized the leader,” Longarm said.
A moment later, Ira translated. “She says that the leader was the man who owns the trading post off to the west. She also says that his wife was among the ones that fell upon them but that her hands were tied to her saddle horn.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“About noon today,” Ira said after getting his answer. “She tells me that there is a gold mine out there about half a day’s ride from here and that is where the whites are taking their men. She says that the hostages will be forced to work in a big cave and dig for gold, and that this is not the first time her people have been captured and then forced into the mine. She says that they never come back to The People.”
Longarm considered this information in grim silence a moment before he said, “Tell her that the men that were taken today will come back alive. Tell her that we will bring them back to this place tomorrow.”
When Ira told this to the old women, their faces lit up with smiles and then the smiles faded and there was more talk.
“What now?” Longarm asked.
“They want to know if the soldiers are close to help you.”
Longarm looked at the old woman and shook his head. “No soldiers.”
The woman spoke rapidly, waving her hands in the air.
“She wants to know where the other white men are to help us.”
“Tell her that these four women are all good shots and brave fighters,” Longarm replied. “Tell them that these women were once slaves like their men who were taken today, and that they will fight to the death.”
Ira slowly translated this message and the Navajo women and children stared at Josie, Juanita, Rosa and Teresa with a mixture of awe and disbelief.
Longarm’s eyes lifted in the direction Fergus Horn and his gang were headed, and then he looked back at the old woman whose face bore the pain of much hardship and suffering. “Ask her and the others to offer prayers that we are victorious.”
Ira nodded and translated. The Navajo women and children all bowed their heads and began to chant and pray, several making the sign of the cross. Their behavior reminded Longarm that Catholic priests and missionaries had been making converts in this harsh and unforgiving country for a very long time.
“Let’s ride,” Longarm said. “I’d like to sneak up on the gang and be in place tomorrow at sunrise.”
Chapter 18
Longarm and Ira pushed their horses as hard as they could without leaving the women far behind. They tried to stay off the horizon where they would not be seen by Fergus Horn, although Longarm seriously doubted that the outlaws had any real concern about being followed.
Near dusk Ira rode alone toward the crest of a hill and dismounted. He dropped his reins and crept up to take a good look at the country toward which the outlaw band was headed. Longarm saw the half-breed crouch and then drop to his belly and lay flat for several minutes before he backed up, then stood and trotted over to rejoin them and the horses.
“The gold mine and the holdup gang are only about a quarter of a mile away,” he announced to everyone.
“Then I’d better take a look,” Longarm said. “In fact, all of you women ought to come up and take a look so you know the lay of the land and what we’re up against.”
Juanita said, “I’ll stay and hold the horses. You can describe it all to me when you come back.”
Longarm nodded with approval and the women dismounted. Their legs were stiff and raw from the long miles, and they walked bowlegged and awkwardly up the hill to then drop and inch their way to the top.
“My gawd,” Josie said, shielding her eyes from the setting sun. “That’s quite a mining operation!”
“Ira,” Longarm asked, “how many men do you count?”
“Twelve or thirteen whites and the Horn woman. That’s her sitting on a rock over by the cave’s entrance.”
“Yes,” Longarm said, wishing he had field glasses. “I see her now. Veronica looks as thin as a boy.”
“What are we going to do?” Rosa said, voicing the question that they all were asking in their minds.
“I’m thinking on it right now,” Longarm replied as he studied the scene.
What he saw was a rock shack, a big set of corrals that contained all the gang’s horses along with what appeared to be a few burros. About fifty feet from the mine’s entrance was a pile of rock tailings as big as a house, then another small wooden shed that probably held dynamite and work tools. The mouth of the mine was at least twelve feet in diameter and was dug into the side of a sixty-foot-tall cliff. On top of that cliff was a broken mesa, and just off to the south in a shallow arroyo was a big stand of cottonwood trees that told Longarm this was the gang’s source of precious spring water.
Other than that, there wasn’t a lot else to be seen. It was clear that the men working in and around the mine slept and ate outdoors, and most of them were loafing in the shade of the rock house.
“The Navajo captives are probably already working in the mine,” Ira said. “How do we handle this?”
Longarm licked his parched lips and looked at Ira and then the slave women. “We have to catch them with their pants down because there is no way that many gunmen are going to surrender. Given that sobering fact, we have no choice but to each select a man-target and open fire at the same time. There are six of us, and if even only three of us kill our targets, then we’ve evened the odds considerably.”
“I’m not sure that we can get close enough to open fire on them before dark,” Josie said.
“I’m sure that we can’t,” Longarm told her. “We’ll make a dry camp and hit them with everything we’ve got right at dawn. We’ll be on the east side of them, firing away from the rising sun, and it will be shining directly in their eyes.”
