Longarm 241: Longarm and the Colorado Counterfeiter (10 page)

Longarm swung his head back around just as the first blast let go. The enormity of it startled even him. A huge cloud of rocks and dust and smoke rose in the air, and a boom like the end of the world shattered the stillness of the world. But that boom had no more than begun to die down when the second went off and the rocks and dirt and smoke again went flying in every direction. Longarm could see that in both cases the explosions had started small landslides. Rocks were still bounding down the hill from the first explosion. As he watched, he saw several riders approaching his way. He began to back down the hill as swiftly as he could. The explosion had startled the mare, but as steady as she was, she had recovered from the fright, and was now just standing away from the side of the mountain, looking up, trembling slightly.

It took Longarm another two or three minutes, but finally he was at the mare's side. He put a boot in the stirrup and swung aboard. Just south about a mile, right along the picket row of rocky hills, was a little grove of trees. He had noticed it earlier. He rode that way, riding just at the foot of the outcropping, but keeping far enough out so that his horse didn't step on a stray rock. In a matter of a few moments, he had the horse in among the little pine trees that grew where there was enough dirt to allow thirty or forty of them to take root. He rode into the grove, keeping the horse concealed, and then jumped down, pulling out his rifle from his boot as he did so. He started up the incline. At this point, the hill was not as rocky and it was much easier going. With labored breath, he dodged rocks and crevasses as he made his way to the top. He figured it would take some time for the riders to locate where the explosions had taken place and then to make their way to them. He expected them to be cautious. He had calculated that he would have the time to get to the firing spot well away from where he had set off the dynamite.

He reached the crest of the butte and went flat on his belly, slowly easing toward a line of sight to the prairie below. He took off his hat to better disguise his presence. He could see a half dozen to eight or ten riders coming. Most of them were headed from the south from where the big house and the outbuildings were located. He assumed that one of those outbuildings was a bunkhouse, maybe even more than one. A couple of other riders were coming from the east, across the pasture, and a couple more were coming from the north at the opening in the ring of hills. It was about what he'd expected. He pulled his Winchester up, cocking the hammer as he did, and sighted on the bunch of men riding from the ranch headquarters.

He had to wait, for they were too far away to get a good shot. As he watched, they neared, coming now to where they were only about six hundred yards away, then five hundred, then four hundred. He sighted on the lead rider and fired. Almost before the sound of the shot quit pounding in his ears, the rider went flipping off his horse and rolled over and over like a rag doll along the prairie. It caused the other riders to come to almost a complete stop. They were looking wildly around, not sure whether it was another explosion or a gunshot or just what it really was. He took that time to lever another shell into his carbine and sight in on another rider. He fired, and that rider went over backward.

Now, they no longer hesitated in confusion. As one, the riders wheeled their horses and headed frantically back toward the south, the direction they had come from. Longarm got one more cartridge into the chamber and sighted on the back of the last man in line. He fired, and the rider slumped sideways in the saddle. For a second, it appeared that he would be able to hang on, but then the weight of his body pulled him off the side of his horse. He fell, landing on his head and shoulders and flipping up into the air, almost as if he was doing a handstand.

By now, the riders were out of sight. Longarm worked the lever of his carbine and looked to his left for the other four riders he had seen. One of them had veered toward the south, not aware, apparently, of the three men who had been shot. Longarm leveled his rifle, led the man a full yard, and then fired.

It was as if the rider had run into a clothesline, so quickly did he leave his horse. One second, the horse and rider were pounding over the prairie together. The next, the horse was going along and the rider was bouncing along on the ground. The other three riders pulled up and stopped. They glanced up toward the line of hills, looking to see where the fire was coming from. Longarm slipped slowly down below the top ridgeline and sat quietly. He was breathing more heavily than normal, but that was from the climb more than anything else.

He had just done something that was not in his nature to do. He had fired from ambush on men that he did not have a direct fight with, but the way he figured it, it didn't much matter. They worked for Vernon Ashton. And Vernon Ashton had decided to kill him or have him killed by such men as he had just shot. And if they were the kind of men who would kill another man just on the words of a man who paid them, then he felt no compunction and no guilt about ambushing them. They were his enemies plain and simple.

The curious part about it was that he could have understood if Ashton had suspected that he was a peace officer. That would have made sense. But Ashton had simply ordered him killed, probably just because he could. Longarm had presented himself as a horse trader, and Ashton had decided that he wasn't. So if indeed he had come there as an innocent horse trader, he would have still been killed if he hadn't been a United States deputy marshal, able to handle himself in a tight place.

The whole situation made him furious. He didn't reckon he had ever despised a man as much as he despised Vernon Ashton. It made him shake inside with anger, and if it was the last thing he ever did, he intended to wipe Vernon Ashton completely out. But he knew he couldn't do that as long as Ashton was surrounded by thirty or forty guns. Therefore, the only way to get to him was to get him naked—take off his clothes, take off his hired guns—and leave him standing there with only his own abilities to protect himself. Longarm would see how he liked that.

It had come a good dawn now, and Longarm still had a few chores left to do. He doubted that Ashton's gunhands would come so readily to the bait the next time, but he was going to make the bait much bigger in hopes that they would.

Aware now that he would have to proceed more carefully, Longarm made his way down to the little grove of pines. He caught up with his horse and rode further south along the base of the hill line. He glanced back toward town, but it was too far for him to see if there was any activity or if anyone had gotten curious about the explosions. He doubted that they had, though. As far away as Ashton's place was, the blast would have sounded almost identical to those that came twenty-four hours a day from the mines.

This time, Longarm rode a good long distance, almost two miles, perhaps a little further. He wanted to be much closer to Ashton's headquarters, but yet he didn't want to come directly even with it. He pulled his horse up and looked up the hill. This would be harder going. It was steeper and much more rocky. He wouldn't be able to use his horse to help him at all. He would have to climb the whole way in his high-heeled boots while carrying his rifle and the two bundles of dynamite. In the end, he put his saddlebags over his shoulder, took his rifle in his left hand, and started up the hill. He had taken time to reload his carbine, though he doubted that he would have a chance to use it.

 

It was hard going, and this part of the mountains was higher than the others had been. Now, he had to help himself along with his free hand, with the saddlebags flopping over his shoulder, trying to keep from banging his carbine against the rocks. It took him about fifteen minutes to reach the top, but when he did, he could see that he had picked a good spot. Very clear in the near foreground were the outbuildings. Two of them were long, low structures that he was willing to bet were bunkhouses. That was what he wanted to stir up. The other good thing was that there were plenty of rock heaps on the ranch side of the mountain.

Longarm knew he would have to work quick because it would be easy to spot him as he worked around the rocks. He left his rifle on the off side and took the two bundles of dynamite, one containing six sticks and the one containing eight, and slipped over the crest of the little mountain. He worked his way about a third of the way down until he found some big boulders with some rocks the size of barrels. They looked to be just what he had in mind.

Now, he was going to do it a little more dangerously. He crimped the blasting cap into the end of the dynamite. This one had a six-foot cord. It would take three minutes for the fuse to burn. He put it in place, lit the fuse, and then hurried south along the mountain face, searching for a home for the eight-stick bundle. He didn't have to go but about a hundred yards. He found a small crevice in between a half-dozen rocks, and shoved the bundle in there. He crimped the blasting cap in place, and then lit the fuse. He turned and hurried as fast as he could to get to the crest. In a second, the bundle with six sticks was going to blast.

He had just made it over and onto the other side when there came a tremendous boom and roar. Longarm watched as a huge cloud of smoke and dust and dirt and rocks erupted from the other side of the mountain. When he was certain they were not going to rain down on him, he peeked over the edge. When he looked, he could see that some of the rocks were falling close enough to the outbuildings to draw the notice of the occupants. He saw one or two figures come to the door and look out. As quickly as he could he raced down to where he had left his rifle.

Just as he reached it, the second bundle went off, this blast sounding even louder than the other. As far away as he was, at least a hundred and fifty yards, he could still feel the thrust of the blast and the concussion as the air was blown apart. Now, as he looked down, he could see rocks hitting the buildings, including the two long, low structures he had taken to be bunkhouses. Half-a-dozen men had come out and looked up to see what had happened. These were men who had been asleep, who had not turned out for his first little attempt to get their attention. But they had come out now and were standing in the yard of the bunkhouse, staring up at the smoke and dust that were still rising.

They were too far away to make for anything but a lucky shot. But they were close together and there was a number of them. He levered a cartridge into the chamber and fired as quickly as he could, firing once, twice, three times. He fired six times until the hammer clicked on empty. He saw four men fall. He could not tell how badly they were hurt. As soon as the shells were spent, Longarm turned and hurried down the mountain as fast as he could. He had an idea that more work would be coming his way.

He got to his horse, but before he mounted, Longarm took a moment to reach into his saddlebags and take out some cartridges to reload. He leaned across the saddle, rammed the rifle home in its boot, and mounted up. He was moving a little more slowly than when he'd started. He did not recall ever running up and down so many hills before in all of his life. He also did not much like what he was doing, but he didn't see where he had any choice. It had been forced on him. A hand he hadn't cared to play had been dealt to him by a crooked dealer. Now he was going to make that dealer pay.

He turned the mare north, heading toward the break in the line of mountains. It was his guess that he had stirred up a hornet's nest and that the hornets were shortly going to be coming out of the hole in the nest. He was going to be there to greet them.

As he rode, he rapidly ran through his mind what damage he possibly could have done. He knew of eight men, possibly ten, that he had finished off or seriously wounded that morning. Add to that the two from the day before, and he figured he had depleted Ashton of a quarter of his resources. He figured if he could get it down to about half, the men would begin to look at each other and wonder if they were being paid enough. It was one thing to lead the easy life and shoot strangers on Ashton's orders when you were in no danger yourself. They probably thought they were well paid, well fed, and well taken care of, but when men were dying around you, you had to wonder if you might possibly be next. Longarm didn't think they would view the job as such a plum.

At least, that was his hope. He hoped that he could discourage enough of them so that the rest would up and quit. He wanted Ashton on the ranch, all by himself in the big house with that good-looking Spanish woman. He didn't know about Early. He wasn't fooled by the man's cheerful face. He had marked the man down for a stone killer. There was no doubt in his mind that of the men he had seen, Early was the most dangerous.

But for the moment, the business at hand was all he needed thinking about. He got to the cleft in the hills and found a firing point some two hundred yards from the opening. He took his horse back around behind a rock outcropping and dropped the reins. She would have earned her oats before this day was out. Then he went back to the firing position he had selected. It was a good two hundred yards to the opening, but that was to his advantage. It was a long shot for him with a rifle on a rest, but it was going to be much longer for the men on horseback returning his fire. He didn't want to be too close and he didn't want to be too far. If they were coming, he felt that he was well placed.

Longarm got out a cigarillo, and lit it with one of the matches that he used to light the dynamite. He had to chuckle about the dynamite. It was damned handy stuff and would really cause a commotion. He had used it before, but only in single sticks that he had thrown. Never before had he used it the way you would use a cannon to blast rocks at somebody.

He smoked quietly, his eyes intent on the opening in the mountain. They had to come. They couldn't sit in there and let people blow them up and shoot them without coming out to see what was happening.