Longarm and the Wolf Women (19 page)

Longarm was on the trail again by ten-thirty and, following Comanche John's scribbled map, found the second cabin by early afternoon. As he'd expected—because he'd never come across a fresh trail—the taut log structure, perched on a hillside overlooking a small ravine and rolling firs and aspens, had been abandoned, the doors and windows boarded up, a wooden bucket tipped over the chimney pipe, needle grass growing in the adjoining corral and lean-to.

Longarm took another deep drag off the cigar and stared at the rocky twin domes of Ute Peak rising from the pine forest ahead of him, its boulder-strewn slopes and rounded crests stippled with brown boulders and cedars, the trees thicker in the ravines and chutes branching around scarps protruding from its slope like rocky sores.

Ute was the highest peak around, jutting from a pine-choked canyon among other, similar formations a good eight thousand feet above sea level, above the north fork of the Diamondback River twisting at its base.

Longarm couldn't see the river canyon from here, but crossing several steep rises earlier, he'd heard the rapids. Judging by John's map, Magnusson's second cabin lay just over the peak's low, eastern shoulder, near Neversummer Creek.

He hadn't figured on riding that far to meet John. If all had gone well, they should have crossed paths by now, but it looked as though Longarm would have to ford the north fork of the Diamondback and try to pick up John's trail somewhere around the other cabin.

He hoped John hadn't fallen prey to Magnusson's wolf women. John could be nettling and tiresome, but Longarm had grown fond of the old codger, and he'd hate like hell to have to tell the Marshal of Diamondback he'd gotten her uncle killed.

Longarm was trail-weary, fatigued from the thin, high-altitude air, the bear debacle, from having to run down his mounts afoot, and from riding up and down these forested ridges, each one looking all too much like the one before it, not to mention ducking under branches and swerving around deadfall and backtracking after his trail petered out in a box canyon.

With a sigh, he stuck the cheroot in his teeth, stood, brushed off his denims, and reached into his saddlebags for his Maryland rye. He lifted it high, smiled with relief to see that the bottle was three-quarters full, then popped the cork and took a bracing pull.

Enjoying the burn in his throat and the restorative warmth in his belly, he returned the hooch to the pouch, grabbed the sorrel's reins and the pack mule's lead rope, and swung into the leather.

An hour later, he was walking the sorrel along the shoulder of a grassy slope, when the mule nickered. A half second later, the sorrel threw its head up sharply, snorting and twitching its ears.

Longarm drew back on the horse's reins, glanced at the pack mule, which had stopped and was bobbing its head angrily.

“What is it, fellas?”

Longarm peered through the trees carpeting the slope below, at the pines and rocks on the incline to his right. Magpies foraged among the branches, and a golden eagle winged around a granite scarp jutting high above the ridge crest. The only sounds were the birds and the river rapids curving along the base of the mountain on Longarm's left.

Frowning, keeping his ears pricked and dragging his gaze back and forth across the old Basque sheep trail he'd been following from Magnusson's empty cabin, he gigged the sorrel forward. As he moved into the shaded forest, the mule stopped suddenly, snorting loudly, nearly jerking the lead rope from Longarm's hand.

The sorrel whinnied.

“What the—?” Peering downslope, Longarm tensed his back and touched his pistol grips.

Where the forest bled out to a steep, sunlit slope carpeted in brome grass, needle grass, and squaw currant, a young woman was hunkered down on all fours, picking currants from the bushes and dropping them into a large basket of woven yucca blades. She wore no top, and her full, pink-tipped, golden tan breasts swayed as she moved, crawling along the slope's shoulder, plucking berries from the spindly vines.

Fifty yards below her, the rapid-stitched river curved along the base of the mountain.

The sorrel twitched its ears again. As it lifted its head sharply, Longarm leaned forward and, staring at the blonde who had not yet seen him in the forest shadows, closed his gloved left hand across the horse's nostrils, preventing a whinny.

The blonde probably hadn't heard him because of the river's rush below, but the jittery animals appeared ready to pitch and scream.

When the sorrel lowered its head, Longarm removed his right hand from its snout and, touching his revolver's grips once more, pulled his boot from his right stirrup, preparing to dismount. He'd just begun to swing his right leg up toward the horse's rump, when something large appeared in the corner of his right eye.

A tooth-gnashing roar sounded like a locomotive's bellow in Denver's Burlington yards.

Both horses pitched and screamed. Slamming his right boot back into the stirrup and flinging his right hand toward the saddle horn, Longarm whipped his head toward the up slope.

The grizzly stood on its hind legs at the very edge of thick woods and behind a boulder that rose to the bear's broad belly. It could be no other bear but the one he'd already danced with, for there could be no other bear that size—or that cantankerous—in this stretch of forest.

The son of a bitch had followed him. It was stalking him.

As the sorrel screamed again and swung sharply toward the down slope, Longarm's right hand hit the saddlehorn askance. Before he knew it, he was careening off the horse's right shoulder. He hit the ground on his back, the air squeezed from his lungs in a single rush.

He instinctively dug his fingers into the dirt and pine needles carpeting the steep slope, but gravity grabbed him and pitched him down the mountain.

As he turned somersaults through the thin brush of the forest, grunting and groaning, he watched the arrow-straight columns of the pines whip past. His shoulder glanced off one. The blow turned him slightly.

Then he was rolling, limbs akimbo. With each downturn, he saw the blonde on the sun-splashed slope grow before him. On her hands and knees, she stared up at him, blue eyes wide with shock, breasts dipped toward her berry basket, wild hair framing her chiseled, beautiful face.

She was directly in Longarm's path.

As he rolled toward her, she swerved one way, then the other, her eyes growing larger. Then he slammed into her. She screamed. Berries flew.

She rolled beneath him, then on top of him, and then they got separated for a while before he rolled on top of her once more, feeling her hair in his face, then her naked, sweat-slick right shoulder a half second before his hand swept across a full, round breast.

They separated as they flew off the bank and plunged into the river.

Longarm felt the cold water close over him, his right leg entangled with one of the blonde's. He heard the muffled explosion of a large-caliber rifle.

His back hit the rocky bottom—a dozen hard lumps assaulting him. He got his legs under him and lifted his head from the water as another explosion resounded throughout his skull.

He spit water, shook his head, and opened his eyes. The blonde bobbed up from the pool, gasping and smoothing her hair back from her face, the water cascading down her breasts. Beyond her, a big, bearded man in a buffalo coat and leather hat sat on the riverbank, holding a heavy Sharps rifle in his hands as he stared uphill, grinning.

Up the hill, brush thrashed and deep grunts sounded.

Longarm followed the big man's gaze, his own eyes snapping wide.

The grizzly tumbled down the hill like a huge boulder loosed by a landslide. The bear was heading toward Longarm and the girl, who stood gazing up at the bear, her lips forming a silent “Wooah!”

Longarm's body was sore from toe to scalp, and his brain was addled. He was slow to react. As the bear plunged toward him, dust billowing around the huge, bouncing body, the arms and legs flying every which way, Longarm wheeled and threw himself into the blonde.

They flew ten feet upstream, landing on a shallow bar. A wink later, the bear careened over the cutbank and plunged into the river like a gargantuan cannonball, landing where Longarm and the girl had stood staring up at it.

The splash was like a dynamite detonation.
Ka-booom!

Longarm and the girl were pelted with sand and pebbles as a wave washed over them. Spitting grit from his lips, Longarm stared at the bear.

It lay on its back, arms and legs spread wide. Blood glistened from two large holes in its chest, webbing like red smoke in the tea-colored water. The bear's nose and toes stuck up from the surface, its brown, shot-glass eyes glazed with death.

Longarm looked at the blonde lying on her side, facing him, her shocked eyes on the bear. Sand streaked her breasts, the water beading on them and reflecting the sunlight like jewels.

Suddenly, he bolted to his knees, brushed his hand across his holster, and spewed water from his lips. The .44 was still there. He palmed it, aimed it first at the blonde, then at the mountain man sitting on the bank and staring appreciatively down at the water-logged grizzly. He held his Sharps across his knees.

“Hold it,” Longarm ordered, blinking against the water still washing down his face from his hair. He thumbed the Colt's hammer back. “Stay where you are—both of you.”

The blonde and the big man turned to him dully, as if noticing him for the first time. He could have been a strange bird that had just dropped into their camp without warning.

Longarm glanced around and stepped back to peer over a low ridge behind the big man in the buffalo coat—Magnus Magnusson, without a doubt. Blue camp smoke rose from a notch in the mountain slope, and Longarm spotted a black mule tied with Comanche John's dun gelding and several horses between aspens.

His gut twisted, and his heart hammered. If they had John's mounts, John was most likely dead. Hardening his jaw, Longarm looked around once more.

“Where's the other woman?”

In the corner of his right eye, a shadow moved behind him. A glassy murmur of water . . .

Something hard slammed against the back of Longarm's head. The world pitched. Black balloons danced in his eyes until one balloon grew larger than all the others, filling his vision as his knees buckled.

His gun fell from his slack fingers, and he hit the river with a groan.

Longarm floated up through deep, gauzy blackness to half-consciousness. He was aware of being wet and riddled with aches and pains, and of lying on a fur of some kind. The fur didn't extend much past his knees, and his boots, when he moved his feet, scraped sand and gravel.

Gradually, he floated up from a sticky slumber and opened his eyes. It was almost like being reborn in another world. Where in the hell was he, and how had he gotten here?

After a few seconds, it all came back—the girl, the bear, the river.

Magnusson.

Instinctively, Longarm's right hand went to his holster, but he wasn't surprised to find it empty, the leather wet and gummy from the river.

He lay staring up at a ragged round piece of sky, a single star winking to life just right of a high, bald mountain peak another thousand feet above him. Around the ragged hole, pale gray rock tapered down to steep walls falling in all directions around him.

He was in a hole of some kind. Possibly an old mine digging. He could see the marks of picks and chisels in the crenelated granite. The opening was a good twenty feet above him.

Somewhere behind him, water trickled. When he moved his left foot, a rat shrieked and scuttled across sand and rock.

Bringing his gaze in closer, Longarm saw that he was lying on a deerskin. There wasn't much else around—just the rock walls and a jumble of stones behind him choking what appeared to be the mine's main shaft.

He turned to his right, and his insides contracted.

A human skeleton lay slumped against a low shelf protruding from the wall—a skeleton clad in a patched plaid shirt, denim trousers, and hobnailed jackboots. Nearby lay a black, knit watch cap, like those favored by miners.

A scorched rock ring lay near the man's boots, humped with old, gray ashes. The skull still had some skin and sinew left on it, but the eye sockets were black and empty. What few teeth the man owned were long, yellow, and crooked. One far back in his mouth shone silver.

Recoiling, his heart pounding, Longarm got up slowly, noting the scrapes on his hands, arms, and knees. His damp shirt was torn in several places, probably by the brambles he'd rolled through. His right knee felt swollen, and that ankle was gimpy.

A tiny man in his head was assaulting his brain plate with a ball-peen hammer. Amid the pain he wondered why he was still alive.

What was the point of throwing him in a pit? What were they saving him for?

Where was Magnusson and those crazy bitches?

In spite of all his aches and pains, he figured he'd live—if he could figure a way out of the pit, that was . . .

Staring up the sheer walls, looking for handholds, he caught a shimmering glow on one side of the opening far above his head. A campfire. The faint scent of burning pine and roasting meat brushed his nose.

He tried to identify the meat.

He grunted. Bear.

Wincing at the pain in his head, he moved along the hole, squinting against the gathering darkness, trying to find a way up the wall. Of course, if there were one, the hombre moldering nearby would no doubt have found it.

Longarm drew a deep breath, fighting back panic as the sheer walls closed around him and the darkening sky quickly filled the opening, like a lid being nailed down on a casket.