Longarm 397 : Longarm and the Doomed Beauty (9781101545973) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and its hair, skin, brains, and bone fairly painted the ground around him. The kid still clutched his pistol, but now as Longarm watched, the young would-be shooter’s hand opened. The pistol struck the ground with a thud. The kid’s knees were buckling, and now they hit the weeds at the edge of the bank, and the lifeless, quivering, blood-oozing corpse rolled through the brush and down the bank, to pile up five feet in front of Longarm.
    â€œGot him, Mother!” yelled Hansel Anderson.
    Longarm saw the man running along the edge of the bank to stop at the top of the deer path that Longarm had followed down to the water. The Dakota farmer clad in blue-plaid shirt, suspenders, and knee-high, lace-up boots held a smoking shotgun low across his thighs as he grinned down at the man whose head he’d vaporized. Esther Anderson ran up to her man, lifting her gray skirts up above her blunt, black shoes, and clutched his arm as she, too, stared down at the farmer’s handiwork.
    â€œI reckon all that bird huntin’ on the sloughs back in Dakota done honed your aim some, Dad!” She beamed. Then she narrowed one eye and lifted her pious gaze to Longarm. “A fork-tailed demon if we ever seen one. Dad here spied him first, Custis, as the would-be bushwhacker strolled so leisurely out of the depot house yonder and sauntered in your direction. Then I, too, saw him lift that hogleg from his holster, check the loads, and roll the cylinder like he expected to be usin’ that little smoker real soon. Sure enough, he was.”
    She clamped a hand on the grinning farmer’s big left shoulder. “The Lord’s work is never done—eh, Dad?”
    Longarm slowly heaved himself to his feet. He let his hand fall away from the walnut grips of his Colt Frontier .44-40, positioned for the cross draw on his left hip. He cast his gaze between the still-quivering corpse clad in blood-soaked brown wool to the two pioneers standing proudly above him, beaming as though looking out over a field of freshly harvested wheat.
    â€œHoly shit,” Longarm muttered, as several passengers from the train came over to see what the blast had been about.
    â€œSuch vulgarisms lack nobility, Custis,” admonished Esther Anderson crisply. “And there is nothing holy in dung. Come, Dad—I’m tired and hungry, in need of food and rest before we make our next connection.”
    â€œYou go on into the depot, Mother.” The big farmer patted the middle-aged woman’s hand. “I’ll be along in a minute.”
    When the woman had gone, hefting two carpetbags and leaving the bulk of their luggage to “Dad,” Longarm gathered up his gear and climbed the bank. He stood beside his coverall-clad benefactor as he glanced down at the dead man. “Thanks, Anderson.” He squinted at the big double bore in the man’s big, scarred hands. “You’re right handy with that old popper.”
    â€œShot a lot of geese back in Dakota. And any jaspers that tried to crowd me. You’d best watch yourself, Custis. If this man here was out to blow your wick, there could be more.”
    â€œI do believe you’re right,” Longarm said, as the big farmer clapped him on the back and, setting his shotgun on his shoulder, headed off toward where his and “Mother’s” luggage was piled on the platform flanking the depot building.
    Several men from the train milled around Longarm, smoking and glancing down with looks of revulsion at the dead kid lying near the cold creek, and at the bloody, boney spot in the sage and fescue near Longarm’s boots, which was all that remained of the would-be killer’s head. All the men appeared seasoned frontiersman, but one had to gulp to keep his lunch down as he turned and walked away, fatefully shaking his head.
    Longarm saw a short, potbellied, bandy-legged man in his mid- to late fifties walk out the depot building’s rear door,