Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats Read Online Free PDF

other buildings around it. So far, aside from flames spitting from the windows, it seemed to be contained.
    The shooting seemed to be coming from both sides of the street near the burning building. Longarm could see smoke puffing from behind a stock trough on the street’s left side and from the ­broken-­out windows of another building on the right. A ­medium-­sized spotted dog stood between Longarm and the shooters, on a boardwalk, staring toward the commotion, anxiously wagging its tail and barking its fool head off.
    Longarm slowed his pace as he angled toward the first building at his end of the town, on the street’s right side. He had to size up the situation, figure out who was shooting at whom, as best he could without getting his own head shot off. Only then could he try to defuse the trouble.
    He stepped onto a boardwalk fronting a small drugstore. Someone jerked a shade down over a window to his right, and he heard quick footsteps as someone hurried into hiding. Longarm continued forward along the roofed boardwalk fronting the drugstore. When he was almost to the building’s other side, he stopped and jerked back, pressing his shoulder against the drugstore’s front wall.
    He edged a look around the corner and into the alley beyond. A man was walking up the alley toward the main ­street—­a tall man in a ­high-­crowned brown Stetson, ­spruce-­green duster, and ­high-­topped, brown boots with spurs. He had two pistols on his hips and a Winchester in his gloved hands.
    A curly wolf, if Longarm had ever seen one.
    Longarm stepped away from the drugstore’s front wall, aiming his own Winchester straight out from his right hip. With quiet, commanding menace, he said, “Hold it, feller. I’m a deputy U.S. marshal. Toss down that rifle and face me.”
    The man stopped dead in his tracks, facing the street. He appeared to stop breathing for a moment. A half second later he widened his eyes and gritted his teeth as he swung toward Longarm, leveling his carbine and loudly ramming a shell into the action.
    Longarm fired twice, his Winchester crashing loudly around the alley, his empty cartridge casings pinging onto the boardwalk behind him.
    He levered a fresh shell into the firing chamber and watched the hard case trigger his own rifle into the ground as he stumbled back against the wall behind him.
    He grunted as he dropped the rifle and tried to get his feet beneath him to no avail. One foot slipped out from under him and he fell back against the wall and slid down to the ground, where he lay on his side, shaking.
    Longarm took a knee, looking around.
    Soon he realized that the hard case he’d shot had likely been trying to slip around behind the men shooting from the opposite side of the main street, from in front of a feed store about a block up from Longarm’s position. That meant at least one of those fellas was a ­lawman—­possibly Thrum’s son, Ryan, who’d taken over the local lawdogging job from his father about a month ago, due to Thrum’s latest heart attack.
    The men on the side of the law were throwing intermittent spurts of lead at a building just up the street from Longarm. Judging by the shots, he thought there were five guns being ­fired—­three on the street’s right side, two on its left side, where the townsmen were hunkered down behind a stock trough.
    Longarm hoped he was right about who was who, because at the rate the pink building was burning and due to spread, he had to work fast in helping the lawman or whoever was holding off the curly wolves. He stepped out into the alley where the dead man lay, and then walked down the gap to his right, intending to get around the other three outlaws.
    He shouldered up to the side of the building on the alley’s far side, doffed his hat, and edged a look around the rear. All clear. Donning his hat, he hurried around the corner and began