Couldn't risk letting whoever was up there know that Flint had been followed. The wind had gotten stronger and chillier the higher Longarm climbed, so before he left the horse he took his jacket from the saddlebags and put it on.
'Sorry there's no graze for you here, old son,' he said quietly as he patted the horse on the neck. 'We'll be back down in grass country after a while.'
He left the roan tied to a scrubby pine and started up the trail once more. His hand hovered near the butt of his Colt as he climbed. His heart was slugging heavily in his chest from the elevation, the exertion, and maybe a little bit from anticipation. He didn't know for sure what he was going to find, but he sensed he was drawing near the end of this case--one way or the other.
This high up the mountain, he thought it unlikely there would be any guards posted, but he kept his eyes and ears wide open just in case. He hadn't seen any sign of Flint for several minutes now.
Suddenly, a bench opened up in front of him. This shelf of fairly level land was several hundred yards long and half that deep. Longarm dropped into a crouch behind a boulder that was perched next to the rim. From there, he could see that the bench was much like the valley down below where he and Molly had made love, only somewhat larger. The ground had a thin cover of grass on it, and a few trees were clustered around what was evidently a spring of some sort. A little creek meandered off to the right end of the bench, where it spilled over the side in a waterfall. Longarm was willing to bet that water was mighty clear and mighty cold. It made him thirsty just thinking about it.
But his attention was focused much more on the trio of ramshackle cabins built around the spring. Old prospectors' shacks, more than likely, he thought, left over from the days when folks had hoped to find gold up here. Somebody had repaired the cabins and built a pole corral, in which a couple of dozen horses grazed.
The horse Jared Flint had been riding was tied up in front of one of the cabins. There was no other sign of the timber company foreman.
Flint had to be inside the cabin, thought Longarm, no doubt conferring with the men who were hiding out here. The men he had hired to raid the lumber camp, to rustle cattle from the Diamond K... and who knows what other deadly errands he had planned for them to carry out?
He had to get closer, Longarm knew. Had to find out just what the next step in Flint's scheme was going to be. He hoped that Molly had reached the ranch without any trouble, because he was going to need help rousting these outlaws from their den.
A foot scraped on rock behind him.
Longarm twisted, his hand flashing to the Colt on his hip. He palmed the gun from the cross-draw rig and started to bring it up, his finger tightening on the trigger. He expected the crash of a shot or the impact of a blow at any instant, and he cursed himself for getting so caught up in his thoughts that he had let someone sneak up on him. Such carelessness was probably about to be the death of him, but at least he would go down fighting.
He froze, finger taut on the trigger, as Molly stepped back sharply and gasped in fear and surprise.
'Son of a bitch!' Longarm hissed. 'Girl, I almost blew your head off!' Tremors of reaction went through him.
'I... I didn't mean to startle you,' Molly stammered. 'I saw you up here, and I knew you must have... must have found something.'
'Damn it, I sent you back down the mountain!'
'I... I decided to follow you. I was afraid you'd get in trouble-'
'Oh, I'm in trouble, all right,' grated Longarm. 'I've got a nest full of killers sitting right in front of me and no help on the way thanks to you.'
Molly's features grew tight with anger. 'All I wanted to do was help!'
The conversation was being carried on in whispers. Longarm wasn't worried that their words would carry to the hard-cases he was sure were in those cabins conferring with Jared Flint. He was worried, though, that he and Molly might be spotted if there were any sentries posted around the hideout. He had planned to stay there, keeping an eye on the place until help arrived from the Diamond K. But now he knew that no help was coming. The only thing he and Molly could do was slip away as quietly as possible and return to the ranch. With luck, maybe he could still thwart whatever Flint was planning to do next.
He took hold of Molly's arm. 'Come on, we've got to get back down the mountain-'
'Freeze, mister!'
The shout came from Longarm's left. He twisted in that direction, the Colt he had drawn a moment earlier still in his hand. He pulled Molly behind him, prepared to shield her body with his own. His eyes spotted the man crouched behind a rock, the rifle in his hands trained on the two of them.
'Drop that gun, you bastard!'
That yell came from the other direction, and Longarm felt his heart sinking. They were trapped in a cross fire. He might have been able to swap lead with one man and come out of the exchange alive; two men with rifles, one to each side of him, meant that he and Molly would both die if any shooting broke out. He turned his head to glance over his shoulder, and saw the second guard covering him with a Winchester from about thirty yards away. Longarm wasn't sure where either of them had been hiding until now, but that didn't really matter. What was important was that he had been spotted while he was trailing Jared Flint up here.
'Take it easy on those triggers, gents,' he called out to the two outlaws as he lifted both hands, the Colt still in his right.
'Put the gun on the ground,' yelled one of the men. Longarm complied with the order, bending to carefully place the Colt at his feet.
The other guard said, 'Move away from it.' He came out from behind the rock that had sheltered him and advanced toward Longarm and Molly, keeping the rifle trained on them. Behind him, Longarm heard the second guard approaching too. Longarm took several steps away from the Colt, and Molly moved with him.
'Custis...' she said, fear in her voice. Her arm was against his, and he could feel her trembling.
'Don't you worry,' he said quietly. 'We'll get out of this somehow.'
