The boy’s eyes became wide with the prospect. Pork chops? As many as he liked? “Two pork chops?”
“Three if you’d ruther. It don’t make no nevermind to me, son.”
Buddy grinned. “Three pork chops then. And some fried taters. And some hominy. I love hominy. And some …”
“Eric!” his mother warned.
“It’s all right, Miz Fulton. He can have anything he wants. I said so. Only thing is, whatever he takes, that’s what he’s gotta finish. I won’t be carrying the stuff up here just for him to waste.”
Angela subsided. So did Buddy’s enthusiasm. “I have to clean my plate?”
“Dam right you do.”
“Then maybe you should make it two pork chops. And not so much taters and hominy. What do you think?”
“I think you’re gonna have you a good breakfast. Miz Fulton, how ‘bout you?”
Her request was considerably more modest than her son’s had been. Tea, toast, maybe a little jam if it wasn’t too much trouble.
He’d just order up three hearty breakfasts, Longarm figured, and Angela and Buddy could work out between them who got around what. He made a mental note of what he needed, then picked up his Stetson and unbolted the shanty door.
The door hadn’t more than swung open before there was the booming report of a shotgun blast, and the door kicked back on its hinges under the thundering impact of the shotgun charge. Sometime since last night, Longarm thought even as he was swinging into action, the guy with the two-shot gun had gone and gotten himself some real shotgun shells. He wasn’t loaded for duck hunting this morning.
“Lower. No, scoot bac: just a little bit. That’s better.” Longarm’s first concern was for Angela and Buddy. He had the both of them lying on his pallet with the protective bulk of the iron stove between them and the shotgun outside. A heavy shotshell pellet fired at close range can punch clean through the sort of thin lathing that the Fulton shanty was made from, and he didn’t want either one of these innocents hurt any further on his account.
He put them in the safest place he could find inside the house, then dragged the wood box over to shield them from the side. He stuffed a pillow underneath the stove to more or less close in the gap between the iron legs, then covered the woman and the boy with the quilt he’d slept under. A good quilt can stop a partly spent shotgun pellet. Maybe. Often enough to be worth the effort now anyway.
“Both of you lay still. I don’t wanta have to think about what my target is. If I see something move I wanta know I’m free to fire. Do you understand that? It ain’t a matter of who’s brave or who ain’t. It’s a matter of can I shoot without worrying about you two. An’ that can be the difference between me living or me dying. I ain’t being a hero ‘bout this. I’m bein’ selfish. An’ I wanta stay living so I can keep right on bein’ that way. You understand that. Buddy? Miz Fulton?”
He waited until he got a nod of understanding from each of them, then draped the quilt over on top of them, covering even their heads so as to give them as much protection as was possible.
“Wait here an’ don’t move. I’ll be back quick as I can be, but I don’t know how long that’s gonna be an’ won’t make you no promises that I might not be able to keep. Just you both mind, you stay here till I come fetch you. That way we’ll all be safe.”
He touched Angela on the shoulder and gave Buddy a poke on the upper arm, then palmed his Colt and eased up beside the open doorway.
The door itself had been torn up pretty good by the shotgun blast. The thing was definitely in need of repairs. Better a slab of gray, weathered wood than Custis Long’s belly, though. Doors would be easier to replace.
He stood there for a moment and looked around the room. He saw what he wanted and, keeping well back from the door frame, made his way across the room to fetch it.
At the least, he figured, Angela’s robe was going to need laundering when this thing was over with. Well, he’d pay for the washing. The point was to be alive so he could pay.
He held his .44 ready in one hand, and with the other shook the robe out so it dangled full length to the floor. Then, with a sweep of his arm, he floated the dark green robe out the door. The garment sailed out like a ghost riding on a breeze.
The shotgun boomed again, and Longarm burst through the doorway at full speed. One charge of pellets smacked into the wall of the house just before Longarm flew out. Another punched into the wood just behind him as the gunman reacted without taking time for careful aim.
With both barrels expended Longarm was free to look for cover. Otherwise he’d have had to hit the ground and hope he could keep ahead of the shotgunner’s swinging muzzles.
He trampled clean over Angela’s fluttering robe and legged it around the corner of the shack long before the ambusher would have had time to reload. He ducked into a crouch and squeezed in between Peppy’s lean-to shelter and the back of the house. He still hadn’t had a chance to see where it was the shotgunner was hiding. And he didn’t want that information to come as any surprise when he did figure it out. Better to be cautious now even when he thought the shotgunner should be out of sight.
The Fulton place was one of a handful of similar shacks that had been built without pattern along the banks of the sluggish creek that passed through the Cargyle canyon. Longarm slipped around to the back of the place next door, and eased forward along its side wall until he could peer around the front corner and look for the shotgunner.
There wasn’t much to see. Another small clutch of shacks on the far side of the railroad tracks. A well with a rock wall around it and a windlass and bucket mounted overhead. An abandoned wagon box with weeds growing out of it. Peppy’s cart beside the Fulton place—Longarm had just run right by that cart without so much as noticing it was there—and across the way a trash heap that seemed to consist mostly of broken whiskey bottles.
