restorative jolt of the whiskey, to be honest--had given him back some of his strength, buoyed him to the point that he thought he could ride again.
'Surely you don't actually think Kinsman is innocent,' Aurora said in a mixture of amazement and indignation.
'I haven't seen a lick of proof that he's guilty,' Longarm shot back. 'I got a pretty good look at one of the gents who ambushed me today, and he wasn't one of Kinsman's riders. Neither was the man who tried to kill me yesterday. Somebody's spooked, Aurora, and is trying to get me out of the way.'
He still liked Ben Callahan for that role. Admittedly, he couldn't be sure that Callahan even knew of his existence, let alone that he was a deputy U.S. marshal, but it was possible, especially if, as Longarm suspected, Callahan had at least one man here in the Mcentire camp who was really on his payroll. Longarm's true identity was common knowledge among the loggers, and if Callahan had an inside man, the information could have been passed along easily to the rival timber company owner.
'Regardless of whether what you say is true or not, you're not going anywhere.' Aurora shook her head stubbornly. 'You're in no shape to ride.'
'The hell with it,' Longarm muttered. Roughly, he shook off her hand and stood up. 'I'll go like this.'
Aurora looked shocked at his vehemence. 'Wait a minute,' she said quickly. 'If you're that determined...'
'We're wasting time,' Longarm said grimly.
'I'll do what you asked.' Hurriedly, Aurora tore an undergarment into strips to bind up Longarm's wound, then produced a man's shirt from a trunk. 'it was one of Angus's,' she said. 'The sleeves may be a little short.'
They were, but Longarm didn't care. Whatever he was going to do, he had to do it before he lost his second wind.
Because once that was gone, he likely wouldn't be able to do anything for a while except collapse.
He left the cabin as he was shrugging into the shirt and fastening a couple of its buttons. While he looked around for the roan, he thumbed fresh cartridges into the Colt, then holstered it. The horse was nearby, standing where Longarm had dropped its reins.
Aurora had followed him out of the cabin. 'I'm coming with you,' she said.
Longarm looked at her in surprise. 'You can't do that.'
'The hell I can't, as you would say. I can be every bit as stubborn as you, Marshal.'
Longarm had already figured that out about her, and even as he drew a breath to argue, he knew it would be useless. So he said instead, 'All right. But if there's trouble, you stay out of the way.'
She made no reply, just headed for a small corral near the cookshack where several saddle horses were kept.
The fire in the barracks was burning itself out following the collapse of the structure, and the flames didn't seem to have spread, as Longarm saw to his considerable relief. Jared Flint turned away from the ashes of the building and then started quickly toward Longarm and Aurora, his brow creasing in surprise and concern above his bushy eyebrows. 'Miz Mcentire,' he said as Aurora led a horse from the corral, 'what are you doing, ma'am?'
'I'm going with Marshal Long,' Aurora told him. 'Will you saddle this horse for me, Mr. Flint?'
'Sure, but--are you certain that's a good idea?' Flint inclined his head toward Longarm. 'No offense to the marshal, but he looks pretty banged up.'
'He is,' said Aurora, 'but we're going to do what we can to stop the men from attacking the Diamond K. Marshal Long is worried--and I share his concern--that some of our men may be killed when they confront Kinsman and his bloodthirsty cowboys.'
She just couldn't resist doing a little editorializing, thought Longarm. But overall, he was glad she had decided to come with him. If they reached Kinsman's ranch in time to stop the loggers from attacking, the men would be more likely to obey Aurora's orders than his. If she told them to give up their thoughts of revenge, they might go along with her wishes.
Of course, it might already be too late, and that thought gnawed at Longarm's gut. Just as he had worried that some harm might come to Aurora in the attack on the camp, now he was concerned about the safety of Molly Kinsman, not to mention the others on the ranch for whom he had felt an instinctive liking, such as Wing and Joe Traywick.
Not surprisingly, Jared Flint saddled a horse for himself as well as one for Aurora. When she saw that her foreman intended to go along, Aurora's mouth tightened, but she didn't say anything. Together with Longarm, they rode out of the camp, Flint taking the lead. Instead of following the usual trail, however, Flint took a smaller path that curved over the shoulder of the mountain.
'This is the way the boys went,' he said. 'It's a little closer to the Diamond K this way than it is going all the way back to the main trail.'
So that explained why he hadn't run into the rampaging lumberjacks on his way to the camp, thought Longarm. They had taken a different route.
Even so, it seemed to take a long time to reach Matt Kinsman's ranch. Longarm rapidly became lost as the trail twisted and turned through the woods. After a while, Aurora grew concerned too, and asked Flint, 'Shouldn't we be getting there by now?'
Before Flint could answer, the sound of distant gunfire came to their ears.
Longarm bit back a curse, knowing that what he was hearing signaled the beginning of the battle between the loggers and the cowboys of the Diamond K. Grimly, Flint said, 'Sounds like we're too late.'
'Maybe not,' Longarm grated. 'Maybe we can stop it before too many men get ventilated.' He prodded the roan forward, not looking back to see if Aurora and Flint were following. The horse was getting tired--but then so was Longarm. The reserves of strength he had replenished earlier were running out again.
Guided by the gunfire, Longarm made his way through the pines. They grew closely together in places, so that he had to thread his way among them. Aurora and Flint had to ride single file behind him much of the time. The
