'Flint led us on a so-called shortcut that day,' Longarm said bitterly. 'I figure he was really delaying us in hopes we'd be too late to stop a full-scale battle from breaking out. Luckily he didn't slow us down quite enough.'
'You... you followed me,' said Molly, still stuck on that point. Longarm wondered if she was worried that the Chinese cook had seen the two of them making love. Now that they weren't both about to die, she could spare some concern for something like that. Longarm didn't care overmuch, but he was pretty sure Wing knew nothing about that part of the afternoon. Wing had come up the coulee behind Flint, and by that time, Molly's deflowering had long since been accomplished. If Molly had gone on down the mountain as Longarm had told her to, in fact, doubtless she would have run right into Wing on his way up.
'That coulee was a busy place with folks coming and going today,' Longarm commented as Wing helped Molly to her feet. 'Now we've all got to get down the mountain again, as fast as we can. Maybe we can still stop Flint.'
Wing slid a finger along the edge of his blade. 'I'd like that,' he said, and Molly stared at him, as if seeing him for the first time.
She was even more surprised and horrified a moment later when the three of them stepped out of the cabin and she saw the bodies sprawled face-down on the ground. One of the outlaws had a hatchet buried in the back of his head while the other was lying in a pool of rapidly drying blood that had gushed from his slit throat. Longarm looked at the corpses too, and said to Wing, 'I reckon in your earlier days, you must've done a little work for some of those tongs down in San Francisco.'
'Tongs?' repeated Wing, his face and voice emotionless. 'This humble one is but a cook.'
Longarm grinned tiredly and shook his head, knowing there was no point in carrying on with this conversation. No matter what Wing had been in the past, he was a good friend now. Hell, he had saved their lives, pure and simple, and he was going to help Longarm put an end to Jared Flint's schemes too.
Flint was going to be one surprised son of a bitch the next time he saw Longarm.
And Longarm hoped fervently that next time was going to be over the barrel of a gun.
CHAPTER 14
The horses ridden up there by Longarm and Molly had been brought up to the camp from where they had been left and put into the corral. Wing retrieved the mounts while Longarm helped himself to a six-gun and some extra shells from one of the dead guards. Then the three of them started back down the mountain. At the bottom of the coulee, they split up, over Molly's objections. Longarm sent her to the Diamond K with orders to bring as many men as possible to the headquarters of the Mcentire timber operation. 'Your pa might not believe me if I told him what's going on,' said Longarm, 'but I'm betting he'll believe you.'
'I'll make sure of it,' she promised grimly. Longarm turned to the cook. 'Wing, you head for the logging camp and warn them about what Flint's planning to do. Maybe if they know a flood's on the way, they can avoid the worst of it. Once the punchers from the Diamond K get there, bring them and Mrs. Mcentire's men up the mountain to that dam. Even if I can slow down Flint and his men and keep them from blowing up the dam, I'm liable to need a hand by then.'
'You can't stop them by yourself,' protested Molly. 'There are too many of them!'
Longarm grinned. 'Reckon I'll just have to make do. Now git, both of you!'
Reluctantly, Wing and Molly galloped away on different trails. Longarm took yet a third path, sending the roan down a narrow trail that he hoped would take him where he needed to go.
He had only a vague idea of where the dam was located, and he didn't have a lot of time to spend searching. A glance at the sky told him that the sun was lowering toward the peaks of the Cascade range. Flint had said he wanted to reach the dam just after dark. That was a good time for the explosion he had planned. None of the loggers would be there, because they would all be down in the main camp, sitting down to supper. The torrent of water that would race down the Mountainside following the blast would take them completely by surprise unless Wing got there in time to alert them to their danger. They might have a little warning, Longarm corrected himself, because they might hear the explosion that destroyed the dam. But that would be too little, too late, especially since the loggers would have no way of knowing what had caused the blast.
There was a lot riding on him, Longarm realized--not only justice for a clever criminal, but also the lives of innocent men.
And possibly the life of Aurora Mcentire as well.
Despite Flint's high-flown statements about not wanting to kill Aurora, he had come close before, when he or one of his henchmen had set free that boom to come crashing into Aurora's cabin. The flood that would wash down the mountain after the dam was destroyed wouldn't differentiate between its victims either. As long as she was in the camp, Aurora was in deadly danger.
As shadows gathered, Longarm had to watch the trail closely. From landmarks on the mountain and in the valleys below, he estimated that he was almost directly above the timber camp now, which meant he should be reaching the dam soon. Despite the fact that any delay chafed at him, he slowed the roan to a walk so that the pounding of its hoofbeats wouldn't advertise that he was coming. If he was going to have any chance to stop Flint's plan, he had to take the men at the dam by surprise.
Suddenly, he heard voices, and he reined the horse to a quick stop. He swung down from the saddle and tied the roan to a nearby bush. 'Stay here, old son,' he whispered to the horse as he patted it on the neck. Then he started on foot along the path, which had all but disappeared in the thickening dusk.
Through a screen of brush and trees, he saw the dam looming ahead of him. It was built of logs, naturally enough, and had a sluice gate in its center, several feet below the top of the dam. A surefooted logger could walk out there on the dam, bend over and grasp a handle, and pull the gate up to release the water into the flume, which was already partially built. Longarm's gaze followed the steeply inclined, elevated trough as it ran down the Mountainside and disappeared into the shadows. He didn't know how much of the flume had been completed, but if that dynamite went off as Flint planned, it would be destroyed along with the dam.
The flume and the dam itself could be rebuilt, though, once Flint had succeeded in running off Aurora Mcentire. After all, the money wouldn't be coming out of his pocket.
Longarm crouched behind the thick trunk of a pine and searched the dam and the area around it for any sign of Flint and the man's hired gunmen. Surely he hadn't beaten them to the punch and gotten there first. That wasn't possible.
Nor was it the case, Longarm saw a moment later. A couple of men emerged from the shadows on the far side
