her.
Of course, she was the one with all the money in the family. She could probably pay the servant to disregard Lord Beechmuir’s orders.
Longarm suddenly wondered just who had given Helene the stuff in the first place and gotten her hooked on it. Having her so dependent on him for the laudanum would be a pretty lucrative arrangement for Ghote.
He put that question out of his mind. There were other things to deal with at the moment, like this damned fight with Booth. The Englishman turned toward him, stripped off the jacket, and asked haughtily, “Are you ready, Marshal?”
“If you’re bound and determined to go through with this, I reckon I am,” said Longarm.
“This clearing isn’t really large enough,” Booth said. “I propose that we go over to that field where there will be plenty of room.” He pointed toward a large open area about two hundred yards downriver.
Longarm nodded. “That’s all right with me.” He started toward the spot with Lord Beechmuir stalking along beside him. Catamount Jack, Lucy, an impatient Benjamin Thorp, and the two servants followed along behind.
Helene knew the feeling quite well. It was like swimming up from the bottom of a deep, dark pool. Mentally, she kicked against the forces trying to hold her down, pulling herself up toward the light.
At the same time, she didn’t really want to go. She was content where she was, wrapped in the comforting darkness, unable to feel any of the pain and disappointment of life.
Reality would intrude its ugly face all too soon; why hurry the process?
Vaguely, though, she realized something was wrong. Some instinct was telling her that she had to wake up, that she had to leave the land of sweet nothingness behind and return to the harshness of the world. As she struggled to open her eyes, a bad smell filled her nostrils. Not just an unpleasant odor, she thought fuzzily, but an almost overpowering stench.
She opened her eyes, blinked against the morning light that came through the open entrance flap of the tent. It had been closed when she lay down on the cot after drinking deeply of the medicine from Ghote’s bottle. She was certain the servant had closed the flap behind him when he left. But now it was open.
Something moved between Helene and the light, something monstrous that blotted out the sun. Her eyes opened wider and her jaws spread apart in terror as she saw the huge, shaggy shape looming over her. A scream tried to make its way up her throat.
Then a filthy, hairy hand—or perhaps it was a paw—clamped down brutally over her mouth, cutting off the scream before any of it could escape. Helene tried to surge up off the cot, but it was hopeless. The strength of the thing holding her down was much too great for her to overcome.
This can’t be happening, she thought, and just like that she had her answer. It wasn’t happening. It was simply a dream brought on by the medicine, and soon it would pass. Even now she felt darkness creeping in around her again, blotting out the overpowering fear she had felt only seconds earlier.
She had known she didn’t want to return to the real world, and she had been right all along. She slumped back now, welcoming the darkness, letting it wash over her and protect her, sealing her away from all the ugliness in the world.
Chapter 16
“This will be suitable,” Lord Beechmuir said as he looked around the open pasture. “Plenty of room, eh?”
Longarm had fought a lot of battles in more cramped conditions, but he didn’t mind the open space. As he took off his hat and handed it to Lucy, he made one final attempt to talk some sense into the Englishman. “We don’t have to do this,” he said to Booth.
“We most certainly do. Nothing else will satisfy my honor.”
Longarm sighed and glanced at the others, as if to ask them what more he could have done to prevent this. Thorp just looked impatient, Lucy wore a worried expression on her face, and Catamount Jack was grinning with excitement and anticipation. Singh’s bearded features were set in their seemingly perpetual scowl, and as usual, it was difficult if not impossible to read the expression on Ghote’s face.
“Let’s get on with it,” Thorp snapped. “The sooner this is over, the sooner we can get back to looking for the Brazos Devil.”
“Not to worry, Benjamin, old boy,” Lord Beechmuir assured him. “I have a feeling we’ll find that bloody beast today, and my hunter’s instincts have never failed me.”
Maybe not, Longarm thought, but Booth’s inflated sense of pride was sure letting him down. The man ought to take a good look at his wife and see just what a fool she was making of him. But Longarm kept those thoughts to himself, knowing it was too late for them to do any good.
He flexed his hands and rolled his shoulders to loosen them up, then shook his arms a little. “I reckon I’m ready whenever you are, Booth,” he said, no longer bothering to use the Englishman’s title.
Booth lifted his fists and spread his legs in a boxing stance. “Have to, old man,” he said.
“Up yours, old son,” Longarm said, and threw the first punch.
It was a hard right cross that didn’t have anything fancy about it, nor did it start from any Marquis of Queensbury position. It was the kind of punch Longarm would throw at some son of a bitch in a saloon brawl who was about to hit him with a whiskey bottle. His fist rocketed past Lord Beechmuir’s belated attempt to block the punch and slammed into the Englishman’s mouth. Booth went backward a couple of steps and sat down hard.
Singh’s instincts made him reach for his sword again, but Catamount Jack casually let the barrel of the Sharps cradled in his arms swing toward the Sikh. “I wouldn’t,” the old mountain man said quietly. “This is between the two O’ them.”
His nostrils flaring with anger over his sweeping mustache, Singh took his hand away from the hilt of the curved sword.
Sitting on the ground, Lord Beechmuir shook his head, then reached up and gingerly felt his lips, which were bleeding and already starting to swell. “A good blow,” he said in grudging admiration to Longarm.
