Oakley, all right?”
“Sonofabitch! You are a real cocksman! And you was telling me to stay away from good-looking women? Hell, you’d probably have screwed yourself dry and died if she hadn’t kicked you out! Ain’t that the gospel truth!”
Longarm grinned. He knew that old Pete wanted him to say yes. “Yes, I guess it is,” he said.
“Ha!” Pete cried, slapping his leather apron and howling with laughter. “What a damned hypocrite!”
Longarm let the man carry on for a few moments. Then he spit into the forge and watched it sizzle. “Pete, where is the best place to hide and get the drop on Ford and his friends when they come to have you remove the handcuffs?”
Pete’s laughter choked down to nothing and he wiped his face with a dirty handkerchief he’d dragged from his back pocket. “Well,” he began, “you could hide up there in the loft and shoot down on ‘em.”
Longarm twisted his head up and surveyed the loft. “Uh-uh,” he said finally. “I want to be down here where I can cut off their escape.”
“You mean where you can escape if things go to hell in a hand-basket,” the blacksmith corrected.
“Maybe so.” Longarm looked all around until he decided on the stall nearest the back door. “Is there a horse in that one?”
“Yep. And I’m about to shoe him.”
“Move him to one of the other stalls,” Longarm ordered. “That’s the one that I want to hide in when I order Ford and his ambushers to surrender.”
“They won’t surrender.”
“They will if I have a shotgun on ‘em. There’s two in the medicine wagon. Will you get them both for me?”
“Sure. I drove that wagon up to the yard and it’s parked right outside. I unhitched the horses and gave ‘em a good feed. Figured they sort of belong to me now and I better protect my own property.”
“If things go wrong,” Longarm said, “that is good thinking.”
Pete removed a sorrel from the stall that Longarm wanted to use for a hiding place. “I think I’ll just take this sorrel outside and put him in a corral. Might be safer. He’s a good horse and his owner is a friend of mine. I’d like to keep him as a friend.”
“That makes sense,” Longarm said. “I expect your friend would not be pleased if his horse got plugged by a stray bullet.”
“You got that right.”
Pete led the sorrel outside saying, “I’ll bring them shotguns along on my way back.”
“Good,” Longarm said.
He entered the empty stall and pulled the solid and very heavy door closed behind him. Pete was not real big on cleanliness and the stall hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, if ever. The heavy ammonia of horse urine filled Longarm’s nostrils, and the stall was buzzing with flies.
“Damn,” he said to himself as he reached over the chest-high door of the stall and prepared to leave. “Maybe there’s a cleaner one that …”
He froze, hearing voices outside. The one that was familiar belonged to his former prisoner, Ford Oakley.
“Gawddammit, Pete,” Oakley was saying, “get your skinny old ass inside and let’s figure out a way to get these handcuffs the Hell off my wrists! And no excuses!”
Longarm ducked, but not before he saw the silhouettes of four men and the blacksmith slip through the back doorway. The big silhouette was definitely Oakley and he sounded extremely unhappy.
“Pete,” he said, “me and the boys tried like sons abitches to get these damn things off. We couldn’t even get the chain tying them together to break.”
“But you sure beat the Hell out of it,” Pete said as they stopped beside his forge. “It’s all flattened and mashed up where you been hammerin’.”
“The sonofabitch is made of hard steel,” one of the outlaws said. “Just our luck it’s probably the best pair of damned handcuffs in Nevada.”
“Can you get them off without breaking my wrists?” Oakley asked.
“I don’t know,” Pete said. “I can definitely break the chain so that your hands aren’t bound together anymore, but the handcuffs themselves are another matter.”
“Damn!” Oakley roared. “I’ll bet we’re just going to have to find that sonofabitchin’ marshal and get the keys to these things from him.”
“I’d expect so, Ford,” Pete said with ready agreement. “If I get to hammerin’on them cuffs, you ain’t going to like how it feels.”
“Just … just get rid of the chain,” Oakley said. “At least then I can use my hands to hold a gun or a rifle.”
“I’ll do it,” Pete said. “Ford, you just need to stop over here by the forge and stretch that chain across my anvil. Won’t take but a few good blows and I’ll have her cut in two.”
Ford did as he was told. “Cut the chain twice, both times right up next to my wrists. I don’t want to be swingin’ a damn chain around, so just cut it all the hell away.”
“I’ll do it, Ford. Yes, sir, I sure will do that.”
Longarm waited until he heard the first blow of Pete’s hammer. Then he stepped out of the stall and bellowed, “All right, hands up! You too, Ford!”
