moving pretty good despite the heat and his high heels and spurs. Longarm didn’t spot him before he’d made it almost two full furlongs from one corner of the house. Then Longarm called out to him, saw that only seemed to speed the kid up, and fired.
He’d already ducked and rolled by the time his heavy buffalo round cart-wheeled the running Spud Travis into a clump of pear, from which he would never rise under his own power. So when Harmony Drake blazed away at the Big Fifty’s smoke through another window, glass and all, Longarm was grinning through another gap in the hedge entirely. He knew nobody with a lick of sense would still be standing behind all that gunsmoke drifting through the shattered window. So he held his own fire for now.
Inside the house, Goldmine Gloria was saying, “He’s as crazy as I heard!
He’s got no other lawmen with him! He aims to take you in alone! Whatever makes the man act so contrary?”
Harmony almost snarled, “What makes womankind ask such totally stupid questions? Can’t you see he wants to take me alone because he refused help the other night and bragged he could handle me without any? Centerfire was right. We should have killed him when we had the chance. I was a fool to let you talk us into doubling back on our own trail like we done. When a body gets away from a lawman like Longarm, he’s got no business playing kid games!”
The brassy blond widow woman who owned the dusted-out farm said, “We’d have never been found out if you hadn’t had to go into Yuma and get caught that time. I told you everyone had me down as the rightful owner of this property, under my married name, not as the Goldmine Gloria of dubious fame along the Owlhoot Trail. I told you boys to let me run grub and snake-medicine out here whilst the law lost interest in us all, but-“
“You’re fixing to make a deal with him, ain’t you,” her paramour and partner in crime demanded.
The brassy blonde sighed wearily and moaned, “Oh, Lord, hang some crepe on your nose. Your brain just died. I’d have turned you in for the bounty weeks ago if that had been my plan when I took you under my wing. How many times do I have to tell you the big job I have planned for up Tombstone way will Pay more than I could get for you, Frank, Jesse, and the Kid? I don’t need any damned bounty money, honey. I need some tough hairpins to back my play when I clean out that bullion shipment next month!”
Harmony moved to another window, six-gun in hand, as he grumbled a lot about recent developments. She said soothingly, “I know we seem to have been too tricky with Longarm for our own good, honey. I’m sorry I got all the boys killed. But we had to keep this homespread to work out of. We still need a place to hole up with that freight wagon of bullion we’ve been planning on. There’s just no way you could freight tons of silver out before they cooled off, and once we get rid of that one pest outside, and recruit a few more gunslicks-“
Then she screamed as Longarm, having caught a glimpse of her nervous pacing when she passed a wall mirror, let fly a buffalo round that shattered both another window pane and the wall mirror, to inspire a dive for the floor and considerable wetness between her already sweat-soaked thighs.
Harmony blazed back at the smoke curling up from the cactus across the way, then ducked and rolled for the other shattered window before Longarm could return his fire.
Crouched below the level of the other sill, reloading, Harmony muttered, “He’s still using that slow but sure buffalo rifle. He must have picked up another six-gun by now. He must be out to rattle us by busting things up with them big slugs.”
Goldmine Gloria moved toward the slot by the door with the Yellow Boy that Centerfire wasn’t using any more as she licked her lips and said, “It seems to be working. He’s got me scared skinny and you seem to be the one he’s after!”
Harmony Drake’s voice chilled ten degrees as he quietly asked her just how he was supposed to take that last remark.
Goldmine Gloria probably saved her blond head as she turned from the slot instead of shoving the gun muzzle out of it. She saw the sweaty but pale-faced Harmony was staring at her, rather than out the window, and she smiled wanly and said, “Honey, you’re letting him get to you! Our only chance calls for our sticking together! Be a good boy and shoot the bad man for Mommy and Mommy will give you a nice blow job. He’s whittled us down to where it’s only two to one. But that’s still two to one, if we don’t lose our heads.”
It wasn’t going to work. Goldmine Gloria was good at her chosen criminal career because she could almost read the mind of a mark from his or her words and expressions. Like all good confidence artists or poker players, Goldmine Gloria knew it was when words and expressions didn’t quite match up that things were about to go to hell in a hack. So as her partner in bed and crime smiled boyishly and softly allowed he’d yet to see her lose her own head, Goldmine Gloria fired from the hip and spun Harmony away from the other window with a round of .44-40 lead in his chest.
She watched numbly as her fellow plotter and paramour twitched his last on the dusty floor amid shards of busted glass and some spatters from the more thoroughly shot Centerfire. Then she rose to move over to that wall mirror while, outside, Longarm called out, “It’s commencing to get awfully hot out here.”
The sole survivor didn’t answer. She knew how much time she had. She knew Longarm was alone out there and had no way of seeing in. So that gave her time to strip off her sweated-up and pissed-in shift, rub a damp rag over her flushed skin, and run a comb through her limp hair before she moved over to the front door, opened it a crack, and tossed the Yellow Boy out before calling, “It’s over. You won. Come on in and have some sangria I just made.”
Longarm called back, “I have a better notion, Miss Gloria. I want you to step out on the veranda with your hands polite. Then I want the others to follow suit before we talk about any cooling drinks this here sunny afternoon.”
Goldmine Gloria stepped outside, in nothing but her high-button shoes. Longarm knew they were miles from the nearest neighbor, but it still surprised him some to see a stark naked gal with a figure like that by broad day.
Staying put in the ruined orchard behind its cactus hedge, Longarm ordered her to move clear of the gaping doorway behind her. Goldmine Gloria moved mighty interestingly as she sauntered to one side, calling across to him, “You got all three of them, Custis. There’s nobody left but little old me, and I hope you understand they made me do it that night aboard the train.”
Longarm sighed and shouted, “I saw how they had you covered. I have you covered better. So what say you come on across to me and all our ponies now.”
She demurred girlishly. “Without any clothes on, Custis?”
He thought, then decided, “Go back inside. Put on some duds. Then I want you to do me a little favor before
