LONGARM AND THE DAUGHTERS OF DEATH
By Tabor Evans
Jove Books New York Copyright (C) 1996 by Jove Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
ISBN: 0-515-11783-8
Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016.
JOVE and the “J” design are trademarks belonging to Jove Publications, Inc.
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
Printing history Jove edition / January 1996
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
DON’T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
THE GUNSMITH by J. R. Roberts Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him … the Gunsmith.
LONGARM by Tabor Evans The popular long-running series about U.S. Deputy Marshal Long—his life, his loves, his fight for justice.
SLOCUM by Jake Logan Today’s longest-running action Western. John Slocum rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.
McMASTERS by Lee Morgan The blazing new series from the creators of Longarm. When McMasters shoots, he shoots to kill. To his enemies, he is the most dangerous man they have ever known.
Chapter 1
Longarm almost had the young woman completely undressed. He’d gotten her blouse and skirt off and her slip and chemise. Now she stood in the middle of the room of the little cabin wearing only her bloomers and her little leather slippers. He was down on his knees in front of her, his breath starting to come too fast to make breathing comfortable, getting ready to ease her feet out of the slippers and then go to work on the bloomers. She stood there, naked from the waist up, her beautiful young milk-white breasts erect and topped with cherry-colored nipples pointing at him like twin cannons.
There came a pounding on the cabin door and a voice called out, “Marshal, Marshal Long! You got to come quick!”
Longarm sighed and stood up, looking at the girl regretfully. It was fortunate that the call had come when it did, but it was damned bad luck that it had come at all. He had not undressed other than to take off his hat and his gunbelt. Now he picked his gunbelt up off the floor and buckled it around his waist, still enjoying the sight of the girl. Hannah was her name, Hannah Diver. He reflected, as he took her by the arm and steered her toward the bed, that he would have liked to have done some diving on her. She walked like a sleepwalker, moving docilely and easily at his touch. Diver wasn’t really her last name. Six weeks before she’d married a man named Gus Home, but an hour after her marriage, Gus had been called away by the gang of outlaws he worked with, and she was still waiting to have her marriage consummated.
Longarm, after a week of diligent preparation, had been just about to handle the job for her. If she acted like she was sleeping on her feet or in a trance, it was because she was still a bit apprehensive at the prospect of what was about to happen to her. In everyday life, and in a familiar activity, she was something of a spitfire, as Longarm had reason to know.
Now he bade her get in the bed. He helped her under the covers and assured her he wouldn’t be long. She turned her head on the pillow and looked up at him with eyes that hinted at fire and said, “That’s what Gus told me, an’ I been keeping myself Sunday-clean and perfumed for damn near two months, and what has it got me?”
He leaned down and kissed her as the pounding started on the cabin door again. He said, a little pain in his groin, “I promise, Hannah. Let me get rid of whoever is at the door and I will be right back. But you stay under the covers so you don’t have to get dressed again.” Before he moved, he lifted the covers to look at her firm, thrusting breasts again. It was a little cool in the cabin, and her nipples were puckered and hard. He ran his eyes down what he could see of her, all the way from her light brown hair and hazel eyes to the small waist and the tops of her perfectly rounded thighs. He sighed. The pounding was still coming at the door. He didn’t often get a chance to do a good turn for such a delicious-looking twenty-two-year-old maiden in distress, and he hated like hell to leave his work unfinished. He dropped the covers, told Hannah he wouldn’t be but a moment, and then walked across the hardwood floor of the big cabin.
He took hold of the wrought-iron handle, tripped the latch, and jerked open the heavy wooden door. A man, considerably smaller than Longarm’s six-foot, 190-pound frame, stood there, his fist still poised in the air to knock again. He had a deputy sheriff’s badge on his shirt and a weak, ferret-like look on his face.
Longarm said, letting his irritation show, “What the hell you want? Don’t you know I’m in here interviewing the wife of one of the culprits? What’s the matter with you, Deputy Purliss? Ain’t you got a damn lick of sense, interrupting an interview like this?”
Purliss always sounded as if he was struggling to catch his breath. He said, “I’m mighty sorry, Marshal Long, but the sheriff done told me to fetch you. They got them boys treed ‘bout six miles up river. Got ‘em penned up in a cave, way up on the bluff. Sheriff wants you to come.”
With a sigh Longarm stepped out of the cabin and shut the door behind him. He said, “Purliss, the sheriff has had that gang treed, as you call it, before and it came to nothing. Now, I am getting damn tired of his wild-goose chases. Especially now when I am about to get some information out of Gus Home’s wife.”
“But they is there, Marshal. An’ Sheriff Bodenheimer wants you to come. There is some question they is across the county line an’ he wouldn’t have jurisdiction, don’t you know. So he needs you, you bein’ a federal officer an’ all.”
Longarm frowned. “How many damn times I got to explain to Bodenheimer that it don’t matter about county lines if he is in hot pursuit.”
“But that be the thang, Marshal. Sheriff Bodenheimer ain’t shore he could be considered in hot pursuit an’ he
