Tabor looked at him strangely. “We make a fine living. Hasn’t Mr. Killion explained things?”
“Some,” Longarm lied. “You know, about the trains and such, but I still expected people to keep busy.”
“We do keep busy,” Tabor explained. “There’s always some of us out scouting up opportunities.”
Longarm understood Tabor to mean that members of the gang were constantly searching for other banks, trains, stages, and individuals to rob, and then reporting their findings to Matthew Killion.
“How many jobs do you do a month?”
“Enough to live right,” Tabor said. “We got good whiskey to drink, as much as we want, and we got some whores, though they’re pretty worn out and not a damn bit lively unless you start to pinchin’ ‘em when they act too lazy.”
“I see.”
Tabor licked his lips and his eyes grew bright. “Some of them whores are from Mexico, and we’ve got some ex-prison girls too. Ones that have been in real trouble.”
“Nevada prison girls, right?” Longarm asked, suddenly becoming nervous.
“Yeah, I expect. One named Lucy is from Arizona, though. Seems to me she was once in that same Yuma prison that they locked you up in. Hell, you might even know her!”
“I doubt it,” Longarm said. “They kept the women and the men inmates as far away from each other as possible and we never hardly even saw one another. Most of the women in Yuma were as hard as nails.”
“Lucy is hard, but she’s also handsome. You don’t pinch her, though. If you do that you’re liable to get a knife shoved up your ass … if she don’t first whack off your balls.”
“I’ll remember that,” Longarm said.
“Good thing if you do.” Tabor was leaving. “I don’t like to hurt the girls anyway. And as for Lucy, she just sort of scares the piss outa me. I’d rather meet up with a cougar in a cave than Lucy in her bed.”
“I’ll stay away from her,” Longarm vowed.
“Best you do,” Tabor advised as he went out the door.
Chapter 14
That evening, Longarm went outside and headed across the street for the saloon. He was hungry and looking for a meal as well as a little sociable conversation. Not that Longarm had any illusions about making friends with anyone who’d ride with Killion’s gang, because he was determined to bring the whole lot of them crashing down. But in his experience, men with whiskey in their bellies tended to open up and reveal secrets that they would never speak about when completely sober. With any luck, Longarm hoped he might even get one of Killion’s men to spill his guts about that big Donner Pass train robbery.
Longarm was halfway across the street when a loud shout stopped him dead in his tracks.
“Hey, you big sonofabitch!”
Longarm’s hand streaked for his six-gun even as he twisted around in the direction of the voice. A man was standing deep in the shadows between two buildings, and Longarm couldn’t pinpoint his exact location until his six-gun stabbed muzzle flame.
A bullet struck Longarm in the ribs and its impact spun him halfway around, probably saving his life. Longarm regained his balance and fired at the muzzle-flash. An instant later, he heard the man grunt. Before Longarm could get off another shot at his ambusher, he was gone, the sound of his boots pounding down the narrow corridor between two burned-out storefronts.
Longarm gripped his side and felt warm blood. He swore and limped after his man, but when he reached the spot where the man had fired, Longarm realized that he had too big a head start and would be impossible to overtake.
“What happened?” Randy asked, rushing up to join Longarm.
Longarm holstered his gun and pushed back his coat. “I was ambushed.”
“By Dean?”
“He’d be my first guess.” Longarm took a deep breath. The initial shock was wearing off to be replaced by a deep, throbbing pain in his side. “I managed to return fire and I’m pretty sure that Dean took a bullet.”
“And he just opened fire on you from ambush?”
“That’s right.”
“We’ll find him,” Randy vowed, his eyes dropping to Longarm’s side. “How bad are you hurt?”
“I might have broken a rib,” Longarm said through gritted teeth. “I dunno.”
“We’ll take you over to see Lucy.”
“What for? Isn’t she the ex-convict from Yuma?”
“That’s right, and she’s also the best in Helldorado when it comes to patching a man up. Besides,” Randy said, “you might even know her from the days when you and she were both inmates down in the Arizona Territory.”
“Not likely,” Longarm said quickly. “And I’d just as soon let the doctorin’ wait until I find Dean before he tries to ambush me again.”
“Maybe you killed him.”
“I don’t think so,” Longarm said. “He was running pretty hard when he took off.”
“There’s no place to run in Helldorado,” Randy said confidently. “Let’s go find Lucy and have her take care of
