“I said you’re to stay inside an’ I mean it. If you poke your head out I might go an’ misunderstand what’s happening an’ put a .44 slug through the bridge o’ your nose. You understand me?”
“Was that a shot that I heard, Marshal?”
“D’ you understand me?” Longarm insisted.
“Yes, of course, but …”
He was no longer paying attention to the bitch in blue. She could wait.
Right now he had other things to think about. He palmed his Colt and began a slow drift in the direction the gunshot had come from.
Chapter 33
The back wall of Burdick’s station was windowless. Plain and blank and with no defensive firing slits or other openings where a gun and gunman might be concealed. Which meant whoever had fired the shot that hit with deadly accuracy—albeit with fortuitous result for Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long—had to have been hiding at one corner or the other of the longish structure.
As close as Longarm could recall when he tried to bring the exact sound of the shot back to mind, the would-be assassin must have been on the south or right-hand side of the place.
Staying well clear of the building on the theory that the guy had had an aimed shot from rest at a stationary target, but that he couldn’t be that accurate again if his quarry was at a distance and at the same time was in motion, Longarm skirted wide around the back of the place until he could get an unobstructed view of that side of the building. As he pretty well expected, there was no one in sight.
Once again his small-bore attacker had made a swift, single attempt at murder and then … disappeared.
This was the fourth time the same man had taken a crack at him, Longarm reflected sourly, and he had not yet gotten so much as a glimpse of the sonuvabitch.
The man might as well have been a ghost. A will-o-the-wisp. What he most assuredly was not was imaginary.
Longarm had the misshapen lead slug in his pocket to prove that, the bit of distorted metal that had been stopped by the thickness of his leather wallet and the barrier of his badge of office.
Except for those—except for the accuracy of the gunman’s aimed fire—Longarm could well be lying dead or dying at that very moment.
Whoever this bastard was, Longarm acknowledged, he was uncommonly good at his job.
And for him it was a job. Longarm would have willingly bet the farm on that assumption. Who except a paid professional, and a damned good one at that, would keep coming back for repeated tries after the first few failed. Most especially, who but a very confident professional would make this last attempt in broad daylight and from such a distance.
Longarm stopped for a moment to estimate the range from the back corner of the station building—which surely was the spot from which that shot had been fired—to the front door of the ladies’ outhouse. Forty yards? At least that, he decided.
A small-caliber pistol is a short-range firearm. Generally speaking, even in the hands of an expert, a .22 pistol could be considered to have an effective range of not more than fifteen yards. Twenty-five yards tops, and that was if the shooter had a solid rest for his hand.
Most handgun combat is undertaken, Longarm knew perfectly well, at distances of from two to eight yards. And never mind what the dime novels claimed. The people back East who wrote and printed them, Ned Buntline and his ilk, might not know any better, but Longarm and all his fellow peace officers damn sure did. Gunfights are mostly belly-to-belly affairs, and the man who is steady enough to draw a bead and take aimed fire from longer ranges is one mighty rare bird indeed.
This guy, though, had shot from an estimated … no, screw this estimated stuff. Longarm wanted to know for sure. He strode to the back corner of the station and, marching in a straight line, paced off the distance to the outhouse.
Forty-two yards. His guess had been close.
He looked back over his shoulder and reflected on the view of the outhouse he’d had from the ambusher’s place of hiding. There was a square-on view of the door to the women’s shitter, but the wider two-holer assigned to the men sat at a slight angle so that from that south end of the station building there was only an oblique view of the men’s outhouse door. Anyone coming out of that outhouse would be momentarily screened from view by the swing of the wooden door itself, and if the victim then happened to move to his left instead of coming straight on, there would be no good shot at all. In order to be sure of getting a good shot at someone emerging from the men’s outhouse an ambusher would have to set up at the north end of the station. And if he were standing there he would be in view of the men who were working in the barn.
Interesting, Longarm thought as he pondered the facts. Damned well interesting.
He pulled out a panatela—later on if the mud dried enough to be a little less sloppy, perhaps he could walk out to the stranded coach and get some of his own brand of cheroots; the panatelas were nice and he was grateful to have them, but they couldn’t compare with his old favorites—and took his time about lighting the thing.
He puffed on the cigar for a few minutes while he rolled a few things around in his mind.
Then, satisfied, he said, “Reckon the excitement is over. You can come out now.”
“I was afraid you’d forgotten me,” the blue bitch’s voice called from behind the closed outhouse door.
“No chance o’ that,” he assured her.
“Very well then.” The door came open with a faint creaking of the rusty spring, and the veiled woman stepped outside to join Longarm.
“Turn around for a second, if you don’t mind, please.”
