When Ramey cursed and kept moving, Longarm coolly shot the man’s other leg out from under him. Ramey’s scream filled the alley and he collapsed, spitting curses.
Longarm trotted over beside the fallen killer. Ramey was writhing around on his stomach and seemed to be mindless in his pain. But when Longarm grabbed his arm and tried to turn him over, the little gunman had one last card to play and took a vicious swipe at Longarm with a short-bladed pocket knife.
“You’re harder to finish than a damned rattlesnake,” Longarm grunted, after jumping back with the knee of his pants sliced open.
Ramey tried to lunge at him with the pocket knife and Longarm, having had more than enough from this little assassin, simply booted Ramey in the side of the head. Ramey grunted and his body quivered into stillness.
Longarm searched the man and found that he was carrying almost a thousand dollars cash. “Blood money, I’ll bet,” Longarm muttered, taking the knife and then the empty derringer and Colt.
He used Ramey’s pretty red silk bandanna as a tourniquet on the man’s right leg, and Ramey’s gunbelt served the same purpose for the left leg. But that didn’t completely stop the bleeding.
“I’d like nothing better than to let you bleed to death in this alley on account of what you did to Kane and Ward, but I’m going to make sure that you tell me the whole story and that we get to the bottom of who paid you all this blood money,” Longarm told the still figure.
Longarm heard a commotion behind him, and spun around to see men crowded at the entrance to this alleyway. “Hey!” he yelled. “Come give me a hand!”
They hurried forward, and Longarm ordered them to pick Jack Ramey up and carry him over to the jail.
“Don’t he need a doctor awful bad first?” a puffing man said as they carried Ramey back to the main street.
“I suppose,” Longarm said, noting the condition of Ramey’s legs. “Probably at least one of his leg bones is shattered. Dr. Blake is going to hate me for all the work I’m bringing him, but someone had better go find him anyway if he’s already left the jail.”
As it turned out, Thaddeus Blake had not yet left the jail and the bodies of Marshal Kane and Deputy Ward.
“He the one that shot ‘em?” the doctor asked when they carried the unconscious and badly wounded gunman into the jail and laid him on a straw mattress.
“Yeah,” Longarm said, “that’s Jack Ramey.”
“Thought it might be,” the doctor said. “He never showed his face much around Bodie. Spent all his time in the Champion Saloon, when he wasn’t off raising hell.”
“His hellin’ days are over,” Longarm said. “And so are those of the bartender who works at the Champion.”
Blake, who had been about to tear open the pants leg so that he could get at the bullet wounds, looked up suddenly. “You mean you killed another one!”
“No,” Longarm said, “he was the first man I’ve killed in Bodie. This little bastard is the one that killed Marshal Kane and his deputy, remember?”
“Yeah,” the doctor said. “I just meant … well, I just meant that a lot of people have gotten lead poisoning today.”
“I know,” Longarm said, his mind turning to Megan as he started toward the door, “and a lot more could get the fatal disease before things finally improve.”
“Hey!”
Longarm turned at the doorway, suddenly feeling old and tired and in need of a drink. “Yeah?”
“What do we do with Ramey if I can keep him from bleeding to death?”
Longarm thought about that for a moment, then said, “I don’t think you have to do anything, Doc. I mean, it’s not like he is going to get up and walk out of here.”
“No,” the doctor said, “but what if someone wants to walk into this office and kill him so that he doesn’t talk?”
“Good point,” Longarm said. “I’m glad someone is still thinking. Doc, if that happens, just excuse yourself and take a walk.”
“I will,” the doctor assured him.
Longarm nodded, and then he reloaded his gun. The doctor watched him through his bloodshot eyes, and then he shook his head and said, “If you’re going to shoot anyone else, don’t wound ‘em. I’m worn out.”
A sardonic smile tugged at the corners of Longarm’s mouth. “Doc, I’ll sure keep that in mind,” he promised as he headed back toward the U.S. Hotel.
Chapter 14
“Darlin’, how’s the shoulder feeling?” Longarm asked, closing, then locking their hotel room door behind him.
Megan motioned Longarm over to her side, and when he sat down she said, “I heard all the gunshots and I was so afraid that …”
Tears started to fill her eyes, and Longarm smiled. “As you can see, I’m just fine.”
“What happened?”
“I hunted down, shot the legs out from under, and then arrested a gunman named Jack Ramey.” Longarm took a deep breath because the rest was hard to put into words. “Ramey sneaked up behind the jail and gunned Ivan
