Well, my, oh, my, Longarm thought with considerable satisfaction. What do we have here? And just what might these gents be doing tonight? Out for a moonlight stroll? Just happened to pass near to the Travis cabin? Sheer coincidence, their lawyers would claim. Hell, yes.
Longarm’s lips thinned in a grimace that held no mirth whatsoever.
He sat silent and still. Content to bide his time and let these jehus demonstrate their intentions beyond the possibility of reasonable doubt.
Chapter 37
The two dark figures, each bundled heavily in coats and gloves and mufflers, made their cautious approach to the back of the cabin. The one with the shotgun, slightly the shorter of the two, stood facing outward to keep watch, while the other one went about the business of dowsing the logs of the wall with coal oil, starting about waist high and letting the volatile fluid pour over the logs thoroughly.
Actually Longarm was not sure that would be enough to destroy the place even if he left them alone with their task. The thing was, Darby Travis, or whoever it was that built this cabin, had used thick, unsplit, but completely peeled logs for his construction.
With no bark to act as tinder, and as difficult as it is to set a thick chunk of wood aflame, there was some doubt—in Longarm’s mind anyway—as to whether these fellows were very adept when it came to arson. Like as not, he figured, the coal oil would burn itself out harmlessly on the surface without getting the logs started. Not that he was going to offer any helpful suggestions for improvement, of course. All Longarm needed for his purposes was to see a match flame. From there on, any court in the country would be forced to conclude that conflagration was what these gents had in mind.
And sure enough, there was the fire as the one with the scattergun said something to his partner, and the taller one struck a match.
Longarm was thirty, forty feet away, and could hear the sounds of the whispered conversation without being able to make out the words.
He thought the voice was familiar, but could not have sworn to that.
And anyway, he had everything he needed now.
Staying low behind the screen of willow withes, he first took aim with his .44 and then announced, “Don’t neither one of you move. You’re both under arrest. You with the gun, drop it. You with the match, hold still.”
Dammit, that was what a peace officer was supposed to say. Billy Vail drilled that into all his deputies often enough.
But just as pretty nearly always happened, the book that said an officer was supposed to announce himself didn’t get around to guaranteeing that the asshole idiots would go along with the instructions.
Hell, they almost never did.
And these fellows were no exception.
The one holding the match dropped it. The one with the gun held onto it.
The taller one quite naturally tossed his match onto the coal oil he’d just finished pouring, and a gout of bright flame leaped up the wall, illuminating the men and everything for a dozen yards around them.
The shorter one brought his shotgun to bear, searching in the sudden flash of light for the source of Longarm’s voice.
Longarm didn’t know for sure if the guy with the gun could see him or not, but he was not much inclined to take chances with a man who’d tried several times already to shoot him.
Longarm’s Colt barked, and a slug took the one with the shotgun high in the middle of his chest. Just about at the point where his heart ought to be.
The man teetered backward, righted himself, and went down face-first in the snow, the shotgun discharging harmlessly into the ground as a convulsive grasp of dying fingers closed on the triggers.
“You! Hold still, dammit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hands up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now kick some snow onto that fire and knock it down.”
“Yes, sir.” The man held onto his oil can with one hand and bent to sweep some snow onto the fire.
At least that was what Longarm thought he was doing.
Instead the fool grabbed for the shotgun his partner had dropped.
“Dammit!” Longarm snapped.
He thought the dead man had already tripped both triggers of the scattergun. He thought the thing was empty and harmless. He thought.
The problem was that he did not know that for certain sure. And he wasn’t willing to bet his life on it. The man picked up the shotgun. Longarm put a bullet into his forehead. The man dropped like a marionette with its wires cut. “Shit,” Longarm growled, stumbling forward on legs numbed by the combination of freezing cold and long inactivity so he could dowse the coal-oil fire and remove the threat to Darby Travis’s home.
Only when he was done with that did he take time to see just who it was he’d shot and killed this frosty morning.
“Aw, God damn it!” he complained once he saw.
Chapter 38
