Read Online Longarm #396 : Longarm and the Castle of the Damned (9781101545249) by Tabor Evans - Free Book Online

two hands.”
    â€œCoon?”
    Moore nodded. “You’ll understand the name soon as you see Coon. He has these dark, dark circles around both his eyes. Makes him look like a raccoon. I think he’s been called that since he was a pup. I got no idea what his right name would be. All I ever heard him called was Coon.”
    â€œCan you tell me how to get to his place?” Longarm asked.
    â€œEasy as can be,” Moore said as the hand named Petey led a barrel-chested gray horse out of the corral and gave its reins to Longarm. “What you do is to go over this way . . .”

Chapter 18
    Longarm needed to go to Coon Morgan’s ranch so he could speak with Netty, but he needed that saddle first, so he detoured back along the road to Medicine Bow until in the distance he could see the carcass of the livery stable’s brown mare.
    The dead horse was barely visible under a moving blanket of magpies and buzzards. But then in nature nothing goes to waste. Less than a day after the mare was killed she was about half-eaten. A few more days and there would be nothing left but bones. And the coyotes would soon scatter those all to hell and gone.
    Longarm sat balanced atop the borrowed gray for some time while he studied the country in a broad circle, with the brown’s carcass at the center.
    Whoever it was that shot at him yesterday could well have returned to plan another ambush, with the saddle and bridle as bait that Longarm could be expected to return to. If there was a trap, Longarm had no desire to walk into it.
    He sat and watched for the length of time it took him to smoke a cheroot, then he rode the rim of that imaginary circle, staying a quarter mile or so out from the mare and examining every rock, shrub, and cactus that might conceal a man with a rifle. He found nothing, but only when a very careful search was concluded did he rein the gray gelding toward the dead horse.
    A dark cloud of flapping, squawking, fluttering birds filled the air as Longarm’s approach frightened them away from their meal.
    By the time he threw his leg over the gray’s neck and slid down to the ground, he was damned glad to be standing on his own hind legs again. Riding bareback just was not as comfortable as being able to relax in a good stock saddle.
    It took only moments for him to saddle the gray. He hung the mare’s bridle on the saddle horn, put his foot in the stirrup, and mounted. Damn but it felt good to have leather between him and the horse, and it felt even better to have stirrups to take his weight instead of having to use his thigh muscles constantly.
    â€œNow then,” he muttered aloud, “let’s see can we find Coon Morgan’s place now that I’ve gotten away from the track Jess Moore pointed out for me.”
    The gray horse twitched its ears at the sound of his voice.
    Man and horse were not fifty yards from the brown mare’s carcass before the carrion eaters began to return.

Chapter 19
    Coon Morgan had a rawhide outfit with a long, low dugout for a ranch headquarters and three more smaller dugouts that likely served as a bunkhouse and storage. An adobe brick oven stood beside a pavilion, a shake roof supported on four tall posts. A long table sat beneath the roof of the pavilion, and there was a raised fire pit with an iron grill over it at the end opposite the brick oven.
    A set of corrals, haystacks, and sorting pens lay beyond the dugouts. Half a dozen horses stood, hipshot and tails switching, close to a partially filled hay bunk.
    It was past midday when Longarm rode into the yard. Smoke rose from the oven, and there was a woman bending over a washtub stirring clothes with a long wooden paddle. The tub sat well off the ground, resting on more adobe bricks. She had a fire built beneath the tub to boil her wash water.
    Longarm stopped the gray horse short of the woman and her washing so as not to billow any dust over her clean clothing. At his approach she