Read Online Longarm 397 : Longarm and the Doomed Beauty (9781101545973) by Tabor Evans - Free Book Online Page A

wooden.
    Longarm chuckled. Did Billy really know what the girl looked like, or had he been merely trying to prepare his senior deputy for the worst possibility? Likely, the former.
    Somehow, he’d gotten a description of the girl and, knowing Longarm’s weakness for the fairer sex, had decided to jerk the randy lawman’s chain. In Billy’s conniving way, the ruse had probably also been meant to warn Longarm to keep his hands, as well as other more insistent body parts, off and out of the girl.
    â€œOh, God,” the girl cried, wrinkling her thin, blond brows as she stared up at the big lawman towering over her, raking his eyes across every inch of her. “You’re not only uncouth but crazy, to boot!”
    â€œEasy, miss,” Longarm said, poking her pistol into the waistband of his pants and regaining his composure. “I’m no more dangerous than your average coyote dog— as long as you don’t prod me with sticks or guns, I keep my hackles down.” He turned to Deputy Leroy Panabaker standing just inside the door, blushing as he stared in unconscious admiration at the beautiful, disheveled, young creature on the bed near Longarm. “How many more o’ them trail wolves, as Miss Pritchard calls ’em, is lurkin’ around out there, Leroy?”
    The boy turned slowly toward Longarm, lower jaw hanging. “What’s that?”
    â€œHow many more o’ them Younger gang is on the lurk, Deputy?” Longarm repeated, raising his voice to break the young badge toter out of his stupor.
    â€œTwenty, at least,” the girl answered.
    Deputy Panabaker patted down the rooster tail at the crown of his skull and frowned. “There can’t be that many. When I was up at Miss Barbara’s place, I only counted fifteen or so.”
    â€œWhere’s Miss Barbara’s place?” Longarm asked.
    â€œAbout five miles up Old Burn Canyon, south of here. That’s where the gang is holed up. They been sending a few men at a time to town to cause trouble—mess up the train tracks, shoot up saloons, and take potshots at the hotel where Miss Pritchard’s been holed up since the two Pinkertons brought her to town to testify against old Babe Younger. They killed Detective Ramsay just last week—leastways, it was likely the gang that ambushed him from a dark alley when he was bringin’ Miss Pritchard a supper tray.”
    â€œThose Younger savages were tryin’ to scare and bedevil me, I reckon,” the girl said, crossing her pretty legs and giving one foot a shake as she folded her arms on her chest. “And the rest of the town, too—for holding the trial for that awful varmint in the first place! But now, just this morning, they killed Mr. Andrews, the second Pinkerton, and stormed over here promising to hang me from the same gallows on which the town hanged Babe Younger!”
    She sobbed and, scrunching up her face in horror, threw her head back, and howled. “After they took me back to that brothel in the canyon and let each of the gang take his turn with me!” She shook her head as tears streamed down her peaches-and-cream cheeks. “Oh, God— I am truly doomed to a fate worse than death !”
    â€œAh, you ain’t doomed, Miss Pritchard.”
    Longarm shifted his feet uncomfortably, staring at the poor, bereaved creature sobbing before him. Finally, awkwardly, he sagged down on the edge of the bed. He wasn’t sure he should put his arm around her. The gesture might only repel her further. But she obviously needed comforting. He steeled himself for the worst, laid his rifle down on the bed beside him, and snaked his left arm around her slender shoulders.
    He felt like a varmint as low and seedy as the Younger gang for what the girl’s warm, yielding flesh did to his nether regions as well as his imagination. But he gave her a little squeeze, just the same, and tried to keep his thoughts on