Read Online Longarm and the War Clouds by Tabor Evans - Free Book Online

right. Starlight glistened off a rifle barrel. Longarm saw a sombrero silhouetted against the sky. The bushwhacker saw him at the same time and jerked his rifle up.
    Longarm aimed and fired.
    The man screamed. His own rifle crashed, lapping flames at a slant toward the ground. The ricochet plowed into the end of the boulder near Longarm as the man in the sombrero screamed
“Mierda!”
and staggered backward down the slope, spurs chinging.
    A rifle barked farther right along the ridge, and Longarm pumped a fresh cartridge into his own Winchester but held fire when an answering flash and belch evoked a grunt and sent more spurs to ringing raucously.
    Longarm called, “War Cloud?”
    â€œHere, Custis,” came the Indian’s deep voice.
    A half second later, another rifle flashed out of the darkness on the downslope ahead of Longarm and on his left—about forty yards away. The bullet burned a line across the lawman’s left cheek. He wheeled and, crouching, gritting his teeth, emptied his Winchester, the spent cartridges clinging off the boulder behind him.
    He lowered the gun and ran down the slope, following a path that the moon- and starlight revealed between brush clumps and rocks. Ahead, he saw the jostling shadow of the man he’d opened up on moving away. The closer Longarm got to the gent, the clearer the man’s grunts and groans became as he ran in the opposite direction. His gait grew more and more shambling.
    Finally, he stopped and half fell against a rock.
    â€œHold it!” Longarm shouted, palming his Colt.
    He wanted the man alive. He wanted to know who the shooters were and what had prompted the ambush.
    â€œFuck you, you son of a bitch!” the man screamed.
    Light flashed off the barrel of the rifle that the hombre was swinging toward Longarm. The lawman extended his Colt Frontier and hurled two chunks of .44-caliber lead at the dead center of the man. The bullets punched him straight back. He dropped his rifle and flailed at the rock to no avail.
    He piled up on the ground beyond it with a shrill cry. There were wild snapping sounds. The man groaned, gasped frantically. When Longarm reached the wounded bushwhacker, he saw what the commotion had been. The man had fallen into a sprawling cholla and been impaled by a thousand of the jumping cactus’s porcupine-like quills.
    He lay quivering as he died, blood glistening darkly in the moonlight.
    War Cloud said in a low, even, unalarmed voice that rang clear in the quiet night, “You all right over there, brother?”
    â€œBetter than this poor son of a bitch.”
    â€œYou better come over and look at this, brother,” said War Cloud.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œWe’re rich men, Custis.”

Chapter 8
    Longarm saw a faint glow in the rocks off to his right, in the direction from which War Cloud’s voice had come. Leaving the dead man where he lay on the cholla, he made his way across the shoulder of the slope until he was looking down into a hollow cut in the rock-strewn hillside.
    In the hollow, by the low fire burning there with a coffeepot sitting inside the stone ring and on a flat rock to stay warm, War Cloud stood, looking up at Longarm. The Indian’s lined face was creased with one of his devilish grins.
    He held his Spencer repeater out and down, indicating the pair of saddlebags near the fire. Longarm knew what he’d find inside the bags even before he skipped rocks down into the hollow and flipped one of the flaps back. He stared down into the pouch stuffed with packets of banded greenbacks and cream-colored burlap sacks. Longarm plucked one of the small sacks up out of the pouch. Coins clinked inside. He hefted it in his hand.
    â€œGold, I’d say.”
    â€œWe could head for Frisco, brother,” War Cloud said. “I hear the women are pretty there.” He grinned again, betraying the fact he was joshing. Longarm had never known a more honest or