Longarm and the Killer Countess by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Longarm made the climb without incident except for scraping his knee when his low-heeled cavalry boot slipped out of a notch in the rock wall. Huffing and puffing from the elevation as well as the cold air that raked his lungs like sandpaper, he gained the top of the ridge wall in a little over five minutes, and dropped to a knee.

He looked around at the conifers studding the ridge that continued to slope upward away from the box canyon. Starlight seeped through the canopy, offering just enough light to see a scattering of pine needles and recently fallen cones in the crusty snow. Obviously, no fresh snow had fallen in the past day or two, and the intense sunlight at this altitude had probably caused the surface to melt for a time in the afternoon before freezing again at sundown.

If anyone had been up here, and had knocked the snow from the pine bough hanging low over the lip of the ridge wall, their tracks weren’t apparent. There was an indentation at the base of a broad-boled fir, but that could have been made by an animal several days ago, the track obscured by melting and freezing snow.

Longarm straightened and continued to look around the forest, which was so quiet he imagined he could hear the stars kindling high overhead. He stepped over a deadfall, then turned suddenly to stare up the snowy slope, through the dark, columnar trunks. He’d heard something. The rasp of a light foot in snow. Or thought he had. As he held still and listened, he heard nothing more except the strumming of one of the Cossacks’ guitar-like string instruments getting tuned it up in preparation for another Russian hoedown.

Obviously, the mood in the camp was considerably lighter than it had been the night before. Thank Christ the countess got her moose . . .

Longarm continued to stare up the slope, reluctant to turn away. He had the dread-like feeling of being watched. But as he stayed frozen, listening and watching, he neither heard nor saw anything amiss. Finally—his imagination was likely getting away from him up here with these crazy Russians—he turned back toward the canyon and took some time finding another way back down to the canyon floor.

When he’d descended the ridge wall without breaking his neck but only skinning his other knee, he shouldered his rifle and tramped back in the direction of the camp. He could hear more instruments now, including the flute-like instrument that Gogol had played the other, more festive evening. As he approached the three sleighs under the overarching rock ledge that blotted out the stars, he could hear several men clapping and chanting in their mother tongue.

It sounded a little like a powwow, Longarm thought, though without the rattles and the metronomic beat of a war drum.

One of the pickets that Bodrov had assigned to the camp’s perimeter called a warning as Longarm approached. Longarm yelled out to identify himself and continued heading for the fires, which showed orange in the dark pines beyond the sleighs.

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