Longarm and the Midnight Mistress by Tabor Evans

Author:Tabor Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Chapter 18

“Shouldn’t you be staying lower than that, Marshal?”

“I can see better this way,” Longarm said. He was exposed from his solar plexus upward, kneeling more or less in plain sight from the house windows. “It would take an aimed shot to hit me,” he explained. “In order to take aim, they’d have t’ show themselves. I got every confidence I could bust ’em before they could draw a good bead an’ get an aimed shot off in this direction.” He smiled. “They ain’t firing as wild as you was a while ago but they ain’t taking close aim neither.”

“Do you even think they’re still in there?” Mader asked. “We haven’t seen nor heard anything of them in twenty, thirty minutes or so.”

“They’re still there. Jason is around back in the alley watching so they don’t sneak off that way. I assume that’s where the other constable . . . Sam, is it? I’m assuming that’s where he is, too. Is that right?”

Ben Mader went pale. “He . . . I thought you knew. Whistler is dead. That’s what started this fight.”

“Dead? What happened?”

“He’s laying in those bushes over there. They shot him, marshal. They gunned him down like a dog.”

Longarm frowned. The fact that these kidnappers had already killed a lawman made things all the worse. They knew they would hang if they were taken alive. There was no threat anyone could hold over them to assure Glenda’s safety. “Tell me about it, Ben.”

“I don’t know everything for sure. I was across the street. Working that side while Whistler was knocking on doors. I was too far away to overhear exactly what he said but what we been doing is we’d knock on the door, then announce ourselves when somebody opened up or if they just called out to see who it was. I was paying attention to the houses over on my own side of the street, you understand.”

“Of course.”

“So I never knew anything was different over here until I heard the first shot. I looked and . . . oh, Jesus! I never saw a man killed before today.”

“It’s all right, Ben. Take your time. Take a few deep breaths.”

Mader gulped for air. He looked like he might puke at any moment but Longarm saw his throat working, likely swallowing back the impulse. “They hit Sam in the belly, it looked like. He doubled over and fell and rolled off the edge of the porch. He’s laying right over there.” The young constable pointed. “If you know just exactly where to look you can see a little patch of blue. That would be Sam’s britches. Then after . . . after Sam went off the porch those sons of bitches in there shot some more. Wild shooting. Then one of them hollered something . . . I figure they must have looked out and seen me . . . and that’s when they started shooting at me.

“I was halfway across the street, thinking to see could I do anything to help Sam.

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