Longarm and the Sins of Laughing Lyle (9781101612101) by Evans Tabor

Author:Evans, Tabor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA
Published: 2012-10-06T04:00:00+00:00

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An hour later, leaving the preacher’s daughter sound asleep and sexually sated at last, Longarm slipped out the little house’s back door. He didn’t want to be seen leaving her house so late at night, as rumors would fly like lava from a spewing volcano. It was late—nearing midnight—and he doubted anyone would be out and about. But there was no point in taking chances with a girl’s reputation.

The night was cool and dark and silent, the stars even brighter than before in that clean, dry, autumn sky.

He walked out into the backyard, shouldered up to a cottonwood tree, and dug a cheroot from his coat pocket. He’d just fished a lucifer match from his pants pocket and was about to rake his thumbnail across it, when he heard something.

He froze.

There was the faint, wooden rattle of logs from the small, open shed ahead of him, where he could see two, waist-high rows of split cordwood and another row that was nearly shoulder-high. A cat meowed shrilly. A man said under his breath, “Fuckin’ cat!”

Longarm stepped back behind the tree and, holding the cigar in his left hand, slipped his Colt from its holster with the other hand and ratcheted back the hammer. He said softly but pitching his voice with menace, “Who’s there?”

Foot thuds sounded from behind the largest of the woodpiles. Someone was running back there—jogging rather. The foot thuds dwindled as the man fled.

“What in hell . . . ?”

Longarm stepped out from behind the cottonwood and started jogging forward, careful not to stumble over something in the darkness. He ran around behind the large woodpile, then followed the sounds of the running feet northward and back toward the heart of Nowhere. There were several shacks and pens and wagons out here, and a dog started barking somewhere off to Longarm’s left.

Most of the cabins were dark, though a few curtained windows glowed weakly. Longarm walked around behind the Six-Shooter Saloon, a couple of whose windows were also wanly lit.

A silhouetted figure stood outside the closed back door between two low windows. A cigarette glowed between his lips. He had his fists on his hips, which were thrust forward. Longarm could hear the unsteady piss stream he was loosing into the yard just off the back step.

The pissing man grunted. “What the hell’s goin’ on back here, fellas?”

Just then a shadow moved off the Six-Shooter’s far corner. Longarm dove to his left as a gun flashed and bellowed. He hit the ground, hearing the bullet plunk into a dilapidated stable behind where he’d been standing a second before. Longarm rolled over and came up firing once, twice, three times at the silhouetted figure crouched off the saloon’s corner.

He thought he saw the shooter’s shadow jerk slightly before the man threw himself against the building and out of Longarm’s field of vision. Meanwhile, the man who’d been pissing had fallen back against the saloon’s door, yelling, “Hey! Hey! Hey! What the fuck?” He fell drunkenly, cursing and grunting and trying to tuck himself back into his trousers.

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