Longarm and the Pleasant Valley War by Tabor Evans

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

Chapter 11

Hall disappeared as Longarm and Tremaine lunged toward the far side of the wash atop the nickering roan. As Longarm turned the frightened horse down yet another right fork in the wash, he saw Hall leap from the bank ahead and into the saddle of his steeldust waiting below.

Sliding his empty Henry into its scabbard, the Ranger glanced over his shoulder at Longarm and Tremaine, whose head rested against Longarm’s back. The black Ranger’s dark eyes were white-ringed as they probed the forking wash behind Longarm.

Longarm shot past him as Hall gave a raucous bellow and gouged his spurs into the steeldust’s flanks.

The roan being weighed down by two riders, Hall caught up to Longarm and Tremaine in no time, and soon both horses were plunging abreast down the broadening wash. Longarm could feel Tremaine sagging behind him, shifting loosely back there atop Longarm’s rain-slicker- wrapped bedroll, and the lawman hoped the man was conscious enough to hold on.

Random gunfire, shouts, and the thuds of hammering hooves hadn’t ceased since Longarm had maneuvered Tremaine off the bank, and they continued now behind the three fleeing riders. Slugs sliced the air around them, screeching past and hammering rocks with billowing dust puffs and whining ricochets.

Longarm spared a quick glance behind.

Dust broiled back there in the ever-widening wash, and he could make out three or four front riders clad in sombreros and crisscrossed bandoliers, with dusters or canvas jackets whipping in the wind. The pursuers were pushing up out of that broiling brown cloud as though their horses were propelled by it.

Rifles and pistols flashed. The reports echoed loudly, off the walls of the wash, shuddering like hammered steel cables.

Behind Longarm, Tremaine sagged. Beneath him, the roan blew, fagged. It had been a hard ride for the horse, through sparsely watered country, even before they’d come upon the man trap. Now, with two riders, it was even tougher.

Longarm glanced at Hall riding low in his saddle to Longarm’s right, the Ranger’s weathered hat basted by the wind against his forehead. “We’re gonna have to fort up!”

Hall nodded and cast another look behind. As he did so, a hole suddenly appeared in the front of his hat brim. He rolled his eyes up to give it skeptical consideration, then hunkered lower and raised his elbows as he and Longarm continued more or less east along the gently snaking, ever rising and leveling wash.

As the wash’s banks dropped and fell away, Longarm found himself climbing a long, low, boulder-strewn hill toward a summit about a mile straight ahead. All around—near and far—were stone dikes, rocky shelves, escarpments, and more black mounds of ancient volcanoes and lava rubble.

The sun was angling behind him, the light softening, and shadows were bleeding out from every rock and shrub.

Their pursuers, apparently mounted on fresher horses than their quarry, were gaining on Longarm and his two partners. The bullets were slicing the air ever closer to Longarm and the lunging roan, and several times he had felt the horse flinch at a graze.

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