Longarm and the Arapaho Hellcats by Tabor Evans Page B

glistened in it. “I . . . I went back to fetch . . . medicine from my . . . saddlebags. I’d just started back when I heard the shooting.”
    The old lawman wagged his head. His breath rattled in his throat. “I ran down to try to stop ­it—­I figured it was a bushwhack. Drummond was holed up in the trees ­yonder—­waitin’ to dry gulch us. I went runnin’ down through the trees, yellin’ to warn the others. Several of Drummond’s men fired on me though I don’t think they ever saw me. When I took this here bullet, I hid amongst some rocks.”
    â€œCan you stand, Thrum?”
    Breathing hard, McIntyre nodded. He gave Longarm his arm, and the federal lawman helped the man to his feet. The man’s knees wobbled. Longarm wrapped an arm around McIntyre’s waist and led him up and over the ridge, heading back in the direction of the horses.
    â€œGoddamn, ­low-­down, dirty, ­dry-­gulchin’ bastards!” McIntyre rasped. “They musta been waitin’ in the trees, snuck around behind us.” He looked at Longarm, showing his teeth beneath his thick, gray ­soup-­strainer mustache. “They just walked down there and executed those men. Ten of my ­friends—­all good ­businessmen—­from Arapaho! Just like they was shootin’ sick cattle, Custis!”
    â€œEasy, Thrum. Don’t talk. We gotta get you to a camp, warm fire, see about tendin’ that bullet hole.”
    â€œFuck the bullet hole. They killed my boy! They just killed ten of Arapaho’s most prominent businessmen!”
    â€œNothin’ we can do about it now, Thrum.” They were almost back to the horses shifting around in the darkness, the mounts’ eyes reflecting the moonlight. “Later . . . after we get that hole tended.”
    Longarm helped McIntyre onto his buckskin and then he untied the other horses so they could roam and forage. Some area rancher would likely add them to his remuda. Longarm swung up onto his sorrel’s back and, leading McIntyre’s horse by its reins, rode back down the trail.
    Some of the other horses followed as he cut off the trail and headed nearly straight west, toward a sloping, forested ridge. The shrubs and junipers around him were silvered by moonlight, revealing a deer path, which he followed to the edge of the trees and then up through the trees toward a relatively flat, ­rock-­rimmed shelf in the ridge wall.
    He decided the shelf would be a good place to camp, as the fire he’d build to get McIntyre warm and to brew coffee would be concealed by the heavy pine growth.
    When he’d helped the old lawman out of his saddle and had eased him onto the ground, he unsaddled the horses, gathered wood, and built a fire. He gave his bottle of rye to the sheriff and told him to take several good pulls. McIntyre did so, weakly, as he sagged back against a rock outcropping, cursing between breaths.
    By the light of the fire, Longarm opened his friend’s shirt and inspected the wound. The ­thumb-­sized hole was oozing thick, red blood that looked black in the darkness tempered by the fire’s low flames. The blood ran down the sheriff’s side, staining his cartridge belt, holster, and pants.
    â€œHow’s it look?” McIntyre asked, tipping his head back against the outcropping and stretching his lips away from his teeth. He shuddered as pain waves rolled through him.
    â€œAin’t gonna sugarcoat it for you, Thrum. It don’t look good.”
    â€œDon’t feel good, neither.”
    Longarm gently leaned the man forward, lifted his bloody shirt up, and inspected his back. “The bullet appears to have gone all the way through. Hard to tell how much damage it did. Might’ve torn up your liver. About all I can do is clean it the wound, stuff something in it so you don’t bleed dry, and wrap