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

dusty black boot. As Longarm stared at the dime-sized blood drop, another one dropped down the inside of a pants leg and glanced off the boot to land beside it. Longarm’s eye moved up the yellow-checked trouser leg nearest the blood drops until he saw the face of the man belonging to the trousers staring at him in the back-bar mirror. He was a wizen-faced gent with a steel-colored mustache and frosty blue eyes, long, silver hair hanging down the back of his charcoal-colored wolf coat.
    His eyes were shrewdly sharp, jaws taut. Longarm had just snaked his right hand across his belly for his Colt when the man swung around to face him, a Colt Navy . 44 in his right hand. Longarm’s six-shooter spoke first. The bushwhacker’s shot overlapped it, the bullet drilling a chair back on the far side of the table from Longarm, throwing splinters.
    As a startled roar lifted from the small crowd, and men flung themselves away from the bushwhacker, the shooter groaned and doubled over, triggering another bullet into the floor in front of his right boot. He dropped to his knees, hat tumbling off his shoulder, and started raising the Colt Navy once more.
    â€œHold it!” Longarm yelled, wanting the man alive.
    â€œHold this, you son of a—!”
    Longarm shot him again, sending him sprawling, flopping around like a landed fish on the floor fronting the bar, blood pumping from a wound in his lower right side and another in his upper right chest. He tried lifting the pistol yet again, but couldn’t get it off the floor. He dropped it, and his shaking hand fell on top of it.
    Longarm rose from his chair, keeping his pistol extended. A hush had fallen over the place, all the other customers crouched and shifting their shocked gazes between Longarm and the man on the floor, who was still flopping his arms and kicking his legs, spitting curses out with the blood issuing from his mouth.
    Longarm walked over to him and kicked the Colt out of his reach. He glanced at the others, one group clumped to his left, one to his right, with the three men who’d been sitting at the table now standing behind it. Longarm didn’t know if any were friends of the shooter’s, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.
    He glanced at the group to his left, and wagged his gun toward his right. “Get on over there with the others, and don’t anyone let a hand stray to a pistol, understand? Or you’ll get what he got.”
    When he had all the other patrons grouped near the batwings—except for the barman, who stood behind his bar, fists on his hips and looking none too pleased—Longarm dropped to a knee beside the writhing shooter. The man’s long, coarse gray hair slid around his face as he wagged his head from side to side.
    â€œWho sent you to beef me?” Longarm asked him.
    â€œFuck you!” the dying man roared.
    Then he coughed up another gob of blood. His body fell still. He gave a gurgling sigh, and his pale blue eyes stared opaquely up at the saloon’s low rafters.
    Longarm cursed and straightened, holding his own Colt straight down at his side. He hadn’t been sure the man was after him and not just skulking around the Todd house, trying to get a look at Bethany naked. But now he knew. He’d heard it in his words, seen it in his eyes.
    Longarm slid his gaze around the onlookers, then gestured at the dead man with his gun. “Who was he?”
    No one said anything. They just stared at the dead man.
    â€œWho was he?” Longarm asked again, louder, his patience growing thin.
    â€œDave Ross,” one of the three onlookers who’d been at the table blurted out. “What the hell you kill him for?”
    â€œIn case you didn’t notice, he tried to kill me. And that’s the second time tonight! What I want to know is who’s he workin’ for?”
    The men looked around at one another, and a dull hum of conversation rose. They all just shook