Longarm 242: Red-light (10 page)

Longarm staggered along the boardwalk. Somewhere men were running and yelling. He knew he was hurt bad, too bad to make a fight of it right now. He couldn't let Mallory's men catch him in the open. Forcing his muscles to move, he ran along the street until a dark mouth yawned to his right. He plunged into it.

This alley led past a feed store, and at the rear of the building was a tall wooden platform. Wagons could be backed up there so that heavy bags of grain could be brought from the building and loaded into them. The platform looked to be solid all around, but when Longarm paused beside it and started pulling at the boards, he found what he was looking for. Several of the boards were loose, and when he pulled them back, he formed a narrow opening into the hollow space underneath the loading platform. He went to his knees and wiggled through it, gasping as his wound was raked over the rough edge of one of the boards.

But then he was inside, in the welcoming darkness, and he tugged the boards back into place. If Mallory's men searched for him with lanterns, they would probably spot the signs of his flight and figure out where he was hidden, but there was nothing he could do about that now. His side was starting to burn as if a torch was being held to it.

Longarm was never sure how long he lay there in the mud under the loading platform, drifting in and out of consciousness. It was damned galling to have to hide from a bunch of low-down bushwhackers who had molested and then killed an innocent woman, but there was nothing else he could do right now.

He tried to keep his breathing steady for two reasons: concentrating on that helped him shut out the pain of being shot, and the less noise he made, the less likely Mallory's men were to find him. For a while, there was quite a hubbub coming from Greenwood Avenue, but then it died away. Shootings were pretty common in a place like this. As long as it didn't happen in the middle of the main street, folks just kept their heads down until the trouble was over and then went on about their business. Several times, Longarm heard men walk past the loading platform, but none of them stopped.

Finally, when enough time had passed so that he thought it might be safe to emerge, he pushed the boards aside and slithered out. He forced himself to his feet and stood there shakily while he slipped a hand under his coat and explored the wound. There was a lot of blood, and it hurt like blazes. He couldn't tell how badly he was hurt.

He needed to find that old granny woman. She could patch him up. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, he buttoned his coat over the bloodstained shirt and walked stiffly toward Greenwood Avenue. He staggered a little and knew he looked like a drunk who was making an effort not to reveal just how inebriated he really was. He reached the avenue and turned north toward Comstock. Someone would have to tell him where to find the old woman who passed for a sawbones around here, because he didn't have any idea how to locate her.

He hadn't gone more than a block before Mallory's men spotted him and started chasing him. After that, it was a matter of trying to stay ahead of them and hoping they wouldn't start shooting so that some other innocent person would be gunned down, and then he was in another alley and there was a door in front of him, and beyond the door an angel, a beautiful red-haired angel ... She was looking down at him now, Longarm realized suddenly, and her full red lips curved in a smile. “Hello,” she said. “I see you're still alive.”

“I'm glad,” she went on. “For a while there, we weren't sure if you were going to make it or not.”

Longarm didn't say anything for a lengthy moment. Instead, he took stock of his situation. He was lying in a soft bed on what felt like clean sheets. A thick quilt was spread over him so that he was wrapped in warmth. He would have been pretty comfortable if it had not been for the tightness around his midsection and the pain that shot through him when he moved slightly.

The red-haired woman saw his grimace. “Just lie still,” she told him. “You don't want that bullet wound to open up again.”

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over him. The dark blue dressing gown she wore hung open enough so that he could see into it. The gap revealed much of the valley between the swells of her breasts. Her skin was fair and lightly dusted with tiny freckles. She smelled good, too, just a hint of perfume mixed with soap and clean skin. Longarm realized suddenly that she must have just come from a bath.

And he realized as well that her nearness was having an effect on him. He felt a stiffening at his groin, and as his hardness grew, he became aware that he was naked under the covers except for the bandages wrapped tightly around his middle.

“Who ... who are you?” he managed to say. “Where am I?”

The woman shifted a little, and he saw a rosy nipple peek out of the robe for a second. “You're in my bedroom at the Silver Slipper,” she said. “My name is Nola Sutton. I own this place. That was my office you barged into the other night.”

“The ... other night,” repeated Longarm. “How long ... have I ...”

“Two days and three nights,” replied Nola Sutton, knowing what he was trying to ask. “That's how long you've been unconscious. It's morning again.” She stood up and walked to the window with a swish of dark blue silk. When she pulled the curtain back, brilliant sunlight slanted into the room and made Longarm wince. He narrowed his eyes against the glare. After more than forty-eight hours of darkness, he wasn't ready for that much light.

Nola Sutton strolled back over to the bed and sat down while Longarm's eyes adjusted. The window had a thin frosting of ice on it, and the frozen crystals broke the sunlight into shifting patterns of color. It probably would have been beautiful, if he had felt good enough to appreciate the sight.

He looked at her again and saw that she had drawn the robe closed. Feeling slightly disappointed, he said, “There were some fellas ... chasing me ...”

“Mallory's men,” Nola said with a nod. “They came to my office door and knocked a few minutes after you barged in.”

“You ... didn't let 'em in?”

“I invited them to come in and look around all they wanted,” she said. “By that time, I had thrown a comforter over the sofa where you were lying. They couldn't see you, and I told them that no one had been in the office all evening except me. They took my word for it and went on to look for you elsewhere.”

“You were ... taking a mighty big chance,” Longarm told her. “If they had come in ... and found me ...”

“I would have killed them,” Nola said simply. “My hand was on my gun in the pocket of my gown, and I know how to use it.”

Longarm frowned at her. He hadn't expected such a cold-blooded answer from such a lovely woman. Evidently, she had more spunk than most of the rest of the people in town combined.

“I thought Mallory ... had everybody in Galena City buffaloed,” he said.

Nola shook her head. “Not everyone is afraid of him, and he knows it. His men have their orders. They know not to push me too far.”

“Well, I'm obliged for what you've done for me.”

She smiled and shrugged. “I've always had a soft spot in my heart for strays.”

“You reckon that's what I am?” asked Longarm, returning her smile.

“You certainly looked like you'd had better days. After Mallory's men were gone, I had you brought up here and sent one of my girls for Granny Winslow. When she saw how much blood you'd lost, she told me you'd probably die. I told her to do her best for you. Now that you're awake, I'm convinced that you're going to live after all. I can tell by your eyes that you're a very stubborn man.”

“I'll take that ... as a compliment,” murmured Longarm. “Right now I'm ... a mighty sleepy man all of a sudden.”

“Then you should rest,” Nola said softly. “When you wake up again, you should eat something, but for now, just sleep.”

That sounded good to Longarm. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to drift away. As sleep began to claim him, though, he suddenly asked himself a question: now that Nola Sutton had him, what was she going to do with him?

He dozed off before he could come up with an answer.

True to her word, Nola had a bowl of hot broth waiting for him when he woke up again. Only she didn't deliver it herself. Instead, when Longarm opened his eyes, he found a young woman with blond hair bending over the bed. “Are you awake?” she asked brightly.

“I reckon I am,” Longarm replied. He shifted and found that the pain in his side, while still there, was not as sharp this time. It didn't take his breath away.

But the blond damned near did. She was big—tall, broad-shouldered, heavy-breasted. She looked like the sort of girl who had been raised on a farm or a ranch, and fairly recently, too, since she wasn't more than twenty years old. Her skin even retained a trace of a tan that working in the sun must have given her. At the moment, however, her working outfit was considerably different than it had probably been earlier in her life. She was wearing a short red dress with a flouncy skirt and black lace stockings. The dress was cut low enough to reveal the upper third of her large breasts. Thick wings of hair a shade lighter than honey framed her lovely face and fell past her shoulders.

“I have some broth here that the cook just brought up,” she said to Longarm. “I want you to eat every bit of it.”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. He wasn't in the habit of arguing with ladies as pretty as she was, and besides, in his weakened condition, she could hold him down and spoon-feed him if she was of a mind to.

She helped him sit up in bed, propping several pillows behind him. The quilt slipped, and Longarm grabbed for it out of habit. The blond laughed and said, “Don't mind about that, honey. There's nothing under those covers I haven't seen plenty of times before.”

“That may be true in general, ma'am,” said Longarm, “but you ain't seen this particular one.”

She laughed again. “Don't be too sure. Somebody had to get those bloody clothes off of you and help clean you up, you know.” She gave him a mischievous smile. “I've been looking forward to getting to know you better when you aren't passed out from a gunshot wound. By the way, my name's Angie.”

She stuck out her hand like a man, and Longarm shook with her. “You can call me Custis,” he said.

“I know. Your name's Custis Parker. Nola heard some of the men talking about you. You rode into town, raised hell, and got shot, all in one day.” Angie suddenly frowned. “Some people say you killed Mrs. Keegan. Is that true?”

“Is that the woman who was shot in the back in an alley?” Longarm suddenly felt even worse about the woman's death. He hadn't even known her name when she had saved his life and lost her own in the process.

“She was shot, all right, and she'd been abused.” Angie was glaring at him now.

Longarm met her gaze squarely and said, “I didn't kill the lady, Angie. I was there, but it was the men who were trying to bushwhack me who shot her. They're the ones who abused her, too, and then sent her to try to trap me.”

She nodded, and Longarm could tell she believed him without reservation, now that she had heard it from his own lips. She said, “They were Mallory's men, weren't they?”

“I reckon so.” Longarm sighed. “I suppose when you get right down to it, I
am
to blame for Mrs. Keegan's death. I was trying to stir things up by asking questions about Mallory. I guess I stirred them up a little too good.”

“I think I'd be better off if I didn't hear about all that,” said Angie. She went to a dresser on the other side of the room. A tray with a bowl on it sat there, and Longarm saw wisps of steam rising from the bowl. He could smell a delicious aroma in the air, too, and the realization hit him suddenly that it had been a long time since he'd had anything to eat. Hard on the heels of that thought came his stomach, cramping with hunger.

Angie brought the tray over to the bed. “Can you manage by yourself, or do you want me to feed you?”

“I'm a mite light-headed, but I'll give it a try.” Longarm reached for the spoon beside the bowl.

Before he could reach it, a wave of dizziness hit him, and he had to sag back against the pillows. Angie said firmly, “You just sit there, Custis. I'll take care of you.”

“I reckon I'd better let you,” he said reluctantly. “I wouldn't want to spill that broth.”

“Absolutely not. It's hot, and if you dump it in your lap, you might burn something important.”

Longarm chuckled. She was a brazen hussy, he thought, but what else could you expect from a gal who worked in a saloon? That didn't mean he was going to like her any less. Some of the best women he'd ever known had been the ones whom society found the least respectable.