“We want to be sure you’re all right, Custis,” Nola said. “We have quite an investment in you, you know.”

  Rafaela said, “You’ve been eating our food and drinking our coffee and whiskey for over a week, you know.”

  “Not to mention anything else you’ve been getting from Nola,” said Angie with a grin that didn’t falter even when Nola scowled at her.

  “All right,” Longarm said, not wanting them to start arguing. “I reckon I can understand why you don’t want me to get shot up again. Just ... be careful.”

  Nola nodded. “We will be, Custis. I promise.”

  Jessup came in the back of the station. He was carrying Pryor’s duster. He handed the long coat to Longarm as he said to Nola and her companions, “Ladies, you can board the stage as soon as we bring it around to the front of the building again.”

  Longarm slipped the duster on over his sheepskin jacket. Bringing it in had been a good idea on Jessup’s part. It was unlikely that Mallory had anyone watching the station, but just in case there was a spy, the duster might throw him off. He could easily mistake Longarm for Pryor, since their hats were similar and they were about the same size.

  Longarm picked up one of the mailbags while Jessup hefted the other one. With his head down, Longarm walked out the rear door of the station and crossed the short distance to the barn. Jessup walked alongside him, carrying the other bag. As soon as they were inside, safe from any prying eyes, Longarm handed the mailbag up to George, who stowed it in the boot under the driver’s box. Then Longarm stripped off the duster and gave it back to the waiting shotgun guard. “Much obliged for the loan,” he said to Pryor.

  The young man grinned. “Claude told us all about what’s going on here, Marshal. We’ll do whatever it takes to put a stop to Mallory’s depredations.”

  George spat from atop the driver’s box, then drawled, “The kid reads. That’s why he talks like that.”

  “I been known to frequent the Denver library myself,” said Longarm as he returned Pryor’s grin. “Especially along toward the end of the month when my money’s running low and it ain’t payday yet.”

  Jessup handed the other mailbag to George, then turned to Longarm. “Best climb inside,” he said. “George’ll take the coach back around front and pick up the rest of the passengers.”

  Longarm shook his head as he reached up to open the door of the coach. “Nope. Just drive on and leave ’em here. They won’t like it when they find out they’ve been left behind—”

  “We certainly wouldn’t,” Nola’s voice said from the door of the barn. “That’s why we decided to come on out here and board the stage.”

  The four men looked around in surprise and watched the women daintily walk along the broad aisle that ran down the center of the barn. Longarm grimaced. He had hoped to slip that trick past Nola, but he realized now that he had underestimated her. A gal in her line of work had to be used to men lying to her, so she would be naturally suspicious of everything.

  “I still say it’s a damned bad idea—” he began.

  “Not as bad as letting you go off on your own and get shot up by a bunch of outlaws,” Nola said stubbornly as she reached his side. She held out a gloved hand. “Now, if you would be so kind as to assist me, Marshal ...”

  Longarm sighed and took her hand. He helped her into the coach and would have assisted the other women as well, but he saw that young Pryor had already snatched off his hat and had taken Angie’s hand. She was cooing and making eyes at him as he led her around to the door on the other side of the coach. Rafaela and Mickey followed.

  Jessup shook hands with Longarm and said, “Good luck, Marshal,” just as Charlie Dodson had done a couple of hours earlier.

  And just as he had done then, Longarm thought that he was going to need it.

  Now, more than ever.

  Chapter 15

  Under other circumstances, it would have been mighty pleasant to sit inside a stagecoach with four beautiful ladies and rock along a mountain road on a crisp, clear day like this. The clouds had finally blown away, and this Nevada high country was as beautiful as Longarm had ever seen it.

  Of course, he couldn’t really see much of it, because he was sitting on the floor of the coach between the two seats, his hat off and his back propped against one of the doors. That way, if Mallory or anybody else was studying the coach through a telescope or field glasses, they wouldn’t be able to see him.

  “How are you feeling, Custis?” asked Nola as the coach swayed gently on its thoroughbraces.

  “Fine,” he replied. “I’m bandaged up so tight nothing can happen to that wound.” He nodded to Rafaela. “You did a good job. All of you have. No man could ever ask for better nurses than I’ve had this past week—or prettier ones, neither.” He grinned at Angie.

  “Oh, go on with you,” she said. “Nola and Mickey and Rafaela are lots prettier than me. I’m like a big ol’ plow horse, and they’re quarter horses.”

  Nola patted her hand. “You’re a very pretty girl, Angie. You ought to know that by now, the way those miners clamor over you and practically come to blows.”

  “Shoot, most of those miners would hump a mountain lion if it’d stay still—”

  A thump on the coach roof brought a sudden end to the banter. George called back, “We’re comin’ up on a bad spot. The road goes through a draw up ahead. It’s narrow, and there’s plenty of cover on both slopes.”

  Longarm remembered the place from his ride up to Galena City. The road was narrow to start with, but even more constricted in the approaching draw. The place was tailor-made for an ambush, all right.

  He drew his Winchester closer beside him on the floor of the coach and then reached for the pouch full of dynamite. With a grim-faced glance around at the four women, he said, “You ladies be ready for trouble now. If there’s any shooting, I want you down on this floor. I’ll be up and out of the way by then.”

  “You’re calling the shots, Custis,” said Nola.

  Something about her voice bothered him, but when he glanced at her again, she wore a serious, concerned look on her face. She didn’t look like she was up to anything.

  But she was a woman, Longarm reminded himself, and trying to figure out a woman was like trying to read Sanskrit or one of those other dead languages—most fellas didn’t have a clue how to go about it.

  It was too late to worry now. Instead, he slipped several of the sticks of dynamite out of the bag and gripped them in his left hand. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a cheroot and a lucifer. He put the cheroot in his mouth and then turned his head so that he could hold it well away from the dynamite as he lit it. He flicked the lucifer into life and held the flame to the end of the tube of tobacco, sucking in until he had a brightly glowing coal on the end of the cheroot. He pinched out the lucifer and dropped it on the floor of the coach. A long drag on the cheroot helped settle his nerves a little.

  That didn’t last long, because a moment later the coach rattled into the draw, and a second after that the whipcrack of a rifle shot shattered the peaceful stillness of the afternoon.

  “Son of a bitch!” yelled George, and Longarm wondered if the driver was hit. George sounded more angry than he did hurt, however, as he continued to curse. The coach lurched heavily and came to an abrupt stop.

  “They killed one of the leaders!” That was Pryor, letting Longarm know what had happened. “They’re coming down the slopes on both sides of the draw!”

  “Damn it!” Longarm had been worried about something like that. It would make things more difficult, since the outlaws would have the coach caught in a crossfire.

  Suddenly, Nola thrust her hand out. “Give me some of that dynamite, Custis! I could always throw a rock as good as any boy when I was a little girl.”

  Longarm hesitated, then gave Nola the dynamite he had already taken from the bag. Hurriedly, he delved into it again and brought out three more sticks. Outside the coach, men were whooping and shouting and shooting, but Longarm hadn’t heard any bullets hit the coach yet. A man’s voice yelled, “Drop those guns, boys, and nobody’ll get hurt!”

  He looked at Nola. She mouthed Mallory.

  Longarm gave her a curt nod, then drew in hard on the cheroot. The tip glowed a bright cherry-red. He held the fuse of one of the sticks of dynamite to the coal, and it sputtered into life. At the same time, Nola leaned over and held the fuse of one of her sticks to the cheroot. That fuse lit an instant after the first one.

  “Now!” Longarm growled around the cheroot.

  He rose up, twisted, and flung the dynamite out the window on the near side of the coach. Nola threw her stick out the other window. Longarm had cut the fuses almost dangerously short. He caught a glimpse of the greasy red cylinder turning over and over as it flew through the air. Half a dozen men on horseback were clustered on that side of the coach, and a couple of them yelled in alarm.

  Then, like twin peals of thunder, both sticks of dynamite blew.

  Longarm snatched up the Winchester as two of the outlaws went flying out of their saddles. He didn’t know if either of them was Mallory. Time enough to sort that out later. Right now, he was more concerned with corralling the rest of the gang. He stuck the barrel of the rifle through the window in the door and yelled, “Drop your guns! You’re under arrest!”

  Behind him, surprisingly close, a pistol cracked. “Get ’em, girls!” ordered Nola.

  Longarm grated a curse and glanced over his shoulder. Nola, Angie, Rafaela, and Mickey had all hauled guns out of their handbags; they ranged from the small pocket pistol Nola used to an old Dragoon Colt that Angie gripped in both hands as she fired out the window toward the outlaws on the far side of the stagecoach. The noise of guns blasting inside and outside the vehicle was deafening.

  A bullet chewed splinters from the door next to Longarm’s head, and a couple of the slivers sliced into his cheek and drew his attention back to that side. He opened up with the Winchester. His first shot drove into the chest of one of the outlaws and drove the man backward off his horse like a giant fist.

  Longarm jacked the rifle’s lever and fired again. He heard the dull boom of Pryor’s shotgun and the sharper sound of George’s pistol as the two men got into the fight. For a handful of seconds that seemed much longer, guns roared, bullets sang, and the draw was filled with noise and flame and the sharp tang of gun smoke.

  Then, with an eerie suddenness like a curtain dropping in a play, the shooting stopped.

  Longarm lowered his rifle. All six of the men on his side of the coach were down, but a couple of them were still moving. He heard the door on the other side of the coach open and jerked his head around to see Nola climbing out. “Wait a minute!” he said.

  “I think they’re all dead,” she said, ignoring his order. The other three women piled out of the coach after her.

  Muttering sulfurous curses under his breath, Longarm kicked open the door on his side and dropped to the ground. He kept the muzzle of the Winchester pointing in the general direction of the two outlaws who were definitely still alive. He climbed the pine-dotted slope and checked the other four first, rolling them over with his boot. One of them was alive as well, the breath rasping in the man’s throat as he flopped onto his back, arms outflung loosely. There was a bloody streak along the side of his head where a bullet had creased him and knocked him senseless. Longarm moved on to the other two wounded men, kicking their fallen guns well away from their hands before he got too close to them. One of the men was gutshot and probably had only minutes to live. He was writhing in pain but was only semiconscious. The other one had a leg wound and was wide awake—awake enough to cuss a blue streak as Longarm approached him.

  “You’ve broke my leg, you son of a bitch!” he howled.

  It looked to Longarm like the bullet had just plowed a furrow in the meaty part of the man’s thigh and knocked him out of his saddle. “You’ll live, old son,” Longarm told him. “Get up and walk down yonder to that coach.”

  “I can’t walk! I’m shot!”

  “In that case, I’ll just put a bullet through your head so’s I won’t have to bother with you,” Longarm said coldly.

  The man cursed some more, but he got hold of a sapling and used it to support himself as he pulled himself to his feet. Wincing and complaining every step of the way, he hobbled down the slope to the bottom of the draw with Longarm following him. The man who had been creased on the head was still out cold, Longarm saw as he went by.

  George and Pryor had both climbed down from the box and appeared to be unhurt except for a bullet burn on Pryor’s forearm. “They never knew what hit them, Marshal,” he said to Longarm with a grin. “That dynamite was a brilliant idea.”

  Longarm inclined his head toward the other side of the road. “What about the rest of the bunch?”

  “We checked ’em out for the ladies,” said George. “Got one that’s still alive. Looks like a bullet busted his left elbow. He ain’t got no fight left in him.”

  “The rest of them are deceased,” added Pryor. “I wasn’t aware that the ladies were in possession of an arsenal. It was quite astounding when all that firepower began to demonstrate itself.”

  “Yeah,” said Longarm dryly. “Surprising as all hell.” He jerked a thumb at his prisoner, then pointed to the unconscious man on the ground. “Keep an eye on these two. They’re the only ones still alive on this side.”

  George and Pryor nodded.

  Longarm walked around the back of the coach. Nola, Angie, Rafaela, and Mickey were gathered on the other side, talking excitedly among themselves. They fell silent when Longarm approached. He frowned at them and said, “I thought I told you ladies to stay down when the shooting started.”

  “If we’d done that, you might not have captured all the gang,” said Nola. “I think we were very helpful.”

  Longarm couldn’t really argue with that. He glanced at the bodies scattered around on this side of the draw. One of the outlaws was such a gory mess that Longarm knew the dynamite must have exploded right next to him. Three other men were sprawled loosely in various attitudes of death, and a fifth and final man had been tied to a tree by either George or Pryor. He was whimpering in pain from the wounded arm he held closely against his body.

  Given the damage done by the dynamite and the element of surprise, it was possible George and Pryor could have accounted for all the bandits on this side of the draw. But the barrage from inside the coach had certainly evened the odds. More than that, really, reflected Longarm. Mallory’s men hadn’t known what hit them.

  “Which one’s Mallory?” he asked.

  “I haven’t seen him,” said Nola. “He must be around on the other side.”

  Longarm jerked his head. “Come take a look.”

  Nola walked around the coach beside him, and the other three women followed. Without hesitation, Nola pointed at the man who had been creased on the head. “That’s him,” she said, and Longarm could hear the hate in her voice. “That’s Ben Mallory.”

  So, Longarm was finally getting a look at the man he had come here to capture. He was glad that Mallory had survived the battle. He strode over to stand above the outlaw and peered down at him. Mallory was a slender man in his thirties with dark, curly hair, not overly intelligent looking, but there was a vicious cunning in his features that matched everything Longarm knew about him. Mallory was stirring now, trying to regain consciousness, and Longarm reached down to prod him in the chest with the barrel of the Winchester.

  “Wake up, Mallory,” Longarm said. “It’s all over. You’re under arrest.”

  Mallory’s eyes flickered open. He moved his head, then winced at the pain that must have shot through his skull. “Who ... who are you?” he asked hoarsely.

  “Deputy United States Marshal Custis Long,” Longarm told him. “You’re my prisoner, and I’m going to take particular pleasure in seeing you swing for murder and robbery, Mallory.”

  Mallory groaned and closed his eyes. They snapped open again when Nola stepped up beside Longarm and said, “Hello, Ben.”

  “Nola!” Mallory croaked. “I ... I thought I saw you in that coach, but ... I figured I was seein’ things—”

  “No matter how much Marshal Long enjoys seeing you hang, I’ll enjoy it more, Ben,” said Nola. She spat in Mallory’s face, making him jerk his head to the side and groan again as he clutched his skull.

  Longarm put a hand on Nola’s arm and gently drew her back. “That’s enough,” he told her. “I reckon Mallory’s figured out by now that you were working with me all along, even as muddled as he must be right now. Why don’t you ladies climb back in the stage, and we’ll start thinking about what we’re going to do next.”

  Nola gave Mallory one more venomous glance, then allowed Longarm to steer her back to the stagecoach. George and Pryor closed in on Mallory, jerked him to his feet, and tied his hands securely behind his back.

  The outlaws had started their attack by shooting one of the lead horses through the head, and when it had dropped, that had forced the rest of the team and the coach to come to a halt. Once all the surviving outlaws were tied up, George and Pryor began the task of cutting the dead horse loose from its harness and backing the coach away from it. The other leader was unhitched as well and tied on behind the coach, so that the team wouldn’t be unbalanced. With only four horses to pull it, the stagecoach would have to travel at a slower pace.

  “We’re closer to Galena City than we are to Virginia City,” Longarm said. “We’ll turn around and go back there, so that I can lock these owlhoots up for the time being.”

  “But there’s no jail in Galena City,” Nola pointed out. “There’s not even a constable.”

  “Surely somebody’s got a smokehouse, or a good solid storeroom,” said Longarm. “That’s all I’ll need for now, that and somebody to stand guard.”

  Nola nodded. “You won’t have any trouble finding volunteers for that job. Everyone in town has lived in fear of Mallory for so long, they’ll all be glad to see him locked up. In fact, they’d probably be happy to take care of the trial and the execution, as well.”