Longarm shook his head firmly. “There won’t be any lynchings. Mallory’s going to have a proper trial in Carson City.”

  “All right, but I imagine there’ll be a good-sized delegation from Galena City to witness the hanging.”

  “That’s fine,” Longarm said. “Just as long as everything’s done legal like.”

  With the skill of long experience, George turned the coach around to head back to Galena City. “Bat’s not going to like messin’ up our schedule, and neither’s Claude,” he warned.

  “I reckon they’ll both forgive us, considering we’re bringing Mallory in,” Longarm said. “Let’s get those boys up top. The undertaker’ll have to bring his wagon back out here for the dead ones ... if the wolves have left him any customers by then.”

  Mallory and the other two wounded outlaws climbed awkwardly to the top of the stage. Once they were there, Pryor bound them even more tightly. “I’ll keep an eye on them,” he promised Longarm. He hefted the greener and added, “If they try to escape, they’ll regret it.”

  Longarm didn’t think any of the outlaws would try anything, not considering the shape they were in. Mallory was the least injured of the three, and he was still light-headed from the bullet slapping him alongside the skull.

  Longarm didn’t have to sit on the floor of the coach this time. He settled down on the rear seat, between Mickey and Rafaela. Nola and Angie sat facing them. Nola asked, “Are you all right, Custis? That wound of yours didn’t start bleeding again, did it?”

  He slipped a hand inside his shirt and checked the bandages. “Feels fine,” he reported. “Still aches a little, but that’s to be expected. I reckon in another week or so I’ll be as good as I ever was.”

  Angie giggled. “And I’ll bet that’s mighty good. Isn’t it, Nola?”

  Nola just smiled coolly and said, “Some things aren’t any of your business, Angie.” The smile took most of the sting out of the words.

  Longarm settled back against the seat, took a deep breath and blew it out in a sigh of relief. Despite the tragedies along the way—the deaths of Amelia Loftus and Mrs. Keegan—and the near-tragedies such as the bushwhackings that had resulted in Longarm and J. Emerson Dupree each catching a bullet, this job had just about come to a successful conclusion.

  All he had to do now was recover the stolen silver Mallory had hidden up at that Indian burial ground ...

  Chapter 16

  Longarm ducked as a bullet chipped the rock right above his head. “Shit!” he said.

  Some jobs just never turned out to be simple, no matter how much a fella hoped they would.

  He was crouched among the boulders that littered the edge of a small plateau dotted with pine trees and clumps of brush. Looming above the plateau in the crystal-clear morning air was the snow-capped mountain called Virginia Peak. In the distance Longarm could see the still blue waters of Pyramid Lake extending far to the north. The plateau commanded quite a view, not as beautiful as the area around the lake called Tahoe, south of here along the California-Nevada border, but still mighty pretty. That might have had something to do with why the Paiutes had decided to lay their dead to rest here.

  This was still sacred ground to the Paiutes, even though they didn’t use it anymore, and they probably wouldn’t have taken kindly to a bunch of white outlaws using it as a hideout. But the Paiutes had all been moved off to the reservation, and they didn’t ride the warpath anymore. Chances were, none of them even knew that Mallory and his men had built a log cabin smack-dab in the middle of their sacred plateau.

  “I sure wish those men Mallory left behind hadn’t spotted us until we got closer,” George called over to Longarm. “That cabin looks mighty solid. Who knows how long they can hold us off from in there?”

  George was crouched behind another boulder about twenty feet away, and beyond him were Pryor, J. Emerson Dupree, Charlie Dodson, and half a dozen other men from Galena City and the surrounding mines. As Nola had predicted, Longarm had plenty of volunteers for anything he wanted once word got around that he had brought in Ben Mallory. George and Pryor had asked to come along because they worked for the California & Nevada Stage Line; Dupree was here because he wanted the story of the remaining outlaws’ capture; and Dodson and the other men just wanted to be in on the finish. They had all ridden up here this morning because the stagecoach had gotten back into Galena City too late on the previous afternoon to start then.

  Unfortunately, the men Mallory had left behind to guard the loot from earlier robberies had to be suspicious because their leader and the rest of the gang hadn’t returned when they were supposed to. Mallory wouldn’t be coming back. He was locked up in Galena City, along with the other two surviving outlaws.

  Longarm and his unofficial posse had tried to cover the open ground surrounding the cabin without being seen, but the men inside had spotted them and opened fire, driving them back to cover in the rocks at the edge of the plateau. Since then it had been a standoff. The outlaws couldn’t get out of the cabin, but Longarm and his companions were pinned down here in these boulders.

  There had to be some way to shake those owlhoots out of their hole, thought Longarm. He just hadn’t been able to come up with it yet.

  At least he didn’t have to worry about Nola and the other women during this fight, he reminded himself. They were safely back in Galena City.

  He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a cheroot. As he clamped it between his teeth, it reminded him of something, and without pausing to light the cigar, he stuck his hand in the pocket of the sheepskin jacket. Sure enough, the two sticks of dynamite he had put in there the day before, following the gunfight with Mallory’s gang, were still there.

  Longarm grinned around the cheroot as he called to the other men, “Who’s got the strongest arm?”

  “That might be me,” said George with a frown. “Wrestlin’ with those stagecoach teams builds up a fella’s muscles.”

  Longarm flipped one of the sticks of dynamite across the gap between his cover and the boulder where George was crouched. “Think you could heave that all the way to the cabin?” he asked.

  George caught the dynamite, but he looked plenty nervous as he did so. “Good Lord, Marshal!” he exclaimed. “You can’t just go tossing this stuff around like that. It goes off if you look at it wrong!”

  “I reckon it’s safe enough if you’re careful,” said Longarm. “Just be sure you’re ready to throw it before you light the fuse.”

  Pryor volunteered, “I’ll do it if you don’t want to, George.”

  “No, that’s all right,” grumbled George. He patted the pockets of his coat. “Lemme find a match.”

  A few moments later, Longarm caught a whiff of sulphur in the mountain air as George lit a match and held it to the fuse. As soon as the fuse caught, George dropped the match and quickly drew back his arm. He rose up slightly to throw the dynamite toward the outlaws’ cabin.

  A rifle cracked from inside the cabin, and the bullet drilled into George’s shoulder, knocking him backward. The dynamite slipped from his hand and bounced a couple of feet down the slope. George landed where he could see the fuse hissing and sputtering, and he let out a yell of sheer terror.

  Longarm bolted out from behind the boulder and launched himself in a long, desperate dive toward George and the dynamite. “Hit the dirt!” he yelled to the other men. The fingers of his outstretched hand closed around the cylinder and flipped it away as Longarm crashed into the ground.

  The dynamite spun up into the air and exploded.

  The force of the blast drove Longarm’s head against the rocky slope, and for a second he couldn’t see anything except a dizzy blackness shot through with streaks of red. Then his vision cleared and his hearing began to come back. He saw George lying nearby, clutching a wounded shoulder. George’s mouth was moving, and gradually Longarm began to hear the profanity spewing from the jehu’s lips.

  Longarm grinned despite the pain in his side. That had been a close one.

  He pushed himself onto hands and knees, grabbed George, and pulled him into a more secure position behind the boulder. George’s wound was painful but not too serious, Longarm decided. A glance along the rim of the plateau told him that the other men were shaken but all right. Charlie Dodson called, “Got any more of that dynamite, Marshal?”

  “One more stick,” replied Longarm as he reached into his jacket pocket where he had tucked away the other red-wrapped cylinder. He brought it out, tossed it over to Pryor, who passed it on to Dodson. Longarm asked the mine superintendent, “Can you reach the cabin with it?”

  “I swung a sledgehammer and a pickax for a long time before I started pushing papers,” said Dodson. “I’ll give it a try.”

  Longarm picked up George’s rifle. His own Winchester was back there behind the boulder he had been using for cover before. “Let’s give him some covering fire, boys,” Longarm called to the other men. He stuck the barrel of the rifle over the top of the boulder and started blazing away. Pryor and the other men followed his lead, pouring their fire toward the cabin.

  Dodson lit the fuse, stood up, and heaved the dynamite toward the cabin as hard as he could. Longarm yelled, “Hold your fire!” He didn’t want a stray bullet setting off the dynamite before it got there.

  The outlaws forted up in the cabin must have heard the blast from the first stick, thought Longarm, and they had to suspect that the posse would try again. They opened up from inside the cabin, attempting to set off the dynamite before it reached its target. The cylinder kept spinning through the air, though, untouched by the rifle fire, trailing the sparking fuse. It hit the ground about fifteen feet from the cabin wall, bounced twice, and rolled to a stop only inches from the wall just as the fuse burned down.

  The explosion sent logs flying into the air. When the dust and smoke cleared, Longarm saw that a hole had been blasted into the side of the cabin, and the whole structure was leaning crazily now. The roof began to collapse with a grinding and crashing sound. Through the jagged hole in the wall, Longarm saw movement, and a second later three men stumbled out of the collapsing cabin. One of them was dressed only in tattered, bloodstained shreds of clothing. He must have been right on the other side of the wall from where the dynamite had gone off, thought Longarm.

  All three of the outlaws were empty-handed. “Enough!” one of them shouted between shuddering coughs. “We give up, damn it! Don’t shoot!”

  Longarm and the other members of the posse came out on the flat top of the plateau and kept their guns trained on the outlaws as they advanced toward the wrecked cabin. In a matter of moments, the three men Mallory had left behind to guard the hideout had their hands tied securely behind their backs.

  Longarm, Dodson, and Dupree walked over to the cabin while Pryor and the other men herded the prisoners toward the edge of the plateau. Longarm peered into the ruins and saw a couple of trunks sitting next to some crude cots that had been overturned by the force of the blast. The trunks weren’t locked. Longarm stepped carefully through the debris and reached the nearest trunk. He lifted the lid.

  Silver ingots gleamed dully in the sunlight.

  “Incredible,” said Dupree. “There’s a small fortune here. What was Mallory going to do with it?”

  “I expect when he figured he had enough, he’d pack it all out and head for San Francisco or someplace like that,” said Longarm. “His share would have been enough to let him live like a king for a long time.”

  “There’s plenty here for that already,” Dodson pointed out.

  Longarm shrugged. “Outlaws are generally greedier than they are smart. That’s what trips ’em up.” He winced as he felt the sticky wetness on his side. “Damn. Must’ve busted those bullet holes open again when I went diving after that stick of dynamite.”

  Dodson slapped him heartily on the shoulder. “We’ll patch you up, Marshal, and ol’ George, too. I reckon that’ll do until we can get you back to Galena City.” The mine superintendent grinned broadly. “And once you’re back in the hands of Miss Sutton and her ladies, I’m sure they’ll take mighty good care of you.”

  Longarm had to grin, too. This time, he was looking forward to recuperating in the Silver Slipper.

  “All that work getting you healthy again,” Nola said crossly, “and you go and ruin it, Custis.”

  “Couldn’t let George get his head blowed off,” Longarm explained patiently. “Not if I could help it.”

  Rafaela pulled a fresh bandage tight around his midsection. “You could have been killed, too, you know,” she said.

  Longarm inclined his head in acknowledgment of her point. “True enough, but that happens all the time in my line of work. Seems like not a month goes by when somebody’s not doing their damnedest to kill me.”

  “I couldn’t live like that,” said Angie. “I’d be afraid all the time.”

  Mickey stroked Longarm’s bare shoulder. “Custis is not afraid,” she said. “Custis is a brave man.”

  He grinned at the four women standing around him as he sat in Nola’s room. “Custis is a damned lucky man,” he said, “to have four ladies like you looking after him.”

  “Yes, well, one of these days we’re liable to get tired of patching you up,” Nola said. Her expression softened slightly. “I’m just glad you captured Mallory and recovered all that silver.”

  Rafaela was finished with her bandaging, so Longarm leaned back and sighed. “Might never have been able to do it without the four of you,” he said solemnly. “You’ve got my thanks, and the thanks of the Justice Department.”

  “That and two bits will buy a drink,” said Nola. Longarm could tell she was somewhat uncomfortable with his gratitude, so he decided not to press the issue.

  Instead, he said, “It’s been a long day. I could use something to eat.”

  “And then some rest,” Nola said. Longarm nodded in agreement.

  It had taken a while to do a rough job of doctoring on Longarm and George, as well as to figure out a way to haul all that silver back to Galena City. The posse had wound up unloading the silver and splitting it up among them, leaving the trunks in the ruined cabin. All the saddlebags on the posse’s horses had been stuffed full, but the silver was now safe and sound, locked up in the stagecoach station. With Mallory now in custody, Charlie Dodson and the other mine superintendents planned to send wagons into town the next day to load up the silver and take it to Carson City.

  Evening was fast approaching as Longarm and Nola shared a meal in her bedroom. Longarm felt himself getting drowsy. Even though it was only dusk outside, when he was finished eating, he yawned and said, “I reckon I’m going to have to turn in.”

  “You go right ahead, Custis,” Nola told him. “Like I said before, you need your rest.”

  Longarm couldn’t argue with that. Nola pulled the curtains closed as he climbed into bed, and then she blew out the lamp before slipping quietly from the room.

  A deep, dreamless sleep claimed Longarm, and he had no idea how much time had passed when he suddenly awoke. His lawman’s instincts had alerted him to something, and as he rolled over quickly, he discovered what it was.

  A naked woman had climbed into bed with him.

  She put her arms around him and kissed him, her lips unerringly finding his, even in the dimness of the room. His arms went around her, and he expected to feel Nola’s familiar contours. Instead, he was surprised to realize that the woman snuggling against him was considerably more slender and less endowed than Nola.

  “Rafaela?” he whispered.

  “Ssshhh.” Her fingers wrapped hotly around his hardening shaft. “Just lie still, Custis.”

  His visitor was Rafaela, all right. He was lying on his side, and after a moment she turned so that she was lying next to him, spoon-fashion, with her rear nestled against his groin. His rigid manhood slipped between her thighs and rubbed against the lightly furred lips of her femininity. She moved her hips back and forth, creating a delicious friction even though he had not yet penetrated her. Longarm slipped his arms around her so that he could fondle her small, pear-shaped breasts.

  The door of the room made a slight noise as it opened and closed.

  Longarm caught his breath, not knowing what to expect as a figure darted across the shadows of the room. He would have rolled away from Rafaela and reached for his gun on the bedside table, but she clamped her thighs together tightly, holding him in place. “It’s all right,” she said.

  A second later, Longarm heard the whisper of silk, and then the bed sank a little behind him as someone else climbed in. Soft lips kissed the back of his neck as long hair slid enticingly over his shoulder. He felt another nude woman pressing herself against him from behind. It was a little more difficult for him to be sure, but he didn’t think this was Nola, either, and his second mysterious visitor wasn’t big enough to be Angie. That left Mickey.

  “We make Custis happy,” she whispered in his ear, confirming his guess. One of her hands boldly explored his body, stealing between his legs from behind to cup and caress his sac.

  He groaned in pleasure. “Damn right you make Custis happy,” he said hoarsely. He moved his upper arm and reached back so that he could caress Mickey’s hip. She arched against him.

  This was what the old saying about an embarrassment of riches must mean, Longarm thought as he nuzzled the side of Rafaela’s neck. It had been a while since he had been in bed with two women at the same time, but he hadn’t forgotten what a special pleasure it was. He explored and caressed Rafaela, searching out all her secret places, while Mickey did the same to him.

  “Be ... careful ... Custis,” Rafaela gasped out, breathless with joy. “You don’t want to ... hurt yourself again.”

  “You ladies are the best medicine I know,” Longarm said as he boldly slipped a finger into Rafaela’s womanhood. She caught hold of his hand and pressed him deeper into her.