He wondered about J. Emerson Dupree, wondered as well if there was a doctor here in Galena City. He waited until a woman was passing him on the boardwalk, then reached up and tugged on the brim of his hat as he said, “Pardon me, ma’am. Could you tell me if there’s a sawbones in this town?”

  She was a middle-aged woman with graying dark hair under her bonnet. Her gaze played over Longarm, and she said, “You look healthy enough, sir.” He thought he saw just a hint of flirtatiousness in her eyes, so he grinned at her.

  “I hope I am, ma’am,” he said, “but you never can tell what’s going to happen in the future.”

  “That’s true enough,” said the woman. “Unfortunately, there’s no doctor here, just an old granny who serves as midwife and patches up bullet wounds.”

  “How is she at that?”

  “Which one, midwifery or bullet wounds?”

  Longarm chuckled. “I ain’t likely to need a midwife any time soon, ma’am.”

  “In that case, I’m told she’s quite efficient at cleaning and bandaging bullet holes.”

  Longarm tipped his hat again and said, “I’ll keep that in mind. I’m obliged for the information, ma’am.”

  So there was at least a chance Dupree was in good hands, thought Longarm as he moved on down the street. He hated to think that the newspaperman might die simply because he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, talking to Longarm.

  But then, folks hardly ever died from being in the right place at the right time, he mused.

  His horse was still tied in front of the newspaper office. He got the dun and led it down to the livery stable, where an old hostler took Longarm’s money and put the horse in a stall. “We’ll take good care of him,” he promised.

  Longarm nodded and asked, “Where’s the nearest hotel?”

  The hostler pointed out the open double doors of the barn. “Right across the street. Place is called Kingman’s.”

  “Much obliged.” Longarm had taken his Winchester from the saddle boot on the dun. He carried the rifle and his warbag with him as he crossed the street toward the hotel, a two-story frame building made of thick, whitewashed planks.

  Kingman’s Hotel wasn’t nearly as fancy inside as the International in Virginia City, but it would do for his needs, Longarm decided as he crossed the lobby. The floor at least had a rug on it, and several padded armchairs that weren’t too broken-down were scattered around the room. A clerk with hair that was slicked down with pomade and parted in the middle stood behind the registration desk. He gave Longarm a professional smile and said, “Howdy-do. You want a room?”

  “That’s the idea,” said Longarm with a nod. “Something quiet.”

  “That’s a mite hard to come by in a place like Galena City,” the clerk told him. “But I can put you on the second floor, rear. That’ll get you as far away from the street as possible. Room’ll run you two dollars a night.”

  Longarm frowned. “Pretty steep, ain’t it?”

  “Mister, you’re lucky to get any place at all to sleep in this town. We’ve got half a dozen new silver mines in these parts producing like crazy, and there’s more folks coming in all the time.” The clerk looked dubiously at Longarm’s rifle. “You want me to put that in the storeroom for you?”

  “I reckon I’ll keep it with me,” said Longarm, “unless that’s against the rules in a high-priced place like this.”

  “Naw, there ain’t no ordinance against carrying guns. No ordinances of any sort, come to think of it.” The clerk spun the registration book around on the desk and asked, “Well, how about it? You want the room or not?”

  Longarm dropped some coins on the desk and reached for the quill pen in its holder. “I reckon,” he said as he scrawled “Custis Parker, Denver, Colorado” in the book. It was an alias he used sometimes when he was keeping his real identity a secret, comprised of the first and middle names his mama had given him back in West-by-God Virginia.

  The clerk slid a key across the desk. “Room Twelve, Mr. Parker,” he said. “Up the stairs and all the way to the rear.”

  Longarm nodded his thanks and hefted his Winchester and warbag. As he carried them up the stairs, he thought that his description as the man who had provoked a fight in the Chinaman’s place earlier by asking questions about Ben Mallory must not have reached the clerk. Otherwise the man would have probably been more leery of renting him a room. He wondered what the clerk would do when he eventually heard the stories and realized he had a troublemaker lodging upstairs.

  Until that happened, Longarm was going to get some rest. The strain of the past few days had made him weary, and he was feeling a little edgy from the showdown that had left the would-be outlaw dead and J. Emerson Dupree badly wounded. Longarm had traded lead with plenty of killers over the course of his years as a marshal, but a fella never got completely used to such things. As soon as he had gone inside the hotel room and shut the door behind him, he leaned the Winchester in a corner, put his warbag on the bed, and fished out a well-padded bottle of Maryland rye that was wrapped up in a pair of spare longhandled underwear. After a long swallow, he lowered the bottle and said, “Ahhh.”

  Nothing like coming close to death for reminding a fella that he was truly alive, thought Longarm. But that was a feeling best experienced in small doses ...

  It was getting on toward evening when Longarm came back downstairs. He had stretched his long frame out on the bed and dozed for a while, but the whole time his hand had been on the butt of the Colt he had slipped under the pillow. The single chair that was in the room looked too rickety to be much good for propping under the doorknob, so he had settled for leaning the Winchester against it instead. If anybody opened the door or as much as rattled the knob, the rifle would fall and wake him.

  No one had disturbed him, though, and now he was hungry after his nap. Somehow, he didn’t think the Chinaman would want his business after what had happened there earlier in the day, and he hadn’t seen a dining room downstairs in the hotel. So Longarm shrugged into his coat and put his hat on, prepared to go back out into the raw evening. He left the Winchester lying on the bed as he went out. Pausing momentarily just outside the room, he placed a match between the door and the jamb, low down so that it wouldn’t be easily noticed, then carefully shut the door. If anybody was waiting for him inside when he got back, he’d have at least a little warning.

  Judging by the look the clerk gave him, Longarm’s reputation had spread to the hotel during the afternoon. The slick-haired gent frowned at Longarm and said, “You didn’t tell me you came here to raise hell.”

  “You didn’t ask,” Longarm pointed out. “Anyway, my money’s as good as anybody else’s, ain’t it?”

  “There’s money, and then there’s money,” said the clerk. “And some of it ain’t worth dying over. I’d appreciate it if you’d gather your gear and leave, mister.”

  Longarm fired up a cheroot and said around it, “That ain’t likely to happen, old son. I paid, and I’m staying. But you can tell Mallory that you did your damnedest to run me out of here. Maybe he won’t hold it against you that you didn’t succeed.”

  The clerk stared at Longarm for a moment, then said in a voice ragged with anxiety, “What the hell do you want here in Galena City, mister?”

  “That’s my business.” Longarm blew out a cloud of smoke. “And maybe Mallory’s.” There. That was another prod that was bound to reach Mallory’s ears sooner or later.

  The clerk shook his head. He wore the look of a man staring into his own grave. “I wish you’d never come here,” he said solemnly.

  “Well, I’ll be out of your hair for a little while,” said Longarm. “Soon as you tell me where a gent could get some supper.”

  “Best place is the Chinaman‘s—” The clerk stopped short and shook his head. “No, you probably wouldn’t want to go back there, would you? And even if you did, Ling wouldn’t like it. Why don’t you try Red Mike’s, up on Comstock Street? There’s already some bullet holes in Mike’s walls, so a few more shouldn’t make much difference.”

  Longarm grinned wolfishly. “Much obliged. I’ll mosey on up there.”

  He went to the front door of the hotel, opened it, slipped outside quickly so that he wouldn’t be silhouetted against the light inside for more than an instant. According to his watch when he took it from his pocket and opened it, the hour was only five o’clock, but already night was falling. The thick clouds shut out the sun and brought on the darkness that much faster.

  Every instinct Longarm possessed was on the alert as he walked up Greenwood Avenue toward Comstock Street, which formed the upper bar of the T. He was still several blocks from the intersection when a woman’s voice said, “Mister? Mister, can you help me?”

  The voice was wracked with pain. Longarm looked over and saw a figure leaning against the side wall of the building he was passing. His first thought was that this was some sort of trap set by Mallory, but the anguish in the woman’s voice had seemed genuine. He glanced around, but he was the only one on this stretch of boardwalk, and the building was dark and closed up.

  Cautiously, he stepped toward the woman. “Ma’am?” he said. “Are you all right?”

  She seemed to be having trouble catching her breath, but when she moved slightly, air hissed between clenched teeth. “They . . . they dragged me back in the alley,” she gasped out. “I ... I told ’em I was a respectable woman, a married woman. They ... they laughed at me.”

  Longarm saw now that she was trying to hold the tatters of a torn dress around her. He felt anger welling up inside him. “Who was it?” he asked as he stepped toward her. “Did you know them?”

  “It was ... Mallory’s boys.”

  Longarm wasn’t surprised. The outlaws thought they could get away with anything they wanted to do around here, including rape. They were sure as hell going to find out different, he vowed. He reached out to the woman. “Here, let me help you—”

  “No!” It was a whisper, barely heard. She went on in the same low tones. “They made me say that, they threatened to kill my husband if I didn’t. They saw me talking to you earlier today and figured you’d listen to me. Get out of here, mister, now!”

  The words tumbled out of her, breathless and run together. But Longarm understood enough to know what she was saying. In the faint light that reached the mouth of the alley where she leaned against the wall, he recognized her as the middle-aged woman he had asked whether there was a doctor in Galena City.

  Now, because of that innocent moment, she had suffered through no fault of her own, just like Dupree. Mallory’s men had witnessed the conversation and decided to use her to strike back against the stranger who had come to town and started asking questions. They had beaten her, probably used her, and now she was the bait in a trap ...

  Longarm grabbed her arm. “Come on!” he barked. “Let’s get out of here!”

  “No!” she said again, this time crying out the word. She didn’t try to pull away from Longarm, though. Instead she threw herself in front of him.

  At that moment, bursts of orange fire licked out from the darkness of the alley, and gunshots shattered the silence.

  The woman was thrown forward, falling against Longarm, and he caught her instinctively as he realized in horror that she had been hit by the gunfire. He saw her face, inches from his, handsome and still dignified despite the hell she had been forced to endure, and as pain twisted her features, she moaned, “Better this way ... after what they did to me ...”

  Then she sagged in Longarm’s grip, and the rattle in her throat told him she was dead.

  Guns were still blasting in the alley, and bullets sang a deadly song around Longarm’s head. He felt the woman’s body shudder as more slugs thudded into her back, but at least she was beyond the pain of feeling them now. Longarm reeled toward the corner of the building, intending to use it as cover if he could get there. With the woman’s body in his arms, he couldn’t reach his gun.

  She slipped out of his grasp before he made it to the comer of the building. People on the street were yelling and running for cover as bullets chewed splinters from the planks. Longarm crouched and tried to draw his Colt, but as his fingers touched the smooth wooden grips of the weapon, something slammed into his side and twisted him around. The blow didn’t hurt very much, but he was suddenly sick at his stomach. He had been shot before, and he knew the feeling.

  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.”

  Chapter 9

  “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 ...”