Longarm and the Horse Thief's Daughter by Tabor Evans Page B

sagged to his knees, coming down almost on top of Longarm’s headlamp.
    Longarm stepped back, his breathing heavy after those few seconds of mortal combat.
    The glare of light from the carbide lamp showed Henry slumped on his side. The stone knife Longarm had been carrying was buried half its length into his gut, high under his ribs. The man must have been bleeding internally ever since that first clash of bodies.
    Henry gasped for air, mouth forming an O like a fish tossed onto a riverbank. One hand lifted as if in surrender.
    It was no surrender. He tried in vain to punch Longarm but no longer had strength enough to throw the fist. His hand fell helpless across his body.
    His mouth opened and for a moment Longarm thought he wanted to speak. Instead a gout of blood, dark in the light from the fallen headlamp, spilled out of his mouth to saturate his beard and dribble down onto the rock floor.
    He clearly was dying.
    Longarm rocked back onto his heels, gasping for breath himself. He shook his head.
    â€œA waste,” he said, his voice coming out halfway between a croak and a whisper. “What a stupid, fucking waste.”
    Longarm dropped down, sitting with his back pressed against the rock wall. He picked up the headlamp and put it on, then sat with the man called Henry until the man’s breathing stopped and his eyes glazed into the blank sightlessness of death.
    When Longarm’s breathing had returned to normal, he knelt and closed Henry’s eyes, then started back out toward the mine entrance.
    He encountered the four workmen on his way out, the patient little burros following close behind them.
    â€œYour buddy is back there,” he told the men. “You can haul his ass out; I’m not gonna do it for you.”
    All four blinked, uncomprehending.
    Longarm crouched low until the last burro was past, then resumed his low duckwalk back to sunlight and fresh air.

Chapter 24
    Her husband had made a find of some sort, Jane Nellis had said. Presumably then the three raiders wanted his claim as much as, or more than, whatever they might have been able to rob from the site.
    Well, they wanted the claim and wanted the girl as well.
    The problem was that Jane Nellis had no idea where her husband’s find was located. She had been there, of course, but did not know where she was at the time.
    Jane was a city girl with no knowledge of these mountains. Her only interest was with her family, her only reason for being there was to be with them.
    And now her family was gone. Somewhere in these mountains, in one of the innumerable gulches and valleys. Even if Jane had been willing to go back, even if she were sufficiently recovered from her ordeal . . . and from the gunshot wound Longarm put into her . . . she would not know how to find her way back.
    Longarm knew he could wander these mountains for the next couple years and might or might not find his way into the right gulch. Worse, if he did find it, he might well not know it was the right place. Any new diggings with three or more owners? Wouldn’t that be a futile telltale to look for since parties of miners often banded together to find and work their claims.
    The only thing he could think of was how the mind of the average criminal worked.
    The bastards could not themselves be trusted, and so they tended to not trust others. Apparently they assumed that everyone was as crooked as they were themselves.
    When he reached the opening of the adit where Henry died, Longarm retrieved his .45 and said to the foreman there, “Mind if I ask you something?”
    â€œDon’t mind at all. So what’s your question?”
    â€œUp here, when a man makes a strike, where does he go to file his claim?”
    The foreman turned his head and spat a stream of pale tobacco juice off to the side, then turned his attention back to Longarm. “You gotta post your markers at each of the four corners, then you go all the way down to Fort