Longarm on the Santee Killing Grounds by Tabor Evans Page A

riding habit was loudly calling her an infernally stuck-up whore. The two riders with him were just ogling her like hungry coyotes closing in on a newly yeaned calf with its momma off somewhere else.
    Longarm told himself gang rapes were more unusual than lots of asshole remarks to an unescorted gal along Saloon Row, even in the town of Durango. Then he told himself that even if they were serious, the gal was likely partly to blame and Durango, dammit, had a half-ass company police force that was supposed to watch out for such rowdy behavior. Then he told himself that he was the only peace officer in sight and that the gal seemed really worried as she tried to get free, protesting, "Unhand me, sir! I'm not the sort of girl you seem to take me for, and I'll tell my husband if you get fresh with me!"
    One of the ones just standing by, as if for his turn, laughed dirty and jeered, "You ain't wearing no ring for the same reasons you ain't got no man of your own, Amarillo Annie. You must really take us for tenderfeet if you hope to fool us with such a high and mighty act, you two-bit cunt!"
    Longarm had heard enough. He stepped out of the shadows, saddle gun aimed politely at the planking between them, as he called out in a conversational tone, "Evening, Miss Annie. They told me you'd lit out just before I arrived to escort you... wherever it was you aimed to go."
    The gal didn't answer. She was no fool. But the one who had her by one arm sneered, "She aims to go with us and you'd be well advised to stay out of this, pilgrim."
    Longarm smiled pleasantly enough, considering how tricky the light was, but let an edge of steel creep into his voice when he softly but firmly replied, "I can see by the way all three of you wear your guns that you could be headed into a situation much like the one in that sad old song about the eastbound herd bull and the westbound train. I don't want to brag, but I am not a cowhand in town with a skinful, and even if I was, I got more rounds in the tube of this one Winchester than you could possibly have in the wheels of the two guns you seem to be packing betwixt the three of you. So don't tell this child whether he ought to stay in or out of anything, and Miss Annie just told you to let go her arm, amigo mio!"
    The other one, who seemed more sure of the gal's social status, tried not to sound worried as he cautioned, "You don't want to get in a fight with three grown men over Amarillo Annie, pard. Don't you know what she is?"
    To which Longarm could only reply in a dead-level way, "I do. She's the lady you all just heard me offer to escort on to wherever she may want to go. I'd sure hate to hear anyone call any lady I'm escorting anything less than a lady. For that would make me a sort of fool, in your eyes leastways, and that would mean I'd have to make you look even more foolish, wouldn't it?"
    The one still holding the gal's arm, although not as firmly, tried a nervous horse laugh and blustered, "Hell, I see one of him and three of us, too spread out for him to get more than one of us as we both draw, Slim."
    What the skinny one with the other six-gun might have answered remained a mystery. The gal they'd been tormenting wrenched her arm free and declared, "Now stop it this instant! Don't you silly kids know you're trying to scare the one and original Longarm, and him with the drop on you?"
    The one who'd been about to grab for her arm some more crawfished back as if he'd just noticed a diamondback he'd been fixing to tread on barefoot. The skinny one with the other six-gun worn too high for a side-draw gulped and protested, "Nobody here never said nothing about scaring nobody, Miss Annie. Can't you take a little joke?"
    The gal didn't answer. So he tried the same question on Longarm, who shrugged and quietly asked, "How about you, Miss Annie? Do we take all this as kid stuff and let 'em live, or would you like the three of them stuffed and mounted?"
    By the time she'd grudgingly decided to let it go