Longarm and the Sins of Laughing Lyle (9781101612101) Read Free Page B

the Frontier Colt . 44 from the cross-draw holster on his left hip.
    He leveled both weapons on the cutthroats. “I know who you are,” Longarm said, glancing past the three waddies on his right toward the stairs, uneasy about Laughing Lyle May, whom he could no longer hear laughing. “I’m Custis Long, deputy U.S. marshal out of Denver, and you fellas done come to the end of your trail.”
    â€œDon’t think so, Long!” came the roaring shout from the stairs.
    Longarm swung to his right. As though he’d materialized out of thin air, Laughing Lyle stood a third of the way down the stairs, gritting his teeth and leveling two Colts.
    â€œ
Down, boys!
” Longarm shouted at the drovers, diving straight forward, away from the table, just as Laughing Lyle opened up with his Colts, sending lead screaming around the saloon hall and chewing into the floor behind Longarm’s boots.
    The three waddies hurled themselves, chaps flapping, up and over the bar, to hit the floor on the other side with heavy slapping thuds. Laughing Lyle cut loose with a tooth-gnashing yell as he continued triggering his six-guns. At the same time, Longarm hit the floor to the left of Dix and Charlie Embers, and Laughing Lyle shouted at his two cohorts, “Get outta the way, you stupid bastards, or I’ll turn you both into stew!”
    Longarm rolled and came up on his butt, extending his Colt and derringer as Laughing Lyle triggered a round into the table about four feet ahead of the lawman, blowing up splinters and playing cards between Dix and Charlie Embers. Longarm fired twice quickly at Laughing Lyle, hammering adobe out of the wall behind him and causing the outlaw to wheel drunkenly and fall to the stairs.
    Meanwhile, Dix had fallen atop a chair but was scrambling back to his feet red-faced and pulling the long-barreled hogleg out of its shoulder holster. Before he could level the big popper, Longarm drilled him with his derringer, the .32-caliber slug taking the tall, lanky killer through his prominent Adam’s apple. The slug ricocheted off his spine, exited the left side of his neck, and screamed into the wall over the naked whore cowering with her arms over her head on the fainting couch.
    Dix threw his head back and tried to scream, but nothing came out except a shrill choking noise, as he triggered the Buntline Special into the ceiling before he fell and expired. Longarm fired two more shots at Laughing Lyle on the stairs, and then, as Charlie Embers scooped his two pistols off the floor, Longarm shot the black-haired, poison-mean owlhoot twice in the chest.
    The slugs picked Charlie straight up off the floor and threw him up and over the bar, behind which he disappeared with a smacking
bang,
evoking indignant cries from the waddies.
    A pistol barked to Longarm’s left, one slug tearing into the floor near his left knee, the other drilling a table leg and throwing splinters in all directions. The lawman turned to see that Kid McQuade had finally gotten his pants up and grabbed a hogleg. He was triggering the pearl-gripped Remington as he sidestepped toward the bar, about fifteen feet away from Longarm, and screaming, his mouth and eyes wide.
    The lawman rolled beneath a table. Two slugs chewed through the table and into the floor.
    Longarm rolled out from under the table and triggered both his Colt and his derringer. The Colt’s .44 round hammered the kid’s forehead above his left eye, while the derringer’s .32-caliber slug drilled a neat, marble-sized hole through his left cheek, just beneath the same eye.
    The kid took one more side step toward the bar, nodding his head sharply as though he couldn’t agree more with something that had been said, then stopped and dropped straight down to his knees. He nodded once more, thick curly hair bouncing about his neck and shoulders, then flopped onto his back, arms spread out to both sides and flapping like wings. His