Tabor Evans Read Free

soft, elongated vowel sounds of Southern speech.
    She went on, "Something happened that I don't remember. I don't remember you at all-"
    "No reason Why you should, ma'am. Far as I know, you never did lay eyes on me before, any more than I've seen you before now."
    Her brows knitted thoughtfully as she struggled to remember. "Then, what happened to me?"
    "You got hit. Real hard, judging from the length of time you've been out. You don't need to worry about anything, though. Nobody laid a hand on you while you were unconscious. You're all right."
    Longarm studied her while she was looking around the clearing. She was a bit older than he'd first judged her to be--in her early thirties, perhaps. Her eyes, which he was seeing for the first time, were dark brown. Her gaze, darting around the little glade, fell on the dead man who lay on the ground at one edge of the clearing.
    "My God!" she gasped. "He was--he was the one-"
    "He was the one that hit you," Longarm filled in when her voice trailed off.
    "More than that." She began to tremble as memory came rushing back. "He was one of the guides I hired at Fort Smith. He-they-there were four of them. And they were going to rape me."
    Longarm nodded. "That's about the size of it. I watched it all, from the time they commenced chasing you around until I got busy and changed their ideas."
    "Is that a polite way of telling me that you killed him?"
    "Well, now, I wasn't trying to be polite, ma'am. No more than I usually am, to a lady. But now that you remember what was going on, it won't bring back more bad memories than you've already got. The reason you don't know how all of it come about is that you'd been knocked cold just before I dropped that fellow there."
    "My God! What kind of place am I in? You're saying you shot that man in cold blood?"
    "No, I wouldn't exactly say it was cold-blooded. I was mad as hell, if you don't object to me swearing a mite. I don't like to see four men ganging up on anybody, let alone a woman, trying to hurt her."
    "Hurting's one thing. Killing's another. I've never been raped, and I don't suppose it would be a very nice experience, but at least I'd still have been alive when they finished. That man lying there is dead?"
    "Yep. Just about as dead as anybody'll ever be."
    "You killed him deliberately, with a gun, instead of just stopping him from-from what he wanted to do."
    Longarm was losing his patience. He looked into the woman's angry eyes for a moment before he replied, "If you'll recall, ma'am, there were four of them. And they weren't the kind I'd want to walk up to and try to reason with, seeing as how all of them were wearing guns."
    "He should have been tried in court, not summarily executed! Even the most disgusting criminal deserves a trial before a judge and jury. You deprived him of his life without giving him a chance to defend himself!"
    Her eyes were fixed scornfully on Longarm's apparently emotionless face.
    "Oh, he defended himself. Him and his three friends all had a few shots at me before I winged two of them and they lit out."
    "But they didn't."
    Longarm's temper finally let go. "Now, you just be good enough to keep quiet a minute, ma'am."
    She looked at him questioningly, and started to say something, but Longarm was already standing up, his back to her. He went to the fire and selected a branch, choosing one that had a good flame at one end and was long enough to serve as a torch.
    "you follow along with me, if you feel able to," he told the woman.
    "Follow?" she shook her head. "I don't understand."
    "You will," he assured her.
    Longarm waited for her to stand up. She got to her feet by kneeling first. The loose, unfastened skirt dropped away. She stood up quickly and grabbed for the skirt, which lay on the ground. Draping it around her waist, she fumbled for a button or snap, but whatever had secured the garment had been torn off by the dead man. She settled for holding the skirt with one hand as she took a step toward Longarm.