The Long Trail Home Read Free Page A

his mouth with his knife. They tasted crusty and smothered in hot spices.
    â€œYou know what’s funny, amigo?” Kiowa laughed. “That deputy is goin’ to come out here looking for us carrying a lantern tryin’ to cut our trail—but he’ll look for horse prints, and he won’t find any. The amazin’ Kiowa Fox is impossible to track on horseback, especially when he doesn’t have a horse!”
    For several minutes the only sounds were the scraping of tin pie plates and the smacking of lips.
    â€œHere she comes!” Fortune pointed across the dirt road to the open door of the saloon. “In the black dress.”
    â€œThat ain’t no dress,” Kiowa whispered.
    â€œSure it is.”
    â€œThere ain’t enough of it to be a dress.”
    Sam took a big bite of sourdough bread. “Well, it’s Ladosa, all right.”
    Kiowa scratched the back of his neck. “Ever’one includin’ the angels in heaven can see that.”
    They pulled back into the deep shadows of the boulders.
    â€œSammy?” the lady called out staring into the June night.
    Fortune pointed to both sides of the Dry Fork Saloon, where men snuck in the shadows. Kiowa Fox scooped up a rock the size of a sweet potato and chunked it fifty feet to their left.
    Four shots flared almost in unison.
    â€œWhat are you doin’?” Ladosa screamed. “Sammy’s a friend of mine!” She yanked a broken crate off the front porch and tossed it at the shadowy gunmen. Then she spun around and stomped back into the building.
    Sam watched through the saloon door. Ladosa marched across the room and up the stairs. Several men entered the saloon from the back door, then all the lights dimmed to black.
    â€œThey’re layin’ in for a siege,” Kiowa whispered. “What are we goin’ to do?”
    â€œFinish our supper. We’ve got the advantage.”
    â€œHow do you figure that? They’ve got six men and two women.”
    â€œSeven men,” Sam corrected.
    â€œAre you countin’ the dead one?”
    â€œYep, but we got the edge. We know where they are—but they don’t know where we are.”
    â€œYou think they’ll try to sneak out after us again?”
    â€œNope.” Sam picked his teeth with the fingernail of his little finger. “They’ve got no motivation. No reward’s out on me. No warrants. And they don’t know you.”
    â€œSome of ’em jist want to be the one who shot Sam Fortune.”
    â€œI don’t know which is sadder, Kiowa, them or us.”
    â€œI’ll sneak up there and get us two horses.”
    â€œNot until I talk to Ladosa.”
    â€œShe ran upstairs.”
    â€œShe’ll come see me.”
    â€œThe old ‘Sammy charm’?”
    â€œI just treat ’em decent, that’s all.”
    â€œShe ain’t a decent woman.”
    â€œI figure that’s for the Lord to decide, not me.” Fortune pointed to the side of the leaning building. “Over there! She’s climbing down that escape ladder.”
    â€œI don’t see nothin’,” Kiowa insisted.
    â€œNeither do I,” Sam replied. “But, I hear the rustle of her petticoat.”
    â€œShe wasn’t wearin’ a petticoat.”
    â€œShe is now,” Fortune assured.
    â€œSammy, you’re crazy.”
    â€œFinish your supper. We’ll be leavin’ soon,” Sam whispered.
    â€œOn horseback?”
    â€œThat remains to be seen.”
    â€œI ain’t walkin’ out on that Staked Plain,” Kiowa declared.
    â€œMaybe we’ll go north.”
    â€œI ain’t walkin’ north either.”
    Fortune sat his tin plate quietly on the boulders, then crept to the edge of the road. By crouching low on his haunches, he could spy the dark silhouette of Ladosa McKay.
    â€œSammy?” she whispered.
    He scooted far to her right, then answered softly,