Longarm and the Colorado gundown

_{“Not unless it’s a regulation or something, sir. He’s pretty much dead now. If that’s all right. Sir.” Parson sounded so dolefully apologetic that Longarm couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he said it wasn’t all right for the ambusher to be dead now. He put a rein on his tongue, though. He had the impression that poor ol’ Parson wasn’t much used to being joshed.}

_{“I’m sure that’s fine,” was all that Longarm said on the subject.}

_{It occurred to him that guns had been fired here, a roof had collapsed, and men had died. Yet there was no hint of acknowledgment of any of that from Aggie Able in her cabin. But then she’d already proven herself a timid woman once she was buttoned securely within her walls at night, hadn’t she? “It’s all right, Aggie,” he said loudly enough to be heard inside. “Everything is okay now. Unbar the door}

_{and hand us out a lantern, please.”}

_{Longarm didn’t hear any movement indoors, but Parson must have. The bodyguard—errand boy too, it seemed— went around to the front, and came back moments later with an unlighted lamp. Longarm hadn’t actually specified a light, had he? Just the means for it. He sighed and snapped a match head aflame.}

_{Parson held the lamp while Longarm first found his Colt—it was lying in plain sight not two feet from where he’d been pinned—and then the handcuffs that had been jostled loose when the damned roof fell on him. He felt considerably better with the Colt back in hand, and quickly reloaded the lone chamber that he’d had time to empty. Only then did he and Parson move to the other end of the shed to examine the havoc they’d combined to create there.}

_{“Nice shooting,” Parson observed. “If I could do that I believe I’d carry a gun myself, Mr. Long.”}

_{Longarm’s one bullet, hastily aimed on the basis of instinct and experience, had taken the first assailant square in the chest. His sternum had been crushed inward, no doubt stopping the man’s heart in the middle of a beat. He would have been dead, or as good as, before his knees touched the ground.}